CategoryArtificial Intelligence
Will Space Aliens Become a New Majority Religion?
Nearly as many young Americans believe in ET as in God, says religion profPopular culture is looking for high-tech ETs to be its saviors and Silicon Valley aspires to become those ETs. What could possibly go wrong?
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Machine Learning Dates Back To at Least 300 BC
The key to machine learning is not machines but mathematicsMachine learning is not a new technique, but is simply a modern extension of a tool that we have had in our toolbox since the days of the Babylonians. It continues to serve us well to help us extrapolate our data to estimate the value of unknown results and to help find the signal in noisy data.
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In 2018, Sci-Fi Phoned the Seventies, It Seems…
…for high-tech overpopulation scares. How else to explain Avengers’ Thanos?, asks Eric Holloway
How Do You Explain That Machines Won’t Really Think Like People?
Computation cannot become non-computational thought but it is difficult to prove that something can’t happen.
Does Workplace Automation Improve Service or Merely Cut Costs?
Chances are, the CEO won’t know there’s a problem until complaints come in. Elon Musk didn’t
Can AI Make Unique Trail-Blazing Science Discoveries?
It would save us a lot of time but, as Eric Holloway warns, some things can’t be automated, by their very nature
Sorry, Wired: That “Crafty Robot” Doesn’t Write in Languages It’s Never Seen
The artificial intelligence industry is overwhelmed with title inflation and feat hype
If You Think Common Sense Is Easy to Acquire…
Try teaching it to a state-of-the-art self-driving car. Start with snowmen.
Seven Minutes to Goosebumps: Confronting Materialism Head On
A new short film series takes on materialism in science, including that of AI’s pop prophets
Philosopher: Gloom and doom over AI is “silly”
Jay Richards thinks that historian Yuval Noah Harari is wrong to think that AI will necessarily subvert democracyThe idea that machines are capable of replacing us is the topic of many books he has read but, he argues, the thing that really distinguishes us is the capacity for developing creative freedom.
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Yes, There ARE Ghosts in the Machine
And one of them is you
Could AI think like a human, given infinite resources?
Given that the human mind is a halting oracle, the answer is no
How Artificial Intelligence Shapes Our Language
Culture critic Mark Steyn reflects on the Matrix and the red pill, which seems to be everywhere
China’s AI Package for Africa Includes Mass Surveillance Technology
Africa sees development aid; China sees an expanding African database
Michael Medved Talks With Robert J. Marks About Animal vs. Human vs. AI Minds
With a glance at unique human creativity
Did an AI Really Learn Human-like Number Sense?
That's the claim, but critics say that humans imposed the number senseDoes artificial intelligence “share our natural ability to make numeric snap judgments”? Researchers observed this knack for numbers in a computer model composed of virtual brain cells, or neurons, called an artificial neural network. After being trained merely to identify objects in images — a common task for AI — the network developed virtual neurons that respond to specific quantities. These artificial neurons are reminiscent of the “number neurons” thought to give humans, birds, bees and other creatures the innate ability to estimate the number of items in a set (SN: 7/7/18, p. 7). This intuition is known as number sense. Maria Temming, “A new AI acquired humanlike ‘number sense’ on its own” at ScienceNews A team led by neurobiologist Read More ›
AI as the Artful Dodger
Watch what happens when I train a neural network on portraits of 56 famous scientists, starting the process with a right eye
Autopilot Is NOT Just Another Word for “Asleep at the Wheel”
As a recent fatal accident in Florida shows, even sober, attentive drivers often put too much trust into Tesla’s Autopilot system, with disastrous resultsLike all tools, AI systems, when used correctly, can augment our abilities, but they are nowhere near replacing us. And we endanger ourselves, and others, when we believe they can.
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Could AI Authentically Create Anything?
Brendan Dixon: The first question posed to me as an artist was,“What are you trying to say?”Du Sautoy believes that AI will “in the distant future” achieve consciousness. For that, we have no evidence. It is a statement of religious faith akin to that of Anthony Levandowski's AI Church.
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