Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

CategoryBusiness and Finance

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George Gilder talking with Peter Robinson at the Hoover Institution

George Gilder on the Real-Life Prospects — and Limits — of AI

Gilder, who is organizing the COSM conference in Bellevue, Washington, in October, clears the fog about “the cloud”

The “cloud” of cloud computing, that Gilder predicted, is things, not ideas. Thus it is subject to the limits of things, as opposed to the limits of ideas. It’s reasonable to ask where that limit is. It is probably both a question and an answer that we can understand.

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Car top taxi sign

Even Uber didn’t believe in Uber’s self-driving taxis

We found that out after Google’s Waymo sued the company

Optimism is not driving the recent collaboration and corporate consolidation in the self-driving car industry. Rather, their retrenchment is protection against an uncertain future.

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You Think You Have Nothing To Hide?

Then why are Big Tech moguls making billions from what you and others tell them?

The bottom line is this: if you think you don’t have anything to hide, then you don’t understand how the modern data economy really works, nor the impact of being caught in a riptide of public opinion.

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Will Money Be “Real” in an Information Society?

Now that Facebook is proposing Libra, a cryptocurrency, this might be a good time to ask

Many of us know cryptocurrencies only from passing headline news. Yet thoughtful people argue that such currencies will help shape an information society. Why?

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Could Huge Chunks of Asteroid Gold Wreck Our Economy?

16 Psyche’s gold illustrates how AI affects jobs. Not the way many think…

“By lowering the price of gold, it would create new, currently nonexistent, markets for other uses of gold,” says Jay Richards. In the same way, AI creates new, currently nonexistent, markets for human time and creativity.

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Self driving car on a road. Autonomous vehicle. Inside view.

Elon Musk: You Are Liable for My Malfunctioning Code!

He hopes to put the blame for self-driving mishaps in parking lots on customers

At Mind Matters News, we have criticized his approach on numerous grounds. One problem that keeps getting left out is, who assumes moral responsibility and legal liability for self-driving vehicles?

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COSM: George Gilder Hosts Top Tech Guys, To Ask, Where Is All This Going?

Are machines replacing or helping us and how will we know the difference?

The October 23-25 conference is aimed at CEOs, CTOs, and CIOs, investors, researchers, technologists, and anyone for whom the $950 Early Adopter Rate (before July 23) would be a good investment in their future.

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Facebook Building Cryptocurrency-Based Payments System - 3D Rendering

Facebook “Likes” Cryptocurrency

We asked Jonathan Bartlett, what the new coin, Libra, means for Facebook? For crypto?

Avoiding having to judge between currencies "solves a political problem for Facebook, but I don't see that it solves problems for anyone else," Bartlett says.

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Tap-Tap Busse, Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Haiti Calling … Reaching Out, Touching the World

Baylor Engineering prof Brian Thomas has been helping Haitians establish businesses to recharge cell phones, using solar panels

In Haiti, 40% of the population (eleven million) still depends on subsistence agriculture. But cell phones allow them to leapfrog many traditional stages of technological development.

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Can the Newest Technology Liberate the Poorest Communities?

In Haiti, new technology bypasses many development pitfalls

In 2011, roughly 10% of Haitians had bank accounts. But by 2013, mobile digital banking via cell phones was starting to stand in for bricks-and-mortar banks.

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WROCLAW, POLAND - JANUARY 28, 2020: Physical version of Bitcoin (BTC), Trezor (cryptocurrency hardware wallet) and other cryptocurrencies background.

Bitcoin: Is Lack of Trust the Biggest Security Threat?

It’s almost a parable: Everyone can see, no one can access, the millions trapped in the ether by a password known only to a dead man

Is this the future of currency? Seems like the Dark Ages to me. Bitcoin is a clever idea, but it is perhaps too clever for its own good.

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Facebook is said to be exploring minting its own cryptocurrency

If Facebook wants to mint private currency, can it still be the judge of morals and manners among users?

A software engineer and tech blogger sees ideas sprout up all over, including both the absurd and the brilliant, as traditional companies try to incorporate cryptocurrencies into their business model.

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Personal Bitcoin Wallet with euro coins

How Do Bitcoins Work Anyway?

And what's their future? A roundup for non-geeks

Everywhere these days one hears people foretelling the fortunes of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin—like so many fairies, good and bad, wishing around a cradle. Most people, including New Yorker staff writer Nick Paumgarten, have hoped to just avoid the scene, partly because few enthusiasts can even explain what the cryptocurrencies are or why they exist. But Paumgarten dove in and his recent long form article offers helpful explanations along with illuminating profiles of digital currency pioneers. First, why? Bitcoin and Ethereum enthusiasts want, in Paumgarten’s words, “a better, decentralized version of the World Wide Web—a Web 3.0—more in keeping with the Internet’s early utopian promise than with the invidious, monopolistic hellscape it has become. They want to seize back the tubes, and Read More ›

Personal Bitcoin Wallet with euro coins

How Bitcoin Works: The social value of trust

The idea of employing such a game to guarantee validity in a trustless environment is nothing short of groundbreaking. It is an amazing accomplishment, and I am impressed by it more each time I think about it. However, it does have some drawbacks, which, I think, will ultimately lead to its demise.

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Pile of colorful children’s alphabet wooden block toys

Imagining Life after Google

Reviewers of George Gilder's new book weigh in

If we have simply taken the big software, hardware, and social media companies who dominate our lives for granted, the reactions from the business world to Life after Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy should give us a lot to think about.

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Why Do We Think Money Is Real?

It is actually a constantly shifting network of agreements to trust others

It is actually a constantly shifting network of agreements to trust others. Maria Bustillos, editor of Ethereum’s culturemag, Popula, asks us to think about just what money is before we make up our minds about Bitcoin.

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George Gilder: Life after Google Will Be Okay

People will take ownership of their own data, cutting out the giant “middle man”

In his new book, he calls the successor era he envisions the “cryptocosm,” referring to the private encryption of data, represented by technologies such as blockchain.

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Bitcoin gold coin. Cryptocurrency concept.

A Wallet You Can’t Feel?

Will Bitcoin change the rituals around money?

It’s tempting to assume that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin will succeed because social media did. But digital doesn’t mean magic. Cryptocurrencies will work if the needs met are more significant to most people than the problems created are.

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