CategoryMachine Learning
Quantity vs Quality: Can AI Help Scientists Produce Better Papers?
What happens when scientists simply can't read all their peers' papers and still find time for original research?
AI Winter Is Coming
Roughly every decade since the late 1960s has experienced a promising wave of AI that later crashed on real-world problems, leading to collapses in research funding.
Facial Recognition Aids Persecution of Chinese Christians, Muslims
Western companies still seek business ties with an increasingly authoritarian regimeThe crackdown on religion is said to stem from Xi Jinping, who became President in 2012. After he got term limits removed in March 2018, some have begun to privately call him “Emperor Xi.”
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AI, it turns out, can solve any problem
As long as we are not too persnickety about what we consider a solution
If a Robot Read the News, Would You Notice a Difference?
The Chinese government thinks not. Is this the way of the future?
The “superintelligent AI myth”
The problem that even the skeptical Deep Learning researcher left out
Who needs wisdom? We’ve got algorithms!
On a decision about a TV series, the Algorithm offered a narrow view (ratings) while Hollywood offered a “big picture” view. Who was right?
Brains are not billions of little computers
Despite the hype. Also, life forms are not machines and neurons are not neural networks
Can Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, save it from humanity?
Berners-Lee has launched a global campaign for a Magna Carta to “protect people’s rights online from threats such as fake news, prejudice and hate”
Canada demands intimate banking data from a half million citizens
The goal of the program, recently uncovered by media, is to develop a “new institutional personal information bank” for government use.A Canadian TV station recently provided a dramatic insight into how far Western governments are prepared to go, using advanced data gathering techniques, to surveil the lives of citizens: Statistics Canada is asking banks across the country for financial transaction data and personal information of 500,000 Canadians without their knowledge. Global News has learned. Documents obtained by Global News show the national statistical agency plans to collect “individual-level financial transactions data” and sensitive information, like social insurance numbers (SIN), from Canadian financial institutions to develop a “new institutional personal information bank.” Andrew Russell and David Akin, “EXCLUSIVE: Stats Canada requesting banking information of 500,000 Canadians without their knowledge” at Global News Further investigation showed that the government agency has already…
Human intelligence as a halting oracle
Jonathan Bartlett proposes to model the human mind as a halting oracle
Did AI show that we are “a peaceful species” triggered by religion?
No, but this episode shows how science media sometimes help mislead the publicUnfortunately, most of the public knows about science only through science media professionals. And it is apparent that science media professionals often know little to nothing of what they are talking about.
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A chilling snippet from mass surveillance in China
China is helping other countries restrict their citizens’ internet, while shunning the U.S.
Life after Google: More private and more profitable?
Reviewing Gilder’s Life after Google, Ralph Benko asks, If our attention is worth billions, shouldn’t we market it?
Too late to prevent being ruled by The Algorithm?
Dilbert’s creator, Scott Adams, tells Ben Shapiro why he thinks politicians soon won't matter
Who assumes moral responsibility for self-driving cars?
Can we discuss this before something happens and everyone is outsourcing the blame?
Self-driving vehicles are just around the corner
On the other side of a vast chasm…
Could AI write novels?
George Orwell thought so, as long as no thinking was involved
How Do Bitcoins Work Anyway?
And what's their future? A roundup for non-geeksEverywhere 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…