Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

CategorySocial Factors

N or neutral gear position light sing show close up at vehicle gauge
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post
Winston Ewert
Date
October 30, 2018
Categorized
Social Factors
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Is Technology Neutral?

Or does it change our world whether we like it or not?
Winston Ewert
October 30, 2018
4
Social Factors

People tend to be one of two minds when it comes to technology. One group views technology as directional—altering those cultures it reaches. They construct plausible narratives about how this or that technology has changed our culture. The second group views technology as neutral. They dismiss the narrative put forward by the first group, explaining that such changes are due to forces within the culture, not to technology.

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Car windshield view of Zabriskie Point, Death Valley, California, USA
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Jonathan Bartlett
Date
October 26, 2018
Categorized
Machine Learning, Social Factors
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Who assumes moral responsibility for self-driving cars?

Can we discuss this before something happens and everyone is outsourcing the blame?
Jonathan Bartlett
October 26, 2018
7
Machine Learning, Social Factors

Level 4 self-driving vehicles will bring with them a giant shift in the moral equation of driving. Unfortunately, in a culture that seems to think that the future will take care of itself, little thoughtful public discussion is taking place. My hope is to start a discussion of how coming technological changes will affect the future moral landscape.

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 25, 2018
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Social Factors
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How AI could run the world

Its killer apps, in physicist Max Tegmark's tale, include a tsunami of "message" films
Denyse O'Leary
October 25, 2018
5
Artificial Intelligence, Social Factors

In traditional fairy tales, an explanatory gap can be addressed by magic. After all, most readers will grant a writer one impossibility (for example, that a boy’s horse has human intelligence) just to get the story moving. Unfortunately, science fiction is one genre that doesn’t work that way. The author must make the claim sound like science, a problem Tegmark vaults right over.

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Mind Matters
Date
October 25, 2018
Categorized
Philosophy of Mind, Social Factors
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How a Computer Programmer looks at DNA

And finds it to be "amazing" code
Mind Matters
October 25, 2018
5
Philosophy of Mind, Social Factors

From 2006 through 2017, Dutch entrepreneur and software developer Bert Hubert contributed from time to time to a web page where he listed many of the ways the workings of DNA can be likened to coding decisions by programmers.

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Am Abgrund
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post
Jonathan Bartlett
Date
October 24, 2018
Categorized
Machine Learning, Social Factors
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Self-driving vehicles are just around the corner

On the other side of a vast chasm…
Jonathan Bartlett
October 24, 2018
6
Machine Learning, Social Factors

Many cheerleaders have wrongly assumed that the progress from one level of automation to another should be a direct, linear process but it clearly isn’t. Rather, the transition from Level 4 to Level 5 automation is multiple orders of magnitude more difficult than all the other levels combined. Its completion should not be taken as a foregone conclusion.

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 23, 2018
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Social Factors
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Could AI write novels?

George Orwell thought so, as long as no thinking was involved
Denyse O'Leary
October 23, 2018
4
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Social Factors

Serious literature will always be written, to borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill, in “blood, toil, tears and sweat” because imaging the human condition accurately is part of its nature. And if the writer lives in an unfree society, serious literature will also be written in fear.

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Personal communication
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Mind Matters
Date
October 23, 2018
Categorized
Philosophy of Mind, Social Factors
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Brain hacks

Do we understand the brain better if we see it as a computer?
Mind Matters
October 23, 2018
6
Philosophy of Mind, Social Factors

Seeing the brain as a computer doesn’t tell us as much as we might think. When human beings build computers, we design them in a way that we can understand and use. So we think our brains must be like that too. Sure enough, in the vast complexity of our brains, we can surely find some elements that remind us of a computer. Others won’t.

 

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Mind Matters
Date
October 19, 2018
Categorized
Machine Learning, Social Factors
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Would Google be happier if America were run more like China?

This might be a good time to ask
Mind Matters
October 19, 2018
6
Machine Learning, Social Factors

A leaked internal discussion document, the “Cultural Context Report” (March 2018), admits a “shift toward censorship.” It characterizes free speech as a “utopian narrative,” pointing out that “As the tech companies have grown more dominant on the global stage, their intrinsically American values have come into conflict with some of the values and norms of other countries.”

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Mind Matters
Date
October 11, 2018
Categorized
Machine Learning, Social Factors
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Hacks damage Facebook, kill Google+

The internet changes everything. For example, it makes the Big Guys more vulnerable, not less vulnerable, than bit players
Mind Matters
October 11, 2018
5
Machine Learning, Social Factors

Facebook gets blamed for everything from what Russia does to what American voters do. But the people who seem to think Mark Zuckerberg and company have superpowers for changing the world are mistaken. Facebook was not able to fend off a damaging hack.

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Mind Matters
Date
October 11, 2018
Categorized
Machine Learning, Social Factors
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Did AI teach itself to “not like” women?

No, the program did not teach itself anything. But the situation taught the company something important about what we can safely automate.
Mind Matters
October 11, 2018
4
Machine Learning, Social Factors

Back in 2014, it was a “holy grail” machine learning program, developed in Scotland, that would sift through online resumes, using a one-to-five star rating system and cull the top five of 100, saving time and money. Within a year, a problem surfaced: It was “not rating candidates for software developer jobs and other technical posts in a gender-neutral way.”

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 8, 2018
Categorized
Machine Learning, Social Factors
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I, Robot, am gathering dust in the sales room …

Why do robotics experts think that customers will warm to robots because they look like people?
Denyse O'Leary
October 8, 2018
3
Machine Learning, Social Factors

The underlying assumption is surely incorrect. Robots like the Roomba succeed in part because they don’t look or act like people, let alone threaten people. They just do jobs people would prefer not to do or maybe can’t.

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pawel-czerwinski-710838-unsplash
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Mind Matters
Date
October 8, 2018
Categorized
Machine Learning, Social Factors
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Google boss quits, writes satirical novel

The novel is said to be so far-fetched that it captures the environment
Mind Matters
October 8, 2018
4
Machine Learning, Social Factors

Recently, we’ve looked at a number of complaints about the way Silicon Valley is acquiring too much power over people’s lives, at home and abroad, and reaching deep into the compulsory school system as well. A former employee decided to respond creatively.

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kevin-364843-unsplash
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Mind Matters
Date
October 5, 2018
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Machine Learning, Social Factors
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People-friendly robots company shuts down

The “cobots,” robots that can work with people, got the pink slip—for now
Mind Matters
October 5, 2018
4
Machine Learning, Social Factors

Robotics is a business like any other. The individual good idea requires a business plan that can survive savage years in the wilderness before the buyout. That said, we certainly haven’t heard the last of the cobot, which may be one of the ideas that make robotics practical for everyday business.

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Portraits of people thinking
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Jonathan Bartlett
Date
October 4, 2018
Categorized
Machine Learning, Social Factors
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Who built AI? You did, mostly

Along with millions of others, you are providing free training data
Jonathan Bartlett
October 4, 2018
5
Machine Learning, Social Factors

For AI to work you need data. The most innovative players in the AI space have learned how to get users to willingly and gladly provide them with data for free.

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Brain activity
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Mind Matters
Date
October 3, 2018
Categorized
Philosophy of Mind, Social Factors
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Knowledge is power, sort of…

If that’s ALL knowledge is, the resulting science is bound to be limited, says Michael Egnor
Mind Matters
October 3, 2018
2
Philosophy of Mind, Social Factors

If you are trying to predict the course of a cannonball, Newtonian mechanics are adequate. If you are trying to understand the mind of the guy who fired the cannon, you need to look much deeper.

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markus-spiske-803817-unsplash
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Mind Matters
Date
October 1, 2018
Categorized
Ethics, Machine Learning, Social Factors
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Are sex robots a cure for loneliness?

Maybe, in a culture where people see themselves as machines
Mind Matters
October 1, 2018
3
Ethics, Machine Learning, Social Factors

Nancy Pearcey, who is the author of Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, reminds us that the most popular metaphor for the universe today is a vast machine.

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