Mind Matters Reporting on Natural and Artificial Intelligence

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An internet email symbol and a group of people are separated by a red prohibitory symbol No. restrictions on access to the global Internet. Censorship. Information control, society isolation policy
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post
Author
Heather Zeiger
Date
January 18, 2020
Categorized
Global Technology, Social Media, Surveillance
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Can a Totalitarian State Be an Information Society?

Beijing’s clumsy social media campaigns against democracy in Hong Kong and Taiwan have failed but attempts to control local media are ramping up
Heather Zeiger
January 18, 2020

Xi believes that the Western values of a free press, free speech, and separation of powers contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union and that China must avoid them so as not to succumb to the same fate. But the Soviet Union fell just before the internet became today’s information superhighway.

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Photo by Wherda Arsianto
Type
post
Author
Heather Zeiger
Date
January 14, 2020
Categorized
Surveillance
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Serious Media In China Have Gone Strangely Silent

With a compulsory new app, the government can potentially access journalists’ phones, both for surveillance and capturing data
Heather Zeiger
January 14, 2020

Liu Hu sums up the scene in a few words: “Outside of China, journalists are fired for writing false reports… Inside China, they are fired for telling the truth.”

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black mathematics board with formulas
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post
Author
Daniel Andrés Díaz-Pachón
Date
January 5, 2020
Categorized
Mathematics
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Faith Is the Most Fundamental of the Mathematical Tools

An early twentieth century clash of giants showed that even mathematics depends on some unprovable assumptions
Daniel Andrés Díaz-Pachón
January 5, 2020

David Hilbert wanted all mathematics to be proved by logical steps. Kurt Gödel showed that no axiomatic system could be complete and consistent at the same time.

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Group Of Businesspeople Identified By AI System
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post
Author
News
Date
January 2, 2020
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Global Technology, Work
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How To Fool Facial Recognition

Changing a couple of pixels here and there can stump a computer
News
January 2, 2020

Both computers and humans can be fooled by patterns that appear significant but really aren’t. But the bigger the computer, the more random patterns it can find in the vast swathes of data processed.

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Tesla Motors logo sign
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post
Author
Jonathan Bartlett
Date
December 30, 2019
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Global Technology
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2019 AI Hype Countdown #1: Tesla’s Robotaxis—Tales of a Phantom Fleet

Musk put out a tweet on December 22, saying “Sorry, it's been a bit of a struggle.” At last, a claim we can unreservedly believe
Jonathan Bartlett
December 30, 2019

Because Tesla has yet to make a yearly profit in any of its sixteen years of existence, it depends on capital raises of various forms (equity, debt, etc.) to stay in business. Capital raises require big promises and Tesla’s overstatements about its self-driving cars are always good for a few billion.

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Photo by Daniil Kuželev
Type
post
Author
News
Date
December 30, 2019
Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind
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Researchers: Our Conscious Visual Perception Lies Outside Our Visual Cortex

They concluded that the end step of perceiving where objects are occurs in the frontal lobes, a finding they describe as “radical”
News
December 30, 2019

A major consequence of the advance of modern neuroscience is that we now “know” so much less than we used to. But what we do know points us in promising research directions.

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Photo by NeONBRAND
Type
post
Author
Michael Egnor
Date
December 29, 2019
Categorized
Philosophy of Mind, Religion
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Why Materialism Fails as a Science-Based Philosophy

I don’t believe that either panpsychism or cosmopsychism is true. But I have some sympathy with people who hold those views
Michael Egnor
December 29, 2019

There is no doubt that consciousness is a fundamental property of animal and human existence. As philosopher Philip Goff notes, a philosophy like materialism that cannot plausibly account for it cannot be correct.

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The-Expanse-Publicity-Still
The Expanse Still Image
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post
Author
Adam Nieri
Date
December 28, 2019
Categorized
Arts & Culture
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Sci-Fi TV: 2019’s Best and Worst

2019 featured many sci-fi television and movies that were less sci-fi than political narrative
Adam Nieri
December 28, 2019

In 2019, I fell out with Netflix. I felt bombarded by more and more edgy content, as though Netflix wanted me to know how “adult” it is. Rather than producing a few amazing originals, Netflix started vomiting up a ton of terrible originals.

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The mankind races - ethnic and multi ethnic - scientific model - concept
Type
post
Author
Heather Zeiger
Date
December 26, 2019
Categorized
Ethics, Global Technology, Surveillance, Technocracy
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China: DNA Phenotyping Profiles Racial Minorities

In the United States, targeting minorities means political pushback; in China, no such discussion is allowed
Heather Zeiger
December 26, 2019

While there is some merit to the idea that the population of a particular geographic region will have similar DNA patterns, this science comes with a host of assumptions that, when taken too far, crosses the line into pseudoscience.

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China and Australia puzzles from flags, 3D rendering
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post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
December 11, 2019
Categorized
Global Technology
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Weighing the Costs of China’s High-Tech Power

Western nations like New Zealand, Australia, and Canada must weigh Beijing’s demands carefully
Denyse O'Leary
December 11, 2019

Smaller Western countries, dependent on high-tech cooperation and the promise of huge markets in China, have muted their protests over Hong Kong and even accept Chinese government censorship in their own territories. That can put them in conflict with their own stated values.

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One belt one road. New Chinese trade silk road. map infographics
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post
Author
Heather Zeiger
Date
December 3, 2019
Categorized
Global Technology, Surveillance
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Why China Leans Hard on Central Asia

The region is critical to China’s ambitions, hence the generous offers of state-of-the-art surveillance technology
Heather Zeiger
December 3, 2019

Where is all of the data going and where is it stored? The short answer is China. The Central Asian countries’ current laws do not adequately protect their citizens’ privacy. In fact, most countries in the world do not have adequate laws to deal with the potential harms of facial recognition technology.

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Robot's body
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post
Author
News
Date
December 3, 2019
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health, Philosophy of Mind
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Would You Want Immortal Life as a Cyborg?

Would you give up your right arm for a robotic device that performs better? Think about it
News
December 3, 2019

Transhumanism can mean uploading one’s mind into cyberspace. But some transhumanists hope to slowly morph into “immortal cyborgs” with endlessly replaceable parts. Five years ago, we were told, we were all turning into cyborgs: Did you recently welcome a child into the world? Congratulations! An upstanding responsible parent such as yourself is surely doing all you can to prepare your little one for all the pitfalls life has in store. However, thanks to technology, children born in 2014 may face a far different set of issues than you ever had to. And we’re not talking about simply learning to master a new generation of digital doohickeys, we’re talking about living in a world in which the very definition of “human” Read More ›

light at the end of the tunnel
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post
Author
News
Date
November 21, 2019
Categorized
Medicine and Health, Philosophy of Mind
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Why Medical Scientists Take Near-Death Experiences Seriously Now

Today, we know much more about what happens to people when they die—and what we are learning does not support materialism
News
November 21, 2019

Near-death experiences are generally seen as real, even among hardcore skeptics, and research focuses on how to account for them.

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Artificial Intelligence and Transhumanism - illustration
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post
Author
News
Date
November 19, 2019
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind, Religion
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Transhumanism—Is It a Dangerous Idea?

Some Silicon Valley greats hope to merge with machines to live forever. But what then?
News
November 19, 2019

The late philosopher Jerry Fodor (1935—2017) said that the reason “we’re all materialists” is that the alternatives seem even worse. Transhumanism, had he lived to see it develop, would give him pause for further reflection. 

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protest in hong kong 2019 june 12
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post
Author
Heather Zeiger
Date
November 19, 2019
Categorized
Global Technology, Surveillance, Technocracy
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Hong Kong: The Dread That Lies Ahead

They fear the fate of the Uyghurs, under "complete video surveillance"
Heather Zeiger
November 19, 2019

They dread 2047 when Hong Kong comes completely under the jurisdiction of the Communist Party and is subject to the CCP’s rule of law rather than Hong Kong’s own laws under the current “one country, two systems” regime.

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Man trying to whistle
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post
Author
News
Date
November 15, 2019
Categorized
Data Privacy, Ethics, Medicine and Health
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Google’s Secret Health Data Grab: The Whistleblower Talks

This is the fourth whistleblower in the last eighteen months
News
November 15, 2019

“The decision came to me slowly, creeping on me through my day-to-day work,” we are told, until it came down to “how could I say nothing?”

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Chatbot / Social Bot mit Quellcode im Hintergrund
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post
Author
Brendan Dixon
Date
November 14, 2019
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture
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Should AI-Written News Stories Have Bylines? Whose?

Like it or not, AI is here to stay. So, how do we make the best use of it in writing?
Brendan Dixon
November 14, 2019

Automation can help some aspects of writing. But media outlets get tech “google”-eyes and too often fail to ask the hard questions about what they are automating, how, and why.

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Quantum computer system. Internet connection. Net system. Modern big data. Magic code. .Techno pattern. Intersect grid. Symmetry lines. Energy blocks. Kaleidoscopic shape. AI. Sci-fi
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post
Author
Eric Holloway
Date
November 12, 2019
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind, Programming
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Google vs. IBM?: Quantum Supremacy Isn’t the Big Fix Anyway

If human thought is a halting oracle, then even quantum computing will not allow us to replicate human intelligence
Eric Holloway
November 12, 2019

Google’s quantum supremacy claim is certainly fascinating and controversial, but even if true, it ultimately only amounts to an incremental and even inconsequential improvement in the state of AI and ML, due to the still-unmet need for a halting oracle.

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Big brother electronic eye concept, technologies for the global surveillance, security of computer systems and networks
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post
Author
News
Date
November 11, 2019
Categorized
Ethics, Technocracy
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Can a Big Data Program Be Society’s Crystal Ball?

Can a program with enough data on all of us predict our future?
News
November 11, 2019

Even fans admit that, if the program works, bad actors can use it just as easily as New Scientist’s virtuecrats.

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