Can a Big Data Program Be Society’s Crystal Ball?
Can a program with enough data on all of us predict our future?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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But Could Techno-Immortality Ever Be the Real Thing?
Oxford mathematician John Lennox looks at Ray Kurzweil’s techno-immortality from a Christian perspectiveIn these excerpts from the podcast, Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks talks with John Lennox about an AI immortality where we are told, for example, that we won’t need tongues because we can tap right into our taste buds.
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Neuroscientist Says Our Souls Are Not Machines
A reviewer notes that Sharon Dirckx makes her case in a way that is easy for the attentive non-specialist reader to understand.If readers are looking for a book by a writer familiar with the science who does not just adopt the materialist view and then spend two hundred and fifty pages supporting it, Am I Just My Brain? might be a good choice.
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Astrophysicist: Materialism Is on Shaky Ground
Adam Frank ponders the fact that materialism entirely fails to explain consciousnessFrank’s computational research group has developed advanced supercomputer tools to study how stars form and die. So he would incline to a materialist view, surely? But no, he says, quantum physics blew all that away. And some neuroscientists just haven’t caught up.
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Yes, You Can Manipulate Infinity—in Math
The hyperreals are bigger (and smaller) than your average number — and better!Hyperreal numbers are a new type of number that was developed to simplify and rethink the way that we deal with very large and very small numbers.
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How Much Google Do You Really Need?
As more people are becoming concerned about Big Tech’s snooping and apparent political ambitions, practical responses are emergingGetting away from constant surveillance and dangerous little bubbles of manipulated information is easier than some users may realize, tech pioneers and experts say. You can make simple changes today.
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A Type of Reasoning AI Can’t Replace
Abductive reasoning requires creativity, in addition to computationAI, says William Littlefield, would get stuck in an endless loop with abductive reasoning, which is an inference to the best explanation or an educated guess. But it plays an important role in creating hypotheses in the sciences.
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Hong Kong: Face Mask Ban Fuels Fiercer Protest
The masks, like many of the protesters’ strategies, circumvent China’s omnipresent high-tech surveillanceThe Chinese government may use violent behavior as a justification for obliterating the Hongkongers’ prized freedoms. As a possible precedent, the Uyghur people, as a whole, were painted as religious extremists, even though only about 1,000 people participated in violent protests.
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How You Can Really Know You’re Talking to a Computer
In a lively exchange, computer science experts offer some savvy adviceClaims that a given program has “passed the Turing test” should be treated skeptically because a program can be optimized to pass the Turing test without demonstrating any particular intelligence.
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A Quick Guide to Augmented Reality
Now that Apple is integrating Augmented Reality Into iOS 13, here are some things you can do with itWhile iOS 13 has some amazing features, it also has some significant limitations. The biggest one is that the tracking between the real world and the virtual world does not extend to GPS.
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A BABY, a GEEK, and a COW…
… all walk into a bar looking for some BEER and VINO…What happens next? They all beat the market. Were their ticker names a factor? I decided to study that.
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The Three Laws of Robotics Have Failed the Robots
Almost no one out there thinks that Isaac Asimov's Three Laws could work for truly intelligent AI
Cats do bond with people
Both cats and kittens showed about the same level of attachment to caregivers as children and dogs didWhen a cat feels secure, he develops relationships with humans and dogs. But he won’t be either your servant or your master; just your housemate—and maybe at last your old friend.
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Can China Really Silence Hong Kong?
Hong Kong is tech-savvy and the protesters are adept at defeating even high-tech terrorsSome protestors use umbrellas to block the view of newly installed surveillance cameras while others dismantle the electronics. Others place traffic cones over tear gas canisters and then neutralize the gas with water.
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Do We Need To Learn from AI How To Think Better?
No, and a moment’s thought shows why not
Tibetan Monks Can Change Their Metabolism
Far from disproving it, science has documented itFor decades, a default assumption was that claims that meditating monks in the Buddhist tradition could greatly raise their temperature or slow their metabolism were assumed to be exaggerations that would yield to a scientific explanation. The scientific explanation turned out to be that they can do exactly that.
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If Computers Are Intelligent, Climbing a Tree Is Flying
That, says Edward Feser, is the take-home message from Gary Smith’s book, The AI DelusionThe book’s message is that “the real danger of artificial intelligence is that it will remain dumber than we are,” but we will think it is smarter.
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Tell Kids the Robot Is “It,” Not “He”
Teaching children to understand AI and robotics is part of a good education todayWe are not truly likely to be ruled by AI overlords (as opposed to powerful people using AI. But even doubtful predictions may be self-fulfilling if enough impressionable people come to believe them. Children, for example. We adults are aware of the limitations of AI. But if we talk about AI devices as if they were people, children—who often imbue even stuffed toys with complex personalities—may be easily confused. Sue Shellenbarger, Work & Family columnist at The Wall Street Journal, warns that already, “Many children think robots are smarter than humans or imbue them with magical powers.” While she admits that the “long-term consequences” are still unclear, “an expanding body of research” suggests we need to train children to draw…
Will Industry Pressure Loosen Self-Driving Car Tests?
Right now, the regulatory agency is under pressure to accept the industry’s “softball” testing suggestions