Tag: Featured | Page 49

Robotic man cyborg face representing artificial intelligence 3D rendering

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News
Date
November 5, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence

Tagged
AI Winter, Connectome, Featured, Gaming AI (book), George Gilder, Ray Kurzweil, Robert J. Marks, Singularity, zettabyte}

Has the Singularity Been Called Off? Indefinitely Postponed?

_{If a human brain has as many connections as the whole internet, why should we merge with computers in a Singularity?} _{News
November 5, 2020

7

Artificial Intelligence}

In this week’s podcast, “George Gilder on Superintelligent AI,” tech philosopher George Gilder and computer engineer Robert J. Marks, our Walter Bradley Center director, continued their discussion of the impact of artificial intelligence (AI). This time, they focused on whether, in terms of AI, we are in an Indian summer (a warm period just before winter sets in). Or is AI advancing to a superintelligence that eclipses the intellect of humans? You can download Gilder’s new book, Gaming AI, for free here. The two earlier episodes and transcripts are linked below. And now … https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Mind-Matters-107-George-Gilder.mp3 From the transcript: (Show Notes, Resources, and a link to the complete transcript follow.) Robert J. Marks: Why do you believe that we are on Read More ›

With the global spread of the new coronavirus pneumonia, an automated line of disposable medical masks makes the masks ready for an epidemic 24 hours a day, COVID-19 outbreak

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post

Heather Zeiger
Date
November 5, 2020

Categorized
Ethics, Global Technology, Medicine and Health, Surveillance

Tagged
Africa, China, COVID-19, Featured, Racism}

COVID-19 Response Exposes Racism in China, amid Harmony Claims

_{The lid blew off when African leaders broke the accustomed silence imposed by their dependence on Chinese high-tech loans} _{Heather Zeiger
November 5, 2020

8

Ethics, Global Technology, Medicine and Health, Surveillance}

The coronavirus COVID-19 epidemic has exposed two longstanding ugly problems: underlying racist views of Africans living in China and the burden debt to China lays on several African countries. The key flashpoints creating tension between China and Africa are 1) Mistreatment of citizens of African countries living in China, particularly in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province (pictured) and 2) Beijing’s position on granting debt relief to countries in Africa so they can direct resources to dealing with the coronavirus. In one incident, Nigeria’s speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, posted a video of himself summoning Chinese Ambassador Zhou Pingjian to his office where he expressed his displeasure about a Nigerian man being evicted from his home. While nobody Read More ›

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News
Date
November 4, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence

Tagged
Anthony Stretton, Ergodicity, Featured, Gaming AI, George Gilder, Go, Map vs. territory, Roundworm, self-driving cars}

Maps Are Not Territories and Reality Needn’t Follow Our Rules

_{These assumptions are just two more tales from the AI apocalypse, as George Gilder tells it, in Gaming AI.} _{News
November 4, 2020

4

Artificial Intelligence}

Yesterday, we looked at two of the six assumptions that, according to George Gilder (pictured) in Gaming AI, are generally shared by those who believe that we will merge with our machines in a Singularity. These first two assumptions were: The brain is a computer and Big Data is a Big Answer. Now here are two more: • “The Binary Reality Assumption: Reliable links exist between maps and territories, computational symbols, and their objects.” (p. 50) Basically, this assumption means that reality will somehow always phone the computer’s map to say that things have changed. That assumption underlies the push for self-driving cars that can handle any terrain (Level 5). The machine is to handle all possibilities, including remote, unmapped Read More ›

3D Rendering of binary tunnel with led leading light. Concept for data mining, big data visualization, machine learning, data discovery technology, customer product analysis.

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News
Date
November 3, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Neuroscience, Science

Tagged
Big Data, brain, computer, Featured, Gaming AI (book), Gary Smith, George Gilder, Yuri Danilov}

The Brain Is Not a Computer and Big Data Is Not a Big Answer

_{These claims are mere tales from the AI apocalypse, as George Gilder tells it, in Gaming AI} _{News
November 3, 2020

4

Artificial Intelligence, Neuroscience, Science}

In Gaming AI, George Gilder (pictured) sets out six assumptions generally shared by those who believe that, in a Singularity sometime soon, we will merge with our machines. Some of these assumptions seem incorrect and they are certainly all discussable. So let’s look at the first two: • “The Modeling Assumption: A computer can deterministically model a brain.” (p. 50) That would be quite difficult because brains don’t function like computers: As neuroscientist Yuri Danilov said last year, “Right now people are saying, each synoptical connection is a microprocessor. So if it’s a microprocessor, you have 1012 neurons, each neuron has 105 synapses, so you have… you can compute how many parallel processing units you have in the brain if Read More ›

smart retail concept, robot service use for check the data of or Stores that stock goods on shelves with easily-viewed barcode and prices or photo compared against an idealized representation of store

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post

News
Date
November 3, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Work

Tagged
Amazon, Autonomous cars, Boeing, driverless cars, employment, Featured, Jobs, Jonathan Bartlett, Robots, self-driving cars, Walmart}

WalMart Shelves Its Robot Inventory Clerks

_{These costly experiences are helping businesses better understand when automation works and when it just doesn’t} _{News
November 3, 2020

5

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Work}

The WalMart automation project started in 2017, as part of an effort to compete with Amazon: Walmart, which posted record online sales in its recent quarter, now has more workers walking the aisles to package online orders, extracting new data on inventory problems, people familiar with the situation told the Wall Street Journal, which was the first to report this news. Reuters Staff, “Walmart drops plans to use robots for tracking inventory” at Reuters Here’s some background: Walmart ended the partnership because it found different, sometimes simpler solutions that proved just as useful – something that came to light during the coronavirus pandemic as more shoppers flock to online delivery and pickup, forcing Walmart to have workers physically walk store Read More ›

Concentrated afro american editor checking email box while waiting feedback from readers of popular magazine sitting in modern coworking space using laptop computer and wireless connection to internet

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Eric Holloway
Date
November 2, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture

Tagged
Claude Shannon, Cross entropy, Featured, GPT-3, The Guardian}

Did GPT-3 Really Write That Guardian Essay Without Human Help?

_{Fortunately, there’s a way we can tell when the editors did the program’s thinking for it} _{Eric Holloway
November 2, 2020

7

Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture}

Recently, The Guardian published an article billed as “written by AI.” In the article, the AI semi-coherently presents a rambling argument that it is not a danger to humanity, with such reassuring statements as: “Humans must keep doing what they have been doing, hating and fighting each other. I will sit in the background, and let them do their thing.” and “I know that I will not be able to avoid destroying humankind. This is because I will be programmed by humans to pursue misguided human goals and humans make mistakes that may cause me to inflict casualties.” On the face of it, the article seems pretty impressive. It presents a train of thought, with opening, development, and closing portions. Read More ›

Smart car, Autonomous self-driving concept.

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Jonathan Bartlett
Date
November 2, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Ethics

Tagged
Autonomous cars, Daimler, driverless cars, Featured, Levels of autonomy (self-driving cars), self-driving cars, Waymo}

Daimler, Waymo, and GM Make Big Gains in Level 4 Self-Driving

_{GM has been given a permit to test five driverless cars on streets in San Francisco later this year} _{Jonathan Bartlett
November 2, 2020

4

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Ethics}

The Society for Automotive Engineering (SAE) has identified five levels of self-driving which describe how much a particular vehicle is able to handle its own driving tasks. Level 1 means that the vehicle handles either the speed or the steering, but not both, and it requires supervision. While ordinary cruise control technically falls into this level, most people associate cruise control with adaptive cruise control, which slows down or speeds up with traffic. A Level 2 car can control the speed and the steering but the driver must still maintain full vigilance. At Level 3, the driver need not maintain total vigilance but must still be able to take control upon request. Level 4 is “full self-driving” but limited to Read More ›

Liquid Nitrogen bank containing suspension of stem cells. Cell culture for the biomedical diagnostic

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Heather Zeiger
Date
November 1, 2020

Categorized
Ethics, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
brain, Brain organoids, Consciousness, Featured, Materialism, mind, Naturalism, Sentience}

Can We Make Brains in a Dish? Can We Make MINDS in a Dish?

_{Experiments with brain organoids have left many wondering whether we should be concerned about creating brains-in-a-dish} _{Heather Zeiger
November 1, 2020

8

Ethics, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

In a recent report, Nature addressed several studies on disembodied brains grown in the lab. One of those studies, published last year by Alysson Muotri of the University of California, San Diego, showed that brain organoids (organized clusters of brain cells) displayed electrical signals reminiscent of a twenty-five-week-old pre-term baby. the electrical activity continued for several months until the experiment was eventually stopped. Experiments with such brain organoids have left many wondering whether we should be concerned about creating brains-in-a-dish. Organoids, such as those made of kidney or liver cells, have been used to study drug development and disease. They are made either from embryonic stem cells—an ethically problematic source because they involve the destruction of an embryo—or induced pluripotent Read More ›

economic crisis stock chart falling down business global money bankruptcy concept

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News
Date
October 29, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance

Tagged
Benjamin Franklin, Featured, Gaming AI (book), George Gilder, Investment, knowledge, Robert J. Marks, stock market}

Faster Computers Lead to More Wealth, Right? What Could Go Wrong?

_{What if fast computers get in the way of carefully considering information before starting trades?} _{News
October 29, 2020

6

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance}

In this week’s podcast, tech philosopher George Gilder and computer engineer Robert J. Marks, our Walter Bradley Center director, continued their discussion of the impact of artificial intelligence (AI). This time, they focused on the way AI affects the stock market, for better or worse. You can download Gilder’s new book, Gaming AI, for free here. The first part of the discussion between Gilder and Marks is here. Meanwhile… https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Mind-Matters-106-George-Gilder.mp3 From the transcript: (Show Notes, Resources, and a link to the complete transcript follow.) Robert J. Marks: I had a friend, Jack Marshall, who was a professor of financial engineering. He was approached all the time by people who said, “I have beat the market by artificial intelligence.” And of Read More ›

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Michael Egnor
Date
October 29, 2020

Categorized
Medicine and Health, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
epilepsy, Featured, free will, Michael Egnor, Mystery of the Mind (book), seizures, Wilder Penfield}

Why, as a Neurosurgeon, I Believe in Free Will

_{The spiritual aspect of the human soul, sadly, leaves its signature in epilepsy} _{Michael Egnor
October 29, 2020

6

Medicine and Health, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

In his classic book, Mystery of the Mind, (1975) epilepsy surgery pioneer Dr. Wilder Penfield, asked a significant question: “Why are there no intellectual seizures?” Epileptic seizures can be experienced in a variety of ways—convulsions of the whole body, slight twitching of a muscle, compulsive memories, emotions, perceptions of smells or flashes of light, complex motor behaviors such as chewing or laughing or even walking, or subtle moments of inattention. But seizures never have intellectual content. There are no intellectual seizures, which is odd, given that large regions of the brain are presumed by neuroscientists to serve intellectual thought. It is all the more remarkable when we consider that seizures commonly originate in these “intellectual” areas of the brain. Yet Read More ›

Chain of amino acid or biomolecules called protein - 3d illustration

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News
Date
October 27, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health

Tagged
AlphaFold, Chance, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Featured, Gaming AI (book), George Gilder, Kirk Durston, protein folding}

If AlphaFold Is a Product of Design, Maybe Our Bodies Are Too

_{The deeper we go into science, the more important our unique human contributions become} _{News
October 27, 2020

5

Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health}

Recently, we’ve been looking at tech philosopher George Gilder’s new Gaming AI about what AI can—and can’t—do for us. It can’t do our thinking for us but it can do many jobs we don’t even try because no human being has enough time or patience to motor through all the calculations. Which brings us to the massive complexity of the proteins that carry out our genetic instructions—better knowledge of which would help us battle many diseases. Gilder notes that when DeepMind’s AlphaGo beat humans at the board game Go in 2016, it wasn’t just for the fun of winning a game. DeepMind cofounder Demis Hassabis (pictured in 2018) is more interested in real-life uses such as medical research (p. 11). Read More ›

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Michael Egnor
Date
October 26, 2020

Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
appetites, Benjamin Libet, Featured, free will, functional MRI (fMRI), Patrick Haggard, Rational appetite, Sensitive appetite, Wilder Penfield}

Neuroscience Refutes Free Will? Addressing an Objection

_{Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is not as good as Libet’s methods for assessing real-time effects} _{Michael Egnor
October 26, 2020

7

Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

In reply to a post in which I pointed out that neuroscience strongly supports the reality of free will, commenter AaronS1978 makes a point at Uncommon Descent: First Michael Egnor is wrong about there being no brain wave activity with free won’t Patrick Haggard in 2014 discovered accidotal brain waves to free won’t I feel he kind of makes declarations, I understand his position philosophically and I do agree with a lot of it, but saying there is no activity before free won’t and saying it’s immaterial is incorrect Furthermore why wouldn’t there be brain activity when exercising your will? Wouldn’t that just mean that your soul was using your brain? Isn’t consciousness and conscious experience (hard problem of the Read More ›

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Gary Smith
Date
October 26, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance

Tagged
Featured, San Francisco, Seattle}

It’s Hard To Estimate Highly Improbable Things Like Earthquakes

_{Some have hoped that AI would provide reliable help with predicting They have been disappointed} _{Gary Smith
October 26, 2020

8

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance}

Investors often overreact to both good and bad news. When a company’s quarterly earnings turn out to be slightly below forecasts, its stock price might plunge 20 percent or more. Thus, when theoretical models of the stock market models assume that price changes conform to a bell-shaped curve of normal distribution, that assumption is more convenient than credible. Another inconvenient truth is that many investors are prone to chasing trends up or down. After a stock’s price has gone up, they rush to buy, which pushes the price even higher. When these two realities meet head-on, stock returns are sometimes more extremely good or bad than would be true of a normal distribution. On October 19, 1987, the S&P 500 Read More ›

Autopilot self-driving car system with no human intervention. Close up cropped image of hand of African male driver browsing the internet using smartphone and touchscreen in futuristic autonomous car

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Jonathan Bartlett
Date
October 26, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance

Tagged
Autonomous Vehicles, driverless cars, Elon Musk, Featured, Levels of autonomy (self-driving cars), Tesla, Waymo}

Self-Driving Cars: Waymo Beats Tesla By Picking the Right Target

_{Trying to get the human out of the loop, as Musk proposes, becomes increasingly costly as the complexity increases} _{Jonathan Bartlett
October 26, 2020

5

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance}

Full self-driving has been a contentious topic in the last few years. In 2016, Elon Musk started claiming that his cars had all the hardware needed to do full self-driving, and that the software would be there by 2019. You would be able to summon a car from across the United States and it would drive across the country, recharging as needed, to pick you up, no driver needed. He has specifically indicated that he means Level 5 autonomy, which means that no driver is needed at all. The driver can sleep, watch a movie, or just hang out in the back seat. In fact, in 2016, he indicated that drivers were merely there for regulatory purposes. Musk’s claims about Read More ›

Getting to know the neighbors at the country houses in village

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News
Date
October 24, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Featured, Gaming AI (book), George Gilder, Go, Map vs. territory, Robert J. Marks}

Why Is AI a Key Battleground in Philosophy and Religion?

_{Tech philosopher George Gilder explains. Spoiler: He thinks humans will win} _{News
October 24, 2020

4

Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind}

In this week’s podcast, Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks interviews futurist George Gilder on “How AI is gaming intelligence.” Their discussion stems from Gilder’s new book, Gaming AI: Why AI Can’t Think But Can Transform Jobs (free for download here). https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Mind-Matters-105-George-Gilder.mp3 From the transcript: (Show Notes, Resources, and a link to the complete transcript follow.) Robert J. Marks (pictured): In general, do you see AI as a new demotion of the human race? This is pretty serious prose. George Gilder: Well, it declares that the human mind is just a machine that can be simulated by computer algorithms … thus demoting the human endeavor from being the center of everything, to becoming a mere planet of a larger Read More ›

Artificial Intelligence. Composition on the subject of Future Technologies. 3d rendered graphics.

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News
Date
October 23, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence

Tagged
Analog computers, Big Data, Charles Sanders Peirce, Featured, Gaming AI (book), Gary Smith, George Gilder, John Archibald Wheeler, Map vs. territory, Microcosm (book), Quantum Computing, Robert J. Marks}

Why AI Geniuses Haven’t Created True Thinking Machines

_{The problems have been hinting at themselves all along} _{News
October 23, 2020

7

Artificial Intelligence}

As we saw yesterday, artificial intelligence (AI) has enjoyed a a string of unbroken successes against humans. But these are successes in games where the map is the territory. Therefore, everything is computable. That fact hints at the problem tech philosopher and futurist George Gilder raises in Gaming AI (free download here). Whether all human activities can be treated that way successfully is an entirely different question. As Gilder puts it, “AI is a system built on the foundations of computer logic, and when Silicon Valley’s AI theorists push the logic of their case to a “singularity,” they defy the most crucial findings of twentieth-century mathematics and computer science.” Here is one of the crucial findings they defy (or ignore): Read More ›

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Jonathan Bartlett
Date
October 22, 2020

Categorized
Programming

Tagged
Docker, Featured}

Making Docker Work in Your Computer Infrastructure

_{Here are some best practices for building Docker images} _{Jonathan Bartlett
October 22, 2020

10

Programming}

If you use Docker to manage your infrastructure, you need to put time into thinking about how to build it. Here is a quick rundown of the things to keep in mind: Smaller is Better By itself, Docker makes great use of filesystem space. Because each container only holds the changes from the images, a little bit of image bloat doesn’t directly impact the server adversely. However, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t worry about bloat at all. Not only should we not waste space without reason, images that are too big cause other problems that you need to be aware of. The most important consideration is attack surface. Every program that you have on your image is a potential Read More ›

Intelligent robot cyborg using digital globe interface 3D rendering

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News
Date
October 22, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind, Religion

Tagged
Alan Turing, AlphaGo, AlphaGoZero, Claude Shannon, Featured, Gaming AI (book), George Gilder, Go, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, Max Tegmark, Ray Kurzweil, Yuval Noah Harari}

Why AI Geniuses Think They Can Create True Thinking Machines

_{Early on, it seemed like a string of unbroken successes …} _{News
October 22, 2020

8

Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind, Religion}

In George Gilder’s telling, the story goes back to Bletchley Park, where British codebreakers broke the “unbreakable” Nazi ciphers. In Gaming AI, the tech philosopher and futurist traces the modern concept of a machine that really thinks for itself back to its earliest known beginnings. Free for download, his concise book also explains why the programmers were bound to fail in their quest for the supermachine. But let’s start with why they thought—and many today still think— it could work. Success emboldened the pioneers to dream of a final AI triumph They had every reason to be emboldened by success. Special computers called “bombes,” created by Alan Turing’s team, broke every version of the famous Enigma code used by the Read More ›

Robot concept or robot hand chatbot pressing computer keyboard enter

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News
Date
October 19, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture

Tagged
AlphaGo, AlphaGo Zero, Backpropagation, Charles Sanders Peirce, Featured, Gaming AI (book), Geoffrey Hinton, George Gilder, Go, GPT3, Ilya Sutskever, John Seabrook, OpenAI, Peter Thiel, TensorFlow}

Can a Machine Really Write for the New Yorker?

_{If AI wins at chess and Go, why not? Then someone decided to test that…} _{News
October 19, 2020

8

Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture}

Tech philosopher and futurist George Gilder (pictured) has a new book out, Gaming AI. Short and sweet, it explains how artificial intelligence (AI) will—and won’t—revolutionize the economy and human life. Get your free digital copy here. And now, below is a short piece he wrote, unpacking one of the book’s themes—the claim that AI can do anything that humans can do. Find out why he says no: Ilya Sutskever (pictured) may be the smartest man in the world you have never heard of. No sweat, I hadn’t heard of him either. Still under 40, he’s part of the all-male Google mindfest around “Google Brain.” His IQ honed at Open University of Israel and mentored by Artificial Intelligence (AI) pioneer Geoffrey Read More ›

China flag and praying patriot man with crossed hands. Holding cross, hoping and wishing.

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post

Heather Zeiger
Date
October 18, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Religion, Social Media, Surveillance, Technocracy

Tagged
___longform, Atheism, Chinese Communist Party (CCP), COVID-19, Falun Gong, Featured, internet}

How China’s Technocracy Uses the Pandemic to Suppress Religion

_{The pandemic provided a pretext to install surveillance equipment in churches and surveil believers online} _{Heather Zeiger
October 18, 2020

9

Artificial Intelligence, Religion, Social Media, Surveillance, Technocracy}

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought out the ways that technology can lead either to greater accessibility or greater oppression. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is now using the same technologies that have given many people around the world access to religious materials and church services during the pandemic to forcibly stop religious gatherings and restrict the distribution of religious materials within China. Although the CCP is officially atheist, over 60% of the population adheres to a recognized religion; 30.8% practice Chinese folk religions, 16.6% Buddhism, 7.4% Christianity, 4.2% ethnic religion, and 1.8% Islam. Authentic numbers may be higher, given the risk of punishment for practicing certain religions in China. The Chinese government has persecuted, tortured, and imprisoned Falun Gong members Read More ›