Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagCOSM

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Planet earth from space, zoom in to the middle east, Saudi Arabia, world skyline, globe

Why So Blue? Look at the Progress We’ve Made

Even though there are reasons to celebrate, the mainstream narrative hides them

We’ve cited the groundbreaking book Superabundance several times here at Mind Matters, mainly in connection to its co-author, Gale Pooley, a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth & Poverty, and a speaker at the 2021 COSM conference, the yearly technology summit that has attracted speakers like Carver Mead, Peter Thiel, and others. Pooley’s co-author, Marian Tupy, who lectured at COSM 2022 on the book, does work on human progress at the Cato Institute, and published a post showing the many ways humanity has benefitted over the last century. He stands opposed to the mainstream approximations of doom that declare our world’s swift-approaching expiration date, writing, The chance of a person dying in a natural catastrophe — earthquake, Read More ›

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Pharmacist holding medicine box and capsule pack in pharmacy drugstore.

The Role of Information Theory in Medicine

Jay Richards interviews Matt Scholz, Founder & CEO of Oisín Biotechnologies about the challenges and promises of the information theory of biotech

Jay Richards interviews Matt Scholz, Founder & CEO of Oisín Biotechnologies about the challenges and promises of the information theory of biotech. Besides the regulatory environment, Scholz believes that one of the biggest impediments to breakthroughs in medicine is the ability to empower the patient. Strangely, the one person who has no say in healthcare is the patient who ought to be “the arbiter of what goes into their body and not just be subject to the whims of the system.” Matthew Scholz is Immusoft’s founder and served as the company’s Chief Executive Officer from 2009 through 2017. Immusoft’s inflection point as a company came when Matthew conceived how a research system developed by Nobel Laureate and former President of Read More ›

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European telecommunication network connected over Europe, France, Germany, UK, Italy, concept about internet and global communication technology for finance, blockchain or IoT, elements from NASA

Can Crypto Reverse the Tech Decline?

Listen to a 2019 COSM panel on crypto and the blockchain

For today’s featured COSM video, enjoy this panel from the 2019 conference on cryptocurrencies, the blockchain, and its potential for the tech world. The panel explores the future of cryptocurrency/blockchain technologies, and considers the implications for global money, global security, and internet architecture. We’ve been sharing a number of lectures from past COSM conferences. This video is just one of many you can find at the Bradley Center’s YouTube page. There you’ll find several lectures, interviews, and panels dealing with issues that range from economics, Big Tech, and artificial intelligence. Notable speakers include 2022 Kyoto Prize winner Carver Mead, venture capitalist Peter Thiel, and George Gilder, co-founder of Discovery Institute and author of Life After Capitalism: The Meaning of Wealth, the Future of the Economy, and Read More ›

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3D rendering of curved graphene surface on black background

James Tour on Converting Waste to Graphene

Waste products can be converted to graphene, an extremely valuable material with a host of useful applications.

For today’s featured video, watch Dr. James Tour, Professor of Chemistry at Rice University, give a riveting tour of how waste products can be converted to graphene, an extremely valuable material with a host of useful applications—from medical applications to new strong and lightweight materials to an energy source for zero CO2 emissions. Dr. Tour is a renowned synthetic chemist who is also known for his research on the origin of life. Watch his lecture below: We’ve been sharing a number of lectures from past COSM conferences. This video is just one of many you can find at the Bradley Center’s YouTube page. There you’ll find several lectures, interviews, and panels dealing with issues that range from economics, Big Tech, and Read More ›

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A futuristic glowing quantum computer unit, 3d render

Quantum Computing: What Does it Change?

Microsoft's Julie Love discusses the myths and challenges of quantum computing

in today’s featured video from the 2022 COSM conference, Dr. Julie Love, Director of Quantum Computing Business Development at Microsoft, describes the challenges of quantum computing, exposes some of the myths regarding the technology, and describes the types of applications that quantum computers are best suited to address—including clean combustion, energy, and water, and energy efficiency. We’ve been sharing a number of lectures from past COSM conferences. This video is just one of many you can find at the Bradley Center’s YouTube page. There you’ll find several lectures, interviews, and panels dealing with issues that range from economics, Big Tech, and artificial intelligence. Notable speakers include 2022 Kyoto Prize winner Carver Mead, venture capitalist Peter Thiel, and George Gilder, co-founder of Discovery Institute and author Read More ›

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Business brainstorm, online video meeting, virtual conference with multiracial colleagues. African American man communicate with business partners by video call uses laptop and app, work from home

Digital and Physical Spaces for Work and Play

What is the future of work?

A panel featuring top execs at Microsoft, Plus, OTOY, and Rec Room discusses the future of work and play in both physical and digital spaces. Where will they occur and what will they look like? And what are the implications for productivity, privacy, security, and human fulfillment? We’ve been sharing a number of lectures from past COSM conferences. This video is just one of many you can find at the Bradley Center’s YouTube page. There you’ll find several lectures, interviews, and panels dealing with issues that range from economics, Big Tech, and artificial intelligence. Notable speakers include 2022 Kyoto Prize winner Carver Mead, venture capitalist Peter Thiel, and George Gilder, co-founder of Discovery Institute and author of Life After Capitalism: Read More ›

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An intricate and detailed microscopic view of a nanotechnology-powered environment, showcasing nanobots and nanostructures

Using Nanorobotics to Kill Cancer

There are some major breakthroughs in nanotechnology that could hold great promise

Shlomo Nedvetzki, CTO of Nanorobotics, discusses the panel “The New Nanocosm” at the COSM Technology Summit 2022, which explored emerging technologies that hold great promise for advancing human prosperity. Nedvetzki focused on nanorobotic machines that can target and kill individual cancer cells. There are some major breakthroughs in nanotechnology that could hold great promise. We’ve been sharing a number of lectures from past COSM conferences. This video is just one of many you can find at the Bradley Center’s YouTube page. There you’ll find several lectures, interviews, and panels dealing with issues that range from economics, Big Tech, and artificial intelligence. Notable speakers include 2022 Kyoto Prize winner Carver Mead, venture capitalist Peter Thiel, and George Gilder, co-founder of Discovery Institute and author of Beyond Capitalism: Read More ›

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Beautiful Single white cloud isolated over black background

A Cloud of Converging Technologies

We are entering the roaring 2020s, technologically speaking

We are on the cusp of a Roaring 2020s. Mark Mills, author of The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and a Roaring 2020s, proposes that the convergence of revolutions in three technology spheres is unleashing the next great economic boom: the means for accessing and propagating information, the machines that represent the means of production, and the materials domain from which we fabricate everything that exists. Watch him explain and defend his ideas in this informative lecture from the 2022 COSM Conference. We’ve been sharing a number of lectures from past COSM conferences. This video is just one of many you can find at the Bradley Center’s YouTube page. There you’ll find Read More ›

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Peter Thiel on General Artificial Intelligence at COSM 2021

Peter Thiel on Big Tech: A Throwback Lecture

Peter Thiel opens up about how artificial intelligence, 5G wireless, and blockchain security are converging in a new era

We’ve been sharing and promoting several videos from the 2022 COSM conference, but there’s also a wealth of material to be found in the YouTube archives. Today, we’d like to share a lecture from the 2019 conference featuring prominent venture capitalist and technology innovator Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel opens up about how artificial intelligence, 5G wireless, and blockchain security are converging in a new era. In a substantive and wide-ranging discussion with tech guru George Gilder, Thiel outlines how new Internet and monetary systems can remedy the currently torturous relations between the U.S. and China, and how understanding money as time overthrows the prevailing economic and technological models and opens the way to a cornucopian future.

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Gold bitcoin cryptocurrency coins on yellow backgound

John Tamny and the Future of Money

Forbes editor John Tamny discusses his views on crypto and traditional forms of money at COSM 2022

The 2022 COSM conference saw a number of remarkable speakers, including winner of last year’s prestigious Kyoto Prize, Carver Mead, and Forbes editor John Tamny, who is featured in today’s highlighted video from the conference. Tamny sat down with philosopher Jay Richards to share his thoughts on the conference and his views on the future of money, especially regarding cryptocurrencies versus traditional forms. You can watch the conversation here, and can also access many other great talks and interviews on the Center’s main YouTube page.

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Businessman in creative blue maze background.

AI is a Tool, Not a Solution for Everything

Life is complicated and our problems can't always be solved through an engineering approach

AI is a tool. In the words of Robert J. Marks from an interview at last year’s COSM conference, it can’t be a “friend or foe,” because it’s not a living entity. It’s something that can be used (or abused). Such a neutral, balanced attitude toward AI is alien to many Big Tech moguls who are pitching AI as the solution to many of the world’s complicated problems. For them, on the flipside of the doomsday alarmists, AI will usher in a new epoch of human progress. They may be partially right about that, but according to this writer at Slate, their hype reflects a commitment to technological “solutionism,” the idea that tech, once adequately suited for the task, can Read More ›

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Non-Computable You: Bradley Center Celebrates Human Creativity in 2022

Humans are unique and will never be replaced by the machines they invent.

Note: Mind Matters News is made possible by support from the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence, a project of the non-profit Discovery Institute. Here is a report of our activities for 2022. If you benefit from the work of Mind Matters News, could you donate to support our work in 2023? Humans are unique and will never be replaced by the machines they invent. That was the powerful takeaway from this year’s new book by Walter Bradley Center Director Robert J. Marks, Non-Computable You: What You Do that Artificial Intelligence Never Will. The release of Marks’ book was one of many ways that the Bradley Center advanced its mission in 2022 to defend human dignity and creativity Read More ›

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Electric Cars at COSM 2022

Are Electric Cars Really the Future?

Panelists at the 2022 COSM conference discuss the pros and cons of electric vehicles

On November 10th, the COSM conference hosted a special panel on electric vehicles (EVs for short). Brian Mistele, founder and CEO of Inrix, a leading provider of traffic information, car services, and transportation analytics, moderated the discussion. Aside from Mistele, the panel included Howard Hayden, professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut and editor of The Energy Advocate, Walter Myers, Principal Manager on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud-based platform, and Tony Posawatz, an automotive industry pioneer and chief executive of Fisker Automotive. They brought a range of perspectives on the pros and cons of EVs and where the auto industry is heading. Posawatz kicked off the panel by giving a brief overview of automobile history. He said, There was electric and folks Read More ›

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Summer meadow blow balls landscape painting

Could AI ever pass the Van Gogh test?

Van Gogh was crazy but he was talented and AI can be neither

The Van Gogh Test for sheer creativity? Thursday night at COSM presented a live, in-person interview with Federico Faggin, the Italian physicist and computer engineer who co-won the prestigious Kyoto prize in 1997 for helping develop the Intel 4004 chip. Faggin was interviewed by technology reporter Maria Teresa Cometto, who asked him to regale the audience with tales about helping to design early microchips. Eventually Faggin recounted a time when he was “studying neuroscience and biology, trying to understand how the brain works,” and came upon a startling realization: And at one point I asked myself, “But wait a second, I mean these books, all this talk about electrical signals, biochemical signals, but when I taste some chocolate, I mean Read More ›

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Panel on AI at COSM 2022

Experts at COSM Debate Whether Chatbot was Sentient

Turned out quite pleasant. Google fired him in 2022 - but what really happened there?

Last Thursday morning at COSM, a panel of experts debated whether truly sentient artificial intelligence (AI) could potentially exist — and even whether it already does. Robert J. Marks, distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at Baylor University, opened by criticizing the Turing test, as a measure of whether we’ve produced genuine AI. Developed by the famous English mathematician and World War II codebreaker Alan Turing, the test holds that if we can’t distinguish a machine’s conversational discourse from that of a real human, then it must exhibit humanlike intelligence. Marks maintains that this is the wrong test for detecting true AI. In his view, the Turing test fails because it “looks at a book and tries to judge Read More ›

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Crowd of people on the street. No recognizable faces

Living in a Superabundant Age

Marian L. Tupy talks economics, falling birth rates, and human creativity at the COSM conference

On November 10th, Marian L. Tupy, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, spoke at this year’s COSM technology summit on behalf of his new book Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet. Tupy co-wrote the book with Gale L. Pooley, a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and associate professor of business management at Brigham Young University-Hawaii. Their book takes a contrarian view of economics, scarcity, and the idea that an excessive human population diminishes the world’s resources. As the book’s title suggests, Tupy and Pooley take the opposite view: the world’s resources increase with population growth. During the COSM session, Tupy said, The caveman had the same natural resources at Read More ›

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Peter Thiel’s Take on What Has Really Happened With AI

The trouble is, who is AI really benefiting?

Peter Thiel is a classic in people you should know about but possibly don’t. He helped get PayPal and LinkedIn started and he tries to think about where new tech is taking us. He spoke at COSM 2022 on that topic and he mentions a book that should set us thinking: The high-level question I want to ask today is, basically, how should we think about AI? Should we think of it as intelligent, conscious, or merely evil? The book that I think is interesting is that of Wang Huning, who’s the number four guy in the entire communist government [of China]. He’s sort of the professor and theorist of Xi Jinping thought. And he wrote this book [about his Read More ›

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Peter Thiel via videoconference at COSM 2022

Peter Thiel: The Multiverse Is a “Gateway Drug”

It’s a gateway drug to other crazy ideas, like the belief we live in a simulation

BELLEVUE, WA — Speaking to tech leaders and investors at COSM 2022 in the Seattle area, entrepreneur Peter Thiel provocatively asked “why do so many people in Silicon Valley believe in the simulation hypothesis that the entire universe, the cosmos, is just a computer simulation? Why do they believe something as crazy as this?” Actually, noted Thiel, the belief that our world is a simulation has now faded somewhat: I think probably the peak belief in the simulation hypothesis was maybe something like a decade ago, maybe circa 2012 to 2015, and it has probably faded some. We’ll still have Gen Z people say that things are a glitch in the simulation or there’s still some sort of passive reference Read More ›

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Chinese flag and big brother data surveillance

On What Terms Is Co-Operation Between the US and China Possible?

China analyst Miles Maochun Yu thinks that China’s new goal is to become the new global power first, then implement its ideology

A panel at COSM 2021 aired a disagreement between philosopher of technology George Gilder and political analyst Newt Gingrich. Gingrich argued that China is the greatest threat to global freedom while Gilder felt that claims about forced labor, for example, are overstated and that we must co-operate with China for technological advances. In the background is China’s 24/7 surveillance of the entire population, the door-to-door identification of and crackdown on religious believers, as well as on civil rights activists. The situation in China has changed a great deal over the past half decade which marked the Uyghur internment camps and the premature takeover of Hong Kong. As Michael Schuman puts it: China today is in the grip of the most Read More ›

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Gold bitcoin on dark background

COSM Speaker Peter Thiel: The Failures and “Self-Hatred” of Big Tech

Listen to maverick entrepreneur Peter Thiel’s talk from last year’s COSM conference. Thiel discusses his views of artificial intelligence, Big Tech’s monopoly, China, and the future of technology with legendary tech guru George Gilder. You can register now to hear Peter Thiel and George Gilder at this year’s COSM conference in November. Show Notes 00:50 | Introducing Peter Thiel 01:12 Read More ›