^TagNew York Times

3D rendering of abstract blocks of mathematical formulas located in the virtual space

^{Type
post

Author
Peter Biles
Date
May 13, 2023

Categorized
Arts & Culture, Mathematics

Tagged
AI, C.S. Lewis, Euclid, Hemingway, Intelligent design theory, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, Mathematics, New York Times, novels}

Math, Mind, and Matter

_{The surprising similarities between mathematics and literature} _{Peter Biles

May 13, 2023

4

Arts & Culture, Mathematics}

Last October, legendary American author Cormac McCarthy, who wrote Blood Meridian and The Road, released a pair of interconnected novels called The Passenger and Stella Maris. The books arrived after a sixteen-year silence from the desk of McCarthy. The books deal, per usual, with themes of mortality, fate, and the “God question,” and are predictably lyrical, vivid, and dark. But McCarthy plows new ground in these sibling novels. The books are about mathematicians. It’s fiction about math. The story revolves around the complex relationship between a brother and sister: Bobby and Alicia Western. Bobby is a deep-sea diver with some history in the field of mathematics, while Alicia is a once-in-a-generation math prodigy. Not Estranged, but Akin After reading these books myself, I marveled at McCarthy’s ability to Read More ›

View of the Great Salt Lake at sunset, at Antelope Island State Park, Utah

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post

Author
Wesley J. Smith
Date
March 30, 2023

Categorized
Human exceptionalism, Panpsychism

Tagged
Consciousness, Conservation, Great Salt Lake, Mysticism, Nature, Nature Rights, New York Times, Panpsychism, Terry Tempest Williams, Wesley J. Smith}

Should Great Salt Lake Have Rights?

_{The nature rights movement keeps making inroads into establishment thinking — and people keep ignoring the threat} _{Wesley J. Smith

March 30, 2023

5

Human exceptionalism, Panpsychism}

The nature rights movement keeps making inroads into establishment thinking — and people keep ignoring the threat. The concept has now been advocated in a major opinion piece in the New York Times. Utah’s Great Salt Lake is shrinking — a legitimate problem worthy of focused concern and remediation. Utah native and Harvard Divinity School’s writer-in-residence Terry Tempest Williams — who focuses on “the spiritual implications of climate change” — makes a strong case that the lake is in trouble. A Conservationist Approach Her proposed remedies reflect a proper conservationist approach worthy of being debated: Scientists tell us the lake needs an additional one million acre-feet per year to reverse its decline, increasing average stream flow to about 2.5 million acre-feet per year. A Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
News
Date
March 30, 2023

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence

Tagged
AI, Artificial Intelligence, Bard, Bing, chatbots, ChatGPT, Consciousness, Elon Musk, Google, Humanity, Large Language Models (LLMs), New York Times, OpenAI}

Elon Musk to AI Labs: Press Pause

_{The petition reflects growing concern over the proper role of AI in human society and its potential for overreach} _{News

March 30, 2023

2

Artificial Intelligence}

Over 1,000 leaders and experts in technology and science, including Elon Musk, are now urging artificial intelligence labs to pause their research and distribution of new AI technologies. They believe moving forward so swiftly on AI research could bring about unintended consequences in the future, and that we don’t understand AI well enough yet to be casting so much trust in it. According to The New York Times, The open letter called for a pause in the development of A.I. systems more powerful than GPT-4, the chatbot introduced this month by the research lab OpenAI, which Mr. Musk co-founded. The pause would provide time to introduce “shared safety protocols” for A.I. systems, the letter said. “If such a pause cannot be Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Peter Biles
Date
February 24, 2023

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence

Tagged
AI, Artificial Intelligence, Bing, ChatGPT, Google, Kevin Roose, Large Language Models (LLMs), metaverse, Microsoft, New York Times, Search engine, SEO}

The Metaverse was a Bust. Will AI Save the Day?

_{Microsoft is counting on it, investing billions into AI research and development} _{Peter Biles

February 24, 2023

3

Artificial Intelligence}

Just a couple of years ago, the metaverse was taking the tech world captive with grandiose promises of revolutionizing the internet and representing the future of human interaction. Microsoft was among the moguls who embraced the metaverse project with open arms, only to face the harsh fact that the technology was underdeveloped, investors were skeptical of its viability, and a massive swath of the American public seemed simply uninterested in the product. But, it was new technology. It was exciting. It was supposed to be the future. Now, Microsoft is hailing AI as the destiny of the internet, again with the sort of optimism that directed their love affair with virtual reality. The company has jumped the gun and sought Read More ›

Robot hand holding heart Technology Future Power

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post

Author
News
Date
February 16, 2023

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence

Tagged
AI, Bing, ChatGPT, loneliness, Love, marriage, New York Times, OpenAI, Search engine, Sydney, Valentine}

Love at First Click? A Creepy Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot

_{New York Times tech journalist thinks AI has crossed a line} _{News

February 16, 2023

2

Artificial Intelligence}

The new Bing bot is freaky. Kevin Roose is a technology reporter for The New York Times and wrote a piece today detailing his “conversation” with Bing new’s chatbot. To put it simply, it was weird. The chatbot diverged from its initial informational output and ended up introducing itself as “Sydney” and then “confessed its love” for Roose. He writes, For much of the next hour, Sydney fixated on the idea of declaring love for me, and getting me to declare my love in return. I told it I was happily married, but no matter how hard I tried to deflect or change the subject, Sydney returned to the topic of loving me, eventually turning from love-struck flirt to obsessive Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
News
Date
January 19, 2023

Categorized
Arts & Culture

Tagged
Arts, Avatar, Colonialism, David Brooks, film, James Cameron, Moviegoing, Movies, New York Times, Science fiction, Spider-Man}

Avatar 2 Surpasses Spider-Man at the Box Office

_{The long-awaited sequel proved the skeptics wrong and scored big at the movie theaters} _{News

January 19, 2023

2

Arts & Culture}

James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water, surpassed Spider-Man: No Way Home in box office records and now stands at No. 6 of all time highest grossing films. The sci-fi visual wonder is the sequel to the first Avatar installment, which was released in December 2009. Critics doubted whether the franchise could rebound in popularity after a 13 year absence in the movie theaters, atop further concerns about the relevance and viability of moviegoing in the “pandemic era.” The doubters were quelled by the success of Spider-Man: No Way Home, and with Cameron’s blockbuster success, might be silenced for good. Despite ever increasing streaming options, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max, and Peacock, people still seem interested in Read More ›

Face recognition and personal identification technologies in street surveillance cameras, law enforcement control.

^{Type
post

Author
Caitlin Bassett
Date
April 28, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Law, Surveillance

Tagged
ACLU, Al Gidari, Canada, Canada's Office of the Privacy Commissioner, China, Clearview AI, Daniel Therrien, DHS, Doug Mitchell, Facebook, Facial Recognition, facial recognition technology, Fight for the Future, Google, Hoan Ton-That, Instagram, Kashmir Hill, Law enforcement, New York Times, OpenMedia, Richard Schwartz, Rudy Giuliani, Surveillance, Twitter, VEnmo, Woodrow Hartzog, YouTube}

Canada Orders Facial Recognition App to Cease and Desist

_{Your face is likely already stored in this app's database} _{Caitlin Bassett

April 28, 2021

9

Artificial Intelligence, Law, Surveillance}

In February, Canada released the findings of a year-long investigation into the US-based facial recognition app, Clearview AI. The investigation declared Clearview’s actions illegal within Canada and ordered the company to cease operations within the country and to remove all Canadian citizens from its database. “What Clearview does is mass surveillance, and it is illegal,” said Canadian Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien. So what is Clearview AI? And why has it raised the ire of our neighbors to the North? Clearview AI, Inc. Clearview AI is a facial recognition company marketed primarily to law enforcement agencies. It boasts a database of over 3 billion facial images “scraped” from public sources online such as news articles and social media sites. In other Read More ›