Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagTechnology

cloud-data-computing-and-neural-network-cross-media-marketing-mesh-representing-connections-monitor-screen-in-perspective-stockpack-adobe-stock
Cloud data computing and neural network, cross-media marketing mesh representing connections, monitor screen in perspective
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post
Author
News
Date
July 24, 2023
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Technology
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You Control the Algorithm

Watch Dr. Phil Parker discuss how he and his team have developed revolutionary new search engine technology
News
July 24, 2023
1
Technology

For today’s featured video from a past COSM conference, watch Dr. Phil Parker, INSEAD Chair Professor of Management Science and Founder of Botipedia, discuss how his team has unlocked the power of algorithm-based content creation to create the revolutionary new search engine technology of Botipedia/Totosearch, which promises to be a dramatic improvement over Wikipedia and Google. 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 ›

the-tower-of-babel-stockpack-adobe-stock
The Tower of Babel
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Author
News
Date
July 20, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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“The Bigger the Toy, the Smarter You Ought to Be to Use It”

With great technological power comes great moral responsibility, said Peterson
News
July 20, 2023
1
Artificial Intelligence

The Canadian clinical psychologist and YouTube lecturer Jordan B. Peterson, who ascended to international fame upon the publication of his book 12 Rules for Life, has shared his thoughts on artificial intelligence, and has been speaking on the subject in his interviews with greater regularity. Here’s a short clip (ten minutes long) of Peterson lining out some of the ethical challenges with AI: “We’re primitive children on the ethical front with the tools of gods,” Peterson said, noting how in the last few decades, technological and scientific progress has far outpaced humanity’s ethical maturity. For Peterson, the more sophisticated and powerful the technology, the greater need there is for virtue, self-control, and good will in order to handle these tools Read More ›

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Business using smartphone,with wifi icon,business communication social network concept.
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post
Author
News
Date
July 19, 2023
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Technology
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Will Wi-Fi 6 and LEOs Be the Real 5G?

Considering the future of mobile networks with George Gilder and Richard Vigilante
News
July 19, 2023
1
Technology

In today’s featured COSM video, Richard Vigilante and George Gilder moderate a panel exploring the future of mobile networks. Panelists include Gilad Garon, co-founder and CEO Of ASOCS, and Stephen Cohen, Chief Architect of Worldwide Enterprise Services at Microsoft. 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 the Time Theory of Read More ›

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Planet earth from space, zoom in to the middle east, Saudi Arabia, world skyline, globe
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post
Author
News
Date
July 17, 2023
Categorized
Economics
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Why So Blue? Look at the Progress We’ve Made

Even though there are reasons to celebrate, the mainstream narrative hides them
News
July 17, 2023
3
Economics

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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colorful stained glass
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post
Author
Peter Biles
Date
July 16, 2023
Categorized
Religion, Technology
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Consider Laying Your Phone at the Altar

What if we actually did start eliminating smartphone use in our most important social institutions?
Peter Biles
July 16, 2023
2
Religion, Technology

If you’re a churchgoing person, do you check your phone during the sermon? Do you even bring it with you? Or when you’re having dinner with your spouse or a group of friends, is the draw to glance at the smartphone an almost irresistible temptation? It is for me. I’ve struggled with phone addiction since I was first introduced to my first smartphone at the age of seventeen, which I realize is way older than the average age kids get online today. But what would it look like to have social spaces totally free of these persistently distracting and disruptive technologies? A new article by Jake Meador at the online journal Mere Orthodoxy asked this question. He poses it hypothetically, Read More ›

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Titanic at Belfast. Date: 1912
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post
Author
Russ White
Date
July 7, 2023
Categorized
Technology
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The Titan and the Titanic: Bookends of Progressivism

Nature, despite all our technological innovations, remains extremely powerful
Russ White
July 7, 2023
4
Technology

I read, with great sadness, of the wreck of the Titan. There were, undoubtedly, technical reasons why this submersible, carrying five human souls, broke up, lying now in the same graveyard as the Titanic. We pray that the impacted families might find peace in this moment—and in the coming times when lawsuits are filed, and horrible things are spoken about their loved ones. There is a great lesson to learn from this disaster—not the obvious lessons about the all-to-human failings of individual engineers or managers. The lesson we take from this should be broader. We should learn a lesson about man’s confidence in his own abilities, in our ability to overcome nature, and in a certain kind of progress. The Read More ›

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Young handsome man with beard wearing casual sweater and glasses over blue background very happy and excited doing winner gesture with arms raised, smiling and screaming for success. Celebration
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post
Author
News
Date
June 30, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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AI Can Do It All So You Don’t Have To

Sometimes satire says it best
News
June 30, 2023
2
Artificial Intelligence

Satire is often best at uncovering uncomfortable truths. Much of the talk around AI progress celebrates its ability to make certain tasks way easier, such as writing essays, programming computer code, or firing your employees. While that is certainly true, the concern remains that if we depend on AI like this for long enough we might just forget how to put two and two together and write a sentence over ten words long. That’s probably cynical, but the principle is there – depending on technology to perform mental tasks will lessen the ability to independently perform those same mental tasks. The popular satire site The Onion published a paragraph about a hypothetical man who is delighted about AI because it Read More ›

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Man Presenting to Group of People
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Author
Peter Biles
Date
June 29, 2023
Categorized
Economics
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New Review of “Life After Capitalism” Amplifies Book’s Core Themes

Returning to the "mind-centered economy" where knowledge is wealth
Peter Biles
June 29, 2023
3
Economics

A new review of George Gilder’s latest book Life After Capitalism from Samuel Gregg highlights the need for the return of the “mind-centered economy,” in which governmental bureaucracies no longer hamper human creativity and imagination. When capitalistic, democratic societies fall for materialistic presuppositions of the world, they end up resembling socialist contexts in which the state is everything and individual men and women are squelched. Gregg writes at the Acton power blog, [Gilder]takes this notion of the free human mind as the decisive factor in driving economic growth and applies it across the board to economic theory, technology, and our understanding of money. Looking at the question of incentives, for example, Gilder points out that they would yield nothing in Read More ›

cloud-technology-icon-for-online-shopping-global-business-concept-stockpack-adobe-stock
Cloud technology icon for online shopping global business concept
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post
Author
News
Date
June 29, 2023
Categorized
Technology
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The New Nanocosm

What are the emerging technologies that hold great promise for human prosperity?
News
June 29, 2023
1
Technology

We’ve been highlighting several videos from the 2022 COSM Conference, which took place in Bellevue, Washington last November and featured a number of highly prominent leaders and innovators in technology and science. Today’s video features a panel representing companies on the leading edge of technology applications. They discuss emerging technologies that hold great promise for human prosperity — from the conversion of waste to clean energy; to the production of graphene for a multitude of uses including building materials, lubricants, composites and coatings, sensors, and energy harvesting and storage; to revolutionary nanorobotic machines that can target and kill individual cancer cells. Visit the Center for Intelligence’s YouTube page for many more lectures, panels, and interviews from COSM 2022 and past 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
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Author
News
Date
June 25, 2023
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Technology
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Digital and Physical Spaces for Work and Play

What is the future of work?
News
June 25, 2023
1
Technology

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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Post-Human Dystopia - A Cybernetic Future in Neon
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post
Author
Peter Biles
Date
June 24, 2023
Categorized
Technocracy
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Jacques Ellul and the Technocratic Society

Unhappy is the society dominated by "technique"
Peter Biles
June 24, 2023
4
Technocracy

Jacques Ellul was a twentieth-century writer and philosopher who left us an abundance of riches on the impact of technology on our modern world, or what he called the “technological society.” I’ve been working through his book The Technological Society for a while now. It’s dense, slow reading, but is jam packed with insights. Aside from merely the proliferation and growth of technology in the West over the last century, Ellul notes that we’ve become a culture obsessed with “technique,” performing tasks for efficiency instead of intrinsic purpose, and training ourselves to relate to other people in like manner. What matters under technique’s domination is not morals or human dignity but about outcome and “results,” being bigger, better, and faster. Read More ›

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Yosemite Firefall
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post
Author
Andrew McDiarmid
Date
June 23, 2023
Categorized
Environment
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John Muir and the Pleasures of Nature

The inventor-turned-naturalist can teach us the benefits of loving the natural world
Andrew McDiarmid
June 23, 2023
8
Environment

April 21 is John Muir’s birthday. Muir is typically remembered as one of America’s foremost naturalists, father of our national parks and a tireless defender of the wilderness. But he might very well have been none of those things. As a young man, Muir was gifted at building machines, and he was set to pursue a career in technology until everything went dark. Literally. Revisiting this little-known chapter of Muir’s life can inspire us to better navigate our own relationship to technology and give us a fresh reason to celebrate his work. In 1849, Muir left his homeland of Scotland and moved with his family to the backwoods of Wisconsin. Farm work, chores, and family Bible studies kept him busy Read More ›

an-intricate-and-detailed-microscopic-view-of-a-nanotechnology-powered-environment-showcasing-nanobots-and-nanostructures-stockpack-adobe-stock
An intricate and detailed microscopic view of a nanotechnology-powered environment, showcasing nanobots and nanostructures
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post
Author
News
Date
June 21, 2023
Categorized
Robotics
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Using Nanorobotics to Kill Cancer

There are some major breakthroughs in nanotechnology that could hold great promise
News
June 21, 2023
1
Robotics

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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COVID-19 coronavirus and crisis concept, US president Franklin`s eyes and face mask on 100 dollar money bill. Corona virus affects global stock market.
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post
Author
Wesley J. Smith
Date
June 20, 2023
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Technocracy
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Is the Public Health Technocracy Faltering?

Technocrats don’t rely on mandates but eagerly impose policies that render society less free
Wesley J. Smith
June 20, 2023
4
Technocracy

In February, I warned about a treaty being negotiated to empower the World Health Organization to declare a pandemic, which would trigger governments assuming mandatory emergency powers. From, “Transforming WHO into a Public-Health Technocracy“: The WHO director-general would be granted the power to “declare pandemics,” at which point emergency provisions of the treaty to impose public-health policies would go into effect. . . . The WHO would be able to dictate policies if international consensus were not obtained by a vote of the two presidents and four vice presidents of the WHO CA+. . . The International Court of Justice would also be granted decisive power. . . . It would centralize pandemic planning and response into itself. . . Read More ›

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Babel tower
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post
Author
News
Date
June 20, 2023
Categorized
Science
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Science After Babel

Read an excerpt of a new book by mathematician and philosopher David Berlinski
News
June 20, 2023
6
Science

By David Berlinski Editor’s note: We are delighted to welcome Science After Babel, the latest book from mathematician and philosopher David Berlinski. This article is adapted from the book’s Introduction. The scientific revolution began in the 16th century, and it began in Europe. No one knows why it happened nor why it happened where it happened, but when it happened, everything changed.  Until the day before yesterday, the imperial architects of the scientific revolution were well satisfied and sleek as seals. An immense tower was going up before their very eyes. The physicists imagined that shortly it would reach the sky; the biologists were satisfied that it had left the ground; and only the theologians were heard to observe that it Read More ›

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Forest in fog with mist. Fairy spooky looking woods in a misty day. Cold foggy morning in horror forest with trees
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post
Author
Peter Biles
Date
June 17, 2023
Categorized
Arts & Culture, Transhumanism
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That Hideous Strength, A.K.A. Transhumanism

C.S. Lewis's classic science fiction tale is about the temptation to reject being human
Peter Biles
June 17, 2023
7
Arts & Culture, Transhumanism

C.S. Lewis’s 1946 science fiction novel That Hideous Strength is almost eighty years old now. Written during the throes of World War II, the novel is the culmination of Lewis’s cosmic trilogy, preluded by Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra. There are hosts of other articles attending to the prescience of Lewis’s terrifying novel, and for good reason; That Hideous Strength is a warning against using technology to dehumanize people and ultimately cripple the world into submission. It’s a great book as a novel, but it seems especially appropriate to revisit in lieu of the growing interest in transhumanism and the rapid acceleration of AI development. It feels like much of the talk on AI in recent months involves Read More ›

beautiful-single-white-cloud-isolated-over-black-background-stockpack-adobe-stock
Beautiful Single white cloud isolated over black background
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post
Author
News
Date
June 16, 2023
Categorized
Technology
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A Cloud of Converging Technologies

We are entering the roaring 2020s, technologically speaking
News
June 16, 2023
1
Technology

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 ›

face-of-female-robot-artificial-intelligence-concept-generative-ai-stockpack-adobe-stock
Face of female robot, Artificial intelligence concept. Generative AI
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post
Author
News
Date
June 15, 2023
Categorized
Technology
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Dystopia, Utopia, or Somewhere in Between?

Two great minds on the future of "smart machines"
News
June 15, 2023
1
Technology

We’ve been featuring several videos from last year’s jam-packed COSM conference, which featured celebrated speakers like Kyoto Prize winner Carver Mead, venture capitalist Peter Thiel, and a number of other highly influential voices in technology and science. Today, however, we’re sharing a video from the archives of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture on the future of “smart machines,” including the dawn of sex robots. The video features a conversation between Discovery Institute’s Jay Richards and Michael Medved, who is a Senior Fellow with Discovery Insitute’s Center for Wealth & Poverty and a renowned radio broadcaster. Their discussion is remarkably pertinent to both the benefits and challenges raised by artificial intelligence and the future of “smart technology.” You can Read More ›

closeup-of-ben-franklin-on-a-one-hundred-dollar-bill-for-background-iv-stockpack-adobe-stock
Closeup of Ben Franklin on a one hundred dollar bill for background IV
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post
Author
George Gilder
Date
June 9, 2023
Categorized
Economics
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Life After Capitalism: Human Creativity Drives Economic Growth

Gilder once more rocks the archetypes of modern information theory and economics with a paradigm-shifting salvo of sheer brilliance
George Gilder
June 9, 2023
2
Economics

Author of national bestseller Life After Google and generation-defining Wealth and Poverty, venture capitalist, futurist, and pioneering thinker extraordinaire George Gilder pinpoints how the clash of creativity with power at the heart of economic systems leads to global cognitive dissonance and argues that the creation of the novel taps capitalism’s infinite promise and is humanity’s only path of escape from stagnation and tyranny. Gilder once more rocks the archetypes of modern information theory and economics with a paradigm-shifting salvo of sheer brilliance. The capitalist era is over — get ready for life after capitalism. For more than two hundred years, capitalism spread wealth around the globe, bringing unprecedented prosperity and progress, liberating human potential. But something has gone terribly wrong in the world economy. Read More ›

catch-the-star-a-person-is-standing-next-to-the-milky-way-galaxy-pointing-on-a-bright-star-stockpack-adobe-stock
Catch the star. A person is standing next to the Milky Way galaxy pointing on a bright star.
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post
Author
Peter Biles
Date
June 3, 2023
Categorized
Philosophy
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A Return to the Reality of the Soul

Materialism has depersonalized the universe, but the evidence for the soul remains
Peter Biles
June 3, 2023
5
Philosophy

Contemporary Western culture is disillusioned. Under the mainstream narrative of materialism, moderns struggle to connect their lives with a transcendent meaning beyond the self. In the United States, we enjoy a level of privilege and wealth foreign to the majority of prior generations, and yet we see “deaths of despair,” frightening rates of anxiety and depression, and heightened political tensions. None of this is news to you, I’m guessing. I’ve personally written a variation of that paragraph in other articles a number of times. The question behind our collective disillusionment is, frankly, why? Why do we struggle to make something of our lives? Why do we enjoy technological and scientific progress but lack the moral and cultural means to enjoy Read More ›