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Europe's Got Talent For Geeks
fiannaFailMan writes "Teams of scientists from across the continent are vying for a funding bonanza that could see two of them receive up to $1.33 billion over 10 years to keep Europe at the cutting edge of technology. The contest began with 26 proposals that were whittled down to six last year. Just four have made it to the final round. They include a plan to develop digital guardian angels that would keep people safe from harm; a massive data-crunching machine to simulate social, economic and technological change on our planet; an effort to craft the most accurate computer model of the human brain to date; and a team working to find better ways to produce and employ graphene — an ultra-thin material that could revolutionize manufacturing of everything from airplanes to computer chips."
I disagree. The human brain model is a realistic and useful project. In fact, modelisation has always been a very active field in computer science.
They include a plan to develop digital guardian angels that would keep people safe from harm
So in other words... Track everyone everywhere at any given time and keep informed on what they and the ones around them are up to? Given the track record of past human governments implementations of similar projects and more specifically what they do with the information I'd rather opt out of this one, even if it meant that, you know, I was responsible for me staying out of harms way.
The anti-European sentiment expressed by americans here is really sickening. Why is it every time there is a story about something positive in Europe, americans innate sense of cultural inferiority comes to the fore expressed as hate.
This scientist X-Factor style competition sure beats the hell out of Honey Booboo. So good luck with that you yanks.
In my experience, once you discover, that no matter where you go, roughly 90% of the people are complete and utter idiots, you're forgetting all the racial or nationalistic stereotypes you were brought up with.
At least in my case, misanthropy cured nationalism.
I am speaking from an American born Chinese working in London, and while I can't speak about other European nations, the UK is pretty good with diversity. I have not experienced any overt discrimination, and it's comparable to the environment for when I worked in the US.
Like most countries, cities are better with diversity than rural areas. In fact, one third of Londoners were born outside of Britain, and the last census indicated that white Brits are a minority in London, (this excludes British people of different ethnicities as well as white people from other countries).
The Graphene one. The others are just the usual BS from people clueless about how computers work and what they can and cannot do.
Spoken like a true programmer or sysadmin with no knowledge of statistics, modelling, machine learning or data analysis. I know, because I was one (and I still write code and maintain servers). But I've also moved into the above fields, and it's a completely different world. The discrete math and logic you use in programming are completely useless here, and the things you can do and the hurdles you come across are very different from the ones you see in programming. Of course, you still have to implement your models and analyses, and you get all the usual issues there (plus things like numerical instability), but even if the software is running fine you'll have things like parameter identifiability, difficulties in comparing models, lack of data in the places where you need it, conceptual problems with the models that can only be solved by making them more complex, which leads to lack of data problems and the need for massive amounts of compute power, and so on. These are the things they will be trying to tackle, and they have nothing to do with the limitations of Turing-style computers.
I do remain sceptical about having a chat with a Turing-level AI any time soon, but data analysis, modelling and inference methods are getting better and better (see Google Search, Watson) and I don't think that continued research into these things is a waste of money. Neither do Google, Facebook, Microsoft, the US government, and the EU apparently.
Finally, here's another EU project in this direction that is both scary and interesting.
You mean that thing built with the cooperation of 10,000 scientists from over 1 hundred countries? The fact that it sits on European soil is incidental because there were a lot of people that poured their labor into it that were not Europeans.
The fact that it sits on European soil is no doubt due to the fact that CERN is almost completely funded by European nations. Incontrovertibly, this is a case of European nations working together on something technology related.
Another example off the top of my head is the European Space Agency. Obviously not a patch on NASA, but still an example of European cooperation on technology.
Racist jingoistic fucktard
I think I see where this is coming from.
It's an interesting idea, but suggests a far greater understanding of how the brain works than we actually have. How can you abstract the important parts, when we have no idea what they are? We're still trying to figure out the many, highly complex biochemical pathways. Maybe that explain why, even though the project employs a full-time science writer, it never seems to publish very much?
How can you abstract the important parts, when we have no idea what they are?
There are several levels of abstraction that one can pursue when modeling things. We already know a lot about things in all of these levels, only not in a fully comprehensive way. Modeling and simulation is an excellent way to give insights about the gaps in the knowledge and to direct further research.
We're still trying to figure out the many, highly complex biochemical pathways.
And each of the 250+ neurotransmitters has different physic-chemical dynamics. Does that mean we need to know everything before we make an overall functional model? Definitely no.
Do I have to take into consideration every car in existence to make a model of congestion on roads? No. Now bring me my spherical cow please.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
Tss
What you mean is "what I could or ever could imagine them to do."
I'm sure if asked someone could had said something like "A computer can just crunch numbers, it will never be able to play chess" to.
Yeah and we will surely get there if we never try.
"No need to do these weather simulations and prediction, we are often wrong anyway."
Better give up anything we can't do atm. Tell that to your children.
"No use for you to study math, you suck at it and there's so many others who are better than you. Why are you even trying?"
WTF is wrong with people?
It''s a good way to end all progress though.
There are already competing efforts to model the human brain, why should this group in particular get the funding?
Once upon I time I was part of a group that tried to get EU funding for a project.
One of the reasons we didn't get it was that we were too pessimistic when mentioning other fields that would benefit from our research.
The research grants are not only there to benefit one specific research field. Projects like the LHC arguably made larger leaps in data management than it did in particle physics. That research will be beneficial for everyone with similar problems.
It doesn't answer your question but nothing will answer your question unless you specifically mention one group that you think should have the funding instead. Then we can discuss which project will benefit society the most.
"I am speaking from an American born Chinese working in London"
Let me guess, you're a tapeworm? A brain parasite? A cybernetic implant?
please, all of the best scientists and engineers from here are still heading to north america. want to know why? its not because life is better over there, or the culture is better, or theres more vacation days.
its the prejudice and racial discrimination. european countries, while appearing to act all modern and chic, are still too steeped in their centuries-old hatred of one-another (especially former powers acting like they still have power) and indoctrinated biases. if you are from eastern europe you are still treated like shit (especially from hungary, and the hungarians are a delightful, highly intelligent nation, political situation nonwithstanding). if you want to immigrate to europe, like i have, learning the language is a must (in my case, german) or else, because of some superiority complex by the host nation, you will be constantly shitted on no matter how good your skill is. its no wonder im considering moving back to canada, where i can actually be judged on my talent.
america has its own problems, but at the bare minimum people are more or less judged on what they can do/what they can bring to the table. its why you STILL have the best sports leagues, best research programs, best schools, best websites (all the websites that matter are american built), best technology, best software and ultimately the best ideas. european nations working together on something technology related? please.
I'm a European. I just looked out the window and, WOW!!!! this place is just cawling with racists, the disgusting critters are all over the place, climbing the walls, on the rooves of houses and they are falling out of the trees. I never noticed that before!?! Somebody should really be doing something about this... like spraying pesticides or something. Mind you they'd have to be careful not to spray the column of scientists, engineers, students, athletes and web-devlopers running for the airport waving greencards and yelling USA! USA! Mr Coward, thank you! Reading your post has been a real eye-opener.... now where did I put my passport? Do you think they'll give me a green card? I'm not a web-developer but I know a whole bunch of stone-age languages like C and C++.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Just like you can't simulate weather in a computer because it contains no water?
Spoken as somebody that has fully absorbed the propaganda of the Bayesian community. Statistical modeling cannot ever model complex things. It is really good at simple ones, but what does that get you? Not intelligence. Intelligence is not dealing with a lot of facts and finding simple things about them. Intelligence is dealing with a relatively small number of facts and having insights about them, i.e. things that extend the previous model you had on a fundamental level.
I am never ceased to be amazed how many people mistake mechanical data-mining for intelligence. My own explanation for that is that real intelligence is not that common in humans either.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Well, that depends on your definition of complex I guess. I'm currently attempting to model the distribution of plants in space and time. That includes processes like dispersal, local colonisation and extinction, plant physiology, human influence, and species interactions. I haven't got all of them in yet, but to my eyes it's not simple.
I'm not interested in creating any kind of intelligence, I just want to know which model describes my data best, how good it is, why it is better than other models, what that says about reality, and how I can improve it further. That'll require some intelligence, which will come from me and my colleagues. And yes, I'm using Bayesian inference (MCMC model fitting using Gibbs sampling) to get there, because it's a good tool for the job.
Does that mean that my model is going to be any good at describing reality? No idea. That depends on how much data I can obtain to put in it, how accurately and comprehensively the processes involved are modelled, and to what extent the process I'm modelling is inherently random and unpredictable. So we'll see how it goes. However, giving up because "Statistical modeling cannot ever model complex things" strikes me as simplistic and defeatist.
Honestly, looking at your posts in this thread, I get the feeling that I'm seeing a case of Clarke's First Law here. But maybe that's just me.