"Detractors worry about a future where humans are enslaved to an evil race of robot overlords."
This is why so many distrust the media -- they consistently misrepresent (that is, lie about) the positions of people who aren't what the media consider mainstream. No, the people warning of AI risk are NOT worried that we will be enslaved to malicious robot overlords. They instead worry that superintelligent AIs will be very, very good at carrying out the objectives we give them -- and we'll be horrified at the solutions they find. It's like asking a genie for a million dollars, so it arranges for your child to die a horrible death in an industrial accident that leads to you receiving a million dollars in the wrongful-death lawsuit.
The NYT served as the Bush Administration's propaganda organ in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Now they are reprising that role for the Obama administration's last-ditch efforts to lie the country into war with Russia.
Am I the only one getting tired of the unbelievable arrogance of companies like Tesla who want to tell you what you can do with your own property?
Or perhaps Tesla's position is that they are only licensing you to use the car. In that case, they need to be honest and call it a rental or a lease; claiming that they're selling you a car is just fraudulent.
...because, no matter how closely I scrutinize the text of the First Amendment, I can't find this "national security" exclusion they're talking about.
Not to mention that their excuse for overriding the First Amendment is ludicrous. I don't believe that they actually believe that publication of 3D printer gun files actually puts the security of the nation at risk; they're just grasping at straws to support a predetermined conclusion.
Speaking as a 53-year-old engineer...
I haven't encountered age discrimination. Then again, I work in the Salt Lake City / Provo Utah area, not Silicon Valley.
Is ageism widespread in Silicon Valley, and is it a bad thing? If so -- if preferring a younger candidate over an older candidate is based on irrational prejudices rather than on a hard-nosed assessment of who brings the most value to the company -- then companies that practice ageism put themselves at a competitive disadvantage against companies that do not practice ageism. If the practice is as widespread and irrational as is being claimed, then this is a wonderful business opportunity for companies that do not practice ageism: such companies would have near-exclusive access to a pool of talent that is being shunned by other companies. This kind of scenario is not hypothetical; much of CitiBank's success in the 70's has been attributed to its efforts to recruit top female MBA graduates at a time when its competitors were only recruiting male MBAs.
"part of what's happening is that we are not helping schools and teachers teach it in an interesting way."
If someone needs to convince you that CS is interesting, then maybe CS is not for you. I've never known a really good programmer who got into the field because someone coddled and cajoled them into it. On the contrary, they seek out every opportunity they can find to learn more on their own initiative.
"He was overcome with emotion for parts of it, pausing to gather himself as he told the story of how he was replaced by a foreign visa holder."
A job is not an entitlement; it's an economic transaction. Just as you have every right to seek out the best deal you can find when you purchase a home, or a car, or the services of a plumber, tax preparer, or attorney, employers also have every right to seek out the best deal they can find when they purchase services from individuals.
Essentially, this guy is whining about how someone else out-competed him in the marketplace by offering a better deal.
I don't have a comment on the study, but I know what "Universal basic income" means to me -- I get to work harder for a smaller take-home paycheck while even more able-bodied adults than before are supported by my labor. (I have an ex-wife and several adult children who don't work.)
"It is the fifth year in a row he's introduced a science education bill after announcing he wanted 'every publicly funded Oklahoma school to teach the debate of creation vs. evolution.' "
I think the senator would not be happy with the results if they actually did this. Imagine if, instead of teaching evolution as a dogma, they discussed the many different lines of evidence that led scientists to their current conclusions about evolution. Imagine discussing the many puzzling questions in biology for which creationism has no answer, but which evolutionary theory resolves. Imagine a vigorous discussion of epistemology and the scientific method.
I can't think of a better way of debunking creationism.
In other news, a spokesman for the New York City Mugger's Guild has hinted that a compromise between muggers and pedestrians may be in the works, allowing mugger's to take only 70% instead of 100% of any cash and credit cards being carried by persons they accost on the street.
More special privileges for women -- as if they didn't have enough already -- and more discrimination against men. I'm getting really, really tired of this, especially when I see my son excluded from one educational opportunity after another solely because of his sex.
Jensen's inequality says that if f(x1,..., xn) is a convex function (curving upwards in all directions), and (x1,..., xn) is a random vector, then the mean value (probability-weighted average) of f(x1,..., xn) is higher than f evaluated at the mean value of (x1,..., xn). It's easy to see this if n=1 and there are only two possible values of x, because the line drawn from (a, f(a)) to (b, f(b)) always lies above the graph of the function f.
If you take f(x1, x2, x3, x4) to be the measured distance between two points when (x1, x2) are the errors in the X and Y coordinates of the first point, and (x3, x4) are the errors in the X and Y coordinates of the second point, then it turns out that f is a convex function, and Jensen's Inequality applies. Assuming the errors are unbiased (mean value of 0), this says that the average measured distance (mean of f(x1, x2, x3, x4)) is higher than f(0, 0, 0, 0) (the actual distance).
In a society in which rule of law held sway, it would not be possible for the FBI or any other governmental agency to simply seize a domain; Sharebeast would have to first be convicted of having broken a law that specified seizure of the domain as a possible penalty, or the RIAA would have to win some sort of civil suit against Sharebeast first.
John Galt, the pivotal figure in Atlas Shrugged, once worked as an engineer with the fictional Twentieth Century Motor Company. After the original owner died, his heirs decided that employees would work according to their ability, but be paid according to their needs.
"The extraordinary claim that machines can become so intelligent as to gain demonic powers requires extraordinary evidence, particularly since artificial intelligence (AI) researchers have struggled to create machines that show much evidence of intelligence at all."
Um... intelligent machines already exist. I am one. So are you. The human brain is an existence proof that intelligent machines are possible. In this day and age, no respectable intellectual should need reminding of that fact.
Intelligent machines with demonic powers? Let's see... Kublai Khan, the emperor Caligula, Hitler, Stalin, Mao...
Superintelligent machines? Exhibit 1 is John von Neumann.:-)
No, it has not yet been proven that quantum computers cannot efficiently solve NP-complete problems (i.e., that BQP does not contain NP). That would be a major breakthrough. It's strongly suspected that BQP does not contain NP, but so far we seem to lack the mathematical tools that would be required to prove such a thing.
OP writes: "The goal of being able to solve NP-hard or NP-Complete problems with quantum computers is similar to being able to travel to the moon, mars or deeper into space with rockets."
Not even close. There was never any reason to believe that traveling to the moon was fundamentally impossible. That was an engineering problem, and no known nor suspected laws of physics prohibited it.
Solving NP-complete problems efficiently (polynomial time) with quantum computers may is a mathematical problem, however -- it amounts to finding a quantum algorithm for any one NP-complete problem -- and it may prove to be truly impossible, that is, it may be that no such algorithm exists. In fact, most experts in the field would say that the evidence so far strongly suggests that this is the case, that BQP (the set of problems you can solve in polynomial time on a quantum computer) does not include the NP-complete problems.
Jo Brand and Roseanne Barr got applause when they "joked" about wanting to stab men through the heart. Isn't that far worse than calling someone thin-skinned?
Sure, just choose a default for division by zero. I always prefer silent errors where my software just gets the wrong answer over being informed in no uncertain terms when something is wrong. I mean, the important thing is to keep up appearances, maintain the illusion that everything is okay, isn't it?
Slashdot Mirror
"Detractors worry about a future where humans are enslaved to an evil race of robot overlords."
This is why so many distrust the media -- they consistently misrepresent (that is, lie about) the positions of people who aren't what the media consider mainstream. No, the people warning of AI risk are NOT worried that we will be enslaved to malicious robot overlords. They instead worry that superintelligent AIs will be very, very good at carrying out the objectives we give them -- and we'll be horrified at the solutions they find. It's like asking a genie for a million dollars, so it arranges for your child to die a horrible death in an industrial accident that leads to you receiving a million dollars in the wrongful-death lawsuit.
The NYT served as the Bush Administration's propaganda organ in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Now they are reprising that role for the Obama administration's last-ditch efforts to lie the country into war with Russia.
"Some scientists and academics are embarking on a frenzied mission to archive reams of scientific data on climate change"
Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit will be happy; in the past he's had endless struggles trying to get data from climate scientists.
Am I the only one getting tired of the unbelievable arrogance of companies like Tesla who want to tell you what you can do with your own property?
Or perhaps Tesla's position is that they are only licensing you to use the car. In that case, they need to be honest and call it a rental or a lease; claiming that they're selling you a car is just fraudulent.
...because, no matter how closely I scrutinize the text of the First Amendment, I can't find this "national security" exclusion they're talking about.
Not to mention that their excuse for overriding the First Amendment is ludicrous. I don't believe that they actually believe that publication of 3D printer gun files actually puts the security of the nation at risk; they're just grasping at straws to support a predetermined conclusion.
Speaking as a 53-year-old engineer... I haven't encountered age discrimination. Then again, I work in the Salt Lake City / Provo Utah area, not Silicon Valley. Is ageism widespread in Silicon Valley, and is it a bad thing? If so -- if preferring a younger candidate over an older candidate is based on irrational prejudices rather than on a hard-nosed assessment of who brings the most value to the company -- then companies that practice ageism put themselves at a competitive disadvantage against companies that do not practice ageism. If the practice is as widespread and irrational as is being claimed, then this is a wonderful business opportunity for companies that do not practice ageism: such companies would have near-exclusive access to a pool of talent that is being shunned by other companies. This kind of scenario is not hypothetical; much of CitiBank's success in the 70's has been attributed to its efforts to recruit top female MBA graduates at a time when its competitors were only recruiting male MBAs.
"part of what's happening is that we are not helping schools and teachers teach it in an interesting way."
If someone needs to convince you that CS is interesting, then maybe CS is not for you. I've never known a really good programmer who got into the field because someone coddled and cajoled them into it. On the contrary, they seek out every opportunity they can find to learn more on their own initiative.
When did algebra become advanced math? I was 11 when I took my first algebra course.
What the MTA did / is doing is a crime under Maryland's wiretapping statute. Why have the responsible persons not been arrested and put on trial?
"He was overcome with emotion for parts of it, pausing to gather himself as he told the story of how he was replaced by a foreign visa holder."
A job is not an entitlement; it's an economic transaction. Just as you have every right to seek out the best deal you can find when you purchase a home, or a car, or the services of a plumber, tax preparer, or attorney, employers also have every right to seek out the best deal they can find when they purchase services from individuals.
Essentially, this guy is whining about how someone else out-competed him in the marketplace by offering a better deal.
I don't have a comment on the study, but I know what "Universal basic income" means to me -- I get to work harder for a smaller take-home paycheck while even more able-bodied adults than before are supported by my labor. (I have an ex-wife and several adult children who don't work.)
"It is the fifth year in a row he's introduced a science education bill after announcing he wanted 'every publicly funded Oklahoma school to teach the debate of creation vs. evolution.' "
I think the senator would not be happy with the results if they actually did this. Imagine if, instead of teaching evolution as a dogma, they discussed the many different lines of evidence that led scientists to their current conclusions about evolution. Imagine discussing the many puzzling questions in biology for which creationism has no answer, but which evolutionary theory resolves. Imagine a vigorous discussion of epistemology and the scientific method.
I can't think of a better way of debunking creationism.
"Dubious ethics?" Let's be clear here: the FBI committed a crime, the same crime that the owners of the website committed.
It's time we started insisting that law enforcement obey the law.
In other news, a spokesman for the New York City Mugger's Guild has hinted that a compromise between muggers and pedestrians may be in the works, allowing mugger's to take only 70% instead of 100% of any cash and credit cards being carried by persons they accost on the street.
More special privileges for women -- as if they didn't have enough already -- and more discrimination against men. I'm getting really, really tired of this, especially when I see my son excluded from one educational opportunity after another solely because of his sex.
Jensen's inequality says that if f(x1, ..., xn) is a convex function (curving upwards in all directions), and (x1, ..., xn) is a random vector, then the mean value (probability-weighted average) of f(x1, ..., xn) is higher than f evaluated at the mean value of (x1, ..., xn). It's easy to see this if n=1 and there are only two possible values of x, because the line drawn from (a, f(a)) to (b, f(b)) always lies above the graph of the function f.
If you take f(x1, x2, x3, x4) to be the measured distance between two points when (x1, x2) are the errors in the X and Y coordinates of the first point, and (x3, x4) are the errors in the X and Y coordinates of the second point, then it turns out that f is a convex function, and Jensen's Inequality applies. Assuming the errors are unbiased (mean value of 0), this says that the average measured distance (mean of f(x1, x2, x3, x4)) is higher than f(0, 0, 0, 0) (the actual distance).
In a society in which rule of law held sway, it would not be possible for the FBI or any other governmental agency to simply seize a domain; Sharebeast would have to first be convicted of having broken a law that specified seizure of the domain as a possible penalty, or the RIAA would have to win some sort of civil suit against Sharebeast first.
John Galt, the pivotal figure in Atlas Shrugged, once worked as an engineer with the fictional Twentieth Century Motor Company. After the original owner died, his heirs decided that employees would work according to their ability, but be paid according to their needs.
Needless to say, it did not work out well.
This sounds like something out of an Ayn Rand novel. It's very similar to something that happens in Atlas Shrugged.
"The extraordinary claim that machines can become so intelligent as to gain demonic powers requires extraordinary evidence, particularly since artificial intelligence (AI) researchers have struggled to create machines that show much evidence of intelligence at all."
Um... intelligent machines already exist. I am one. So are you. The human brain is an existence proof that intelligent machines are possible. In this day and age, no respectable intellectual should need reminding of that fact.
Intelligent machines with demonic powers? Let's see... Kublai Khan, the emperor Caligula, Hitler, Stalin, Mao...
Superintelligent machines? Exhibit 1 is John von Neumann. :-)
No, it has not yet been proven that quantum computers cannot efficiently solve NP-complete problems (i.e., that BQP does not contain NP). That would be a major breakthrough. It's strongly suspected that BQP does not contain NP, but so far we seem to lack the mathematical tools that would be required to prove such a thing.
OP writes: "The goal of being able to solve NP-hard or NP-Complete problems with quantum computers is similar to being able to travel to the moon, mars or deeper into space with rockets."
Not even close. There was never any reason to believe that traveling to the moon was fundamentally impossible. That was an engineering problem, and no known nor suspected laws of physics prohibited it.
Solving NP-complete problems efficiently (polynomial time) with quantum computers may is a mathematical problem, however -- it amounts to finding a quantum algorithm for any one NP-complete problem -- and it may prove to be truly impossible, that is, it may be that no such algorithm exists. In fact, most experts in the field would say that the evidence so far strongly suggests that this is the case, that BQP (the set of problems you can solve in polynomial time on a quantum computer) does not include the NP-complete problems.
Good Lord, people, Scott Aaronson refuted this memcomputer nonsense some time ago:
Memrefuting
The short story is that all they've done is a sleight of hand where they smuggle the exponential blowup somewhere else.
Jo Brand and Roseanne Barr got applause when they "joked" about wanting to stab men through the heart. Isn't that far worse than calling someone thin-skinned?
More here.
Sure, just choose a default for division by zero. I always prefer silent errors where my software just gets the wrong answer over being informed in no uncertain terms when something is wrong. I mean, the important thing is to keep up appearances, maintain the illusion that everything is okay, isn't it?