It is inevitable that as any country becomes "developed", the size of their market will be highly correlated to their population. My country (the US) likes to think its something intrinsic about our people or society which has made us #1, but by far the most important thing going for us is a large developed population under the control of a strong single government.
It is no small feat to contain a 300+ million educated and developed population under a single unified society. Russia failed in the 80's, Europe is really struggling keeping the EU unified today, and the US went through a civil war and its hard to see a perfectly unified society in our current political climate. I believe China will have a harder time keeping control than any of my earlier examples, but even multiple fractured Chinese states would have significant economic power.
Projecting out world politics 50+ years into the future is impossible, but ultimately the largest and most unified markets will win economically. The winner could be a unified and developed China, a merged Euro-American market, or any number of other options. This is why the protectionist trend in my country is so troubling, but luckily these factions are rarely successful politically.
That's just it, the fear (or mine at least) isn't that they'll perfect the technique, but that they will try to use it anyway. It may become a means of discrimination that they can utilize to justify hiring and promoting who they want.
We already have laws which require employment tests to have a demonstrable link between the test and ability to perform job functions, as well as criteria for determining whether a particular set of criteria have an adverse affect on a protected group. If you are worried these laws won't be applied properly, that is no different than worrying about abuses such as asking American Football related questions to weed out immigrants.
I certainly agree people will try to get around employment laws, just like they already try today. But systemic problems such as those portrayed in Gattaca should not be used a realistic future possibilities. We have had these types of employment abuses handled in our laws since 1971
Using IQ tests, or any other test for general intelligence, is ILLEGAL in America [wikipedia.org].
That is not true. That ruling simply ensures that employment tests provide a demonstrable link between the test and ability to perform job functions. In this case any high school graduate could complete the job (and probably even that is an unnecessary requirement). IQ tests are generally regarded as poor choices for employment related tests, but they are not illegal.
Apparently Gattaca is not as far off as I would have thought.
Gattaca simply took a concept which is almost certain to happen and took it to an illogical extreme to create drama and conflict. Not unlike many sci-fi books and movies. I haven't read any scientific literature claiming we will ever be able to use genetic testing to perfectly determine someone's capabilities, as explicitly shown in Gattaca by interviews consisting of only a genetic test. Nurture still has an effect, so genetics will only ever be one of many factors.
There are laws that prevent employers from considering health, gender, religious views, and other deeply personal attributes when hiring a candidate. I don't see how this could possibly be allowed in the future (unless our laws change).
Genetic testing is simply an egregiously extreme version of attempting to determine how smart, hard working, determined, etc. a candidate is, which is allowed by our current laws. If a company cannot use genetic markers which signify greater intelligence (if such a thing even exists), why would they be allowed to use an IQ test or school grades, or any other indication used to guesstimate a candidate's intelligence?
I think new laws will be needed to stop abuses, because I'm not convinced our current employment laws are enough to stop abuse.
My question was primarily this - what are the 70% of Note users who are not switching to the iPhone 7 doing? People buy a Note because they want a phablet. They aren't going to downgrade to a smaller phone, most likely.
That is exactly the problem my wife had with replacing her Note 7. There simply are no competing products for the Note. She either had to downgrade to a 5.5" screen with no stylus, or go back to a Note 4/5. It is quite painful to pay $700+ for a phone released a year ago, so she went with a $250 refurbished Note 4.
In the end this fiasco cost us about $50 and a lot of hassle, since we traded in her old Note 4 for only $200.
sure, lets godwin the candidate who threatens the current corruption.
Its too bad that comparing people with Hitler became so common no one takes it seriously when someone's political rhetoric really is as fascist as Hitler's was. The story about the boy who cried wolf comes to mind.
I know Gary Johnson isn't likely to win, but if he gets close to 10% of the vote it'll change the entire scope of all future elections.
This is why I'm close to wanting a civics and history test to determine who is allowed to vote (which needs to be taken more recently than an 8th grade civics test). Anyone who thinks a third party candidate getting 10% of the vote would change anything about modern elections doesn't even remember the last 25 years of presidential elections. Ross Perot received 18.9% of the popular vote in 1992 without causing any of the political upheaval you are hoping for.
Young voters, or simply uneducated older voters, need to learn what a Plurality voting system with First Past the Post voting is, and how it works. They need to learn the difference between a voting system where coalitions are built before the election and represented by two parties containing multiple voting blocs (like the US), and one which allows for more than two parties but which requires a coalition to be built after elections (with less input and control from the voters). There are pros and cons on both sides.
The benefits of that economic growth will almost exclusively go to billionaires who contribute to to their campaigns and foundations.
And just like today, one of the political parties will confuse the issue by starting an anti-AI bandwagon just like we see done with anti-Globalization today. Instead of dealing with the income inequality created by AI (like with globalization) they will distract voters by blaming the technology. And then you'll have a new generation of politicians pretending they can put the genie back in the bottle just to get votes from the uneducated while still keeping their donors happy.
What's your point? A lot of people feel like that's exactly the kind of president we need right now. There is a lot of stuff to rebuild within our own borders so we don't need to worry about how other people around the world are living their lives. We are not the world police.
This is one example of how poorly educated most voters are. Foreign policy is one of the few parts of our government where the President has a great deal of control. With the exception of supreme court justices, foreign policy, and the military, all other talking points are mostly irrelevant since Congress is responsible for most domestic issues.
much cheaper price though. I am sure they wouldn't mind your telecommuting if you worked for peanuts.
If that is the case, then throw every other bullshit excuse for not supporting telecommuting out the door.
Why? He is saying they are willing to pay for an inferior product (a telecommuter) as long as it is reflected in the price. No difference than my not complaining about a McDouble tasting worse than a dry aged prime steak because I only paid a dollar for the burger (as apposed to $60).
I have only 22 years of experience in IT, and even I can tell you that you're an over-simplifying simpleton if you believe [the problem is management].
The source of every problem is management, because they ultimately have the responsibility to deliver to stakeholders. They are responsible for poor hires, for not removing bad hires, for not putting good enough project managers in place to track progress, you name it. Don't get me wrong, the IT members actually making the mistakes also share blame, but a small percentage of it. Just like their income is only a fraction of their managers'.
You're wrong. That's exactly who they are thinking about. Why do you think all the tax breaks cut off (and tax hikes begin at) significantly lower income levels than 10 million (250k joint was the most recent target income level for hiking costs on).
You are confusing income and net worth. The $250k household income target level does show the government feels the same way I do about who is considered "wealthy". That would probably come to about $300k of income before deductions, which would require around $7-$10 million, depending on how much of your wealth is tied in your house or other non-liquid assets.
Applause for a perfect example of the "moving the goalposts" argument. I'm going to bookmark this and refer to it in the future. Well done!
While this is a good example of how some goalposts do move on their own over time (in this case because of inflation), I don't think that is what you are referring to. I believe you are referring to the Moving the Goalpost Fallacy, which in this case does not apply because the goalpost moves on its own naturally in this case.
Read "The Millionaire Next Door". You just described most millionaires. And you know them; you just don't know that they are millionaires.
Our society's lexicon needs a word for someone who has at least $10 million, because that is who people are really thinking of when they talk about millionaires. Either that or people who only have a few million but are still in their 20's/30's. No one is thinking of a regular middle class person who amassed $1.5 million in their retirement account by the age of 65.
It really is an important distinction, because having $1-2 million by retirement does not give the lifestyle anyone in the developed world attributes to "millionaires". $2 million provides about $60k-$80k in yearly income (inflation adjusted) throughout retirement. Hardly what anyone is thinking of when they refer to millionaires. I can virtually guarantee this isn't what the AC was thinking of when he mentioned them.
Having $10 million on the other hand will provide over half a million dollars of income for life. This is the lifestyle people mean when they refer to millionaires.
I have very rarely heard of a discussion of say, neural networks, referred to as "AI" in other than in a marketing or popular media context.
This is simply a product of speaking to the audience. The more general your audience is, the more general your nomenclature becomes. You can find numerous research papers where neural networks are considered applications of artificial intelligence. You are certainly correct that people in the industry call these applications neural networks far more than calling them AI, just like I would tell a colleague I am finishing some JavaScript code instead of saying I am doing web programming.
Once these researchers, and the companies employing them, need to talk to regular people through marketing or the popular media, using terms like deep learning, neural networks, finite state machines, etc would be counterproductive. The public is much more likely to understand the phrase "We made a breakthrough in AI" than "We made a breakthrough in Adaptive Neural Fuzzy Inference Systems."
"AI" for us greybeards means one thing: actual intelligence, i.e. sentience.
I think you mean sapience, not sentience, but your statement still goes to the heart of why people complain about the semantics used by the computing industry when it discusses artificial intelligence. It shows a disconnect between people like yourselves and the actual artificial intelligence research community.
Even at its very beginnings, artificial intelligence was not limited to sapient computer systems. The 1956 Dartmouth Conference, organized by John McCarthy (who coined the term artificial intelligence), considered the field of artificial intelligence to be far wider than simply creating a thinking machine. Expert systems, deductive and inductive systems, neural networks, and many other current AI topics were all discussed.
Artificial intelligence, since its beginning, has been interested in finding ways for computers to solve problems once reserved for humans. It doesn't matter if the computer is using creativity, imagination, or reason. Eventually this will almost certainly lead to sapient computers, but the field of artificial intelligence can still keep making breakthroughs longs before that happens.
TL; DR; Your definition of artificial intelligence is simply wrong.
This. There is no fucking AI. I'm sick of hearing news about it every god damned day when it doesn't even exist.
So Amazon and Google have a huge team of employees listening to my voice waiting for me to say "Alexa" or "OK Google" and then transcribing my messages? Does Facebook has a team of people setting up the feed of every user manually? Because if not there is real AI doing this.
I would be interesting to see if they save any money here as well, considering UPS operates on about a 7-8% profit margin. Considering Amazon is such a large customer I would be willing to bet they make far less profit on Amazon shipments. Not a lot of room for savings unless they believe they have a new better way of doing shipping.
UPS has a revenue of about $60 billion per year, while Amazon pays about $5 billion in yearly shipping costs. This puts them in an entirely different order of magnitude as far as scale goes. This makes it even less likely Amazon would save a lot of money.
If Amazon does pull this off (meaning they save money) it would be quite an accomplishment.
Amazon is not always the cheapest but they usually are the most convenient in my experience.
Which if you value your time means that unless you are buying something worth at least hundreds of dollars, its almost never worth shopping around. I shop around when buying a TV or high end video card, but never for an under $100 item.
I usually don't go to Amazon first when shopping for items, but only because it is easier to type the product into Google and follow the Amazon link I find in the results, with is almost always Amazon if they offer the product. I wonder if that counts as going to Amazon first or not.
If there is a child running out on the road that is obscured from sensors, a human will see the ball, see others on the yard in horror and shock and be able to intuit what is about to happen.
Or in a more realistic scenario, the human is driving 35 mph in a residential area and still can't stop in time for the child, and the automated car is obeying the speed limit and can stop. But I will certainly grant you there will be times when an automated car kills someone when a human would not. The important thing is whether more or less people in total are killed by automated cars when compared to human drivers.
Your second scenario is exactly why we need legislatures to start deciding these rules now. Your question is essentially how dangerous will we allow these cars to drive. Your ability to sue, or more accurately your ability to win a lawsuit, will depend on the early legislation and case law. Most likely insurance companies will end up covering car companies in the same way they cover individual drivers now. You won't have to sue them, they will just pay you for medical bills, pain and suffering like they would today for a human driver.
You mention a whole lot of things where human intuition is compensating for a brain which is incapable of paying attention to all inputs at the same time. But we aren't talking about such a limited processing device when discussing automated cars.
An automated car doesn't need to know a bouncing ball on the street means it should be looking out for children. It is always looking out for children, unlike its human counterpart.
Before getting this technology legal and on the road, perhaps we should focus on getting this technology?
Publicly letting the industry know regulators are interested in helping make automated vehicles a reality is a very important early step in lowering the risk involved in investing in this technology. Major car companies and other investors will probably now be more willing to invest money in technologies which support automated vehicles becoming a reality.
Every investor's risk matrix just had one box move from red to yellow.
Slashdot Mirror
It is inevitable that as any country becomes "developed", the size of their market will be highly correlated to their population. My country (the US) likes to think its something intrinsic about our people or society which has made us #1, but by far the most important thing going for us is a large developed population under the control of a strong single government.
It is no small feat to contain a 300+ million educated and developed population under a single unified society. Russia failed in the 80's, Europe is really struggling keeping the EU unified today, and the US went through a civil war and its hard to see a perfectly unified society in our current political climate. I believe China will have a harder time keeping control than any of my earlier examples, but even multiple fractured Chinese states would have significant economic power.
Projecting out world politics 50+ years into the future is impossible, but ultimately the largest and most unified markets will win economically. The winner could be a unified and developed China, a merged Euro-American market, or any number of other options. This is why the protectionist trend in my country is so troubling, but luckily these factions are rarely successful politically.
That's just it, the fear (or mine at least) isn't that they'll perfect the technique, but that they will try to use it anyway. It may become a means of discrimination that they can utilize to justify hiring and promoting who they want.
We already have laws which require employment tests to have a demonstrable link between the test and ability to perform job functions, as well as criteria for determining whether a particular set of criteria have an adverse affect on a protected group. If you are worried these laws won't be applied properly, that is no different than worrying about abuses such as asking American Football related questions to weed out immigrants.
I certainly agree people will try to get around employment laws, just like they already try today. But systemic problems such as those portrayed in Gattaca should not be used a realistic future possibilities. We have had these types of employment abuses handled in our laws since 1971
Using IQ tests, or any other test for general intelligence, is ILLEGAL in America [wikipedia.org].
That is not true. That ruling simply ensures that employment tests provide a demonstrable link between the test and ability to perform job functions. In this case any high school graduate could complete the job (and probably even that is an unnecessary requirement). IQ tests are generally regarded as poor choices for employment related tests, but they are not illegal.
Apparently Gattaca is not as far off as I would have thought.
Gattaca simply took a concept which is almost certain to happen and took it to an illogical extreme to create drama and conflict. Not unlike many sci-fi books and movies. I haven't read any scientific literature claiming we will ever be able to use genetic testing to perfectly determine someone's capabilities, as explicitly shown in Gattaca by interviews consisting of only a genetic test. Nurture still has an effect, so genetics will only ever be one of many factors.
There are laws that prevent employers from considering health, gender, religious views, and other deeply personal attributes when hiring a candidate. I don't see how this could possibly be allowed in the future (unless our laws change).
Genetic testing is simply an egregiously extreme version of attempting to determine how smart, hard working, determined, etc. a candidate is, which is allowed by our current laws. If a company cannot use genetic markers which signify greater intelligence (if such a thing even exists), why would they be allowed to use an IQ test or school grades, or any other indication used to guesstimate a candidate's intelligence?
I think new laws will be needed to stop abuses, because I'm not convinced our current employment laws are enough to stop abuse.
My question was primarily this - what are the 70% of Note users who are not switching to the iPhone 7 doing? People buy a Note because they want a phablet. They aren't going to downgrade to a smaller phone, most likely.
That is exactly the problem my wife had with replacing her Note 7. There simply are no competing products for the Note. She either had to downgrade to a 5.5" screen with no stylus, or go back to a Note 4/5. It is quite painful to pay $700+ for a phone released a year ago, so she went with a $250 refurbished Note 4.
In the end this fiasco cost us about $50 and a lot of hassle, since we traded in her old Note 4 for only $200.
sure, lets godwin the candidate who threatens the current corruption.
Its too bad that comparing people with Hitler became so common no one takes it seriously when someone's political rhetoric really is as fascist as Hitler's was. The story about the boy who cried wolf comes to mind.
I know Gary Johnson isn't likely to win, but if he gets close to 10% of the vote it'll change the entire scope of all future elections.
This is why I'm close to wanting a civics and history test to determine who is allowed to vote (which needs to be taken more recently than an 8th grade civics test). Anyone who thinks a third party candidate getting 10% of the vote would change anything about modern elections doesn't even remember the last 25 years of presidential elections. Ross Perot received 18.9% of the popular vote in 1992 without causing any of the political upheaval you are hoping for.
Young voters, or simply uneducated older voters, need to learn what a Plurality voting system with First Past the Post voting is, and how it works. They need to learn the difference between a voting system where coalitions are built before the election and represented by two parties containing multiple voting blocs (like the US), and one which allows for more than two parties but which requires a coalition to be built after elections (with less input and control from the voters). There are pros and cons on both sides.
The benefits of that economic growth will almost exclusively go to billionaires who contribute to to their campaigns and foundations.
And just like today, one of the political parties will confuse the issue by starting an anti-AI bandwagon just like we see done with anti-Globalization today. Instead of dealing with the income inequality created by AI (like with globalization) they will distract voters by blaming the technology. And then you'll have a new generation of politicians pretending they can put the genie back in the bottle just to get votes from the uneducated while still keeping their donors happy.
What's your point? A lot of people feel like that's exactly the kind of president we need right now. There is a lot of stuff to rebuild within our own borders so we don't need to worry about how other people around the world are living their lives. We are not the world police.
This is one example of how poorly educated most voters are. Foreign policy is one of the few parts of our government where the President has a great deal of control. With the exception of supreme court justices, foreign policy, and the military, all other talking points are mostly irrelevant since Congress is responsible for most domestic issues.
much cheaper price though. I am sure they wouldn't mind your telecommuting if you worked for peanuts.
If that is the case, then throw every other bullshit excuse for not supporting telecommuting out the door.
Why? He is saying they are willing to pay for an inferior product (a telecommuter) as long as it is reflected in the price. No difference than my not complaining about a McDouble tasting worse than a dry aged prime steak because I only paid a dollar for the burger (as apposed to $60).
I have only 22 years of experience in IT, and even I can tell you that you're an over-simplifying simpleton if you believe [the problem is management].
The source of every problem is management, because they ultimately have the responsibility to deliver to stakeholders. They are responsible for poor hires, for not removing bad hires, for not putting good enough project managers in place to track progress, you name it. Don't get me wrong, the IT members actually making the mistakes also share blame, but a small percentage of it. Just like their income is only a fraction of their managers'.
Wow. Now we're going to try to subset the subset of 'rich' you want us to hate on.
I'm not hating on anyone. Perhaps some other posters in the same thread were, but I'm not.
You're wrong. That's exactly who they are thinking about. Why do you think all the tax breaks cut off (and tax hikes begin at) significantly lower income levels than 10 million (250k joint was the most recent target income level for hiking costs on).
You are confusing income and net worth. The $250k household income target level does show the government feels the same way I do about who is considered "wealthy". That would probably come to about $300k of income before deductions, which would require around $7-$10 million, depending on how much of your wealth is tied in your house or other non-liquid assets.
Applause for a perfect example of the "moving the goalposts" argument. I'm going to bookmark this and refer to it in the future. Well done!
While this is a good example of how some goalposts do move on their own over time (in this case because of inflation), I don't think that is what you are referring to. I believe you are referring to the Moving the Goalpost Fallacy, which in this case does not apply because the goalpost moves on its own naturally in this case.
Read "The Millionaire Next Door". You just described most millionaires. And you know them; you just don't know that they are millionaires.
Our society's lexicon needs a word for someone who has at least $10 million, because that is who people are really thinking of when they talk about millionaires. Either that or people who only have a few million but are still in their 20's/30's. No one is thinking of a regular middle class person who amassed $1.5 million in their retirement account by the age of 65.
It really is an important distinction, because having $1-2 million by retirement does not give the lifestyle anyone in the developed world attributes to "millionaires". $2 million provides about $60k-$80k in yearly income (inflation adjusted) throughout retirement. Hardly what anyone is thinking of when they refer to millionaires. I can virtually guarantee this isn't what the AC was thinking of when he mentioned them.
Having $10 million on the other hand will provide over half a million dollars of income for life. This is the lifestyle people mean when they refer to millionaires.
I have very rarely heard of a discussion of say, neural networks, referred to as "AI" in other than in a marketing or popular media context.
This is simply a product of speaking to the audience. The more general your audience is, the more general your nomenclature becomes. You can find numerous research papers where neural networks are considered applications of artificial intelligence. You are certainly correct that people in the industry call these applications neural networks far more than calling them AI, just like I would tell a colleague I am finishing some JavaScript code instead of saying I am doing web programming.
Once these researchers, and the companies employing them, need to talk to regular people through marketing or the popular media, using terms like deep learning, neural networks, finite state machines, etc would be counterproductive. The public is much more likely to understand the phrase "We made a breakthrough in AI" than "We made a breakthrough in Adaptive Neural Fuzzy Inference Systems."
"AI" for us greybeards means one thing: actual intelligence, i.e. sentience.
I think you mean sapience, not sentience, but your statement still goes to the heart of why people complain about the semantics used by the computing industry when it discusses artificial intelligence. It shows a disconnect between people like yourselves and the actual artificial intelligence research community.
Even at its very beginnings, artificial intelligence was not limited to sapient computer systems. The 1956 Dartmouth Conference, organized by John McCarthy (who coined the term artificial intelligence), considered the field of artificial intelligence to be far wider than simply creating a thinking machine. Expert systems, deductive and inductive systems, neural networks, and many other current AI topics were all discussed.
Artificial intelligence, since its beginning, has been interested in finding ways for computers to solve problems once reserved for humans. It doesn't matter if the computer is using creativity, imagination, or reason. Eventually this will almost certainly lead to sapient computers, but the field of artificial intelligence can still keep making breakthroughs longs before that happens.
TL; DR; Your definition of artificial intelligence is simply wrong.
This. There is no fucking AI. I'm sick of hearing news about it every god damned day when it doesn't even exist.
So Amazon and Google have a huge team of employees listening to my voice waiting for me to say "Alexa" or "OK Google" and then transcribing my messages? Does Facebook has a team of people setting up the feed of every user manually? Because if not there is real AI doing this.
AI can be as simple as a simple finite state machine or a complicated deep learning neural network. Just as natural intelligence can range from plants secreting defensive chemicals when hearing a caterpillar eating to someone figuring out how to drive a car.
It doesn't have to be Skynet to be considered AI.
I would be interesting to see if they save any money here as well, considering UPS operates on about a 7-8% profit margin. Considering Amazon is such a large customer I would be willing to bet they make far less profit on Amazon shipments. Not a lot of room for savings unless they believe they have a new better way of doing shipping.
UPS has a revenue of about $60 billion per year, while Amazon pays about $5 billion in yearly shipping costs. This puts them in an entirely different order of magnitude as far as scale goes. This makes it even less likely Amazon would save a lot of money.
If Amazon does pull this off (meaning they save money) it would be quite an accomplishment.
Amazon is not always the cheapest but they usually are the most convenient in my experience.
Which if you value your time means that unless you are buying something worth at least hundreds of dollars, its almost never worth shopping around. I shop around when buying a TV or high end video card, but never for an under $100 item.
I usually don't go to Amazon first when shopping for items, but only because it is easier to type the product into Google and follow the Amazon link I find in the results, with is almost always Amazon if they offer the product. I wonder if that counts as going to Amazon first or not.
If there is a child running out on the road that is obscured from sensors, a human will see the ball, see others on the yard in horror and shock and be able to intuit what is about to happen.
Or in a more realistic scenario, the human is driving 35 mph in a residential area and still can't stop in time for the child, and the automated car is obeying the speed limit and can stop. But I will certainly grant you there will be times when an automated car kills someone when a human would not. The important thing is whether more or less people in total are killed by automated cars when compared to human drivers.
Your second scenario is exactly why we need legislatures to start deciding these rules now. Your question is essentially how dangerous will we allow these cars to drive. Your ability to sue, or more accurately your ability to win a lawsuit, will depend on the early legislation and case law. Most likely insurance companies will end up covering car companies in the same way they cover individual drivers now. You won't have to sue them, they will just pay you for medical bills, pain and suffering like they would today for a human driver.
You mention a whole lot of things where human intuition is compensating for a brain which is incapable of paying attention to all inputs at the same time. But we aren't talking about such a limited processing device when discussing automated cars.
An automated car doesn't need to know a bouncing ball on the street means it should be looking out for children. It is always looking out for children, unlike its human counterpart.
Before getting this technology legal and on the road, perhaps we should focus on getting this technology?
Publicly letting the industry know regulators are interested in helping make automated vehicles a reality is a very important early step in lowering the risk involved in investing in this technology. Major car companies and other investors will probably now be more willing to invest money in technologies which support automated vehicles becoming a reality.
Every investor's risk matrix just had one box move from red to yellow.