With population exploding, shouldn't we return to an era where the weak were culled out?...
Unless you live in Africa, population is not exploding. The population growth rate is slowing, the UN predicts that the world population will stabilize around 2090 and fall afterwards. Most (more recent) predictions think that this estimate is pessimistic - it's looking like population will stabilize around 2050 and decline afterwards.
Most industrialized nations have negative population growth already, the US *would* have negative population growth if you discount immigration. Even with immigration, the US population is slowing and will turn the corner sometime in the next couple of decades.
... back in the day old people had the grace to die of diabetes or a heart attack, now they live until 90, but don't work the last 30 years of their lives, effectively eating the seed corn of the new generation.
I think the problems you are seeing is due to a lack of an evolved sense of morality. On your part.
There's no benefit to them keeping your information safe, it costs them time, money, and effort to do so, and there's no real consequences when they screw up. They will just put out a statement saying "all of our customer information was stolen, we recommend everyone change their password, and the hole is now patched - it can't happen again!".
Also, they can blame the thieves. "It wasn't our fault, it was that scoundrel who noticed that you can change the account number in the URL to get into someone else's account."
As to "we value your privacy", what does that actually mean? It means that companies have discovered that people trust companies that make that statement, and are more likely to purchase from such a company.
That's all it means, and no more. It doesn't mean that they care or that they abide by the statement, it means that they think they can get more business by using that phrase liberally in their public-facing documents.
You're living under the naive assumption that companies mean what they say and will do what they promise. They do what the consumer protection laws force them to do - any statement that reflects these laws is probably true, while the rest is simple puffing.
This appears to be a story depicting a sort-of utopian future (of limited extent - an island) where there are no rules.
I'm not sure from the context whether the author is in favor or against the concept. It somehow feels like he is knitting together several uncomfortable consequences of "no rules" in an attempt to paint that future as dystopian.
The thing people always miss, the important overlooked point, is that no one wants a state where there are no rules. What people invariably want is a state which has rules enforcing human rights, and little else.
The most basic human right is to have sovereignty over ones own body. Mat Honan's article shows us that with no rules, outsiders would be able to do anything they wanted to us - even against our consent. It would be the strong doing whatever they wanted to the weak. Typical, obvious, and predictable - we have many examples of lawless societies where the strong do just that.
Many of our rules are violations of that first most basic right, pretty much anything that someone else thinks that you should do or not-do for your own good: rules about drugs, prostitution, abortion, doctor-assisted suicide, and yes, wearing clothes. We could do away with large swaths of the legal landscape and eliminate large parts of government, both local and federal, if we could just say "do anything you want, so long as you don't infringe on the rights of others".
If you would like to read about a rule-less society which enforces basic human rights and is a little less dystopian, try "Manna" by Marshall Brain. It's an easy read and an interesting story.
Another good example is "Voyage From Yesteryear" by James Hogan. A little longer and with more drama, but essentially a rule-less society which enforces basic human rights.
From a casual reading (by a non-lawyer) of the constitution, this makes perfect sense.
This thing about "we can go through all your possessions if we somehow get our hands on it" is ludicrous, and the "if we can pick the lock or break it open we can rummage around inside" thing is stupider still. If I lock my data but the police manage to break the encryption method they can rummage around in the data? Does this work for the locks on my house? The dial on my safe?
The simple search looking for weapons thing "to protect the officer" was an exception, but they've taken it beyond extreme rights violations.
If you see someone committing a crime, arrest them. If you can't convict them without the data on their cell phone, you shouldn't have arrested them in the first place.
Oh, and if someone parrots "how can we do our jobs if we don't have the tools" nonsense, remind them that we're currently enjoying the lowest crime rate in several decades.
... The self-assured scientist claims that the only thing preventing scientists from understanding the human brain in its entirety — from the molecular level all the way to the mystery of consciousness — is a lack of ambition.
This.
Also, the lack of any sort of a roadmap as to how to do this.
Also, the lack of any sort of definition for "consciousness", or any indication that it is an emergent property, or any way to measure when you've succeeded in making consciousness, or any theoretical evidence at all that it would arise from any specific plan.
We could model as many neurons as we like and it *still* wouldn't be a human brain unless we figure out how those neurons connect with each other. With no detailed plan, it's like trying to build a house by tacking boards together.
The "self-assured scientist" could start by telling us how a Cortical Column is wired up, how the feedback and feed-forward between columns works, and why artificial neural nets have inputs on one side and outputs on the other, when the brain apparently has both inputs and outputs on one side (in the sense of a functional diagram; ie - the efferent and afferent neurons connect to the same level of layer), and what the distinction is between these models.
If he can't solve basic issues, how can he hope to succeed in such a complex and ambitions project?
This is yet another ridiculous situation, stupid enough that it makes me wonder why such situations exist.
If a website is illegal (for any definition of illegal, including terrorism, pornography, and IP violations), then it should be judged illegal by a court in country with reference to the specific law that the site violates. That country can then mandate that ISPs in that country block that specific website, the government can ask the government of the registrar or hosting company to take action, the government can identify people who access the site and charge them with a crime.
Illegal is illegal, but this thing about "anyone can take action if they think something is illegal" is ludicrous. Letting business advocacy groups, unelected government bureaucrats, and random government departments to suddenly state "we're the governing authority, this is illegal, we're pulling your plug" is complete bullshit. Government departments can certainly make such pronouncements, but should be required to act only with court approval. For instance, if the State Department wants Defense Distributed to take their plans offline, it should get a court order.
The courts exist to protect our rights. Taking action without judicial process is an end-run around those rights, and shouldn't be allowed.
Here's a related question. Do you trust when a car manufacturer tells you to buy new parts?
Specifically, the maintenance schedule in the owner's packet that comes with a new car. For example, at 60,000 miles:
1) Replace engine coolant
2) Replace HEV inverter coolant
3) Replace manual transmission oil
4) Replace automatic transmission/CVT/eCVT fluid
5) Replace differential oil
6) Replace engine drive belts
7) Replace radiator cap
8) Replace transfer case oil
Are all these necessary, or is the dealer trying to squeeze more money from the owner? I've heard various mechanics coming down on both sides of this question. Does the differential oil really need periodic replacing? Do you need new drive belts if there's no visible damage?
(Also: Do you replace the engine oil and filter every 2000 miles, or is this just another way to squeeze money from the consumer?)
Mental health is a large subject, let's take a smaller slice for discussion: depression.
Depression meds work no better than placebo. Depression meds have lots of unpleasant side-effects, so being treated for depression is - on average - worse than going undiagnosed.
Depression is a symptom of many diseases - at least 18 of them commonplace. Many cases of depression are the result of 1) underactive thyroid (40% by one accounting), 2) Low levels of vitamin D, and 3) sleep apnea.
And yet, the symptom is treated as a disease in and of itself. Prescription meds which do more harm than good are commonly prescribed under the flimsiest of circumstances:
Patient: "doctor, I feel tired and run down"
Doctor: "It sounds like depression. Try this and see if it goes away".
After all is said and done, a casual reading of the research would suggest that the scientific method used in psychology research is crap. That's a strong statement, but not completely without merit.
Psychiatrists need to stop worrying about publishing the next trivial follow-on paper, and need to stop theorizing by making up stories. Get your evidence first, make theories to explain the evidence, and then throw out theories which have no testable predictions.
Go back to basics, and stop making money from giving people false hope through increased suffering.
(Grrr! A close friend got chewed up and spit out by the medical profession because of depression.)
We were using a variant of this to help balance helicopter blades. Put accelerometers on the frame, [carefully] run up the engine while tethered, analyze the vibration, advise the tech how to adjust the blade weights, and repeat. Eventually you get well-balanced blades.
A similar system could diagnose wheel and tire issues. Mount an accelerometer and a microphone on the frame near each of the wheels and try to detect vibration and/or frequencies that correlate with wheel or shaft rotation, and frame vibration.
I'd love to have an onboard diagnostic that shows an X-ray diagram of the engine drive-train, with green/yellow/red circles around the various parts and listings detailing the type of part and level of health.
You could also implement active balance compensation.
You can never balance anything exactly perfect, but if you can measure and analyze the balance you can compensate for minor imperfections. An electromagnet mounted near a shaft can "pull" the shaft slightly at the right point in its rotation, compensating for a tiny amount of imbalance.
For small values of "compensate", you can tune your mechanical system to be much quieter and have much less wear. The same system can measure the amount of compensation needed, and alert the user when the engine exceeds the system's ability to compensate.
Lots of interesting possibilities here for active computer-control of mechanical systems.
A ball inside a ball-bearing race typically fails by "spalling": a tiny flake breaks off of the surface of the ball.
As it rolls around the race, the ball makes a periodic "tick" sound whose frequency is related to its rotation.
So... if you record the sound coming from an engine, and you have an index mark input (when the flywheel reaches TDC, for instance) and you know the gearing ratios of all the shafts, the inner race and outer race diameter of the ball bearing races, and the number of balls &c you can relate the frequency to a particular bearing which is going bad before it fails.
You can do the same thing for the races: the inner and outer races rotate with a particular speed relative to the balls, so a crack or spall on a race will also make a sound at a particular frequency.
Essentially, look for energy in the particular frequency that a particular failure in a particular bearing would make based on the engine RPM, and repeat for all races. If you find enough energy (ie - audio volume), you know which bearing is going bad and the nature of the problem.
A bad gear typically starts with a broken tooth: a crack forms at the base of the tooth, resulting in a tooth which doesn't push as hard against the mating tooth in the next gear. This causes the driving shaft to speed up slightly as the cracked tooth mates, and slow down for the next tooth due to inertia.
If you continuously monitor an accelerometer attached to one of the engine shafts you can see this speedup/slowdown signature, and if you know the gearing ratio you can figure out which gear is going bad within the engine. The crack tends to mature over time, so an individual tooth will first become "wobbly" before complete failure.
A Journal Bearing typically wears when the "hole" becomes bigger than the shaft (the oil and mating shaft grind the hole bigger over time). When this happens, the mating shaft and attached mechanics will "wobble" within the hole, causing a noticeable shift in the mass of the engine.
If you continuously monitor an accelerometer attached to the engine block, you can index this wobble to the shaft speed based on the engine RPM and tell if any bearings are failing and how bad they are.
In all cases you can determine the nature and extent of the damage while it is relatively minor - before it damages other parts of the engine (scored shafts, pieces breaking off, catastrophic failure in flight, &c.)
At the time this was figured out the technology was expensive to implement, so it was only appropriate in select situations - aircraft maintenance, for instance.
Nowadays with the rise of high-power microprocessors and personal phone displays, perhaps some enterprising hobbyist will figure out a way to implement this for automobile maintenance.
Suppose I own a museum and seek to make money by charging admission.
If seeing the museum has a certain importance to people - people must see the museum once in their lives, for instance - then I maximize my profit by raising prices as high as the situation will bear. To the limit that people need to see the museum, I can extract the most money.
Suppose instead the government fixes the museum ticket price but says nothing about how many people see the museum per day. Since I cannot raise prices I must sell more tickets to maximize profit. I am encouraged to structure operations so that the most people see the museum - opening the museum 24 hours a day, for instance. Over time I am encouraged to allow ever more people access to the museum - structural changes to the building or parking lot, touring the museum to large cities, and so on.
In the first case, economics based on a limited resource resulted in higher prices and less overall service.
In the second case, economics based on access resulted in more people having access.
In certain cases the government should regulate a fixed resource to maximize the usage or maximize the benefits to society instead of maximizing the individual profit. In the current telecommunications situation, we are not maximizing the utility of the resource as compared to other countries such as Europe and Japan.
We're seeing this in the healthcare industry as well. Health care is bewilderingly complex, but consider a slice of the issue for comparison: getting a diagnosis from a doctor's visit. If the government regulated doctor visits to a fixed price, and specified that future visits for the same ailment were covered under the original fee, then doctors would make the most money when they get the diagnosis right on the first visit. The economics would favor access, satisfaction, and customer service instead of "try this and see" with followup visits.
Sadly, the political structure in this country is thoroughly corrupt, so suggesting regulation is pointless. There are windmills for jousting in abundance, and life's too short to spend it on quixotic quests.
Such a stupid situation that could be solved easily.
If the carriers had a service for the owner to remotely brick and unbrick the phone as well as transfer ownership (with the ability to brick) to another person this would be a non-issue.
It's a service that makes owning the phone more valuable to the end-user; yet, it's an externality to the phone companies. Rather than provide the best possible product and services, they do the barest minimum and reap unjustly high profits. They can do this because they operate out of the normal reach of capitalism - the state-sponsored monopoly. With a stranglehold on public property and the blessings of their government lawmakers, they can do pretty-much whatever they want. Capitalism has failed, therefore we need more government regulation.
That should greatly shorten this discussion. Did I miss any memes?
Wasn't there something about due process in some document or other somewhere? Something about a warrant needed before the government can take action?
I can understand taking action as part of the legal process - confiscating evidence as part of filing for criminal charges, for instance. But can the government simply act unilaterally with no oversight? Has it always been this way?
Is it always "government does what it wants with no oversight, and the victim has to get the courts involved?"
Seems like that might be a good change to be included in the next constitution.
That's a fool's errand. The goal of the developer should be to build a system that accomplishes tasks and is able to auto-improve the speed of accomplishing repetitive tasks with minimal (no) human intervention.
The goal of the philosopher is to lay out what intelligence "is". These tracks should be run in parallel and the progress of one should have little-to-no impact on the progress of the other.
Do you consider proper definitions necessary for the advancement of mathematics?
Take, for example, the [mathematics] definition of "group". It's a constructive definition, composed of parts which can be further described by *their* parts. Knowing the definition of a group, I can test if something is a group, I can construct a group from basic elements, and I can modify a non-group so that it becomes a group. I can use a group as a basis to construct objects of more general interest.
Are you suggesting that mathematics should proceed and be developed... without proper definitions?
That a science - any science - can proceed without such a firm basis is an interesting position. Should other areas of science be developed without proper definitions? How about psychology (no proper definition of clinical ailments)? Medicine? Physics?
I'd be interested to hear your views on other sciences. Or if not, why then is AI is different from other sciences?
You highlight important points, of which AI researchers should take note.
We don't know what intelligence actually is, but we have an example of something that is unarguably intelligent: the mammalian brain. Any proposed mechanism of intelligence should be discounted unless it behaves the same way as a brain. Most AI research fails this test.
I personally think in-depth modeling of individual neurons is too deep of a level - it's like trying to make a CPU by modeling transistors. We might be better off using the fundamental function of a neuron as a basis - sort of like simulating a CPU using logic gates instead of transistors.
But your point is well taken. Lots of research is done under the catch-all phrase AI simply because they do not constrain themselves in any way. What they make doesn't have to pass any criterion for reality, or even reasonableness.
Andrew Ng is a brilliant teacher who I respect, but I have questions:
1) What is the constructive definition of intelligence? As in, "it's composed of these pieces connected this way" such that the pieces themselves can be further described. Sort of like describing a car as "wheels, body, frame, motor", each of which can be further described. (The Turing Test doesn't count, as it's not constructive.)
2) There are over 180 different types of artificial neurons. Which are you using, and what reasoning implies that your choice is correct and all the others are not?
3) Neural nets in the brain have more back-propagation connections than forward. Do your neural nets have this feature? If not, why not?
4) Neural nets typically have input-layers, hidden-layers, output layers - and indeed, the image in the article implies this architecture. What line of reasoning indicates the correct number of layers to use, and the correct number of nodes to use in each layer? Does this method of reasoning eliminate other choices?
5) Your neural nets have an implicit ordering of input => hidden => output, while the brain has both input and output on one side (ie - both the afferent and efferent neuron enter the brain at the same level, and are both processed in a tree-like fashion). How do you account for this discrepancy? What was the logical argument that led you to depart from the brain's chosen architecture?
Artificial intelligence is 50 years away, and it's been that way for the last 50 years. No one can do proper research or development until there is a constructive definition of what intelligence actually is. Start there, and the rest will fall into place.
Assuming that the software exists on the vendor's server, suppose the following:
1) I purchase a subscription to Creative Suite
2) I setup my computer to allow others [that I choose] to remotely use the internet as if from my computer
3) I sell time on my computer to allow others to use Creative Suite from my computer when I'm not using it
4) Profit!
This will clearly be a violation of their terms of service, but isn't it protected under the first sale doctrine? Is there any way that they can enforce a ban on this activity?
A website similar to Craigslist could let people register their computers, the software they have registrations for, and the hours when it will be available. The website would manage time, passwords, and payment. Sounds like a potential business opportunity.
Note that Windows already has most of the features you need for this (keeping the remote user out of your personal files, for example).
Assuming the executable is on the vendor's computer:
The software only has to be compiled for one architecture - no more Windows/Mac/Linux versions The user has no installation problems - conflicts with drivers, antivirus, &c The code can be optimized to the execution machine The code cannot be pirated
You always have the most up-to-date version of the software The execution machine is probably better/faster than your personal machine If the company goes out of business or closes the server, you lose your work The company can lock you in with proprietary formats that you can't read (ie - you can have the results, but not the intermediate form used by the software) You're forced to pay for access during months when you don't use the software - or you lose your data You need to be internet connected to the internet for it to work You need a reasonably fast internet connection for it to work You need a reasonably reliable internet connection for it to work The company gets your real personal info with the subscription (as opposed to purchasing and not registering, or registering with false information) The company gets to mine your activities for targeted advertizing
These are just off the top of my head - I'm sure others can think of other creative ways the company will use this technology.
All in all it's a great deal for the vendor. For the user, not so much...
Apparently many of the posts on this thread come from people who didn't look at the contest.
This is not a programming contest in the sense that they are asking people to create a program. It's a data mining contest where they are asking people to solve a data mining problem.
Yelp is a business directory that allows people to post reviews. The programming challenge is to create a program/algorithm/method to determine how many "this was useful useful" votes a review will receive. Presumably they want this information to inform their reviewers on how best to write a review - what to avoid, how to phrase, &c.
Winning the contest isn't writing the program per-se, it's making a better prediction algorithm than anyone else.
Also it's a long-term contest (8 weeks) instead of the "overnight hackathon challenge" you might be thinking of. You can make several submissions and get feedback for how your algorithm is doing, and how it stacks up to other teams.
Also also it's a team effort. You can enter solo or as a team.
The job offering is for a data scientist at Yelp, so it makes sense that they are looking for people who can manipulate data.
The job listing doesn't have the typical "must have 4 years experience in XXX" listings that everyone hates. It states:
.) A passion for big data, and creative ideas for what to do with it.
.) The algorithms and data structures experience to make your ideas workable.
.) The coding experience to turn those ideas into reality. We use Java & Python. You don’t need to be an expert, but experience is a plus and we will expect you to learn them on the job.
.) A background in Machine Learning or Information Retrieval.
.) Minimum BA/BS degree in Computer Science, Math, or related degree
.) A love of delighting people with local knowledge.
Everyone complains about the HR "minefield" that sorts candidates by requiring useless or immaterial experience instead of raw coding ability. This is a new type of job search that doesn't have these problems.
This doesn't appear to be what everyone thinks it is.
Suppose you are trying to sell a new computer to a company - an older machinist's shop whose office is still using Dos.
You *could* say "these new computers are dual core, 3 GHz, running Windows XP and Office suite". Their eyes will glaze over and you won't make the sale.
You *should* say "these new computers will save your company $2000 per month. Here's how:"...and list the ways that the new computer will save them time. An hour here, an hour there - it adds up.
Present things in ways which are important to the listener. The big three are 1) Saves money over the long run 2) Saves time over the long run, and 3) Saves effort over the long run. Frame your information in those terms.
Slashdot Mirror
With population exploding, shouldn't we return to an era where the weak were culled out?...
Unless you live in Africa, population is not exploding. The population growth rate is slowing, the UN predicts that the world population will stabilize around 2090 and fall afterwards. Most (more recent) predictions think that this estimate is pessimistic - it's looking like population will stabilize around 2050 and decline afterwards.
Most industrialized nations have negative population growth already, the US *would* have negative population growth if you discount immigration. Even with immigration, the US population is slowing and will turn the corner sometime in the next couple of decades.
... back in the day old people had the grace to die of diabetes or a heart attack, now they live until 90, but don't work the last 30 years of their lives, effectively eating the seed corn of the new generation.
I think the problems you are seeing is due to a lack of an evolved sense of morality. On your part.
Why should they care?
There's no benefit to them keeping your information safe, it costs them time, money, and effort to do so, and there's no real consequences when they screw up. They will just put out a statement saying "all of our customer information was stolen, we recommend everyone change their password, and the hole is now patched - it can't happen again!".
Also, they can blame the thieves. "It wasn't our fault, it was that scoundrel who noticed that you can change the account number in the URL to get into someone else's account."
As to "we value your privacy", what does that actually mean? It means that companies have discovered that people trust companies that make that statement, and are more likely to purchase from such a company.
That's all it means, and no more. It doesn't mean that they care or that they abide by the statement, it means that they think they can get more business by using that phrase liberally in their public-facing documents.
You're living under the naive assumption that companies mean what they say and will do what they promise. They do what the consumer protection laws force them to do - any statement that reflects these laws is probably true, while the rest is simple puffing.
This appears to be a story depicting a sort-of utopian future (of limited extent - an island) where there are no rules.
I'm not sure from the context whether the author is in favor or against the concept. It somehow feels like he is knitting together several uncomfortable consequences of "no rules" in an attempt to paint that future as dystopian.
The thing people always miss, the important overlooked point, is that no one wants a state where there are no rules. What people invariably want is a state which has rules enforcing human rights, and little else.
The most basic human right is to have sovereignty over ones own body. Mat Honan's article shows us that with no rules, outsiders would be able to do anything they wanted to us - even against our consent. It would be the strong doing whatever they wanted to the weak. Typical, obvious, and predictable - we have many examples of lawless societies where the strong do just that.
Many of our rules are violations of that first most basic right, pretty much anything that someone else thinks that you should do or not-do for your own good: rules about drugs, prostitution, abortion, doctor-assisted suicide, and yes, wearing clothes. We could do away with large swaths of the legal landscape and eliminate large parts of government, both local and federal, if we could just say "do anything you want, so long as you don't infringe on the rights of others".
If you would like to read about a rule-less society which enforces basic human rights and is a little less dystopian, try "Manna" by Marshall Brain. It's an easy read and an interesting story.
Another good example is "Voyage From Yesteryear" by James Hogan. A little longer and with more drama, but essentially a rule-less society which enforces basic human rights.
From a casual reading (by a non-lawyer) of the constitution, this makes perfect sense.
This thing about "we can go through all your possessions if we somehow get our hands on it" is ludicrous, and the "if we can pick the lock or break it open we can rummage around inside" thing is stupider still. If I lock my data but the police manage to break the encryption method they can rummage around in the data? Does this work for the locks on my house? The dial on my safe?
The simple search looking for weapons thing "to protect the officer" was an exception, but they've taken it beyond extreme rights violations.
If you see someone committing a crime, arrest them. If you can't convict them without the data on their cell phone, you shouldn't have arrested them in the first place.
Oh, and if someone parrots "how can we do our jobs if we don't have the tools" nonsense, remind them that we're currently enjoying the lowest crime rate in several decades.
While these incidents do not involve a security breach...
A vendor's machine can take money from me without my consent or knowledge.
Apropos of nothing, what would constitute a security breach in your model?
... The self-assured scientist claims that the only thing preventing scientists from understanding the human brain in its entirety — from the molecular level all the way to the mystery of consciousness — is a lack of ambition.
This.
Also, the lack of any sort of a roadmap as to how to do this.
Also, the lack of any sort of definition for "consciousness", or any indication that it is an emergent property, or any way to measure when you've succeeded in making consciousness, or any theoretical evidence at all that it would arise from any specific plan.
We could model as many neurons as we like and it *still* wouldn't be a human brain unless we figure out how those neurons connect with each other. With no detailed plan, it's like trying to build a house by tacking boards together.
The "self-assured scientist" could start by telling us how a Cortical Column is wired up, how the feedback and feed-forward between columns works, and why artificial neural nets have inputs on one side and outputs on the other, when the brain apparently has both inputs and outputs on one side (in the sense of a functional diagram; ie - the efferent and afferent neurons connect to the same level of layer), and what the distinction is between these models.
If he can't solve basic issues, how can he hope to succeed in such a complex and ambitions project?
Obvious Futurama response:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Isjgc0oX0s
This is yet another ridiculous situation, stupid enough that it makes me wonder why such situations exist.
If a website is illegal (for any definition of illegal, including terrorism, pornography, and IP violations), then it should be judged illegal by a court in country with reference to the specific law that the site violates. That country can then mandate that ISPs in that country block that specific website, the government can ask the government of the registrar or hosting company to take action, the government can identify people who access the site and charge them with a crime.
Illegal is illegal, but this thing about "anyone can take action if they think something is illegal" is ludicrous. Letting business advocacy groups, unelected government bureaucrats, and random government departments to suddenly state "we're the governing authority, this is illegal, we're pulling your plug" is complete bullshit. Government departments can certainly make such pronouncements, but should be required to act only with court approval. For instance, if the State Department wants Defense Distributed to take their plans offline, it should get a court order.
The courts exist to protect our rights. Taking action without judicial process is an end-run around those rights, and shouldn't be allowed.
Here's a related question. Do you trust when a car manufacturer tells you to buy new parts?
Specifically, the maintenance schedule in the owner's packet that comes with a new car. For example, at 60,000 miles:
1) Replace engine coolant
2) Replace HEV inverter coolant
3) Replace manual transmission oil
4) Replace automatic transmission/CVT/eCVT fluid
5) Replace differential oil
6) Replace engine drive belts
7) Replace radiator cap
8) Replace transfer case oil
Are all these necessary, or is the dealer trying to squeeze more money from the owner? I've heard various mechanics coming down on both sides of this question. Does the differential oil really need periodic replacing? Do you need new drive belts if there's no visible damage?
(Also: Do you replace the engine oil and filter every 2000 miles, or is this just another way to squeeze money from the consumer?)
Mental health is a large subject, let's take a smaller slice for discussion: depression.
Depression meds work no better than placebo. Depression meds have lots of unpleasant side-effects, so being treated for depression is - on average - worse than going undiagnosed.
Depression is a symptom of many diseases - at least 18 of them commonplace. Many cases of depression are the result of 1) underactive thyroid (40% by one accounting), 2) Low levels of vitamin D, and 3) sleep apnea.
And yet, the symptom is treated as a disease in and of itself. Prescription meds which do more harm than good are commonly prescribed under the flimsiest of circumstances:
Patient: "doctor, I feel tired and run down"
Doctor: "It sounds like depression. Try this and see if it goes away".
After all is said and done, a casual reading of the research would suggest that the scientific method used in psychology research is crap. That's a strong statement, but not completely without merit.
Psychiatrists need to stop worrying about publishing the next trivial follow-on paper, and need to stop theorizing by making up stories. Get your evidence first, make theories to explain the evidence, and then throw out theories which have no testable predictions.
Go back to basics, and stop making money from giving people false hope through increased suffering.
(Grrr! A close friend got chewed up and spit out by the medical profession because of depression.)
Check these out for more info:
"Detection of rolling Element Bearing Damage by Statistical Analysis" by D. Dyer and R.M. Stewart (Journal of Mechanical Design)
"Envelope Analysis - the Key to rolling-element bearing diagnosis" by Joelle Courrech and Mark Gaudet" (Bruel & Kjaer Application Note)
We were using a variant of this to help balance helicopter blades. Put accelerometers on the frame, [carefully] run up the engine while tethered, analyze the vibration, advise the tech how to adjust the blade weights, and repeat. Eventually you get well-balanced blades.
A similar system could diagnose wheel and tire issues. Mount an accelerometer and a microphone on the frame near each of the wheels and try to detect vibration and/or frequencies that correlate with wheel or shaft rotation, and frame vibration.
I'd love to have an onboard diagnostic that shows an X-ray diagram of the engine drive-train, with green/yellow/red circles around the various parts and listings detailing the type of part and level of health.
You could also implement active balance compensation.
You can never balance anything exactly perfect, but if you can measure and analyze the balance you can compensate for minor imperfections. An electromagnet mounted near a shaft can "pull" the shaft slightly at the right point in its rotation, compensating for a tiny amount of imbalance.
For small values of "compensate", you can tune your mechanical system to be much quieter and have much less wear. The same system can measure the amount of compensation needed, and alert the user when the engine exceeds the system's ability to compensate.
Lots of interesting possibilities here for active computer-control of mechanical systems.
A ball inside a ball-bearing race typically fails by "spalling": a tiny flake breaks off of the surface of the ball.
As it rolls around the race, the ball makes a periodic "tick" sound whose frequency is related to its rotation.
So... if you record the sound coming from an engine, and you have an index mark input (when the flywheel reaches TDC, for instance) and you know the gearing ratios of all the shafts, the inner race and outer race diameter of the ball bearing races, and the number of balls &c you can relate the frequency to a particular bearing which is going bad before it fails.
You can do the same thing for the races: the inner and outer races rotate with a particular speed relative to the balls, so a crack or spall on a race will also make a sound at a particular frequency.
Essentially, look for energy in the particular frequency that a particular failure in a particular bearing would make based on the engine RPM, and repeat for all races. If you find enough energy (ie - audio volume), you know which bearing is going bad and the nature of the problem.
A bad gear typically starts with a broken tooth: a crack forms at the base of the tooth, resulting in a tooth which doesn't push as hard against the mating tooth in the next gear. This causes the driving shaft to speed up slightly as the cracked tooth mates, and slow down for the next tooth due to inertia.
If you continuously monitor an accelerometer attached to one of the engine shafts you can see this speedup/slowdown signature, and if you know the gearing ratio you can figure out which gear is going bad within the engine. The crack tends to mature over time, so an individual tooth will first become "wobbly" before complete failure.
A Journal Bearing typically wears when the "hole" becomes bigger than the shaft (the oil and mating shaft grind the hole bigger over time). When this happens, the mating shaft and attached mechanics will "wobble" within the hole, causing a noticeable shift in the mass of the engine.
If you continuously monitor an accelerometer attached to the engine block, you can index this wobble to the shaft speed based on the engine RPM and tell if any bearings are failing and how bad they are.
In all cases you can determine the nature and extent of the damage while it is relatively minor - before it damages other parts of the engine (scored shafts, pieces breaking off, catastrophic failure in flight, &c.)
At the time this was figured out the technology was expensive to implement, so it was only appropriate in select situations - aircraft maintenance, for instance.
Nowadays with the rise of high-power microprocessors and personal phone displays, perhaps some enterprising hobbyist will figure out a way to implement this for automobile maintenance.
Suppose I own a museum and seek to make money by charging admission.
If seeing the museum has a certain importance to people - people must see the museum once in their lives, for instance - then I maximize my profit by raising prices as high as the situation will bear. To the limit that people need to see the museum, I can extract the most money.
Suppose instead the government fixes the museum ticket price but says nothing about how many people see the museum per day. Since I cannot raise prices I must sell more tickets to maximize profit. I am encouraged to structure operations so that the most people see the museum - opening the museum 24 hours a day, for instance. Over time I am encouraged to allow ever more people access to the museum - structural changes to the building or parking lot, touring the museum to large cities, and so on.
In the first case, economics based on a limited resource resulted in higher prices and less overall service.
In the second case, economics based on access resulted in more people having access.
In certain cases the government should regulate a fixed resource to maximize the usage or maximize the benefits to society instead of maximizing the individual profit. In the current telecommunications situation, we are not maximizing the utility of the resource as compared to other countries such as Europe and Japan.
We're seeing this in the healthcare industry as well. Health care is bewilderingly complex, but consider a slice of the issue for comparison: getting a diagnosis from a doctor's visit. If the government regulated doctor visits to a fixed price, and specified that future visits for the same ailment were covered under the original fee, then doctors would make the most money when they get the diagnosis right on the first visit. The economics would favor access, satisfaction, and customer service instead of "try this and see" with followup visits.
Sadly, the political structure in this country is thoroughly corrupt, so suggesting regulation is pointless. There are windmills for jousting in abundance, and life's too short to spend it on quixotic quests.
Such a stupid situation that could be solved easily.
If the carriers had a service for the owner to remotely brick and unbrick the phone as well as transfer ownership (with the ability to brick) to another person this would be a non-issue.
It's a service that makes owning the phone more valuable to the end-user; yet, it's an externality to the phone companies. Rather than provide the best possible product and services, they do the barest minimum and reap unjustly high profits. They can do this because they operate out of the normal reach of capitalism - the state-sponsored monopoly. With a stranglehold on public property and the blessings of their government lawmakers, they can do pretty-much whatever they want. Capitalism has failed, therefore we need more government regulation.
That should greatly shorten this discussion. Did I miss any memes?
Wasn't there something about due process in some document or other somewhere? Something about a warrant needed before the government can take action?
I can understand taking action as part of the legal process - confiscating evidence as part of filing for criminal charges, for instance. But can the government simply act unilaterally with no oversight? Has it always been this way?
Is it always "government does what it wants with no oversight, and the victim has to get the courts involved?"
Seems like that might be a good change to be included in the next constitution.
Nothing beats the traditional snap-on appendage.
First go watch Kentucky Fried Movie or "Enter the Dragon" or "Innerspace" (note the "Robert Picardo character". That should give you some ideas.
That's a fool's errand. The goal of the developer should be to build a system that accomplishes tasks and is able to auto-improve the speed of accomplishing repetitive tasks with minimal (no) human intervention.
The goal of the philosopher is to lay out what intelligence "is". These tracks should be run in parallel and the progress of one should have little-to-no impact on the progress of the other.
Do you consider proper definitions necessary for the advancement of mathematics?
Take, for example, the [mathematics] definition of "group". It's a constructive definition, composed of parts which can be further described by *their* parts. Knowing the definition of a group, I can test if something is a group, I can construct a group from basic elements, and I can modify a non-group so that it becomes a group. I can use a group as a basis to construct objects of more general interest.
Are you suggesting that mathematics should proceed and be developed... without proper definitions?
That a science - any science - can proceed without such a firm basis is an interesting position. Should other areas of science be developed without proper definitions? How about psychology (no proper definition of clinical ailments)? Medicine? Physics?
I'd be interested to hear your views on other sciences. Or if not, why then is AI is different from other sciences?
Let us know when you have a peer reviewed publication on your "new" system. Untill then, you can stfu.
Let us know when a peer-reviewed publication tells us how to construct an intelligence.
When will that be - another 50 years, perhaps?
Really. Are you saying that, after AI has gone nowhere for the last 50 years that his position is completely without merit?
At the very least, you should entertain the possibility that the emperor does, in fact, have no clothes.
You highlight important points, of which AI researchers should take note.
We don't know what intelligence actually is, but we have an example of something that is unarguably intelligent: the mammalian brain. Any proposed mechanism of intelligence should be discounted unless it behaves the same way as a brain. Most AI research fails this test.
I personally think in-depth modeling of individual neurons is too deep of a level - it's like trying to make a CPU by modeling transistors. We might be better off using the fundamental function of a neuron as a basis - sort of like simulating a CPU using logic gates instead of transistors.
But your point is well taken. Lots of research is done under the catch-all phrase AI simply because they do not constrain themselves in any way. What they make doesn't have to pass any criterion for reality, or even reasonableness.
Andrew Ng is a brilliant teacher who I respect, but I have questions:
1) What is the constructive definition of intelligence? As in, "it's composed of these pieces connected this way" such that the pieces themselves can be further described. Sort of like describing a car as "wheels, body, frame, motor", each of which can be further described. (The Turing Test doesn't count, as it's not constructive.)
2) There are over 180 different types of artificial neurons. Which are you using, and what reasoning implies that your choice is correct and all the others are not?
3) Neural nets in the brain have more back-propagation connections than forward. Do your neural nets have this feature? If not, why not?
4) Neural nets typically have input-layers, hidden-layers, output layers - and indeed, the image in the article implies this architecture. What line of reasoning indicates the correct number of layers to use, and the correct number of nodes to use in each layer? Does this method of reasoning eliminate other choices?
5) Your neural nets have an implicit ordering of input => hidden => output, while the brain has both input and output on one side (ie - both the afferent and efferent neuron enter the brain at the same level, and are both processed in a tree-like fashion). How do you account for this discrepancy? What was the logical argument that led you to depart from the brain's chosen architecture?
Artificial intelligence is 50 years away, and it's been that way for the last 50 years. No one can do proper research or development until there is a constructive definition of what intelligence actually is. Start there, and the rest will fall into place.
Assuming that the software exists on the vendor's server, suppose the following:
1) I purchase a subscription to Creative Suite
2) I setup my computer to allow others [that I choose] to remotely use the internet as if from my computer
3) I sell time on my computer to allow others to use Creative Suite from my computer when I'm not using it
4) Profit!
This will clearly be a violation of their terms of service, but isn't it protected under the first sale doctrine? Is there any way that they can enforce a ban on this activity?
A website similar to Craigslist could let people register their computers, the software they have registrations for, and the hours when it will be available. The website would manage time, passwords, and payment. Sounds like a potential business opportunity.
Note that Windows already has most of the features you need for this (keeping the remote user out of your personal files, for example).
Assuming the executable is on the vendor's computer:
The software only has to be compiled for one architecture - no more Windows/Mac/Linux versions
The user has no installation problems - conflicts with drivers, antivirus, &c
The code can be optimized to the execution machine
The code cannot be pirated
You always have the most up-to-date version of the software
The execution machine is probably better/faster than your personal machine
If the company goes out of business or closes the server, you lose your work
The company can lock you in with proprietary formats that you can't read (ie - you can have the results, but not the intermediate form used by the software)
You're forced to pay for access during months when you don't use the software - or you lose your data
You need to be internet connected to the internet for it to work
You need a reasonably fast internet connection for it to work
You need a reasonably reliable internet connection for it to work
The company gets your real personal info with the subscription (as opposed to purchasing and not registering, or registering with false information)
The company gets to mine your activities for targeted advertizing
These are just off the top of my head - I'm sure others can think of other creative ways the company will use this technology.
All in all it's a great deal for the vendor. For the user, not so much...
Apparently many of the posts on this thread come from people who didn't look at the contest.
This is not a programming contest in the sense that they are asking people to create a program. It's a data mining contest where they are asking people to solve a data mining problem.
Yelp is a business directory that allows people to post reviews. The programming challenge is to create a program/algorithm/method to determine how many "this was useful useful" votes a review will receive. Presumably they want this information to inform their reviewers on how best to write a review - what to avoid, how to phrase, &c.
Winning the contest isn't writing the program per-se, it's making a better prediction algorithm than anyone else.
Also it's a long-term contest (8 weeks) instead of the "overnight hackathon challenge" you might be thinking of. You can make several submissions and get feedback for how your algorithm is doing, and how it stacks up to other teams.
Also also it's a team effort. You can enter solo or as a team.
The job offering is for a data scientist at Yelp, so it makes sense that they are looking for people who can manipulate data.
The job listing doesn't have the typical "must have 4 years experience in XXX" listings that everyone hates. It states:
Everyone complains about the HR "minefield" that sorts candidates by requiring useless or immaterial experience instead of raw coding ability. This is a new type of job search that doesn't have these problems.
This doesn't appear to be what everyone thinks it is.
Here's an example of how this works.
Suppose you are trying to sell a new computer to a company - an older machinist's shop whose office is still using Dos.
You *could* say "these new computers are dual core, 3 GHz, running Windows XP and Office suite". Their eyes will glaze over and you won't make the sale.
You *should* say "these new computers will save your company $2000 per month. Here's how:" ...and list the ways that the new computer will save them time. An hour here, an hour there - it adds up.
Present things in ways which are important to the listener. The big three are 1) Saves money over the long run 2) Saves time over the long run, and 3) Saves effort over the long run. Frame your information in those terms.