"What if delegating everything to machines is a radical and fundamental new change in the course of human history?"
Right after mentioning the industrial revolution (albeit in a dismissive way). People don't actually think about the things they write anymore, do they?
If that actually happens then I suppose people will do what they've done after all the OTHER increases in automation. Service industry jobs. Retail, white collar, etc.
Seriously, over two thirds of most first world economies are service industry. Virtually all of those jobs didn't exist before the industrial revolution because everybody was too busy doing all the things that machines do for us now.
It's all those manufacturing jobs, apparently. The ones that are dirty, dangerous and mind numbing. Thanks to insanely strong unions many of them are also obscenely overpaid, which makes them "middle class."
The summary (and perhaps the article... I don't know, couldn't care less) is a study in sexism. It states the absolute percentage of male misconduct, not the rate. Then it uses the well known technique of stating the proportional change ("one-third of what one would expect") to make the difference seem really big.
I certainly believe men are more prone to getting caught cheating in science. I think it's reasonable that they may even be more prone to doing it. But the summary reads like a cancer scare piece or a political message.
Studies of marital infidelity suggest women are sneakier. They're no more faithful, but they don't get caught as much. Not having the irresistible urge to brag about wrongdoings to their friends at the bar/locker room probably helps.
A guy made something that sort of looks like Iron Man's gauntlet and behaves like Buzz Lightyear's. He won't tell you how he made it, but he might build one for you if you give him lots of money.
One particular kind of AI, which was largely abandoned in the 60's assumes that. Modern AI involves having some system, which ranges from statistical learning algorithms all the way to biological neurons growing on a plate, learn through presentation of input. The same way people learn, except often faster. AI systems can be taught in all kinds of different ways, including dumping information into them, a la Watson; by letting them interact with an environment, either real or simulated; or by having them watch a human demonstrate something, such as driving a car.
The objection here seems to be that Google isn't going to end up with a synthetic human brain because of the type of data they're planning on giving their system. It won't know how to throw a baseball because it's never thrown a baseball before. (A) I doubt Google cares if their AI knows things like throwing baseballs, and (B) it says very little generally about limits on the capabilities of modern approaches to AI.
A technology editor at MIT Technology Review says Kurzweil's approach may be fatally flawed based on a conversation he had with an MIT AI researcher.
From the brief actual quotes in the article it sounds like the MIT researcher is suggesting Kurzweil's suggestion, in a book he wrote, for building a human level AI might have some issues. My impression is that the MIT researcher is suggesting you can't build an actual human level AI without more cause-and-effect type learning, as opposed to just feeding it stuff you can find on the Internet.
I think he's probably right... you can't have an AI that knows about things like cause and effect unless you give it that sort of data, which you probably can't get from strip mining the Internet. However, I doubt Google cares.
You're right, if you're staring at a mostly static display, VNC is just great.
Try doing everything you do on a computer via VNC over a residential connection to the Internet. Now do you want to pay Dell $19.95 a month for the privilege? Are you going to call it a game changer?
Pi $35 (http://www.newark.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?sku=43W5302) Case $6.39 (http://www.newark.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?sku=92T3300) Wifi $9.99 (go with yours, or newark has one for the same price) Bluetooth $5.56 (http://www.newark.com/dynamode/bt-usb-m2/adaptor-bluetooth-usb-class-1/dp/39T4089)
total: $56.94
That gets you hardware that is presumably more powerful than what Dell is pushing (because it's not just a dumb terminal) and can be used to do other things than connect to Dell's cloud. The $25 pi will bring that down to under $50. Integrating the wifi onto the board and dropping all the other ports the pi has would also reduce the price considerably. And there's no way Dell pays $6 for plastic boxes in volume.
If a bunch of amateurs and small volume companies can offer that price, with considerably more capability, $50 for Dell's loss leader hardware for their cloud service is a pretty crappy deal. They should be giving you the thing for free.
And "Dell's software?" VNC clients are free. Sorry, I meant VNC clients that don't send your data through Dell's cloud for perusal.
Actually, $50 is kind of a ridiculously high price for this. A raspberry pi is $25 and can do more than act as a dumb terminal.
Dell isn't going to reinvent itself by convincing everyone to stop buying $300 laptops from them and start buying $50 USB sticks. They're going to have to charge a decent amount for service.
Except they're not doing ssh or x forwarding, they must be doing vnc. VNC is usable, but not particularly nice much of the time over regular coonnections.
I think he means the UK that has 1/4 the US homicide rate....
People who are knowledgeable about guns and know how to use them are scared of people who aren't knowledgeable about guns having them.
Oh, and Sweden's homicide rate is less than a quarter of the US homicide rate. I don't know if it's the gun control laws only, but they're doing something right.
That section would go a LOONG way towards cutting down on gun deaths in the US. Except for the beginning. The thing should just start at "a gun owner ", skip a bit, and resume at "when the gun is out of the owner's immediate control."
All gun owners should always make sure that nobody else, convicted criminal, diagnosed mentally ill or perfectly normal, can access their guns except under careful supervision.
What's reprehensible about it? Facebook is giving you a free service. In exchange, they bombard you with advertising. Why should your "inbox" be anymore immune than your "wall?" Oops, I mean "timeline?"
I don't think most people who mention the first amendment to the US constitution on Slashdot have much idea of what it says or what it means. They only really get three words "freedom of speech" and extrapolate wildly from there. The "Congress shall make no law" part gets completely lost. And that's saying nothing about the supreme-court-approved exceptions, nor the many supreme-court-tacitly-approved exceptions.
1. "major planet" = gas giant 2. "minor planet" = terrestrial planet 3. "dwarf planet" = dwarf planet 4. "planetary object" = asteroid, if it's mostly rock, comet if it's mostly ice or moon if it orbits a planet
Except for a few of the names, you pretty much agree with the IAU. The IAU definitions also have the advantage that the features they depend on are related to mass but in many cases easier to see, and don't require arbitrary mass thresholds.
It this thing regularly plows through a ring of protoplanetary material then it is correctly labelled a protoplanet, not a planet. If it has cleared it's orbit, which it may have, and is no longer accumulating lots of material, then it is correctly called a planet.
The definition seems to work very well in this case.
If you choose a frame of reference you can certainly say that things have happened "already," one thing happens "then" another does, and time has passed "since" an event. Relativity certainly does have an ordering of events (which we like to call causality). The preservation of causality was one of the motivations for relativity.
The OP is correct in stating that this event has "already" happened. It has (or probably has, if nothing intervened), from our particular point of view. His mistake was the smartass tone suggesting that's the ONLY point of view.
Your own position is just as suspect. There certainly is a "the" time, that ticks off 25 years as light goes from Formalhaut to here. It's the one that's indicated on your watch. Not ALL times count the same way, but some definitely do, including the one we're most attached to.
Slashdot Mirror
"What if delegating everything to machines is a radical and fundamental new change in the course of human history?"
Right after mentioning the industrial revolution (albeit in a dismissive way). People don't actually think about the things they write anymore, do they?
If that actually happens then I suppose people will do what they've done after all the OTHER increases in automation. Service industry jobs. Retail, white collar, etc.
Seriously, over two thirds of most first world economies are service industry. Virtually all of those jobs didn't exist before the industrial revolution because everybody was too busy doing all the things that machines do for us now.
It's all those manufacturing jobs, apparently. The ones that are dirty, dangerous and mind numbing. Thanks to insanely strong unions many of them are also obscenely overpaid, which makes them "middle class."
The summary (and perhaps the article... I don't know, couldn't care less) is a study in sexism. It states the absolute percentage of male misconduct, not the rate. Then it uses the well known technique of stating the proportional change ("one-third of what one would expect") to make the difference seem really big.
I certainly believe men are more prone to getting caught cheating in science. I think it's reasonable that they may even be more prone to doing it. But the summary reads like a cancer scare piece or a political message.
Studies of marital infidelity suggest women are sneakier. They're no more faithful, but they don't get caught as much. Not having the irresistible urge to brag about wrongdoings to their friends at the bar/locker room probably helps.
A guy made something that sort of looks like Iron Man's gauntlet and behaves like Buzz Lightyear's. He won't tell you how he made it, but he might build one for you if you give him lots of money.
To quote an ancient meme... lame.
No, it doesn't.
One particular kind of AI, which was largely abandoned in the 60's assumes that. Modern AI involves having some system, which ranges from statistical learning algorithms all the way to biological neurons growing on a plate, learn through presentation of input. The same way people learn, except often faster. AI systems can be taught in all kinds of different ways, including dumping information into them, a la Watson; by letting them interact with an environment, either real or simulated; or by having them watch a human demonstrate something, such as driving a car.
The objection here seems to be that Google isn't going to end up with a synthetic human brain because of the type of data they're planning on giving their system. It won't know how to throw a baseball because it's never thrown a baseball before. (A) I doubt Google cares if their AI knows things like throwing baseballs, and (B) it says very little generally about limits on the capabilities of modern approaches to AI.
A technology editor at MIT Technology Review says Kurzweil's approach may be fatally flawed based on a conversation he had with an MIT AI researcher.
From the brief actual quotes in the article it sounds like the MIT researcher is suggesting Kurzweil's suggestion, in a book he wrote, for building a human level AI might have some issues. My impression is that the MIT researcher is suggesting you can't build an actual human level AI without more cause-and-effect type learning, as opposed to just feeding it stuff you can find on the Internet.
I think he's probably right... you can't have an AI that knows about things like cause and effect unless you give it that sort of data, which you probably can't get from strip mining the Internet. However, I doubt Google cares.
You're right, if you're staring at a mostly static display, VNC is just great.
Try doing everything you do on a computer via VNC over a residential connection to the Internet. Now do you want to pay Dell $19.95 a month for the privilege? Are you going to call it a game changer?
Oooh, this is a fun game.
Pi $35 (http://www.newark.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?sku=43W5302)
Case $6.39 (http://www.newark.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?sku=92T3300)
Wifi $9.99 (go with yours, or newark has one for the same price)
Bluetooth $5.56 (http://www.newark.com/dynamode/bt-usb-m2/adaptor-bluetooth-usb-class-1/dp/39T4089)
total: $56.94
That gets you hardware that is presumably more powerful than what Dell is pushing (because it's not just a dumb terminal) and can be used to do other things than connect to Dell's cloud. The $25 pi will bring that down to under $50. Integrating the wifi onto the board and dropping all the other ports the pi has would also reduce the price considerably. And there's no way Dell pays $6 for plastic boxes in volume.
If a bunch of amateurs and small volume companies can offer that price, with considerably more capability, $50 for Dell's loss leader hardware for their cloud service is a pretty crappy deal. They should be giving you the thing for free.
And "Dell's software?" VNC clients are free. Sorry, I meant VNC clients that don't send your data through Dell's cloud for perusal.
Actually, $50 is kind of a ridiculously high price for this. A raspberry pi is $25 and can do more than act as a dumb terminal.
Dell isn't going to reinvent itself by convincing everyone to stop buying $300 laptops from them and start buying $50 USB sticks. They're going to have to charge a decent amount for service.
Except they're not doing ssh or x forwarding, they must be doing vnc. VNC is usable, but not particularly nice much of the time over regular coonnections.
It would be if you stripped out all the stuff that makes a pi cool.
I think he means the UK that has 1/4 the US homicide rate....
People who are knowledgeable about guns and know how to use them are scared of people who aren't knowledgeable about guns having them.
Oh, and Sweden's homicide rate is less than a quarter of the US homicide rate. I don't know if it's the gun control laws only, but they're doing something right.
Personally I'd rather get non-fatally punched, stabbed, or even raped rather than shot and killed.
That section would go a LOONG way towards cutting down on gun deaths in the US. Except for the beginning. The thing should just start at "a gun owner ", skip a bit, and resume at "when the gun is out of the owner's immediate control."
All gun owners should always make sure that nobody else, convicted criminal, diagnosed mentally ill or perfectly normal, can access their guns except under careful supervision.
I probably don't want to know, but what's #3?
What's reprehensible about it? Facebook is giving you a free service. In exchange, they bombard you with advertising. Why should your "inbox" be anymore immune than your "wall?" Oops, I mean "timeline?"
Because Zuckerberg has this really awesome letter opener he's been itching to use.
I don't think most people who mention the first amendment to the US constitution on Slashdot have much idea of what it says or what it means. They only really get three words "freedom of speech" and extrapolate wildly from there. The "Congress shall make no law" part gets completely lost. And that's saying nothing about the supreme-court-approved exceptions, nor the many supreme-court-tacitly-approved exceptions.
"Lookin' good Barry."
"Why don't we get you out those wet clothes, and into a dry martini?"
1. "major planet" = gas giant
2. "minor planet" = terrestrial planet
3. "dwarf planet" = dwarf planet
4. "planetary object" = asteroid, if it's mostly rock, comet if it's mostly ice or moon if it orbits a planet
Except for a few of the names, you pretty much agree with the IAU. The IAU definitions also have the advantage that the features they depend on are related to mass but in many cases easier to see, and don't require arbitrary mass thresholds.
That's effectively what they did. Eight major planets, and a whole bunch of minor ones, Pluto being the best known in the latter category.
It this thing regularly plows through a ring of protoplanetary material then it is correctly labelled a protoplanet, not a planet. If it has cleared it's orbit, which it may have, and is no longer accumulating lots of material, then it is correctly called a planet.
The definition seems to work very well in this case.
If you choose a frame of reference you can certainly say that things have happened "already," one thing happens "then" another does, and time has passed "since" an event. Relativity certainly does have an ordering of events (which we like to call causality). The preservation of causality was one of the motivations for relativity.
The OP is correct in stating that this event has "already" happened. It has (or probably has, if nothing intervened), from our particular point of view. His mistake was the smartass tone suggesting that's the ONLY point of view.
Your own position is just as suspect. There certainly is a "the" time, that ticks off 25 years as light goes from Formalhaut to here. It's the one that's indicated on your watch. Not ALL times count the same way, but some definitely do, including the one we're most attached to.