In the end, your only option is to force your card issuer to generate a new one.
Indeed. When I see an unauthorized recurring charge on my CC, I don't fight to get it cancelled. I just report my card stolen and request a replacement.
Cadillac plans are taxed, but most employer provided health insurance is not. This is a problem, because involving employers in the health insurance business adds a whole additional layer to the process that insulates the people receiving care from the people paying for it.
Having your employer provide heath insurance MAKES NO SENSE WHATSOEVER and you only think it does because you are used to it have been conditioned to think it is normal.
In Maoist China, each factory ran their own school for the children of their employees. So if you changed jobs, your children had to switch to a new school. That is obviously completely idiotic. But you can only see that because you are outside the system and you have seen a better way.
Employer provided heath insurance IS JUST AS STUPID. If you work for, say, an auto parts store, and they provide health insurance, then your major healthcare decision is being made by someone who:
1. Knows nothing about healthcare. 2. Has zero bargaining power. 3. Has no particular incentive to care about quality of service
We should remove all tax benefits of employer provided health insurance and transition to a system that makes sense.
Great. Because, there won't be any abuse of the system problems with that.
You should use evidence based reasoning.
Plenty of countries have healthcare that is free at point-of-use. They have mechanisms to prevent abuse that work well.
In many countries, when you "go to the doctor", you see a screening nurse or PA first, when you walk in the clinic door. 80-90% of the time that is as far as you get, because your ailment is something routine, and the nurse just hands you some pills and tells you to go home and get some sleep and drink plenty of fluids. Many times there is ZERO paperwork. There isn't even a record that you were there, and the nurse may not even ask for your name. You just walk in, get some quick advice, maybe some free pills, and then you walk out. The cost to the healthcare system is maybe $5, if that.
In America, even a sniffle means 30 minutes sitting in the waiting room next to people coughing up phlegm, several insurance forms, and a whole team of people to interface with the insurance companies, prepare and clean the treatment rooms, confer with the malpractice attorneys, etc.
Car analogy: Auto insurance covers catastrophic events like collisions. But what would happen if it also included gasoline?
So every time you refuel, you fill out a form, take it to the insurance department at the gas station, sit in the waiting room for 30 minutes while they negotiate the price with your auto insurance company, and when you are finally approved, you sign more forms indicating that you understand that gasoline is flammable and contains carcinogens and should not be consumed internally or sprayed in anyone's eyes. Then they dispatch a highly trained professional to dispense the gas, which is time consuming because there is a different nozzle specified by each insurance company, and your company requires the use of a low cost nozzle that doesn't quite fit your car. Finally, you receive a binder with all the forms and receipts for your tax records.
What would this do to the cost and hassle of owning a car?
Exactly. Cognito ergo sum only applies to yourself. You have no way to determine if I, or an AI, are conscious. It is just an internal "feeling". It is not falsifiable, and is thus not a scientific concept.
This is all true, and is one of the reasons that homelessness is such an intractable problem.
The homeless are attracted to big liberal coastal cities where they get the most handouts. But these are also the places with the highest housing costs, which makes it far more expensive to move them into housing, which means they are more likely to stay homeless.
This is another reason why giving handouts to the homeless is a BAD IDEA and is just exacerbating their situation. If you want to help them, donate to a shelter or substance abuse center, or (even better) donate to mental health research for a permanent solution.
You don't hear about these outbreaks in Africa, South Asia, or other places where filth is common, because people are constantly exposed to E. coli and other common intestinal and skin bacteria. So everyone's intestines are toughened up and resistant to infection. The only exception is very young children who often die of diarrhea from intestinal infections.
This seems really stupid. If restaurant owners deserve to be subsidized by the taxpayer, why not just do it directly by giving them money? That way they wouldn't even have to make any food. They could just collect their subsidy checks while relaxing at home in front of the TV, and the tech workers could eat at the cantina which they obviously prefer. So everybody wins.
Doing it indirectly via vouchers just adds a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy, while giving everyone a suboptimal outcome.
Indeed. Street food is more common and better than ever before. TFA is just stupid. Office parks often have food trucks and carts around lunchtime. And office parks are not a "new" thing either, nor are they specific to tech.
Journalists just hate nerds because we make more money, drive Teslas, and get all the chicks. So they blame every problem on us.
Now, the elephant in the room is obviously consciousness
There is no evidence that consciousness is a necessary precondition for intelligence.
In fact, there is no objective evidence that consciousness is even a real thing. There is no falsifiable test for it. It is like asking if something has a soul or free will.
Some cultures believe that rocks and trees are conscious. Can you show that they aren't?
But do you remember the name of the second person to climb Everest? Okay, too easy, it was Tensing Norgay, his sherpa guide.
Actually, not so easy. It may have been Edmund Hillary. They reached the summit together, and neither claimed to have "beaten" the other. They claimed equal credit. So we know the first two people to reach the summit and survive the descent. But we don't know the order.
Better description for intelligence: "Force that Maximises the Future Freedom of Action"
Checkmate minimizes future freedom of action, because the game is over. But it is considered the most intelligent move.
In other words: AI that can break out of human control and make its own decisions is more intelligent than humans.
In my biology lab we had a frequent problem with fruit flies escaping. This wasn't because they were intelligent, but because they are small and prolific.
Ability to escape may be one facet of intelligence, but hardly the only one, or even an important one.
Or if an AI is more intelligent than humans, it can break free from human control.
Ambition and self-preservation are emergent properties of Darwinian Evolution. Software does not evolve via Darwinism, therefore there is no reason to expect a computer program to spontaneously acquire these properties, whether it is intelligent or not.
The rock does indeed qualify. There is no wholly objective to do anything at all
You are just being argumentative. You don't really believe that sitting and doing nothing is intelligence. If you do, then you should have no problem with my brother-in-law marrying your daughter. When can they meet?
Total BS. What you are calling "weak AI" would just mean "computer programs". We are talking about AI, DEEP learning Neural Nets. They are learning. Deep. And they can play Chess and Go. We are talking about different things.
These are all examples of "weak" AI. Weak/narrow AI does not mean it is dumb at what it does, just that it is limited to a narrow domain.
A chess playing program is great at playing chess, but it is terrible at diagnosing diesel engine malfunctions.
I have a chess program, and I asked it what's wrong with my truck. Its response was "Pawn to E4".
That is doubtless part of it, but a computer playing chess is confronted throughout the game with novel situations
Indeed. That is why the ability to play chess is considered "intelligence", albeit of the narrow sort. A chess program is limited to a single domain, but can still handle novel situations that the designers did not expect or explicitly program.
Novel sentences? As a linguist, I don't think computers are very good at that
Language comprehension and generation requires far more understanding of the context of the wider world, and requires more general intelligence than playing chess. So of course it is harder.
In order for intelligence to develop, system needs motivation to do so.
If you want an accountant to add up a column of numbers, you need to "motivate" him with a paycheck. If you want a computer program to add them up, no incentive is needed.
There is no reason to believe that the calculations need for intelligence would require "motivation" either.
Humans require incentives because they are the product of Darwinian Evolution, where selfish behavior is reinforced by a statistical improvement in genes being propagated. Even human altruism is often motivated by kin-selection or the expectation of reciprocity.
Computer software is NOT the product of Darwinism. The cruise missile control program that self destructs by hitting the target is the one to be reproduced, while the one that preserves itself by failing to detonate gets deleted.
Until we have a proper definition for intelligence my pet rock qualifies.
Here is the proper definition of intelligence:
Intelligence: The ability to formulate an effective initial response to a novel situation.
Each word is important: 1. Intelligence is an "ability" not a mechanism. An entity that behaves intelligently is intelligent. internal mechanism is irrelevant. 2. Intelligence is the ability to "formulate" a plan, not to physically act on it. 3. A response is effective if meets an objective criteria. 4. It is the "initial" response that counts. Success achieved by a long term random process, including evolution over multiple generations, is not intelligence. 5. It is the response to "novel" situations that is the measure of intelligence. It is not just rote application of a solution that worked in the past. Memory and learning are important components of intelligence, but an intelligent entity can see how a past solution may or may not apply, and how to modify it for the new situation.
AI is here now. How many Chess and Grandmaster Go players are out of a job because of AI? All of them.
Read the headline. TFA is talking about General AI, which means broad human level capability in any field, not just in a single narrow field like Go.
We are no where near achieving General, or "strong", AI. Narrow, or "weak", AI is proving to be very useful for many tasks, but it is not clear if we are even on the right track to general AI. For instance, there is no evidence that the brain does "backprop", which is the core foundation of Deep Learning.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't most mass produced American beer basically water anyway?
It doesn't matter, because we drink it so cold that we can't taste it.
In the end, your only option is to force your card issuer to generate a new one.
Indeed. When I see an unauthorized recurring charge on my CC, I don't fight to get it cancelled. I just report my card stolen and request a replacement.
Obamacare made reasonable (catastrophic) health insurance illegal. 'They' tell me that's a good thing.
It is a good thing for some people, but bad for others.
It is bad for young healthy people. It is good for sick old people.
Obamacare is another way to force millennials to subsidize boomers.
What is odd is that Obamacare is more popular with the young than with the old. Voters are bad at math.
Cadillac plans are taxed, but most employer provided health insurance is not. This is a problem, because involving employers in the health insurance business adds a whole additional layer to the process that insulates the people receiving care from the people paying for it.
Having your employer provide heath insurance MAKES NO SENSE WHATSOEVER and you only think it does because you are used to it have been conditioned to think it is normal.
In Maoist China, each factory ran their own school for the children of their employees. So if you changed jobs, your children had to switch to a new school. That is obviously completely idiotic. But you can only see that because you are outside the system and you have seen a better way.
Employer provided heath insurance IS JUST AS STUPID. If you work for, say, an auto parts store, and they provide health insurance, then your major healthcare decision is being made by someone who:
1. Knows nothing about healthcare.
2. Has zero bargaining power.
3. Has no particular incentive to care about quality of service
We should remove all tax benefits of employer provided health insurance and transition to a system that makes sense.
Great. Because, there won't be any abuse of the system problems with that.
You should use evidence based reasoning.
Plenty of countries have healthcare that is free at point-of-use. They have mechanisms to prevent abuse that work well.
In many countries, when you "go to the doctor", you see a screening nurse or PA first, when you walk in the clinic door. 80-90% of the time that is as far as you get, because your ailment is something routine, and the nurse just hands you some pills and tells you to go home and get some sleep and drink plenty of fluids. Many times there is ZERO paperwork. There isn't even a record that you were there, and the nurse may not even ask for your name. You just walk in, get some quick advice, maybe some free pills, and then you walk out. The cost to the healthcare system is maybe $5, if that.
In America, even a sniffle means 30 minutes sitting in the waiting room next to people coughing up phlegm, several insurance forms, and a whole team of people to interface with the insurance companies, prepare and clean the treatment rooms, confer with the malpractice attorneys, etc.
Car analogy: Auto insurance covers catastrophic events like collisions. But what would happen if it also included gasoline?
So every time you refuel, you fill out a form, take it to the insurance department at the gas station, sit in the waiting room for 30 minutes while they negotiate the price with your auto insurance company, and when you are finally approved, you sign more forms indicating that you understand that gasoline is flammable and contains carcinogens and should not be consumed internally or sprayed in anyone's eyes. Then they dispatch a highly trained professional to dispense the gas, which is time consuming because there is a different nozzle specified by each insurance company, and your company requires the use of a low cost nozzle that doesn't quite fit your car. Finally, you receive a binder with all the forms and receipts for your tax records.
What would this do to the cost and hassle of owning a car?
It's not clear what the advantage is over other competing systems
1. Power consumption.
2. Density.
3. Cost
For power consumption, you need to look at both what the server consumes, and the power used to cool the datacenter.
Density means you can pack more into a rack, saving on expensive floor space.
Cost savings aren't clear. TFA doesn't mention prices. But it will likely be less expensive than an Intel system of equal capability.
After all, as an American living in the US, I wouldn't want my US financial data being stored anywhere else but the US.
As an American living in the US, I would want my US financial data stored anywhere except the US.
I think you have an odd perception of which entity an American should fear most (hint: it isn't foreigners).
Well, you may be a p-zombie. I know I am not.
Exactly. Cognito ergo sum only applies to yourself. You have no way to determine if I, or an AI, are conscious. It is just an internal "feeling". It is not falsifiable, and is thus not a scientific concept.
This is all true, and is one of the reasons that homelessness is such an intractable problem.
The homeless are attracted to big liberal coastal cities where they get the most handouts. But these are also the places with the highest housing costs, which makes it far more expensive to move them into housing, which means they are more likely to stay homeless.
This is another reason why giving handouts to the homeless is a BAD IDEA and is just exacerbating their situation. If you want to help them, donate to a shelter or substance abuse center, or (even better) donate to mental health research for a permanent solution.
No, it is over caution that causes the outbreaks.
You don't hear about these outbreaks in Africa, South Asia, or other places where filth is common, because people are constantly exposed to E. coli and other common intestinal and skin bacteria. So everyone's intestines are toughened up and resistant to infection. The only exception is very young children who often die of diarrhea from intestinal infections.
This seems really stupid. If restaurant owners deserve to be subsidized by the taxpayer, why not just do it directly by giving them money? That way they wouldn't even have to make any food. They could just collect their subsidy checks while relaxing at home in front of the TV, and the tech workers could eat at the cantina which they obviously prefer. So everybody wins.
Doing it indirectly via vouchers just adds a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy, while giving everyone a suboptimal outcome.
Indeed. Street food is more common and better than ever before. TFA is just stupid. Office parks often have food trucks and carts around lunchtime. And office parks are not a "new" thing either, nor are they specific to tech.
Journalists just hate nerds because we make more money, drive Teslas, and get all the chicks. So they blame every problem on us.
Now, the elephant in the room is obviously consciousness
There is no evidence that consciousness is a necessary precondition for intelligence.
In fact, there is no objective evidence that consciousness is even a real thing. There is no falsifiable test for it. It is like asking if something has a soul or free will.
Some cultures believe that rocks and trees are conscious. Can you show that they aren't?
But do you remember the name of the second person to climb Everest? Okay, too easy, it was Tensing Norgay, his sherpa guide.
Actually, not so easy. It may have been Edmund Hillary. They reached the summit together, and neither claimed to have "beaten" the other. They claimed equal credit. So we know the first two people to reach the summit and survive the descent. But we don't know the order.
How about the third person?
No idea.
Better description for intelligence: "Force that Maximises the Future Freedom of Action"
Checkmate minimizes future freedom of action, because the game is over. But it is considered the most intelligent move.
In other words: AI that can break out of human control and make its own decisions is more intelligent than humans.
In my biology lab we had a frequent problem with fruit flies escaping. This wasn't because they were intelligent, but because they are small and prolific.
Ability to escape may be one facet of intelligence, but hardly the only one, or even an important one.
Or if an AI is more intelligent than humans, it can break free from human control.
Ambition and self-preservation are emergent properties of Darwinian Evolution. Software does not evolve via Darwinism, therefore there is no reason to expect a computer program to spontaneously acquire these properties, whether it is intelligent or not.
The rock does indeed qualify. There is no wholly objective to do anything at all
You are just being argumentative. You don't really believe that sitting and doing nothing is intelligence. If you do, then you should have no problem with my brother-in-law marrying your daughter. When can they meet?
You are a linguist but you don't know the word "novelty"?
He clearly knows what "novelty" means. He is just saying it is difficult to quantify, which is true.
Total BS. What you are calling "weak AI" would just mean "computer programs". We are talking about AI, DEEP learning Neural Nets. They are learning. Deep. And they can play Chess and Go. We are talking about different things.
These are all examples of "weak" AI. Weak/narrow AI does not mean it is dumb at what it does, just that it is limited to a narrow domain.
A chess playing program is great at playing chess, but it is terrible at diagnosing diesel engine malfunctions.
I have a chess program, and I asked it what's wrong with my truck. Its response was "Pawn to E4".
That is doubtless part of it, but a computer playing chess is confronted throughout the game with novel situations
Indeed. That is why the ability to play chess is considered "intelligence", albeit of the narrow sort. A chess program is limited to a single domain, but can still handle novel situations that the designers did not expect or explicitly program.
Novel sentences? As a linguist, I don't think computers are very good at that
Language comprehension and generation requires far more understanding of the context of the wider world, and requires more general intelligence than playing chess. So of course it is harder.
In order for intelligence to develop, system needs motivation to do so.
If you want an accountant to add up a column of numbers, you need to "motivate" him with a paycheck. If you want a computer program to add them up, no incentive is needed.
There is no reason to believe that the calculations need for intelligence would require "motivation" either.
Humans require incentives because they are the product of Darwinian Evolution, where selfish behavior is reinforced by a statistical improvement in genes being propagated. Even human altruism is often motivated by kin-selection or the expectation of reciprocity.
Computer software is NOT the product of Darwinism. The cruise missile control program that self destructs by hitting the target is the one to be reproduced, while the one that preserves itself by failing to detonate gets deleted.
Until we have a proper definition for intelligence my pet rock qualifies.
Here is the proper definition of intelligence:
Intelligence: The ability to formulate an effective initial response to a novel situation.
Each word is important:
1. Intelligence is an "ability" not a mechanism. An entity that behaves intelligently is intelligent. internal mechanism is irrelevant.
2. Intelligence is the ability to "formulate" a plan, not to physically act on it.
3. A response is effective if meets an objective criteria.
4. It is the "initial" response that counts. Success achieved by a long term random process, including evolution over multiple generations, is not intelligence.
5. It is the response to "novel" situations that is the measure of intelligence. It is not just rote application of a solution that worked in the past. Memory and learning are important components of intelligence, but an intelligent entity can see how a past solution may or may not apply, and how to modify it for the new situation.
Your pet rock doesn't qualify.
Put simply - most of the "Artificial Intelligence" you hear about in the news is really fancy pattern matching.
Put simply - most of the "Human Intelligence" you see is really fancy pattern matching as well.
AI is here now. How many Chess and Grandmaster Go players are out of a job because of AI? All of them.
Read the headline. TFA is talking about General AI, which means broad human level capability in any field, not just in a single narrow field like Go.
We are no where near achieving General , or "strong", AI. Narrow, or "weak", AI is proving to be very useful for many tasks, but it is not clear if we are even on the right track to general AI. For instance, there is no evidence that the brain does "backprop", which is the core foundation of Deep Learning.
Eventually markets find ways to navigate around abuse.
Microsoft has been around for 43 years. They are making record revenues and profits. "Eventually" can be a long time.