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The Crisis of Identity That Tech Doesn’t Help
Consumerism works well but leaves us emptyWriter and cultural commentator Aaron Renn wrote recently about the dissolution of identity in the United States, contending that if we don’t know who we are, we will never know what to do. Renn writes frequently on issues facing young men in America and the challenges of living well in the secular world. He writes, The reality is that a lot of people in top positions of our society act as if they want you living like Simba. They want porn available for you to watch. They want you betting on the big game on your phone. They want you focused on “experiences” and consumption, like hitting the latest hot travel destination or going to the new farm-to-table restaurant that Read More ›
Anti-Aging: Is it Possible or a Pipe Dream?
A brand-new video on the topic of anti-aging technologies from the 2023 COSM conferenceThe Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence is pleased to be able to share the videos from the 2023 COSM conference, now available on YouTube. This annual conference explores the status and the future of our era-defining technologies, from artificial intelligence to electric vehicles to new developments in biotech. Today’s video features a discussion on anti-aging, and whether this is even a possibility. Matt Scholz, CEO of Oisin Biotechnologies, leads a discussion with Vered Caplan, CEO of Orgenesis, and Elena Sergeeva, Neuroscientist at Tufts and Harvard and co-founder of Tiamat Labs, about anti-aging biotechnologies — how genetic reprogramming of cells could negate the effects of aging and even allow a person to stay in perfect health indefinitely, essentially Read More ›
Spaceman: Along Came a Spider and Sat Down… Well, Maybe
The spider is an alien with a somewhat complex relationship to people and toiletsDeep Fake Videos Can Upgrade Political Humiliation and Rule by Fear
AI human impersonation video technology promises rule by terror to degrees never before imaginedGreen Goblin, the Hasty Transhumanist
A classic Marvel villain presents a picture of hurried science gone wrong“The product is certified ready for human testing.” I’m not quoting Elon Musk in relation to Neuralink. That’s the line from the fictional Norman Osborn in Sam Raimi’s original Spider-Man movie, starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, and the green maniac himself, Willem Dafoe. I’ve seen this movie dozens of times, so maybe it’s due to the weird fact that twenty-plus years after this film hit the scene, we now live in a world where big science organizations like Osborn’s Oscorp seem to be dealing with similar conflicts that ultimately produced the iconic Green Goblin. Not that Elon Musk or Sam Altman are going to start flying around on saucers and terrorize New York City. But they are eager to rush Read More ›
The AI Hype Machine Just Rolls On, Living on Exhaust
Even chatbot enthusiasts, are starting to admit that scaling up LLMs will not create genuine artificial intelligenceMeta AI Scientist: AGI is a Pipe Dream
Human intelligence still can't be matched by a soulless algorithmPredictions on AI’s ever-developing complexity have tech optimists counting the days until the machine replaces the human mind. Artificial general intelligence is the term they use to describe the point in which AI will officially overtake human intelligence. However, certain experts in the field, among them Robert J. Marks, host of the Mind Matters podcast, protest the assumption. AI researcher and scientist Yann LeCun, the AI chief at Meta, said recently that the current AI systems are nowhere close to achieving human-like intelligence. LeCun said, “We’re easily fooled into thinking they are intelligent because of their fluency with language, but really, their understanding of reality is very superficial,” he said. “They’re useful, there’s no question about that. But on the Read More ›
How Could Intelligent Design Help Us In a Conflict?
Well, what would happen if Daffy Duck teams up with Marvin the Martian?In war, the goal is to eliminate a threat as quickly as possible, given available resources. We try to hit the center of a target with the fewest arrows. A key mathematical concept of intelligent design, active information, captures this dilemma. It also helps us understand the role of artificial intelligence might play in wartime. Active information Active information is the difference between two sources of information. Picture archers shooting at a target: 1. Endogenous information: What is the size of the target? And how difficult is the target to hit? It is the difference between hitting a squirrel and hitting the moon. 2. Exogenous information: How skilled the archer is who is firing the arrows? What difference does the Read More ›
COSM 2023 Now on YouTube!
COSM 2023 explored the nature of artificial intelligence, as well as its future potential and risks.You can now watch the 2023 COSM Technology Summit on YouTube. If you weren’t able to attend, or perhaps you want to revisit some of your favorite speakers, we are now releasing the second tranche of videos for your enjoyment. Click here to go to the COSM 2023 Playlist on YouTube! COSM 2023 explored the nature of artificial intelligence, as well as its future potential and risks. Stephen Wolfram spoke about his efforts to make the world more computable so that computers can help us understand the world. Afterward, George Gilder and Bob Metcalfe joined him in a fascinating discussion about Turing machines, neural networks, and AI-driven language models. A panel featuring William Dembski, Robert Marks, and George Montanez offered Read More ›
The AI Bandwagon & Biden’s Executive Order
There are dangers and AI mitigation is needed. The question, though, is how .On Oct 30, 2023, President Biden issued an Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence. A follow-up OMB Policy for management of AI was announced on March 28, 2024. Swallowing AI hype, the AI directive kills a fly with grenade just in case there are other flies nearby. AI remains an exciting often mind-blowing technology, but hyped futuristic depictions of AI in The Terminator and The Matrix are unrealizable science fiction. Unlike humans, AI will never understand what it is doing, be creative or experience qualia. AI is a tool. Like electricity or thermonuclear energy, it can be used for good or evil. Or can be the source of unforeseen accidents ranging from frayed house wiring to Chernobyl. Read More ›
Is Sam Altman Losing Popularity?
People who know Altman are getting tired of his anticsIn November of 2023, just a year after the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Sam Altman was ousted from his post as CEO. Days later, he waltzed back in and retook the throne, snagging a new board in the process. Even though the talk of the drama has died down since then, with other issues, like the 2024 election, taking center stage, it’s still worth wondering why all that happened in the first place. According to Insider and Gizmodo, people familiar with Altman worry that he’s more in it for himself than for the good of humanity. Altman often uses grandiose rhetoric on how AI will enhance and perhaps even define the humanity of the future. (In a good way, of Read More ›
Orwell’s Cold Dystopia is Closer Than We Think
When we speak lies as truth, tyrants come marching inThe Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. [Winston’s] heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him… And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s center. With the feeling that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote: Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. GEORGE ORWELL, 1984 Read More ›
David Foster Wallace: If Screens Are Your Main Media Diet, You’re Going to Die
The novelist warned about the pitfalls of the online life“If we ate like this all the time, what would be wrong with that?” So asks David Foster Wallace, compellingly played by Jason Segel, in the 2015 film The End of the Tour. Wallace is in the car with a Rolling Stone reporter, David Lipsky, cramming down sweets from a gas station when he says that. After Lipsky quips back about obesity, Wallace says, “It has none of the substance of real food, but it’s real pleasurable.” The End of the Tour is set in 1996 shortly after Wallace’s gargantuan novel Infinite Jest hit the literary scene and impressed the nation with its length, wit, tragedy, and insight. A massive book about loneliness, Infinite Jest takes place in a semi-futuristic Read More ›
Cyberwarfare in the Israeli War
Cyberwarfare is the new arms race where opponents try to outdo each other using computer technologyCyberwarfare is the new arms race where opponents try to outdo each other using computer technology. For example, some missiles are guided by the GPS I use daily and take for granted. Israel’s cybersecurity infrastructure has activated nationwide GPS jamming. The jamming seeks to disrupt drones and GPS-guided missiles aimed at the country. Nowhere is GPS jamming more concentrated than in the Middle East. HERE is a map of areas around the world where GPS is disrupted. Click and drag to rotate the globe. In developing weapons in the cyberwarfare back and forth, the United States remains aware of dependency on easily disreputable technology like GPS. If GPS is disrupted, what technology can take its place? One approach is Read More ›
Euthanasia is Not About Compassion
This movement will end up pressuring people to dieEuthanasia isn’t really about compassion but fear of decline and a loathing of dependency — and of those experiencing them. That nasty truth has become abundantly clear with a new column published in the Times of London in which former Tory MP Matthew Parris argues that euthanasia/assisted suicide should not only be permitted — but encouraged. In “We Can’t Afford a Taboo on Assisted Dying,” he writes (my emphasis): I can’t dispute the objectors’ belief that once assisted dying becomes normalized we will become more apt to ask yourselves for how much longer we can justify the struggle. An Unjustifiable Life The word “justify” is telling. It does not only concern the suffering of the person who is ill, disabled, or elderly but the suffering Read More ›
Spaceman: World Is Ending. Worse, an Astronaut’s Wife Wants Out
It’s not clear just what role the threatening Chopra Cloud plays and that complexity dogs the storyNetflix recently released a film called Spaceman, starring Adam Sandler. It’s… interesting. The first time I watched it, I hated it. The second time I watched it, I hated it less. I can appreciate what the movie was trying to do, and Adam Sandler puts on a fine performance… most of the time. But there were just too many plot holes and too much meaningless rhetoric for me to really enjoy the story. The movie is based on a 2017 novel, Spaceman of Bohemia by Czech author Jaroslav Kalfař. It begins with a Czech astronaut flying toward a mysterious, purple anomaly called the Chopra Cloud. The Cloud had appeared in the sky a few years previously, with no known reason. Read More ›
I Don’t Need an AI Refrigerator, but Thanks
We need to clarify what AI is good for and what it would only complicateThe AI hype seems to know no bounds. Is there any sphere of life the optimists will leave untouched? AI techies are coming for home appliances now, too, because it isn’t enough that our refrigerators store our food for us; we need them to refashioned top-down into AI bots that can spin out recipes for us. The main problem with this domestic infestation of AI is the simultaneous invasion of privacy, as noted in a recent Futurism article. Also, it’s just a hassle to keep up with. There’s no doubt there are certain things AI simplifies, like facial recognition on apps and generating an email via ChatGPT, but when I’m in the mood for a frozen burrito, there’s really only Read More ›
What’s the Relation Between Intelligence and Information?
The fundamental intuition of information as narrowing down possibilities matches up neatly with the concept of intelligenceThe key intuition behind the concept of information is the narrowing of possibilities. The more that possibilities are narrowed down, the greater the information. If I tell you I’m on planet Earth, I haven’t conveyed any information because you already knew that (let’s leave aside space travel). If I tell you I’m in the United States, I’ve begun to narrow down where I am in the world. If I tell you I’m in Texas, I’ve narrowed down my location further. If I tell you I’m forty miles north of Dallas, I’ve narrowed my location down even further. As I keep narrowing down my location, I’m providing you with more and more information. Information is therefore, in its essence, exclusionary: the more Read More ›
Can We Trust Large Language Models? Depends on How Truthful They Are
Just because a piece of tech is highly sophisticated doesn't mean it's more trustworthyThe trust we put in Large Language Models (LLMs) ought to depend on their truthfulness. So how truthful are LLMs? For many routine queries, they seem accurate enough. What’s the capital of North Dakota? To this query, ChatGPT4 just now gave me the answer Bismarck. That’s right. But what about less routine queries? Recently I was exploring the use of design inferences to detect plagiarism and data falsification. Some big academic misconduct cases had in the last 12 months gotten widespread public attention, not least the plagiarism scandal of Harvard president Claudine Gay and the data falsification scandal of Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne. These scandals were so damaging to these individuals and their institutions that neither is a university president any longer. When I queried Read More ›