Monthly Archive June 2019
How Much Difference Can AI Deep Fakes Really Make in Elections?
Maybe not much and that truth should make us uncomfortableProminent Psychologist Offers Non-Reductive Approach to Consciousness in Journal Article
A new edition of Communications of the Blyth Institute highlights mind, consciousness, and machine learningRakover presents an initial sketch of a methodology that allows a better conceptualization of the method by which mental states get moved in and out of consciousness. The edition also features a review of Scott D. G. Ventureyra’s On the Origin of Consciousness.
Read More ›Will Facebook’s New Focus on “Community” Groups Prevent Abuses?
When you look a little closer at the proposal, you will see that the answer is noFacebook's move to a more group-focused interface gives the appearance of stronger privacy and community orientation but the structure and logic of social media ensure that these are appearances rather than realities.
Read More ›Science Uprising: Stop Ignoring Evidence for the Existence of the Human Mind!
Materialism enables irrational ideas about ourselves to compete with rational ones on an equal basis. It won’t workMcPathogens: Are McDonalds’ Order Kiosks Clean? Another Look
Can rebuttals exposing fake news be fake news themselves? Judge for yourselfWill Space Aliens Become a New Majority Religion?
Nearly as many young Americans believe in ET as in God, says religion profPopular culture is looking for high-tech ETs to be its saviors and Silicon Valley aspires to become those ETs. What could possibly go wrong?
Read More ›Machine Learning Dates Back To at Least 300 BC
The key to machine learning is not machines but mathematicsMachine learning is not a new technique, but is simply a modern extension of a tool that we have had in our toolbox since the days of the Babylonians. It continues to serve us well to help us extrapolate our data to estimate the value of unknown results and to help find the signal in noisy data.
Read More ›In 2018, Sci-Fi Phoned the Seventies, It Seems…
…for high-tech overpopulation scares. How else to explain Avengers’ Thanos?, asks Eric HollowayScientific American: No Consensus on Smartphones’ Effect on Teen Brains
Others continue to wonder why teens seem comparatively fragileHow Do You Explain That Machines Won’t Really Think Like People?
Computation cannot become non-computational thought but it is difficult to prove that something can’t happen.Does Workplace Automation Improve Service or Merely Cut Costs?
Chances are, the CEO won’t know there’s a problem until complaints come in. Elon Musk didn’tCan AI Make Unique Trail-Blazing Science Discoveries?
It would save us a lot of time but, as Eric Holloway warns, some things can’t be automated, by their very natureSorry, Wired: That “Crafty Robot” Doesn’t Write in Languages It’s Never Seen
The artificial intelligence industry is overwhelmed with title inflation and feat hypeBetraying Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Espousing Abortion
Bonhoeffer opposed abortion but the president of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute argues for itIf You Think Common Sense Is Easy to Acquire…
Try teaching it to a state-of-the-art self-driving car. Start with snowmen.Seven Minutes to Goosebumps: Confronting Materialism Head On
A new short film series takes on materialism in science, including that of AI’s pop prophetsPhilosopher: Gloom and doom over AI is “silly”
Jay Richards thinks that historian Yuval Noah Harari is wrong to think that AI will necessarily subvert democracyThe idea that machines are capable of replacing us is the topic of many books he has read but, he argues, the thing that really distinguishes us is the capacity for developing creative freedom.
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