The thing is there is a moral panic

A perfect storm of toxic feminism and neurosis.

The copyright holder is okay with it, and they own the rights to the image. The researchers using it are okay with it. The only "offensive" thing [cough] about this image is that she is beautiful, and that is what is actually triggering these people.

There's no problem with control if you don't give it too much power.

The not-very-subtle issue is that regardless of the limits put on hardware, the people using the hardware may not be subject to effective limits. Which is how we got Putin, Hitler, Trump, Pol Pot, McCarthy, McConnell, Stalin, Mao, etc.

People have a disturbing habit of taking up crazy and harmful ideas regardless of the source. All an AI really has to do is source the ideas. There will be people who will be delighted to take it from there.

Major Pain would like a word.

The point is, that there is no sound scientific basis for claiming "it is all just known Physics" at this time

Since everything, literally everything, we think we understand today has fallen squarely into "100% just known physics", yes, we can have pretty high confidence that the things we learn tomorrow will do the same. I do agree it is (vaguely, hand-wavingly, extremely low-order probability) possible we might need some new physics, but given the physical constraints of our fleshy machinery, (a) it seems really, really unlikely and (b) without discovering a mechanism that requires same, there's little point in claiming that is the case.

At various points in time we didn't understand X, but later on, we did understand X, and every time that threshold is crossed, the answer has been "100% known physics." To say that because we don't understand Y yet means "might not be known physics" seems to slyly imply that it might not be physics at all, which our experience with reality does not support. Just in case you were leaning that way.

While it would be magnificently interesting to find something that does not fall into that classification, no one has done that yet, and there's no particular reason to expect anyone to, either. Because it has never happened.

We don't know how the brain works or what consciousness even is. Until we figure those out there will not be any real progress towards strong AI

It's worth noting that some developments come from somewhat randomly throwing things at the wall to see if they stick. Often, those doing the throwing are just as surprised as the rest of us when something does stick.

Consider: To have a machine (a robot, more or less) formed as human arm throw a baseball well, the usual approach takes some really heavy math. We, on the other hand, do it without understanding that math at all. There are a lot of folks working on various approaches to what we can loosely call "computational intelligence", and it is possible (not saying likely, just possible) that this will result in an intelligence.

After all, that's how nature did it. Multiple times. In multiple ways. Without knowing how intelligence worked.

This:

I thought the shopping bot was at best a slight upgrade on searching Amazon

Talk about setting a low bar... Amazon's search is one of the worst, quite possibly the worst, searches out there. Not only does it not find what you fucking clearly asked to find and is missing even the most basic search amenities such as wildcarding and quoted exact phrasing, it spams the search output with complete product irrelevancies, artificially up-floated overpriced results, and actual advertising for... well, whatever, but most likely nothing to do with your search.

When doing search engines for my clients, I use Amazon and Pinterest as examples of exactly how poorly searching can be implemented.

Meat is defined as the flesh of animals

Yes, and cultured meat is unquestionably the flesh of animals. It's grown directly from real animal cells, real animal DNA, etc. Therefore, obviously, it's meat. Trying to say it isn't is either a demonstration of a complete ignorance of the science, or disingenuous nonsense unworthy of the claimant or those the claims are being made to.

The USDA's definition doesn't say "has to be from a slaughtered animal carcass."

Fully hyphenated would be better, "Lab-Grown-Meat" or perhaps "Cultured-Meat".

Sure, seems fine. Might want to call the other stuff "Slaughtered-Meat", too. Just so everyone's clear.

Related, I 100% object to calling plant-based products "meat." They aren't meat by any reasonable definition. Calling them meat is outright deceptive. Being a curmudgeonly crank, whenever it comes up in conversation, I say, "Oh... you mean salad. :)

So banning the use of the word "meat" with respect to lab grown would be a fine move to avoid possible consumer confusion. Call the lab grown somethings else.

That makes no sense at all. You're saying "let's not call meat, meat."

Just call it "Lab-Grown Meat" or perhaps "Cultured Meat" as these accurately describe what it is and provide a clear distinction for those who are concerned with it, and go on with progress.

Buy an EV and keep meat on the menu.

The objective — far from met as yet — is to keep meat on the menu; the idea is to get animals off the menu.

And yes, by all means, EVs are the obvious way forward. But moving to an EV represents a major change in consumer habits, at least in the USA, and it's going to take a while both to achieve consumer buy-in and to see the charging infrastructure become ubiquitous. Plus, replacement cycle times have extended because vehicles are lasting somewhat longer and replacement costs have risen for similar vehicle types.

...maybe Slashdot could get their help prevent preventing duplicate articles just hours apart?

Sir, this is a Wendy's.

Visually? Zero. That's not how my mind works.

Interesting link/video. Thank you.

I'm an EE, and visualizing things is a really important tool for my work. Circuit diagrams, circuit board layout / routing, how a board fits in an enclosure, transformer design, etc.

That's fine, and no doubt it's powerful, but it doesn't mean there aren't other ways to approach the same kinds of work. I've been doing hardware design for a bit over 50 years now, and have quite a collection of successful original projects, many quite complex. I've been writing software since the early 1970's as well, and again, lots of completed projects in that domain. For some systems, I did both the hardware design and the supporting software.

WRT schematics and other diagrams, I'm comfortable and effective on a drafting table at putting together complex ones; but, being lazy, I've also written both schematic capture and PCB layout software, including auto-routing and auto-placement. In assembler. :)

I'm a "5" — I can't visualize anything at all. But I can juggle concepts as both words and abstractions just fine, and I find it a comfortable process to realize them as concrete products.

Likely related, I really enjoy photography; it serves as visual memory for me. It's how I can "know" how my mother and father looked, old flames, places, pets, etc. I also take pictures of my hardware projects both under development and at completion. There's definitely a worthy aspect to being able to access that information. Also, some of my most complex software products have been image manipulation systems.

The bottom line is there are definitely multiple highly functional modalities to dealing with most creative tasks.

An embryo is an organism in and of itself. It is alive and it is human in a very scientific sense of the word.

It's not human until it has a functional nervous system with a brain capable of, you know, humanity. Up to that point, it's a clump of cells, not "a human." In fact, short of that level of development, it's no more "a human" than any similarly sized clump of native cells in any person's body.

Humanity does not arise because some muscles contract or a bone develops. Early stage pregnancy does not involve a human. Later on, sure. But to pretend otherwise is anything but scientific.

Likewise, arguing that an early stage pregnancy is an organism is irrelevant; so is a blade of grass. Same for life: grass is alive. These are completely inadequate — in fact, irrelevant — metrics.

Humanity is actually the thing that is reasonable to consider; and if you try to use "humanity" when describing an early stage pregnancy, you are promoting superstition. No functional brain defines that the organism is not capable of humanity. That's a fundamental scientific truth. Consequently, if you claim otherwise, you're either being disingenuous, demonstrating that you have had a completely inadequate science education — or are stupid.

A physical fact? What, exactly, is the physical evidence of people-ness that these embryos lack?

A functional nervous system incorporating a brain capable of, you know, any aspect of humanity.

You're welcome.