When I hear of an AI that controls fusion I immediately think of Doc Ock. You know, the guy with four AI controlled robotic tentacles with a direct spinal interface that are made to control fusion. You on the other had immediately think hentai. You might want to get your brain checked out, I think the cooling fan is gummed up with some serious crud. Maybe then you'll be able to keep up, it's not that hard.

Really? A perfect Doc Ock reference and you go Hentai? Where is your brain at?

Next upgrade will have four robotic tentacles and a direct spinal interface.

Local alcoholic wants you to know he went to a bar and bought a drink so that he could stare at it and ponder the meaning of life. But he swears he didn't actually drink it.

I don't have time for that. Between the WoW guild meetings and D&D campaigns, I'm lucky if I can get a shower more often than once a month. Now you're telling me I'm supposed to be brushing my teeth for two whole minutes not once but twice a day? I'm shocked! Shocked I tell you!

Just so I know who to blame, is this a conspiracy by the Democrats to control my speech or a plot by the republicans to control my body?

The bigger picture is whether or not AI facial recognition should be used in law enforcement at all, not whether some LEO's downloaded a free app without permission from their CO. The article seems to be making a big deal about trivia while dancing around the elephant in the room.

You have to do a lot of hard work spying the old fashioned way to get enough data to train your AI to spy for you.

Then it's time to take over the world.

Exactly. Why go to the trouble of a farcical inquiry into the "plans". They will just say something nice to allay suspicion and then "change their minds" later on after the data has been collected. Even if they are completely above board with their plans, the CCP can come in at any time and nationalize the company and then acquire the data.
The solution is not to hold inquiries and wag stern fingers in peoples faces. We don't need individual companies "promising" to be good. We need actual protections in law.

So an AI that is specifically trained to recognize race from X-Ray's is good at that task. How does that transfer to other AI systems? Why would an AI that is trained to spot cancer also be looking for race? And if racial characteristics in an X-Ray make the cancer spotting AI better at finding cancer in different races then why would that be a bad thing?

Seems like a bit of doom and gloom or possibly FUD that is only weakly linked to reality.
1. Race identifying AI can identify race in medical images.
2. missing link
3. dubious harm from missing link
4. Beware racist medical AI!!!
5. Profit?

I didn't say billionaires can't move the needle. I said that they can, and that it takes time and effort as well as money. I also said that they can't solve any of these problems in an instant. I was arguing against the assertion by the idiot in the summary who said:

"What they seek to leave behind is a planet burning and flooding and full of the kind of small and ordinary suffering such fortunes could alleviate in an instant."

I understand that you are much smarter and more empathetic than I am, but before you accuse someone of directly contradicting themselves within two sentences, maybe try re-reading the text to make sure you didn't just misunderstand.

I know reading before commenting is anti-slashdot, but just as a point of clarification, I didn't say that they don't have enough money to solve any problems. And I wasn't setting up a strawman. I was reacting to the author cited in the summary who said:

"What they seek to leave behind is a planet burning and flooding and full of the kind of small and ordinary suffering such fortunes could alleviate in an instant."

You can't solve world poverty in an instant, no matter how much money you have. Your own links show that.

You can't solve homelessness in an instant either. In the most naive interpretation of homelessness you could solve it in a relatively short time by giving all homeless people houses. But do you truly think that solves the "problem" of homelessness? These are issues that are far deeper than a simple lack of money, or lack of housing or lack of work, and they can't be solved instantly with a single check no matter how large it is.

Sometimes you don't have to resort to a strawman argument. Sometimes the person on the other end is truly that dumb.

Can we do a class or something for young idealists who want to change the world? The billionaires of the world don't have enough money to solve any of the worlds problems in an instant, much less all of them. They can't instantly make all humans millionaires by distributing their infinite wealth. Pull out a calculator (For once in your life!) if you can't do powers of ten math in your head.

They can't instantly solve world hunger or war or poverty or homelessness or disease or death or healthcare bills.

As a quick anecdote, since the math is too hard to do, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have both committed large fractions of their wealth to charitable causes. They are moving the needle on some of those causes, but they did not instantly solve any of their chosen issues with wealth.

And in an effort to inject some humility into the rising generation, just because it seems obvious to you that taking Jeff Bezos' money and giving it to your preferred cause would be a net benefit to society doesn't make it true. It is quite possible that Jeff's joyride will make a bigger difference in creating a better tomorrow than that same money would if spent in your preferred manner. Say it with me. "I can't predict the future."

How much health care do you get for 1T? Considering that the US currently spends over 2T per year on health care, I would imagine the answer is "Not that much" .

On the plus side, after a few months you have completely run through all of Facebook's wealth, and nobody will ever need to facebook ever again.

This leaves aside the problem of actually confiscating all of Facebook's stock and then selling it at the current value. I imagine the stock would tank about 30 seconds after the government confiscates it with the intent to sell it all off.

When Vietnam says "You must censor dissidents or we will block Facebook from the country" who else must go along with that order to get it done? It seems that with many getting internet access through telcos these days along with growing availability of satellite internet access, it would take more than a single point switch to get that done.

Do the phone companies all run through the same fiber trunks that the ISP's do to get into Vietnam?

Perhaps we need a more thoroughly "fail" proof internet. With greater access to satellite internet, and a dab of mesh networking it seems like we could make it much harder to shut down internet access across an entire country.

Early computer hackers knew that data wants to be free. Early internet architects had the same idea. Maybe internet 2.0 can relearn what the plebs have always known.