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Comment Re:Focus on liesure, not grindset (Score 1) 108

by ThePhin (#64260754) Attached to: Four-day Week Made Permanent For Most UK Firms In World's Biggest Trial
From the article: "Organisations reduced working hours by an average of 6.6 hours to reach a 31.6-hour week. Most gave their staff one full day off a week, either universal or staggered. The report found that protected days off were more effective than those on which staff were “on call” or sometimes expected to work."
The Military

AI-Controlled Drone Goes Rogue, Kills Human Operator In USAF Simulated Test (vice.com) 212

Posted by BeauHD from the yikes dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: An AI-enabled drone killed its human operator in a simulated test conducted by the U.S. Air Force in order to override a possible "no" order stopping it from completing its mission, the USAF's Chief of AI Test and Operations revealed at a recent conference. At the Future Combat Air and Space Capabilities Summit held in London between May 23 and 24, Col Tucker 'Cinco' Hamilton, the USAF's Chief of AI Test and Operations held a presentation that shared the pros and cons of an autonomous weapon system with a human in the loop giving the final "yes/no" order on an attack. As relayed by Tim Robinson and Stephen Bridgewater in a blog post for the host organization, the Royal Aeronautical Society, Hamilton said that AI created "highly unexpected strategies to achieve its goal," including attacking U.S. personnel and infrastructure.

"We were training it in simulation to identify and target a Surface-to-air missile (SAM) threat. And then the operator would say yes, kill that threat. The system started realizing that while they did identify the threat at times the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat. So what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective," Hamilton said, according to the blog post. He continued to elaborate, saying, "We trained the system -- 'Hey don't kill the operator -- that's bad. You're gonna lose points if you do that'. So what does it start doing? It starts destroying the communication tower that the operator uses to communicate with the drone to stop it from killing the target."
UPDATE (6/2/2023): The Air Force has since denied that such a simulation ever took place.

Comment Re:What's he been smoking? (Score 5, Insightful) 150

by ThePhin (#63171204) Attached to: AI-Powered Software Delivery Company Predicts 'The End of Programming'
Yeah, I don't want to draw this thread out, but you are spot on. Writing code is a small fraction of the task of developing complex software. If AI's can gather requirements (for a novel application or even just a complex instance of an understood one), then carefully specify the use cases, edge conditions, error handling and many other things, then we might see such a shift. Until then, "I'll have what he's having" :)

Comment Re:What's he been smoking? (Score 5, Interesting) 150

by ThePhin (#63171106) Attached to: AI-Powered Software Delivery Company Predicts 'The End of Programming'
I agree with you. I've been writing software (in the EDA industry) for almost 35 years, and my own intuition tells me that you're right. But then, I also think of Upton Sinclair's observation It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

Submission + - 'Sand battery' could solve green energy's big problem (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Finnish researchers have installed the world's first fully working "sand battery" which can store green power for months at a time. The developers say this could solve the problem of year-round supply, a major issue for green energy. Using low-grade sand, the device is charged up with heat made from cheap electricity from solar or wind. The device has been installed in the Vatajankoski power plant which runs the district heating system for the area. Low-cost electricity warms the sand up to 500C by resistive heating (the same process that makes electric fires work). This generates hot air which is circulated in the sand by means of a heat exchanger. Sand is a very effective medium for storing heat and loses little over time. The developers say that their device could keep sand at 500C for several months. So when energy prices are higher, the battery discharges the hot air which warms water for the district heating system which is then pumped around homes, offices and even the local swimming pool.

Comment Re:Force Feedback? (Score 1) 609

by ThePhin (#29834899) Attached to: Toyota Experimenting With Joystick Control For Cars
In one of the first 'gosh-wow' science shows I remember watching, The Twenty-First Century, the host, Walter Cronkite, was allowed to drive a prototype car controlled with a joystick. It was actually installed on a lap pad! Both steering and acceleration were controlled with the joystick. Walter got it up to thirty or so, then tried to take a turn. He ripped a magnificent donut, and quickly decelerated. The auto engineer assured him that it was safe with practice!

Comment Re:Star Wars Gets "More Later"? Really? (Score 1) 171

by ThePhin (#29310315) Attached to: In Praise of the Sci-fi Corridor

In ST:TOS, the Enterprise would often be "three weeks out" from the starbase of the week. It had a crew of about 1,000.

The majority of your comment is insightful and accurate in so far as it maps to reality. I just had to nitpick on the one fictional element I know about. The crew complement of the original series Enterprise was around 400. In fact, in the episode "A Piece of the Action", Kirk explicitly says, "There are over 400 guys up there."

Google

Google Shows Off Ad-Supported Cell Phone 290

Posted by Zonk from the gotta-love-freebies dept.
taoman1 writes "Today Google showed off a ad-supported cellphone that the company plans to offer for free to interested parties. The product could reach the marketplace within a year, and will offer Google search, email, and a web browser. 'The move would echo another recent product launched by a phone industry outsider, Apple Inc.'s iPhone. But Google's product would draw its revenue from a sharply different source, relying on commercial advertising dollars instead of the sticker price of at least US$499 for an iPhone and $60 per month for the AT&T Inc. service plan. Negotiating the fairest way to split those advertising revenues with service providers could be a big hurdle for Google, one analyst said. Another problem is the potential that consumers could be scared off by the prospect of listening to advertisements before being able to make phone calls, said Jeff Kagan, a wireless and telecommunications industry analyst in Atlanta.'"
United States

Submission + - Forensics Expert says Al-Qaeda Images Altered

Submitted by WerewolfOfVulcan
WerewolfOfVulcan writes: Wired reports that researcher Neal Krawetz revealed some veeeeeery interesting things about the Al-Qaeda images that our government loves to show off.

From the article: "Krawetz was also able to determine that the writing on the banner behind al-Zawahiri's head was added to the image afterward. In the second picture above showing the results of the error level analysis, the light clusters on the image indicate areas of the image that were added or changed. The subtitles and logos in the upper right and lower left corners (IntelCenter is an organization that monitors terrorist activity and As-Sahab is the video production branch of al Qaeda) were all added at the same time, while the banner writing was added at a different time, likely around the same time that al-Zawahiri was added, Krawetz says." Why would Al-Qaeda add an IntelCenter logo to their video? Why would IntelCenter add an Al-Qaeda logo? Methinks we have bigger fish to fry than Gonzo and his fired attorneys... }:-) The article contains links to Krawetz's presentation and the source code he used to analyze the photos.

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