Comment Why did they think it's worth it? (Score 1) 12
One of the dumbest deals I've ever seen. You could pay me to build something like Windsurf, or many of us could, for less than what they paid.
Comment Re:Logical AI is the path forward (Score 1) 42
Who says we don't know how to do it? Technology has advanced since the 1970s.
"We do not."
We do. Look into how Cyc works, and the work of Doug Lenat. Look into how Palantir works. Just because you don't know how to do it, or you haven't seen it, it doesn't mean it hasn't been done or isn't a lot easier to do now that CPUs, ram, and other technologies exist which didn't exist back then. The same reason people thought neural nets couldn't scale, until the technology got to this point where it could be scaled using GPUs. That is what changes things, the ability to have broadband, faster chips, so now it's just a matter of putting them to use.
"We do not."
We do. Look into how Cyc works, and the work of Doug Lenat. Look into how Palantir works. Just because you don't know how to do it, or you haven't seen it, it doesn't mean it hasn't been done or isn't a lot easier to do now that CPUs, ram, and other technologies exist which didn't exist back then. The same reason people thought neural nets couldn't scale, until the technology got to this point where it could be scaled using GPUs. That is what changes things, the ability to have broadband, faster chips, so now it's just a matter of putting them to use.
Comment Logical AI is the path forward (Score 1) 42
Specifically, neurosymbolic AI. In the centralized approach that means something like Google's Alphafold/Alphaproof which uses reinforcement learning combined with the LLM. For the decentralized approach it means something like Tau.net which is logical AI at the foundation layer and machine learning as an extension. The combination of logic GOFAI allows for common sense mechanical reasoning. The addition of machine learning, allows for the pattern recognition, prediction, probability based methods.
Submission + - Tau Logical AI proposes solution to AGI safety and alignment (bitcoin.com)
elucido writes: Ohad Asor, founder of Tau Net makes the claim decentralized logical AI is the path to safe super intelligence. The project is pretty far into development and on the verge of testnet launch.
Submission + - Autobraking tech will be standard in cars by 2022 (cbsnews.com)
pgmrdlm writes: Autobraking tech will be standard in cars by 2022, but drivers complain of "phantom braking"
Automatic emergency braking will be standard in most cars in 2022. The technology is expected to cut the number of rear-end crashes in half, but hundreds of drivers say sometimes the system slams on the brakes – apparently for no reason. CBS News found reports of several accidents and injuries that drivers blamed on false activations of emergency automatic braking systems. Safety advocates and carmakers say in the vast majority of cases it works, but it is not perfect.
For Cindy Walsh, getting behind the wheel of her 2018 Nissan Rogue raises her anxiety level. Since she bought the SUV new last October, she told CBS News correspondent Kris Van Cleave it has slammed on the brakes three times for no clear reason when she said there was no risk of a collision.
"The first one, I was driving down a four-lane highway going about 55 and it completely came to a complete stop," Walsh said. Now she said she's scared to drive the car, so she doesn't drive it.
Walsh took it to the dealer each time. Twice, she said, they told her they fixed it.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is now investigating the 2017 and 2018 Rogue after learning of nearly 850 complaints of false activation of the SUV's automatic braking system. That includes reports of 14 crashes and five injuries.
Automatic emergency braking will be standard in most cars in 2022. The technology is expected to cut the number of rear-end crashes in half, but hundreds of drivers say sometimes the system slams on the brakes – apparently for no reason. CBS News found reports of several accidents and injuries that drivers blamed on false activations of emergency automatic braking systems. Safety advocates and carmakers say in the vast majority of cases it works, but it is not perfect.
For Cindy Walsh, getting behind the wheel of her 2018 Nissan Rogue raises her anxiety level. Since she bought the SUV new last October, she told CBS News correspondent Kris Van Cleave it has slammed on the brakes three times for no clear reason when she said there was no risk of a collision.
"The first one, I was driving down a four-lane highway going about 55 and it completely came to a complete stop," Walsh said. Now she said she's scared to drive the car, so she doesn't drive it.
Walsh took it to the dealer each time. Twice, she said, they told her they fixed it.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is now investigating the 2017 and 2018 Rogue after learning of nearly 850 complaints of false activation of the SUV's automatic braking system. That includes reports of 14 crashes and five injuries.
Scientists Are Making Human-Monkey Hybrids in China (technologyreview.com) 210
glowend shares a report: In a controversial first, a team of researchers have been creating embryos that are part human and part monkey, reports the Spanish daily El Pais. According to the newspaper, the Spanish-born biologist Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, who operates a lab at the Salk Institute in California, has been working with monkey researchers in China to perform the disturbing research. Their objective is to create "human-animal chimeras," in this case monkey embryos to which human cells are added. The idea behind the research is to fashion animals that possess organs, like a kidney or liver, made up entirely of human cells. Such animals could be used as sources of organs for transplantation. The technique for making chimeras involves injecting human embryonic stem cells into a days-old embryo of another species. The hope is that the human cells will grow along with the embryo, adding to it. Izpisua Belmonte tried making human-animal chimeras previously by adding human cells to pig embryos, but the human cells didn't take hold effectively. Because monkeys are genetically closer to humans, it's possible that the new experiments could now succeed. To give the human cells a better chance of taking hold, scientists also use gene-editing technology to disable the formation of certain types of cells in the animal embryos.
The Police in UK Want AI To Stop Violent Crime Before it Happens (newscientist.com) 170
Police in the UK want to predict serious violent crime using artificial intelligence, New Scientist is reporting. The idea is that individuals flagged by the system will be offered interventions, such as counseling, to avert potential criminal behavior. From the report: However, one of the world's leading data science institutes has expressed serious concerns about the project after seeing a redacted version of the proposals. The system, called the National Data Analytics Solution (NDAS), uses a combination of AI and statistics to try to assess the risk of someone committing or becoming a victim of gun or knife crime, as well as the likelihood of someone falling victim to modern slavery. West Midlands Police is leading the project and has until the end of March 2019 to produce a prototype. Eight other police forces, including London's Metropolitan Police and Greater Manchester Police, are also involved. NDAS is being designed so that every police force in the UK could eventually use it. Police funding has been cut significantly over recent years, so forces need a system that can look at all individuals already known to officers, with the aim of prioritizing those who need interventions most urgently, says Iain Donnelly, the police lead on the project.
Comment Does the Robot that owns itself pay taxes? (Score 1) 392
An assumption is that robots will not have sophisticated AI and will always need a human to manage it. What happens when the AI is able to manage it and has no need for human managers or a corporation?
Suppose the self driving car is able to act as a self contained corporation, earn it's own profit, pay for it's own repairs, hire or pay for it's own new designs based on data it and it's clones collected from passengers?
The problem is either going to be "who owns the robots" or "who pays the taxes". Human beings don't want to pay taxes but don't want robots to pay taxes because a very small group of humans expect to own in concentrated fashion the robots which they don't want taxes.
But there is no technical reason why robots require human owners. An autonomous agent which can take on all the functions of those humans need not even be very smart or sophisticated to have the ability to interact as a self contained business or individual economic unit.
The New Censorship: 'How Did Google Become The Internet's Censor and Master Manipulator?' (usnews.com) 246
An anonymous reader writes: Robert Epstein from U.S. News and World Report writes an article describing how Google has become the internet's censor and master manipulator. He writes about the company's nine different blacklists that impact our lives: autocomplete blacklist, Google Maps blacklist, YouTube blacklist, Google account blacklist, Google News blacklist, Google AdWords blacklist, Google AdSense blacklist, search engine blacklist, and quarantine list. The autocomplete blacklist filters out select phrases like profanities and other controversial terms like "torrent," "bisexual" and "penis." It can also be used to protect or discredit political candidates. For example, at the moment autocomplete shows you "Ted" (for former GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz) when you type "lying," but it will not show you "Hillary" when you type "crooked." While Google Maps photographs your home for everyone to see, Google maintains a list of properties it either blacks out or blurs out in its images depending on the property, e.g. military installations or wealthy residences. Epstein makes the case that while YouTube allows users to flag videos, Google employees seem far more apt to ban politically conservative videos than liberal ones. As for the Google account blacklist, you may lose access to a number of Google's products, which are all bundled into one account as of a couple of years ago, if you violate Google's terms of service agreement because Google reserves the right to "stop providing Services to you ... at any time." Google is the largest news aggregator in the world via Google News. Epstein writes, "Selective blacklisting of news sources is a powerful way of promoting a political, religious or moral agenda, with no one the wiser." Google can easily put a business out of business if a Google executive decides your business or industry doesn't meet its moral standards and revokes a business' access to Google AdWords, which makes up 70 percent of Google's $80 billion in annual revenue. Recently, Google blacklisted an entire industry -- companies providing high-interest "payday" loans. If your website has been approved by AdWords, Google's search engine is what ultimately determines the success of your business as its algorithms can be tweaked and search rankings can be manipulated, which may ruin businesses. Epstein makes an interesting case for how Google has become the internet's censor and master manipulator. Given Google's online dominance, do you think Google should be regulated like a public utility?
Volcano Erupts In Southwest Alaska, Sending Ash 20,000 Feet (google.com) 76
USA Today reports that according to the U.S. Geological Survey, the Pavlov Volcano, "about 600 miles southwest of Anchorage, erupted at 4:18 p.m. local time. The agency says the eruption also led to tremors on the ground. ... The USGS has raised the volcano alert level to "Warning" and the aviation warning to 'Red.'" Television station KTUU of Anchorage has a few photos of the emerging ash plume, which has so far risen to about 20,000 feet (hence that aviation warning).
We Had All Better Hope These Scientists Are Wrong About the Planet's Future (washingtonpost.com) 618
Less than 24 hours since we read this dire climate study, an anonymous reader writes from a Washington Post report about several more concerning things: James Hansen, a former NASA scientist, says his new study suggests the impact of global warming will be quicker and more catastrophic than generally envisioned. The research invokes collapsing ice sheets, violent megastorms and even the hurling of boulders by giant waves in its quest to suggest that even 2 degrees Celsius of global warming above pre-industrial levels would be far too much. Hansen has called it the most important work he has ever done. "I think almost everybody who is really familiar with both paleo and modern is now very concerned that we are approaching, if we have not passed, the points at which we have locked in really big changes for young people and future generations," Hansen said.
Activision Buys Candy Crush Developer For $5.9B (inquisitr.com) 132
ForgedArtificer writes: Activision Blizzard purchased Candy Crush Saga developer King Interactive Entertainment last night for a cool $5.9 billion USD; about 20% above market value. The move likely leaves them owning five of the top grossing franchises in the industry. "Candy Crush is one of the most lucrative games in the world, earning some $1.33 billion in revenue in 2014 alone according to a King financial statement. The studio, which operates Candy Crush and a number of similar games including Bubble Witch and Farm Heroes, grossed $529 million in the second quarter of 2015."
MH370: Fragment Is From Missing Flight 272
hcs_$reboot writes: The plane part (the flaperon) that was found on a beach in the Indian Ocean on Réunion island was determined to be part of MH370, the Malaysia Airlines flight that vanished more than a year ago. Some experts have postulated that the damage suggests the flaperon may have been deployed when the plane hit the water, meaning that someone in the cockpit was consciously manipulating the controls. The Malaysian Prime Minister said at a press conference "We now have physical evidence that ... Flight MH370 tragically ended in the Southern Indian Ocean.".
Supreme Court Upholds Key Obamacare Subsidies 591
HughPickens.com writes: Retuers reports that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 6 — 3 in favor of the nationwide availability of tax subsidies that are crucial to the implementation of President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, handing a major victory to the president. It marked the second time in three years that the high court ruled against a major challenge to the law brought by conservatives seeking to gut it.
"Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them," wrote Chief Justice Roberts in the majority opinion (PDF). He added that nationwide availability of the credits is required to "avoid the type of calamitous result that Congress plainly meant to avoid." The ruling will come as a major relief to Obama as he seeks to ensure that his legacy legislative achievement is implemented effectively and survives political and legal attacks before he leaves office in early 2017. Justice Antonin Scalia took the relatively rare step of reading a summary of his dissenting opinion from the bench. "We really should start calling the law SCOTUScare," said Scalia referencing the court's earlier decision upholding the constitutionality of the law.
"Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them," wrote Chief Justice Roberts in the majority opinion (PDF). He added that nationwide availability of the credits is required to "avoid the type of calamitous result that Congress plainly meant to avoid." The ruling will come as a major relief to Obama as he seeks to ensure that his legacy legislative achievement is implemented effectively and survives political and legal attacks before he leaves office in early 2017. Justice Antonin Scalia took the relatively rare step of reading a summary of his dissenting opinion from the bench. "We really should start calling the law SCOTUScare," said Scalia referencing the court's earlier decision upholding the constitutionality of the law.
Microwave Comms Betwen Population Centers Could Be Key To Easing Internet Bottlenecks 221
itwbennett writes: Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Duke University recently looked at the main causes of Internet latency and what it would take to achieve speed-of-light performance. The first part of the paper, titled Towards a Speed of Light Internet, is devoted to finding out where the slowdowns are coming from. They found that the bulk of the delay comes from the latency of the underlying infrastructure, which works in a multiplicative way by affecting each step in the request. The second part of the paper proposes what turns out to be a relatively cheap and potentially doable solution to bring Internet speeds close to the speed of light for the vast majority of us. The authors propose creating a network that would connect major population centers using microwave networks.
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