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Pause for a second and look outside your window at a bird, a squirrel, or even an insect. These organisms all perform complex tasks that involve perceiving food and threats, navigating around trees, and following or hiding from other animals. There is not a robot or a drone on the planet that can do what these bugs and small animals can easily do.

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If what you want to do is to apply machine learning toolkits to datasets, then you don’t need to study much. Study the field to which you want to apply machine learning, then maybe the good old text “Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques” … then when you want to apply some particular machine learning technique, look up a paper or two on that technique and read it…

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Synopsis:

Up till now, what men know the least about is still themselves, their brains in particular. If men do not understand their brains, there is no way for bionic AI and machine brains. In this dialogue, many scientists discuss the development of.

AI and the positive meaning of AI to today’s society.

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Audio engineering can make computerized customer support lines seem friendlier and more helpful.

Say you’re on the phone with a company and the automated virtual assistant needs a few seconds to “look up” your information. And then you hear it. The sound is unmistakable. It’s familiar. It’s the clickity-clack of a keyboard. You know it’s just a sound effect, but unlike hold music or a stream of company information, it’s not annoying. In fact, it’s kind of comforting.

Michael Norton and Ryan Buell of the Harvard Business School studied this idea —that customers appreciate knowing that work is being done on their behalf, even when the only “person” “working” is an algorithm. They call it the labor illusion.

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Chinese delivery firm is moving to embrace automation. Orange robots at the company’s sorting stations are able to identify the destination of a package through a code-scan, virtually eliminating sorting mistakes.

The army of robots can sort up to 200,000 packages a day, and are self-charging, meaning they are operational 24/7. The company estimates its robotic sorting system is saving around 70-percent of the costs a human-based sorting line would require.

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Chinese researchers are developing an advanced artificial intelligence processor that is expected to help China launch its foray into the global chip market; a whopping 1.4 million dollars has already been earmarked for the purpose by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, according to Xinhua.

Tianhe-2 in National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou

© Photo: O01326

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For people in that area, and it may be worth while to try reaching out to them for funding for anti aging stuff.


Why is RAND opening a Bay Area office?

The San Francisco Bay Area is really at the center of technology and transformation. That’s also been a focus at RAND since our very first report, Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship, in 1946, which foretold the creation of satellites more than a decade before Sputnik.

Today, our researchers are working on important questions related to autonomous vehicles, drones, cybersecurity, education technology, virtual medicine—the same questions driving Silicon Valley startups and billion-dollar Bay Area corporations. At the same time, we’re looking at issues surrounding social inequality, drug policy, water resource management, and transportation, all of which directly relate to the Bay Area.

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Some weird religious stories w/ transhumanism Expect the conflict between religion and transhumanism to get worse, as closed-minded conservative viewpoints get challenged by radical science and a future with no need for an afterlife: http://barbwire.com/2017/04/06/cybernetic-messiah-transhumanism-artificial-intelligence/ & http://www.livebytheword.blog/google-directors-push-for-computers-inside-human-brains-is-anti-christ-human-rights-abuse-theologians-explain/ & http://ctktexas.com/pastoral-backstory-march-30th-2017/


By J. Davila Ashcroft

The recent film Ghost in the Shell is a science fiction tale about a young girl (known as Major) used as an experiment in a Transhumanist/Artificial Intelligence experiment, turning her into a weapon. At first, she complies, thinking the company behind the experiment saved her life after her family died. The truth is, however, that the company took her forcefully while she was a runaway. Major finds out that this company has done the same to others as well, and this knowledge causes her to turn on the company. Throughout the story the viewer is confronted with the existential questions behind such an experiment as Major struggles with the trauma of not feeling things like the warmth of human skin, and the sensations of touch and taste, and feels less than human, though she is told many times she is better than human. While this is obviously a science fiction story, what might comes as a surprise to some is that the subject matter of the film is not just fiction. Transhumanism and Artificial Intelligence on the level of the things explored in this film are all too real, and seem to be only a few years around the corner.

Recently it was reported that Elon Musk of SpaceX fame had a rather disturbing meeting with Demis Hassabis. Hassabis is the man in charge of a very disturbing project with far reaching plans akin to the Ghost in the Shell story, known as DeepMind. DeepMind is a Google project dedicated to exploring and developing all the possible uses of Artificial Intelligence. Musk stated during this meeting that the colonization of Mars is important because Hassabis’ work will make earth too dangerous for humans. By way of demonstrating how dangerous the goals of DeepMind are, one of its business partners, Shane Lange is reported to have stated, “I think human extinction will probably occur, and this technology will play a part in it.” Lange likely understands what critics of artificial intelligence have been saying for years. That is, such technology has an almost certain probability of become “self aware”. That is, becoming aware of its own existence, abilities, and developing distinct opinions and protocols that override those of its creators. If artificial intelligence does become sentient, that would mean, for advocates of A.I., that we would then owe them moral consideration. They, however, would owe humanity no such consideration if they perceived us as a danger to their existence, since we could simply disconnect them. In that scenario we would be an existential threat, and what do you think would come of that? Thus Lange’s statement carries an important message.

Already so-called “deep learning” machines are capable of figuring out solutions that weren’t programmed into them, and actually teach themselves to improve. For example, AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence designed to play the game Go, developed its own strategies for winning at the game. Strategies which its creators cannot explain and are at a loss to understand.

Transhumanist Philosophy The fact is many of us have been physically altered in some way. Some of the most common examples are lasik surgery, hip and knee replacements, and heart valve replacements, and nearly everyone has had vaccines that enhance our normal physical ability to resist certain illnesses and disease. The question is, how far is too far? How “enhanced” is too enhanced?

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Could costumed robots one day roam the streets of Walt Disney World?

A new patent application from Disney (DIS) suggests it’s something the company has considered.

The document says Disney is developing robots, including “humanoid robots,” that have been “adapted for soft contact and/or interaction with a human.”

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Libratus, an AI built by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), racked up over $US1.7 million ($2.2 million) worth of chips against four of the top professional poker players in the world in a 20-day marathon poker tournament that ended in Philadelphia on Tuesday…

While machines have beaten humans over the last two decade in chess, checkers, and most recently in the ancient game of Go, Libratus’ victory is significant because poker is an imperfect information game — similar to the real world where not all problems are laid out.

The difficulty in figuring out human behaviour is one of the main reasons why poker was considered immune to machines.

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