A sudden, deep “crack” or “gash” in the Earth around Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains has left many in awe and curious about the explanation.
“AI is achievable, but it will take more than computer science and neuroscience to develop machines that think like people”
Current medical treatment boils down to six words: Have disease, take pill, kill something. But physician Siddhartha Mukherjee points to a future of medicine that will transform the way we heal.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more.
Chatting with strangers on Facebook just got a bit easier.
The social network is launching a new feature for Messenger called Message Requests, that makes it easier for people to receive (or ignore) messages from people they aren’t friends with.
See also: You no longer need a Facebook account to use Facebook Messenger.
Facebook Inc. founder Mark Zuckerberg has started his latest trip to India with a visit to the Taj Mahal and described the country’s most-photographed and photogenic monument as “even more stunning” than he had expected.
Mr. Zuckerberg is in the South Asian nation to deepen his social media company’s connection with the country, which is home to the largest number of Facebook users outside the U.S.
In a post from Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, on his Facebook page, Mr. Zuckerberg said that he had “always wanted to see” the mausoleum, which was built by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan for his deceased wife Mumtaz Mahal in the 1600s.
This piece is dedicated to Stefan Stern, who picked up on – and ran with – a remark I made at this year’s Brain Bar Budapest, concerning the need for a ‘value-added’ account of being ‘human’ in a world in which there are many drivers towards replacing human labour with ever smarter technologies.
In what follows, I assume that ‘human’ can no longer be taken for granted as something that adds value to being-in-the-world. The value needs to be earned, it can’t be just inherited. For example, according to animal rights activists, ‘value-added’ claims to brand ‘humanity’ amount to an unjustified privileging of the human life-form, whereas artificial intelligence enthusiasts argue that computers will soon exceed humans at the (‘rational’) tasks that we have historically invoked to create distance from animals. I shall be more concerned with the latter threat, as it comes from a more recognizable form of ‘economistic’ logic.
Economics makes an interesting but subtle distinction between ‘price’ and ‘cost’. Price is what you pay upfront through mutual agreement to the person selling you something. In contrast, cost consists in the resources that you forfeit by virtue of possessing the thing. Of course, the cost of something includes its price, but typically much more – and much of it experienced only once you’ve come into possession. Thus, we say ‘hidden cost’ but not ‘hidden price’. The difference between price and cost is perhaps most vivid when considering large life-defining purchases, such as a house or a car. In these cases, any hidden costs are presumably offset by ‘benefits’, the things that you originally wanted — or at least approve after the fact — that follow from possession.
Now, think about the difference between saying, ‘Humanity comes at a price’ and ‘Humanity comes at a cost’. The first phrase suggests what you need to pay your master to acquire freedom, while the second suggests what you need to suffer as you exercise your freedom. The first position has you standing outside the category of ‘human’ but wishing to get in – say, as a prospective resident of a gated community. The second position already identifies you as ‘human’ but perhaps without having fully realized what you had bargained for. The philosophical movement of Existentialism was launched in the mid-20th century by playing with the irony implied in the idea of ‘human emancipation’ – the ease with which the Hell we wish to leave (and hence pay the price) morphs into the Hell we agree to enter (and hence suffer the cost). Thus, our humanity reduces to the leap out of the frying pan of slavery and into the fire of freedom.
Continue reading “Humanity on a Budget, or the Value-Added of Being 'Human'” »
