Lifeboat Foundation

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an emerging field of computer programming that is already changing the way we interact online and in real life, but the term ‘intelligence’ has been poorly defined. Rather than focusing on smarts, researchers should be looking at the implications and viability of artificial consciousness as that’s the real driver behind intelligent decisions.

Consciousness rather than intelligence should be the true measure of AI. At the moment, despite all our efforts, there’s none.

Significant advances have been made in the field of AI over the past decade, in particular with machine learning, but artificial intelligence itself remains elusive. Instead, what we have is artificial serfs—computers with the ability to trawl through billions of interactions and arrive at conclusions, exposing trends and providing recommendations, but they’re blind to any real intelligence. What’s needed is artificial awareness.

Elon Musk has called AI the “biggest existential threat” facing humanity and likened it to “summoning a demon,”^[1] while Stephen Hawking thought it would be the “worst event” in the history of civilization and could “end with humans being replaced.”^[2] Although this sounds alarmist, like something from a science fiction movie, both concerns are founded on a well-established scientific premise found in biology—the principle of competitive exclusion.^[3]

Continue reading “Is artificial consciousness the solution to AI?” »

A new device could help law enforcement spot traces of drugs or bomb-making materials from more than 100 feet away.

Voters in Denver, a city at the forefront of the widening national debate over legalizing marijuana, have become the first in the nation to effectively decriminalize another recreational drug: hallucinogenic mushrooms.

The local ballot measure did not quite legalize the mushrooms that contain psilocybin, a naturally occurring psychedelic compound. State and federal regulations would have to change to accomplish that.

But the measure made the possession, use or cultivation of the mushrooms by people aged 21 or older the lowest-priority crime for law enforcement in the city of Denver and Denver County. Arrests and prosecutions, already fairly rare, would all but disappear.

Continue reading “Denver Voters Support ‘Magic’ Mushrooms” »

Inmates will be under surveillance 24 hours a day.

Family Tree DNA was criticized for secretly working with the FBI. Now it’s explicitly asking potential customers to help law enforcement.

And it could violate inmates’ rights.

Power suits, robotaxis, Leonardo da Vinci mania—just a few of the things to look out for in 2019. But what else will make our top ten stories for the year ahead?

Click here to subscribe to The Economist on YouTube: https://econ.st/2xvTKdy

Continue reading “What will be the biggest stories of 2019? | Part One | The Economist” »

Answer: Quite possibly because Facebook’s already forced you to log out and back into your account today.

The news: Facebook said hackers exploited a software flaw to access the records of almost 50 million customers. The firm said it had fixed the vulnerability and reported the breach to law enforcement.

The hack: The company said that the hackers had exploited a coding glitch that affected the service’s “View As” feature, which lets people see what their own profile looks like when someone else takes a look at it online. This allowed them to get hold of digital “tokens,” which are software keys that let people access their account without having to log back in every time.

Continue reading “How to know if you’re affected by Facebook’s massive data breach” »

While facial recognition performs well in controlled environments (like photos taken at borders), they struggle to identify faces in the wild. According to data released under the UK’s Freedom of Information laws, the Metropolitan’s AFR system has a 98 percent false positive rate — meaning that 98 percent of the “matches” it makes are of innocent people.

The head of London’s Metropolitan Police force has defended the organization’s ongoing trials of automated facial recognition systems, despite legal challenges and criticisms that the technology is “almost entirely inaccurate.”

According to a report from The Register, UK Metropolitan Police commissioner Cressida Dick said on Wednesday that she did not expect the technology to lead to “lots of arrests,” but argued that the public “expect[s]” law enforcement to test such cutting-edge systems.

Continue reading “London police chief ‘completely comfortable’ using facial recognition with 98 percent error rate” »