Q) Why Algorithmic leaps can be better than Hardware leaps?
Ans) Hardware constraints create bottlenecks that are hard to tackle as uncertainty of physics at small scale (nano-meters and less) come into play (electrons start jumping around).
At this point, ideas (algorithms) can be used to unleash full potential of the feasible hardware.
Westworld’s first season was largely focused on the abuse of artificial life, given that the park hosts’ purpose almost exclusively revolved around sex, violence, and suffering. The freedom Dolores and her ilk were fighting for was simple consciousness—a right to their own memories and self-awareness. In just the first four episodes, Westworld’s second season has exploded that basic quest into all kinds of fascinating directions, but “The Riddle of the Sphinx” was the first to really grapple with one of the most obvious questions in AI, which is: Isn’t artificial intelligence the key to immortality?
Three Atlantic staffers discuss “The Riddle of the Sphinx,” the fourth episode of Season 2.
The power of the cloud, artificial intelligence, and machine learning is making smart cities and data-based Location of Things navigation a reality. Join the Principal Product Manager for Microsoft Azure Maps and others and learn how advanced location technology will revolutionize everything from autonomous cars to connected cities. Don’t miss this VB Live event!
Location data is the foundation of technology: It’s what binds a device and a user, a user and the environment they’re in. And as location data moves to the cloud and gets smarter, powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, the number of potential applications for smart location data is exploding, says Chris Pendleton, Principal PM for Azure Maps. We’re on the threshold of creating a smarter society, built on the hundreds of millions of connected devices that together create The Location of Things.
In “Engineering a Traiter,” the year is 2027, and a former military officer named Jay Roberts has just engineered a missile attack in downtown Houston — except he doesn’t know that it’s his fault.
This sombre graphic novel tells the story of Roberts, an army engineer working in Texas who’s been targeted by a militia eager to gain access to building codes in order to orchestrate a terrorist attack. With sophisticated A.I., the militia manipulate everything in Roberts’s life. The news he sees is curated to instil hopelessness and despair, and family members’ social media accounts are hijacked to distance Roberts from loved ones. Frustrated and alone, he eventually confesses security information to a “friend” he’s made online, allowing the militias the access they’ve been hoping for. Once they have what they want, Roberts’ social media is manipulated to make him look like a radicalized terrorist. When the attack occurs, he takes the fall.
The narrative may be science fiction, but it paints a realistic — if not paranoid — vision of the future. That bleakness is exactly what Brian David Johnson wanted when he began penning a series of graphic novels for the Army Cyber Institute at West Point.
When Google DeepMind researchers trained a neural network to tackle a virtual maze, it spontaneously developed digital equivalents to the specialized neurons called grid cells that mammals use to navigate. Not only did the resulting AI system have superhuman navigation capabilities, the research could provide insight into how our brains work.
Grid cells were the subject of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, alongside other navigation-related neurons. These cells are arranged in a lattice of hexagons, and the brain effectively overlays this pattern onto its environment. Whenever the animal crosses a point in space represented by one of the corners these hexagons, a neuron fires, allowing the animal to track its movement.
Mammalian brains actually have multiple arrays of these cells. These arrays create overlapping grids of different sizes and orientations that together act like an in-built GPS. The system even works in the dark and independently of the animal’s speed or direction.
Pichai’s challenge is to find a way of reconciling Google’s dovish roots with its future. Having spent more than a decade developing the industry’s most formidable arsenal of AI research and abilities, Google is keen to wed those advances to its fast-growing cloud-computing business. Rivals are rushing to cut deals with the government, which spends billions of dollars a year on all things cloud. No government entity spends more on such technology than the military. Medin and Alphabet director Schmidt, who both sit on the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board, have pushed Google to work with the government on counter-terrorism, cybersecurity, telecommunications and more.
To win in the business of cloud computing, the company tiptoes into the business of war. Some staff fear it’s a first step toward autonomous killing machines.
At least two U.S. universities will offer computer-science degrees focusing on A.I. beginning in the fall of 2018.
By Gael Cooper Inc.com contributor.
