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Category: robotics/AI – Page 2189

Kurzweil is one of the world’s leading minds on artificial intelligence, technology and futurism. He is the author of five national best-selling books, including “The Singularity is Near” and “How to Create a Mind.”

Raymond “Ray” Kurzweil is an American author, computer scientist, inventor and futurist. Aside from futurology, he is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He has written books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism. Kurzweil is a public advocate for the futurist and transhumanist movements, and gives public talks to share his optimistic outlook on life extension technologies and the future of nanotechnology, robotics, and biotechnology.

Kurzweil admits that he cared little for his health until age 35, when he was found to suffer from a glucose intolerance, an early form of type II diabetes (a major risk factor for heart disease). Kurzweil then found a doctor (Terry Grossman, M.D.) who shares his non-conventional beliefs to develop an extreme regimen involving hundreds of pills, chemical intravenous treatments, red wine, and various other methods to attempt to live longer. Kurzweil was ingesting “250 supplements, eight to 10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea” every day and drinking several glasses of red wine a week in an effort to “reprogram” his biochemistry. Lately, he has cut down the number of supplement pills to 90.

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Continue reading “Ray Kurzweil — A Revolutionary Future” | >

How is Artificial Intelligence actually thinking? Even their creators often don’t really fully understand. But if AI becomes more and more important you should at least have an idea of how algorithms get to results. And they think totally different to how human beings do, says Sara M. Watson, tech critic and writer at the Digital Asia Hub, Hong Kong. How can literature and journalism help to find a new perspective on AI?

“The biggest problem AI has is that even the engineers can’t really explain certain outcomes or certain decisions that go through an artificially intelligent system.”

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Article out by Ron Bailey at Reason Magazine that discusses #transhumanism and #libertarianism:

Kai Weiss, a researcher at the Austrian Economics Center and Hayek Institute in Vienna, Austria, swiftly denounced the piece. “Transhumanism should be rejected by libertarians as an abomination of human evolution,” he wrote.

Clearly there is some disagreement.

Weiss is correct that Istvan doesn’t expend much intellectual effort linking transhumanism with libertarian thinking. Istvan largely assumes that people seeking to flourish should have the freedom to enhance their bodies and minds and those of their children without much government interference. So what abominable transhumanist technologies does Weiss denounce?

Continue reading “Transhumanism and Libertarianism Are Entirely Compatible” | >

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke on Friday at a meeting of students in Yaroslavl, Russia about the development of artificial intelligence (AI). In a rather ominous sounding warning, the leader stated that “the one who becomes the leader in this sphere will be the ruler of the world.”

Many of those working in the field see AI as a tool for making humanity better, while others foresee it as a harbinger of doom for the human species. Not many high profile people — especially the leader of the largest nation on Earth — have come forward to blatantly express the potential of AI to be a tool of immense power for a nation to wield.

President Putin went on to say that “it would be strongly undesirable if someone wins a monopolist position,” implying that Russia’s breakthroughs would ideally be shared with other nations.

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Chinese electronics giant Huawei on Saturday unveiled its first mobile personal assistant with artificial intelligence in Berlin, in hopes it will rival the dominance of Samsung’s Bixby and Apple’s Siri.

“Smartphones are smart but they are not intelligent enough,” Richard Yu, of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group, said at this year’s IFA electronics fair.

The mobile assistant, called Kirin 970, will systematically respond to three questions—” the most important combination,” Yu said: Where is the user? Who are they and what are they doing?

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Who woulda thunk it — Putin is a fellow transhumanist. And that is absolutely TERRIFYING.

“…Speaking to students during a national “open lesson” from the city of Yaroslavl, northeast of Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the country that takes the lead in the sphere of computer-based artificial intelligence (AI) will rule.

Speaking to students during a national “open lesson” from the city of Yaroslavl, northeast of Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the country that takes the lead in the sphere of computer-based artificial intelligence (AI) will rule.

“Artificial intelligence is the future not only of Russia but of all of mankind,” said Putin. “There are huge opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to foresee today.”

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Creators of artificial intelligence measure how well machines can imitate human qualities like empathy, listening, affirmation, and love. Don’t reciprocate, says Sherry Turkle. Turkle’s latest book is “Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age”

“I have very strong feelings about a future in which robots become the kind of conversational agent that pretend to have emotional lives. Shortly after I finished we can make reclaiming conversation I was interviewed for an article in the New York Times about Hello Barbie. So Hello Barbie comes out of the box and says, now I’m just paraphrasing, the jest hi I’m Hello Barbie. I have a sister. You have a sister. I kind of hate my sister. I’m jealous of your sister. Do you hate your sister? Let’s talk about how we feel about our sisters. In other words it just kind of knows stuff about you and is ready to talk about the arc of a human life and sibling rivalry as though it had a life, a mother, the feelings of jealousy about a sister and was ready to relate to you on that basis. And it doesn’t. It’s teaching pretend empathy. It’s asking you to relate to an object that has pretend empathy.”

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