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AI researchers have built a Minecraft bot that can explore and expand its capabilities in the game’s open world — but unlike other bots, this one basically wrote its own code through trial and error and lots of GPT-4 queries.

Called Voyager, this experimental system is an example of an “embodied agent,” an AI that can move and act freely and purposefully in a simulated or real environment. Personal assistant type AIs and chatbots don’t have to actually do stuff, let alone navigate a complex world to get that stuff done. But that’s exactly what a household robot might be expected to do in the future, so there’s lots of research into how they might do that.

Minecraft is a good place to test such things because it’s a very (very) approximate representation of the real world, with simple and straightforward rules and physics, but it’s also complex and open enough that there’s lots to accomplish or try. Purpose-built simulators are great, too, but they have their own limitations.

Stepping closer to AI regulation.

As AI continues to develop at a rapid rate, concerns have been raised by experts and the so-called AI ‘godfathers’ about the imminent risks it could pose to people’s privacy, human rights, and safety.

Amid steps taken by the United Kingdom government and the European Union, in partnership with the U.S, to regulate the technology, a member of the non-statutory AI Council of the U.K. government has said that the very powerful artificial general intelligence (AGI) systems may eventually have to be banned.

This is a “key moment in a long journey for Dream Chaser,” which could fly to orbit for the first time this year.

Sierra Space successfully carried out a key test on its Dream Chaser spaceplane, which is designed to lift passengers to the International Space Station (ISS) and Orbital Reef, the private orbital station it’s developing alongside Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.

Colorado-based Sierra Space announced in a press statement that it has successfully powered up its spaceplane for the first time. The new milestone means Dream Chaser isn’t too far away from performing its first orbital flight test, currently scheduled for this year.

Midcap information technology (IT) services firm, Mphasis, on Thursday, announced the setting up of a business unit dedicated to generative artificial intelligence (AI). The unit will offer advisory on adoption of generative AI solutions to clients, develop the company’s own generative AI properties, offer licenses to over 250 AI models through the company’s ‘Hyperscaler’ solutions marketplace for clients, partnerships with 50 startups for helping clients build solutions, and offer conversational AI tools such as chatbots for clients to deploy in their business.

Anup Nair, who has so far served as senior vice-president and chief technology officer (CTO) of Mphasis Digital, will helm the unit, called Mphasis.ai, as its chief architect and CTO.

The launch of the dedicated business unit comes after a flurry of similar launches by pretty much every large-cap IT services firm in the country. On 6 April, Tech Mahindra became the first of the large domestic IT firms to launch a generative AI solution, called ‘Generative AI Studio’, to help clients deploy the technology for content generation use cases.

Joscha Bach is a cognitive scientist focusing on cognitive architectures, consciousness, models of mental representation, emotion, motivation and sociality.

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0:00:00 Introduction.
0:00:17 Bach’s work ethic / daily routine.
0:01:35 What is your definition of truth?
0:04:41 Nature’s substratum is a “quantum graph”?
0:06:25 Mathematics as the descriptor of all language.
0:13:52 Why is constructivist mathematics “real”? What’s the definition of “real”?
0:17:06 What does it mean to “exist”? Does “pi” exist?
0:20:14 The mystery of something vs. nothing. Existence is the default.
0:21:11 Bach’s model vs. the multiverse.
0:26:51 Is the universe deterministic.
0:28:23 What determines the initial conditions, as well as the rules?
0:30:55 What is time? Is time fundamental?
0:34:21 What’s the optimal algorithm for finding truth?
0:40:40 Are the fundamental laws of physics ultimately “simple”?
0:50:17 The relationship between art and the artist’s cost function.
0:54:02 Ideas are stories, being directed by intuitions.
0:58:00 Society has a minimal role in training your intuitions.
0:59:24 Why does art benefit from a repressive government?
1:04:01 A market case for civil rights.
1:06:40 Fascism vs communism.
1:10:50 Bach’s “control / attention / reflective recall” model.
1:13:32 What’s more fundamental… Consciousness or attention?
1:16:02 The Chinese Room Experiment.
1:25:22 Is understanding predicated on consciousness?
1:26:22 Integrated Information Theory of consciousness (IIT)
1:30:15 Donald Hoffman’s theory of consciousness.
1:32:40 Douglas Hofstadter’s “strange loop” theory of consciousness.
1:34:10 Holonomic Brain theory of consciousness.
1:34:42 Daniel Dennett’s theory of consciousness.
1:36:57 Sensorimotor theory of consciousness (embodied cognition)
1:44:39 What is intelligence?
1:45:08 Intelligence vs. consciousness.
1:46:36 Where does Free Will come into play, in Bach’s model?
1:48:46 The opposite of free will can lead to, or feel like, addiction.
1:51:48 Changing your identity to effectively live forever.
1:59:13 Depersonalization disorder as a result of conceiving of your “self” as illusory.
2:02:25 Dealing with a fear of loss of control.
2:05:00 What about heart and conscience?
2:07:28 How to test / falsify Bach’s model of consciousness.
2:13:46 How has Bach’s model changed in the past few years?
2:14:41 Why Bach doesn’t practice Lucid Dreaming anymore.
2:15:33 Dreams and GAN’s (a machine learning framework)
2:18:08 If dreams are for helping us learn, why don’t we consciously remember our dreams.
2:19:58 Are dreams “real”? Is all of reality a dream?
2:20:39 How do you practically change your experience to be most positive / helpful?
2:23:56 What’s more important than survival? What’s worth dying for?
2:28:27 Bach’s identity.
2:29:44 Is there anything objectively wrong with hating humanity?
2:30:31 Practical Platonism.
2:33:00 What “God” is.
2:36:24 Gods are as real as you, Bach claims.
2:37:44 What “prayer” is, and why it works.
2:41:06 Our society has lost its future and thus our culture.
2:43:24 What does Bach disagree with Jordan Peterson about?
2:47:16 The millennials are the first generation that’s authoritarian since WW2
2:48:31 Bach’s views on the “social justice” movement.
2:51:29 Universal Basic Income as an answer to social inequality, or General Artificial Intelligence?
2:57:39 Nested hierarchy of “I“s (the conflicts within ourselves)
2:59:22 In the USA, innovation is “cheating” (for the most part)
3:02:27 Activists are usually operating on false information.
3:03:04 Bach’s Marxist roots and lessons to his former self.
3:08:45 BONUS BIT: On societies problems.

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Long considered the lifeline of the world’s most populous country, the 170-year-old system has seen rapid expansion and modernisation under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s push to boost infrastructure and connectivity in the fast-growing economy.

This year, the government made a record 2.4-trillion-rupee ($30 billion) capital outlay for the railways, a 50% increase over the previous fiscal year, to upgrade tracks, ease congestion and add new trains.

A new, semi-high-speed train built in India and called the “Vande Bharat Express”, or “Salute to India Express”, is showcased as evidence of this modernisation, with Modi himself flagging off the first journeys of many of the trains around the country.