Artificial Intelligence

David Ferrucci on Singularity 1 on 1: Pursue the Big Challenges

by Socrates
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This Monday I interviewed Dr. David Ferrucci on Singularity 1 on 1. David is the IBM team leader behind Watson – the computer that succeeded in dethroning humanity’s greatest ever jeopardy champion – Ken Jennings. I met both Dr. Ferrucci and Ken Jennings during last year’s Singularity Summit where both of them spoke about Watson and the opportunities and challenges associated with it. It was then and there that I hatched my plan to get David (and Ken) on Singularity 1 on 1. I have to say that I learned a lot from and enjoyed talking to David very much. My favorite quote that I will take away from him is this: “Pursue the big challenges and do the big things that inspire people and make them scratch their heads.” During our conversation with Dr. Ferrucci we also discuss topics [...]

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Kara by Quantic Dream: Do Androids Fear Death?

by Socrates
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Kara is a 7 min long tech demo featuring sophisticated performance-capture technology by Quantic Dream. The clip was inspired by Ray Kurzweil’s book The Singularity is Near and was unveiled by David Cage last Wednesday at a Game Developers’ Conference. Said David Cage: “There will come a point where artificial intelligences are smarter than us, it’s inevitable,” Cage said in an interview with Wired prior to the grand unveiling. “This clip is about the moment that happens.” Kara is the story of an android named Kara becoming self-aware while being assembled and desperately insisting that her sentience is a feature and not a bug. I find the realism moving and the poignancy of the ethical questions raised with respect to the freedom of all sentient beings, no matter their substrate, totally heart-breaking. Short clips like that might be a good way to put the spotlight [...]

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Luke Muehlhauser on Singularity 1 on 1: Superhuman AI is Coming This Century

by Socrates
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Last week I interviewed Luke Muehlhauser for Singularity 1 on 1. Luke Muehlhauser is the Executive Director of the Singularity Institute, the author of many articles on AI safety and the cognitive science of rationality, and the host of the popular podcast “Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot.” His work is collected at lukeprog.com. I have to say that despite his young age and lack of a University Degree – a criticism which we discuss during our interview, Luke was one of the best and clearest spoken guests on my show and I really enjoyed talking to to him. During our 56 min-long conversation we discuss a large variety of topics such as: Luke’s Christian-Evangelico personal background as the first-born son of a pastor in northern Minnesota; his fascinating transition transition from religion and theology to atheism and science; his personal motivation and desire to [...]

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Dan Barry on Singularity 1 on 1: Don’t Let Anyone Tell You That You Can’t Reach Your Dreams

by Socrates
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During my 10 weeks at Singularity University I was able to ambush Dan Barry for a 20 min interview for Singularity 1 on 1. Former NASA astronaut and veteran of 3 space missions, Dan is currently the head of faculty at Singularity University and the co-chair for AI, Robotics, Space and Physical Sciences. (As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full.) For me Dan Barry was an inspiration from the very beginning of the program: His inaugural lecture, Failure is an Option, during which he shared both his wife’s moving story (documented in her best-selling book Fixing My Gaze) and his own life’s story (with his 13 unsuccessful attempts to become an astronaut), not only moved me deeply but also taught me that nothing is impossible and that one should never give [...]

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You Can’t Spell Paranoia Without AI: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and to Love Evil Artificial Intelligence

by Matt Swayne
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I have a theory: It wasn’t capitalism and democracy that won the Cold War. Popular Science won the Cold War. Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazines — as well as other journals and magazines that took an awe-inspired, jaw-dropping look at science and technology — paid particular interest to military technology developed by Soviet block engineers in the 1950s and 1960s. The stories typically depicted Soviet military might as growing and unbeatable. Sort of like runaway artificial general intelligence (AGI). Soviet tanks had better armor. Soviet planes were faster and more maneuverable. Soviet subs dived deeper and plowed through the water more silently. Soviet nuclear ICBMs were poised to strike more accurately and more powerfully. (A great place to check out the above claims is the Popular Science Archive Search.) We can argue how the military industrial complex easily co-opts [...]

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Smart Homes: Is AI the Ghost in the Machine?

by Nikki Olson
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When we conceptualize AI, we often forget that it is not something that has to operate in a single location, or have intelligence qualities like our own. We are already surrounded by AI systems that are nothing like our own intelligence, that utilize many machines spread out over large distances, and are equally ‘present’ in many locations. In the future we will bring AI systems like these into our homes in the form of ‘smart environments.’  In doing so we introduce new and interesting relationships between man and machine. However, there may be some limits as to how ‘alive’ we want our AI homes to be. One of the most well-known depictions of the potential ‘terror’ of intelligent environments,  which happens to be a parody of 2001’s HAL and Dean Koontz’s Demon Seed, is the Simpson’s ‘Treehouse of Horror XII’ [...]

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Human Rights for Artificial Intelligence: What is the Threshold for Granting (Human) Rights?

by CMStewart
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It is the year 2045. Strong artificial intelligence (AI) is integrated into our society. Humanoid robots with non-biological brain circuitries walk among people in every nation. These robots look like us, speak like us, and act like us. Should they have the same human rights as we do? The function and reason of human rights are similar to the function and cause of evolution. Human rights help develop and maintain functional, self-improving societies. Evolution perpetuates the continual development of functional, reproducible organisms. Just as humans have evolved, and will continue to evolve, human rights will continue to evolve as well. Assuming strong AI will eventually develop strong sentience and emotion, the AI experience of sentience and emotion will likely be significantly different from the human experience. But is there a definable limit to the human experience? What makes a human [...]

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Change of Plans: Kill All Humans

by Socrates
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The singularity is often equated with a Terminator or Matrix type of a TechnoCalyps based on the presumption that once artificial intelligence becomes sentient then supposedly the most likely action they will undertake is to exterminate us. The following cartoon has been circulating for a while around the general singularity and transhumanist community, but because it is so funny, I thought I’d post it anyway. Even if you may have seen it before you may still find it funny again… I know I laugh every time I read it, and I’ve read it a dozen times by now Hat tip to Singularity 2045 for finding the cartoon first. Related articles Singularities Happen: Alan Watts explains the Singularity… (singularityblog.singularitysymposium.com) The Best of Singularity Weblog 2010 (singularityblog.singularitysymposium.com) Why I Am an Optimist (singularityblog.singularitysymposium.com) A Transhumanist Manifesto (singularityblog.singularitysymposium.com)

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