Imagination is a part of daily life. We use it successfully every day to avoid disaster, even with very minor actions. Imagining what can go wrong, we choose safer options. Of course some of us are better at this than others, but you get the point, don’t you? Imagination is essential to rationality. DeepMind is… Continue reading Machines with Imagination
Over the past few months we have focused on the coming changes that AI and bio-technology will likely bring in the decades ahead. In this post, I would like to focus on something a bit more immediate: the effect that AI and social media are already having on our daily lives and the democracy in… Continue reading Mass Manipulation
A great deal of what Artificial Intelligence can do right now is accomplished in a vastly different way from the one used for that same task in the human brain. Deep-Learning, while it has brought great advances to AI, is still very different from the way a brain learns. A discussion of this issue can… Continue reading AI and Brain Research
Thank you, Paul Lindsay, for sharing this article with me. I am adding it to our Resources page. The article by Fei-Fei Li raises questions about the rapidly developing field of AI and proposes three goals for making Artificial Intelligence human-centered. First, A.I. needs to reflect more of the depth that characterizes our own intelligence.… Continue reading NY Times article: “How to Make A.I. That’s Good for People”
In July of last year, Wired magazine published an article on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and it’s use in military applications (“AI Could Revolutionize War as much as Nukes“). The article discusses both the increasing threat autonomous weapons will pose and the need for diplomatic work to limit their use. Others have raised the question of… Continue reading Join us this Sunday for a discussion of Values, Ethics, and Artificial Intelligence
The New York Times published an article yesterday entitled “The Autonomous Selfie Drone Is Here. Is Society Ready for It?” The inventors of this autonomous (read, AI driven) drone present it as a recreational device, but the technology could clearly be used with much less benign goals. The Autonomous Selfie Drone Is Here. Is Society… Continue reading Autonomous Selfie Drone?
I would like to thank Bob Winstead for a great job leading our discussion of Asimov’s three laws of robotics and the complications with trying to implement them in the real world.
You can find several resources on this topic on the web, but I’ll include only one here. If you would like something to read to follow up on this morning’s discussion, you can try this for starters.
In his 1942 short story “Runaround” (also included in the collection I, Robot eight years later), Isaac Asimov introduced his three laws of robotics, although he had foreshadowed them in a few earlier stories. Here are the three laws: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to… Continue reading Sunday, February 11, 2018 Bob Winstead
I have added a new section, Automation, Robotics, and Education, to the Articles and Blogs page. The new section currently contains six articles related to the adoption of robotics and artificial intelligence in the classroom. I hope you find these resources useful.
Many are sounding the alarm about a technology whose necessary components are already available and that could be used in terrifying ways at very little expense. The following video was produced to promote discussion on this issue. It contains upsetting violent imagery, so viewer discretion is advised. Stuart Russell, Anthony Aguirre, Ariel Conn and Max… Continue reading Autonomous Weapons?
