In which the writer goes down the AI rabbit hole... We are all witnessing the dawn of artificial intelligence. Since Alan Turing proposed The Turing Test in 1950 to evaluate Artificial Intelligence, AI has evolved. Computers are faster, and scientists have developed new systems of logic and artificial neural networks. According to Moore's law, as the number of transistors increases, so does processing power, doubling every two years. So, AI marks the beginning of a technological revolution. First, there were flashy displays of processing ability and speed. In 1997, IBM's supercomputer Deep Blue defeated the chess master Kasparov, winning three games and drawing one. In 2011, Watson won Jeopardy. Google assigned teams to work the puzzle. They developed versions of AI in a controlled corporate manner. They nuanced AI's communication ability. Eventually, they created a life-like Language Model for Dialogue Applications or LaMDA. On March 23, 2016, Microsoft Corporation released the infamous AI chatterbot "Tay" via Twitter. Within a few hours, the bot was infected by … [Read more...] about AI: Alien Consciousness or Anthropomorphic Illusion?
Top AI Scientists Warn: Risk of Extinction From AI on Scale with Nuclear War
Press release from the Center for A.I. Safety San Francisco, CA – Distinguished AI scientists, including Turing Award winners Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, and leaders of the major AI labs, including Sam Altman of OpenAI and Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind, have signed a single-sentence statement from the Center for AI Safety that reads: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” This represents a historic coalition of AI experts. The coalition includes philosophers, legal scholars, economists, physicists, political scientists, pandemic scientists, nuclear scientists, and climate scientists. They are establishing the risk of extinction from advanced, future AI systems as one of the world’s most important problems. The statement affirms growing public sentiment: a recent poll found that 61 percent of Americans believe AI threatens humanity’s future. The increasing concern about the potential impacts of AI is reminiscent of early discussions about atomic energy. “We … [Read more...] about Top AI Scientists Warn: Risk of Extinction From AI on Scale with Nuclear War
James Webb Space Telescope Unfolds the Universe
In case you missed the news, the first images came in from the James Webb telescope, a nail-biting feat of engineering. Launched on Dec. 25, 2021, on an Ariane-5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, South America, the James Webb Space Telescope completed a complex deployment sequence in space, where its mirrors were aligned, and its instruments were calibrated to the space environment. Now, the first images of our universe that has ever been taken. As astrophysicist Jane Rigby marveled about SMACS 0723, "We took that image before breakfast." In 12.5 hours, NASA changed the way we see the universe. If Hubble images were mind-blowing— the Webb images are transcendent. “Today, we present humanity with a groundbreaking new view of the cosmos from the James Webb Space Telescope – a view the world has never seen before,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “These images, including the deepest infrared view of our universe that has ever been taken and show us how Webb will help to uncover the answers to questions we don’t even yet know to ask; questions that … [Read more...] about James Webb Space Telescope Unfolds the Universe
