Categories
AI

XPRIZE is challenging A.I. to save the world

http://www.engadget.com/2016/02/17/xprize-ibm-ai/

“The purpose of the XPRIZE is to directly address the dystopian narrative we’ve been seeing in artificial intelligence,” says Stephanie Wander, a Prize Development Associate and lead designer of the A.I. XPRIZE. She’s specifically referring to the horror stories we often see in movies depicting A.I. as untrustworthy entities. “We feel it’s important to address it because we believe that artificial intelligence will enable us to address the world’s most difficult and challenging issues.”

Categories
AI

Can robots learn to behave by reading our books?

http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/16/11014492/first-click-can-robots-learn-to-behave-by-reading-our-books

Categories
Superintelligence

Human-machine Superintelligence can solve World’s Most Dire Problems

http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2016/01/human-machine-superintelligence-can-solve-worlds-most-dire-problems

Save us please. Thanks.

Categories
God

How much does it matter whether God exists?

https://aeon.co/opinions/how-much-does-it-matter-whether-god-exists

“What are we really talking about when we debate the existence of God? I think it can become a shortcut, a way of side-stepping more necessary and more difficult questions.”

 

Categories
AI Superintelligence

Superintelligence: fears, promises, and potentials

http://www.kurzweilai.net/superintelligence-fears-promises-and-potentials

A more positive response/rebuttal to the idea of superintelligence.

Categories
God

Holiness

As it turns out science has wandered into the realm of the miraculous. Particles can interact with each other across the Universe simultaneously. Light can seemingly come from nothing. And now we are seemingly on the verge some sort of superintelligent being that could either wipe us out or endow us with immortality.

However, nothing in scientific realm or human experience can really replicate or come close to explaining “holiness”. This is a concept not apart of most people’s daily experience. I am not talking about people who seem to be holy, or people who think they are holy. To really understand the ancient understanding of God (and for some modern reader’s) you need to grasp the concept of true holiness. Unfortunately, it’s not really something to be grasped, it’s something that needs to be experienced. If ancient texts are to be believed the experience would be not unlike having the Sun itself show up in your bedroom and begin to speak to you. Light and heat that shakes you to your very core. The normal reaction to this kind of holiness is to “fall down as if dead”. It’s often followed by a sense of one’s own unworthiness. It’s as if you suddenly realize your with the President and you’ve got tons of food stuck in your beard.. only on a much grander scale. Maybe you don’t just have food on your face.. but you are also naked.

I suppose it’s possible that we can imagine an alien vastly beyond our physical limits. Perhaps there could be a being even made completely of photons. After all, scientists have already created molecules out of photons.

Categories
God

We are as Gods…

http://edge.org/conversation/we-are-as-gods-and-have-to-get-good-at-it

At a conference in Germany, Craig Venter was asked “Aren’t you playing God?”? His response: “We’re not playing”.

You have to flip it back, come on, guys. We’re playing God all the time. What else is new? “We are as gods as we have to get good at it”.

When Venter was talking to Dawkins, he said, “that’s a relief; there is no question about playing God, there is no God”.

 

Categories
AI

AI Anxiety

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/12/27/aianxiety/?

“An ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind.”

I.J. GOOD, a British mathematician and code-breaker, in 1965 █ 

Categories
AI vr

Artificial Intelligence Doctors And Virtual Reality Vacations Are On The Horizon

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2015/12/14/artificial-intelligence-doctors-and-virtual-reality-vacations-are-on-the-horizon/

Categories
vr

In Virtual Reality Headsets, Investors Glimpse the Future

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/14/technology/in-virtual-reality-headsets-investors-glimpse-the-future.html