Creative Retirement - Friday Roundtable -- Aug 29, 2014
Singularity Class Preparation
CLASS PREPARATION:
Computers become more capable, doubling in power every 9 to 18 months.
At some point they will become smarter than we are.
* Remind yourself of the story 1984, written by George Orwell in 1949 about his future in 35 years.
* 2001: a space odyssey -- why did HAL, the computer, do what he did? "I am fully committed to the mission, Dave."
* Person of Interest, Tuesday at 9. What started as science fiction has been revealed to be common NSA practice. You know, besides recording every phone call, email and tweet, now license plates are being recorded with time and location. Supposedly, if your car is consistently found at a new site, your bank will call to see if you have a new job and offer you a lower interest loan. Yea, sure.
Do you find it spooky to find advertisements on your email screen of things that you investigated yesterday?
Somebody is class mentioned he had read on TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), [ http://ted.org ] a website I had forgotten about. This started as an annual conference in Silicon Valley and is now international. A Dutchman's critique of global warming and his alternatives was classic. If there is any source on AI and singularity, that would be it. Well, didn't find any, but did find these: all are parts in the development of the next step .
- The first synthetic cell, a cell made by starting with the digital code in the computer, building the chromosome from four bottles of chemical. So this is the first self-replicating species that we've had on the planet whose parent is a computer. The technique is now being used to create new strains of algae able to efficiently convert CO2, a pollutant, into ordinary gasoline and diesel fuel.
- A new way to grow bone in vast quantities without the pain of grafting
- The linguistic genius of learning in babies at less than 6-months
- A selection of robots to allow a paralyzed man to fly thru his garden.
- Show how a clever monkey in the USA learned to control a robot arm in Japan purely with its thoughts.
- The quest to understand consciousness.
- Get ready for hybrid thinking by joining your neocortex in the cloud
- Tools that let us see inside our brains.
Homework:
Observe and consider every indication of a new world with artificial smarts : self parking cars, for instance. Are there any worthy issues about the developments you observe to talk about?
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