Nice article in Scientific American about Gordon Bell’s work at Microsoft Research on the MyLifeBits project. MyLifeBits provides one perspective on the not-too-far-off future in which all our information, and even some of our memories and experiences, are recorded and made available to us (and possibly to others) for posterity.… Read More “Capturing Your Digital Life”
Google’s Larry Page recently gave a talk to the AAAS about how Google is looking towards a future in which they hope to implement AI on a massive scale. Larry’s idea is that intelligence is a function of massive computation, not of “fancy whiteboard algorithms.”… Read More “Intelligence is in the Connections”
Disclaimer: I used to code in Lisp and Scheme a long time back. Then I got interested in Java. But I don’t code at all anymore. I leave that to people who are much smarter than me now :^)
Anyway this cartoon is funny — and if you ever coded in Lisp or Scheme you’ll also get the inside jokes.… Read More “Funny Cartoon — Lisp, the Language of the Gods”
Read this fun article that lists and defines some of the key concepts that every post-singularity transhumanist meta-intellectual should know! (via Kurzweil)
KurzweilAI.net has published an article I wrote redefining the meaning of Web 3.0. Basically, I am proposing that Web 3.0 include a set of emerging technologies that are all reaching new levels of maturity at the same time.
John Markoff’s New York Times article discusses the term "Web 3.0" and equates it with the next evolution of the Web, in which he predicts a move towards more intelligent applications.
First of all I want to say that I hope the use of the term "Web 3.0" in the article doesn’t distract from the real story here.… Read More “Does the Semantic Web = Web 3.0?”
The online music recommendation service Pandora is really cool in all ways but one. Due to what they report as a requirement of their music license the user is only allowed to skip a small number of songs per hour. This can be a problem since the whole point of Pandora is that you give it feedback as it plays songs for you and it learns what you like.… Read More “Pandora is Great But…”
This is a surprisingly good article on the nature of consciousness — providing a survey of the current state-of-the-art in cognitive science research. It covers the question from a number of perspectives and interviews many of the leading current researchers.
Below is the text of my bet on Long Bets. Go there to vote.
“By 2050 no synthetic computer nor machine intelligence will have become truly self-aware (ie. will become conscious).”
Spivack’s Argument:
(This summary includes my argument, a method for judging the outcomeof this bet and some other thoughts on how to measure awareness…)
This article discusses a new research project at Google where they are working on a way to run contextual ads on your computer that reflect what is taking place in the room around you. The technology works by using the computer microphone to make brief snippet recordings of your room where you are.… Read More “Contextual Ad Targeting On Your Life”
A new mathematical technique provides a dramatically better way to
analyze data, such as audio data, radar, sonar, or any other form of
time-frequency data.
… Read More “Breakthrough in Finding Patterns in Complex Data Such as Sound”Humans have 200 million light receptors in their eyes,
10 to 20 million receptors devoted to smell, but only 8,000 dedicated
to sound.
Researchers continue to make progress in fusing living neurons with computer chips:
… Read More “Neuro-Chips”
The
line between living organisms and machines has just become a whole lot
blurrier. European researchers have developed "neuro-chips" in which
living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together.
Today I read an interesting article in the New York Times about a company called Rite-Solutions which is using a home-grown stock market for ideas to catalyze bottom-up innovation across all levels of personnel in their organization. This is a way to very effectively harness and focus the collective creativity and energy in an organization around the best ideas that the organization generates.… Read More “Harnessing The Collective Mind”
The Edge has published mini-essays by 119 "big thinkers" on their "most dangerous ideas" — fun reading.
… Read More “Big Thinkers' Most Dangerous Ideas”The history of science is replete with discoveries
that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally
dangerous in their time; the Copernican and
Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious.
I recently read a report of new neuroscience research in which researchers are able to predict what a person will recall by analyzing their brainstate. You can read a summary here.
This reminds me of an idea I had a while back for using biofeedback to guide brainstates, in order to improve memory.… Read More “A New Kind of Memory Aid”
A group of computer scientists have come up with a mathematical
technique to detect surprising features in dense information streams.
They tested their method by comparing it to what human’s considered
surprising, and the results were… surprisingly good! A mathematical
model of surprise could be very useful in next-generation information
systems, user-interfaces, situation rooms, and even fighter jet
cockpits, for filtering signal from noise and helping to focus
attention on what’s most important at a given time.
Following in the footsteps of Douglas Engelbart’s pioneering work, SRI has announced the upcoming open-source (LGPL) release of Open IRIS — an experimental Semantic Web personal information manager that runs on the desktop. IRIS was developed for the DARPA CALO project and makes use of code libraries and ontology components developed at SRI, and my own startup, Radar Networks, as well as other participating research organizations.… Read More “The Semantic Web on Your Desktop — Open IRIS Announced”