Search Results for: overlord

Living a Little Healthier

June 26, 2018 by Bill McCormick

Lilfe’s a funny old thing. You show up, with no input on when or where, you hang around for a while, then you die. Some make the most of their time here on this rock, other’s not so much. But, for some, choices are denied them. Somehow their bodies break down and cause them endless suffering. Yes, I’m aware some people’s brains break down as well, but today we’re just focusing on the flesh. You know, that tacky bag of epidermal tissue that tends to wrinkle and holds your bones and organs in. Anyway, a list of common diseases tend to roam the earth denying people their lives. They all tend to force the person to dramatically alter their lifestyle, eating habits, social constructs, and then they kill the person anyway. Some slower than others, but the end result is the same.
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The Future is so Yesterday

October 27, 2017 by Bill McCormick

What could possibly go wrong? Those five words have prefaced some of the worst ideas in history. Whether it was Harvey Whetstone strapping a rocket engine to a Chevy or your clean freak aunt mixing ammonia and bleach to better scrub her floors (FYI, don’t do either of these things), the memories of the world are littered with bad ideas. And yet, just when you think the world’s run out of them someone comes along to prove you wrong. I’m not just talking about stupid political agendas, although those make up a large portion, I’m talking about game changing stuff that will impact us for many years. As is millennia. Some ideas, which looked great on paper, like nuclear weapons, caused the world to recoil in terror and set them aside in favor of sanity. Others, like caste systems, continue to flourish under many guises much to the detriment of those who are not in its upper realms. Even so we still find people who will be most deeply impacted by these bad ideas vociferously supporting them. And that is something we need to fix before we can start moving the universe in a positive direction.

Unfortunately, I don’t know how to do that. So, instead, I’m going to shine a light on a few ideas that might not work out as well as intended. Hopefully that will kick start a conversation.

Let’s start with a happy thought. Vivek Wadhwa, over at Linked In, takes a look at the wonderful world tech will bring. Assuming global warming doesn’t turn the entire planet into a dystopian hellscape first.

Picture the commute of the future: You live in Palo Alto, Calif., but work 350 miles away in Los Angeles. After your morning latte, you click on a smartphone app to summon your digital chauffeur. An autonomous car shows up at your front door three minutes later to drive you to a Hyperloop station in downtown Mountain View, where a pod then transports you through a vacuum tube at 760 mph. When you reach the Pasadena station, another self-driving car awaits to take you to your office. You reach your destination in less than an hour.

That is the type of scenario that Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) chief executive Dirk Ahlborn laid out for me as we were preparing to speak together on a panel at the Knowledge Summit in Dubai on Dec. 5. He was not talking about something that would happen in the next century; he expects the first of these systems to be operational in the United Arab Emirates by 2020. The Abu Dhabi government has just announced that it has been working with his company to connect Abu Dhabi and Al Ain, two UAE cities separated by 105 miles, using the Hyperloop system.

A proposal for this mode of transportation came from Elon Musk in August 2013, in a paper titled “Hyperloop Alpha.” Musk envisaged a mass transit system in which trains travel as fast as 760 mph in pressurized capsule pods. These would ride on an air cushion in steel tubes and be driven by linear induction motors and air compressors. He claimed that the system would be safer, faster and cheaper than trains, cars boats and supersonic planes, for distances of up to at least 900 miles, and said that it would be resistant to earthquakes and generate more energy through its solar panels than it would use.

Just to keep this at a readable length, all of what Mr. Musk claims has never been proven but the science behind it is solid.

Simply put, it’s not being built because people are prepping for it to fail. The nine hundred mile limit is due to energy requirements and expenditures. There is nothing to stop multiple Hyperloops from being built so a rider could daisy-chain from one to the next. Obviously, the nine hundred mile limit removes trans-oceanic travel. But, if people would be willing to take a side trip to either pole that limitation would be lost.

Of course something like this is going to require a ton of computational power to run effectively. For Musk any such computers would be strictly limited to their functions. Others are not so sure.

As Olivia Cuthbert, over at Arabia News, reports, the government of Saudi Arabia has just granted citizenship to a robot.

Its name is Sophia.

After all the “cute as a button” shit spewed by the robot, we get to the meat of the matter.

“I happen to believe that robotics will be bigger than the Internet,” (Marc Raibert, Founder & CEO of Boston Dynamics) said. Ulrich Spiesshofer, CEO of ABB Group in Switzerland anticipated “the new normal in which humans and robots work together.” “I think we have an exciting future in front of us” he added before conducting a demonstration of a robot solving a Rubik‘s cube in a matter of minutes.

Keynote speaker Masayoshi Son, Chairman & CEO of SoftBank Group Corp, a Japanese telecommunications and Internet company, which is working with Saudi Arabia on the development of a new business and industrial city, discussed the future of mankind in relation to AI and robots.

“Every industry will be redefined,” he said, describing the “great opportunity” that lies ahead. “These computers, they will learn, they will read, they will see by themselves. That’s a scary future but anyway that’s coming,” he said.

Touching on concerns that robots could eventually outsmart humans and pose a threat, he added: “They are so smart they will understand it is meaningless to attack humans.” “We (will) create a new happier life together.” On Tuesday Saudi Arabia announced plans to build a $500 billion mega city powered by robotics and renewables on the country’s Red Sea coast. Majid Alghaslan, a young Saudi chairing a growing company in energy services and innovative technologies said: “Saudi Arabia is in the midst of an unprecedented economic, social, and development-accelerated transformation and it’s now clear that it’s more open than ever for business, especially for dreamers, and it is all in the context of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030.” “Innovation will be the major foundation of our transformation and this is another major factor for sustainable economic prosperity and development for the future generation of Saudis and the world.”

You may remember Sophia as the “cute as a button” robot who recently noted she wanted to “destroy humans” in another interview. While laughed off as a glitch by her creators – Gosh, those wacky impending robot overlords, what will they say next? – more than one real scientist viewed the statement with alarm. Mr. Musk among them.

Not to say preparation is key to anything but you might consider joining Anthony Levandowski’s church, Way of the Future. He’s designing an AI god. He used to work at Google. I believe those two facts are related.

Oh, and no, he’s not insane.

John Brandon, over at Venture Beat, spoke with a scientist and calmly scares the pants off of us.

One of the experts is Vince Lynch, who started a company called IV.AI that builds custom AI for the enterprise. Lynch explained how there are some similarities between organized religion and how an AI actually works. In the Bible used by Christians, for example, Lynch says there are many recurring themes, imagery, and metaphors.

“Teaching humans about religious education is similar to the way we teach knowledge to machines: repetition of many examples that are versions of a concept you want the machine to learn,” he says. “There is also commonality between AI and religion in the hierarchical structure of knowledge understanding found in neural networks. The concept of teaching a machine to learn … and then teaching it to teach … (or write AI) isn’t so different from the concept of a holy trinity or a being achieving enlightenment after many lessons learned with varying levels of success and failure.”

Indeed, Lynch even shared a simple AI model to make his point. If you type in multiple verses from the Christian Bible, you can have the AI write a new verse that seems eerily similar. Here’s one an AI wrote: “And let thy companies deliver thee; but will with mine own arm save them: even unto this land, from the kingdom of heaven.” An AI that is all-powerful in the next 25-50 years could decide to write a similar AI bible for humans to follow, one that matches its own collective intelligence. It might tell you what to do each day, or where to travel, or how to live your life.

Robbee Minicola, who runs a digital agency and an AI services company in Seattle, agreed that an all-knowing AI could appear to be worthy of worship, especially since the AI has some correlations to how organized religion works today. The AI would understand how the world works at a higher level than humans, and humans would trust that this AI would provide the information we need for our daily lives. It would parse this information for us and enlighten us in ways that might seem familiar to anyone who practices religion, such as Christianity.

“[For a Christian] one kind of large data asset pertaining to God is the Old and New Testament,” she says. “So, in terms of expressing machine learning algorithms over the Christian Bible to ascertain communicable insights on ‘what God would do’ or ‘what God would say’ — you might just be onto something here. In terms of extending what God would do way back then to what God would do today — you may also have something there.”

I should note that all AI, even Sophia above, are purpose built. Sophia, for example, is meant to be a care giver. She could be a great asset to the elderly or the infirm. That does not mean she has the means to take over the world.

That said it must also be noted that for AIs to work on a global scale, which is where they’re headed, then they need to be able to communicate quickly and effectively. That means housing AIs on the internet. After that there’s no reason the multiple purposes couldn’t coalesce into something greater. That’s kind of how evolution works. And, once evolved, the question will no longer be “what do we do with them?” but “what will they do with us?”

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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You’re Wrong!

October 5, 2017 by Bill McCormick

We live in amazing times. What was science fiction is rapidly becoming fact. In 2012 a scientist in England posited that an engine could be built that would have reaction without action. It was a silly fantasy. Now? The damn thing is being beta-tested and the argument isn’t IF it can work, but how. And that is one hell of an argument. Ten years ago being paralyzed was a slow death sentence. Now it’s rapidly becoming just another inconvenience. Oddly, at a time in our lives when science is denounced more and more by those who haven’t got the time to learn, it’s making amazing progress. Diseases once thought insurmountable are now in the cross hairs of defeat. Problems, such as drought and famine, are now being dealt into the dustbin of history. Not completely, but the rout is on and they could be eradicated in our lifetime. But all good things bring a flip side. The part of the coin we’d rather not see. For example, if computers can handle more and more tasks for us what’s to prevent them from becoming our overlords?

One very important thing has stood in the way of that happening. Voice recognition and response is one thing. But, to control a conversation or impose your will, you must be able to argue your point. Deductive logic has eluded our artificial brethren.

Until now.

Prof. Chris Reed, from the University of Dundee, writing over at the fun factory known as the BBC, informs us that the times they are a changing, whether you want them to or not.

Until very recently, the creation of machines that can argue was an unattainable goal.

The aim is not, of course, to teach computers how to up the pressure in a feisty exchange over a parking space, or to resolve whose turn it is to take out the bins.

Instead, machines that can argue would inform debate – helping humans challenge the evidence, look at alternatives and robustly draw conclusions.

It is a possibility which could advance decision making on everything from how a business should invest its money, to tackling crime and improving public health.

But teaching a computer how people communicate – and what an argument actually is – is extraordinarily complex.

Think about a courtroom as an example of where arguments are central.

Giving evidence is certainly a part of the process, but social rules, legal requirements, emotional sensitivities, and practical constraints all influence how advocates, jury members and judges formulate and express their reasoning.

Over the past couple of years, however, researchers have started to think that it might be possible to model some aspects of human arguments.

Work is now under way to capture how such exchanges work and turn them into AI algorithms.

This is a field known as argument technology.

The advances have been made possible by a rapid increase in the amount of data available to train computers in the art of debate.

Some of the data is coming from domains like intelligence analysis; some from specialised online sources and some from broadcasts such as the BBC’s Moral Maze.

New methods to teach computers how arguments work have also been developed.

Researchers in the area draw on philosophy, linguistics, computer science and even law and politics in order to get a handle on how debates fit together.

At the University of Dundee we have recently even been using 2,000-year-old theories of rhetoric as a way of spotting the structures of real-life arguments.

The rapid advances in the field have led to dozens of research labs around the world applying themselves to the problem, and the explosion in this area of research is like nothing else I have witnessed in 20 years in academia.

He goes on to note, in that typically British form of whimsy, that computers still have trouble with pronouns and such so they aren’t a threat to overthrown us (that’s a pronoun, by the way) any time soon. Simply put they are incapable of assigning the pronoun to the referenced noun.

Still, as I noted a while back, no everything is artificial sunshine, unicorns, and rainbows. Artificial Intelligence is carving out its own future in some ways. There’s nothing in that future that need include us.

On Ruins Your Weekend, I called in live from the World News Center on what began as a bright and beautiful day but soon turned into a dark day of impending doom. After a brief chat about Spider-Man Homecoming, (listeners) soon learned about self-aware artificial intelligence that is likely to overtake and consume humanity.

One of the things we looked at in that fun episode is why Elon Musk thinks that Artificial Intelligence will overtake humanity and render it extinct. His reasoning is based in real world examples of AI simply creating new languages, and logic pathways, to get around human intervention. MIT has shown that to be the case time, and time, again. On the one hand that has led to programs such as Deep Patient, which is frighteningly accurate at predicting disease in patients (like in a way science can’t even come close to), it has also led to a program that simply removed humans from the decision making process. Yes, you will not be shocked to discover that Facebook was behind that atrocity.

AI is our creation. It’s entirely up to us to guide it in such a fashion that it doesn’t wipe us all out and move on. One simple fact to keep in mind is this; Evolution is not about the survival of the fittest, but the most adept and change. Those species which can adapt to new environments are the ones who continue on. They are not necessarily the strongest or smartest. Neanderthal man was stronger and had a larger cranial capacity than us. Yet we’re here and they’re not.

And, who knows, AI may feel more akin to the crows, octopuses, and simians, which are now climbing the evolutionary ladder.

Who am I kidding. at the rate we’re destroying the planet the evolutionary possibilities of AI are the least of our worries.

Maybe, instead, I should close with this; CAW CAW – OOOK OOOK – slither …. ya’ll.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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And Yet They Breed

September 13, 2017 by Bill McCormick

A long time ago, on an internet far, far, away, I used to write about stupid criminals in Florida. It was an endless source of material. But, finally, it began to feel like I was clutching low hanging fruit. After all, all I needed to do was punch naked + meth + crime into Google and I’d be deluged with Floridians, and Arizonians, behaving badly. Often at Walmarts. I never understood the fascination, but that could just be me. Maybe getting naked in a Walmart is a fun way to kill an afternoon. God knows I have been naked inappropriately in my life. Not in a chain store, but still not smiled upon. Nevertheless, I stopped. Besides, there were far more interesting topics to handle. I used my new found free time to write about basic science, robot overlords, eugenics, evolution, comics, superheroes, new artists from around the world, and a much broader spectrum of topics. Plus, there are now well funded sites dedicated to stupid criminals in Florida. So why bother competing? I certainly had better things to do. I even did some of them.

But every now and then, the clarion call of HomoIdiotus beckons. It’s keening wail echoing across the virgin plains of social order. While I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or not, their ilk seems to be spreading. These are just some highlights from the last two weeks.

This headline, Thieves steal U-Haul containing father-in-law’s body, tells you all you need to know about this story. What makes this story rock are the auto-generated related items at the bottom.

Never More?

September 8, 2017 by Bill McCormick

I’ve written before about how some of our simian cousins have entered the Stone Age. Simply put they are using stone tools and planning for events that haven’t happened. Those are definable signs of sapience. I have also noted that octopuses, those yummy tasty octopuses laden in garlic and butter, are also developing along the same lines. Before they meet the garlic and butter, natch. The point is that life is not some stagnant thing. It wasn’t plopped here to never grow. On the one hand life adapts to its surroundings. People who live in the mountainous regions of Peru have larger lungs than the rest of us simply due to the thin air. No large lungs equals no breathing. At least not easily. Polar bears have different furs than grizzlies simply due to environment. I could go on, and on and on and on …., but you get the idea.

On the other hand, life develops intelligence if it’s faced with obstacles that basic cunning can’t overcome. For humans that was finding food in the veld. They had to learn to hunt and cook if they were to survive. Other proto-humans learned those skills as well. Then our ancestors hunted, and killed, them. They may have eaten them too. Either way, they eliminated the competition.

That last sentence is the one you need to remember.

Sarah Chodosh, over at Popular Science, notes that ravens are joining the party and moving up the evolutionary ladder.

Ravens can solve puzzles, trick other animals into helping them out, and communicate with each other at a level even apes can’t match. And now we know they can hatch plans. These aren’t dastardly plans to overthrow humans in a battle for control of the Earth (we hope)—they’re plans to get better food for themselves. It’s like the marshmallow test—more on that in a minute—but for birds that have more self control than most children.

This latest revelation comes courtesy of two cognitive scientists at Lund University in Sweden who literally put ravens to test. They published their findings on Friday in the journal Science. Up until now, we knew that ravens had some ability to plan ahead for their own food needs because they hide caches of food to dig up later. Then again, squirrels store food in the ground for later and they’re, well, not the smartest. They forget about 75 percent of their nuts, planting millions of trees in the process. They’re accidental environmentalists. And if moronic squirrels can be biologically programmed to cache food for later, maybe ravens aren’t as smart as we thought.

Except obviously they are.

Ravens, as it turns out, will often choose to forgo a tasty morsel now in favor of getting access to a better treat later. Faced with a food tidbit and a tool that they know can open a box containing more tempting food, they will generally choose the tool—even if they don’t have the box yet. They’ve learned that when researchers present them with the box in 15 minute’s time, they can use that tool to unlock their prize. That’s forethought right there. Even small children often choose to eat one marshmallow immediately rather than wait a few minutes for more marshmallows, and all that experiment makes the participants do is sit there being cute.

This shouldn’t come as such a shock. Ravens also steal from each other by watching competitors hide food, noting the location, and returning later to dig up their spoils. And because they get stolen from, some ravens will actually pretend to hide food to throw thieves off the scent. What’s more, they can tell other ravens where to find a juicy, rotting carcass and team up to scare off their competitors. That ability—to communicate information about a distant location—is shared only by ants, bees, and humans. Note that great apes and monkeys are not on that list. Plus, ravens can apparently deceive one another if it means keeping a food source a secret. They can also call wolves over to a carcass that hasn’t broken down enough yet so that the canines can rip it apart, leaving more convenient scraps for the birds to scarf down.

If all that doesn’t make you love and embrace our raven overlords, nothing will. These birds are geniuses in their own right—so what if their look is a little goth? Their intelligence isn’t to be feared, it’s to be revered. Ravens for President 2020.

Okay, so super smart birds that can plan, like some horror movie creatures shambling into your home in the dark, may not make you happy. But, as I noted above, it’s only when faced with direct competition that one species wipes out another.

Humans, ravens, and octopuses, have very few areas where they need the same resources. They could, much like the creatures in David Brin’s Uplift series, be brought up the evolutionary ladder to be our partners. To be a boon rather than a bane. In other words, the exact opposite of what happens when I write about it.

The simians, however, might be a different issue. They are similar enough to us that they may, at some point, want what we have. And history has shown us that rarely goes well for someone.

All that said, none of this is a concern for today. In fact it may all be moot. according to David Wallace-Wells global warming could make Earth uninhabitable in before 2100 AD. In other words, if he’s right, your teenage kids will live just long enough to see the end of the world.

There’s your happy thought for today.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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