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Kids on Red Bull to create AI?

“It’s almost a no-brainer that a group of smart kids will come together after taking an intensive course on AI and decide that they can use that knowledge to build something of value for humanity. Maybe they will have even more of an inspiration now that there’s a TED XPrize competition for AI. In the process, AI will move from something that took tens of millions of dollars and thousands of people to create, to something that takes tens of thousands of dollars and can be created by a group of kids after an all-night Red Bull session.” 

Source: The Washington Post blog
DOMINIC BASULTO March 25 at 8:27 am

PL: REALLY? Let’s grow up this view. Our excessive veneration for smart “kids” may do us in. Artificial intelligence is SERIOUS business. We need all hands on deck for this one — young geniuses AND old masters. Let’s start talking, thinking and working with this realization. Let’s co-exist, collaborate and invite diversity to the table. There’s no way that 29-year-old white males have a handle on the human experience. They better not be the primary ones writing the cultural blueprint for artificial intelligence that will permanently alter human existence.

FYI: Here’s a reality check for AI coders who think its possible to map complex human situations by attempting to extrapolate incomplete data about humans online: The human brain has trillions of synapses. The average synapse has 300,000 proteins. Synapses are critical to communication inside the brain and scientists don’t yet know their role in human intelligence. [Click on the video below to learn more about this topic.]

Meanwhile, since this blog is all about ‘connecting dots’ you might also find my blog post about the Human Brain Project of interest. It reveals some of the costs and complexities involved with understanding the human brain, the research of which is now underway.


(No wonder generalized AI (i.e. the movie “Her”) has been daunting to develop.)

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Games? Cats? Google’s “state-of-the-art” AI demonstration

G ai video gamesOn March 19, 2014, at a TED conference, Google CEO Larry Page demonstrated what Google’s state-of-the-art AI can do:

Apparently, it has learned how to play video games without training and it can identify a cat face. One thousand computers watching 10 million YouTube stills for three days “learned the concept of cat faces,” as Mr. Page described it. Mr. Page then said: “Imagine if this kind of intelligence were thrown at your SCHEDULE or your INFORMATION NEEDS …” [capitalization added by blogger]

G ai cats

Phil Lawson: Mr. Page, what if ‘this kind of intelligence were thrown at’ the tough human stuff?

What if AI could help a father and son identify the shape of their relationship? What if it could help patients and their doctors identify burden of treatment issues? What if it could help the staff and management of a company in crisis, identify ways to address their concerns in real-time? 

Video games? Cats? It’s time to go deeper. It’s time for AI to help humans help themselves.

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Are we taking AI seriously enough?

Stephen Hawking 2Artificial-intelligence (AI) research is now progressing rapidly. Recent landmarks such as self-driving cars, a computer winning at Jeopardy! and the digital personal assistants Siri, Google Now and Cortana are merely symptoms of an IT arms race fuelled [sic] by unprecedented investments and building on an increasingly mature theoretical foundation … So, facing possible futures of incalculable benefits and risks, the experts are surely doing everything possible to ensure the best outcome, right? Wrong.  … Although we are facing potentially the best or worst thing to happen to humanity in history, little serious research is devoted to these issues …

Stephen Hawking: ‘Transcendence looks at the implications of artificial intelligence – but are we taking AI seriously enough?’ Stephen Hawking, Stuart Russell, Max Tegmark, Frank Wilczek, May, 1, 2014
 
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This virtual assistant ‘does it all’?

“From tracking packages to picking the best route for a commute, the virtual assistant does it all. It can even alert a user to local events that might be of interest.”

Source: Entrepreneur.com
Smart Apps Are Great, But Do They Know Too Much?
By Cadie Thompson, May 26, 2014
.

Phil Lawson:  ‘does it all’? This is how we perceive virtual assistants right now. For our external needs. What about using virtual assistants for our internal dilemmas — for navigating complex human situations or crises … that’s what we’re talking about.

(Re: ‘But do they know too much’? We’ll venture into that discussion soon enough on this blog as it relates to our inter-personal space.)

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