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Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

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Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#171

Post by flopto »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #167
flopto wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Able. Not that skin color itself affects any sort of intellectual ability, but race--including, importantly, the experiences people have because of their skin color--definitely impacts who you are and what you are good at. 2. White software engineers are better at designing racist software (mostly joking). Another half joke: white people are better at designing technology that gets taken seriously by the governmen…

I don't know the race of any software engineers I haven't met. Which is almost all of them. How could govt and the public know either? It seems strange to imagine it could matter.

Well, there are the famous ones. I'd bet facebook would have been treated differently if Mark Zuckerberg were black. You also probably automatically make guesses about people's race online. Race is a bit trickier, but it's not too hard to guess gender online (usernames, and things like this thing I just found on google: http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.php#Analyze)

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#172

Post by alvaromuir »

downandout wrote: post #105
pashariger wrote: post #62

I don't know about you, but I'm very thankful that we have a president that can understand and intelligently talk about these issues (rather than thinking it's all just black magic).

I'm curious...which President are you saying thought it was "all just black magic"? Let's also remember that Obama is the man that unapologetically expanded covert/illegal surveillance programs to an unprecedented scale, directly costing American technology companies billions of dollars in sales. I'd say his actions reflect neither intelligence nor understanding of the tech industry.

Yes, Downandout, because as president He single-handedly did that. You do realize his political opposition LOVES that stuff, right?

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#173

Post by MrZongle2 »

s_q_b wrote: post #34
cjbprime wrote: post #5

> OBAMA: The way I’ve been thinking about the regulatory structure as AI emerges is that, early in a technology, a thousand flowers should bloom. I gotta say, I thought he'd be more familiar with that metaphor. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign

I think he knew the origin, but chose it anyway. It is an elegant phrase. Communists could be very eloquent. How else do you think they managed to convince so many people to be communists?

"How else do you think they managed to convince so many people to be communists?"

Once they had momentum? With rifles.

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#174

Post by helthanatos »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #135
helthanatos wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employment: the condition of having paid work. a person's trade or profession. Just count those that want work or should have work (need to support a family/receiving government aid)

> Just count those that want work or should have work As I just commented, that's easier said than done.

No. Those that want work are searching, getting interviews, etc. Those that need work are easier to count because you're counting situations. The government has enough surveillance on us to accurately count it to a pretty small error margin.

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#175

Post by wildmusings »

ap22213 wrote: post #159
AJRF wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a lot of waffle, with the odd buzzword interspersed. I don't mind Obama, but I do mind when people attribute understanding to him when he talks at an extremely thin level about topics.

Many forget that 8 years ago Obama was highly criticized for being a 'technocrat' and populating his cabinet with 'technologist' outsiders. Leaders don't always have to understand the tactical details that are required for executing their strategy. Obama led as a technologist from day one.

Except that's not what happened. There was a lot of speculation that it would, but then he appointed a bunch of politicians to the cabinet, as is tradition.

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#176

Post by pakl »

ktRolster wrote: post #92
pakl wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm optimistic about what'll happen right after the upcoming AI winter. :) So long as AI remains tasked with categorizing human-taken photos or playing human-created games (no matter how "complex"), AI will remain just that -- artificial -- and not "real". Given the rate of hype that you point out, I suspect a winter of some kind will hit before enough folks realize this. [edited: reorder]

What should they focus on then?

If one wants general AI that can deal with/understand the world, the system needs to learn based on (raw, unadulterated) data from the world. These data are highly dynamic and rarely fit neatly into human-labeled categories. This is part of why the currently-hyped supervised pattern recognition is not all that helpful for general AI.

By the way, the above requirement of real world data probably even applies to building chatbots. (A successful chatbot will need some understanding of the world it is talking about; this is what researchers mean when they say "grounding" is important for NLP).

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#177

Post by helthanatos »

ericlavigne wrote: post #145
helthanatos wrote: post #30

"we found that most people liked the idea that the driver and the passengers could be sacrificed to save many people" Understand morals? Probably not...

MIT's "moral machine" site presents a set of ethical dilemmas involving driving so you can explore your own perspective on morality. http://jalopnik.com/this-mit-online-activity-lets-you-choose... http://moralmachine.mit.edu/

Yeah. Anyone doing that should have kept alive whoever was not breaking the law. I noticed that it said I killed more women, but women broke the law more.

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#178

Post by wildmusings »

pashariger wrote: post #62

I don't know about you, but I'm very thankful that we have a president that can understand and intelligently talk about these issues (rather than thinking it's all just black magic).

This is just hollow legacy-chasing. Just like how he crippled the space program during his 8 years in office, only to discover a passion for it in the last few days.

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#179

Post by downandout »

alvaromuir wrote: post #172
downandout wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious...which President are you saying thought it was "all just black magic"? Let's also remember that Obama is the man that unapologetically expanded covert/illegal surveillance programs to an unprecedented scale, directly costing American technology companies billions of dollars in sales. I'd say his actions reflect neither intelligence nor understanding of the tech industry.

Yes, Downandout, because as president He single-handedly did that. You do realize his political opposition LOVES that stuff, right?

Actually, yes, he did single-handedly do that. The authorization came straight from Obama, and then when it came to light, he basically didn't even bother apologizing. He lied to his base about being against this kind of thing, and then went and did exactly what he wanted to do.

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#180

Post by _andromeda_ »

mr_overalls wrote: post #158
_andromeda_ wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"That's how it has worked in America. Government has supplied the initial flicker" That's not how it worked when America had the most growth. In the late 19th century, when there was less government intervention, America saw the most rapid rate of economic growth. I don't want to get into a debate about who led to the emergence of the great depression but I strongly believe that it was due to government involvement…

> They only get in the way of productive people in a bid to placate non-producers thereby granting themselves power and undue privilege once in office. Oh boy. Anti-government extremists like yourself love to grandstand about the merits of unfettered capitalism without understanding that government creates the conditions for market capitalism to exist. There would be no property rights without the police, legal contr…

Do you value your liberty? I bet you do and you just don't realize you've been slowly but surely losing it.

I would venture that the only extremism, so to speak, that exists is in how government has increased in both its size and ineffectiveness. When you have a combination of the two aforementioned features, then things inevitably get worse.

> Oh boy. Anti-government extremists like yourself love to grandstand about the merits of unfettered capitalism without understanding that government creates the conditions for market capitalism to exist.

> There would be no property rights without the police, legal contracts without the courts, no medium of exchange without the Treasury. Governments provide minimal standards of worker safety, public health, and public education - all of which are necessary for a productive workforce.

Just because monkeys can ride bikes doesn't mean that only monkeys can ride bikes. Due to government's inherent inefficiencies and its tendency to grow and encompass ever more aspects of life, two things happen; you lose your liberty and it becomes very expensive to sustain government.

I really don't see how you can't see that government really is bad for you and that there's always a better way. I don't like the fact that as the human race we've resigned ourselves to thinking that we can innovate/disrupt most other things except for governance. When I hear statements like, 'democracy is the worst form of government except for all others', I cringe. Here's an idea, how about less or where possible, no government. These demagogues and bureaucrats really aren't as important as you think they are.

Let John Galt be. Let the markets be. Obama and the rest of them have no place dictating how innovation and businesses should be run.

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