ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Let Artificial Intelligence Evolve
Michael Chorost | Slate
“For billions of years, aqueous information systems have had to contend with extremely complex environments…And the biochemistry going on in one cubic millimeter of dirt, or a quarter of a cubic millimeter of mouse brain, is orders of magnitude more complex than anything a computer has to face.
By contrast, computers live in a very simple environment. They take in streams of bits and send out streams of bits…That’s why today’s computers can crush you at Go but not have the slightest awareness that they are doing it. They’re too simple. This tells us why A.I. is no threat.”
ROBOTICS: What happens when robots are assigned ethnicities?
Julianne Tveten | Ars Technica
“Is it possible that prejudices humans harbor against one another don’t translate to their interactions with non-human entities, even when those things resemble humans? Can interactions with robots enlighten people about cultures they don’t know and thus the interactions they have with other humans?”
COMPUTING: The Untold Story of Magic Leap, the World’s Most Secretive Startup
Kevin Kelly | WIRED
“The recurring discovery I made in each virtual world I entered was that although every one of these environments was fake, the experiences I had in them were genuine. VR does two important things: One, it generates an intense and convincing sense of what is generally called presence…But the second thing it does is more important. The technology forces you to be present—in a way flatscreens do not—so that you gain authentic experiences, as authentic as in real life.”
FUTURE OF WORK: The automation revolution and the rise of the creative economy
Aidan Cunnifee | TechCrunch
“There are really only two human enterprises: creation and implementation. We design things, come up with interesting strategies and ideas and then we execute them…We build technology to help us on the implementation side (for the most part). We haven’t yet managed to automate our creativity and critical thinking.”
COGNITIVE SCIENCE: The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality
Amanda Gefter | Quanta Magazine
“While neuroscientists struggle to understand how there can be such a thing as a first-person reality, quantum physicists have to grapple with the mystery of how there can be anything but a first-person reality. In short, all roads lead back to the observer.”
FUTURE OF BUSINESS: The Integrated Strategy Machine: Using AI to Create Advantage
BCG Perspectives
“We believe that technology-enhanced strategy can be realized only in the context of an integrated strategy machine: a collection of resources—both technological and human—that act in concert to develop and execute business strategy. It comprises a range of conceptual and analytical operations—including problem definition, signal processing, pattern recognition, abstraction and conceptualization, analysis, and prediction—that connect into a seamless whole.“
ADVANCED MATERIALS: Artificial muscle can heal itself
Tim Wogan | Science Magazine
“Materials that expand and contract in response to an electric field are often used as pressure or strain sensors, sometimes self-correcting ones. Self-healing could be useful when sensors have to be placed in extreme conditions such as in space, where repair is sometimes difficult or impossible”
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