This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through October 22nd)

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Conscious Exotica
Murray Shanahan | Aeon
"In what follows I attempt to...[describe] the structure of the space of possible minds, in two dimensions: the capacity for consciousness and the human-likeness of behavior. Implicit in this mapping seems to be the possibility of forms of consciousness so alien that we would not recognize them."

ROBOTICS: How Analog and Neuromorphic Chips Will Rule the Robotic Age
Shahin Farshchi | IEEE Spectrum
"Why the move to analog now? The answer is simple: We’re at a unique intersection where the neural nets we’re trying to implement are more suitable to analog designs, while demand for these types of AI circuits is expected to explode."

NEUROSCIENCE: How Network Neuroscience Is Creating a New Era of Mind Control
MIT Technology Review
"Is it possible to exercise the same kind of control over the most complex network we know of: the human brain?...'A critical question…is how to modulate a human brain network to treat cognitive deficits or enhance mental abilities,' they say. 'We posit that network control fundamentally relates to mind control.'"

TRANSPORTATION: Will Driverless Cars Really Save Millions of Lives? Lack of Data Makes It Hard to Know.
Michael Laris and Ashley Halsey III | The Washington Post
“Researchers at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, in a study funded by Google, dug into the data and discovered just how incomplete the federal numbers are. An annual national tally of crashes relies heavily on those reported to police. It understates the actual total of crashes with injuries by at least a quarter and 'property damage only' crashes by anywhere from 60 to 84 percent.”

FUTURE: Hey Silicon Valley: President Obama Has a To-Do List for You
Jason Tanz | WIRED
"Ask not what the government can do for Silicon Valley; ask what Silicon Valley can do for the government. That’s President Obama’s tack, anyway.We reached out to six of the biggest names in the WIRED world, and we gave each of them a challenge from the president’s list. Then we asked: To get this done, what’s the industry’s best play?"

Image Credit: Shutterstock