In case you cannot read his essay any time soon, but can watch or listen for an hour, this is equally illuminating. And since he is a quirky fellow, Jaron Lanier’s work and living space is worth a look.
artificial intelligence (AI)
Dear AI Overlords, Reviewed
Virginia Heffernan has appeared in our pages only once before, also reviewing a book. She is one of the great writers in the English language, but often on topics not connected to our themes here. While we mostly are interested in topics related to the natural world, and we know that this topic is a whole other realm, we can guess that AI’s impact on the natural world is part of what the title of this issue of Wired will mean to us pretty soon:
What If the Robots Were Very Nice While They Took Over the World?
First it was chess and Go. Now AI can beat us at Diplomacy, the most human of board games. The way it wins offers hope that maybe AI will be a delight.
THE MORRISSEY HAD the right melodrama in his limbs, and his voice was strong and pained. I was at Gramercy Theatre in Manhattan to see a Smiths tribute band. I tried to get Morrissey’s acid yodel in my throat, to sing along. I am human and I need to be loved / just like everybody else does. But it didn’t feel right to copy a copy. Continue reading
The Coming Wave, Reviewed
The primary author of this book is one of the pioneers of AI, so what he has to say about it as a dilemma is relevant. From a recent conversation he had with Sam Harris my takeaway was that while I do not have much agency in the dilemma, it is better for me to understand it than ignore it. Containment is not, apparently, an option. So what can I do? In this book review, a quicker version of the same message, and the only option may be to ponder it:
The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman review – a tech tsunami
The co-founder of DeepMind issues a terrifying warning about AI and synthetic biology – but how seriously should we take it?
On 22 February 1946, George Kennan, an American diplomat stationed in Moscow, dictated a 5,000-word cable to Washington. In this famous telegram, Kennan warned that the Soviet Union’s commitment to communism meant that it was inherently expansionist, and urged the US government to resist any attempts by the Soviets to increase their influence. This strategy quickly became known as “containment” – and defined American foreign policy for the next 40 years. Continue reading
Organikos 