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Mar 28, 2022

AI, the brain, and cognitive plausibility

Posted by in categories: business, robotics/AI

This point was made clear in a recent paper by David Silver, Satinder Singh, Doina Precup, and Richard Sutton from DeepMind titled “Reward is Enough.” The authors argue that “maximizing reward is enough to drive behavior that exhibits most if not all attributes of intelligence.” However, reward is not enough. The statement itself is simplistic, vague, circular, and explains little because the assertion is meaningless outside highly structured and controlled environments. Besides, humans do many things for no reward at all, like writing fatuous papers about rewards.

The point is that suppose you or your team talk about how intelligent or cognitively plausible your solution is? I see this kind of solution arguing quite a bit. If so, you are not thinking enough about a specific problem or the people impacted by that problem. Practitioners and business-minded leaders need to know about cognitive plausibility because it reflects the wrong culture. Real-world problem solving solves the problems the world presents to intelligence whose solutions are not ever cognitively plausible. While insiders want their goals to be understood and shared by their solutions, your solution does not need to understand that it is solving a problem, but you do.

If you have a problem to solve that aligns with a business goal and seek an optimal solution to accomplish that goal, then how “cognitively plausible” some solution is, is unimportant. How a problem is solved is always secondary to if a problem is solved, and if you don’t care how, you can solve just about anything. The goal itself and how optimal a solution is for a problem are more important than how the goal is accomplished, if the solution was self-referencing, or what a solution looked like after you didn’t solve the problem.

Mar 28, 2022

Grand challenges in AI and data science

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, robotics/AI, science

This conference will take place at EMBL Heidelberg, with a live streaming option for virtual participants free of charge. Proof of COVID-19 vaccination or recovery is required for on-site attendance. Please see EMBL’s COVID-19 terms and conditions.

Workshop registration is available only to EIROforum members. Please note the workshop is an on-site-only event and contact Iva Gavran for more information or use this link for registration.

Mar 28, 2022

Here’s who’s flying on Thursday’s Blue Origin space launch

Posted by in category: space travel

Pete Davidson was initially slated to be the next headline-grabbing name to take flight aboard the suborbital space tourism rocket developed by Jeff Bezos’ company, Blue Origin, after the commercial space company launched several other famous faces on its previous flights.

But the comedian abruptly dropped out of the mission after a schedule change pushed the flight back by a week. His seat was given to longtime company employee Gary Lai, the chief architect of the very rocket he’ll fly on. Lai will be joined by five paying customers who had the means to dish out an undisclosed sum for one of the coveted crew capsule seats.

Liftoff of the New Shepard launch vehicle had been scheduled for Tuesday morning, but the company said that it’s expecting rough winds at its facilities near Van Horn, Texas at that time. Blue Origin is now targeting Thursday at 8:30 am CT. Those interested in catching the action — which is expected to look much like Blue Origin’s three earlier suborbital jaunts — can tune into Blue Origin’s webcast Thursday morning.

Mar 28, 2022

“Not Afraid Of Dying, It Would Come As A Relief”: Elon Musk

Posted by in category: Elon Musk

I’m disappointed that Elon Musk is anti-lifespan extention.

Surely we can find an easier way to avoid old politicians holding powers for too long without condemning billions of people to old age sickness and death.

NDTV.

Continue reading “‘Not Afraid Of Dying, It Would Come As A Relief’: Elon Musk” »

Mar 28, 2022

Astronomers use “galactic archeology” to solve a mystery about the Milky Way’s origins

Posted by in category: space

CSI: Milky Way


Astronomers dig into some forensic archaeology to determine how the Milky Way got its current shape after a series of mergers.

Mar 28, 2022

5,000th Exoplanet is Confirmed

Posted by in category: space

The number of known planets beyond our Solar System has crossed the 5,000 milestone, following the addition of 65 newly confirmed worlds to NASA’s Exoplanet Archive.

Mar 28, 2022

Biological physics should be recognised as a major discipline within physics, claims report

Posted by in categories: biological, physics

First “decadal survey” into biological physics says further advances can only emerge in the subject with additional investment.

Mar 28, 2022

A billion of the world’s most climate-vulnerable people live in informal settlements — here’s what they face

Posted by in categories: climatology, habitats

By Vanesa Castán Broto, University of Sheffield; Emmanuel Osuteye, UCL, and Linda Westman, University of Sheffield

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Flooding is common in informal settlements in Bwaise, a neighbourhood in the Ugandan capital Kampala. Bwaise’s residents are largely excluded from planning and local decision-making processes, and have poor housing and limited access to sanitation and other essential services.

Mar 28, 2022

Printing circuits on rare nanomagnets puts a new spin on computing

Posted by in categories: information science, nanotechnology, physics, robotics/AI

New research artificially creating a rare form of matter known as spin glass could spark a new paradigm in artificial intelligence by allowing algorithms to be directly printed as physical hardware. The unusual properties of spin glass enable a form of AI that can recognize objects from partial images much like the brain does and show promise for low-power computing, among other intriguing capabilities.

“Our work accomplished the first experimental realization of an artificial spin glass consisting of nanomagnets arranged to replicate a neural network,” said Michael Saccone, a post-doctoral researcher in at Los Alamos National Laboratory and lead author of the new paper in Nature Physics. “Our paper lays the groundwork we need to use these practically.”

Spin glasses are a way to think about material structure mathematically. Being free, for the first time, to tweak the interaction within these systems using electron-beam lithography makes it possible to represent a variety of computing problems in spin-glass networks, Saccone said.

Mar 28, 2022

This novel fabric can ‘hear’ your heartbeat

Posted by in categories: engineering, materials

“An engineering team from MIT collaborated with students from Rhode Island School of Design to create a textile that can hear and (eventually) interpret what’s happening on and inside our bodies.”


A new fiber made from a piezoelectric material and a conductor can register sound as mechanical waves and convert it into electrical waves, helping monitor bodies.