Tag: AI

Is quantum computing replacing Turing Machines ..?

About scientists, and quacks.

… stayed as guests in the Ehrenfest home, they were no doubt amused by their host’s pet parrot, which had been trained to say, “But, gentlemen, that is not physics.”

But gentlemen, let’s discuss quantum computing. How can that, and its current state and moreover, its current systemic and systematic (sic the diference) difficulties be explained by taking note of actual ‘computer’ science (theoretical computing), sparse as it is, in the form of the theories surrounding Turing Machines..?
As the latter were proven mathematically (logically) to rule…. All that ever can compute anything, can be represented as a Turing Machine; logically, they’re all (can be made/translated! into) equivalent, computationally.

So, how could one arrive at “Drop all knowledge you had about computing” in the same way as “In this area, gravity no longer exists” …?
I’m really curious.

Plus:
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[Yes gravity’s at work here ..! Barça]

Rejoice, you the Puzzled

Unless you were doing stuff on Nocial Media (see tomorrow — never mind, I’m not one for linear Time), you may have missed or noticed (same) the release of a facsimile of one of the most veritable puzzles of the ages (Western world), in this here thing, which is posted here. Yeah, that’s how hyperlinks work, I kno, I kno.

So, now you the puzzlers AKA crytographers around the globe, may swoop down in even larger numbers than before, to crack the thing. Or, probably, not. And you knew about this whole thing.

Question: (Why | _ ) hasn’t already some Watson-class frigate AI tool (literally certainly not figuratively) been set loose on this ..? Lack of purpose? Of would it be a good ‘Turing test’ of sorts, if we test the capabilitites (learning/analysis time ..!?) of any AI tool, by the time it would take to make mincemeat out of the Manuscript — Duh-tch for tearing apart. Any attempt after the first successful, would need to be instructed not to find the solution out there on the ‘net, obviously (?) …

One may hope, may one not? And:
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[Found it! This is what the Manu is about!!]

For members, useful insights

I’d suggest making this available widely; beyond membership only. Because it ties in so well with, e.g., this and many other issues at this.

Yes, I may be biased; just like everyone if only for having been member of this. Which (subject) plays a much more prominent role in your lives than you think, certainly in the nearest of futures. Beware.

And be aware of:
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[Your ethics reasoning: All corners, leading nowhere, abandoned; Fabrique Utrecht]

Bring on the Future; it belongs to ME

Some say self-driving cars / autonomous vehicles will take over driving as if they will take over all driving. But the intermediate phase [where autonomous persons and autonomous masters with slave (!) persons] will see ‘driving’ turn into a pastime, a hobby, of thrill seeker persons. Yes, even with Insurance rates getting somewhat higher. Not much higher, let alone skyrocketing, because the lone drivers that hold out, will find more and more very defensively behaving autonomous tin cans opposite them, scaring the latter (to steer) off the road…! Hence, aggressive drivers will not (provably) cause many accidents, autonomous vehicles will in all their panic. Hence, autonomous humans will not have staggering Insurance rates

and will keep on driving because of the fun of it, the feeling of independence and self-control, the thrill sought and found…

After human chess players could no longer win against ‘computers’, humans still play chess. After humans were outpaced by cars of all kinds, humans still try to win gold medals at the very event. After humans lost Jeopardy against Watson, humans still compete on ‘intelligence’ everywhere; opportunistically retreating ever further on the definition of ‘intelligence’.
Hence, humans will not drive ‘cars’ en masse, in the near+ future. But they will upgrade the purpose of driving, and will drive.

I sure will, for fun. With so many ‘lectric autonomous thingies on the road moving the sheeple, I’ll have or get myself all the road space I need… The road will belong to ME ME ME ..!

And
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[One perfect artist does NOT outdo others; Gemeentemuseum Den Haag]

You're So Smart

In a reference to a song about me:
Most ab-original humans wouldn’t pass a serious Turing test.
Most serious AI trying to pass, would.

You, the select elite of my blog readers … Well, elite by numbers, mostly, or ..? And select, as in ‘clicked by error’..?

Just kidding, of course, off course.
What I meant was: as originally intended, Turing tests have become a hypothetical mind game ‘only’. Now that we’re approaching ‘intelligence’ of machines, like, graduating from ANI to AGI and on to ASI without a blink — not all of society will change at one instant to the next level, and then after some prep all of society will move to the next! Much more creepy stuff is out there without general (public its) knowledge than you can imagine (if anything) — suddenly we return to the thought experiment.
Acknowledging that we have never been able to give a sort-of extentional definition of ‘intelligence’, only an intentional one. Which may indeed suffice. Now that we’re accustomed, and into ethics discussions rather than did/did-not type of things (ex the laggerds who still can’t stand being surpassed by ‘dumb’ machines — calling them that, calls yourself ‘below’ (quod non) that…), we’ve seem to have made the question irrelevant. When a few still say that this sort of thing is impossible, others are already doing it and hardly anyone seems to care.

The latter part being the scary bit. Wait and see just will not be enough here, in particular RE settling the Ethics elements. It’s not only self-driving cars where momentum is out of human hands and into Technology’s… It’s everywhere.

To not be afraid — or to be but be brave and conquer your fears and Act, this:
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[Still recognisable as VR trompe l’oeil; Rijks Amsterdam]

Contra Bruce, for once

For once, Bruce is not at the right end. Maybe not opposite of it, but.
As per this here blog post of his — a repeat of one of his, and others’, thread.

The argument: We make things, like, security, too difficult for users and hence (?) we shouldn’t try to change them into secure behaviour.
The contra: ‘Guns kill people’, or was it that the men (mostly) firing guns, kill people? And the many toddlers shooting their next of kin since, being at the approximate maturity of the Original gun pwner, they have no clue.

The Contra, too, and much more to the point when it comes to ‘information’ ‘security’: We should make cars run at maximum 5Mph … Since ‘users’ are waaaay too stupid to drive carefully.
Just don’t mention that ‘security’ is a quality not an absolute pass-or-fail thing, and that ‘information’ could not be more vague. [Except ‘cyber’, that’s so vacated of any meaning that it’s a black hole.] And don’t mentoin we still seem to let cars be used by any other moron that once, possibly literally decades ago before ‘chips’ were invented, passed some formal test — the American idea of the test coming very, dangerously, close to … was (sic) it the Belgian? system where one could pick up one’s driver’s license at the post office. Able, allowed, to buy cars that drive not just 5 but 250Mph, on busy roads, without protection against using socmed mid-traffic… One thing could be to introduce Finnish-style booking for unsafe behaviour (if caught, not when as per next paragraph [think that through…]), and/or huge fines for the producers of bad equipment (hw/sw) comparable to fines on car makers, or outright laws to build airbags in, etc.

And then, if we’d design ‘secure’ systems, e.g., the Apple way, we’d end up with even worse Shallows sheeple that have so much less clue than before… And all in the hands of … even in ultra-liberal countries one would suggest either Big Corp, or Big Gov’t, both options being Big Brother literally in such an atrocious Dystopia of humanity.

So, you want safe systems? You get the loss of humanity before actual safety.

[Yes I get the Humans Are The Cause Of Much Infosec Failure thing (including Human Flexibility Can (still!) Solve More Than Machines Can, Against System (!) Malfunction), but also I am completely in favour of both the Humans Must Through Tech Be Completely Shielded From Being Able To Do Anything Wrong and Humans Should Retain All Freedom To Act Responsibly solutions.]

Pick your stand. And:

[Use G Translate if you have to, from Dutch. Typifying the driver, probably, if only for picking the brand/car…; London]

Being busy bodies doing busy work

… Anyone noticed that the ‘trend’ (development) where everyone claims to be oh so busy with, basically busywork, started with the demise of the secretarial profession ..?
Where secreataries (either a pool of or a single personal, or in a pool altogether for sharing i.e. load balancing) and like support staff were (sic) there to alleviate all the chores that now, all underlings/specialists, ‘managers’ and even up, are supposed to do now, in stead of the work they were hired for and be productive in the thing that labour specialisation had made them best, most productive, in, like a Ricardo trade deal within the organisation.

Yes, the secretaries were doing much of, superficially!, uninteresting work but were so labour-specialised in that, that they were more productive, effective, than any heap of managers ever could dream to be … Where the specialists as well as the managers once were specialised folk, with suitable spans of control, but now, no more…

That has been chucked out of the window. Despecialisation resulted indeed, and has included the tons of changeover time involved. Making everyone miserable with having to fill out dumb forms (dumbed-down to the max because now even managers needed to understand, not only the understand-experts that the secretaries were) in stead of the interesting work that one came over to the organisation for.

The hyperbolic extension to socmed addiction and FOMO, and a prefix Impostor Syndrome, of course leading to a neat total burn-out. Thta prefix thing, I’ll elucidate later in some seperate post, if you don’t git it.

The solution also being Obvious: Bring Back The Secretaries! And give them proper status and reward (in all ways; monetary, too, since they raise productivity and morale so handsomely — the latter not literally meant, btw).

Let’s all admit that productivity increase by firing lowest-level staff first, doesn’t work as far as we (???) have done that over the past four decades, and revert that trend. Plus:
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[Wide, high, mighty, needs no tower; Metz cathedral and yes, that’s part of another building on the right not a pic error … (?)]

Right. Explain.

Well, well, there we were, having almost swallowed all of the new EU General Data Protection Regulation to the … hardly letter, yet, and seeing that there’s still much interpretation as to how the principles will play out let alone the long-term (I mean, you’re capable of discussing 10+ years ahead, aren’t you or take a walk on the wild side), and then there’s this:

Late last week, though, academic researchers laid out some potentially exciting news when it comes to algorithmic transparency: citizens of EU member states might soon have a way to demand explanations of the decisions algorithms about them. … In a new paper, sexily titled “EU regulations on algorithmic decision-making and a ‘right to explanation,’” Bryce Goodman of the Oxford Internet Institute and Seth Flaxman at Oxford’s Department of Statistics explain how a couple of subsections of the new law, which govern computer programs making decisions on their own, could create this new right. … These sections of the GDPR do a couple of things: they ban decisions “based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces an adverse legal effect concerning the data subject or significantly affects him or her.” In other words, algorithms and other programs aren’t allowed to make negative decisions about people on their own.

The notice article being here, the original being tucked away here.
Including the serious, as yet very serious, caveats. But also offering glimpses of a better future (contra the title and some parts of the content of this). So, let’s all start the lobbies, there and elsewhere. And:
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[The classical way to protect one’s independence and privvecy; Muiderslot]

Walnuts, brain size and you

Combining some recent news, some really old news, and your place in between. Or not.

The recent news: Birds might have tiny brains, but they still may be very intelligent (as animals go). Now, on a related note, discoveries show that the brain cells of birds may be smaller and/or much denser packed than they are in, e.g., humans and family.
The really before-stone-age news:dinosaurs-picture-is-bleak

Combined: Birds have a separate line of descendance from their dinosaur-time quite-close equivalents. Having survived some dino extinction rounds and still remain quite similar in body and operations as before, having kept the same lightweight and small-package brain structure too?
Then, maybe the dinosaurs weren’t so stupid either with their small but possibly also very densely packed neurons and they just had a bad hair day (that’s what you get when a comet strikes your coiffure — footballers beware).
Just a, very,very,very after-the-facts hypothesis… And:
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[For wine making; isn’t that obvious !?!?!? Quinta do Vallado; Douro]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord