Technology versus Humanity

“Schmidt's assessment back then was that artificial intelligence research faced tremendous obstacles that inhibited its progress. He "didn't think it would scale," he said of the machine learning tech.

And he said he also didn't think it would "generalize," meaning becoming more flexible and elastic, like the human mind, rather than remaining a specialized tool suited only to specific tasks.

Schmidt had underestimated the power of simple algorithms to "emulate very complex things," he said, while qualifying that "we're still in the baby stages of doing conceptual learning."”

Google's Eric Schmidt: 'I Was Proven Completely Wrong' About Artificial Intelligence
http://fortune.com/2017/02/15/eric-schmidt-rsa-artificial-intelligence/
via Instapaper

“Just as the Fourth Geneva Convention has long protected civilians in times of war, we now need a Digital Geneva Convention that will commit governments to protecting civilians from nation-state attacks in times of peace. And just as the Fourth Geneva Convention recognized that the protection of civilians required the active involvement of the Red Cross, protection against nation-state cyberattacks requires the active assistance of technology companies. The tech sector plays a unique role as the internet’s first responders, and we therefore should commit ourselves to collective action that will make the internet a safer place, affirming a role as a neutral Digital Switzerland that assists customers everywhere and retains the world’s trust.”

The need for a Digital Geneva Convention - Microsoft on the Issues
https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2017/02/14/need-digital-geneva-convention/
via Instapaper

“Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US have developed a program that enables the live-tracking of emotions. They rigged up people while regaling them with moderately interesting anecdotes. So far, the responses are graded “positive” or “negative”. But not for long. “Our next step,” said Tuka al-Hanai, the study’s co-author, “is to improve the algorithm so that it is more accurate at calling out boring, tense and excited moments.”

What will happen, she threatened, is that we’ll all have this sort of software running on smartphone watches, and no one will be able to opt out. “Developing technology that can take the pulse of human emotions has the potential to dramatically improve how we communicate with each other.” Then comes the horror-movie pitch: “Imagine if, at the end of a conversation, you could rewind it and see the moments when the people around you felt the most anxious.””

Friendships, romance, humanity: mind-reading tech will kill it all | Catherine Shoard
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/07/friendships-romance-humanity-mind-reading-tech
via Instapaper

“You can think of the sensors as the eyes and ears of the internet. You can think of the actuators as the hands and feet of the internet. And you can think of the stuff in the middle as the brain. We are building an internet that senses, thinks, and acts.”

We’re Building a World-Size Robot, and We Don’t Even Realize It
http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/01/the-internet-of-things-dangerous-future-bruce-schneier.html
via Instapaper