Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for July 27, 2019

remlaps-lite (76)in #rsslog • 5 years ago (edited)

Coevolution of natural and artificial intelligence; Advances in blending machine intelligence with natural intelligence; Microsoft's quantum computing algorithm boosts classical medical imaging; Jobs of the future; Undergraduate college student finds triceratops skull

Straight from my RSS feed:

Links and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines. I filter them so you don't have to.

pixabay license: source.

Ecology of Intelligence - This is another talk in the edge.org possible minds series - this time given by theoretical physicist, Frank Wilczek. The talk is based on a foundation from 3 topics including: (i) theoretical advantages of artificial intelligence - such as speed and low error rates; (ii) the massive lead that's currently held by natural intelligence - due to massive interconnection and 24x7 operation that have been fine tuned over millennia of refinement; and (iii) forces that drive intelligence - including the perpetual human desire for improvement for self and offspring. After laying that groundwork, Wilczek argues that there is no "singularity" on the horizon in coming decades, or even centuries, and natural intelligence also won't be completely replaced by artificial intelligence on those time scales, so he says it's important to recognize that there will be a somewhat long period of coevolution of the two - noting that children born into native interactions with the newer technologies can be thought of as a form of natural cyborg, who will be forced by technology to organize their thoughts differently from their parents. As with previous talks in the series, an open discussion follows the talk. This edge.org series has also been covered here:
- Science and technology micro-summaries for July 16, 2019 - Allison Gopnik
- Science and technology micro-summaries for June 21, 2019 - Carolyn Jones
- Interesting Links: June 13, 2019 - Freeman Dyson
- Interesting Links: June 1, 2019 - Stephen Wolfram
- Interesting Links: May 17, 2019 - Rodney Brooks

STEEM Are we on the brink of becoming Intelligent Human Race or leading towards extinction? - @bluemist discusses recent advances in the area of artificial intelligence, including Elon Musk's Neuralink, Deep Fake video technologies, and the Speech2Face AI technology that promises to construct an image of your face by listening to your voice. (A 5% beneficiary setting has been assigned to @bluemist.)

Microsoft Quantum Algorithm Boosts Medical Imaging - In a project led by Mark Griswold, researchers at Case Western Reserve have applied a quantum computing algorithm from Microsoft to improve medical imaging on classical computers. The algorithm is used in "Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting", which is a similar but more precise form of imaging to MRIs that most of us are familiar with. By applying techniques from Microsoft's quantum algorithm, the researchers have cut the time to produce an MRF image to 1/3 to 1/6 of the time required without it. A similar harnessing of quantum techniques for classical computing was discussed in Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for July 26, 2019. h/t - Communications of the ACM

Jobs of the future are strange, terrifying and 'don't even exist yet' - According to 100jobsofthefuture, future jobs may include roles like "de-extinction geneticist", "cricket farmer, "child support robot programmer" who builds the logic for robots that help children to play safely, and professional "nostalgists", who provide aesthetic support for our aging populations. There's even a quiz to help you identify your own "job of the future". Personally, I have recently been imagining that many of the jobs of the future may look a lot like farming jobs from the past, but where computation, AI & robots replace livestock and agriculture. h/t Communications of the ACM

College Student Finds a 65-Million-Year-Old Triceratops Skull During Paleontology Dig in North Dakota - During a dig in the Bad Lands of North Dakota, University of California, Merced, undergraduate student, Harrison Duran uncovered a partial skull from a 65 million year old triceratops. The expedition was led by Assistant Professor and Research Scientist, Michael Kjelland. In recognition of the land where it was found, the specimen has been named, "Alice". North Dakota is well known for its abundance of dinosaur remains, and the issue of ownership of the archaeological finds was discussed in Interesting Links: April 26, 2019.

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