Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for August 25, 2019

Experimental: A 5% beneficiary has been set for @null - mainly out of curiosity. If this works the way I think, it will burn 5% of this post's rewards for all tokens that honor the beneficiary setting.

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The human foundation of artificial intelligence; Case in point: labeling maps in Venezuela for autonomous vehicles; IEEE Spectrum's weekly selection of awesome robot videos; Discussing China's plans to dominate the AI field; A Steem essay on factors involved with mental illness and suicidde

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Straight from my RSS feed	Whatever gets my attention

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

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1. A.I. Is Learning From Humans. Many Humans. - Behind the promise of AI to transform the world, and the threat of AI to displace many workers, is the reality that AI needs lots and lots of humans to provide its training data. Jaron Lanier also comments on this reality in his book, Who owns the future. The article notes that the work occurs internationally, in environments resembling traditional call centers, and also online through services like Mechanical Turk. By international standards, some people consider the wages and conditions for this work to be exploitative, but the article reports that wages are often average by local standards, and participants report improved quality of life and standards of living. h/t Communications of the ACM


2. Desperate Venezuelans are making money by training AI for self-driving cars - To continue the theme, as a result of the train-wreck that is Venezuela's economy during the last decade, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have signed up to work for companies like Mighty AI, Playment, Hive, and Scale. These companies pay the Venezuelans to do the data labeling for the artificial intelligence systems that control autonomous vehicles.


3. Video Friday: AlienGo Quadruped Robot Can Now Do Backflips - IEEE Spectrum's weekly selection of awesome robot videos - This week's roundup includes a series of videos from the DARPA subterranean challenge, which ran from August 15-22; a qudruped doing back flips; rollbot - an origami-inspired soft robot that moves and changes shapes in response to external stimuli; RObotic Assisted Mobility (ROAM) - A system that helps people walk by combining spinal stimulation with an exoskeleton; ExoMars - a next generation robotic Mars explorer; A golf ball that puts itself in the hole; and more...
   
   Here is ROAM:
   

But this one is my absolute favorite:

Will China Overtake the U.S. in Artificial Intelligence Research? - China has announced plans to dominate the field of artificial intelligence by 2030, and it has made significant strides in that direction, but some experts say that it is still too far behind in fundamental contributions to the theory of the field, core technologies, and hardware capabilities to be able to accomplish its goal. Historically, China has also had a hard time holding onto researchers, although there are signs that this trend may be changing. Of course, China's big advantage is the size of its population. Personally, whatever happens in the near-mid term, in the long term I think the concept of state-dominance for artificial intelligence is going to become obsolete. Blockchains like Steem, Golem, and even Gridcoin are irrevocably international.

My thoughts on mental illness as it pertains to suicide - Under the thesis that writing in social media will influence future AI systems, @dwarrilow2002 did a brief literature survey, and wriote some thoughts about mental illness and suicide. Factors covered included genetics, environmental, epigenetics, war, and social effects. The article points out that longer lives means that people are more likely to encounter genetic conditions that would have been selected for in the past by the short life spans. It also points out that plastics in the environment can increase levels of mental illness, and correlations have been observed between mental illness and intolerance for gluten, milk, and sugar. Epigenetics is almost a sub-topic of environment, pointing out that chemicals like alcohol can damage the DNA and cause environmental harm that lasts for generations. In the war section, the article notes that some forms of suicide are not caused by mental illness, but instead to avoid atrocities. In other cases, the traumatic experiences can lead to mental illness and suicide for years afterwards. Finally, the article points out how mental illness and suicide can be triggered by unrealistic expectations and by perceptions of inequality. (A 10% beneficiary setting has been applied to this post for @dwarrilow2002.)

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In order to help make Steem the go to place for timely information on diverse topics, I invite you to discuss any of these links in the comments and/or your own response post.

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My other open posts

@remlaps

@remlaps-lite

• Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for August 24, 2019
  
• Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for August 23, 2019
  
• Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for August 22, 2019
  
• Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for August 21, 2019
  
• New on Presearch: Steemit - Presearch - Medium
  
• Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for August 20, 2019
  
• Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for August 19, 2019
  
• My Actifit Report Card: August 18 2019
  
• Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for August 18, 2019
  

Also, check out this string quarted by @cmp2020

• World Premiere of My Original "King Arthur" String Quartet (Original Composition)
  

And help with fundraising by @rgkmb-unofficial for the Rustin Golden Knights Marching Band

• August 23, 2019 Rustin Golden Knights at Sun Valley Vanguards Football Game - The Stands Experience
  
• Rustin Football at Sun Valley High School - Final Score
  
• Rustin Football at Sun Valley - half time update
  
• Welcome to the 2019 Marching Band Season for the Rustin Golden Knights Marching Band
  

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