Reports this week of alleged Russian murder of civilians in Ukraine on a large scale – denied by Russia but essentially confirmed by German intelligence and aerial photography, which showed bodies strewn on the ground – are horrifying on many levels. It has been called genocide by President Zelenskyy: other commentators are more circumspect, but … More Possible genocide in Ukraine? Humanity never learns
What defines smart? One of my memories from intermediate school, years ago, was the time my class sat a science test. One of the other kids had made it his life’s mission to jeer at me at every opportunity – mindless bully-stuff like ‘you’re an idiot’ by way of greeting – and happened to get … More What defines intelligence?
It must be about twenty years since I encountered a CD burner labelled (wait for it) “Smart and friendly”. Back then the art of burning CD’s was sufficiently arcane and difficult that even the hardware manufacturers had to pitch their wares as “smart”. It wasn’t, of course – it was a dumb piece of hardware … More True AI and why it’ll ignore us
I have long been intrigued by the way we imagine ‘artificial general intelligence’ as some kind of inevitable future. One, perhaps, where humans – too – can be transferred into machines. You’ll notice I used ‘general’ in that phrase. We throw plain ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) around with reckless glee these days, meaning things like chatbots. … More Why the singularity won’t happen any time soon. Or at all.
Matthew Wright 