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HAL 9000 (credit: Warner Bros.) Is it possible to develop moral autonomous robots with a sense for right, wrong, and the consequences of Via luiy 
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For graduate student Deven Vignali of Libby, the three-dimensional data visualization center at Montana Tech has made his life easier. Via luiy
luiy's curator insight,
November 3, 2013 2:00 PM
For graduate student Deven Vignali of Libby, the three-dimensional data visualization center at Montana Tech has made his life easier. He’s using the $60,000 state-of-the-art software and tracking system to conduct research for his master’s thesis. He’s proving that passive seismic acquisition techniques can be used to monitor geo-thermal resources, as in hot springs. It’s the fastest high-performance computing system within Montana academia, said Jeff Braun, head of the Tech computer engineering and software engineering departments. Consider Vignali’s perspective: “It reduced my simulation model run time from about 18 hours to about three hours, so it positively affected my project,” said Vignali. The system has 10 teraflops of theoretical speed and 1.5 terabytes of memory. Translation: It is equal to between 200 to 400 times the memory of a typical home laptop computer.
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Rencontre avec Eric Sadin, philosophe spécialiste de l’évolution de nos rapports au numérique. Ecrivain et philosophe, Eric Sadin est l’un des rares intellectuels français à penser le changement de civilisation induit par la numérisation de notre monde. Son dernier livre, l’Humanité augmentée (1), a reçu le prix de l’«essai le plus influent de l’année sur le digital» au Hub Forum 2013. Il y évoque la naissance d’un homme-interface connecté à une intelligence artificielle ambiante… Via Mlik Sahib, luiy
Mlik Sahib's curator insight,
October 30, 2013 1:48 PM
"C’est évident. Sans forcément apprendre à coder, nous devons assimiler le langage des machines et savoir ce qui passe dans la boîte noire des systèmes. Où vont les données ? Qu’est-ce qu’un algorithme ? Comment fonctionne le back-office ? Il est fascinant de constater que plus l’interface homme-machine se simplifie, plus l’ergonomie devient fluide, plus la machinerie qui se cache derrière l’écran devient complexe et insondable. Dans ces immenses lieux de mémorisation des comportements que sont les data-centers [centres de stockage de données, ndlr], c’est le règne de l’opacité, et le citoyen est totalement absent. Or, c’est par la connaissance des choses que nous resterons libres de nos choix face cette nouvelle forme de souveraineté technologique. C’est l’apprentissage d’une conscience active à l’égard de notre environnement numérique qui devrait être enseigné dès maintenant à l’école."
luiy's curator insight,
November 1, 2013 6:21 AM
Mais quand le PDG de Google dit : «Nous voulons devenir le troisième hémisphère de votre cerveau», c’est inquiétant, non ?
Oui et non. Google s’inscrit dans ce courant transhumaniste qui consiste à vouloir augmenter l’humanité, à réparer nos déficiences originelles, à améliorer nos capacités physiques et cognitives. Pour Google, Apple, IBM et les autres, il ne s’agit pas de nous dominer façon Big Brother, mais de monétiser la maîtrise technologique en privilégiant la conception d’agents intelligents. Il faut se défaire une fois pour toutes de l’opposition binaire entre technophiles et technophobes. Le temps est à la complexité. Il s’agit aujourd’hui de saisir, dans chacune des situations nouvelles, les perspectives qui s’ouvrent autant que les risques qui pointent. C’est ce travail de «cartographie multicouche» que je m’efforce de développer dans mes livres. |
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How soon can we expect to see brain implants for perfect memory, enhanced vision, hypernormal focus or an expert golf swing? We're closer than you might think. Via JP Fourcade, luiy
luiy's curator insight,
March 19, 2014 10:22 AM
Today, effective brain-machine interfaces have to be wired directly into the brain to pick up the signals emanating from small groups of nerve cells. But nobody yet knows how to make devices that listen to the same nerve cells that long. Part of the problem is mechanical: The brain sloshes around inside the skull every time you move, and an implant that slips by a millimeter may become ineffective.
Another part of the problem is biological: The implant must be nontoxic and biocompatible so as not to provoke an immune reaction. It also must be small enough to be totally enclosed within the skull and energy-efficient enough that it can be recharged through induction coils placed on the scalp at night (as with the recharging stands now used for some electric toothbrushes).
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The wearable revolution is heading beyond Google Glass, fitness tracking and health monitoring. The future is wearables that conjure up a digital layer in real space to 'augment' reality. Read this article by Dan Farber on CNET News. Via luiy
luiy's curator insight,
January 8, 2014 1:55 PM
Augmented Reality past and future
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Would you give your brain a jolt if a Harvard scientist said it could make you smarter, more creative and less depressed? - This couldn’t possibly be a good idea. On Friday the 13th of September, in an old brick building on 13th Street in Boston’s Charlestown neighborhood, a pair of electrodes was attached to my forehead, one over my brain’s left prefrontal cortex, the other just above my right eye socket. I was about to undergo transcranial direct-current stimulation, or tDCS, an experimental technique for delivering extremely low dose electrical stimulation to the brain. Using less than 1 percent of the electrical energy necessary for electroconvulsive therapy, powered by an ordinary nine-volt battery, tDCS has been shown in hundreds of studies to enhance an astonishing, seemingly implausible variety of intellectual, emotional and movement-related brain functions. And its side effects appear limited to a mild tingling at the site of the electrode, sometimes a slight reddening of the skin, very rarely a headache and certainly no seizures or memory loss. Still, I felt more than a bit apprehensive as I prepared to find out if a little bit of juice could amp up my cognitive reserves and make me, in a word, smarter. Via Wildcat2030, luiy
luiy's curator insight,
November 3, 2013 11:07 AM
The first modern experiments with tDCS came in fits and starts. In 1981, Niels Birbaumer, a neuroscientist at the University of Tübingen, Germany, reported that by applying extremely low doses of direct-current electricity — one-third of a milliamp, not enough to power a hearing aid — to the heads of healthy volunteers, he could speed their response on a simple test of reaction time. The Italian neurophysiologist Alberto Priori began his own experiments in 1992, applying just a tiny bit more electricity, about half a milliamp. He found that enough of the electricity crossed through volunteers’ skulls — electrons flowing from the cathodal electrode to the anodal electrode — to cause brain cells near the anodal to become excited. Despite repeating the experiment multiple times to be sure of the results, it took Priori six years to get his findings published in a scientific journal, in 1998. As he told me, “People kept telling me it can’t be true, it’s too easy and simple.”
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In this talk Kevin Warwick, professor of Cybernetics at Reading University presents his talk on Cyborgs at TEDxOxford on 26th September 2011. He presents ideas on bringing back sight to the blind, allowing humans to see with sonar, and communicating with thought alone by combining artificial components with humans. Via Sakis Koukouvis, luiy
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Is it possible to develop “moral” autonomous robots with a sense for right, wrong, and the consequences of both?
Researchers from Tufts University, Brown University, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute think so, and are teaming with the U.S. Navy to explore technology that would pave the way to do exactly that.
“Moral competence can be roughly thought about as the ability to learn, reason with, act upon, and talk about the laws and societal conventions on which humans tend to agree,” says principal investigator Matthias Scheutz, professor of computer science at Tufts School of Engineering and director of the Human-Robot Interaction Laboratory (HRI Lab) at Tufts.
“The question is whether machines — or any other artificial system, for that matter — can emulate and exercise these abilities.”
But since there’s no universal agreement on the morality of laws and societal conventions, this raises some interesting questions. Was HAL 9000 (HAL = (Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer) moral? Who defines morality?