Category Archives: Singularity

The big question around any new handheld is always: what's going to be the new Tetris? For the DS, I'm tempted to say Tetris was Zoo Keeper. For the PSP, Tetris was definitely Lumines, a game that, on a good day, is arguably even better than Tetris in the first place. The Switch? The Switch is such an idiosyncratic console, so strange and yet so familiar. It makes sense, really, that the Switch's Tetris was Tetris.

Kind of. In fact it was Puyo Puyo Tetris, and I don't care what you have to say about Zelda, this cut-price puzzle game, a port of a game first released in 2014, was all you needed for the Switch in the early days. (I appreciate it just missed launch.)

Puyo Puyo Tetris is Tetris and Puyo Puyo. It plays a lovely game of Tetris, with simple readable blocks, lots of colour, and all of the various upgrades like hold and soft- and hard-drops and ghosts. It also plays a lovely game game of Puyo Puyo, the stickiest, sugariest puzzle game of all time in which little blobs of gel fall from the ceiling and must be dealt with.

Listen, though. There is the special harmony of disharmony here. Tetris is sharp and hard-edged, all about shape rather than colour. Puyo Puyo is soft and squishy and as concerned with colour as it is with anything else. You clear Puyo by matching colours, which is very different to clearing Tetriminos by making a line. It's the difference between making a dessert and building a garage. What would ever happen if these two games came together?

Reader, they come together. They come together in Fusion mode. I cannot pretend Fusion mode is my most played part of Puyo Puyo Tetris - in truth I am so committed to Tetris in its purity that I find it hard to pull myself away for long. But Fusion mode still waits there on the select screen and makes me wonder. Something frightening about it really. You know how there's meant to be a supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy, and sometimes it's nice to just sit there of an evening and stare at the sky and be gently creeped out by the idea of this huge, largely incomprehensible force of nature roaring away at the middle of everything above our heads? So it's nice to play Tetris, a game I feel I understand, and consider Fusion, a game that is constantly surprising and alarming.

Fusion is something else. It's not just that you sit there while Puyos fall one minute and Tetriminos fall the next like the whole universe is broken. It's not just that these things refuse to actually fuse when they're in the well together - you still have to think about colour with Puyos and lines with Tetriminos. It's that occasionally something weird happens. Okay, not really occasionally. Tetriminos have weight in this world, which means that when they land on Puyos, they sink through them, and then the Puyos rain down again from above.

I wish I could tell you this is the end of it. But in fact it's the start of it. The start of your understanding, the start of the long road to Fusion mastery. Chains! Blocks that shift between Puyo and Tetriminos as they fall! The absolute wild heresy of a couple of new shapes of Tetrimino!

At the end of this is the Smash-Stack, in which you add to a smashing Tetrimino even as it's still moving. Yes. Take a moment to consider that. And at the end of the Smash-Stack is the eight-line clear Smash-Stack. Eight lines.

This is the puzzle game singularity, right here, where time stops and matter is compacted, whole galaxies served up on a teaspoon. Fusion is a game where strange, improbable things can happen. One day, I tell myself, I will master it and understand all of this for myself.

Read the original here:

The Double-A Team: Puyo Puyo Tetris takes puzzling beyond the infinite - Eurogamer.net

"Chromatica," Lady Gaga

In the 12 years since Lady Gaga dropped her first album, the singer has exceptionally shown that she knows how to create a killer album. "The Fame" was danceable and clever. "The Fame Monster" was an epic adventure into her darker mind. "Born This Way" brilliantly wove in elements of rock and house with her signature pop. Though she might have tripped over her disco ball on "ARTPOP," the album still had direction and character. And "Joanne" was a deep, emotional set of songs that paved the way for the sound of "A Star is Born," a flawless album that captures all the great sides of Gaga. Enter "Chromatica," her sixth studio effort, and her return to the electro dance-pop sound that made her a multiplatinum pop star. It's an album made for the clubs, though during this current pandemic, that's equivalent to dancing alone in front of your floor mirror. But instead of bopping along to the album, you'll want to social distance from it. "Chromatica" is a letdown from one of pop's best voices. The production, which is basic, is the album's biggest problem and the flat sound doesn't help bring the heavy themes of the album to life like Gaga has been able to do in the past. BloodPop works as lead producer, co-crafting most songs on the project. But other helpers are also part of the process, including Max Martin, Skrillex, Ryan Tedder, Axwell, Sebastian Ingrosso, Justin Tranter, BURNS, Rami Yacoub and Tchami. Too many cooks in the kitchen could be the reason the album lacks real flavor. Where is the salt, or spark? "Alice," one of the better songs on the 16-track set, opens the album as Gaga sings, "My name isn't Alice/But I'll keep looking, I'll keep looking for Wonderland." Her search isn't over if "Chromatica" is any indication this feels like a watered-down version of the creative Gaga we all love. In an interview to promote the album, she explained that "Free Woman" was about her sexual assault and "Rain on Me" was partly about her overdrinking. The topics are real and at times, extremely heavy, and Gaga gets points for sharing her real-life feelings and experiences in her music. But the album's production doesn't serve as the best vessel for those deep emotions to breathe. And her vocal performance, surprisingly plain and unmemorable, doesn't help either. Sometimes it feels like Gaga isn't even present. Some of the lyrics feel lazy, too. On "Plastic Doll" she sings, "I've lived in a pink box so long/I am top shelf, they built me strong." Enter side-eye emoji here. Gaga fares better on tracks such as "Replay," or even "911" and "Babylon," though both songs sound like leftover tracks from "Born This Way." But most of "Chromatica" is problematic: First single "Stupid Love" is forgettable; "Enigma" is predictable; and the inclusion of the chart-topping Ariana Grande on the bouncy but super-mediocre "Rain on Me" screams, "I JUST WANT A NO. 1 HIT RIGHT NOW." Having little depth, the best way to describe "Chromatica" might be shallow. Mesfin Fekadu, The Associated Press

"Carry Me Home. A Reggae Tribute to Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson," The Archives

The Archives, a reggae band from Washington, D.C., pay an inspired tribute to the late, groundbreaking soul and jazz poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron and his collaborator Brian Jackson on songs from the 1970s that are still powerfully relevant today. Founded and led by keyboardist Darryl "Trane" Burke, who produced the album with Eric Hilton of Thievery Corporation, The Archives play at a very high level. With some notable guests, including Jackson himself, they've made a very fine album. The band's homebase is a connection Scott-Heron and Jackson lived in the city and the area for years and the reggae versions aren't a random stylistic choice either, as Scott-Heron's father was a Jamaican soccer player. Opener "Home Is Where the Hatred Is" is like a first-person update of John Prine's heartbreaking "Sam Stone." Instead of the addict's child lamenting the father's torment, the junkie himself tells the tale "Home is where I live inside my white powder dreams." Puma Ptah's vocals and a horn section both add degrees of drama. Scott-Heron's best-known composition, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," is stripped of most of its lengthy lyrics, a sensible choice as, for example, neither Spiro Agnew nor John Mitchell mean today what they did during the Nixon era and trying to update the references may have been an unnecessary step too far. "Who'll Pay Reparations on My Soul?" draws power from its harsh questions and all-too-familiar life story, while "Must Be Something" features Jackson as one of three vocalists, their singing the best part of a great arrangement. Raheem DeVaughn puts some very touching Marvin Gaye-like vocals on "A Toast to the People" and Jackson plays a Grandmother Moog on "Winter in America," another classic he co-wrote with Scott-Heron. "Carry Me Home" is a true labor of love that respectfully but bravely re-imagines a selection of great songs while placing a much-deserved spotlight on a pair of pioneers whose messages continue to ring too true. Pablo Gorondi, The Associated Press

"Time Traveler," Jason Wilber

Lucky man, Jason Wilber. For 24 years he traveled the world with a stage pass to every John Prine concert. Wilber was Prine's lead guitarist, and a terrific one at that. "Time Traveler" features the sideman doing his side gig as a singer-songwriter himself, and the album carries poignancy because of Prine's death last month at age 73 from coronavirus complications. The album's 12 songs don't really echo Prine, or the twang of Nashville. Wilber sounds more like a seasoned balladeer at a campus coffeehouse in, say, Bloomington, Indiana, which happens to be his hometown. The album was recorded there well before Prine's death, so it's a coincidence the songs are appropriately reflective and wistful, the tempos mostly mid, the arrangements intimate. Wilber simultaneously is releasing a four-song EP titled "Honey Bee," which has a bigger sound and even makes a late push into bouncy pop on "Free (The Singularity)." Wilber's plaintive tenor wears well throughout as he touches on a wide range of topics. He makes like Rocket Man on "Living In Space," gets the seasonal blues with "On Holidays," and considers the tangled web known as the internet on "Spider." "If We Were Free" seems especially pertinent to the present moment when Wilber sings, "Outside our walls a world burns." While Wilber goes solo, he doesn't solo much. For a better sample of his guitar skills, check out the 2010 set "John Prine: In Person & On Stage." Steven Wine, The Associated Press

Excerpt from:

Album Reviews: Lady Gaga, The Archives and Jason Wilber - Worcester Telegram

By JOHN KAMAU

By making subtle changes within the structure of government, including the name of his office from The Presidency to the Executive Office of the President, President Uhuru Kenyatta has left many confused on the hidden political agenda.

Executive Order No. 1 of 2020 issued Wednesday evening caused a stir with some commentators interpreting the changes to mean the Deputy President's office had been downgraded and tucked under the Executive Office of the President.

This innocent looking nomenclature change has huge legal implications... President denotes singularity of power ... Presidency is shared power, lawyer Donald Kipkorir said in a message on Twitter.

But some constitutional lawyers said nothing has changed, explaining the order as a mere regularisation of changes in government.

In the reorganisation, the National Development Implementation and Communication Committee, headed by Dr Fred Matiangi is not listed as one of the functions of the Interior ministry. Instead, a new role designated as Oversight and Co-ordination in delivery of National Priorities and Flagship Programmes has been created.

Whether the creation of the Cabinet as an institution under OP will lead to power shifts is not clear.

In the previous order, the Cabinet did not exist under institutions and was only listed as a function within the Presidency. It now means that President Kenyatta will have to appoint a substantive Secretary to the Cabinet, a position that is highly regarded within the government.

With the ongoing shifts in the political arena, whoever gets the seat will assume a superior position. The position was scrapped after President Kenyattas attempt to appoint Monica Juma into the seat hit a snag when he failed to get parliamentary approval in 2015.

By renaming the Presidency, the President also appeared to whittle down some of the glamour that comes with a presidential system perhaps in preparation for the constitutional changes proposed under the Building Bridges Initiative.

With this arrangement, DP William Ruto does not get any portfolio, and has to wait to be assigned duties. While he did not appoint his own staff, and his accounting officer was the State House Comptroller, Dr Ruto appears not to have lost anything other than glamour.

Also now within the Office of the President is the Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) headed by Major General Mohamed Badi.

The NMS will now draw its funding from the Consolidated Funds Services (CFS), according to the new order. The order of January 14, and revised last month, thus gives NMS legal backing.

Without a legal instrument, the legitimacy of NMS has always been a subject of discussion with opinion among MPs divided whether it should draw funding from the CFS or the County Revenue Fund (CRF).

The PO shall also now be in charge of parliamentary liaison as well as co-ordination of constitutional commissions. The latter is likely to raise eyebrows considering that the commissions are supposed to be independent from the other arms of government.

In February, State House brokered a deal with Nairobi City County that saw the national government take over key functions from the devolved unit. Planning and management, transport, public works, health and ancillary services were transferred in the deal, which became effective on March 15. However, the NMS ran into headwinds in executing its functions after Governor Mike Sonko declined to sign the Countys Supplementary Appropriation Bill, 2020, effectively locking out of the Sh15 billion to implement the functions.

To save the NMS from a financial crisis, the national government allocated it Sh1.5 billion in the Supplementary Budget II approved by the National Assembly in April. In the 2020/21 budget estimates, the National Treasury has allocated NMS Sh27.9 billion.

This week, President Kenyatta and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga were sighted in Nairobi, at night inspecting the work being carried out by the NMS. The NMS is one of the projects that the President is updated on daily.

The executive order is copied to all key government institutions includng the Attorney-General, Cabinet Secretaries, Chief Administrative Secretaries, Principal Secretaries.

Why an executive order that was issued on May 11 was released Wednesday remains baffling.

Additional reporting by David Mwere.

See more here:

Changes in Executive Order raise eyebrows - Daily Nation

Long before coronavirus appeared and shattered our pre-existing normal, the future of work was a widely discussed and debated topic. Weve watched automation slowly but surely expand its capabilities and take over more jobs, and weve wondered what artificial intelligence will eventually be capable of.

The pandemic swiftly turned the working world on its head, putting millions of people out of a job and forcing millions more to work remotely. But essential questions remain largely unchanged: we still want to make sure were not replaced, we want to add value, and we want an equitable society where different types of work are valued fairly.

To address these issuesas well as how the pandemic has impacted themthis week Singularity University held a digital summit on the future of work. Forty-three speakers from multiple backgrounds, countries, and sectors of the economy shared their expertise on everything from work in developing markets to why we shouldnt want to go back to the old normal.

Gary Bolles, SUs chair for the Future of Work, kicked off the discussion with his thoughts on a future of work thats human-centric, including why it matters and how to build it.

Work seems like a straightforward concept to define, but since its constantly shifting shape over time, lets make sure were on the same page. Bolles defined work, very basically, as human skills applied to problems.

It doesnt matter if its a dirty floor or a complex market entry strategy or a major challenge in the world, he said. We as humans create value by applying our skills to solve problems in the world. You can think of the problems that need solving as the demand and human skills as the supply, and the two are in constant oscillation, including, every few decades or centuries, a massive shift.

Were in the midst of one of those shifts right now (and we already were, long before the pandemic). Skills that have long been in demand are declining. The World Economic Forums 2018 Future of Jobs report listed things like manual dexterity, management of financial and material resources, and quality control and safety awareness as declining skills. Meanwhile, skills the next generation will need include analytical thinking and innovation, emotional intelligence, creativity, and systems analysis.

With the outbreak of coronavirus and its spread around the world, the demand side of work shrunk; all the problems that needed solving gave way to the much bigger, more immediate problem of keeping people alive. But as a result, tens of millions of people around the world are out of workand those are just the ones that are being counted, and theyre a fraction of the true total. There are additional millions in seasonal or gig jobs or who work in informal economies now without work, too.

This is our opportunity to focus, Bolles said. How do we help people re-engage with work? And make it better work, a better economy, and a better set of design heuristics for a world that we all want?

Bolles posed five key questionssome spurred by impact of the pandemicon which future of work conversations should focus to make sure its a human-centric future.

1. What does an inclusive world of work look like? Rather than seeing our current systems of work as immutable, we need to actually understand those systems and how we want to change them.

2. How can we increase the value of human work? We know that robots and software are going to be fine in the futurebut for humans to be fine, we need to design for that very intentionally.

3. How can entrepreneurship help create a better world of work? In many economies the new value thats created often comes from younger companies; how do we nurture entrepreneurship?

4. What will the intersection of workplace and geography look like? A large percentage of the global workforce is now working from home; what could some of the outcomes of that be? How does gig work fit in?

5. How can we ensure a healthy evolution of work and life? The health and the protection of those at risk is why we shut down our economies, but we need to find a balance that allows people to work while keeping them safe.

The end result these questions are driving towards, and our overarching goal, is maximizing human potential. If we come up with ways we can continue to do that, well have a much more beneficial future of work, Bolles said. We should all be talking about where we can have an impact.

One small silver lining? We had plenty of problems to solve in the world before ever hearing about coronavirus, and now we have even more. Is the pace of automation accelerating due to the virus? Yes. Are companies finding more ways to automate their processes in order to keep people from getting sick? They are.

But we have a slew of new problems on our hands, and were not going to stop needing human skills to solve them (not to mention the new problems that will surely emerge as second- and third-order effects of the shutdowns). If Bolles definition of work holds up, weve got ours cut out for us.

In an article from April titled The Great Reset, Bolles outlined three phases of the unemployment slump (were currently still in the first phase) and what we should be doing to minimize the damage. The evolution of work is not about what will happen 10 to 20 years from now, he said. Its about what we could be doing differently today.

Watch Bolles talk and those of dozens of other experts for more insights into building a human-centric future of work here.

Image Credit: www_slon_pics from Pixabay

Visit link:

A Human-Centric World of Work: Why It Matters, and How to Build It - Singularity Hub

THE TOWER OF BABEL/PIETER BRUGEL THE ELDER

The Singularity will be able to solve every problem except one: evil.

These days we have no shortage of problems. We struggle with poverty and a lack of affordable housing. Depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and eating disorders are rampant, especially in teens. The world is getting hotter and the consequences may be worse than we thought. COVID-19 shows how vulnerable we are to disease after a century of successes against it. No one knows how it will end.

For all these problems, technology offers answers as long as policy makers are willing to embrace the solutions. Smart cities are the answer to housing and urban woes such as crime, traffic, and pollution. Affordable housing is ripe for tech disruption. Poverty can be fought with tech. Global warming and climate change only need new sources of energy, electric cars, smart homes and factories to become affordable and ubiquitous. Even disease may eventually kneel to human ingenuity in genetics and AI.

Despite modern woes, they are nothing compared to the struggles of the past with diseases like small pox and plague, wars of conquest and religion, brutal oppression of women and minorities, slavery, and backbreaking toil. Life is getting better and better for everyone. Even problems that technology supposedly causes like loneliness and isolation, technology can also help to solve. Moreover, it isnt clear that these are worse than they used to be anyway. In the past, if you didnt fit in, you were often ostracized. Now, there is a community for everyone, and the ways that we can connect with others will only grow and improve. Those who are more vulnerable to loneliness, the elderly, benefit the most from tech such as Virtual Reality.

What technology offers most is choice. If we dont want to live a suburban existence, for example, we can choose a communal one or, if we crave fresh air, we can live out in the country and telework.

The Singularity represents that moment in the future when that choice becomes almost limitless. Any technological solution you can dream up can be created and implemented almost instantly. With Artificial Intelligence as our partners, human beings can choose whatever lives they desire. The problem is that there will always be some who choose to do wrong and be snakes in the garden of paradise rather than enjoy its (permitted) fruits.

As psychologist and Auschwitz survivor Victor Frankl observed in his classic Holocaust autobiography, Mans Search for Meaning,

[T]here are two races of men in this world, but only these two the race of the decent man and the race of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people. In this sense, no group is of pure race and therefore one occasionally found a decent fellow among the camp guards.

Progress for the human species does not equal progress for the human soul, and the consequences of allowing limitless power fall into the hands of these indecent people could be catastrophic.

This project of constant building to the skies reminds me of the ancient Near East myth of the Tower of Babel, which Biblical authors folded into the Book of Genesis to stand as a testament to Gods power and a warning to human beings who seek to raise themselves up without His guidance or approval. Whatever Higher Power you subscribe to, you cannot deny that human power cannot be increased without limit without a matching elevation of human responsibility at the level of the individual as well as the collective. To do otherwise, is to invite a similar scattering of human potential as our egos grow beyond our ethics.

To give a little background, the Tower of Babel reads like a childrens story sandwiched in between the flood and the story of Abraham. While modern readers interpret it as explaining the origin of languages and nations, it has a far deeper meaning, one that would have been apparent to a reader in the Ancient Near East. There are essentially two groups involved. The people of Babylon (Babel is a transliteration of Babylon from Hebrew) and the heavenly host with God as the Prime Actor. In the story, the Babylonians, who represent all the people on the Earth, decide to build a big tower. The reason they give is that they all want to stay together. Why they need a tower to the heavens to do that is not explained, but there is a lot going on under the surface here. God comes in and sees that they are building a big tower and He says that there is no telling what they will do next. They are too powerful, so he confuses their languages, and they spread out over the Earth instead. The tower is left unfinished.

On the face of it, God seems to be acting like a Jerk. These people are minding their own business building this giant tower and God comes in and messes it up for them. But the issue at stake here is that the people are essentially repeating what happened in the Garden of Eden in that they are taking power for themselves without Gods permission and likewise disobeying his commandments (which was to spread over the Earth). In doing so, they are developing limitless power without having the humility (which is represented by obedience to God) to manage it. (Some Rabbinic interpretations even suggest the tower itself is a big F-you to God.)

In our era, our Tower of Babel is modern technology and institutions and the consequences of ultimate power: power to do evil. If we do not deal with this evil, we will be scattered as God scattered the people of Babylon.

Is evil something that we can solve? Probably not without changing human nature itself. Will technology offer such a cure? Perhaps it will be an anti-evil pill. But would an evil person take such a pill? If the future offers us choices, it must offer us freedoms as well. Freedom inherently contradicts forcing people to change their nature. Perhaps this was really the conundrum that faced the Almighty why not just make people good? But how without taking away who we are?

If we are to protect the Paradise that we seek to build, we must prepare to cast evil out of it. The future cannot be for everyone, but only for those decent people who are worthy of it. This is why even in the post-scarcity society of Star Trek, there are still prisons.

Technology is the Tower not the God. We build higher and higher but we come no closer to heaven. Most of us will be content with an Earthly paradise. Some will choose to explore the stars and others to find new ways of being, but, still others, like the Archangel Lucifer, will seek to destroy it for their own gain.

View post:

The Tower of Babel Project: how human beings must prepare for the approaching Singularity - Medium

Air University Press and Air University Library have relaunched the Fairchild Series, which is an academic series that publishes cutting-edge research.

The series is named after General Muir Stephen Fairchild, who served as the first leader of the Air University, located at the Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.

This timely volume discusses the impact of advances in artificial intelligence (AI) that will lead to panoptic surveillance and directly contribute to highly authoritarian forms of political control.

This edited volume aims to prepare Anglo-American security practitioners for the impact of AI-related technologies on a countrys domestic political system.

This book contains 27 chapters, which is divided into six sections with 24 expert contributors drawing their insights from mixed professional backgrounds.

Particularly, this book traces the differential impact of AI technology on competing domestic regime types.

Chapters in the book describe how China will seek to further increase its authoritarian control by utilizing AI, while making its citizens prosperous and shielding them from external knowledge influences.

The Chinese model of digital authoritarianism or digital social and political control is likely to emerge as a major and direct rival to free, open, and democratic society a model championed by the Anglo-American alliance.

The Russian model, offers a hybrid approach that relies on a variety of manipulative digital tools to destabilize challenger regimes while maintaining tight state control over critical resources and quashing political rivals.

Part 1 of the book with four framing chapters authored by the editorNicholas D. Wrightfocuses on the impact of AI technologies on domestic politics and its far-reaching impact on the evolving global order.

The remaining five sections of the book are filled with contributions from 23 authors, who are some of the worlds leading experts in the field of AI and Internet technologies.

Part two of the book, with five chapters, focuses on how the Chinese and Russian models of digital authoritarianism are shaping domestic political regimes with tools of surveillance, monitoring, big data-fueled AI led governance, facial recognition, and behavioral pattern recognition.

Collectively these technologies are leading to intensifying political control of citizens. The third section of the book is on the export and emulation of Chinese and Russian models of digital authoritarianism to other parts of the world.

Part four contains four chapters on how AI technologies influence Chinas domestic and foreign policy decision making.

Focus of the fifth section, with five chapters, is on the various military dimensions of AI and its application to the development of modern weapon systems such as hypersonic glide weapons and enhancement of Chinese command authority through artificial intelligence.

Probably the most provocative section in this book is the final part of the book that focuses on Artistic Perspectives and the Humanities.

This section draws on science fiction writings, movies, and art to present various telling scenarios of the future.

The set of five chapters offers a vivid and frightening rendering of AI driven technological futures such as precognition to prevent crime, drones to monitor public spaces and summarily execute offenders, a color-coded social credit ranking system to categorize people in a society by obedience to authority, and AI applications that goes beyond facial recognition to diagnosing depression and mood conditions in individuals.

Drawing linkages between AI technologies and terrifying dystopian futures, this set of chapters has issued a clarion call to policy makers to develop robust rules and regulations for democratic governance of the digital world without which corporate and authoritarian control will become the norm.

For the purposes of this book, AI is defined as a constellation of new technologies that combines big data, machine learning, and digital things (e.g., the Internet of Things).

Application of AI implies the analysis of data in which inferences from models are used to predict and anticipate possible future events (p.3).

Critically, what is important to understand is that AI programs do not simply analyze data in the way they were originally programmed, instead the AI programs respond intelligently to new data and adapt their outputs accordingly (p. 3).

Ultimately AI is understood as giving computers new behaviors and knowledge which would be thought intelligent in human beings (p. 3).

The authors argue that the greatest strength of AI capabilities are primarily perceptual, the ability to process images, speeches, and other patterns of behavior and choosing bounded actions to guide decision making.

Googles Deepmind AI is one such example, which draws data from Googles datacenters and accurately predicts when the data-load is going to increase or decrease and correctly adjusts the cooling systems for the datacenters (p.7).

This book raises legitimate concerns with regards to singularity that represents the fear that an exponentially accelerating technological progress will create an AI that exceeds human intelligence and escapes our control (p. 18).

AI systems will self-learn from data without any human input or management. The precise concern is that AI will become super-intelligent, which may then deliberately or inadvertently destroy humanity or usher changes that are outside the control of humans (p. 18).

The terror of singularity is well captured in the five excellent chapters in the concluding section of the book, which draw on sources from reality, fiction, and art to depict an Orwellian dystopia in which conscious human beings either fight back as depicted in the movie seriesMatrix or the Terminatoror they become mindless tools of these self-thinking and regenerating machines (p. 194).

Middle sections of book focusing on the Chinese model of digital authoritarianism, the hybrid Russian model of authoritarianism, and the American model of digital openness, but dependent on corporate control are temporary predictions of AI usage.

The Chinese, Russian, and American models assume that governments could, should, and will be able to control AI and maybe deploy AI toward social control and military applications.

Given the rate of progress, the singularity may occur at some point this century (p. 18).

The lead author, Wright, adds that although clearly momentous, given that nobody knows when, if or how a possible singularity will occur and limits clearly exist on what can sensibly be said or planned for now (p. 18).

The authors are hoping that humans would be able to master and control AI in the same way that we have been (so far) successful in controlling the use and spread of nuclear weapons, albeit imperfectly.

The key assertion here is that much like nuclear weapons, singularity issues related to AI will require managing within the international order as best we can, although our best will inevitably be grossly imperfect (p. 18).

Our solutions are likely to incomplete, inadequate, imperfect, and potentially counterproductive because singularity potentially represents a qualitatively new challenge for humanity that we need to think through and discuss internationally (p. 18). This is a serious and a major claim of the book that readers should take note!

At a more temporal level, the contributors to this important volume proffer three key recommendations: (1) the United States must pursue robust policies to keep ahead of the digital curve and it must respond by preventing the emergence of a military-industrial complex that is managed by an AI corporate oligopoly and a surveillance state; (2) the United States must build a new global order of norms and institutions required to persuade the world that the American model of free and open digital democracy offers an attractive and viable alternative to the Chinese and Russian models of digital authoritarianism; and (3) the United States should fight back against digital authoritarianism and hybridism so that it manages the risks associated with a multifaceted interstate AI competition.

View post:

Artificial Intelligence, China, Russia, and the Global Order - Khabarhub

Novelist Sheila Heti on how Phyllis Roses classic study of five famous Victorian couples unravels the myth of matrimony

I mentioned to some friends last year that I was writing about Parallel Lives, Phyllis Roses 1983 study of five Victorian marriages. One, a man in his 30s who has been with his boyfriend for seven years, but is always falling in love and talks about his relationships constantly, almost fell down in my living room. Another, who claims that thoughts of her husband take up only 10 per cent of her brain, actually did a double-take: it was the only book about marriage she had ever wanted to read.

Parallel Lives had been hiding in the bookshelves of so many of my friends, a shared favourite, without any of us knowing it. These are some of the most exciting books: the ones you feel you have stumbled upon, fortuitously, and that seem so tailored to your interests that its impossible to imagine them having a general, wide readership. Yet Parallel Lives, for all its singularity, does.

One of the virtues of the book and I think one reason it appeals topeople of such different temperaments is its refusal to make sweeping statements about love or life. It remains faithfully close to the factual details of the marriages it depicts, and its mode of conclusion is not generalisation, but the epigram. A generalisation asks to be disagreed with. An epigram unfolds in all directions.

Rereading this book at the age of 42, a decade into a relationship that might well be called a marriage, I cannot perceive the book I first read when I was 23, engaged to a different man, who bought it for me. Back then, I was naively confident about our ability to make a happy marriage of equals, because that is what we wanted to do. I imagined he gave me Parallel Lives as if to say: pick which of these marriages you want, my dear. I am available for any of them. I read the book almost like a mail-order catalogue. But today it seems to be illustrating the opposite point: about the sad and comical fact of our natures, which defines the limits of our most intimate connections.

Rose began writing Parallel Lives when she was 35, a mother, two years divorced. She continued to work on it for six years, while a professor at Wesleyan University. Several years after it was published, she met a man while she was living in Paris researching a book about Josephine Baker; eventually they would marry. This is a heartening fact: though a feminist had attained near X-ray vision for how marriages can develop in all sorts of ways ways that cant be predicted at the start she saw enough value in this arrangement to try it for a second time.

See the article here:

Parallel Lives the only book you'll ever need to read about marriage - Telegraph.co.uk

THE heart of our Milky Way galaxy is blinking at us, according to scientists.

Mysterious signals from Sagittarius A, a huge black hole at the centre of our galaxy, were picked up by one of the world's most powerful telescopes.

2

In a new study, experts at Keio University in Japan outline how the strange, repeating signals may form.

"This emission could be related with some exotic phenomena occurring at the very vicinity of the supermassive black hole," team member Professor Tomoharu Okasaid.

Researchers studied readings of Sagitarius A (Sag A) taken in 2017 by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).

They found a previously-undiscovered light signalcoming from the supermassive black hole, which is four million times as massive as our Sun.

2

The burst of energy likely originated from a region of swirling hot gas around Sag A known as its accretion disk.

Activity appears to stem from the innermost edge of the disk.

The edge is close to the black hole, which is spinning gas and debris around at close to the speed of light.

During this process, random "hot spots" appear that flash millimeter and submillimeter light - the signal detected by the scientists.

What is a black hole? The key facts

What is a black hole?

What is an event horizon?

What is a singularity?

How are black holes created?

It remains unclear what is causing the flashes, but scientists hope the answer could help them learn more about the activity of black holes.

Experts may struggle to find out, however, as photos of Sag A are next-to-impossible to capture because it absorbs all surrounding light.

"The faster the movement is, the more difficult it is to take a photo of the object," Professor Oka said.

The research was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

'DISGUSTING'Amazon slammed after listings with racist abuse appear on UK online store

Hot Deals

CLEAN SAVINGAmazon has knocked 170 off this Roomba robot vacuum cleaner

Live Blog

WE HAVE LIFT OFFElon Musk blasts 2 astronauts into space in historic launch

Exclusive

PLAY TIMEPS5 design revealed? Stunning 'first look' images show leaked Sony sketches in 3D

PLAN-ITJupiter is so bright you can see it from the UK with the naked eye TONIGHT

OUT OF JUICEDelete THESE 22 dodgy apps to save your phone's battery life

In other space news, Nasas first astronaut launch from US soil in almost a decadelifts off tomorrow.

Nasa recentlyunveiled the Tesla carthat will be ferrying astronauts to the launch.

And, incrediblephotos of eerie Martian landscapeshave been released online by scientists.

What do you think of the black hole find? Let us know in the comments!

We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online Tech & Science team? Email us at tech@the-sun.co.uk

Visit link:

Mystery radio signal detected coming from the heart of our galaxy and may be sent from a black hole - The Sun

Last year at South By Southwest, author and entrepreneur Rohit Bhargava spoke to a packed auditorium about trends that, though they may not be obvious, are playing a serious role in shaping the future. Each year Bhargava spends untold hours figuring out which trends are going to be the most relevant and impactful, then puts out a book on them as part of his Non-Obvious series.

He was planning to speak about 2020 trends at this years SXSW festivalbut like every other large in-person event, it was canceled. And like every other thing in our lives, the pandemic has turned most of Bhargavas 2020 trends on their heads.

But not all of them. In fact, a select few trends that were already on the rise have been amplified by Covid-19, and now theyre even more significant. In a virtual SXSW session streamed from his home last week, Bhargava talked about these trends, how we can make the most of them, and how to find meaning amid chaos and confusion.

Were in a time of extreme disruptionthat much is obvious. The places were used to going, which are normally full of people, are empty. Were all at home trying to figure out how to pass the time productively. And we all have big questions about how the new normaleven once our states and cities start to reopenis going to change the way we do everything. Will students go back to school in the fall? Will we be working from home indefinitely? Will we always have to wear a face mask to go to the grocery store? Whats safe and what isnt?

Bhargava emphasized that hes not here to predict the future. Rather than being focused on where the world will be 5 to 10 years from now, he said, I focus on trying to observe today to figure out what to do today. Also, tech on its own doesnt intrigue him as much as the human response to tech and how its impacting our lives. Im more interested in how human behavior is evolving, he said.

But how do you figure that out when theres so, so much information coming at us from all sides? The big problem right now is that we just dont know what to believe, and so we dont believe anything, Bhargava said. The world seems untrustworthy and we dont know what to pay attention to.

Parody videos and articles have popped up poking fun at the confusion around coronavirus, but its disconcerting to realize how much misinformation has been flying around, and how little we know about this virus even after two and a half months of lockdowns.

Misinformation is, of course, not a new problem. And its impossible to consume all the information out there to try to figure out whats real. Instead of attempting to digest and make sense of all the news, tweets, memes, podcasts, articles, shares, retweets, and videos out there, Bhargava said, we should devote more time to trying to understand people. How do we become people who understand people? he asked. What motivates them to believe something, what gets them to act, what engages them?

Bhargavas own people-understanding process involves what he calls the haystack method. Rather than searching for a needle in a haystack, he gathers hay (ideas and stories) then uses it to locate and define a needle (a trend). Its really easy to read the same media that reinforces what you already think over and over, he said. But a key part of gathering valuable information is looking for it in places you wouldnt normally think to look. That means taking in media thats targeted to different demographics than those you fall into.

Once you look across a wide variety of channels, common themes emerge. Bhargava groups those themes together and tries to elevate them into a bigger idea; thats where his trends come from.

He defines a non-obvious trend as a unique curated observation of the accelerating present. Were in a moment now where the present is accelerating even faster, he said. Here are the four trends hes pinpointed that have been amplified by the current situationand how we can make the best of them.

Overwhelmed by technology and a sense that life is too complex, people seek out simpler experiences that offer nostalgia and remind them of a more trustworthy time; we revive habits, media, or connections we find comforting or reassuring. This trend was already in place before the pandemic; Bhargava included a variation of it in his 2019 SXSW talk. The breakneck speed of technology made many of us want to slow down and reconsider the role we want our phones and computers to play in our day to day lives.

But now, Bhargava said, revivalism is gaining even more momentum; if the world seemed complex and overwhelming before, that sense has multiplied by an order of magnitude now that were in a global health crisis. Rather than drowning in too much conflicting information, people are consciously cutting back on the amount of news and social media they consume each day (not least because its just. so. depressing.) and seeking out forms of entertainment that were cast aside long ago: books, puzzles, classic video games, board games. Were reconnecting virtually with friends or relatives we havent spoken to in a while. Were trying out old family recipes in the kitchen since we cant go to restaurants.

Its time, Bhargava said, to rediscover the analog; We can do these things outside of technology. Now that weve been forced to find substitutes for many components of our daily routines, maybe well learn that we dont need to be as dependent on our devices as we thought.

The second trend is essentially a more nuanced variation of the first. Tired of technology that isolates us from one another, people are seeking out and placing greater value on physical, authentic, and imperfect experiences delivered by humans. In a time when we cant hug our friends and families or even speak to store clerks without masks and plastic dividers, were craving empathetic, human experiences big-time.

The aforementioned dependence on digital devices as a way to interact with other people seems reprehensible now that we dont even have the in-person option. Before the pandemic we relied on social media to connect us, texting to communicate with each other, like buttons to share our opinions and preferences, and algorithms to streamline and improve our shopping, transit, and other experiences.

While all of that isnt going to go awayand may double down in a world where physical contact is now perceived as dangerouswere realizing how crucial and irreplaceable our human connections are. We need to focus on empathy first, Bhargava said. An empathetic approach (whether in business or simply with our families and friends) is most likely to provide value to people in the current situation. And probably always.

Have you picked up some new skills during lockdown? Tried your hand at some fancy recipes? Learned hard pieces on the guitar or piano? How likely is it that the skills or habits youve picked up will persist after this is all over?

As we consume bite-sized knowledge on demand, Bhargava said, we benefit from learning everything more quickly but risk forgetting the value of mastery and wisdom. Its become really easy to watch a YouTube video to learn just about anything; during the pandemic, views of cooking tutorial videos have skyrocketed, and its likely the same has happened for instructional videos of all types (including how to cut your own or your partners hair!). Since we now have access to information more readily than ever before, we expect to be able to learn things faster. But it still takes a lot of time and dedication to get really good at a skill or become an expert in a given field.

While its great to learn new skills quickly, lets not forget to zoom out and look at the bigger picture. Bhargava recommends finding ways to connect people with knowledge to inspire beliefs, expanding our worldviews and building towards a greater visionwhether for ourselves, our families, or the collective future.

The lines between industries are eroding, leading to a continual disruption of business models, distribution channels, and consumer expectations. This was happening before Covid-19 broke out; Apple was getting into financial services, banks were opening coffee shops, Crayola started making makeup, and Taco Bell opened a hotel (I know right- WHAT?! Its true though).

Now that everything is closed and were confined to our homes, businesses are having to adapt in ways they never imaginedand those that cant adapt are, unfortunately, in trouble. Everything about how we do business is shifting, Bhargava said. And that disruption is happening at an unprecedented pace. Even once the economy opens againwhich for many states in the US is happening this weekwe wont go back to how things were in 2019. The only way forward is to adapt.

We dont know whats coming next, Bhargava said. But we know that people who can adapt best are non-obvious thinkers who pay attention to whats happening and try to continue to change.

Image Credit: Rohit Bhargava by Brian Smale

Here is the original post:

4 Non-Obvious Trends That Matter During This Pandemic - Singularity Hub

Black holes remain one of the most mysterious entities in the universe, with scientists knowing little about them, and what is on the inside. Their ability to completely deconstruct the laws of physics remain both baffling and mesmerising.

Black holes completely break the laws of physics with their singularity at the centre, which is a one-dimensional point where gravity becomes infinite and space and time become curved.

The only other point in nature where a singularity existed is at the Big Bang.

What is inside a back hole is a mystery, but one expert believes that if you were to get close to the event horizon the point of no return where the clutches of the black holes gravity becomes to powerful that nothing, not even light, can escape you would be burned alive in the accretion disc.

The friction generated by these discs as they are pushed and shoved by the extreme gravitational force is so large that it can produce a tremendous amount of energy, depending on the size of the black hole.

According to astrophysicist Paul Stutter, getting close to the accretion disc would burn you to a crisp.

He wrote for Live Science: "Indeed, lots of stuff in the universe finds itself orbiting around black holes. Once these foolhardy adventurers get caught in the black hole's gravitational embrace, they begin the journey toward the end.

"As material falls toward the black hole, it tends to get squeezed into a razor-thin band known as an accretion disk.

"That disk spins and spins, with heat, friction, and magnetic and electric forces energizing it, causing the material to glow brightly.

READ MORE:Scientists stunned by rogue black holes moving through galaxy

See the original post:

Black hole: THIS is what would happen if you got close to a black hole - Express.co.uk