Category Archives: Post Human

JUDY WOODRUFF: Now: the fears around the development of artificial intelligence.

Computer superintelligence is a long, long way from the stuff of sci-fi movies, but several high-profile leaders and thinkers have been worrying quite publicly about what they see as the risks to come.

Our economics correspondent, Paul Solman, explores that. Its part of his weekly series, Making Sense.

ACTOR: I want to talk to you about the greatest scientific event in the history of man.

ACTOR: Are you building an A.I.?

PAUL SOLMAN: A.I., artificial intelligence.

ACTRESS: Do you think I might be switched off?

ACTOR: Its not up to me.

ACTRESS: Why is it up to anyone?

PAUL SOLMAN: Some version of this scenario has had prominent tech luminaries and scientists worried for years.

In 2014, cosmologist Stephen Hawking told the BBC:

STEPHEN HAWKING, Scientist (through computer voice): I think the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.

PAUL SOLMAN: And just this week, Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur Elon Musk told the MDNMNational Governors Association:

ELON MUSK, CEO, Tesla Motors: A.I. is a fundamental existential risk for human civilization. And I dont think people fully appreciate that.

PAUL SOLMAN: OK, but whats the economics angle? Well, at Oxford Universitys Future of Humanity Institute, founding director Nick Bostrom leads a team trying to figure out how best to invest in, well, the future of humanity.

NICK BOSTROM, Director, Future of Humanity Institute: We are in this very peculiar situation of looking back at the history of our species, 100,000 years old, and now finding ourselves just before the threshold to what looks like it will be this transition to some post-human era of superintelligence that can colonize the universe, and then maybe last for billions of years.

PAUL SOLMAN: Philosopher Bostrom has been perhaps the most prominent thinker about the benefits and dangers to humanity of what he calls superintelligence for many years.

NICK BOSTROM: Once there is superintelligence, the fate of humanity may depend on what that superintelligence does.

PAUL SOLMAN: There are plenty of ways to invest in humanity, he says, giving money to anti-disease charities, for example.

But Bostrom thinks longer-term, about investing to lessen existential risks, those that threaten to wipe out the human species entirely. Global warming might be one. But plenty of other people are worrying about that, he says. So, he thinks about other risks.

What are the greatest of those risks?

NICK BOSTROM: The greatest existential risks arise from certain anticipated technological breakthroughs that we might make, in particular, machine superintelligence, nanotechnology, and synthetic biology, fundamentally because we dont have the ability to uninvent anything that we invent.

We dont, as a human civilization, have the ability to put the genie back into the bottle. Once something has been published, then we are stuck with that knowledge.

PAUL SOLMAN: So Bostrom wants money invested in how to manage A.I.

NICK BOSTROM: Specifically on the question, if and when in the future you could build machines that were really smart, maybe superintelligent, smarter than humans, how could you then ensure that you could control what those machines do, that they were beneficial, that they were aligned with human intentions?

PAUL SOLMAN: How likely is it that machines would develop basically a mind of their own, which is what youre saying, right?

NICK BOSTROM: I do think that advanced A.I., including superintelligence, is a sort of portal through which humanity will have passage, assuming we dont destroy ourselves prematurely in some other way.

Right now, the human brain is where its at. Its the source of almost all of the technologies we have.

PAUL SOLMAN: Im relieved to hear that.

(LAUGHTER)

NICK BOSTROM: And the complex social organization we have.

PAUL SOLMAN: Right.

NICK BOSTROM: Its why the modern condition is so different from the way that the chimpanzees live.

Its all through the human brains ability to discover and communicate. But there is no reason to think that human intelligence is anywhere near the greatest possible level of intelligence that could exist, that we are sort of the smartest possible species.

I think, rather, that we are the stupidest possible species that is capable of creating technological civilization.

PAUL SOLMAN: And capable of creating technology that has begun to surpass us, first in chess, then in Jeopardy, now in the supposedly impossible game for a machine to win, Go.

This is just task-oriented software, some have argued, and not really intelligence at all. Moreover, whatever you call it, there will be enormous benefits, says Bostrom.

On the other hand, if we approach real intelligence, it could also become a threat. Think of Ex Machina or The Matrix or Elon Musks fantasy fear this week about advanced A.I.

ELON MUSK: Well, it could start a war by create by doing fake news and spoofing e-mail accounts and fake press releases, and just by, you know, manipulating information. The pen is mightier than the sword.

PAUL SOLMAN: So, this is going to be a cat-and-mouse game between us and the intelligence?

NICK BOSTROM: That would be one model. One line of attack is to try to leverage the A.I.s intelligence to learn what it is that we value and what we want it to do.

PAUL SOLMAN: In order to protect ourselves from what could be a truly existential risk.

So, how do you get the greatest good for the greatest number of present and future humans beings? It might be to invest now in controlling the evolution of artificial intelligence.

For the PBS NewsHour, this is economics correspondent Paul Solman, reporting from Oxford, England.

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Will we be wiped out by machine overlords? Maybe we need a ... - PBS NewsHour

At least 75 percent of our DNA is useless junk, according to a new study.

Researchers at the University of Houston calculated that only 10 to 15 percent of the human genome is functional, and definitely no more than 25 percent. That makes the remaining 75 to 90 percent of our genome junk useless matter that isnt toxic or harmful, its mostly just there. The study was recently published in Genome Biology and Evolution.

Biologists have argued for years about whether or not our DNA is mostly trash or mostly purposeful. A study conducted in 2012 stated that up to 80 percent of our DNA plays some role in making us who we are a claim that Dan Graur, lead author of the most recent study, hopes his findings will put to rest.

For 80 percent of the human genome to be functional, each couple in the world would have to beget on average 15 children and all but two would have to die or fail to reproduce, Graur told uh.edu.

Graurs research examines how mutations affect DNA. When mutations form in junk DNA, nothing happens. But when mutations form in functional DNA, they can be deadly. If a child inherits functional DNA with mutations, theyll likely die before being able to have children of their own this is how evolution ensures that lethal mutations dont build up and continue getting passed on.

So if the majority of our DNA were functional, we would be accumulating stacks of damaging mutations and need to maintain unrealistic birth rates to sustain the population. And this obviously isnt the case.

Graur told New Scientist that the aforementioned 2012 study spent $400 million on the research and wanted something big to say. Knowing the percentage of functional DNA is crucial to studying and curing diseases.

We need to know the functional fraction of the human genome in order to focus biomedical research on the parts that can be used to prevent and cure disease, Graur said. There is no need to sequence everything under the sun. We need only to sequence the sections we know are functional.

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Human DNA is mostly trash, biologists say | New York Post - New York Post

Kenton Weisgerber, as seen in this photo from last year, is a client of the Housing First program. BRYAN SCHLOSSER / Regina Leader-Post

Not long ago, Kenton Weisgerbers life looked hopeless he was an addict with mental health issues who was one of the hidden homeless in Regina.

Hed lost his job, his home and his roommate.

I ended up putting myself in a tough position where I had no stability, Weisgerber said. At that point, I started to couch surf and stay with people, not really having anywhere that I could call a safe place. All the time, dealing with an addiction.

Last year, he was one of 26 people participating in Reginas initial Housing First program, run by Phoenix Residential Society.

Im humbled Ive been given a second chance, Weisgerber said.

Hes using that chance to confront his addiction and mental health issues and further his education.

Im successful because of the trust and the hope these people gave me,Weisgerber said.

Under the umbrella of the federal governments Homelessness Partnering Strategy (HPS), the YMCA serves as the Community Entity for Regina and Rural Saskatchewan. It is supported by Reginas Community Advisory Board to fund initiatives that aim to end homelessness in our city.

A number of community-based organizations have been part of Housing First, includingThe Circle Project. It was brought on board in the fall of 2016 to offer cultural supports to individuals in the program.

A key priority of HPS funding is Housing First the philosophy and practice of housing the homeless and offering supports when theyre housed.

The initiatives one-year results were released Tuesday at an anniversary event.

An $18,080 investment per participant produced estimated savings of $1.9 million.

The stats speak for themselves but Id be remiss if I didnt put it out there that theres more money and resources needed, said Tyler Gray, Carmichael Outreachs public relations officer.

Currently, 118 people with high needs are waiting to get into Housing First 26 assessed with very severe needs.

Extra funding would make a huge difference, said Lori Wright, in charge of intensive case management with Phoenix Homes.

Its about manpower, she said. We can only support so many Funding would be amazing. Permanent supportive housing would be phenomenal in this city.

Mayor Michael Fougere said cost savings are important, but even more so, peoples lives are being changed.

They are hopeless and they have no place to go, he said. The idea of Housing First is to stabilize them, and then deal with their particular addictions and mental health issues Those changes matter so much to our city.

The city spends roughly $2.5 million on housing.

I do think that a discussion of federal, provincial and city financing resources and in-kind contributions are really important to move this to the end goal, which is ending homelessness, Fougere said.

Due to the success of Housing First through Phoenix Homes and demand for the program, Carmichael Outreach was contracted for 2017-18 to build a second Housing First team for Regina.

Social Services Minister Tina Beaudry-Mellor isinterested in the results Housing First has achieved and wants to see how her ministry can use their measuring tools.

Shes also frustrated.

Weve been working in parallel, but tandem to each other and not in a co-ordinated way, she said. The reason I was there today was to try and change that.

Social Services doesnt provide direct funding to Housing First.

Beaudry-Mellor noted federal funding goes directly to the Community Advisory Board and bypasses the province.

Thats one of the reasons our investments are separate from the Housing First piece, Beaudry-Mellor said. We have invested just under $30 million in the Regina area for hard-to-house projects and that would include housing people with complex medical needs and disabilities through my ministry specifically, but also it would include people who are struggling with mental health and addictions.

MP Ralph Goodale, Minister of Public Safety, noted housing is one of the prime determinants of health, safety and well-being.

Housing First has caused a greater focus and attention on that issue than I think weve ever seen before, he said.

The federal government has invested more than $3 million in the last two or three years to address homelessness around Regina, he said.

Part of the research thats been done is on this very question: Does Housing First work? said Goodale. And the data is indicating in a compelling way that it does.

pcowan@postmedia.com

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Huge savings in human misery and money - Regina Leader-Post

Colorado wildlife managers and homeowners have killed at least 34 bears so far this summer, reflecting the bears growing reliance on human-derived food amid a seasonal shortage of forage in some areas.

This surge in what the managers call lethal removals builds on a pattern in Colorado, where people kill more than 1,000 bears a year. Hunters killed 1,051 bears in 2015 and 933 in 2016, Colorado Parks and Wildlife data show. Government wildlife managers and landowners kill additional bears deemed dangerous; last year, 334 bears were killed 66 by state wildlife officials. At least 77 bears died last year when hit by vehicles.

Nobody is comfortable with whats happening with bears, the largest surviving carnivores in the West. Some wildlife managers point to recent dry conditions and shortages of natural food that may be driving bears into cities. But there is evidence that some bears facing urbanization of their habitat are growing accustomed to eating human food in trash cans, campsites, cars and homes.

Even when natural foods are sufficient, about 32 percent of bears on ColoradosFront Range still ate human food, a 2016 study led by CPW biologist Mathew Alldredge concluded. In western Colorado, 20 percent of bears still ate human food. The researchers analyzed hair and blood from bears killed by hunters to determine their diets.

Were receiving more reports of bears investigating people, getting closer to people than we normally would expect, said Matt Thorpe, a CPW area wildlife manager in Durango (population 20,000), a stronghold for bears. Theyre not demonstrating that natural fear of humans that we usually see.

Up to 50 people a day are calling the southwest regional office and reporting problematic bear behavior. In the Durango area, an early lush spring gave way to a June 10 freeze and hot dry spells, promising fewer forbs, acorns and berries.

A woman in Bayfield reported a bear chasing her children. She told CPW officials she yelled at the bear and tried to drive it away but that it kept following her kids. A federal contractor used dogs to track down and kill that bear.

In cases like this, public-safety priorities give wildlife managers little option but to kill bears, Thorpe said.

Nobody gets into this line of work for that, Thorpe said. My darkest days as a game warden have been those days when I had to put a bear down especially if it could have been prevented if people were more diligent about securing trash and other attractants.

CPW officials say a late spring freeze and a dry July could limit the quantity and quality of forage for bears in some areas.

With higher human population densities, bears can be expected to encounter human food more often unless people change their personal behavior, Lauren Truitt, a CPW spokeswoman, said in a statement. The closer a bear, or bears, live to populated areas the more we will have human-wildlife encounters due to the easy source of food available.

The agency estimates a statewide bear population of 17,000 to 20,000, but officials say that number is based on extrapolations and concede significant uncertainty. State wildlife managershave allowed increased hunting, issuing 17,000 bear-huntinglicenses in 2014, up from 10,000 in 1997.

State wildlife biologists have established that bears adapt to use human food at least when necessary, and that females foraging aggressively to boost their weight are more successful reproducing when they eat human food.

The recent killings were done by CPW and federal contract wildlife managers. A few bears in the southwestern region were trapped and moved, but biologists say that strategy often fails if bears are moved to habitat occupied by other bears or if a bear already is strongly habituated to eating human trash.

Typically, bears confronted by humans back off. Those turning to human food sources typically are curious young males. CPWs Thorpe said inquisitive bears increasingly may have had experiences moving with their mothers as cubs into urban terrain near people to find food rendering them bolder than bears in the past.

Government wildlife managers and landowners killed at least eight bears in the southwestern area between Pagosa Springs and Cortez, CPW officials said. One bear had been eating chickens. Ten more were killed in mountainous areas to the east.

A CPW spokeswoman said 16 bears were killed in the northwestern Colorado, and a couple were killed in the northeast region that includes metro Denver and the booming north Front Range suburbs. One bear attacked a camper west of Denver who was sleeping outside a tent. The bear bit his head.

Traditionally at this time of year, bears forage for forbs and bugs. But they are opportunistic omnivores who find food wherever they can.

Colorados booming human population and expanding suburbs mean bears face more people more often, learning to locate human food in trash cans, in pet food bowls outside houses and occasionally enter houses and cars.

Thorpe said at least four bears this month broke into homes near Durango. The homeowners responded. Justifiably, he said, they shot the bears.

This summers bear-human conflicts reflect complex dynamics that CPW researchers are studying. A recent bear-tracking project over six years around Durango reached conclusions expected to inform a smarter approach to bears. Among the findings:

Bear-human conflicts do not necessarily mean the bear population is growing but that bears are adapting to take advantage of urban expansion.

Bears that eat human food do not become addicted contrary to long-held beliefs that have justifieda two-strikes policy of euthanizing food-conditioned bears.

Rising temperatures around dens and urban development in bear habitat shorten bear hibernation, leading more bears out more often, potentially increasing clashes with people.

Colorados bear population could decline. In southwestern Colorado around Durango, where researchers studied 617 bears starting in 2011, the female bear population decreased by 60 percent.

Coloradans do care about their wildlife, and we need their help to keep these bears wild. It is on all of us to do our part by taking simple steps like locking up trash, taking down bird feeders, Truitt said. If more people would be willing to secure their trash we couldsignificantlyreduce many of the encounters we face each summer.

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Growing conflicts between bears and humans have led to dozens of bear deaths in Colorado this year - The Denver Post

Campaigns to manipulate public opinion through false or misleading social media postings have become standard political practice across much of the world, with information ministries, specialized military units and political operatives shaping the flow of information in dozens of countries, a British research group reported Monday.

These propaganda efforts exploit every major social media platform Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and beyond and rely on both human users and computerized bots that can dramatically amplify the power of disinformation campaigns by automating the process of preparing and delivering posts. Bots interact with human users and also with other bots.

Though most social media platforms are designed and run by corporations based the United States, the platforms are infiltrated almost immediately upon their release to the public by a range of international actors skilled at using information to advance political agendas, both within their own countries and often beyond, said the researchers from Oxford Universitys Computational Propaganda Research Project.

The government propaganda evolved with social media and has grown along with it, said Philip N. Howard, an Oxford professor and co-author of the report, called Troops, trolls and trouble makers: A global inventory of organized social media manipulation.

The report draws on news accounts of social media propaganda in 29 countries to reach broader conclusions about the global growth of various techniques, including issuing false news reports, attacking journalists or countering critical social media posts with messages supporting a government position or political view.

These efforts are often, though not always, clandestine, with the origin of the social media posts obscured through phony account information. Automated bot accounts often play key roles by automatically creating social media posts, responding to other users and echoing select themes in a way that are very difficult to distinguish from ordinary human users. Bots can post far more often than human users, in some cases more than 1,000 times a day; human users dubbed cyborgs rely on similar automation technology to bolster the power of their accounts as well.

[As a conservative Twitter user sleeps, his account is hard at work]

Twitter and Facebook, which owns Instagram, declined to comment on the report. Neither company was singled out in the report, though Twitter and Facebook have become particularly popular targets for social media manipulation because of their global reach.

Howard said he and the reports other lead researcher, Oxfords Samantha Bradshaw, were struck by how much of the propaganda activity and innovation happened in Western-style democracies, including Britain, the United States, Israel, Australia and Mexico.

The report, citing a previously published news account, said that Israel had 350 social media accounts on multiple platforms, operating in English, Hebrew and Arabic. A British propaganda campaign posts fake YouTube videos in an attempt to prevent Muslims from becoming radicalized and joining the war in Syria, the report said. And political forces in Mexico used bots and human users to attack journalists and spread disinformation over social media.

In some cases, these efforts involved full-blown government bureaucracies, with a steady number of employees and fixed payrolls. Other times bands of online activists or ad-hoc groups of paid workers worked together for a single campaign before being disbanded. Some efforts also get outsourced to private vendors that specialize in influencing opinion through social media.

Though Russia leads the world in the sophistication of its online propaganda efforts, Howard said that efforts to support Republican Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign broke new ground for using social media to shape political opinion. Howards group and others have previously reported that Twitter bots supporting Trump were far more vocal and organized than bots supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton, particularly in the closing days of the election.

Its the presidential election cycles that put tens of millions of dollars into these innovations, Howard said. The big-money innovations happen in the United States and then get adopted everywhere.

Other researchers have documented the power of social media to bolster Trumps surprise electoral success and shown that some of those social media resources are now spreading to other nations.

The spread of unflattering documents about French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron now debunked as phony got key support in the final days of the May election from Twitter bots that also had supported Trump in the U.S., according to Emilio Ferrara, a researcher at the University of Southern California.

He analyzed 17 million tweets, finding that bots based outside of France focused on different issues than human Twitter users in France. His latest report, published this month, suggested the possibility of a black-market for reusable political-disinformation bots.

The use of these techniques is growing rapidly as bots and other techniques for manipulating opinion on social media become cheaper and easier to use, and as evidence grows of their effectiveness. Many companies now sell bot accounts by the thousands and, for a fee, will manage them for customers, Ferrara said.

He and other researchers said that the social media platforms do not do enough to combat the spread of bots and the resulting propaganda. The impact goes beyond electoral politics to hot-button issues such as climate change and the safety of vaccines.

The vast majority of people they would be surprised at the extent to which these platforms are used for political manipulation, Ferrara said. Especially with nobody doing anything about it.

Howards group at Oxford also has detected bots that supported Trump working on other issues globally, often in concert with bots supporting alt-right causes and also Russian propaganda campaigns.

They generate so much content and they share each others content that its hard to disaggregate the networks, Howard said.

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Spreading fake news becomes standard practice for governments across the world - Washington Post

Louisville Business First

U of L chief human resources officer leaving post Louisville Business First U of L media relations director John Karman confirmed that Hughes would leave her position, effective July 20. Karman also said that her replacement will be announced on the same day. She joined the university in March 2015. The University of ... and more »

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U of L chief human resources officer leaving post - Louisville Business First

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Michael Gavin, Colorado State University

(THE CONVERSATION) The thatched roof held back the suns rays, but it could not keep the tropical heat at bay. As everyone at the research workshop headed outside for a break, small groups splintered off to gather in the shade of coconut trees and enjoy a breeze. I wandered from group to group, joining in the discussions. Each time, I noticed that the language of the conversation would change from an indigenous language to something they knew I could understand, Bislama or English. I was amazed by the ease with which the meetings participants switched between languages, but I was even more astonished by the number of different indigenous languages.

Thirty people had gathered for the workshop on this island in the South Pacific, and all except for me came from the island, called Makelua, in the nation of Vanuatu. They lived in 16 different communities and spoke 16 distinct languages.

In many cases, you could stand at the edge of one village and see the outskirts of the next community. Yet the residents of each village spoke completely different languages. According to recent work by my colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, this island, just 100 kilometers long and 20 kilometers wide, is home to speakers of perhaps 40 different indigenous languages. Why so many?

We could ask this same question of the entire globe. People dont speak one universal language, or even a handful. Instead, today our species collectively speaks over 7,000 distinct languages.

And these languages are not spread randomly across the planet. For example, far more languages are found in tropical regions than in the temperate zones. The tropical island of New Guinea is home to over 900 languages. Russia, 20 times larger, has 105 indigenous languages. Even within the tropics, language diversity varies widely. For example, the 250,000 people who live on Vanuatus 80 islands speak 110 different languages, but in Bangladesh, a population 600 times greater speaks only 41 languages.

Why is it that humans speak so many languages? And why are they so unevenly spread across the planet? As it turns out, we have few clear answers to these fundamental questions about how humanity communicates.

Most people can easily brainstorm possible answers to these intriguing questions. They hypothesize that language diversity must be about history, cultural differences, mountains or oceans dividing populations, or old squabbles writ large we hated them, so we dont talk to them.

The questions also seem like they should be fundamental to many academic disciplines linguistics, anthropology, human geography. But, starting in 2010, when our diverse team of researchers from six different disciplines and eight different countries began to review what was known, we were shocked that only a dozen previous studies had been done, including one we ourselves completed on language diversity in the Pacific.

These prior efforts all examined the degree to which different environmental, social and geographic variables correlated with the number of languages found in a given location. The results varied a lot from one study to another, and no clear patterns emerged. The studies also ran up against many methodological challenges, the biggest of which centered on the old statistical adage correlation does not equal causation.

We wanted to know the exact steps that led to so many languages forming in certain places and so few in others. But previous work provided few robust theories on the specific processes involved, and the methods used did not get us any closer to understanding the causes of language diversity patterns.

For example, previous studies pointed out that at lower latitudes languages are often spoken across smaller areas than at higher latitudes. You can fit more languages into a given area the closer you get to the equator. But this result does not tell us much about the processes that create language diversity. Just because a group of people crosses an imaginary latitudinal line on the map doesnt mean theyll automatically divide into two different populations speaking two different languages. Latitude might be correlated with language diversity, but it certainly did not create it.

A better way to identify the causes of particular patterns is to simulate the processes we think might be creating them. The closer the models products are to the reality we know exists, the greater the chances are that we understand the actual processes at work.

Two members of our group, ecologists Thiago Rangel and Robert Colwell, had developed this simulation modeling technique for their studies of species diversity patterns. But no one had ever used this approach to study the diversity of human populations.

We decided to explore its potential by first building a simple model to test the degree to which a few basic processes might explain language diversity patterns in just one part of the globe, the continent of Australia.

Our colleague Claire Bowern, a linguist at Yale University, created a map that shows the diversity of aboriginal languages a total of 406 found in Australia prior to contact with Europeans. There were far more languages in the north and along the coasts, with relatively few in the desert interior. We wanted to see how closely a model, based on a simple set of processes, could match this geographic pattern of language diversity.

Our simulation model made only three basic assumptions. First, populations will move to fill available spaces where no one else lives.

Second, rainfall will limit the number of people that can live in a place; Our model assumed that people would live in higher densities in areas where it rained more. Annual precipitation varies widely in Australia, from over three meters in the northeastern rainforests to one-tenth of a meter in the Outback.

Third, we assumed that human populations have a maximum size. Ideal group size is a trade-off between benefits of a larger group (wider selection of potential mates) and costs (keeping track of unrelated individuals). In our model, when a population grew larger than a maximum threshold set randomly based on a global distribution of hunter-gatherer population sizes it divided into two populations, each speaking a distinct language.

We used this model to simulate language diversity maps for Australia. In each iteration, an initial population sprung up randomly somewhere on the map and began to grow and spread in a random direction. An underlying rainfall map determined the population density, and when the population size hit the predetermined maximum, the group divided. In this way, the simulated human populations grew and divided as they spread to fill up the entire Australian continent.

Our simple model didnt include any impact from contact among groups, changes in subsistence strategies, the effects of the borrowing of cultural ideas or components of language from nearby groups, or many other potential processes. So, we expected it would fail miserably.

Incredibly, the model produced 407 languages, just one off from the actual number.

The simulated language maps also show more languages in the north and along the coasts, and less in the dry regions of central Australia, mirroring the geographic patterns in observed language diversity.

And so for the continent of Australia it appears that a small number of factors limitations rainfall places on population density and limits on group size might explain both the number of languages and much of the variation in how many languages are spoken in different locations.

But we suspect that the patterns of language diversity in other places may be shaped by different factors and processes. In other locations, such as Vanuatu, rainfall levels do not vary as widely as in Australia, and population densities may be shaped by other environmental conditions.

In other instances, contact among human groups probably reshaped the landscape of language diversity. For example, the spread of agricultural groups speaking Indo-European or Bantu languages may have changed the structure of populations and the languages spoken across huge areas of Europe and Africa, respectively.

Undoubtedly, a wide variety of social and environmental factors and processes have contributed to the patterns in language diversity we see across the globe. In some places topography, climate or the density of key natural resources may be more critical; in others the history of warfare, political organization or the subsistence strategies of different groups may play a bigger role in shaping group boundaries and language diversity patterns. What we have established for now is a template for a method that can be used to uncover the different processes at work in each location.

Language diversity has played a key role in shaping the interactions of human groups and the history of our species, and yet we know surprisingly little about the factors shaping this diversity. We hope other scientists will become as fascinated by the geography of language diversity as our research group is and join us in the search for understanding why humans speak so many languages.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article here: http://theconversation.com/why-do-human-beings-speak-so-many-languages-75434.

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Why do human beings speak so many languages? - CT Post

The subjugation of humanity by a race of super-smart, artificially intelligent beings is something that has been theorized by everyone from generations of moviemakers to New Zealands fourth-most-popular folk-parodyduo.

But the latestprophet of our cyber-fueled downfall must realize why people would be inclined to take his warnings with a grain of silicon. He is, after all, the same guy whos asking us to turn over control of our cars and our lives to a bunch of algorithms.

Elon Musk, who hopes that one day everyone will ride in a self-driving, electric-powered Tesla, told a group of governors Saturday that they needed to get on the ball and start regulating artificial intelligence, which he called a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization.

No pressure.When pressed for better guidance, Musk said the government must get a better understanding of the latest achievements in artificial intelligence before its too late.

Once there is awareness, people will be extremely afraid, as they should be, Musk said. AI is a fundamental risk to the future of human civilization in a way that car accidents, airplane crashes, faulty drugs or bad food were not. They were harmful to a set of individuals in society, but they were not harmful to individuals as a whole.

And then Musk outlined the ways AI could bring down our civilization, which may sound vaguely familiar.

He believes AI could start a war by doing fake news and spoofing email accounts and fake press releases, and just by manipulating information. Or, indeed as some companies already claim they can do by getting people to say anything that the machine wants.

Musk said hes usually against proactive regulation, which can impede innovation. But hes making an exception in the case of an AI-fueled Armageddon.

By the time we are reactive in regulation, its too late, he said, confessing that this is really like the scariest problem to me.

Hes been warning people about the problem for years, and hes even come up with a solution: Join forces with the computers.

He announced earlier this year that hes leading a company called Neuralink, which would devise ways to connect the human brain to computers, CNN reported.

In the decades to come, an Internet-connected brain plug-in would allow people to communicate without opening their mouthsand learn something as fast as it takes to download a book.

Other prominent figures in the world of science and technology have also warned against the dangers of artificial intelligence, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates and theoretical physicistStephen Hawking. But Musk concedes that people have been hesitant to accept their viewpoint.

I keep sounding the alarm bell, but until people see like robots going down the streets killing people, they dont know how to react because it seems so ethereal, he said. I think we should be really concerned about AI.

Still, even to the biggest skeptic, one sentence offered some food for thought: I have exposure to the very most cutting edge AI, and I think people should be really concerned about it.

Maybe Musk knows something the rest of us dont? He is, after all, a multibillionaire, capable of using obscene sums of money todevelop AI. Maybe in some Musk-funded lab, or on some secret SpaceX satellite, theres already a powerful AI on the verge of getting out.

Maybe its already loose.

Better safe than sorry:

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By Holly Dunsworth By Holly Dunsworth July 14 at 7:00 AM

Human evolution has a public relations problem. That isnt just because some people are skeptical of science in general or because creationists reject the notion of evolution. As it is often studied and taught, human evolution can be male-biased and Eurocentric, even reeking of sexism and racism.

This evolutionary tale from PresidentTrump, with help from a ghostwriter, in Think BIG and Kick Ass in Business and Life, illustrates the problem:

The women I have dated over the years could have any man they want; they are the top models and the most beautiful women in the world. I have been able to date (screw) them all because I have something that many men do not have. I don't know what it is but women have always liked it. So guys, be cocky, confident, smart, and humorous and you will be able to get all the women you want. We may live in houses in the suburbs but our minds and emotions are still only a short step out of the jungle. In primitive times, women clung to the strongest males for protection. They did not take any chances with a nobody, low-status male who did not have the means to house them, protect them, and feed them and their offspring. High-status males displayed their prowess through their kick-ass attitudes. They did not give a crap about what other people in the tribe thought. That kind of attitude was and still is associated with the kind of men women find attractive. It may not be politically correct to say but who cares. It is common sense and it's true and always will be.

This just-so story about men, women, sex and success may fit with many peoples impression of human evolution, but it contradicts the actual science.

First, simple genetic explanations dont exist for most complex behaviors. There are no known genes for kick-ass attitudes or wanting to have sex withsomeone who exhibits them. Further, its unlikely that Trump would exist had his ancestors not given a crap about what other people in the tribe thought. Prosociality cooperating with others, maintaining rich and mutually trustworthy relationships is humanitys bread and butter. Finally, althoughits true that we are primates descended from a long line of jungle-dwelling ancestors before they expanded into all kinds of habitats, its also true that evolution never stopped. Very little about us always will be.

Yet for all the missed beats and flat notes, its clear that Trumps tale is riffing on some outdated but persistent ideas in popular science.

[How to teach kids about climate change where most parents are skeptics]

In every human population around the world, men are on average larger and stronger than women, as is the case in most other primate species. This is often explained by sexual selection for male dominance, that is, male vs. male competition for mates. So, in the past, bigger, dominant males fought and scared away smaller ones and had more opportunities to mate with females. As a result of their relatively greater reproductive output, the genes of these males got passed on at a relatively higher rate than the genes of the smaller guys. This process was enhanced by female preference for making babies with these bigger, stronger, dominant males.

Traditional perspectives on human evolution such asthis one about men and womens body size and behavior have long dominated the science and its popular dissemination. But it deserves scrutiny.

Presenting a human evolutionary narrative over and over againin whichmale competition and female preference are the explanation for big, strong males is too narrow, too simple. It reminds me of when students claim that their B in my human evolution course is keeping them off the deans list, but their transcript isnt exactly straight As. Theres usually more to a story.

A more nuanced explanation for male dominance is less likely to lead anyone to conclude that patriarchy is hard-wired in our genes. Just look more carefully at nature, at the social sciences, the humanities, art, literature! Myriad biological and non-biological factors contribute to the development and persistence of the global phenomenon of how men are disproportionately powerful, and even more so if they belong to the ruling race, religion or clan.

Male baboons and chimpanzees coerce and harass females for sex and obviously male humans do, too, but thats not evidence for genetically hard-wired, male-dominant sexual behavior at all, let alone for it being at the root of the patriarchy. Imagine someone leaping from the observation that primates eat hand-to-mouth to the assumption that its a genetic cause of our growing waistlines. When it comes to sex, we can inadvertently make some atrocious leaps of evolutionary logic about any species, but most of all ourselves. Not only are all primates stellar social learners of good, bad and nifty behaviors, but this overly imaginative primate cant help but inject bias into making sense of it all. Shared behaviors of monkeys, apes and us are not excuses to be fatalistic about sexual harassment and assault by humans who have a much more complex culture in which to learn cooperative behavior and to enforce it. Yes, were primates, and were also humans.

It may be true that Trumps version of maleness is a result of natural and sexual selection, but every other version of maleness across the globe is just as much (or just as little) a product of evolution as is his. If we ask different questions, we reveal other facets of our evolutionary history.

[Humans are driving the evolution of new species]

Primatologist Sarah Hrdy in 1981 published one of many books toward a more complex and complete human evolutionary history called The Woman That Never Evolved. Using the same theoretical tools that scientists had used to build the male-driven explanation for male body size and male dominance, she flipped the question. She asked why so many females in the primate world werent as big as males or even bigger, since female primates compete, too.

Females do not coyly wait for a champion to earn the honor of having sex with them. They do not necessarily cling to males for defense any more than males do, and often such clinging is just a warped description of male dominance over smaller females. Only some of the facts of nonhuman primate behavior are gathered, even fewer are published, and when they are, human bias factors into their interpretation. What we have is only part of the story.

Evolutionary theory has grown up since its conception. Based on mountains of observations of genes and traits over generations, evolutionary scientists have developed much more skepticism toward explanations that lean too dogmatically onnatural or sexual selection. Scientists increasingly resist the temptation to assume that everything evolved for asingle or specificreason, and that everything must exist because it boosted the survival and reproduction of those who passed it on. We know that perpetual mutation and the chance of passing along (or not passing along) traits occurs within complex cooperative systems with constant biological change.

The biological changes that matter most often have to do with embryological development rather than beating the competition to food, safety, or mates.We know that natural and sexual selection permit constant change,are usually very weak, and tolerate a lot of variation. This view of life is household thinking for many scientists and scholars, but it has hardly made its way out to the public. Why not?

We seem to be stuck on an old story thatis less than what we deserve. Maybe its because some analyses trying to break the male-biased mold are dismissed as feminism, which is still widely assumed to be incompatible with the scientific pursuit of knowledge. Maybe its a thirst for American narratives where exceptional individuals are being specially selected. Maybe its because when a persons autobiography is largely a quest to get laid, their biography for our species cant help but echo that.

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But there are billions of human experiences, all equally worthy of influencing evolutionary thinking.

Like most girls, I reached my maximum height years before my male friends did. What I have learned as a biological anthropologist suggests that physiological constraints on growth could help explain why women stop getting taller right around the time we start regular menstrual cycles, a costly metabolic process that could divert resources away from height. Pregnancy and lactation are even costlier, so womens smaller bodies may boost but also betray their talent for metabolic marathons. There could be a similar explanation for why men do not grow even bigger than they do, as we might expect after generations of kick-ass attitudes. Furthermore, male dominance may be much more the result of their bigger bodies than the cause. Anthropologist Ruth Benedict summed it up long ago by writing, The trouble with life isn't that there is no answer,it's that there are so many answers.

Human evolution is for everyone, Trump included. We each take our species origin story personally. Evolution may as well be a gigantic Rorschach test, and that goes for the scientists, too. Some see the competition and identify with its battle cry survival of the fittest, while others see infinite cooperation despite constant change. Perspectives on evolution vary wildly among experts and nonexperts alike, but too few are aware of it. So lets flood the texts, the classrooms, the campfire circles, the zeitgeist with diverse stories from diverse perspectives on the science of human evolution.

Without diverse lives contributing to the science, our evolutionary stories will remain simplistic and woefully incomplete. And when translated in the public sphere, our myopic stories are too often used to justify self-interest and the status quo, such asgender inequality and racism. Trump made this too garish to ignore any longer.

Science has a diversity problem. There was passionate debate before the March for Science about whether it should be explicitly political and whether it should include diversity and inclusion among its chief causes. Beyond the many impacts of these issues on human lives, there are also very real consequences for the knowledge that humans create. Diversifying the brains, bodies and voices of science means better science, better understanding of how the world works. Perhaps they will generate questions about human evolution that no one thought to ask.

Holly Dunsworth is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Rhode Island.

Continued here:
How Donald Trump got human evolution wrong - Washington Post

KMGH-TV via AP

A necropsy completed on a beartrapped and killed near Wardin the wake of last weekends attack on a teenager at a camp area showed human DNA on its claws, wildlife officials said Friday.

The results boost Colorado Parks and Wildlife staffs confidence they killed the right bear, according to area wildlife manager Larry Rogstad.

A 280-pound male black bearattacked a 19-year-old staff member at Glacier View Ranch near Ward at about 4 a.m. Sunday as he was sleeping, biting his head and attempting to drag him away. The young man, with the help of other staff members, was able to fight off the animal.

The necropsy was performed by Colorado Parks and Wildlife pathologist Karen Fox. Rogstad had few other details immediately available on the necropsy results.

However, he added, She did an immediate inspection for rabies, and it was negative for rabies.

To read more of this story go to dailycamera.com

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Bear killed following attack near Ward had human DNA on its claws - The Denver Post