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Clarke's three laws

Clarke's three laws
Clarke's Three Laws are three "laws" of prediction formulated by the British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. They are: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. Origins[edit] Clarke's First Law was proposed by Arthur C. The second law is offered as a simple observation in the same essay. The Third Law is the best known and most widely cited, and appears in Clarke's 1973 revision of "Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination". A fourth law has been added to the canon, despite Sir Arthur Clarke's declared intention of not going one better than Sir Isaac Newton. Snowclones and variations of the third law[edit] There exist a number of snowclones and variations of the third law and its contrapositive: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. The third law can be reversed in fictional universes involving magic: Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science! Related:  Superintelligence

Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence The Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) is a non-profit organization founded in 2000 to research safety issues related to the development of Strong AI. The organization advocates ideas initially put forth by I. J. History[edit] In 2000, Eliezer Yudkowsky[7] and Internet entrepreneurs Brian and Sabine Atkins founded the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence to "help humanity prepare for the moment when machine intelligence exceeded human intelligence".[8] At first, it operated primarily over the Internet, receiving financial contributions from transhumanists and futurists. In 2002, it published on its website the paper Levels of Organization in General Intelligence,[9] a preprint of a book chapter later included in a compilation of general AI theories, entitled "Artificial General Intelligence" (Ben Goertzel and Cassio Pennachin, eds.). The 2007 Singularity Summit took place on September 8-September 9, 2007, at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, San Francisco.

Open the Future Darpa sets out to make computers that teach themselves The Pentagon's blue-sky research agency is readying a nearly four-year project to boost artificial intelligence systems by building machines that can teach themselves -- while making it easier for ordinary schlubs like us to build them, too. When Darpa talks about artificial intelligence, it's not talking about modelling computers after the human brain. That path fell out of favour among computer scientists years ago as a means of creating artificial intelligence; we'd have to understand our own brains first before building a working artificial version of one. But the agency thinks we can build machines that learn and evolve, using algorithms -- "probabilistic programming" -- to parse through vast amounts of data and select the best of it. After that, the machine learns to repeat the process and do it better. But building such machines remains really, really hard: The agency calls it "Herculean". It's no surprise the mad scientists are interested. Image: Darpa

Etudes - Les scénarios du futur selon Peclers Publié le 29 juin 2011 Face à un monde en plein bouleversement, trois dynamiques de comportement émergent aujourd’hui, que les marques doivent prendre en compte. Une vision prospective de notre société et une analyse en profondeur des tendances faite par PeclersParis Depuis 2000, PeclersParis publie Futur(s), une analyse prospective sur l’évolution de notre société, ainsi que des pistes d’innovation pour répondre aux envies et besoins futurs des consommateurs. Tout au long de l’année, l’agence collecte les signaux annonciateurs de l’évolution constante de notre monde, décrypte et hiérarchise ces signes émergents selon un processus sémiologique. Depuis la première édition, cette observation du contexte socioculturel global s’organise autour de quatre pôles fondamentaux de valeurs pivots de la consommation, des plus hédonistes aux plus immatérielles en passant par celles liées au monde naturel et technologique: hédonisme, naturel, technologique, imaginaire. Isabelle Musnik

Promises and Perils on the Road to Superintelligence Global Brain / Image credit: mindcontrol.se In the 21st century, we are walking an important road. Our species is alone on this road and it has one destination: super-intelligence. The most forward-thinking visionaries of our species were able to get a vague glimpse of this destination in the early 20th century. One conversation on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue. For thinkers like Chardin, this vision was spiritual and religious; God using evolution to pull our species closer to our destiny. Today the philosophical debates of this vision have become more varied, but also more focused on model building and scientific prediction. It’s hard to make real sense of what this means. In contrast, today we can define the specific mechanisms that could realize a new world. Promise #1: Omniscience

Transportation Various segments of the passenger compartments on these high-speed maglev trains can be removed as the train passes through the station. These removable sections can then take passengers to their local destinations while other compartments are lowered in their place. This method allows the main body of the train to remain in motion, thus conserving energy. In addition, the removable multi-functional compartments could be specially equipped to serve most transportation purposes. Since military aircraft will be unnecessary in the future, emphasis can be shifted to advancing medical, emergency, service, and transportation vehicles. Here is an example of VTOL (Vertical Take-off and Landing) aircraft with three synchronous turbines, which allow for exceptional maneuverability. These Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) aircraft are designed to lift passengers and freight by the use of ring-vortex air columns. They will provide maximum comfort for the passengers.

On the hunt for universal intelligence How do you use a scientific method to measure the intelligence of a human being, an animal, a machine or an extra-terrestrial? So far this has not been possible, but a team of Spanish and Australian researchers have taken a first step towards this by presenting the foundations to be used as a basis for this method in the journal Artificial Intelligence, and have also put forward a new intelligence test. "We have developed an 'anytime' intelligence test, in other words a test that can be interrupted at any time, but that gives a more accurate idea of the intelligence of the test subject if there is a longer time available in which to carry it out", José Hernández-Orallo, a researcher at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), tells SINC. This is just one of the many determining factors of the universal intelligence test. The researcher, along with his colleague David L. Use in artificial intelligence Explore further: Ant colonies help evacuees in disaster zones

Energy None of these mega-projects will ever be undertaken without a comprehensive study of the positive and negative retroactions involved. As refinements in conversion technologies increase its feasibility, geothermal energy will come to take on a more prominent role. Readily available in various geographical regions throughout the world, both on land and under the sea, this energy source alone could provide enough clean energy for the next thousand years. These underwater structures are designed to convert a portion of the flow of the Gulf Stream through turbines to generate clean electric power. A land bridge or tunnel might be constructed across the Bering Strait. Solar power has tremendous potential from photovoltaic panels that store energy in batteries for private use to large scale solar plants on land and in the sea.

Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence and the metaphorical AI time bomb Frank Knight was an idiosyncratic economist who formalized a distinction between risk and uncertainty in his 1921 book Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit. As Knight saw it, an ever-changing world brings new opportunities, but also means we have imperfect knowledge of future events. According to Knight, risk applies to situations where we do not know the outcome of a given situation, but can accurately measure the odds. “There is a fundamental distinction between the reward for taking a known risk and that for assuming a risk whose value itself is not known,” Knight wrote. Sometimes, due to uncertainty, we react too little or too late, but sometimes we overreact. Artificial Intelligence may be one of the areas where we overreact. Perhaps Elon was thinking of Blake’s The Book of Urizen when he described AI as ‘summoning the demon’: Lo, a shadow of horror is risen, In Eternity! Hawking and his co-authors were also keen to point out the “incalculable benefits.” of AI: The Bill Joy Effect

Visions2200/HomePrime Can AI save us from AI? | Singularity HUB Can AI save us from AI? Nick Bostrom’s book Superintelligence might just be the most debated technology book of the year. Since its release, big names in tech and science, including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, have warned of the dangers of artificial intelligence. Bostrom says that while we don’t know exactly when artificial intelligence will rival human intelligence, many experts believe there is a good chance it will happen at some point during the 21st century. He suggests that when AI reaches a human level of intelligence, it may very rapidly move past humans as it takes over its own development. The concept has long been discussed and is often described as an “intelligence explosion”—a term coined by computer scientist IJ Good fifty years ago. “Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man, however clever. Broader and seemingly beneficial goal setting might backfire too. So, what do you think?

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