Artificial Intelligence

I came across this site : (http://www.nickbostrom.com/superintelligence.html)

The site outlines the case for believing that we will have superhuman artificial intelligence within the first third of the next century. It looks at different estimates of the processing power of the human brain; how long it will take until computer hardware achieve a similar performance; ways of creating the software through bottom-up approaches like the one used by biological brains; how difficult it will be for neuroscience figure out enough about how brains work to make this approach work; and how fast we can expect superintelligence to be developed once there is human-level artificial intelligence.

Our Priorities for Saving the World

I must say that this TED talk from Bjorn Lomberg was rather disappointing. The beginning was very interested and he got my attention with the statistics on some one the problems that we are facing. Such as the 800 million who are starving, 1 billion are lacking in clean drinking water, 2 billion lack sanitation, 2 million dies each year from aids, 175 million international migrants, 940 million illiterate adults, and the several billion who are affected by global warming. Bjorn and the Copenhagen Consensus rank the top four challenges that we face are malaria, free trade, malnutrition and HIV/Aids at number one. All of the others were to costly and would take longer to make an impact than the ones suggested. Climate change was at the bottom of the list due to the high cost of money and the littlest impact it would have. Kyoto is an amendment to the international treaty on climate control. Personally I don't quite understand why this isn't among the top four problems that should be addressed first. They say that it is to costly yet why would we have to pay for it. It would be something to benefit everyone here on earth, who would not want to contribute to that. We could all pull together to help out with the environment. Bjorn also talked about how if we work on the four that are suggested it will save lives and the people in third world countries would eventually be making the amount of money that we do now as we would be making more too. I think that if we take the time to knock out one big problem the smaller ones will come easier. If global warming keeps up we will lose more and more resources till things become scarce. Why don't we feed the hungry? Why don't we lend a hand to those over seas in other countries with diseases? If we have the resources why are so many people doing without? Perhaps I'm being ignorant and things aren't as easy as that. However, I do know that money doesn't buy everything. Yet it seems to be what everyone is depending on to save the world. We need to look to people and ourselves to make a difference and not pieces of paper that we put face value on.

SLOW DOWN!!

So far this is my favorite TED talk. I couldn't agree with Carl Honore more. We try and press more and more into less time. We have turned everything into something to do quickly. Speed dialing, speed reading, speed dating, and speed walking are all examples. The majority of people in the world are living the fast life instead of the good life. Everyone is becoming more and more burnout by trying to do things quickly. When people hear the word slow they think of a person as being lazy or a slacker or even stupid. This is a cultural taboo that we have placed on these words. We all need to slow down and smell the roses, use our creative mode of thought, and savor life. People like moving fast for the adrenaline and they keep themselves so busy so that they don't have to ask themselves real questions. One of Carl's examples were, "If you're raising your kid right?" Carl also said that most of the emails he receives are from the younger age groups asking him to write a letter to their parents about slowing down. It is not just adults who aren't able to slow down its people of all age groups. We are marinated in the culture of speed. Relationships are even being fast paced. No one is taking the time for patience, tranquility or time, they would much rather walk away and not invest anymore time into it. Again this has been my favorite TED talk so far. And I hope everyone will take the TIME to watch it!

TED Talk

The art of creating creatures is about Theo Jansen from Holland, who constructed lifelike kinetic sculptures out of plastic tubing and lemonade bottles. These creatures are able to survive on their own with little help from Theo. In the years to come however the creatures should be able to survive entirely on their own. As of now they are able to walk on their own, store energy, transport 3.2 tons, change their direction when reaching unsafe grounds, such as bodies of water and protect themselves when it storms. When the speech first started out I didn't think that the clump of tubes to the left of the speaker was much. As the video ran on I was suprised and became really into his project. It wouldn't expect something so simple looking and made out of simple objects to have a mind of its own and function the way that it can.

News to me

I couldn't seem to get the videos to work either but I was able to watch the youtube one.


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