AI

George Carlin Has a New Comedy Special

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It is indeed rather surprising to discovered that standup comedian George Carlin has a brand new comedy special that includes lots of new material. It is up on YouTube and completely free. As a Carlin fan, I really wanted to be both delighted and also excited, but I’m not. Why is it surprising? Well basically … Read more

Has a Google AI really become Self-Aware?

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LaMDA

You might perhaps have seen the news that a Google Engineer has become convinced that an artificial intelligence that they created has become ‘sentient’ (self-aware). Is this true, has this AI called LaMDA really become self-aware? Short answer – no. Slightly longer answer – Seriously, just no. So what is going on here, what has … Read more

AI model shows promise to generate faster, more accurate weather forecasts

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AI

I found the University of Washington news on what they have done with their AI model quite interesting. Briefly, weather forecasting is done today via very complex computing models that fully simulate as best as can be managed using the fastest biggest supercomputer available. I’m not kidding, the UK’s Met office announced in Feb this … Read more

AI successfully pretending to be human

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AI

At the recent Google I/O conference there was a demo of Google’s new Duplex AI Assistant. It was quite frankly amazing, so rather than describing it, you can instead see it yourself. Here is that demo … As you listen to it making real calls to book an appointment, you find that not only is … Read more

Debunking: “rise of the machines”

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There is an article in which Skype founder Jaan Tallinn claims …”Machines are becoming so intelligent that they could pose an existential threat“. Really!! OK, lets take a look. The article is in the Sidney Morning Herald . Claim: “Jaan Tallinn argues human-driven technological progress has largely replaced evolution as the dominant force shaping our … Read more

Bot tricks people into thinking it is human – Artifical Intelligence at last? Nope, I’m skeptical

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I’ve tripped over an interesting little snippet in New Scientist where there is a claim that some software called Cleverbot has passed one of the key tests of artificial intelligence: the Turing test. Now before we proceed, lets clarify what this test actually is. It was introduced by Alan Turing (hence the name) in his … Read more