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Category: Singularity Signposts

  • Post-Singularity Science Has Arrived – sort of

    George Rebane Machines are being developed that can analyze realworld observables (think of it as data from experiments with real things) and come up with not only the mathematics that describes the data, but also the mathematics that describes the underlying principles at work.  By ‘underlying principles’ I mean things like conservation laws (energy, momentum,…

  • Additive Manufacturing and its Aftermath

    George Rebane Another quiet revolution is taking place that will impact all of our lives in ways known and unknown.  Its big name is additive manufacturing (AM), but we used to know it as 3D printing.  Stereolithography, the technology behind AM and 3D printers, was first invented by Charles Hull in 1984.  These printers take…

  • The Suicide of Jeopardy

    George Rebane [This is the transcript of my 18feb11 commentary broadcast bi-weekly on KVMR-FM 89.5.  A related post 'Epochal My Dear Watson' was posted on 17feb11.] We Americans have always loved winners, and see ourselves as winners, especially in this age of universal self-esteem.  Oh yes, there is that phase we sometimes go through when…

  • Epochal My Dear Watson

    … and they knew not what they had witnessed. George Rebane Really!  The ease with which IBM’s Watson supercomputer dispatched its champion human opponents on Jeopardy last night, will go down as perhaps the first pre-Singularity temblor on this third planet from the Sun.  During the three session tournament, Watson showed the world what the…

  • Time Magazine discovers the Singularity

    George Rebane Readers know that one of the dominant themes of RR has been the Singularity (see the RR Singularity category for more).  As a technologist and AI researcher I have been a Singularitarian for most of my life.  Ray Kurzweil has done civilization the service of becoming the most dominant and credible spokesman for…

  • New AI Algorithmics – Probabilistic Programming

    George Rebane “GIVEN the choice between a flesh-and-blood doctor and an artificial intelligence system for diagnosing diseases, Pedro Domingos is willing to stake his life on AI. "I'd trust the machine more than I'd trust the doctor," says Domingos, a computer scientist at the University of Washington, Seattle.”  So starts Anil Ananthaswamy’s ‘I, algorithm: A…

  • Upload me Watson!

    George Rebane IBM’s Watson supercomputer has bested humans at the TV game Jeopardy.  Furthermore, it promises to give a definitive performance on 13, 14, 15 February.  Big deal?  Yes it is; and please don’t confuse this advance in machine intelligence with the 1997 victory over chess master Gary Gasparov by IBM’s then hotshot Deep Blue.  The…

  • New Robots in Manufacturing

    George Rebane This year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas featured advances in robotics.  They are now coming out of the R&D pipeline in droves showing all kinds of capabilities in vision, manipulation, mobility, smarts, and even emotion.  One of the featured robots was the ‘Little Helper’ robot that is designed to work in manufacturing…

  • Scattershots – 20dec2010 (updated 21dec2010)

    George Rebane FCC commissioner Robert McDowell concludes his 20dec2010 WSJ piece on ‘net neutrality’ with – “On this winter solstice, we will witness jaw-dropping interventionist chutzpah as the FCC bypasses branches of our government in the dogged pursuit of needless and harmful regulation. The darkest day of the year may end up marking the beginning of…

  • Singularity Signposts – 3dec2010

    George Rebane This weekend (4,5 Dec) at Caltech’s Beckman Institute there will be a Humanity+ conference with the intriguing title ‘Redefining Humanity in the Era of Radical Technological Change’.  They plan to stream the presentations live.  Please check this site for conference information and streaming links. Two aspects of radical technological change were recently announced. …

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