According to a report in ScienceNews, researchers have discovered that the brains of people whose only language is German are configured differently than those of people who only speak Arabic.
At the same time we are learning of this interesting and potentially useful fact, much-better financed researchers are programming artificial intelligence “brains” to manage problems many orders of magnitude more complex than how we process the differences between languages.
I’m afraid our priorities, as a species, are badly out of order.
AI, whatever its potential, is now engaged in a gold rush. Profits will determine its future development. By comparison, basic neuroscience is like a slow-motion hunt for the occasional nugget in a river swarming with fool’s gold.
As we limp haltingly toward a better understanding of our own brains, we are racing toward unleashing much more powerful equivalents in robots. I’m afraid that this is a race we — the people — are going to lose.
As Jill Lepore asks in this week’s New Yorker, “what’s the price to humanity of uploading everything anyone has ever known onto a worldwide network of tens of millions or billions of machines and training them to learn from it to produce new knowledge?”
I guess we’re about to find out exactly what that price will be. And then it really won’t matter how our biological brains change when we speak German or Arabic.
LINKS:
Donald Trump indicted; 1st ex-president charged with crime (AP)
Trump claims ‘political persecution’ in wake of grand jury indictment (Guardian)
An American Tragedy, Act III — The indictment of the former President by a Manhattan grand jury begins a perilous new phase in the Trump saga. (New Yorker)
Your brain wires itself to match your native language (ScienceNews)
The Data Delusion (New Yorker)
Publishers Worry A.I. Chatbots Will Cut Readership (NYT)
Alphabet’s Google and DeepMind Pause Grudges, Join Forces to Chase OpenAI (The Information)
ChatGPT has passed the Turing test and if you're freaked out, you're not alone (TechRadar)
The FTC should investigate OpenAI and block GPT over ‘deceptive’ behavior, AI policy group claims (CNN)
Review: We Put ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and Bard to the Test (Wired)
ChatGPT vs. Google Bard vs. Bing Chat: Which generative AI solution is best? (SearchEngineLand)
ChatGPT vs. Bing vs. Bard: Which AI is best? (PCWorld)
Wall Street Journal reporter arrested in Russia on spying charges (CNN)
Putin’s Russia Is Going Broke Fast. Here’s Why. (New Republic)
Massive documents leak offers rare look at how Russia wages cyberattacks (WP)
What the fight over TikTok really means (Financial Times)
US money supply falling at fastest rate since 1930s (Reuters)
How Uber left Lyft in the dust (CNN)
A sale may be the only ‘rational’ solution for Lyft, observers say (Crain’s)
Lyft might drop shared rides, stay focused on basics under new CEO (TechCrunch)
We Should Fix Silicon Valley, Not Tear It Down (Atlantic)
After Mass Shootings, Republicans Expand Access to Guns (NYT)
Armed groups on the right and left exploit the AR-15 as both tool and symbol (WP)
Yellen says US bank rules may be too loose, need to be re-examined (Reuters)
Trump appeals order directing Meadows, other aides to testify in Jan. 6 probe (The Hill)
Former Vice President Mike Pence signaled that he may not pursue a legal battle to avoid testifying in the Justice Department’s criminal probe into former President Donald Trump’s attempts to steal the 2020 election. “At the end of the day, we’ll obey the law," Pence said. [HuffPost]
‘You can see the terror’: Trump’s tough guy posture ahead of looming indictment isn’t fooling these insiders (Independent)
A Shepherd, a Cook, a Palace Chef: Making Food With Less Under the Taliban (NYT)
Afghan applying to resettle in UK asked to provide Taliban approval (Guardian)
The Complicated and Messy Task of Trying to Aid Afghans Following the Return of the Taliban (Military.com)
It’s Not Just Oceans That Are Rising. Groundwater Is, Too (Gizmodo)
The Salinas Californian, the main local news source for the 163,000 residents of Salinas, has had no reporters since December. (LAT)
Ancient DNA is restoring the origin story of the Swahili people of the East African coast (The Conversation)
Male Substitute Teacher With Ponytail Cloaked In Mystery (The Onion)
No comments:
Post a Comment