Category:Technology
Thursday Thoughts: more reasons not to fully trust technology with your life
Add Panera Bread to the growing list of companies that can’t even secure your basic personal data
Joining Equifax, Uber, FedEx, DHS, Saks Fifth Avenue, and more, Panera was found to be negligent of its customers’ data, leaving full names, e-mails, home addresses, phone numbers and credit card information exposed in plain text off of its websi… Read more
Another Tesla Autopilot fatality: man selflessly gives up his life to train AI
Another naive software engineer bites the dust in Silicon Valley for not heeding the warning signs this blog has pointed out: outside of games with rigid rules and a finite set of moves, current AI is mostly just plain stupid.
In the awe of AI like AlphaZero, believing that AI will take over the world because of its dominance in linearly defined subjects such as … Read more
Okay, maybe it’s time to fear, AlphaZero is here
In No need to fear, AI domination is not near, I stated:
Only when a self-learning AI can teach itself the complexities of the world from first principles should we fear AI growing a mind of its own.
In the world of chess, poker, Go and Shogi, I suppose we do have something to fear because there have been significant leaps in achieving game theory optimal play us… Read more
The pot calling the kettle black Part 2: Tim Cook criticizes Facebook for out-Appling Apple
In a prior article I wrote about a different pot, George Soros, calling the same kettle, Facebook, black, noting the similar approaches of both parties profiting off of propaganda, whether it be through the Open Society Foundation, media and academia on Soros’ end or social media on Zuckerberg’s end.
Recently, Tim Cook has come out in favou… Read more
Time to fear, AI assisted domination is here
Yesterday’s article points out that AI is far away from having a mind of its own and robot domination is irrational and unfounded.
However, that doesn’t mean that the role of AI is diminished in today’s world. In fact, a dangerous precedent is set when AI is used to accompany nefarious human behaviour.
When not used in a nefarious manner, i… Read more
No need to fear, AI domination is not near
In light of the recent news of a self-driving Uber car killing a pedestrian and Computing Forever’s warning of a pending AI takeover, it’s time to take a step back as usual and look at this issue from an unemotional, rational perspective.
Most of the “breakthroughs” in AI recently have been the result of big data mining. Computers g… Read more
Reaching critical mass: does being the first to implement a big data solution guarantee a monopoly?
We hear it all the time: break up Facebook, Google, Twitter, et al. because they have an information “monopoly”. Add the manipulation of their algorithms to serve the ideological agenda of their management, shadowbanning and censoring search results for example, the more reason to break them up for abusing their “monopoly”.
I… Read more
Facebook’s AI to detect wrong-think is a magnification of human stupidity
In my article on big data mining that describes what fuels a lot of big tech’s AI algorithms that smaller tech firms generally don’t rely on, I made the case that heavily crowdsourced AI are subject to exploitation and manipulation.
If you tell a neural network that 2 + 2 = 5 enough times, then sure enough that AI will start regurgitating nonsensic… Read more
Thursday Thoughts: baking in hyperbole and outrage in western culture
In Canada, why is snow in Winter considered a special weather statement?
Nowadays, weather sites like theweathernetwork.com feel like they need to constantly issue a giant red warning icon to remind all of us that we do indeed live in Canada, and sometimes it snows in Winter.
We live in peak clickbait times. Everything is breaking news. Everything … Read more
Defeating search engine bias: it’s time to treat the new media like the old media
If you are old enough to remember the days of print media, newspapers had the reputation of leaning politically in one direction and it was considered unwise to isolate yourself to a single paper and one point of view. You were encouraged to read several papers to get a well-rounded picture of current events.
In the Toronto region, that would mean reading the S… Read more