Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'artificial intelligence'

Staying Human in the A.I. Mega-Machine

Recently I went to see my doctor for a follow-up to spine surgery that alleviated much of the severe pain that had been limiting my life in serious ways. The surgery was a success, and with less pain came more mobility, better sleep, and increased vitality. Continue Reading...

Alexa’s Just Not That into You

A few weeks ago, software engineer Brandon Jackson found himself shut out of his smart home for a full week. When Alexa wouldn’t respond to his commands, he called the Amazon help desk to see what the issue was. Continue Reading...

The futility of artificial intelligence economics

Salesforce, an American cloud-based software company, earlier this year announced an initiative to develop an artificial intelligence economist. Stephan Zheng, the lead research scientist at Salesforce Research, describes the moonshot goal of this project as to build a reinforcement learning framework that will recommend economic policies that drive social outcomes in the real world, such as improving sustainability, productivity, and equality.” Continue Reading...

Sailing to Byzantium with Avatars

Socrates in some sense has come full circle. In a case of life imitating art, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Central Florida in Orlando have received a grant to create life-like virtual representations of historical figures, with whom students can interact, dialogue, and inquire (HT: Slashdot). Continue Reading...