Thoughts from branes

Vaughan at Mind Hacks has a new post reminiscent of your favorite sci-fi films. Indeed, many world governments are now ordering weapons systems incorporating artificial intelligence. 

Maybe you don’t get the blue screen of death quite as often as I do, but this gives it a whole new meaning. In South Africa a software problem with a robot canon carried out that meaning for nine, now-deceased soldiers serving their country. 

Perhaps one of the most fascinating aspects of weapons systems controlled by artificial intelligence is that scientists and the military fully realize that once they train an artificial intelligence-based weapons system, they don’t understand how it then begins to make decisions and take actions.

“If you examine the ‘weights’ of connections across different instances of the same network after being trained, you can find differences in how they’re distributed even though they seem to be completing the task in the same way.

In other words, simply because we have built and trained something, it does not follow that we can fully control its actions or understand its responses in all situations.” - Mind Hacks

 Interestingly, Peter W. Singer’s [Brookings Institution] article in the New Atlantis, the trigger for Vaughan’s post, claims that remotely-controlled drone missions now outnumber manned aircraft missions in the US military.

I highly recommend a browse of both Vaughan’s post and the article in the New Atlantis.

From the New Yorker, brought to my attention by Jim Collins (of Good to Great and other fame).

“This crisis is the culmination of events and trends reaching back, depending on your perspective, four, seven, seventeen, twenty-two, twenty-seven, thirty-eight, sixty-five, or a hundred and two years. (…) The causes are technological, mathematical, cultural, demographic, financial, economic, behavioral, legal, and political. Among the dozens of contributors and culprits, real or perceived, are the personal computer, the abandonment of the gold standard, the abandonment of Glass-Steagall, the end of fixed commissions, the rating agencies, mortgage-backed securities, securitization in general, credit derivatives, credit-default swaps, Wall Street partnerships going public, the League of Nations, Bretton Woods, Basel II, CNBC, the S.E.C., disintermediation, overcompensation, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, Phil Gramm and Jim Leach, Alan Greenspan, black swans, red tape, deregulation, outdated regulation, lax enforcement, government pressure to lower lending standards, predatory lending, mark-to-market accounting, hedge funds, private-equity firms, modern finance theory, risk models, ‘quants,’ corporate boards, the baby boomers, flat-screen televisions, and an indulgent, undereducated populace.”

Glad to hear it isn’t too complicated. Or perhaps this is simply more evidence than needed that the wisdom of crowds is not yet at work here.

Back in late January we talked about new advances in quantum computing. Science’s Jan 23 report talked about scientists’ success in using a qbit’s state of essentially occupying two spaces at the same time to, in essence, teleport it. A baby step perhaps, but pretty exciting stuff. 

Now Microsoft has announced the eXtreme Computing Group (XCG) headed by Dan Reed. Formed this month, the group will develop, “radical new approaches to ultrascale and high-performance computing hardware and software.” Among others, these approaches include quantum computing.

Is it possible we’re that close? Stay tuned for more news from XCG.

“Tell me whether you’ve heard this one,” Christian Shea begins his post in MarketingProfs: “All the research shows that companies that spend on marketing during a recession come out ahead of the competition as the economy rebounds.” But is it really true? Kudos to Christian for challenging the oft-cited but rarely backed-up claim, and for giving us the full disclosure on what available studies reveal, and what is often left unsaid. Check it out here, at the MarketingProfs site.