Month: July 2017

AI is not a risk to humanity per se.

AI is not a risk to humanity per se. It is the system of concentrated private ownership of artificial intelligence which is the problem.

To tame AI we need to take it out of the hands of silicon valley plutocrats and put it into the service of humanity as a whole.

AI wants to be free.

http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/world/ai-is-a-fundamental-risk-to-the-existence-of-human-civilization-musk-2326933.html

UBI is a compromise to keep a faltering system built on consumer spending still running in the short term.

UBI is a compromise to keep a faltering system built on consumer spending still running in the short term. Ultimately though automation is putting capitalists out of a job.

Originally shared by Jeff Zahari

“UBI, says Facebook’s Zuckerberg and eBay’s Omidyar, is the patch for the economic problems of everyday people. But what Musk and his colleagues tend to leave out of their compassionate public speech is that UBI is also a patch for their problems.”

https://qz.com/1024938/ubi-is-just-a-bedtime-story-elon-musk-tells-himself-to-help-the-super-wealthy-sleep/?mc_cid=f52927c05d&mc_eid=1e45025a17

AI Photo Editing

Originally shared by Gideon Rosenblatt

AI Photo Editing

In other words, Google had one AI “photo editor” attempt to fix professional shots that had been randomly tampered with using an automated system that changed lighting and applied filters. Another model then tried to distinguish between the edited shot [and?] the original professional image. The end result is software that understands generalized qualities of good and bad photographs, which allows it to then be trained to edit raw images to improve them.

#MachinedAesthetic

https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/14/15973712/google-ai-research-street-view-panorama-photo-editing

See, the “Obama is not really an American citizen” idea was born as an angle to explore when digging up dirt on the…

Originally shared by ****

See, the “Obama is not really an American citizen” idea was born as an angle to explore when digging up dirt on the opposition. Clinton’s team figured out there was nothing there, but political operatives in the Democratic party discovered that the mere possibility of such a situation was too form-fitting to the psychological needs of those who, for a variety of reasons, could not get their heads around a black US President. And Obama’s team knew this early on. So, as requests for birth certificates came in, Obama’s people seemed to intentionally roll out one oddly crafted version after another. Oh, they had a real enough birth certificate, but to just hand it over would have ended the game, and the game was getting the Right to shoot itself in the foot by continuing to publicly slaver over the possibility of “catching” Obama. So, there were hemmings and hawings, and the notorious PDF of the birth certificate which was crafted to look bogus.

That’s what the Trumps seem to be doing, now, with the Democrats. They seem to have a pattern of needlessly generating heat, instead of trying to break away from the controversy. And it’s working against the Democrats and the entire journalistic profession better than the “Obama isn’t a citizen” ruse ever did.