Joshua Wright's Blog, page 7

J, how fast did you read this post?

Lately I’ve been trying to increase the speed at which I read so that I can read more (finding more time to read is my other option, but that’s not happening).J can read extremely fast, and I’m super jealous of that. But how fast can Jread before hebegins to lose comprehension? Good question, and here’s a great Wired article discussing it.

While speed readers claim to read upwards of 1 to 2thousandwords per minute, The Wired article mentioned that mosteducated folk“read at approximately the s...

How to define AI?

Interesting article on how to define Artificial Intelligence. Still seems tooambiguous to me; I could see legislators using this single “definition” to coherently argue opposing sides to a debate on regulations. This is not an easy problem to solve.

ML != AI

I keep seeing these articles referencing machine learning as artificial intelligence, as if they’re one and the same. They’re not. Not even close.

Machine learning is a cool way for computers that have a lot of pre-defined context to find patterns from huge sets of data after they’ve been seeded with a less-huge corpus of accurate data (often derived from humans).

A machine would be artificially Intelligent if it couldderive that corpus on it’s own, with no context. That is a muchmore complic...

All About Hugo Puppygate

If you haven’t been following it, this Wired article about the Hugo award is a great recap of the recent literary nerd kerfuffle.

All about Hugo Puppygate

if you haven’t been following it, this Wired article about the Hugo award is a great recap.

Scientists create something they call a wormhole that is not in fact a wormhole, with something that looks like a baby Death Star, but which is not in fact a baby Death Star

Details here.

The Internet Killed The Studio Star

Is the title I would have chosen for this article, which discusses the music industry (and other “creative” industries) in the post internet world.

Twitch Attempts To Play Dark Souls

And the results make me despair for the democratic system of government. If you can stand the pain, take a look: http://www.twitch.tv/twitchplaysdark They have been stuck in the Undead Asylum for 4 days. I think they’ve been stuck at that same corner for near a day. They’ve worn out their only decent weapon by hitting it against the wall so much that I don’t think it possible for them to do enough damage to the Asylum Demon for them to ever escape. They only have the broken straight sword lef...

A Contrarian Viewpoint of AI Risk

Here’s a great articlecontradicting the recent spate of doomsday prognosticationsurrounding the risks posed by AI. It also serves as a good AI history primer.

I’m not sure where I stand on this, but I think it’s closer to Geist than Bostrom. I do think we should be consideringhow to develop safe AI, but I think the existential God-like threat is long a ways off. It’s one thing to get a computer program to master pong without any data, it’s a much different thing to get it to cure cancer befor...

PS Now’s time is Now (or other stupid/clever headline)

I recently had a kid. Scratch that. I didn’t have the kid, my wife had the kid. And when I write “had the kid” I really mean she explored the barriers of human pain to push an eight pound living, breathing human being out of her lithe female shape. Much respect.

Anyhow, in my time off, and in between the many distracting baby activities (gawd baby, can’t you see I’m trying to finish off this boss battle?), I’ve been giving Sony’s PS Now service on my Vita a tryout.

In short: I’m impressed. Th...