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Stephen Hawking Warns of Threat to Mankind from Artificial Intelligence – Video

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Stephen Hawking Warns of Threat to Mankind from Artificial Intelligence
Stephen Hawking suggests that A.I. could get out of control and eventually take us over or remove us completely. He may not be that far off considering how d...

By: Penny University

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Stephen Hawking Warns of Threat to Mankind from Artificial Intelligence - Video

Tech giants pour resources into artificial intelligence

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Singular vision: Silicon Valley's biggest companies are vying with each to build a fully functional artificial brain. Illustration: Doug Griswold/MCT Photo: MCT

The latest Silicon Valley arms race is a contest to build the best artificial brains. Facebook, Google and other leading tech companies are jockeying to hire top scientists in the field of artificial intelligence, while spending heavily on a quest to make computers think more like people.

They're not building humanoid robots not yet, anyway. But a number of tech giants and start-ups are trying to build computer systems that understand what you want, perhaps before you knew you wanted it.

"It's important to position yourself in this market for the next decade," said Yann LeCun, a leading New York University researcher hired to run Facebook's new AI division in December. "A lot is riding on artificial intelligence and content analysis, and on being smarter about how people and computers interact."

Artificial intelligence programs can already recognise images and translate human speech. Tech researchers want to build systems that can match the human brain's ability to handle more complex challenges to intuitively predict traffic conditions while steering automated cars or drones, for example, or to grasp the intent of written texts and spoken messages, so they can better anticipate what kind of information, including ads, their users want to see.

Facebook has recruited several well-regarded AI scientists, including one from Google, in recent months. Google has been working on artificial intelligence for several years, enlisting prominent researchers such as Stanford's Andrew Ng and the University of Toronto's Geoffrey Hinton to help build computer systems known as "neural networks," which are capable of teaching themselves.

But in a sign it wants to do more, Google paid a reported $US400 million in January to buy DeepMind, a British start-up said to be working on artificial intelligence for image recognition, e-commerce recommendations and video games. DeepMind had also drawn interest from Facebook. In March, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg invested personally in Vicarious, a Silicon Valley start-up working on software that can recognise and draw images of animals or other things.

"In the last 18 months, every venture capital firm I know has made at least one investment" in artificial intelligence, robotics or related sectors, said Raj Singh, CEO of Tempo AI, which makes a "smart calendar" mobile app that acts like a personal assistant. Tempo uses technology from SRI, the Menlo Park, California, think tank that developed key elements of Apple's Siri and has spun off several artificial intelligence start-ups.

Competition among digital personal assistants is especially heated: While each works differently, Tempo is vying with Siri, Google Now andMicrosoft's new Cortana. Through a series of upgrades, each has tried to outdo the others in providing reminders and anticipating questions by analysing relevant data from users' calendars, contact lists and email.

The ultimate goal is something closer to "Samantha," the personable operating system voiced by actress Scarlett Johansson in the film Her, though it undoubtedly will be more businesslike.

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Tech giants pour resources into artificial intelligence

Johnny Depp's 'Transcendence' is a stumble, not a fall; he'll be back

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Maybe it's the worn-out fedora. Or the tattoos. Or the jingle-jangle of all those baubles, bangles and beads he often wears when venturing out in public.

It might be the way his voice seems to be permanently altered as a mash-up of his two idols Hunter S. Thompson and Keith Richards. Or that he's making a fifth "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie no matter what you think of the idea.

Or maybe it's because he owns an island and you don't.

Whatever the reason, when Johnny Depp's latest movie, the sci-fi mind-bender "Transcendence," opened recently to bad reviews and indifferent business, many observers seemed just a little too happy to proclaim the 50-year-old actor over-and-out as a movie star, continuing the backlash that began last summer when "The Lone Ranger" rode into box-office oblivion. "Young Johnny Depp Would Hate Old Johnny Depp" jeered a headline on New York magazine's Vulture website. That would be true, I suppose, if a budding actor imagined a career that included three Oscar nominations, more than $6 billion in movie tickets sold and the creation of a genuinely beloved, iconic character as a betrayal of his youthful ideals.

But that's probably not the case here.

Fact is, since fleeing the TV show "21 Jump Street" and the collateral damage of teen idoldom 25 years ago, Depp has done it his way, pursuing a career as a character actor along the lines of a verse that director Tim Burton composed years ago when they began making movies together. "There was a young man, everyone thought was quite handsome, so he tied up his face and he held it for ransom."

The most surprising thing about "Transcendence" may well be that Depp isn't hiding his mug underneath thick makeup or sporting some elaborately constructed hat or costume. His face is front and center on the film's one-sheet, part of it pixelated to convey the movie's story of Will Caster, an artificial intelligence researcher whose consciousness is uploaded onto the Internet. Walking-talking Depp is seen only at the beginning of the movie. For much of "Transcendence," Depp is disembodied, a ghost in the machine, if that. We're never sure how much of Will's essence survived the upload, which, understandably, gives his wife (and research partner) pause. It's a love story framed as an examination of what makes us human.

It's an ambitious movie and not altogether successful in realizing its many enthusiasms. It's also an odd headlining choice for an actor, particularly one as physically gifted as Depp, since it consigns him to spectral status for most of its running time. But at least it contains ideas. When I caught up with it (along with five other people) at a recent matinee, trailers for half a dozen movies played in front of it, all of them sequels or prominently featuring some combination of spandex and capes. Following that parade, "Transcendence," even in its most predictable stretches, felt like an act of defiance.

As did "The Lone Ranger," last summer's would-be franchise tent pole that, thanks to incessant harping over production delays and budget overruns, arrived in theaters with the stench of failure. But this was a bold movie in every respect, an entertaining, dazzling western made in the spirit of Spielberg and Sergio Leone that looked at the mythology of America's westward expansion with a progressive sensibility that you wouldn't expect from either producer Jerry Bruckheimer or the Walt Disney Co. The French loved it (of course) with critic Jacky Goldberg reading "Ranger" as an assertion that "America was founded on the theft and unlawful killing of Indians and the exploitation of Chinese immigrants to build the train."

That's one way of looking at it. My kids just dug hi-yo! the horse playing Silver and the way Depp gave Tonto a deadpan dignity that brought to mind Buster Keaton, a good two decades after young, idealistic Johnny paid tribute to the silent film star in the beautiful, absurdist romance "Benny & Joon."

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Johnny Depp's 'Transcendence' is a stumble, not a fall; he'll be back

University of Calgary Three Minute Thesis (3MT) 2014 – Stefan Hoerzer – Video

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University of Calgary Three Minute Thesis (3MT) 2014 - Stefan Hoerzer
2014 #UCalgary3MT Finalist Stefan Hoerzer from Kinesiology presented "Using artificial intelligence to identify group-specific movement patterns". http://ucalgary.ca/mygradskills/three-minute-thes...

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University of Calgary Three Minute Thesis (3MT) 2014 - Stefan Hoerzer - Video

Artificial Intelligence: A Bad Idea Whose Time Has Come?

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May 8, 2014|7:10 am

"Imagine a machine with a full range of human emotions. Its analytical power will be greater than the collective intelligence of every person in the history of the world. Some scientists refer to this as the 'singularity'. I call it 'transcendence'," says Johnny Depp's character, Dr. Will Caster, in the haunting new science fiction drama "Transcendence."

While many moviegoers might embrace the power of artificial intelligence displayed in the movie released in theaters last month as just science fiction, world famous physicist Stephen Hawking along with computer scientist Stuart Russell, physicists Max Tegmark and Frank Wilczek say it could be a harbinger of humanity's doom.

Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/stephen-hawking-warns-artificial-intelligence-could-be-worst-mistake-in-history-as-johnny-depps-transcendence-examines-it-119131/

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Artificial Intelligence: A Bad Idea Whose Time Has Come?


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