Security forum discusses freedom-terrorism surveillance balance

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Kris Sims, Atlantic Bureau Nov 22, 2014

, Last Updated: 7:27 PM ET

HALIFAX - The world's leading military minds gathered in Halifax to talk about terrorism, freedom and technology this weekend, while a terrorist organization taunted them all online.

On Saturday, the head of the United States National Security Agency (NSA) sat next to Canadian Justice Minister and forum founder Peter MacKay, and Jane Harman, head of Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

"The world is becoming an incredible network of sensors," Admiral Mike Rogers, director of the NSA said, explaining the amount of cameras, microphones and other technology in place around the world.

Rogers said the free world's greatest challenge in fighting borderless "death cults" like ISIS and other terrorist groups is balancing surveillance and civil liberties.

"The risk, the threat, has never been greater and the trust in our own governments as never been lower."

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Security forum discusses freedom-terrorism surveillance balance

Australia and NZ actions on press freedoms alarming

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MONDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2014 Australia and New Zealand actions on press freedoms alarming - PFF

PFF, Rarotonga, COOK ISLANDS Wed 15th October 2014

Global support for investigative journalism in Australia and New Zealand is a welcome response to law changes and a police raid, says the Pacific Freedom Forum

"Particularly welcome is the call from the Freedom of the Press Foundation in the United States for worldwide fundraising for legal defence," says PFF Chair Titi Gabi.

PFF is calling on Australia and New Zealand to urgently review law changes that restrict press freedom, and a police raid on the home of an investigative journalist.

"Media freedoms in the Pacific have long been supported by Australia and New Zealand," says PFF Chair Titi Gabi.

"To now see actions against those freedoms by authorities in those countries is alarming," she says.

PFF joins the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, an organisation representing 18,000 publications in 120 countries, along with other media freedom groups around the world in calling for the new Australian security laws to be revised.

"Journalism is not a crime," says Gabi, a journalist based in Papua New Guinea.

"Australia cannot credibly condemn the jailing of Al-Jazeera journalists on security charges in Egypt while pursuing similar powers in its own country."

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Australia and NZ actions on press freedoms alarming

Injustice: Gods Among Us – Cyborg Superman – Classic Battles On Very Hard (No Matches Lost) – Video

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Injustice: Gods Among Us - Cyborg Superman - Classic Battles On Very Hard (No Matches Lost)
My 2nd playthrough with Superman. This time I #39;m actually doing classic battles instead of the villains only ones. Was much more happy with this playthrough than the other one. Was a close call...

By: Vman

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Injustice: Gods Among Us - Cyborg Superman - Classic Battles On Very Hard (No Matches Lost) - Video

Turing Test Alternative Proposed By Georgia Tech's Mark Riedl

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November 23, 2014

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

For decades, the Turing Test has been the standard method used to measure whether or not a machine or computer program exhibits human-level intelligence, but now a Georgia Institute of Technology researcher has devised an alternative method that relies not on its ability to converse, but on its ability to create a convincing story, poem or painting.

The new test is known as Lovelace 2.0 and it was developed by Mark Riedl, an associate professor in the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing. In his work, Riedl sought to improve upon the original Lovelace Test, which was first proposed back in 2001, by creating clear and measurable parameters by which to judge the artistic work created by the artificial intelligence (AI) system.

For the test, the artificial agent passes if it develops a creative artifact from a subset of artistic genres deemed to require human-level intelligence and the artifact meets certain creative constraints given by a human evaluator, he explained to BBC News technology reporter Jane Wakefield. Creativity is not unique to human intelligence, but it is one of the hallmarks of human intelligence.

The original Lovelace Test required that the AI agent develop a creative work in such a way that the person or team who designed it cannot explain how it developed said item, meaning that the creation must have been made in a way deemed valuable, novel and surprising. In Riedls new updated version of the test, however, the evaluator is asked to work within defined constraints without making value judgments about the artistic object.

The Georgia Tech researcher proposes that Lovelace 2.0 is an alternative to the Turing Test, which was originally proposed by computing pioneer Alan Turing back in 1950. Originally known as the Imitation Game, the Turing Test has long been used to test the intelligence capabilities of computational systems, despite the fact that it often relies on deception and the fact that the man who developed it never envisioned using it as a diagnostic tool.

Its important to note that Turing never meant for his test to be the official benchmark as to whether a machine or computer program can actually think like a human, Riedl said in a recent statement. And yet it has, and it has proven to be a weak measure because it relies on deception. This proposal suggests that a better measure would be a test that asks an artificial agent to create an artifact requiring a wide range of human-level intelligent capabilities.

According to Wakefield, a computer is considered to have passed the Turing Test if it is mistaken for a human more than 30 percent of the time during a five-minute series of keyboard conversations. In June, a program designed to simulate a 13-year-old Ukrainian allegedly passed the test, though some experts dispute those claims. Riedl told the BBC that even no existing story generation system can pass the Lovelace 2.0 test.

I think this new test shows that we all now recognize that humans are more than just very advanced machines, and that creativity is one of those features that separates us from computers for now, added Professor Alan Woodward, a computer expert from the University of Surrey thinks it could help make a key distinction.

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Turing Test Alternative Proposed By Georgia Tech's Mark Riedl

Israel Aerospace Industries opened the factory for producing the wings for 1/3 of the world’s F-35s – Video

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Israel Aerospace Industries opened the factory for producing the wings for 1/3 of the world #39;s F-35s
Israel Aerospace Industries inaugurated Tuesday a new plant for the manufacture of American fighter pilot wings for F-35 aircraft near Ben Gurion Airport. As part of the deal, the IDF...

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Israel Aerospace Industries opened the factory for producing the wings for 1/3 of the world's F-35s - Video