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Imagine how much life this man has extended to the world since the 1920's.....

We need more guys like this in the world

On 2/10/2019 at 2:05 PM, Equivocation said:

This still doesn't hide the fact of you speaking the way you did and assume people in that pot are all from the hood. And your hood talk is indeed stereotyping and near the line of racism

@Equivocation Please refrain from further instigation. If you want such a conversation please PM each other. Not on a public thread.

@JOHN BUTLER Please PM people back. You should know by now to start a new topic or hold your conversations on someone's wall rather than go so way off topic 

Researchers at the non-profit AI research group OpenAI just wanted to train their new text generation software to predict the next word in a sentence. It blew away all of their expectations and was so good at mimicking writing by humans they’ve decided to pump the brakes on the research while they explore the damage it could do.

Elon Musk has been clear that he believes artificial intelligence is the “biggest existential threat” to humanity. Musk is one of the primary funders of OpenAI and though he has taken a backseat role at the organization, its researchers appear to share his concerns about opening a Pandora’s box of trouble. This week, OpenAI shared a paper covering their latest work on text generation technology but they’re deviating from their standard practice of releasing the full research to the public out of fear that it could be abused by bad actors. Rather than releasing the fully trained model, it’s releasing a smaller model for researchers to experiment with.

The researchers used 40GB of data pulled from 8 million web pages to train the GPT-2 software. That’s ten times the amount of data they used for the first iteration of GPT. The dataset was pulled together by trolling through Reddit and selecting links to articles that had more than three upvotes. When the training process was complete, they found that the software could be fed a small amount of text and convincingly continue writing at length based on the prompt. It has trouble with “highly technical or esoteric types of content” but when it comes to more conversational writing it generated “reasonable samples” 50 percent of the time. 

In one example, the software was fed this paragraph:

In a shocking finding, scientist discovered a herd of unicorns living in a remote, previously unexplored valley, in the Andes Mountains. Even more surprising to the researchers was the fact that the unicorns spoke perfect English.

Based on those two sentences, it was able to continue writing this whimsical news story for another nine paragraphs in a fashion that could have believably been written by a human being. Here are the next few machine-paragraphs that were produced by the machine:

The scientist named the population, after their distinctive horn, Ovid’s Unicorn. These four-horned, silver-white unicorns were previously unknown to science.

Now, after almost two centuries, the mystery of what sparked this odd phenomenon is finally solved.

Dr. Jorge Pérez, an evolutionary biologist from the University of La Paz, and several companions, were exploring the Andes Mountains when they found a small valley, with no other animals or humans. Pérez noticed that the valley had what appeared to be a natural fountain, surrounded by two peaks of rock and silver snow.

GPT-2 is remarkably good at adapting to the style and content of the prompts it’s given. The Guardian was able to take the software for a spin and tried out the first line of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” The program picked up on the tone of the selection and proceeded with some dystopian science fiction of its own:

I was in my car on my way to a new job in Seattle. I put the gas in, put the key in, and then I let it run. I just imagined what the day would be like. A hundred years from now. In 2045, I was a teacher in some school in a poor part of rural China. I started with Chinese history and history of science. 

The OpenAI researchers found that GPT-2 performed very well when it was given tasks that it wasn’t necessarily designed for, like translation and summarization. In their report, the researchers wrote that they simply had to prompt the trained model in the right way for it to perform these tasks at a level that was comparable to other models that are specialized. After analyzing a short story about an Olympic race, the software was able to correctly answer basic questions like “What was the length of the race?” and “Where did the race begin?”

These excellent results have freaked the researchers out. One concern they have is that the technology would be used to turbo-charge fake news operations. The Guardian published a fake news article written by the software along with its coverage of the research. The article is readable and contains fake quotes that are on topic and realistic. The grammar is better than a lot what you’d see from fake news content mills. And according to The Guardian’s Alex Hern, it only took 15 seconds for the bot to write the article. 

Other concerns that the researchers listed as potentially abusive included automating phishing emails, impersonating others online, and self-generating harassment. But they also believe that there are plenty of beneficial applications to be discovered. For instance, it could be a powerful tool for developing better speech recognition programs or dialogue agents.

OpenAI plans to engage the AI community in a dialogue about their release strategy and hopes to explore potential ethical guidelines to direct this type of research in the future. They said they will have more to discuss in public in six months.

[OpenAI via The Guardian]

Neat... although this thing had a nasty reputation for crashing.....

Not sure if it is still in use now though.

Probably never thought that one day he would be the Governor of California..... 

I love the colors! 😉

Time flies... it has now gone from the Military to Corporate use....

Look what just came out from the Mobile World Conference...

We’ll know we’ve made it as a newsletter when a) we become the largest U.S. city by population and b) we get invited to Microsoft’s HQ to demo the HoloLens 2, the updated mixed reality headset it unveiled at MWC yesterday.  

What is it? It’s a device you wear that overlays digital images (like holograms) onto the real world. And instead of going after individual consumers, Microsoft is selling the HoloLens 2 to corporations with employees who work with their hands—think factories.

And because we’re not salty at all, let’s get more insight from tech journalists who actually got the invite to Redmond, WA:

• Cnet’s Scott Stein: “The best way I can describe it is like Google Maps' turn-by-turn directions for real world instructions—or like a floating Lego manual for reality.”
• The Verge’s Dieter Bohn points out the HoloLens 2 (a “technical marvel”) reflects Microsoft’s strategy to serve “corporate and enterprise needs instead of trying to crank out hit consumer products.”

I think this new campaign is even worse. It promotes a complete waste of food to the poorest who use the app looking for deals where they end up getting a second egg McMuffin just because it’s a penny. They really just wanted one with a discount. 

Another bad move for a global corporation misusing the diminishing resources of the planet while fattening up the poorest while squeezing them for every last penny. 

Sad

That was brutal!!!  

Did Bonnie and Clyde ever kill anyone? or did they just steal money? Just curious.

Does anyone else feel like this guy is getting upset?

The first MS Surface was a flop in my opinion...

The new Surface 2 is a pretty good work laptop.

For my home though I still like all Mac stuff.

Umm... hasn't Microsoft been making money off of the US Military since the 1980's?

What am I missing?

How does someone like Tucker Carlson even be identified as a "Journalist"?

Watch the Meteoric rise of Apple and the other tech giants .... incredible to see how things have shifted.

Which ones will still be on this list in 2040?

• Tesla (-3.74%) is officially having a bad week. Consumer Reports said it won’t recommend the Model 3 anymore due to reliability issues.

• Nike shares (-1.05%) were watched closely a day after Duke basketball phenom Zion Williamson injured himself when his foot ripped through one of its sneakers.

But don’t take our word for it. SoftBank’s Vision Fund is leading a $1 billion funding round in logistics startup Flexport at a very sexy valuation of $3.2 billion, per Forbes.

What Flexport does: Uses software—and physical assets like warehouses—to help companies transport goods. In industry lingo, it’s known as a “freight forwarder.”

And SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son doesn’t write massive checks to just anyone (okay...he kinda does), so what’s special about Flexport?

• Disruption: Flexport is bringing modern tech to an ancient industry, where vets use a combo of email, phone, and spreadsheets to track complex supply chains. Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen told Forbes, “Of the top 100 freight forwarders, we are the only one founded after Netscape.”
• A kindred spirit: Petersen jives with Masa’s long-term approach (that 300-year plan tho) and his ability to help startups scale.

Bottom line: Forbes reports Flexport’s 2018 revenue was $471 million, and with logistics and transportation accounting for ~7.5% of U.S. GDP, there’s a lot more up for grabs.

Trump outlined a very high-tech ambition: challenging U.S. companies to go beyond 5G network technology to...6G tech.

FYI, wireless carriers around the world are gunning to get 5G to market first. AT&T launched 5G in 12 cities last year. And Verizon announced plans to launch in 30 cities by year-end.

But the real challenge to U.S. carriers isn’t each other. Major Chinese telecom Huawei is leading the pack in 5G (and looks poised to start on its own 6G soon).

• Remember, the Trump administration has urged U.S. firms and allies to avoid Huawei tech in their 5G rollouts, alleging it could be spying for the Chinese government.
• The U.S. is having trouble convincing those allies.

But Trump could be adopting a new tone. He made no mention of Huawei on Twitter yesterday, opting for a competitive spirit over “blocking out” rivals (as was the M.O. before).

Bottom line: Some have taken Trump’s Huawei omission as an olive branch. And with trade talks dragging on, the president could be looking to soften up Beijing.

the two are issuing a joint credit card that pairs with your iPhone to make managing money easier.

• The specs: The co-branded card will test with employees before officially rolling out to the rest of us this spring, per the WSJ.
• The allure: Cardholders will get extra features inside the Apple Wallet app—setting spending goals, managing balances, and tracking rewards.
• And the reason: Is youuuuu Times are changing...

Faced with shrinking iPhone demand, Apple’s boosting its fee-generating services unit (with a $50 billion revenue target by 2020). It’ll snag a bigger share of fees from its own card than it can from card purchases made through Apple Pay right now.

And Goldman wants to use its first credit card to appeal to the everyman (and offset a slump in securities trading). It’s got high hopes new Apple/Goldman customers might also become customers at its online consumer bank, Marcus.