Putting the Intelligence Into AI
Not content to create an AI that could learn how to play the computer game Civilization on it's own (and win 46% of the time) researchers at MIT taught the AI how to learn how to read English. (Note that they did not teach it English, they actually made it smart enough, that it was able to learn English it on it's own by playing the game and looking at the manual!) When it was given the general help / instruction manual for Civilization, it was smart enough to assimilate that knowledge, and increase it's win rate to a staggering 79% of the games it played.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/language-from-games-0712.html
Synthetic Burgers
Professor Mark Post, from Maastricht University in the Netherlands, and his team have grown synthetic pork strips and claims that within a year, they will also be able to grow synthetic beef for use as a cheap and efficient meat source.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2008347/Test-tube-burger-coming-soon-Lab-grown-meat-needed-feed-world.html
Global warming?
"The earth is heating super rapidly! It's caused by man! We are killing our planet!" Only, the temperature has not moved in over a decade. Hmmm. Asia pollution "blamed" for halt in warming. The key sentence from the article: "World temperatures did not rise from 1998 to 2008, while manmade emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuel grew by nearly a third, various data show." (emphasis added.)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/04/us-climate-sulphur-idUSTRE7634IQ20110704
Man Induced Climate Change?
"Global warming will cause terrible storms which will grow to truly epic proportions!" Only, "During the past 6-years since Hurricane Katrina, global tropical cyclone frequency and energy have decreased dramatically, and are currently at near-historical record lows." (emphasis added.)
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/
Don't take no pictures!
"Be afraid. Fear everything and everyone!" That's the message we hear every time you get near an airport. Fear is used as a catch-all excuse to do anything. Don't like a passenger taking a picture of your name badge when you are rude to passengers? Call them a "security risk" and have them booted off the airplane!
http://www.pixiq.com/article/woman-escorted-off-us-airways-flight-for-snapping-iphone-photo
1 comment:
That MIT AI thing is very cool!
A point about global warming.
Temperature data is available here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.gif
Rather than listen to reporters at Reuters, please feel free to examine the data and you can draw your own conclusions about whether warming has stopped.
As well, check which two data points on the graph represent 1998 and 2008. You will see that 1998 is the data point in the '90s lifted far above the trendline by El Nino, while 2008 is the data point in the '00s that is pulled well below the trendline by La Nina.
This is akin to claiming that the weather doesn't change between winter and summer by drawing a line between the coldest day in July and the warmest day in January.
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