Apr 22Everything We Know About Genetic Traits Is WrongThere’s a better way to think about traits — It’s common to hear that “XYZ trait must be genetic” because it runs in families, or because identical twins (who inherit the same variants of the 20k genes we all share) exhibit the trait more often than fraternal twins (born to the same family but inheriting slightly different variants of…Genetics5 min read
Feb 27How the Fed Created a Stock Market Bubble of Epic ProportionsThe U.S. Federal Reserve will soon trigger a financial crisis that threatens democracy itself How did we get here? Since the Great Depression, American politicians — mostly Democrats — have voted to construct an ever-larger “social safety net” to support the poor, elderly, minorities, and those not able to care for themselves. We now have…Federal Reserve5 min read
Feb 14How To Tell If A Machine Is IntelligentThe Turing Test is fine, with a few tweaks In 1950, Alan Turing proposed an “imitation game” to assess whether a machine is intelligent. In this “Turing Test,” an interrogator asks the machine a series of questions. If the machine’s replies closely resemble (imitate) those of a human, the machine…AGI3 min read
Published in Geek Culture·Dec 5, 2021AI Researchers Discover How To Pass The Turing TestAlas, a work of fiction. Recently, I interviewed two scientists who claimed to have discovered how to make machines truly intelligent and pass the Turing test. Here’s how they did it. “We focused on giving Maxine — that’s the name of our intelligent machine — the same kinds of goals…AGI6 min read
Published in The Startup·Sep 26, 2021America’s Founding Principles…and what to do when they’re violated America boldly declared independence from Great Britain in 1776 and proudly proclaimed a new set of governing principles — life, liberty, equality and democracy — that, today, are the envy of the world. Imagine living in Taliban-led Afghanistan, where women’s rights are rapidly…Freedom4 min read
Published in Geek Culture·Sep 5, 2021Data Structures for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)Yeah, I know… symbolic AI isn’t cool… yet! Symbolic AI (or “hand-coded” AI) has gotten a bad reputation in the age of neural networks and machine learning, where it’s assumed that all knowledge can be extracted (bottom-up) from big labeled datasets. Why bother to hand-code symbols, rules and relationships when…AGI5 min read
Published in Geek Culture·Mar 7, 2021Maybe We Think in AlgorithmsAll it takes is a common software library across the human species — We use language to communicate everyday rules and common sense bits of wisdom to others. “If you keep your key in the ignition with the radio blaring but the engine off for 2 hours, your car battery will probably be dead.” Or “Don’t touch the stovetop if the red light…AI3 min read
Published in The Startup·Jan 31, 2021How to Harness Alien IntelligenceFeelings, emotions and even biases are just algorithms — Recently, I heard a loud crash in my backyard. As I rushed outside, I found a strange oblong and metallic craft, damaged and half-buried in a muddy crater, a gaping hole ripped in its side. When I peered cautiously inside, I discovered a shaken but unharmed alien staring back at…AGI5 min read
Dec 30, 2020The Twelve Goals of AIHow to progress toward Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) Basic pattern recognition. Extract features from raw sensory inputs; for example, the ears convert raw sounds to frequency maps; the eyes convert visual inputs to feature maps (used for facial recognition, etc.) Associate new perceptions with existing memories (via dimension reduction). …AI3 min read
Published in The Startup·Nov 29, 2020What’s Wrong With AI?…and how to fix it — What’s wrong with AI? If you want to know what’s wrong with current theories of artificial intelligence (AI) — and avoid the next AI winter —just ask a neuroscientist. In “How We Learn,” neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene outlines how babies apply a rich assortment of prior models to understand people, objects…AI5 min read
