Tag: Artificial intelligence

AI and skin biomarkers: profile of Anastasia Georgievskaya

AI and skin biomarkers: profile of Anastasia Georgievskaya

Anastasia Georgievskaya is using AI to develop biomarkers from photos of consumers’ skin. She is doing important work for the longevity revolution, but the consumers are more attracted by offers of improved attractiveness than offers of extended lifespan. Skin biomarkers Anastasia Georgievskaya runs a company in Estonia that provides consumers with recommendations engines for healthcare and lifestyle changes, using indicators from photographs of their skin. The company is called Haut.AI, and it operates a software platform which solicits images, and also lifestyle and preference data from individuals. It processes this information, and provides the results to clients. The clients include...
Book review: The Patient Will See You Now by Eric Topol

Book review: The Patient Will See You Now by Eric Topol

Eric Topol is a techno-optimist and a leading advocate of radical change in the medical profession. Judging by some of the reactions to this best-selling book, parts of that profession see him as a traitor. Smartphone revolution One of the two main themes in Topol's latest book is that the AI embedded in our smartphones is about to spark a revolution in healthcare. Paired with tiny sensing devices and accessing ever-increasing amounts of data, smartphone apps enable patients to monitor every aspect of our bodies.  Diagnoses can be made and prescriptions issued without us having to physically visit the doctor's...

Humanity’s capacity to believe fiction is our super-power

This may seem a bit off-topic, but bear with me. Yuval Harari's book "Sapiens" is brilliant.  I wish I'd written it.  It's stuffed full of great insights, large and small, and the writing style is crisp, clear and often witty.  You can sample his thinking in this TED talk: [embed]http://www.ted.com/talks/yuval_noah_harari_what_explains_the_rise_of_humans?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2015-07-25&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=top_left_image#t-875718[/embed] One of Harari's most important insights is that the reason why humans rule the world, and why the fate of every other species depends on us, is our ability to believe things that aren't true.  Our ability to believe that money is valuable, and that nations and gods exist is what enables us...

Endorsements for "Surviving AI"

"Surviving AI", a non-fiction review of the promise and peril of artificial intelligence, will be published later this summer.  Designer Rachel Lawston has produced a terrific cover (biased? me?), and I'm very grateful to all the illustrious (and busy) people below who gave their time to review it:  A sober and easy-to-read review of the risks and opportunities that humanity will face from AI. Jaan Tallinn, co-founder Skype; co-founder CSER and FLI Understanding AI – its promise and its dangers – is emerging as one of the great challenges of coming decades and this is an invaluable guide to anyone...

Artificial intelligence and ethics

I recently debated some of the ethical considerations raised by the rapid development of artificial intelligence with Ben Medlock of Swiftkey.  Sally Davies of the FT was the ringmaster, and the event was hosted by Playfair Capital.  The video is now available: [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvEpATeR5gA&index=1&list=PLDwFvHbYRUw2mcns9GXuGjJhkFD4JEyaQ[/embed]

Professor Margaret Boden’s talk at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risks

Professor Boden has been in the AI business long enough to have worked with John McCarthy and some of the other founders of the science of artificial intelligence. During her animated and compelling talk to a highly engaged audience at CSER in Cambridge last month, the sparkle in her eye betrayed the fun she still gets from it. The main thrust of her talk was that those who believe that an artificial general intelligence (AGI) may be created within the next century are going to be disappointed. She was at pains to emphasise that the project is feasible in principle, but she...

New book: "Surviving AI". Review copies available

I've just finished writing a non-fiction book on artificial intelligence, called Surviving AI. It starts with a brief history of the science and a description of its current state.  It goes on to look at the benefits and risks that AI presents in the short and medium term, with a short story highlighting the improvements to everyday life that are in the pipeline, and discussions of technological unemployment and killer robots. Then it gets into artificial general intelligence - machines with human-level cognition: whether we can create one, and if so when; whether we will like it if we do, and what we should do about...

Professor Stuart Russell's talk at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risks

Professor Stuart Russell, computer science professor at University of California, Berkeley, gave a clear and powerful talk on the promise and peril of artificial intelligence at the CSER in Cambridge on 15th May. Professor Russell has been thinking for over 20 years about what will happen if we create an AGI – an artificial general intelligence, a machine with human-level cognitive abilities. The last chapter of his classic 1994 textbook Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach was called “What if we succeed?” Although he cautions against making naive statements based on Moore's Law, he notes that progress on AI is accelerating in...

The Economist’s curious articles on artificial intelligence

The Economist is famous for its excellence at forecasting the past and its weakness at forecasting the future. Its survey on AI (9th May) is a classic. The explanation of deep learning is outstanding, but the conclusion that we should not worry about superintelligence because today's computers have neither volition nor awareness is, well, less impressive. The magazine's leader seems to agree, saying that "even if the prospect of what Mr Hawking calls “full” AI is still distant, it is prudent for societies to plan for how to cope". But it then goes on to make the outlandish claim that...
Movie review: Ultron – not the new Terminator after all

Movie review: Ultron – not the new Terminator after all

Film number two in Marvel's Avengers series is every bit as loud and brash as the first outing, and the crashing about is nicely offset by the customary slices of dry wit, mainly from Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man. Director Joss Whedon demonstrates again his mastery of timing and pace in epic movies, with audiences given time to breathe during brief diversions to the burgeoning love interest between Bruce Banner and the Black Widow, and vignettes of Hawkeye's implausibly forgiving family. The film is great fun (especially on an IMAX screen) and does pretty much everything that fans of superhero...

Ultron, the new Terminator?

Avengers, the Age of Ultron opens in the UK later this week, and in the US the week after. Apparently Hollywood can forecast a film's takings pretty well these days (thanks to clever AI algorithms, no doubt) and it seems the studio is quietly confident it's going to overturn box office records. It may also overturn something else: the unwritten law that every article about the future of artificial intelligence has to be accompanied by a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger, or the killer robot he played. The original Terminator movie was released in 1984, and 31 years is a great innings....

On killer robots

The Guardian's editorial of 14th April 2014 (Weapons systems are becoming autonomous entities. Human beings must take responsibility) argued that killer robots should always remain under human control, because robots can never be morally responsible. They kindly published my reply, which said that this may not be true if and when we create machines whose cognitive abilities match or exceed those of humans in every respect. Surveys indicate that around 50% of AI researchers think that could happen before 2050. But long before then we will face other dilemmas. If wars can be fought by robots, would that not be...

On boiling frogs

If you drop a frog into a pan of boiling water it will jump out. Frogs aren't stupid. But if a frog is sitting in a pan which is gradually heated it will become soporific and fail to notice when it boils to death at 100 degrees. This story has been told many times, not least by the leading management thinker, Charles Handy, in his best-selling book The Age of Unreason. Unfortunately, the story isn't true. It was put about by 19th-century experimenters, but has been refuted several times since. Never mind: it's a good metaphor, and metaphors aren't supposed...

Interview on Singularity Weblog

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zISzqmtojD8#t=1036[/embed] This week I interviewed with Nikola Danaylov, the creator of Singularity Weblog.  It was great fun, and quite an honour to follow in the footsteps of his 160-plus previous guests. We talked about hope and optimism as a useful bias, about the promise and peril of AGI, about whether automation will end work and force the introduction of universal basic income ... and of course about Pandora's Brain.
Science fiction gives us metaphors to think about our biggest problems

Science fiction gives us metaphors to think about our biggest problems

Science fiction, it has been said, tells you less about what will happen in the future than it tells you about the predominant concerns of the age when it was written. The 1940s and 50s is known as the golden age of science fiction: short story magazines ruled, and John Campbell, editor of Astounding Stories, demanded better standards of writing than the genre had seen before. Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, AE van Vogt, and Robert Heinlein all got started in this period. The Cold War was building up, but the West was emerging from the destruction and austerity of...

Singularity University Summit, Seville, March 2015

Hyatt Hotels has revenues of $4bn and a market value of $8.4bn. AirBnB has revenues of $250m, 13 staff, pretty much no assets, and a market value of $14bn. It will soon be the world’s largest hotel company. Über was founded in 2009 and has a market cap of $40bn, despite – again – having pretty much no physical assets. It has taxi drivers up in arms all over the world. Magic Leap, a virtual reality company, raised $50m in February 2014 and then $550m in October. It persuaded the second set of investors to contribute by showing them a...

Pandora’s Brain is published!

Pandora's Brain is available today on Amazon sites around the world in both ebook and paperback formats. I'm celebrating by attending the Singularity University Summit in Seville.  The content of this conference has been inspiring and uplifting but also very grounded.  As you would expect, the word "exponential" has been used a great deal, but the presenters - mostly SU faculty - have focused on changes expected in the near term, and have provided solid evidence and examples to support their claims about the future they envisage. I've met some great SU people - including AI expert Neil Jacobstein, medical expert Daniel...

It’s that man again!

OK, I know some people have had enough of Mr Musk lately, but he does keep saying and doing interesting things. In a wide-ranging and intriguing 8-minute interview with Max Tegmark (leading physicist and a founder of the Future of Life Institute), Musk lists the five technologies which will impact society the most.  He doesn't specify the timeframe. His list of five is (not verbatim - it appears at 4 minutes in): Making life multi-planetary Efficient energy sources Growing the footprint of the internet Re-programming human genetics Artificial Intelligence A pretty good list, IMHO. What is very cool is that he...