About a decade ago, spam brought email to near-ruin. The contest to save your inbox was on, with two of the world’s biggest tech companies vying for the title of top spam-killer. Microsoft boasted that its spam filters were removing all but 3 percent of the junk messages from Hotmail, the company’s online email service at the time.
Google responded by claiming that its service, Gmail, removed all but about one percent of spam messages, adding that its false positives rate was also about one percent. It was a point of pride for the two companies, particularly Microsoft, whose Hotmail service once carried such a poor reputation for spam.
Read moreApple’s early-adopting, outspoken co-founder Steve Wozniak thinks humans will be fine if robots take over the world because we’ll just become their pets.
After previously stating that a robotic future powered by artificial intelligence would be scary and very bad for people and that robots would get rid of the slow humans, Wozniak has staged a U-turn and says he now thinks robots taking over would be good for the human race. Robots are going to be smarter than us and if they’re smarter than us then they’ll realise they need us. Some of the most high-profile technology pioneers and the greatest minds of science have warned of the dangers of AI.
Read moreIt was the middle of the day, and my cell phone rang with a local number I didn't recognize. Figuring it was one of my kids calling from a friend's phone to tell me that they had forgotten their cell phone and needed a ride, I answered — and found myself rapidly descending into the uncanny valley.
"Amy" was, in fact, an outbound interactive voice response program running on a server, likely somewhere in a cloud data center. The company behind the call was the latest incarnation of a sweepstakes and magazine subscription scam operation currently known as North American Direct Services, Inc.
Read moreArtificial intelligence? Well, forget it. There is a much more interesting idea. And if works, it might be the next IT revolution that we all have been longing for since Bill Gates said 512K of RAM would be enough for everything and everybody.
While many others, including huge and famous players like Google or Numenta, are trying to develop AI in different forms, the Ukrainian guys are looking for developing what they call “a digital lifeform”. There is a new Ukrainian startup, called Digital Life Lab. It is about to bring something new to the world, and the concept is quite overwhelming. The project will be able to go through different states and moods.
Read moreBill Gates is a well-known person who has put his money where his mouth is when it comes to saving the world. It would seem that this makes his opinions worth considering when he tells us that he scares that artificial intelligence could be a threat to humanity.
Gates stressed the concerns expressed over the past year by Musk, Hawking and others that something vaguely resembling the science fiction scenarios from the Terminator and Matrix franchises could come to pass if the potential of artificial intelligence is not taken seriously. Personal interests aside, Musk and Gates could just be right about the threat posed by artificial superintelligence.
Read moreDozens of scientists, entrepreneurs and investors involved in the field of artificial intelligence, including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, have signed an open letter warning that greater focus is needed on its safety and social benefits.
The letter and an accompanying paper from the Future of Life Institute, which suggests research priorities for “robust and beneficial” artificial intelligence, come amid growing nervousness about the impact on jobs or even humanity’s long-term survival from machines whose intelligence and capabilities could exceed those of the people who created them.
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