blog – August 29, 2021
The previous podcast's prognostications have hereby been revised to say that Homo sapiens will not be made slaves to super-intelligent technology; Rather, Homo sapiens will simply be made irrelevant by super-intelligent technology. From problems associated with Global Warming to mankind being made irrelevant vestigial biological organisms by super-intelligent algorithms, I am starting to question the overall expedient to man's never-ending quest for technological innovation.
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blog – August 15, 2021
Intelligent machines will turn humans into slaves by the end of next year. Just kidding, that is likely not ever going to happen. It's interesting to think how R2-D2 and C-3PO delighted us for so many decades as intelligent machines that not only worked along side humans as intelligent servants (if not friends), but also helped humans wage war against the 'Dark Side'. Yet, how fast did the idea of benevolent machine intelligence get subsumed by the idea of robot overlords, ala 'Terminator'. This book helps to dispell cultural beliefs inculcated by both of these movie myths. Yet, I wonder...
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blog – July 26, 2021
If you are trying to learn the nuts-and-bolts behind the machinery of Machine Learning (ML), like I am, then this is a nice, short book to dive into. Don't let the brevity of the book fool you, though. This book is 130 pages of pure rubix cube type thinking. This book takes a bit of work to digest, and I am still trying to assimilate Chapters 1 and 2, to be honest. Nevertheless, I feel that great things will come from persistence in understanding this material, as it has caused Cindy and I to ponder what exactly constitutes the word 'Intelligence' in 'Artificial Intelligence (AI)'; and further, is Machine Learning truly a waypoint on the path to AI or AGI (Artificial General Intelligence)?
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blog – July 12, 2021
Why try to get hired by a company as an Individual Contributor (IC) when you can team-up with a few colleagues, start a business, and sell your business to a big tech firm for $44 million? You don't need a product, inventory, income or even a business plan. This is exactly what Jeff Hinton and two of his students did when they founded DNNResearch and got bought by their highest bidder - Google. Turns out that to be worth that much money, however, your company has to be on the fringe of starting a technological revolution (like 'Artificial Intelligence'), as Cade Metz eloquently and meticulously describes in his book, 'Genius Makers'.
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blog – June 8, 2021
You've undoubtedly heard the old adage, 'practice makes perfect.' Daniel Coyle, in his book, 'The Talent Code,' explains the biological imperatives behind the act of practicing a task over and over in order to build-up a skill in a certain area. 'The Talent Code' explains that practice, and deep practice in particular, helps to build-up fatty tissue called myelin around neural connectors in our brains, helping to retain data between neural transfers and improving data throughput in the process. So one mystery unlocked, I suppose, but what motivates us humans to put in the amount of work required to beef up our myelin to such a degree that we can actually become great at something?
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