Popular Science
Fun, smart and varied feature stories, but a sometimes sophomoric design
Proactive investing calls for a broad knowledge of where the world’s headed, and Popular Science magazine can help develop that understanding. After all, the magazine’s editors have been looking to the future for the past 147 years. But be aware that the articles vary widely in sophistication. Take a look at some recent headlines…
Groundhog Day is all about woodchuck sex
Six more weeks of Tinder.
What will we name the solar system’s next planet?
Even in space, bureaucracy prevails.
Still, luckbox is fascinated with PopSci’s coverage of the opportunities and challenges of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). A recent article explains that Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, an Estonian-born computer programmer, is working to prevent a literal existential threat to humans in the form of a super-intelligence “breakout” of AI. It’s where “ultra-smart” AIs outpace humans on the evolutionary ladder and dominate their creators the way that humans now dominate apes.
Or worse yet, the machines could simply exterminate humanity. Here are some excerpts from the PopSci article on Tallinn…
Can Super-Intelligent AI Escape Our Control and Destroy Us?
The team defending humankind from a killer AI
By Mara Hvistendahl, Winter 2018
“Advance AI can dispose of us as swiftly as humans chop down trees.”
“Tallinn warns that any approach to AI safety will be hard to get right. If an AI is sufficiently smart, it might have a better understanding of the constraints than its creators do. Imagine, he says, “waking up in a prison built by a bunch of blind 5-year-olds.” That’s what It might be like for a super-intelligent AI confined by humans. — Jeff Joseph
