In short, there is a negative relationship between yield and nutritional content. And during the last 50 years, the farmers have optimized for one thing: yield. When you optimize for yield, you compromise nutrition.
Source: Tale of Tasteless Tomatoes: Why Vegetables Do Not Taste Good Anymore – Calm Science
The times I feel I’ve made most difference to our team’s effectiveness is when I find ways to not build things.
Let’s not build that feature. Is there existing software that could be used instead?
Let’s not add this functionality. Does the complexity it will introduce really justify its existence?
Let’s not build that product yet. Can we first do some small things to test the assumption that it will be valuable?
Let’s not build/deploy that development tool. Can we adjust our process or practices instead to make it unnecessary?
Let’s not adopt this new technology. Can we achieve the same thing with a technology that the team is already using and familiar with?“The best tool for the job” is a very dangerous phrase.
Let’s not keep maintaining this feature. What is blocking us from deleting this code?
Let’s not automate this. Can we find a way to not need to do it all?
In a new study of how anesthetic drugs affect the brain, researchers suggest that our experience of reality is the product of a delicate balance of connectivity between neurons—too much or too little and consciousness slips away.
Source: Consciousness may be the product of carefully balanced chaos | Science | AAAS
“For a long time we wondered why more people didn’t major in computer science,” Aiken reflects. “Everyone in the field believed it was the future and that [it] represented an important way of thinking. Now the world believes us, and we have an overwhelming number of students.”
Ex Machina is still one of the best commentaries I’ve seen on AI in recent years. Not because it’s an accurate depiction of future technologies – it clearly isn’t. Its value lies in what it reveals about the state of AI and philosophy in the 2010s, a decade in which we’ve become a little bit obsessed with the idea that through artificial intelligence we can create, or even become, a god.
Source: Artificial Intelligence: Gods, egos and Ex Machina | Science | The Guardian
The biggest problem with collaboration is that it makes what Mr Newport calls “deep work” difficult, if not impossible. Deep work is the killer app of the knowledge economy: it is only by concentrating intensely that you can master a difficult discipline or solve a demanding problem. Many of the most productive knowledge workers go out of their way to avoid meetings and unplug electronic distractions. Peter Drucker, a management thinker, argued that you can do real work or go to meetings but you cannot do both. Jonathan Franzen, an author, unplugs from the internet when he is writing. Donald Knuth, a computer scientist, refuses to use e-mail on the ground that his job is to be “on the bottom of things” rather than “on top of things”. Richard Feynman, a legendary physicist, extolled the virtues of “active irresponsibility” when it came to taking part in academic meetings.
Well before the advent of the microprocessor and the supercomputer, Professor Minsky, a revered computer science educator at M.I.T., laid the foundation for the field of artificial intelligence by demonstrating the possibilities of imparting common-sense reasoning to computers.
“Marvin was one of the very few people in computing whose visions and perspectives liberated the computer from being a glorified adding machine to start to realize its destiny as one of the most powerful amplifiers for human endeavors in history,” said Alan Kay, a computer scientist and a friend and colleague of Professor Minsky’s.
Source: Marvin Minsky, Pioneer in Artificial Intelligence, Dies at 88 – The New York Times
It will be a long time before anyone starts sending fully formed thoughts to a computer, he says—and even longer before anyone finds it really useful. Think about speech-recognition software, which has been around for decades, Schalk says. “It was probably 80 percent accurate in 1980 or something, and 80 percent is a pretty remarkable achievement in terms of engineering. But it’s useless in the real world,” he says. “I still don’t use Siri, because it’s not good enough.”
Source: The Neurologist Who Hacked His Brain—And Almost Lost His Mind | WIRED
This may sound like science fiction, or the plot of a Marvel movie, but AFP is reporting that scientists and arms experts in attendance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland have issued a dire warning saying that robots with advanced artificial intelligence (or AI robots) could one day join wars and kill many people.
Source: Experts At Davos Say Weaponized Artificial Intelligence Robots Are Dangerous – STGIST
The UAV arrives at the drop-off location, hovers, autonomously descends, and alerts the UGV of touchdown. The UGV control station then confirms touchdown, drives out of the holding “kennel” to a safe distance, and alerts the UAV it is clear to take off. The UAV can ascend and return to base, while the UGV autonomously drives off to its first area of interest to investigate.
Source: Helicopter Robot Airdrops Recon Ground Robot, No Humans Necessary – IEEE Spectrum
