Category Archives: AI

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Yikes!! AI Is Coming for My JOB — Even Though I’m Already Retired!

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Tom Edsall writes a very valuable  weekly column in the New York Times, and he’s paid a lot of attention to the rise of Artificial Intelligence. Like other observers, he’s particularly concerned about AI’s developing impact on jobs and society, present and future.

In his June 5 column, Edsall picks the brains of several scholars who are delving deeply into these matters. One piece of what he found jerked me upright. Continue reading Yikes!! AI Is Coming for My JOB — Even Though I’m Already Retired! →

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Two Views: Canada, India & An “Inconvenient” Assassination?

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1. A Murder, a Diplomatic Dust-Up and the Risk of Impunity

By Nicholas Kristof

Nicholas Kristof
Nicholas Ktistof

Father’s Day this year, two heavyset men were loitering near a Sikh temple in British Columbia. Then the president of the temple, a Canadian citizen and an activist named Hardeep Singh Nijjar, stepped out and climbed into his pickup truck to drive home for dinner with his family.

The two waiting men, wearing masks, fired through Nijjar’s window about a dozen times. Temple members bravely ran after the gunmen, who escaped in a getaway car driven by a third man.

Continue reading Two Views: Canada, India & An “Inconvenient” Assassination? →

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Two Pieces of Good News: AI Bringing Speech for the Paralyzed Closer, And Dawn at the Grand Canyon

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The Guardian – August 23, 2023

Paralysed woman able to ‘speak’ through digital avatar in world first

By Hannah Devlin

Latest technology uses tiny electrodes on brain surface and is faster than synthesisers which rely on eye tracking

A severely paralysed woman has been able to speak through an avatar using technology that translated her brain signals into speech and facial expressions.

The advance raises hopes that brain-computer-interfaces (BCIs) could be on the brink of transforming the lives of people who have lost the ability to speak due to conditions such as strokes and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Continue reading Two Pieces of Good News: AI Bringing Speech for the Paralyzed Closer, And Dawn at the Grand Canyon →

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Chatbot fantasies

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Spend enough time with ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence chatbots and it doesn’t take long for them to spout falsehoods.

Described as hallucination, confabulation or just plain making things up, it’s now a problem for every business, organization and high school student trying to get a generative AI system to compose documents and get work done. Some are using it on tasks with the potential for high–stakes consequences, from psychotherapy to researching and writing legal briefs.

Continue reading Chatbot fantasies →