Can machines become conscious?

There is no doubt that computers will become more and more "intelligent." But the question of subjectivity and the feeling of existing is much more debated.



The rapid progress of learning algorithms will generate machines of intelligence comparable to ours in the decades to come. Capable of speaking and reasoning, they will have their place in a myriad of fields, such as economics, politics, and, inevitably, war. The birth of real artificial intelligence will profoundly affect the future of humanity and condition the very existence of such a fate.

Take, for example, the following quote: "Even today, research is underway to understand better what new AI programs will be able to do while remaining within the limits of today's intelligence." Most AI programs currently programmed are mainly limited to making simple decisions or performing simple operations on relatively small amounts of data. "

Perhaps you had the impression that something was wrong in this paragraph? This quote is the work of GPT-2, a language robot that I tested last summer. Developed by OpenXAI, a company in Chicago that promotes "virtuous" AI, GPT-2 is a learning algorithm based on an artificial neural network. Its entrails contain more than a billion connections simulating synapses, the junction points between neurons.

The task of the network is stupid when confronted with an arbitrary starting text, it must predict the next word. He does not "understand" the documents as a human would. But during his learning phase, he devoured astronomical quantities of texts - eight million internet pages in all - and adjusted his internal connections to anticipate word sequences better.




I wrote the first sentences of the article you are reading, then "injected" them into the algorithm by asking it to compose a suite. In particular, he spat out the paragraph cited. Admittedly, this text resembles a first-year student's efforts to remember an introductory course in machine learning, during which he would have daydreamed. But the result still contains the keywords and phrases - not wrong, really!

Intelligence is not consciousness.

The successors of these robots risk triggering a tidal wave of fake articles and reports, which will pollute the internet. It will be just one more example of programs performing feats that we thought were only for humans: playing strategy games in real-time, translating text, recommending books and movies, recognizing people in pictures or videos.

The task of the network is stupid: when confronted with an arbitrary starting text, it must predict the next word. He does not "understand" the documents as a human would. But during his learning phase, he devoured astronomical quantities of texts - eight million internet pages in all - and adjusted his internal connections to anticipate word sequences better.

I wrote the first sentences of the article you are reading, then "injected" them into the algorithm by asking it to compose a suite. In particular, he spat out the paragraph cited. Admittedly, this text resembles the efforts of a first-year student to remember an introductory course in machine learning during which he would have daydreamed. But the result still contains the keywords and phrases - not wrong, really!

The successors of these robots risk triggering a tidal wave of fake articles and reports, which will pollute the internet. It will be just one more example of programs performing feats that we thought were only for humans: playing strategy games in real-time, translating text, recommending books and movies, recognizing people in pictures or videos.

Will algorithms one day write a masterpiece as successful as In search of lost time? Hard to say, but the beginnings are there. Remember that the first translation and conversation software was easy to make fun of, as it lacked finesse and precision. But with the invention of deep neural networks and the establishment of robust computing infrastructures by digital companies, computers have improved continuously, until their productions are no longer ridiculous. As we see with the game of go, chess, and poker, today's algorithms are capable of surpassing humans (as of last November, Lee Sedol, one of the greatest Go players in history, decided to retire after losing several times against the AlphaGo algorithm; he declared that it was an entity that could no longer be defeated, note). So much so that our laughter freezes: are we like Goethe's sorcerer's apprentice, having summoned helpful spirits that we can no longer control?

Much of the brain activity remains localized and, therefore, does not gain consciousness. This is the case of the neural modules which control the posture of the body or the direction of gaze. But when the activity of one or more regions exceeds a critical threshold - say, when we present to someone the image of a delicious treat - it triggers a wave of neuronal excitement which propagates through the workspace, throughout the brain. This signal then becomes accessible to a multitude of auxiliary processes, such as language, planning, the reward circuit, long-term memory, and storage in a short-term buffer. It would be the fact of disseminating this information on a global scale that would make it aware. So,  sugar and fat shoot to come.

The Pros & Cons of Algorithms & Artificial Intelligence [AI]

Developments in AI are leading to drastic changes in the way we live.AI and Algorithms can already detect many diseases, cancers, and can control the worlds around us.

How will AI change our society in the future?

The rapid growth of AI will provide many opportunities, but it does come with many dangers. Algorithms can decide whether to grant loans, who is an insurance risk, and how good employees are. But there is a huge problem: humans can no longer comprehend how algorithms arrive at their decisions. And another big problem is AI’s capacity for widespread surveillance.

• Which decisions can we leave to AI & which do we want to? 
• What are AI’s social implications? 

AI and Machine learning can be used to create sound and video recordings which will make it more and more difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction. It will make the world of work more efficient and many professions superfluous.

Artificial Intelligence is helping to translate messages of long-lost languages

There are about 6,000-8,000 languages currently spoken in the world. That's less than a quarter of all the languages people spoke over the course of human history. Every time a language is lost, so goes that method of thinking, of relating to the world.

While languages change, many of the signs and how the words and characters are distributing stay relatively constant gradually. Due to the fact that of that, you might try to translate a long-lost language if you understood its relationship to a known progenitor language. This insight is what allowed the group which included Jimmy Lu and Charlotte Kim from MIT and Jason Kim from Google's AI lab to use machine learning to analyze the early Greek language Linear B (from 1400 BC) and a cuneiform Ugaritic (early Hebrew) language that's also over 3,000 years of ages.

Linear B was formerly split by a human - in 1952, it was figured out by Mike Ventris. However this was the very first time the language was determined by a device.

The technique by the scientists focused on 5 key properties connected to the context and alignment of the characters to be analyzed - distributional resemblance, monotonic character mapping, structural sparsity and considerable cognate overlap.

Yet another #ArtificialIntelligence translation tool to help people overcome language barriers. This could be used at the Olympics next year. pic.twitter.com/jbgBhGkK0d #ai #AIforGood #japan #5G #smartcity #SmartCities #tokyo #futureofwork

— Sean Gardner (@2morrowknight) October 3, 2019

They trained the AI network to search for these characteristics, accomplishing the appropriate translation of 67.8% of Linear B cognates (word of typical origin) into their Greek equivalents.

What AI can potentially do much better in such jobs, according to Stanford Innovation Evaluation, is that it can simply take a strength technique that would be too tiring for humans. They can attempt to equate signs of an unknown alphabet by rapidly testing it versus signs from one language after another, running them through everything that is currently known.

Next for the scientists? Maybe, the translation of Linear A - the Ancient Greek language that nobody has actually been successful in analyzing so far.

You can inspect out their paper "Neural Decipherment through Minimum-Cost Flow: from Ugaritic to Linear B" here.

Every time a language is lost, so goes that way of thinking, of relating to the world. Because of that, you could try to decode a long-lost language if you understood its relationship to a recognized progenitor language.

New lung cancer detection AI outperforms human radiologists

Lung cancer has been one of the major health disasters across the globe. This is because it kills thousands of people every year according to the recent clinical statistics. It is true that very few people survive from this complication just like the AIDS patients. Therefore, we can say that lung cancer is the second world’s health disaster after AIDS. Once you have been diagnosed with this complication, your life is always in danger simply because the chances to survive are actually very low. Most of the survivors from this health disaster go for health insurance simply because their lives are exposed to serious danger. It is also worth noting that not all health insurance providers will accept to offer the lung cancer survivors insurance policies. They have to carry out some medical examination for these people to qualify for a health insurance policy.  This means that these cancer survivors are always disadvantaged since nothing goes smooth on their side. Therefore, it is good to stay away from anything that is likely to increase the chances of getting this kind of cancer, smoking being one of them. If you are a smoker, you should be aware that your day is coming and the best way to do is to quit smoking as early as possible and avoid being diagnosed with this type of cancer. Statistics show that individuals who quit smoking before the cancer cells fully develop are not at risk of getting lung cancer. Therefore, it is up to you to make a decision of whether or not to quit smoking and reduce the chances of getting this kind of complications not seen in synthetic biology

There lots of facts about lung cancer. These have been realised through several clinical tests with people who have been diagnosed with this type of cancer. One of the facts is that cancer is the second health disaster in the world. About 90 percent of individuals admitted in hospitals due to cancer complications comprise of lung cancer patients. This means that this type of cancer precedes AIDS in terms of deaths that it causes every year. Therefore, it is good to avoid those cancer-causing agents such as tobacco and stay healthy. Another fact is that smoking increases the chances of getting this type of cancer by almost 60 percent. This means that smoking can pose your life in danger and put you in major health problems. This is because the tobacco smoke contains carcinogenic substances that cause this type of cancer. The first cigarette that you smoke increases the chances of getting this type of cancer what happens to be that these carcinogenic substances settle at the walls of wind pipes inside your lungs. As you continue to smoke, more and more of these substances accumulate inside your lungs. Remember that smoking damages the cilia lining in the lungs that is responsible for sweeping away dirt that gets into the lungs. Having cilia destroyed, it means that dirt will not be expelled from the lungs hence accumulate there as long as the person does not stop smoking. These carcinogenic substances get converted to cancer cells. They also convert some of the normal cells in the lungs into cancer cells and start to dig deep in the walls of the trachea inside the lungs. This continues for quite a long time until the person is diagnosed with lung cancer at his or her 70’s. At this point, the lungs are fully invaded, and nothing can be done to the victim other than to wait for the fate. Therefore, it is good to quit smoking and avoid getting this disastrous complication.

Lung cancer patients are nowadays surviving, but not all. This is due to the introduction of chemotherapy that can kill the cancer cells. This is actually an effective way to treat cancer, although it does not work all the time. There are specific chemotherapy drugs that can be administered to cancer patients and get it treated completely. These drugs treat different types of cancer, lung cancer being one of them. The drug can be injected or taken orally as capsules or in the liquid form. Chemotherapy has got some disadvantages, especially the side effects. The working behind chemotherapy is actually simple. It kills the cells with fast division, which is one of the characteristics of cancer cells. In this process, some of the normal cells get damaged simply because they possess these characteristics. These include cells lining up the intestines and the mouth. Therefore, you should be very careful when undergoing chemotherapy or you have all your normal cells killed in the process.

Just found out today that I have inoperable lung cancer. Tell u what troops, If it's beatable, I'll kick it's cunt right in btw #NFSE 🇬🇧

— Barry Long (@BroxyBaz) September 13, 2019

Patients with lung cancer should ensure that they undergo the right treatment. If you are diagnosed with this complication, it is good to look for a personal doctor who will handle your case privately. Therefore, the chances of you being a lung cancer survivor depends on the type of treatment you receive and also the kind of doctor you had.