Wired to the max ...

Wired to the max ...

Skynet looms ...

BRT has posted many blurbs about autonomous weapons,  an AI-driven tech becoming commonplace given just how little money it takes to build lethal hardware not imagined just one year ago.

When developing machines that can make own decisions – typically called autonomous systems – the ethical questions that arise are arguably more concerning than those in object recognition. AI-enhanced autonomy is developing so rapidly that capabilities which were once limited to highly engineered systems are now available to anyone with a household toolbox and some computer experience.

Using a variety of techniques, autonomous drones are already a threat. They have been caught dropping explosives on U.S. troops, shutting down airports and being used in an assassination attempt on Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. The autonomous systems that are being developed right now could make staging such attacks easier and more devastating.

Ask the Houthis how effective this tech was against the Saudi oil refineries.

Skynet looms ...

Consider the following wartime scenario: Hoping to spare the lives of soldiers, a country deploys an autonomous weapon to wipe out an enemy force. This robot has demonstrated military capabilities that far exceed even the best soldiers, but when it hits the ground, it gets confused. It can’t distinguish the civilians from the enemy soldiers and begins taking innocent lives. The military generals desperately try to stop the robot, but by the time they succeed it has already killed dozens.

Who is responsible for this atrocity? Is it the commanders who deployed the robot, the designers and manufacturers of the robot, or the robot itself?

End game: We have already lost control because we don't know how the AI driving the tech works.

Interesting is it not?

The Terminator doing backflips et al ...

Ahead of it's time ... by 2000+ years

The word's first computer was built over 2000 years ago, something rather amazing without question.

To whit:

More than 21 centuries ago, a mechanism of fabulous ingenuity was created in Greece, a device capable of indicating exactly how the sky would look for decades to come -- the position of the moon and sun, lunar phases and even eclipses. But this incredible invention would be drowned in the sea and its secret forgotten for two thousand years.

This video is a tribute from Swiss clock-maker Hublot and film-maker Philippe Nicolet to this device, known as the Antikythera Mechanism, or the world's "first computer". The fragments of the Mechanism were discovered in 1901 by sponge divers near the island of Antikythera. It is kept since then at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece.

The Antikythera mechanism (Fragment A – front); visible is the largest gear in the mechanism, approximately 14 centimetres (5.5 in) in diameter

Of Ice & Snow

Dividing Line

Snowbound

Channel Crossing :)

Of ice & snow

Channeling Stuben

'Tis the season

Prelude to Winter

Reflection 2Step

Prelude to Night

Winter Solstice

The Wolf Moon

Sleepwalkers et al ...

Sleepwalkers is an excellent Wired podcast series depicting man's changing view of AI and what it means to the world. Needless to say, BRT has written copiously about the same tech as it's the right and interesting thing to do without question. 

“We’ve basically got 2 billion humans completely jacked into an environment where every single thing on your phone wants your attention,” Harris says. “Their incentive is to calculate ‘what is the perfect, most seductive thing can I show you next?’”

As yours truly has said for years, It's all about the money ...

A guilty pleasure ... Gahan Wilson :)

A wonderful cartoonist died this week, Gahan Wilson, who was a guilty pleasure of yours truly for many many years. :)

We shook hands and then sat in silence. What to say to one of the masters of the macabre? I decided that it was better to say nothing; silence is sometimes an acceptable form of respect. At that time, Wilson was a star in three places: The New Yorker, Playboy, and National Lampoon, delivering covers, multi-panel series, and single-panel gags to those majestic peaks of the cartoon-publishing landscape. The title of a 2013 documentary about him, “Born Dead, Still Weird,” tells us a lot about the man and his work. Weird was his specialty—he thought that way, and he drew that way. Wilson was part of a select group of cartoonists who own their style, who deliver on paper what seems to be a good piece of themselves. It is a distinction shared by, to name just a few, Edward Koren, George Booth, and Roz Chast. The work is somehow inseparable from who they are, and that’s part of what makes it so memorable.

“I’d just as soon it wasn’t cut into those funny little pieces, if you don’t mind.”

Gahan Wilson, whose outlandish, often ghoulish cartoons added a bizarrely humorous touch to Playboy, The New Yorker, National Lampoon and other publications in the era when magazines propelled the cultural conversation, died on Thursday in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 89.

Gahan Wilson | RIP

Over a thousand years ...

Over a thousand years, Venice more than just survived by working with nature to safely remain above the waters but no more thanks to GW, combined with corruption and ineptness at historic levels.

"The lagoon's ecosystem is unique," says Vianello, "the ancient Venetians who built the Republic of Venice worked in harmony with nature, not against it."

Many Venetians believe excavation of deep canals in the 1960s to accommodate oil tankers irreparably harmed the lagoon's delicate ecosystem. There's also widespread skepticism about a long-term project to build large, movable floodgates to hold back rising sea levels.

The project is called Mose, an Italian acronym that also means Moses, suggesting a parting of the waters. Still unfinished after 16 years and $5.5 billion in public funds, it has been plagued by corruption and won't be in operation for two more years.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions - Proverb

The Blob

Remember the 1958 SF flick, THE BLOB, a fearsome alien creature not only indescribable and indestructible but also cannot be stopped? Well, to this rube, Amazon's the 21st-century equivalent as it is everywhere, relentless to the max and impacting the world in ways unimagined just 5 years ago.

BALTIMORE — Another big Prime Air 767 takes off from Baltimore-Washington International Airport — where Amazon’s shipping last year eclipsed that of FedEx and U.P.S. put together — and wheels above the old industrial city. Below, the online giant seems to touch every niche of the economy, its ubiquity and range breathtaking.

To the city’s southeast stand two mammoth Amazon warehouses, built with heavy government subsidies, operating on the sites of shuttered General Motors and Bethlehem Steel plants. Computers monitor workers during grueling 10-hour shifts, identifying slow performers for firing. Those on the floor earn $15.40 to $18 an hour, less than half of what their unionized predecessors made. But in Baltimore’s postindustrial economy, the jobs are in demand.

Near the Inner Harbor are the side-by-side stadiums of the Ravens and the Orioles, where every move on the field is streamed to Amazon Web Services for analysis using artificial intelligence. Football players have a chip in each shoulder pad and baseball players are tracked by radar, producing flashy graphics for television and arcane stats for coaches.

And this excerpt from the NYTimes piece is just part of Amazon's reach into Baltimore.

The original. :)

The end of the world ... for us

The end of the world has begun as nothing is being done regarding climate change and nothing will be done due to overpopulation, resource depletion, environmental degradation and endless war as nations cannot get their act together to work together to remedy this most dire situation in any way, shape or fashion.

The production gap is largest for coal, of which Australia is the world’s biggest exporter. By 2030, countries plan to produce 150% more coal than is consistent with a 2℃ pathway, and 280% more than is consistent with a 1.5℃ pathway.

The gap is also substantial for oil and gas. Countries are projected to produce 43% more oil and 47% more gas by 2040 than is consistent with a 2℃ pathway.

Remember, earth DOESN'T NEED US. Click here for the report, it will warm the cockles of your heart.