What's new on the website
January 23, 2024
When I wrote the AI AND HUMAN INTELLIGENCE article four years ago, I ended that article with a video clip from now eight years ago. I was just told today that a few weeks after that clip was posted, the "homeless piano man" had gone through a heartwarming change. Strange how all this happens in four year increments 😄! Here is that new clip, read the comments too:November 26, 2022
Got cought with other commitments and my note on Transformers is taking much longer than I anticipated. The field is advancing at high speed though and I feel I have to do something in the interim. So I attached a second video clip with a good overview presentation from Google Brain Zurich to the note. It shows how transformers subsume many of the other neural network architectures, like CNNs and LSTMs, and even parts of reinforcement learning.May 1, 2022
Another fresh alert that the level of AI in our defense projects is not where is should be, one of the themes of the website: NORAD’s VanHerck says artificial intelligence capabilities lacking.March 2, 2022
The conflict in Ukraine has some AI-related components. Continuing that separation of political from the technical, I wrote a small political entry on my personal website, On the Conflict in Ukraine. So here I say a few things about the technical aspects.One aspect relates to drones, whose AI sophistication is constantly growing. Turkey has aligned itself strongly with Ukraine and the fact that the delivery of Turkish drones to Azerbaijan made the difference in its border war with Armenia has not escaped attention in either the US or Russia or Ukraine. And now Turkey and Ukraine are working to co-produce TB2 drones. Some images on Twitter suggest that the drones are already being used in the current conflict.
Just as importantly, technology is revolutionizing how intelligence is gathered and analyzed and machine learning techniques are a central part of that technology. Ukraine has brilliant scientists and engineers working in AI and having that sophistication (drones and intelligence gathering) making its way into a military that could potentially become aligned with an adversary (NATO of course) was of growing concern to Russia.
Again, this attempt to understand Russian motives should not be taken as a justification for the invasion and the horrors of bombing civilians and nuclear power plants. I say more on that in the note On the Conflict in Ukraine.
February 11, 2022
Gödel's incompleteness theorems are central to our understanding of the limitations in the foundations of AI. He also wrote an unpublished more philosophical manuscript, which is controversial in nature. A video describing the 14 philosophical points of that manuscript, which I had originally included in the Foundational Questions article is not available anymore and I had to replace it with a link to a Medium article describing both the theorems and Gödel's philosophical viewpoints. I ended the Foundational Questions article with a longer video about Gödel's complicated life.November 30, 2021
The growing tension between China and the US regarding Taiwan's independence has been too much to ignore. A clip of the recent summit between Presidents Biden and Xi, and an analysis by Prof. Alfred McCoy of the current situation has been added at the very top of the article AI in a Bipolar World; we need that analysis in order to keep the frame of the current AI competition between the two countries updated. An additional view of the tension may be helpful to the reader. I am a fan of the Singapore PM and can't pass this opportunity to use his understanding of the situation. The clip is cut short in order to keep focus on our topic, but it's well worth listening to the entire interview if the reader has time.September 10, 2021
In my view the most pressing practical need in AI is the development and deployment of AI tools to combat disinformation. (Disinformation is the other unspoken pandemic to hit the US and as you can see from my inclusion of the CDC poster at the top of the What's New page, I intend to do my tiny part in combating both.) Messy as it may be, a democracy needs to foster discourse, and there cannot be any meaningful discourse if we do not know what the facts are. Facts, positive or negative, are like little treasures, treasures whose values rise sharply when looked at by AI. This is going to be controversial and political so I need a bit of time to think it over and avoid blowups. Here is a start: Disinformation.July 22, 2021
It's time to thank you, the reader 💗! The website is now being read by hundreds of people every day. Readership numbers (shown below ordered by country for one day in April and another day in July) obviously depend on the time of the day; while the US is rarely displaced from the top spot, it is gratifying to see that readership has been growing consistently on all continents.
June 15, 2021
I had to clarify in the AI: Most Powerful Weapon Ever article that the criticism on our website about the 2016 interference in our elections is not in any way directed at the Russian people but rather strictly at the intelligence services within the Russian government that orchestrated the 2016 interference. That new clarification is here.June 10, 2021
A new video clip about incompleteness (the fundamental "not knowing" in mathematics, which "not knowing" also applies to the AI foundations) has emerged in May of 2021. It is very informative and beautifully augments the presentation given by us on the topic in the Foundational Questions article.June 8, 2021
A link to the full AlphaGo documentary (1.5 hours), now available on YouTube, was added at the end of the Main AI Concepts article. Secondly, one of the most relevant conferences for our field is in its second year: the 2nd International Conference on Machine Learning Techniques and Data Science (MLDS 2021). The list of AI conferences linked to in the Main AI Concepts article has been updated to include this conference.May 11, 2021
The list of AI conferences linked to in the Main AI Concepts article was updated through the end of 2021. Most of the 2021 conferences have been scheduled to take place virtually, just like the 2020 conferences. A few conferences are still hoping for a hybrid in-person and virtual format.April 3, 2021
Looked up an entry in the Glossary page and realized that I wrote this page so hastily, I did not even bother with a spell checker. So for example, the entry about Integrated Information Theory said this: "Although the human brain is the main substrate of interest, it may not be the only one. So the theory may be interestingly tied to methphysics." That may be very true, but methphysics, interesting at it may be, was meant to be metaphysics 😄. Fixed all the other misspelling pearls.April 1, 2021
When I uploaded the Further Reading page about a year ago, there was a fly on my screen, right at the bottom of the page. I still can't get rid of it.March 25, 2021
In the page About the Author, I am trying to alert the reader to some of my political biases. Since the original publication of the website in February of 2020 the political landscape in the U.S. has changed. Part of my original motivation for developing this website was my concern with the approaches of the previous Administration regarding AI matters, especially the negative impact of its immigration policies on our AI progress and on our positioning vis-a-vis other AI powers, like China and Russia. I have revised the paragraphs at the very end of the page in which I mention some signs of a new approach to AI matters by the new Administration and express my hope for a cooperative foreign policy to complement that AI approach.February 19, 2021
Have started the promised revision of the website, given the 1st anniversary of its publishing. Each article now has two additional pieces of information, right underneath its title: an Original date and a Revision date. The revision date is actually a hyperlink, taking the reader to the description of the revision here in the What's New file.January 30, 2021
Spent the last couple of months on an unusual journey on my personal website. Here is the magnificent 😄 outcome: Games. That gibberish may make it to this website eventually, but not anytime soon.November 22, 2020
In the article on Artificial Consciousness, a video clip from the YouTube metaRising channel has been added. It provides a good framework for the various questions around the possibility of ASI acquiring consciousness. You may want to watch the entire documentary here: Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness.November 14, 2020
Just like everyone else in the U.S., I have been preoccupied with the November 3 elections. Working on a wide update and a renewed emphasis on the idea that truth matters, especially in the ever increasing presence of AI systems. Respect for truth has seen a remarkable decay in the past 4 years.October 13, 2020
Rewrote a few paragraphs in the AI: Most Powerful Weapon Ever article. As you would suspect, weapons are a controversial subject, and my insistence on using videos to make better points (than I would make with words) runs into trouble sometime. Some of the "touchy" videos I use get frequently removed. So I had to use different ones and adjust sightly the points I wanted to make. The basic ideas are the same though.September 21, 2020
The newly released Social Dilemma documentary on Netflix brings additional ammunition to the issues discussed in our website, especially in relation to the How We Form Political Opinions, AI and Fake Data, and Government versus High-Tech articles. Please watch the documentary.September 13, 2020
The list of AI conferences linked to in the Main AI Concepts article was updated through 2021. Secondly, some of the 2020 conferences have been scheduled to take place virtually.August 23, 2020
The site underwent a 2-month restructuring, in particular the URL structure, all with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in mind. The site has many more visitors now, and so it is time to make it easier for the search engines.June 29, 2020
Reviewing an interview with Karl Friston (discoverer/proponent of the Free Energy Principle) by Lev Friedman. You can watch it directly on YouTube in its entirety, before I launch into a discussion of its many implications for our topics. The id of the video is "NwzuibY5kUs". Alternatively, you can go to Friedman's podcast site, where you will find a larger selection of interviews on the topic of AI: Artificial Intelligence: AI PodcastJune 5, 2020
I received some constructive criticism about the treatment of the Century of Humiliation in the AI In a Bipolar World article and revised a few paragraphs. I am working on a deeper revision though.May 15, 2020
Semantic markup has been added as a test to one of the articles. The work will continue until all the articles will be shown with enriched information by search engines.April 17, 2020
The article on Artificial Consciousness has been revised to account for some new material on the Neural Correlates of Consciousness; a short page has been added to clarify the various terms and structures of the biological neuron.March 25, 2020
Improved the responsiveness and performance of the website; added it to Cloudflare so it can perform faster in all parts of the world; compressed some files; technical stuff in other words. Content had only minor changes.February 23, 2020
AI Blue Dot has a Facebook page. We'll use that page as our home for discussions.November 21, 2020 update: This page is no longer active. A page is not the proper way to go, I am trying to put together a Facebook group, in which other people can contribute and I am only one of the moderators. It's far more interesting that way. Write me at the address in the contact page if you are interested in moderating such group, and let me know about your area of expertise. We will need an active researcher in the area of AI Ethics in particular.