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Showing posts from May, 2015

Freethought vs Thinking Machines

Artificial intelligence in computing always seems to be beyond the horizon.  The abilities of Google Search, Apple Siri and Microsoft Bing would have looked like successful artificial intelligence to someone in 1980 (I know, because I would have thought so!), but the goal posts keep shifting out. We always expect more. Artificial intelligence is now used against human dissidents.  The NSA and GCHQ are using enormous computers to troll the networks and sniff out supposed terrorists.  There was even news that Russian systems use social network data to predict who are likely to be future trouble makers. This is all due to a recent shift in policing from crime prosecution, to crime prevention. "Cogito, ergo sum" -- Descartes In the interest of crime prevention, the bar has been lowered and to me, the really disturbing thing is not that these immature children are supporting terrorism - they have no clue what it really is - but that they are being prosecuted f