IdeaFestival

Coding deception

If chess is the measure of the mind, what's an artificially intelligent machine have to do to be considered a human equal? After all, in 1997 machine defeated former grandmaster Garry Kasparov using brute computation, and AI has since conquered draughts, Othello, backgammon and Scrabble according to the Financial Times article, "Machines that can outwit the smartest brains." Though the mind doesn't, obviously and thankfully, use strict logic, coding rules-based actions has become sufficiently advanced that the best human players of tactical board and card games have fallen prey to cleverly coded synthetic intelligence. Only the human play at the ancient game of Go remains unconquered.

AI is clearly making progress.

Ever since HAL was sonorously creeping out everyone in the theater, we've had this tendency to move the goalposts to avoid the idea that an artificial intelligence might someday match our wetware. "It is," the main organic character in the FT piece says, "whatever computers can't do yet."

If that's the case, then I wonder if coding deception might be the last synthetic frontier.

Wayne

Fault and fissure in the human heart

From the series Speaking of Faith, this episode is highly recommended. Using his perspective as deep sea explorer and revolutionizer of plate tectonics, geophysicist Xavier Le Pichon has also lived in an intentional community caring for people with mental disabilities for many years, and has developed a rich perspective on human fragility and suffering based, in part, on his scientific understanding of a still-evolving world. Fault lines in the Earth and human spirit, though weak in themselves, make a better future possible. They rarely waste a hurt.

Wayne

Speaking of Faith

Tickling my reptilian brain

From a piece on neuromarketing, this randy suggestion: “Conventional research only gets you so far because it’s rationalisation after the event, and most decision-making is done subconsciously. We set out to measure physical changes people cannot consciously control.”

Not so fast.

Let's get to know one another first, OK? Love me for my prefrontal cortex.

Wayne

Hat tip: Futurismic

neuroscience, neuromarketing

Enceladus' Briny Breath

Move over, Ganymede and Europa. Salt in Saturn's E ring and evidence in the form of spectacular geysers on the moon itself suggests that Enceladus could have an underground ocean. The video below also contains some of the best photographic images of the moon from Cassini's imaging team, CICLOPS. Have a look.

Wayne

Buy discounted all-access pass, meet Anthony Bourdain

Remember that the first 85 people to purchase a discounted all-access pass to IF'09 will be invited to meet Anthony Bourdain following his event.

Wayne

Anthony Bourdain

Bird brains, quantum biology, today's big idea

New evidence suggests that body-temperature quantum entanglement in birds can leave them in an altered chemical state that they can sense. Thus equipped, they manage the migratory route by "seeing" the Earth's magnetic field. Entangled states have also seem to be a by-product of photosynthesis.

This is news.

Should these ideas prove out, they have implications for how we think of life. I wonder, for example, how coauthor of the book Biocentrism, astronomer and IF'09 speaker Bob Berman might address the suggestion that "nature seems to have created the conditions in which entanglement thrives" in the second link above.

Wayne

biocentrism

Generative architecture and the cold dead body of Euclid

Have a look at some of these "generative scapes" on the blog of Portuguese architect Paulo Guerreiro, whose interest in these forms reminded me of a recent discussion between modern art curator Paola Antonelli and creator of fractal geometry, Benoit Mandebrot, about the intersection between mathematics and art. See this video exchange in SEED's Salon series.

The key idea: our perceptions of what makes for the modern object has changed, and for a very good reason. "Sticks to cylinders or cubes or parallelepipeds" are no longer the idealized, and ideal, structure, but architects and designers are playing, instead, with fractals and generative algorithms and examining the architecture and just-so subtleties of biology. I have real soft spot for mid-century modern, but as Antonelli and Benoit pointed out in their discussion, Euclid died at the hands of a particularly perceptive mathematics.

No doubt as-yet undiscovered tools will make for other modern objects, but that's part of the fun, isn't it? Until then, enjoy.

Wayne

Businesses could learn a lot from a seat at the Poker table

Via Creative Generalist, this Harvard Business Review article asks a particularly relevant question for businesses in an age of fluid markets and information ubiquity. If competitive advantages don't last long, if "hypercompetition" is the rule, the "skill of getting out of things" and refocusing an organization is just as important as being able to recognize opportunity in the first place. I wonder what businesses could learn from Poker pros about letting go of a once-solid position.

Wayne

All-Access Pass giveaway: We have a winner!

Repeated random sampling is critical to the sciences, but we needed just one random number, "49", to choose the winner of the first IdeaFestival All-Access Pass giveaway. Congratulations to Diana Stewart of Louisville! Round one is over, but four more all-access passes will be given away before the middle of August. Follow the IF action on Twitter, or join the IdeaFestival Facebook group for the latest. That is all.

Wayne

How to Win a FREE All-Access Pass to the IdeaFestival!

Information on the the IdeaFestival early bird All-Access Passes that went on sale today, as well as other important information about this year's event, can be found here. If you're among the first 85 people to purchase an All-Access Pass, you will receive an invitation to a special reception with Anthony Bourdain immediately following his event on Friday evening September 25^th at The Kentucky Center.

Here's how you can win one FREE all-access pass to the IdeaFestival!

Email me at [email protected] by 9a EDT, Monday (June 22). After 9a Monday morning, I will randomly choose a winner from all the email entrants received by that time, notify him or her, and then everyone else in a blog post and by Twitter. Good luck!

The IdeaFestival will give away a total of four more all-access passes by the middle of August, so if you don't win this go around, stick around. We'll do it again.

Wayne