Category Archives: techonlogy
Printing Guns, Drugs, DNA Weapons and… #Hillary?
Thank goodness they’re not evil! – How Google Could Rig the 2016 Election – – POLITICO
America’s next president could be eased into office not just by TV ads or speeches, but by Google’s secret decisions, and no one—except for me and perhaps a few other obscure researchers—would know how this was accomplished.
Research I have been directing in recent years suggests that Google, Inc., has amassed far more power to control elections—indeed, to control a wide variety of opinions and beliefs—than any company in history has ever had. Google’s search algorithm can easily shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20 percent or more—up to 80 percent in some demographic groups—with virtually no one knowing they are being manipulated, according to experiments I conducted recently with Ronald E. Robertson.
American farmers have to stop juicing their pigs to meet China’s food safety standards
For years, the US pork industry has stood by the safety and efficacy of a controversial growth drug banned in nearly 200 countries. But now, thanks to Chinese regulations, the National Pork Board is quietly encouraging American pork producers to stop using it.
Ractopamine is a beta-agonist, a drug that changes animals’ metabolism so that they develop more muscle instead of fat. The result is a meat that is both leaner and, because muscle is heavier than fat, heavier. That translates into benefits for consumers looking to cut the fat in their diets, as well as producers, because hogs can get heavier on less food.
But ractopamine is far from a dream drug. “The drug has triggered more adverse reports in pigs than any other animal drug on the market,” Helena Bottemillerreported for the Food & Environment Reporting Network in 2012. Documented effects include “hyperactivity, trembling, broken limbs, inability to walk and death.” The FDA said the data didn’t establish cause and effect, and the National Pork Producers Council and National Pork Board have both said the drug is safe. But health and animal-welfare advocates have been sounding the alarm for years, noting that its impacts on human health are largely unknown and that the approval from Codex, the World Health Organization’s international food safety body, is based on a single study of six men, one of whom had to drop out because he experienced negative health effects.
No they are not “evil”, but they can be deadly – How #Google is fighting #ISIS in Syria – Quartz
Google—or the many products and services now under the holding company Alphabet—provides the connecting tissue between US forces and Kurdish militias fighting against ISIS in war-torn Syria.
New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi writes from the battlefield that fighters are using Android-powered Samsung tablets and Google Earth to track their battle lines and coordinate close air support with the US military:
“Our comrades can see the enemy moving at the GPS address I just sent you,” [a Kurdish fighter] wrote in Arabic to a handler hundreds of miles away in a United States military operations room. Then he waited for the American warplanes to scream in. The strike that ensued soon after blasted a crater at exactly the coordinates provided by the Kurdish fighter. It left a circle of bodies, including one of an Islamic State fighter who died slumped over his AK-47.
Snowden vindicated – Boing Boing
When the courts ruled NSA domestic spying illegal last week, it was the plain fact of that surveillance that was most important. But it also means that whistleblower Ed Snowden, cast as a traitor and spy by his critics, is vindicated.
http://boingboing.net/2015/05/11/snowden-vindicated.html
False flags & cyber wars: New Snowden leaks reveal Canada spy agency’s ‘deception toolbox’
Remember when Canada seemed to exemplify a “nice” government?
Top secret documents from Edward Snowden’s cache have revealed Canada’s ambition to become a big player in the world of electronic spying. The leak comes just as the country plans to vote on a law that would give its cyber agencies more powers.
A confidential presentation by Canada’s intelligence agency Communications Security Establishment (CSE) dated 2011 was among the documents published jointly by the Canadian Broadcast Corporation and The Intercept, the website of investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald. In it, the counterpart of US National Security Agency (NSA) assures its Five Eyes allies – US, UK, Australia and New Zealand – that by 2015 it “will seek the authority to conduct a wide spectrum of Effects operations in support of our mandates.”
Anti-Robot Protest Held At SXSW
A small group of protesters held signs and handed out t-shirts to protest robots today at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.
What did they have against robots you might ask? Well, they are (apparently, seriously) concerned that robots could one day surpass human intelligence and they were genuinely anxious about this.
A spokesperson for the group told TechCrunch they hoped to raise awareness about the possible dangers of uncontrolled growth and development around artificial intelligence and robotics.
He stressed, however the group wasn’t against technology per se or even robots and AI, but they wanted to make sure that these technologies were developed in a controlled way.
The protest spokesperson cited Elon Musk as a prominent person who has expressed concern about robots and the development of artificial intelligence, and in fact TechCrunch reported in January about a $10M donation by Musk to the Future of Life Institute to “keep AI beneficial to humanity.”
As the article stated:
“Here are all these leading AI researchers saying that AI safety is important”, said Elon Musk in the statement, referring to this letter originally put forward by FLI founder and MIT professor Max Tegmark. “I agree with them, so I’m today committing $10M to support research aimed at keeping AI beneficial for humanity.”
FLI wrote in the blog post:
“There is now a broad consensus that AI research is progressing steadily, and that its impact on society is likely to increase. A long list of leading AI-researchers have signed an open letter calling for research aimed at ensuring that AI systems are robust and beneficial, doing what we want them to do.”
The group is simply organizing around the concerns expressed in this letter by some prominent members of the scientific community including physicist Stephen Hawking.
That said, the protest spokesperson insisted they didn’t intend to stop the progress of technology, but they hoped to encourage government oversight and even a worldwide organization to make sure that these technologies are developed safely and under controlled growth.
Ramses Alcaide, an electrical engineer and neuroscientist and CEO of Neurable, a startup that is developing brain-computer interfaces for people with disabilities, told TechCrunch he spoke to the group to the get their perspective.
“They see the big picture, but they don’t know where we are technologically. We could be a thousand years from what they are worrying about. There are so many things we don’t understand.”
He added, “I think slowing it down would be a disservice to humanity. I’m glad there are people who think that way. Let’s think about this scientifically, but let’s not stop research. I think if you were to ask Elon Musk if we should stifle progress, I don’t think he would want to do that,” Alcaide said.
The protest group has a Twitter account and a website, which lists the organization’s mission statement: “Stop the Robots is dedicated to using technology for good and understanding the true risks that artificial intelligence poses to humanity.”
They also list several articles with titles like: Why You Should Fear Machine Intelligence and The Need For Regulation. The website home page features the SXSW protest prominently, although the pictures make it look a lot bigger than what I observed when I came upon it this afternoon.
My first instinct when I saw this protest that it was a publicity stunt, but the people who were there seemed to have genuine concerns, and they took them to a street corner in Austin today to express them.
Update 3/17/2015: In a statement published on the Stop The Robots website last night, the founders admitted the protest was indeed a convoluted publicity stunt. They still insist they believe in the sentiment of the rally — controlled growth of artificial intelligence. Ultimately though this was about generating publicity for a dating app. Feel free to roll your eyes.
The Geospatial Revolution
This vid is from a fascinating Coursera.org class I’m taking. Geospatial Intelligence (geoint) uses information about people in places at a given time and location to “decision advantage”. Our ever-expanding network of satellites and sensors (especially our cell phones) facilitate everything from our finding the nearest coffee shop to Obama’s ability to locate targets for drone assassination. Geoint is wonderful and creepy. Not necessarily in that order.
INCISITY 