Thursday, July 01, 2021

How Does Artificial Intelligence Work?

Recreation is not a secondary concern for a democracy. It is a primary concern, for the kind of recreation a people make for themselves determines the kind of people they become and the kind of society they build.

~Harry Allen Overstreet via Kim A

 

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Clop Gang Partners Laundered $500 Million in Ransomware Payments


Does Artificial Intelligence Work? BuiltIn.com: “Less than a decade after breaking the Nazi encryption machine Enigma and helping the Allied Forces win World War II, mathematician Alan Turing changed history a second time with a simple question: “Can machines think?”  Turing’s paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” (1950), and its subsequent Turing Test, established the fundamental goal and vision of artificial intelligence. At its core, AI is the branch of computer science that aims to answer Turing’s question in the affirmative. It is the endeavor to replicate or simulate human intelligence in machines. The expansive goal of artificial intelligence has given rise to many questions and debates. So much so, that no singular definition of the field is universally accepted. The major limitation in defining AI as simply “building machines that are intelligent” is that it doesn’t actually explain what artificial intelligence is? What makes a machine intelligent? In their groundbreaking textbook Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, authors Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig approach the question by unifying their work around the theme of intelligent agents in machines. With this in mind, AI is “the study of agents that receive percepts from the environment and perform actions.” (Russel and Norvig viii)…”



BBC takes ‘fresh look’ at the legal profession with new podcast for aspiring lawyers

Legal Cheek: “The BBC’s legal division has launched a new podcast series aimed at aspiring lawyers who don’t fit the cookie cutter mould. When Lucy Moorman, executive producer of the ‘Not All Lawyers Have Law Degrees’ podcast, trained to become a barrister some 25 years ago, you had to have 12 formal dinners in your Inns of Court and dress in a black robe surrounded by ‘benchers’. She explains how being ‘called to the bar’ — the ceremony at which barristers are formally recognised to have passed the vocational stage of training — could well have meant being quite literally being called to the bar to finish a drink, so far as she was concerned. Language and its potential to become exclusionary, is a key talking point in the first episode of the podcast where BBC lawyer, Brigit Morris, chats to well-known barrister and author Mohsin Zaidi about his journey into law and the advice he received along the way. The barrister recalls the awkward moment when some rather colourful messages popped up on his iPad while he was assisting a Supreme Court justice with a speech on marriage equality…”



The Last–And Only–Foreign Scientist in the Wuhan Lab Speaks Out Bloomberg 


Covid cracks Modi’s ‘Teflon’ popularity Asia Times 


More Younger People Without Comorbidities Died In Second Wave, Data Show India Spend


Coronavirus Hong Kong: second local Delta case triggers fears of fifth Covid-19 wave South China Morning Post


Highly contagious Delta coronavirus variant spreading fast in California LA Times


Booster may be needed for J&J shot as Delta variant spreads, some experts already taking them Reuters


Australia Covid: Outbreaks emerge across country in ‘new phase’ of pandemic BBC


‘Taken this up at highest levels’, Poonawalla assures India as EU Green Pass excludes Covishield The Print