The Dark Secret at the Heart of AI

No one really knows how the most advanced algorithms do what they do. That could be a problem.

The system is so complicated that even the engineers who designed it may struggle to isolate the reason for any single action. And you can’t ask it: there is no obvious way to design such a system so that it could always explain why it did what it did.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604087/the-dark-secret-at-the-heart-of-ai/


Deep Patient: An Unsupervised Representation to Predict the Future of Patients from the Electronic Health Records

We performed evaluation using 76,214 test patients comprising 78 diseases from diverse clinical domains and temporal windows. Our results significantly outperformed those achieved using representations based on raw EHR data and alternative feature learning strategies. Prediction performance for severe diabetes, schizophrenia, and various cancers were among the top performing. These findings indicate that deep learning applied to EHRs can derive patient representations that offer improved clinical predictions, and could provide a machine learning framework for augmenting clinical decision systems.


https://www.nature.com/articles/srep26094


Elon Musk Compares Building Artificial Intelligence To “Summoning The Demon”
https://techcrunch.com/2014/10/26/elon-musk-compares-building-artificial-intelligence-to-summoning-the-demon/



Elon Musk’s new startup Neuralink has the stated ultimate goal of enhancing humans with BCIs to give our brains a leg up in the ongoing arms race between human and artificial intelligence. He hopes that with the ability to connect to our technologies, the human brain could enhance its own capabilities – possibly allowing us to avoid a potential dystopian future where AI has far surpassed natural human capabilities. Such a vision certainly may seem far-off or fanciful, but we shouldn’t dismiss an idea on strangeness alone. After all, self-driving cars were relegated to the realm of science fiction even a decade and a half ago – and now share our roads.

Stanford researchers develop brain-controlled typing for people with paralysis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oka8hqsOzg

https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-lays-out-plans-to-meld-brains-and-computers-1492738741

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/melding-mind-and-machine-how-close-are-we/

Elon Musk Lays Out Plans to Meld Brains and Computers

Startup Neuralink aims to treat disabled and ultimately create a new language of ‘consensual telepathy’

https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-lays-out-plans-to-meld-brains-and-computers-1492738741

Trump says Jared Kushner, who owns 666 Fifth Avenue, will bring peace to Middle East

President-Elect Donald Trump over the weekend said his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who owns the iconic 666 Fifth Avenue building in New York City, will “broker a Middle East Peace Deal.”

“You know what? Jared is such a good lad, he will secure an Israel deal which no one else has managed to get,” Trump told the German magazine Bild on Monday. “You know, he’s a natural talent, he is the top, he is a natural talent. You know what I’m talking about – a natural talent. He has an innate ability to make deals, everyone likes him.”

During an interview with the Times of London, Trump said that Kushner, who is Ivanka Trump’s husband, would take on the task of negotiating a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Trump has previously stated that Kushner “knows the region, knows the people, knows the players,” Trump described in a previous interview, as reported by the Jerusalem Post.

According to the New York Times, the Kushner Companies’ purchased the 666 Fifth Avenue building back in 2007.

Kushner.com states: “In January 2007 Kushner Companies completed the largest single building transaction in New York history with our purchase of 666 Fifth. Purchased for $1.8 billion, this 1.6 square foot, class ”A” office tower was split into separate office and retail condominiums and repositioned to attract higher-end clientele.”

“After a record-breaking lease to Uniqlo for $300 million, the retail section of the building was sold in two separate transactions to Zara and Vornado Realty Trust at a combined value of $1.1 billion. Kushner Companies retained the office condos via separate recapitalization, bringing in Vornado as a joint venture partner in 2011.”

After news broke, many religious individuals on social media started to point out the irony that a man who aims to bring peace to the Middle East, is also closely connected to the number 666, which in the Christian religion points to the number of the “Beast” or “anti-Christ.”

https://crusaderjournal.com/2017/01/16/trump-says-jared-kushner-who-owns-666-fifth-avenue-will-bring-peace-to-middle-east/

Putin says US preparing to bomb Syrian capital and blame Assad

Vladimir Putin says US is preparing to bomb Syrian capital and will blame devastation on Bashar-al Assad's forces

The Russian leader made the astonishing claim during a press conference with the Italian President Sergio Mattarella

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/vladimir-putin-says-preparing-bomb-10201886?service=responsive

How artificial life spawned a billion-dollar industry

Scientists are getting closer to building life from scratch and technology pioneers are taking notice, with record sums moving into a field that could deliver novel drugs, materials, chemicals and even perfumes. Despite ethical and safety concerns, investors are attracted by synthetic biology’s wide market potential and the plummeting cost of DNA synthesis, which is industrializing the writing of the genetic code that determines how organisms function.