tag > Augmentation
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Intuitionism in the Philosophy of Mathematics
Intuitionism is a philosophy of mathematics that was introduced by the Dutch mathematician L.E.J. Brouwer (1881–1966). Intuitionism is based on the idea that mathematics is a creation of the mind. The truth of a mathematical statement can only be conceived via a mental construction that proves it to be true, and the communication between mathematicians only serves as a means to create the same mental process in different minds.
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A World Without Apps - talk by Michel Beaudouin-Lafon (UIST 2019)
Homo Cyberneticus: The Era of Human-AI Integration - talk by Jun Rekimoto (UIST 2019)
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Among the key efforts launched under Walker’s tenure at DARPA was development of the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile. Walker also reinvigorated the agency’s hypersonic weapons and space efforts. Also noted by the agency: Under Walker’s leadership, DARPA launched the three-year, $1.5 billion Electronics Resurgence Initiative as well as the five-year, $2 billion AI Next program. Walker also “made pivotal investments in the realm of engineered biology, resulting in several breakthroughs, chief among them a program that has helped reduce Ebola fatality rates by more than 70%,”
#Military #BCI #Biotech #Biology #RadioBio #ML #Augmentation #Robot
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Another layer of opacity: how spies use AI and why we should talk about it
"Instead of reducing complexity for intelligence agencies, AI creates new data problems and will add another layer of opacity to already secretive organisations. At the same time, the general hype around AI presents a unique opportunity to learn about and weigh in on intelligence practice in real time. "
Augmentation as Artifice: A Palantir Look at AI
"AI is overrated. The role of machines is not to replace but facilitate human reasoning. Augmented intelligence (AuI) can help intelligence agencies navigate the data deluge by enabling human analysts to make data-driven decisions in a more transparent and accountable way."
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Paralyzed man walks using brain-controlled robotic suit (CNN)
Paralysed man walks using mind-controlled exoskeleton (Guardian)
Related: New Neuroprosthetics startup, founded by Verily (Google) & GlaxoSmithKline: Galvani Bioelectronics
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"Electronics as E.S.P." - Marshall McLuhan in Explorations Magazine, Volume 8 (1957):
"Synesthesia, the new sin of the nineteenth century, roused as much misunderstanding as E.S.P. today. Extra sensory perception is normal perception. Today electronics are extra sensory, Gallup polls and motivation research are also. Therefore, people get all steamed up about E.S.P. as something for the future. It is already past and present."
MCLUHAN: Let me help you. Tribal man is tightly sealed in an integral collective awareness that transcends conventional boundaries of time and space. As such, the new society will be one mythic integration, a resonating world akin to the old tribal echo chamber where magic will live again: a world of ESP. The current interest of youth in astrology, clairvoyance and the occult is no coincidence. Electric technology, you see, does not require words any more than a digital computer requires numbers. Electricity makes possible--and not in the distant future, either--an amplification of human consciousness on a world scale, without any verbalization at all.
PLAYBOY: Are you talking about global telepathy?
MCLUHAN: Precisely. Already, computers offer the potential of instantaneous translation of any code or language into any other code or language. If a data feedback is possible through the computer, why not a feed-forward of thought whereby a world consciousness links into a world computer? Via the computer, we could logically proceed from translating languages to bypassing them entirely in favor of an integral cosmic unconsciousness somewhat similar to the collective unconscious envisioned by Bergson. The computer thus holds out the promise of a technologically engendered state of universal understanding and unity, a state of absorption in the logos that could knit mankind into one family and create a perpetuity of collective harmony and peace. This is the real use of the computer, not to expedite marketing or solve technical problems but to speed the process of discovery and orchestrate terrestrial--and eventually galactic--environments and energies. Psychic communal integration, made possible at last by the electronic media, could create the universality of consciousness foreseen by Dante when he predicted that men would continue as no more than broken fragments until they were unified into an inclusive consciousness. In a Christian sense, this is merely a new interpretation of the mystical body of Christ; and Christ, after all, is the ultimate extension of man.
PLAYBOY: Isn't this projection of an electronically induced world consciousness more mystical than technological?
MCLUHAN: Yes--as mystical as the most advanced theories of modern nuclear physics. Mysticism is just tomorrow's science dreamed today.
"Mere electric speed-up makes X-ray awareness natural." - Marshal McLuhan
Found via mycanvassesaresurrealist
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On DARPA’s research into human enhancement (The Atlantic)
The mission: “to ‘free the mind from the limitations of even healthy bodies.’ What the agency learns from healing makes way for enhancement. The mission is to make human beings something other than what we are, with powers beyond the ones we’re born with and beyond the ones we can organically attain.” “How can I liberate mankind from the limitations of the body?” one researcher asked. One aspiration: "the ability, via computer, to transfer knowledge and thoughts from one person’s mind to another’s."
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“One Half A Manifesto” - written by Jaron Lanier in the year 2000:
“There is a real chance that evolutionary psychology, artificial intelligence, Moore’s Law fetishizing, and the rest of the package, will catch on in a big way, as big as Freud or Marx did in their times. Or bigger, since these ideas might end up essentially built into the software that runs our society and our lives. If that happens, the ideology of cybernetic totalist intellectuals will be amplified from novelty into a force that could cause suffering for millions of people.”
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"Technological Masturbation" - by Robert Anton Wilson (1993)
The vibrator — first as shady joke, then a growing fad — has already prepared us for the technologization of sex, so introduction of the artificial sex partner will come as little surprise.
Rudimentary doll-like models are already for sale, one [called the Deep Throat model — naturally] is even capable of performing fairly realistic fellatio. Hedy Lamarr’s autobiography, Ecstasy and Me, reveals that a former lover of hers had a very elaborate imitation Hedy manufactured to give him solace when their affair went on the rocks. Such developments indicate that in sex, as elsewhere, desire plus money equals results — or, as George S. Kaufman once said of a friends‘ new estate, “This is what God could have done, if He’d had the money.”
Are we talking about substitute sex for the crippled, the malformed, the hopelessly ugly or neurotic? Only in the first generation of such technology. Brain-wave and other bio-feedback studies lead inevitably into the concept of cybernetic sex robots programmed to scan neural signals from the human partner and provide exactly, precisely, exquisitely what is desire in every second of sexual union. In fact, reports from Masters and Johnson indicate that their crude and pre-cybernetic [brainless] ACE model [artificial coital equipment] produced no frustration in the women who tried it. Eventually such mechanized substitutes can be programmed for an effect “better than the real thing,” as William S. Burroughs fantasised in his sixties science fiction novel “The Soft Machine.”
In recent years, John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Baltimore possessed a 100-pound robot affectionately dubbed The Beast, that knows how to “feed” itself, i.e., to seek electric outlets and recharge its circuits when its power runs low. Sim one, an experimental robot at University of Southern California, has the external features of a man, stands over six feet tall and has a normal pulse rate, blood pressure and heartbeat; is white-skin coloured, moves its diaphragm and chest in simulation of breathing, and even possesses a tongue, teeth, and vocal cords. Sim’s keepers plan improved models that will sweat, bleed, cry out in pain, and eventually replace cadavers in training medical students. The Sim One of today combined with the Masters and Johnson ACE of today would already constitute a crude artificial playmate for women. A more complex Hedy Lamarr doll [or Linda Lovelace, or Raquel Welch or..] cannot be far away. [Recall the movie Blade Runner (Philip K. Dick) where NASA coerced Earth’s inhabitants to leave the planet by providing them with a humanoid playmate.]
Yes; why not a totally programmed sexual environment? Saul Kent, who has described this concept as “multi-media masturbation”, envisions sex tapes for the household computer, programmed for the all- around sexual trip — with or without partner. Already, X-rated motels in California provide water beds and closed circuit TV featuring porn films, so that a shy couple can have a simulated orgy and share their real selves with each other and the images of Georgina Spelvin, Harry Reems, and Marilyn Chambers. The next step, easily obtainable for the rich even now, is to program the whole inner environment of the bedroom for a fantasy that goes well with the sex act. ESB control of brain centres via this computer-programmed artificial environment would give, in Burrough’s perfect phrase, “precise control over thought, feeling, and apparent sensory impression” [his italics]. Reality in that room would be whatever you wanted it to be.
Of course, in a sense we already live inside that room, as the Buddhists know. That is, the human nervous system, properly programmed, can edit and orchestrate all experience into any gestalt it wishes. We encounter the same dismal and depressing experience over and over because they are repeating tape loops in the central programmer of our brains. We can encounter ecstasy over and over by learning the neurosciences that orchestrate all incoming signals into ecstatic tape loops. The contact has already happened right where you are sitting now. Whether it is tuned-in or not tuned-in depends on your skill as metaprogrammer.
Multi-media pornography will enthral millions when it first appears; porn light shows, porn 3-D, and porn holograms are the dawning intimations of a revolution that will climax — certainly by the early years of the next century — when the difference between porn and the artificial sex mate will no longer be visible. Multimedia solipsism and all-channel masturbation will be the pleasure norms.
- Technological Masturbation - by Robert Anton Wilson appeared in TOTAL, Volume 2 (1993).
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#Comment: Fun to discover Wilson discussing the idea of cybernetic/augmented total hedonism. A concept people like Robert Nozick explored in "Experience Machine" (1974) or David Pearce in "The Hedonistic Imperative" (1995) or even Daniel Kahneman "Hedonic psychology". Wilson's post includes a reference to the JHAPL's classic robot "The Beast", that knew how to “feed” itself, i.e., to seek electric outlets and recharge its circuits when its power runs low - an idea somewhat related to Shannon's Ultimate Machine, alas far less genius and fun. In my playbook, "augmented" or "optimized" hedonism is an extremely naive and boring concept, which quickly leads to experience mono-cultures and nonsensical discussions around "artificial love" - deep down in a hyper-commercial total-surveillance simulacra of meaningless bullshit. Growing calls to "end suffering through tech" are a clear sign of a crass misunderstanding of the most basic lessons of Buddhism, which such people love to frequently quote (meanings easily lost in translation and history to the gullible seeker). Somewhat related: Samim’s Law of Diminished Experience.
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Ride-Hailing Apps Have Allowed More Binging and Increased Demand For Bartenders.
"A study published last week analyzed ridesharing's effects on binge drinking and found that it increased heavy drinking by around 20% and increased employment at bars and restaurants by an average of 2%."
#Comment: A nice illustration that every technological augmentation comes with a side of amputation, the topic of a recent talk i gave: "Augmentation, Amputation, Dehumanisation - Towards Life Centered Design". #Augmentation #Health
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"Homo Cyberneticus: The Era of Human-AI Integration" - position paper by Jun Rekimoto, University of Tokyo, Sony CSL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1911.02637.pdf
#Comment: Generations of researchers feverishly chasing the dream of "merging" with inanimate matter (silicon etc.), eager to trade the living for the dead. From Golem and Frankenstein to Cybernetics and A.I: Necrophilia is the name of the game.
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Talk: Augmentation, Amputation, Dehumanisation - Towards Life Centered Design
A talk i gave at the Helsinki Design Week's "Data Driven Design Day" (Finland, Sept.12.2019)
#Augmentation #Technology #ML #Regenerative #Projects -
Patent-Bot: "Automating the patent troll... The program creates thousands of new patent summaries per second.": http://muse.jhu.edu/article/728406
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Green AI: “We want to shift the balance towards the Green AI option — to ensure that any inspired undergraduate with a laptop has the opportunity to write high-quality papers that could be accepted at premier research conferences.” https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.10597
The greenest form of "AI" is "No AI". Let's ask ourselves earnestly, does this task really need to be computerized & automated - or is it possibly healthier & saner for humans, flora & fauna to do the task? There is no free lunch - every augmentation leads to amputation.
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"The New Living Language, Brainwaves & Babel"
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Hearables Will Monitor Your Brain and Body to Augment Your Life: https://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/audiovideo/hearables-will-monitor-your-brain-and-body-to-augment-your-life #Augmentation #ML #Politics #NeuroScience
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"I want a dystopian Monopoly: wildly fluctuating bitcoin currency is managed by a voice-controlled AI banker that often can't understand what you're saying (and vice versa) and is occasionally hacked by autonomous AI bankers on the same ham-radio network. Batteries not included." - Marc Weidenbaum @disquiet
