I read the article and I find this fascinating. I am happy they are giving it some thought. Pronoun political correctness (a.k.a. thoughtfulness or respectfulness) aside, if our society's training data leads AIs to make assumptions, we should be aware of it and be careful to detect it.
An incorrect pronoun isn't going to kill someone -- but we are gradually handing over more and more decisions to technologies that rely on AI/ML. Perhaps investigations into incorrect pronoun assumptions can lead to improvements in assumption errors in other areas (e.g. you think your self driving vehicle doesn't need radars and that only using cameras is sufficient? Just because it looks like a big fluffy cloud doesn't necessarily mean you can safely fly/drive through it).
Back to just pronouns though: if someone says "My teacher assigned me to read Act I of Macbeth tonight", most people would avoid a reply that uses he/she until an indication was given or they'd just ask "Who's that, Ms. McFadden? Yeah, I know, she assigns way too much homework!". If a human can be smart enough to get it right, then I'm glad folks are working on AIs getting it right too (or, for now, not making assumptions until they can get it right).
The fact that AIs are advanced enough for us to be thinking about these kinds of details is wonderful! :)
> There is no such thing as "shortage" of anything. Just pay more, and you'll get it.
Businesses are also limited by how much their customers are willing to pay for the item/service their workforce produces.
If a company's labour costs are higher than the price their customers are willing to pay for the product they are selling, then that product won't be produced.
e.g. if the labour that goes into making raspberries means the customer has to pay $6.99 for a tiny little package of raspberries at the grocery store, and no one in the world is willing to pay that, then raspberries will no longer be sold.
I'm not saying that there currently isn't room to pay higher wages, I'm just saying there is a practical limit to "just pay more".
On 26 Sep. 1982 in 'Knight of the Phoenix' when Michael falls asleep KITT automatically takes over.
Google should have a camera pointing at the driver and use machine learning to detect someone that is asleep or medically impaired and automatically take over if the car starts to leave its lane.
Perhaps the driver could configure where it wants the car to go in such a case (if asleep: continue to final destination; if medical issue: drive to nearest hospital and call "Parent" or "Spouse" on cell phone and explain the situation; if smart watch can detect alcohol in your sweat therefore unconsciousness likely due to intoxication: drive to a trusted friend and call ahead, etc.).
At the very least, if the person appears to be asleep it could ask "Are you sure you want to return to manual control?". It should be able to tell the difference between someone sleeping and someone alert wanting control back.
It's been some decades since fiction inspired us, but we're getting close!
Are you thinking Norway hitting 2025 is unrealistic being only 7 years away? A video from last year states electric car sales there are already near 30% of new car sales:
OMG! I have been looking for this for years (edit: decades!!) but didn't know the name of it! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! I am so happy!!
Setting aside the constant drama surrounding Trump, to me this seems to have a significant positive potential.
See reference [1] below to see how many people are currently in space. I would definitely not call that a "force". A more permanent presence in space for more people would necessitate a lot more scientific research that will likely have non-military benefits (like GPS research did in the past). There is so much for us to learn which is good for humanity and inspiring for young people.
The excitement around space might make it easier to get additional funding approved. According to this [2] the Army, Navy, and Air Force budgets for 2016 weren't too far off from each other. It will be interesting to see at what level the funding will fall for this "separate but equal" department.
According to this [3] the President has announced job one is to declutter space to avoid collisions and spacecraft breakups, which all spacefaring countries will benefit from.
As much as I admire Elon Musk, it would be nice to have a government presence in space for rescue missions, etc. For anyone that has played too many hours of Civilization IV, you might enjoy Baba Yetu performed by the United States Navy Band [4]. The rescue force I would envision would be like the small clip at 2m00s to 2m20s in that youtube video, except in space.
Lots of people talk about things like 'basic income' to protect us when machines watch what we do and then take over our jobs. I would prefer to push that day out a little bit by instead allocating money to us doing totally brand new things, like this in space, that excites me and makes me want to spring out of bed in the morning!
The one thing that I suspect will be missing is new players.
One of the things I enjoyed the most was seeing in chat a player that didn't know how to get from Iron Forge to catch a boat to the other continent, and I'd have fun showing him how to get through the Wetlands to the port. The Wetlands was a higher level than we were at the time the quests wanted us to visit the other continent, so it was a dangerous journey and you'd usually become friends by the time it was over.
Of course everyone knows how to get there now, so I don't know how they can recreate the fun of helping someone out that is inexperienced. The same goes with dungeon fights, etc., -- everyone will already know all the tricks I expect.
I certainly miss the days of exploring a brand new world, the likes I had never seen in a video game before, and helping others (and being helped by others) along the way. Wonderful times! :-)
For those interested, here's how to get a simple bot running in 30 minutes or less. Click the Twitch link to see the end goal and see how good/not-so-good various bots are today.
Watch StarCraft Broodwar bots live on Twitch now (runs 24x7 showing newly uploaded bots, commentary on Sunday afternoons): https://www.twitch.tv/sscait
This really sunk in for me when I learned we were able to create robots that always win at rock, paper, scissors. A regular person wouldn't naturally expect this.
If Medical Watson works for and is paid by cancer hospitals, does that affect Chef Watson's recommendations (either in a positive way, to keep us healthy, or in a negative way due to the profit incentive)? In other words, do the various Watson implementations have any shared data or code base that could influence the other? I assume not, but how cool would that be?
An incorrect pronoun isn't going to kill someone -- but we are gradually handing over more and more decisions to technologies that rely on AI/ML. Perhaps investigations into incorrect pronoun assumptions can lead to improvements in assumption errors in other areas (e.g. you think your self driving vehicle doesn't need radars and that only using cameras is sufficient? Just because it looks like a big fluffy cloud doesn't necessarily mean you can safely fly/drive through it).
Back to just pronouns though: if someone says "My teacher assigned me to read Act I of Macbeth tonight", most people would avoid a reply that uses he/she until an indication was given or they'd just ask "Who's that, Ms. McFadden? Yeah, I know, she assigns way too much homework!". If a human can be smart enough to get it right, then I'm glad folks are working on AIs getting it right too (or, for now, not making assumptions until they can get it right).
The fact that AIs are advanced enough for us to be thinking about these kinds of details is wonderful! :)