Two five-hour Zoom webinars on back-to-back days. Woo! I’m glad that’s over. But seriously, check out the recorded sessions and talks. I loved everything. Good places to start are Jim Kurose’s keynote (session 8) and the panel discussion on regulating artificial intelligence. I’m in awe of and grateful to all of the brilliant and hard-working … More UMass Amherst Symposium on Computing for the Common Good
Like cookies and milk, cryptocurrencies and Universal Basic Income (UBI) are two particularly promising concepts that could go great together. If we’re to give money to the needy, then we should use the best technology available. Because trust is built-in, cryptocurrencies can bypass the sticky bureaucratic fingers that are all too common in many countries. The most significant barrier to large-scale implementation of a crypto UBI is the lack of a reliable identification system. Needy people don’t typically have passports. And since their governments are often corrupt, giving those governments power to exclude or include people would be dangerous. My Kuwa (“to be” in Swahili) white paper is a first attempt to describe a potential technical solution to this identification challenge. … More Kuwa: A Decentralized, Pseudo-anonymous and Sybil-Resistant Individual Identification System
“Streampunks: Youtube and the Rebels Remaking Media” covers the rise of a new class of media stars: Youtubers. Robert Kyncl, YouTube’s cheif business officer, authored the book with the help of Maany Peyvan, Google’s lead writer. It’s an authoritative, fascinating, well-written and entertaining book. If you’re over 30 and you’ve blinked, then you may have missed the media revolution that YouTube sparked and is continuing to lead. But since current Google employees wrote the book, it’s not surprising that it sometimes seems like an infomercial that occasionally acknowledges some of YouTube’s less desirable impacts. If you work in the media business, then read this book. … More Your kids are watching Streampunks while YouTube watches everyone.
“The Master Algorithm” gives readers an overview of the current state of machine learning, The book’s hypothesis is that there can be one general purpose algorithm that’s able to learn anything. The book reviews the philosophies, strengths, and weaknesses of each of the “five tribes” of machine learning, and in the process, readers learn the history of artificial intelligence (AI). The Master Algorithm concludes with some thoughts about a future when computers surpass the capabilities of the human brain for tasks that previously required conscious beings. Will learners solve all of our problems and bring about technological singularity, or will our future learning machines become our overlords in a Skynet-like dystopia? … More Utopia, Dystopia, or Both? The Master Algorithm is Coming.
The term “big data” has come to represent the technologies, software tools, methodologies, and even the organization structures, that are designed to manage and analyze the new massive and complex data sets that businesses are creating. Proponents argue that companies that master the challenges of big data will crush their competitors that don’t. This post reviews a book, entitled “From Big Data to Big Profits.” … More There’s Big Money in Big Data
Technophile Musings 