25 March 2018

Notes - same kind of ingenuity / park



       Early Sunday afternoon. You were reading an article in the 2018 Spring Edition of Popular Science and found the conclusion to the article on page 101, "Don't Be Afraid" by Steven Pinker quite positive and worthy of your personal notes. Here is the conclusion to the article on 'Robots'. - Amorella
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       "When we put aside fantasies like foom, digital megalomania, instant omniscience, and perfect control of every molecule in the universe, artificial intelligence is like any other technology. It is developed incrementally, designed to satisfy multiple conditions, tested before it is implemented, and constantly tweaked for efficacy and safety. As AI expert Stuart Russell puts it: 'No one in civil engineering talks about 'building bridges that don't fall down.' They just call it building bridges.' Likewise, he notes, AI that is beneficial rather than dangerous is simply AI.
         Artificial intelligence, to be sure, poses the more mundane challenge of what to do about the people whose jobs are eliminated by automation. But the jobs won't be eliminated that quickly. The observation of a 1965 report from NASA still holds: 'Man is  the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system -that can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.' Driving a car is an easier engineering problem than unloading a dishwasher, running an errand, or changing a diaper, and at the time of this writing, we're still not ready to loose self-driving cars on city streets. Until the day battalions of robots are inoculating children and building schools in the developing world, or for that matter, building infrastructure and caring for the aged in ours, there will be plenty of work to be done. The same kind of ingenuity that has been applied to the design of government and private-sector policies that match idle hands with undone work."

Quoted from Popular Science, Spring Edition 2018, "Don't Be Afraid", by Steven Pinker, p. 101.
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       Time for lunch, boy. Post. Amorella


       You are at High Banks Nature Park off Rt. 23 just south of Rt. 750 to Polaris. You are surprised with the vast size as well as the large numbers of middle mature trees. You are facing west shaded by a large tree as it will be dusk shortly. Earlier after Graeters' you spent time at the house taking a few pictures. Some duct work is done, the sump pump is in and working and the garage and basement are ready to be poured in the next couple of days. After that the electric can be wired and heating/cooling installed as well as the garage door. Eventually, you headed back to Kim and Paul's, fed the cats, changed clothes and stopped at Five Guys for supper and the park. - Amorella
       1907 hours. This is a very wooded park with lots of trails as well as picnic areas and paved walking paths also.
       Carol is beginning Chapter 48 of Patterson's Postcard Killers. You are a bit leery of sitting down here in the middle of the woods without a lot of people around although the Park Patrol has been around twice since you arrived. - Amorella
       1914 hours. I am not very trusting of strangers. At the Polaris Graeters' I checked the mileage to our new house and it is three and a half miles; this is about the same distance from our Mason house to the two nearby Graeters', one south and one west, and the other one at Westerville is four miles. One is slightly southeast and the other is slightly southwest. This must have been an unconscious decision to put the house in such a location. Very funny. Time to go, says Carol. (1924)

       A  stop at Kroger's Marketplace on Lewis Center and Rt. 23 before heading back to Kim and Paul's. Earlier today you received a text from Kim saying that they had lunch with Linda and Bill along I-75 at Tampa before continuing on south of Sarasota. Kim also sent pictures of her grandparents' house at Sun City Center. It looks very much like it always did on the cul-de-sac in St. Andrews Estates. The house is in front of the third tee. You were there when it was being built in 1975. Mom and Dad Hammond lived there until January 1992. After they died Linda sold the house. Post. - Amorella

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