Archive for the ‘Artificial Intelligence’ Category

Chanukah and the Battle of Artificial Intelligence – The Ultimate Victory of the Human Being – Chabad.org

Chanukah is generally presented as a commemoration of a landmark victory for religious freedom and human liberty in ancient times. Big mistake. Chanukahs greatest triumph is still to comethe victory of the human soul over artificial intelligence.

Jewish holidays are far more than memories of things that happened in the distant pastthey are live events taking place right now, in the ever-present. As we recite on Chanukahs parallel celebration, Purim, These days will be remembered and done in every generation. The Arizal explains: When they are remembered, they reenact themselves.

And indeed, the battle of the Maccabees is an ongoing battle, oneThe battle of the Maccabees is an ongoing battle embedded deep within the fabric of our society. embedded deep within the fabric of our society, one that requires constant vigilance lest it sweep away the foundations of human liberty. It is the struggle between the limitations of the mind and the infinite expanse that lies beyond the minds restrictive boxes, between perception and truth, between the apparent and the transcendental, between reason and revelation, between the mundane and the divine.

Today, as AI development rapidly accelerates, we may be participants in yet a deeper formalization of society, the struggle between man and machine.

Let me explain what I mean by the formalization of society. Formalization is something the manager within us embraces, and something the incendiary, creative spark within that manager defies. Its why many bright kids dont do well in school, why our most brilliant, original minds are often pushed aside for promotions while the survivors who follow the book climb high, why ingenuity is lost in big corporations, and why so many of us are debilitated by migraines. Its also a force that bars anything transcendental or divine from public dialogue.

Formalization is the strangulation of life by reduction to standard formulas. ScientistsFormalization is the strangulation of life by reduction to standard formulas. reduce all change to calculus, sociologists reduce human behavior to statistics, AI technologists reduce intelligence to algorithms. Thats all very usefulbut it is no longer reality. Reality is not reducible, because the only true model of reality is reality itself. And what else is reality but the divine, mysterious and wondrous space in which humans live?

Formalization denies that truth. To reduce is useful, to formalize is to kill.

Formalization happens in a mechanized society because automation demands that we state explicitly the rules by which we work and then set them in silicon. It reduces thought to executable algorithms; behaviors to procedures, ideas to formulas. Thats fantastic because it potentially liberates us warm, living human beings from repetitive tasks that can be performed by cold, lifeless mechanisms so we may spend more time on those activities that no algorithm or formula could perform.

Potentially. The default, however, without deliberate intervention, is the edifice complex.

The edifice complex is what takes place when we create a device, institution or any other formal structurean edificeto more efficiently execute some mandate. That edifice then develops a mandate of its ownthe mandate to preserve itself by the most expedient means. And then, just as in the complex it sounds like, The Edifice Inc., with its new mandate, turns around and suffocates to deathThe Edifice Inc., with its new mandate, turns around and suffocates to death the original mandate for which it was created. the original mandate for which it was created.

Think of public education. Think of many of our religious institutions and much of our government policy. But also think of the general direction that industrialization and mechanization has led us since the Industrial Revolution took off 200 years ago.

Its an ironic formula. Ever since Adam named the animals and harnessed fire, humans have built tools and machines to empower themselves, to increase their dominion over their environment. And, yes, in many ways we have managed to increase the quality of our lives. But in many other ways, we have enslaved ourselves to our own servantsto the formalities of those machines, factories, assembly lines, cost projections, policies, etc. We have coerced ourselves into ignoring the natural rhythms of human life, the natural bonds and covenants of human community, the spectrum of variation across human character and our natural tolerance to that wide deviance, all to conform to those tight formalities our own machinery demands in the name of efficacy.

In his personal notes in the summer of 1944, having barely escaped from occupied France, the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson of righteous memory, described a world torn by a war between two ideologiesbetween those for whom the individual was nothing more than a cog in the machinery of the state, and those who understood that there can be no benefit to the state by trampling the rights of any individual. The second ideologythat held by the western Alliesis, the Rebbe noted, a Torah one: If the enemy says, give us one of you, or we will kill you all! declared the sages of the Talmud, Not one soul shall be deliberately surrendered to its death.

Basically, the life of the individual is equal to the whole. Go make an algorithm from that. The math doesntThe life of the individual is equal to the whole. Go make an algorithm from that. The math doesnt work. work. Try to generalize it. You cant. It will generate what logicians call a deductive explosion. Yet it summarizes a truth essential to the sustainability of human life on this planetas that world war demonstrated with nightmarish poignance.

That war continued into the Cold War. It presses on today with the rising economic dominance of the Communist Party of China.

In the world of consumer technology, total dominance of The Big Machine was averted when a small group of individuals pressed forward against the tide by advancing the human-centered digital technology we now take for granted. But yet another round is coming, and it rides on the seductive belief that AI can do its best job by adding yet another layer of formalization to all societys tasks.

Dont believe that for a minute. The telos of technology is to enhance human life, not to restrict it; to provide human beings with tools and devices, not to render them as such.

Technologys ultimate purpose will come in a time of which Maimonides writes, when the occupation of the entire world will be only to know the divine. AI can certainly assist us in attaining that era and living itas long as we remain its masters and do not surrender our dignity as human beings. And that is the next great battle of humanity.

To win this battle, we need once again only a small army, but an army armed with more than vision. They must be people with faith. Faith in the divine spark within the human being. For that is what underpins the security of the modern world.

Pundits will tell you that our modern world is secular. Dont believe them. They will tell you that religion is not taught in American public schools. Its a lie. Western society is sustained on the basis of a foundational, religious belief: that all human beings are equal. Thats a statement withAll human beings are equal. Thats a statement of faith. no empirical or rational support. Because it is neither. It is a statement of faith. Subliminally, it means: The value of a single human life cannot be measured.

In other words, every human life is divine.

No, we dont say those words; there is no class in school discussing our divine image. Yet it is a tacit, unspoken belief. Western society is a church without walls, a religion whose dogmas are never spoken, yet guarded jealously, mostly by those who understand them the least. Pull out that belief from between the bricks and the entire edifice collapses to the ground.

It is also a ubiquitous theme in Jewish practice. As Ive written elsewhere, leading a Jewish way of life in the modern era is an outright rebellion against the materialist reductionism of a formalized society.

We liberate ourselves from interaction with our machines once a week, on Shabbat, and rise to an entirely human world of thought, prayer, meditation, learning, songs, and good company. We insist on making every instance of food consumption into a spiritual, even mystical event, by eating kosherWe liberate ourselves from interaction with our machines once a week. and saying blessings before and after. We celebrate and empower the individual through our insistence that every Jew must study and enter the discussion of the hows and whys of Jewish practice. And on Chanukah, we insist that every Jew must create light and increase that light each day; that none of us can rely on any grand institution to do so in our proxy.

Because each of us is an entire world, as our sages state in the Mishnah, Every person must say, On my account, the world was created.

This is what the battle of Chanukah is telling us. The flame of the menorah, that is the human soul The human soul is a candle of Gd. The war-machine of Antiochus upon elephants with heavy armorthat is the rule of formalization and expedience coming to suffocate the flame. The Maccabee rebels are a small group of visionaries, those who believe there is more to heaven and earth than all science and technology can contain, more to the human soul than any algorithm can grind out, more to life than efficacy.

How starkly poignant it is indeed that practicing, religious Jews were by far the most recalcitrant group in the Hellenist world of the Greeks and Romans.

Artificial intelligence can be a powerful tool for good, but only when wielded by those who embrace a reality beyond reason. And it is that transcendence that Torah preserves within us. Perhaps all of Torah and its mitzvahs were given for this, the final battle of humankind.

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Chanukah and the Battle of Artificial Intelligence - The Ultimate Victory of the Human Being - Chabad.org

Robotics and Artificial Intelligence in solar energy – ELE Times

A one of a kind opportunity exists to apply AI to a particular part of the clean energy value chain: materials. Materials fill in as the structure blocks of clean energy, for example, the solar cells that make up the photovoltaic panels found on rooftops. Enhancing the materials used to manufacture parts of clean energy is significant on the grounds that current materials are frequently lethal, non-earth rich, and require carbon-concentrated processing.

Without getting excessively technical, basically, the entire reason of AI is a machine emulating the human brain. The machine can learn and adjust to various situations, and as time passes, the machine gets smarter and responds diversely to accomplish better outcomes.

Utilizing AI along these lines can give producers an edge. Manufacturers will in general put resources into upgrading downstream production capacities, which has prompted a few AI applications in sensor innovations and process optimisation. Utilizing AI for upstream design purposes, nonetheless, is an undiscovered business opportunity that could decrease the time it takes to find new materials, opening up capital for deployment and commercialisation strategies.

Robots have already made a difference. They are currently generally used to blend many somewhat various recipes for a material, store them on single wafers or different platforms, and afterward process and test them all the while. In any case, basically trudging through recipe after the recipe is a moderate course to a breakthrough. High throughput is an approach to do heaps of experiments, however, not a great deal of development.

Governments are making the first move on AI-empowered clean energy materials disclosure, flagging this is a region of key national and worldwide interest. Public risk capital drives down expenses for industry, empowering the more extensive adoption of AI in cutting edge producing. Making clean energy materials less expensive, cleaner, and increasingly solid isnt useful for the earth, yet in addition useful for business.

This situation shows an opportunity for the clean energy manufacturing sector. Applying AI to the advancement of new materials can decrease embedded emissions, toxicity and costs while saving researchers valuable time in the lab. Experiments done by trial-and-error are frequently rehashed a lot of times before a breakthrough happens. Rather, AI could automate complex logical tasks and empower analysts to concentrate on tasks that require more creativity and ingenuity.

To speed the procedure, numerous teams have included computer modeling to foresee the equation of likely pearls. Were seeing a torrential slide of exciting materials originating from the forecast, says Kristin Persson of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in California, who runs a large-scale prediction enterprise known as the Materials Project. However, those frameworks still commonly depend on graduate students or experienced researchers to assess the consequences of trials and decide how to continue. However, Individuals still need to do things like rest and eat.

Governments are making the first move on AI-empowered clean energy materials disclosure, flagging this is a region of key national and worldwide interest. Public risk capital drives down expenses for industry, empowering the more extensive adoption of AI in cutting edge producing. Making clean energy materials less expensive, cleaner, and increasingly solid isnt useful for the earth, yet in addition useful for business.

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Robotics and Artificial Intelligence in solar energy - ELE Times

Military Applications of Artificial Intelligence – Ethics Project Now Funded – Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)

How canthe moral integrity and agency of military personnel be preserved and enhanced when artificial intelligence is implemented in practices of war?

Congratulations to Greg Reichberg on funding from the SAMKUL callof the Research Council of Norway for a four-yearproject with th title: Warring with Machines:Military Applications of Artificial Intelligence and the Relevance of Virtue Ethics. The PRIO team also consists of Henrik Syse and Mareile Kaufmann, and in addition a full-time PhD position.

Artificial intelligence plays an ever-expanding role in the context of war. This project aims to determine how the moral integrity and agency of military personnel may be preserved and enhanced when artificial intelligence is implemented in practices of war.

The project will pursue this goal from the perspective of virtue ethics, philosophy of action and mind, and applied military ethics, in close dialogue with institutional stakeholders as well as technologists and representatives from cognitive neuroscience. Its three main research questions are as follows:

The project is built up around a unique institutional collaboration between leading national and international research institutions within the fields of military ethics, the philosophy of mind, and artificial intelligence research, as well as key military training institutions and technology manufacturers.

In addition to the PRIO team, the project will have the following externalmembers:

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Military Applications of Artificial Intelligence - Ethics Project Now Funded - Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)

Innovations in Artificial Intelligence-, Cloud-, and IoT-based Security, 2019 Research Report – ResearchAndMarkets.com – Business Wire

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Innovations in Artificial Intelligence-, Cloud-, and IoT-based Security" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This Cyber Security TechVision Opportunity Engine (TOE) provides a snapshot on emerging cyber security solutions powered by artificial intelligence, cloud, and IoT innovations that help companies protect from threats, data breaches, phishing, other advanced and targeted attacks. They also defend against and prevent modern attacks residing within cloud, endpoints, and various network layers.

Cyber Security TechVision Opportunity Engine's mission is to investigate new and emerging developments that aim to protect the network infrastructure and the resources operating in the network. The TOE offers strategic insights that would help identify new business opportunities and enhance technology portfolio decisions by assessing new developments and product launches in: anti-spam, anti-virus, phishing, identity management, disaster recovery, firewalls, virtual private networks, end-point security, content filtering,

Web application security, authentication and access control, intrusion prevention and detection systems, encryption algorithms, cryptographic techniques, and pattern recognition systems for network security.

Highlights of this service include technology roadmapping of network security technologies; IP portfolio analysis; information on funding and investment opportunities; evaluation of commercial opportunities from technology developments; technology assessment; analysis of technology accelerators and challenges and many more.

Key Topics Covered:

Companies Mentioned

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/n3ivvh

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Innovations in Artificial Intelligence-, Cloud-, and IoT-based Security, 2019 Research Report - ResearchAndMarkets.com - Business Wire

Ume University: Master all areas of Artificial Intelligence – Study International News

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming work and life as we know it, already boosting workplace efficiency and leading to noticeable improvements to the quality of for instance healthcare, lowering costs while giving clinicians time to work with their patients more closely, and with more insight. This was made clear in arecent MIT Technology Review Insights surveyproduced in partnership with GE Healthcare, where more than 82 percent of healthcare business leaders said their AI deployments were showing positive results across operational and administrative activities,.

When analysing the impact AI would have on the global education sector, founders of theInstitute for Ethical AI in Education (IEAIED) said there wasno need to fear the technology. Rather than replace the human element in education, AI would augment teaching and learning, they said.

There are highly beneficial applications of machine learning inside the area of education. Artificial Intelligence may enable personalised learning, especially important for students with specialized needs and challenges. Awell-designed AI can be used to identify learners particular needs so that everyone especially the most vulnerable can receive targeted support.

With global education and healthcare being just two of many sectors that AI has advanced so far, and withhundreds more AI technology developmentson the horizon, such as autonomous vehicles, manufacturing and financial services to add to the list, the need for expertise in the field appears limitless!

Firmly supporting this need and accepting this challenge is theFaculty of Science and TechnologyatUme University, Sweden.

Currently open forautumn 2020 intake, their newMasters in Artificial Intelligenceis a postgraduate programme that enables you to develop broad and core competence in AI and equips you with the digital tools necessary for future career success.

Youll also experience a combination of lectures, seminars, group work, and tutorials in conjunction with different types of assignments and laboratory work to advance your AI education in a multidisciplinary manner.

It is of critical importance to study in a more multidisciplinary manner, where humanities and social sciences are combined with science and technology. AI can no longer be seen as a purely technical or computer science discipline. It is per definition interdisciplinary, says Ume Department of Computing Science Professor, Virginia Dignum.

One of the first professors recruited to Sweden as part of the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP) initiative and actively involved in several international initiatives on policy and strategy guidelines for AI research and applications, such as theEuropean Commission High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI HLEG), Dignum is one of the AI experts at Ume who are driving research and graduate success forward.

My position at Ume University makes it possible for me to look at societal, ethical and cultural consequences of AI. I will for instance be studying methods and tools to ensure that AI systems are formed not to violate human values and ethical principles, says Dignum, who also leads the research group Social and Ethical Artificial Intelligence at the Faculty.

Another integral member at the Faculty is Senior Lecturer Helena Lindgren.

Understanding the urgency of AI integration, Lindgren believes that the university needs to be driven to produce research that develops, educates and enhances the capabilities of AI in society, both in terms of system development and implementation.

One of the objectives at Ume is to raise societys AI competence, such as through continuing education and professional development of currently employed persons. Its very important for Sweden as a nation, as well as its companies and organisations, to be able to take the next step in digital development, says Lindgren.

Lindgren and Dignum reflect the high caliber of the 30-strong researchers at Ume University that are engaged in the development of AI in different areas.

To study here is to be under their expert guidance as you undertake courses that relate to human-AI interaction and complete student projects conducted in collaboration with an organisation addressing societal challenges.

In these projects, students are expected to collaborate in interdisciplinary teams and with representatives from industry and public organisations, adding a practical twist to the 2020 course.

In this English-taught Masters, you are also expected to take full responsibility for organising your tasks so that deadlines are met and collaborative work within student projects are manageable within office hours.

Despite being a new course, AI is not a new focus for Ume.

In the 1970s, Ume Professor Lars-Erik Janlert focused on Knowledge Representation, and in the early 1980s he formed the Swedish AI Society together with other Swedish researchers.

Since then, Ume has expanded its outreach into a variety of research and education activities across different departments and faculties and is now one of seven universities that are part of the governmental initiative AI Competence for Sweden.

Ume University

Continuously building its research efforts through its strong interdisciplinary traditions and close collaborations with society, AI@UmU initiatives have also established an expanding network of researchers, teachers, students and professionals who want to learn, discuss and collaborate around AI-related issues via seminars, panel discussions and courses.

Always welcome to discuss the latest tech revelations and AI advancements with their professors and visiting professionals, Ume students are motivated to unearth AI research angles of their own.

From day one of the new Masters programme, theyll deepen their insight into this exciting field and take their knowledge of AIs theoretical foundations, intelligent robotics, machine learning and data science further.

So, if youre ready to master all areas of AI and want to start your postgraduate study venture in Sweden, click here to find out about the application and eligibility process.

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Ume University: Master all areas of Artificial Intelligence - Study International News