Author: themorningnews.org
Some of the dangers of creating realistic looking robots.
An interesting article at The Verge about a visit to robotics company Engineered Arts, where they’re trying to create androids with a human body’s dexterity.
(The video shows one of their most advanced machines responding when someone tries to touch its nose.)
As you get used to treating human-like automata as automata, you may slowly find yourself treating humans the same. It’s similar to the dilemma parents have with young children and Alexa. Should they be polite to the AI assistant because it encourages them to be polite to humans? Or is that the wrong way to treat a piece of software coded and controlled by a huge multinational corporation?
As I ponder this, Jackson and I walk past a desk laden with mechanical widgets undergoing stress tests. Pistons have been nailed to a wooden plank while, on a stand, tiny pulleys lift and lower a cup full of screws. And, true to Singler’s suggestion that humans will ascribe a bit of soul to just about anything that moves, I feel passing sympathy even for these tortured components.
Via The Browser
“Everything revolves around density and imperceptible motion.”
For your weekly soothe, “Joshua Tree, for orchestra,” by Georg Friedrich Haas, from its Switzerland premier in 2020.
The watcher of the night sky inevitably looks at groups of stars, and these create pictures in the viewer&r…
Gavin Francis: Considering the rise in antibiotic resistance may come to come to be seen as an age of recklessness, too.
Gavin Francis: Considering the rise in antibiotic resistance may come to come to be seen as an age of recklessness, too.
↩︎ The London Review of Books…
In 2021, the CEOs of America’s seven biggest publicly traded health insurance companies earned more than $283 million.
In 2021, the CEOs of America’s seven biggest publicly traded health insurance companies earned more than $283 million.
↩︎ STAT
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Why are watches often set to 10:10 in ads? One theory is that the hands then resembles a smiling face.
Why are watches often set to 10:10 in ads? One theory is that the hands then resembles a smiling face.
↩︎ Real Clear Science
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Drew Millard on The Righteous Gemstones.
One friend’s dad was a former professional drag racer whose compound included an airplane hangar, a forklift, a single-wide trailer, and a giant yard that occasionally doubled as a mud pit where people would race be…
“There is no difference, ingredients-wise, between the Fanta in the fridge at the 7-Eleven and the Fanta of the spirits.”
“There is no difference, ingredients-wise, between the Fanta in the fridge at the 7-Eleven and the Fanta of the spirits.”
↩︎ The New York Times
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