robg

Far from an AI century, we still don’t understand how brains create and drive intelligence. The more we learn about actual intelligence from brains, the more artificial versions will approximate what we’ve evolved to do. Modern neuroscience is younger than neural networks.

Great point, Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions covers the orthodoxy well and how it inhibits progress based on merit.

Isnt this ad hominem itself a “culture war position”?

Pretty wild if you told me 20 years ago we’d buy always watching cameras for outside our homes and always listening microphones for inside our homes.

People I know tape their mouths shut to force breathing through the nose. Have you looked at that or done a sleep study for apnea?

Yesterday’s Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence that seeks to help the federal government lead in responsible innovation mentions Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) as part of the ‘National AI Talent Surge’, and to meet this need, they are opening a new application opportunity to be part of an AI-focused PIF cohort that will start in Summer 2024! PIF’s mission to bring technologists and strategists into federal government to partner with leaders and improve the public’s experience with government has never been more important.

Apply now through November 17 at 11:59 pm ET. Register for information sessions linked below to learn more about this opportunity and the application process. If you previously applied to be a part of the PIF 2024 cohort and meet the updated specialized experience on our website around Artificial Intelligence, they encourage you to apply to this new opportunity.

Info Sessions:

Monday, November 6, 2023 2:30-3:30 pm ET Thursday, November 9, 2023 1:00-2:00 pm ET Tuesday, November 14, 2023 11:30 am-12:30 pm ET

https://presidentialinnovationfellows.gov/apply/

I was a PIF for almost three years at FDA / VA working horizontally on digital biomarkers. Really happy to answer any questions, the cohort model means you end up getting to know a small group of innovators working across government.

Walking and other automated activities can boost your energy levels and help you to concentrate on the meeting. But if you're trying to focus on two things that require cognitive attention simultaneously, you can't hear if something important is happening in the meeting. Alternatively, you have to constantly switch between tasks. It's really taxing for the brain, Nurmi says.

I know you probably meant the negative impacts but the Arab Spring was over 10 years ago. We saw and celebrated then came the countervailing forces.

To echo wslack, experiences with moving initiatives through grit and collegiality is key. The PIF program is a bit easier to apply for than USAjobs and really focuses on being more of an entrepreneur-in-residence, as much as that’s possible in government. I was able to work horizontally in a way that would have been challenging otherwise.

I was a Presidential Innovation Fellow for almost three years at FDA / Veterans Affairs, happy to answer any questions. The program is looking for industry experiences to better inform and shape government policies.

Seems like this list could have been written 10 years ago. Honest question: What’s changed?

What’s your data to back that up? If truck drivers, there’s nothing close that would turn huge trucks robotic for the current generation.

Who were the astronauts that died with Challenger? Notoriety is hardly an index worth investing in.

A colony on the moon is technically possible, albeit very expensive. Many nations could create one today. People are choosing to spend their limited resources on better forms of progress.

Sustained funding for 60 years shows the continued interest in there, to use one of the “reasons” you cite for Apollo.

Those two “reasons” are no where in the same universe. Take away the Soviets and it wouldn’t have happened. See also the last 60 years.

Exactly this. The current hype for a human on Mars is repeating the mistakes of Apollo then the Shuttle. By contrast the public has absolutely been engaged in what rovers and telescopes find.

And if the Apollo “success” is any guide, it actually hampers further progress because the milestone was overhyped with no sustainable plan.

The last 60 years have shown the interest is there without humans AND having humans in the loop dying have deeply impaired progress based on limited resources and their allocation.

That’s neither simple nor a fact. Space exploration has almost all been robots, telescopes, probes, etc. The interest has been self-sustaining with an endless stream of discoveries, discoveries including still Voyager.

He’s conflating all of the resources spent with the outcomes involved. Need to see the graph?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NASA-Budget-Federal.svg

Now imagine if those same resources were spent on fusion propulsion…

Everything you say can be applied to the history of humans on the Earth’s moon. 50 years later you’ve been proven wrong. Robots are better and cheaper at space exploration and humans being in the loop have only made things more expensive and more risky. The failures of human space adventures have made things much harder on space budgets. See also the Shuttle program, after Apollo.

It’s been over 50 years since a human was on the moon. The need to replicate that psychological success has not been there for humanity given the costs and better use of resources. Mars is exponentially more expensive.

Yet. I choose to not give them that opportunity given their main revenue stream when Apple gives me better choices for my health data.

With no next gen propulsion system and no self-sustaining colony, humans on Mars are a resource sink with no added benefits.

Lest you forget it took 300 years for North America to generate self-sustaining colonies from the first Europeans. And those didn’t require life support for oxygen and water for every second of survival.

You’re telling me we can’t send, in the next 100 years, a fleet of remote controlled backhoes with the same sensors and assays the human would use?

The push for humans on Mars is deeply misguided. The same resources should be used to send many more probes and for far longer durations. After 100 years of deeply mapping all available resources, then maybe send humans if a long-term colony is self-sustainable and necessary for deep space exploration with better propulsion technologies.

Edit: Without a self-sustaining colony and next generation propulsion tech, any humans on Mars as a backup plan will die lonely deaths. Surprised people seem confused on the necessary and sufficient conditions. Show me that robots can set up a self-sustaining colony with self-generating resources to get to other worlds, and that’s a legit “backup” plan. Otherwise we’re just arguing about edge cases with no viable solutions. You don’t need humans on Mars to show what’s possible.

Not going to respond to the ad hominem flame war comments but I’ll just add, it’s about relative choices, hence why I still use a Fitbit.

I can see how each public company makes money and can examine their technical decisions. I’ve been working in wearables and healthcare, for instance, since 2010. Fitbit sends all data to the cloud then updates your data in your app. Not a huge deal and provides nice API opportunities. But as soon as Google takes over that data explicitly, I expect it will be used to advertise to me, despite the assurances to the contrary on the acquisition.

By contrast, Apple chose to develop a strong privacy model for health data on the Phone. They certainly didn’t need to and could have readily chosen the same cloud-first implementation. But they didn’t. And the APIs are harder to work with as a consequence. I respect and appreciate those decisions and so I buy their products more. You may choose differently.

This, Apple is not primarily an advertising company. I buy quality products from them that last, still using a 2013 iMac that has never had any issues. Even original AirPods work so well, I replace them as the battery degrades.

Impressed that Apple pockets $18 Billion and still mostly protects privacy with reasonable UX choices. Nothing is perfect, but denying Google more data about me is one reason I’ll always stick with iOS over Android and why I’ll ditch my Fitbit when it forces a Google account in 2025.