Hi, Folks -

Searching for the source of the forwarded text in the above post I came upon a somewhat different point of view:

The Next Wave
A Conversation With John Markoff [7.16.15]
https://www.edge.org/conversation/john_markoff-the-next-wave
Copyright © 2016 By Edge Foundation, Inc All Rights Reserved.

Here are some excerpts.

Are AI computers and robots about to take over?

What hasn't happened is the other part of the AI problem, which is called cognition. We haven't made any breakthroughs in planning and thinking, so it's not clear that you'll be able to turn these machines loose in the environment to be waiters or flip hamburgers or do all the things that human beings do as quickly as we think.

Did Instagram really kill Kodak?

The classic example is that almost everybody cites this apparent juxtaposition of Instagram—thirteen programmers taking out a giant corporation, Kodak, with 140,000 workers. In fact, that's not what happened at all. For one thing, Kodak wasn't killed by Instagram. Kodak was a company that put a gun to its head and pulled the trigger multiple times until it was dead. It just made all kinds of strategic blunders.

Is the Future rushing toward us?

There is an argument that these machines are going to replace us, but I only think that's relevant to you or me in the sense that it doesn't matter if it doesn't happen in our lifetime. The Kurzweil crowd argues this is happening faster and faster, and things are just running amok. In fact, things are slowing down. In 2045, it's going to look more like it looks today than you think.

Full article, here:

https://www.edge.org/conversation/john_markoff-the-next-wave

Copyright © 2016 By Edge Foundation, Inc All Rights Reserved.

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