AI systems could play a part in democracy while remaining subordinate to traditional democratic processes like human deliberation and human votes. And they could be made subject to the ethics of their human masters. It should not be necessary for citizens to surrender their moral judgment if they don’t wish to.
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Multiscale Methods | NECSI - 0 views
Researchers report new approach to cultured meat - 0 views
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Humans are largely omnivores, and meat has featured in the diets of most cultures. However, with the increasing population and pressure on the environment, traditional methods of meeting this fundamental food requirement are likely to fall short. Now, researchers at the University of Tokyo report innovative biofabrication of bovine muscle tissue in the laboratory that may help meet escalating future demands for dietary meat.
Unveiling the double origin of cosmic dust in the distant Universe - 0 views
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Two billion years after the Big Bang, the Universe was still very young. However, thousands of huge galaxies, rich in stars and dust, were already formed. An international study, led by SISSA-Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati, now explains how this was possible. Scientists combined observational and theoretical methods to identify the physical processes behind their evolution and, for the first time, found evidence for a rapid growth of dust due to a high concentration of metals in the distant Universe. The study, published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, offers a new approach to investigate the evolutionary phase of massive objects.
The mathematical strategy that could transform coronavirus testing - 0 views
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Scientists say that widespread testing is needed to get outbreaks of the new coronavirus under control. But in many regions, there's a shortage of the chemicals needed to run tests. In several countries, health officials have started using a strategy that was first proposed in the Second World War: group testing. By testing samples from many people at once, this method can save time, chemical reagents and money, say researchers.
Physics and information theory give a glimpse of life's origins | Aeon Essays - 0 views
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How did life originate? Scientists have been studying the question for decades, and they've developed ingenious methods to try to find out. They've even enlisted biology's most powerful theory, Darwinian evolution, in the search. But they still don't have a complete answer. What they have hit is the world's most theoretically fertile dead end. When scientists look for life's origins, they usually work in one of two directions. They work backwards in time through the record of organisms that have lived on Earth, or they work forward from one of the many hypothetical prebiotic worlds in which life could have emerged.
Implementing a quantum approximate optimization algorithm on a 53-qubit NISQ device - 0 views
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A large team of researchers working with Google Inc. and affiliated with a host of institutions in the U.S., one in Germany and one in the Netherlands has implemented a quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) on a 53-qubit noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) device. In their paper published in the journal Nature Physics,, the group describes their method of studying the performance of their QAOA on Google's Sycamore superconducting 53-qubit quantum processor and what they learned from it. Boaz Barak with Harvard University has published a News & Views piece on the work done by the team in the same journal issue.
Detecting Regions At Risk for Spreading COVID-19 Using Existing Cellular Wireless Netwo... - 0 views
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Goal: The purpose of this article is to introduce a new strategy to identify areas with high human density and mobility, which are at risk for spreading COVID-19. Crowded regions with actively moving people (called at-risk regions) are susceptible to spreading the disease, especially if they contain asymptomatic infected people together with healthy people. Methods: Our scheme identifies at-risk regions using existing cellular network functionalities-handover and cell (re)selection-used to maintain seamless coverage for mobile end-user equipment (UE). The frequency of handover and cell (re)selection events is highly reflective of the density of mobile people in the area because virtually everyone carries UEs. Results: These measurements, which are accumulated over very many UEs, allow us to identify the at-risk regions without compromising the privacy and anonymity of individuals. Conclusions: The inferred at-risk regions can then be subjected to further monitoring and risk mitigation.
Low-cost measurement of facemask efficacy for filtering expelled droplets during speech... - 0 views
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Mandates for mask use in public during the recent COVID-19 pandemic, worsened by global shortage of commercial supplies, have led to widespread use of homemade masks and mask alternatives. It is assumed that wearing such masks reduces the likelihood for an infected person to spread the disease, but many of these mask designs have not been tested in practice. We have demonstrated a simple optical measurement method to evaluate the efficacy of masks to reduce the transmission of respiratory droplets during regular speech. In proof-of-principle studies, we compared a variety of commonly available mask types and observed that some mask types approach the performance of standard surgical masks, while some mask alternatives, such as neck fleece or bandanas, offer very little protection. Our measurement setup is inexpensive and can be built and operated by non-experts, allowing for rapid evaluation of mask performance during speech, sneezing, or coughing.
Proteins Unfolded - 0 views
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Artificial intelligence (AI) has solved one of biology's grand challenges: predicting how proteins curl up from a linear chain of amino acids into 3D shapes that allow them to carry out life's tasks. Today, leading structural biologists and organizers of a biennial protein folding competition announced the achievement by researchers at DeepMind, a U.K.-based AI company. They say the DeepMind method will have far-reaching effects, among them dramatically speeding the creation of new medications.
How AI will change democracy - 0 views
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There are nevertheless serious objections to the idea of AI Democracy. Foremost among them is the transparency objection: can we really call a system democratic if we don’t really understand the basis of the decisions made on our behalf? Although AI Democracy could make us freer or more prosperous in our day-to-day lives, it would also rather enslave us to the systems that decide on our behalf. One can see Pericles shaking his head in disgust.
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In the past humans were prepared, in the right circumstances, to surrender their political affairs to powerful unseen intelligences. Before they had kings, the Hebrews of the Old Testament lived without earthly politics. They were subject only to the rule of God Himself, bound by the covenant that their forebears had sworn with Him. The ancient Greeks consulted omens and oracles. The Romans looked to the stars. These practices now seem quaint and faraway, inconsistent with what we know of rationality and the scientific method. But they prompt introspection. How far are we prepared to go–what are we prepared to sacrifice–to find a system of government that actually represents the people?
Is it better to be a wild rat or a factory farmed cow? A systematic method for comparin... - 0 views
The AI Entrepreneur's Moral Dilemma - Unsupervised Methods - 0 views
The Rise of the "Retro Human" Business - Unsupervised Methods - 0 views
Are You Creditworthy? The Algorithm Will Decide. - 0 views
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The decisions made by algorithmic credit scoring applications are not only said to be more accurate in predicting risk than traditional scoring methods; its champions argue they are also fairer because the algorithm is unswayed by the racial, gender, and socioeconomic biases that have skewed access to credit in the past.
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Algorithmic credit scores might seem futuristic, but these practices do have roots in credit scoring practices of yore. Early credit agencies, for example, hired human reporters to dig into their customers’ credit histories. The reports were largely compiled from local gossip and colored by the speculations of the predominantly white, male middle class reporters. Remarks about race and class, asides about housekeeping, and speculations about sexual orientation all abounded.
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By 1935, whole neighborhoods in the U.S. were classified according to their credit characteristics. A map from that year of Greater Atlanta comes color-coded in shades of blue (desirable), yellow (definitely declining) and red (hazardous). The legend recalls a time when an individual’s chances of receiving a mortgage were shaped by their geographic status.
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