#garry-kasparov
[re:AI] - we are in strange competition both with and against our own creations in more ways every day #competition #comparison #humans-and-machines
i remain an optimist if only because i've never found much advantage in the alternatives. #optimism
advertisers are paid to exploit the power of symbols #advertising #symbols
this is a critical point to keep in mind before we criticize or praise anyone for their own predictions, and before we make our own. every disruptive new technology, any resulting change in the dynamics of society, will produce a range of positive and negative effects and side effects that shift over time, often suddenly. consider the most discussed impact of the machine age, employment. the avalanche of factory automation, business machines, and domestic labour-saving devices that, starting in the 1950s, led to the disappearance of millions of jobs and entire professions, while skyrocketing productivity created unprecedented economic growth - and the creation of more jobs than had been lost. #cause-and-effect
machines don't need to do things in the same way the natural world does in order to be useful, or to surpass nature. This is obvious from millenia of physical technology and it applies to software and artificially intelligent machines as well. airplanes don't flap their wings and helicopters don't need wings at all. the wheel doesn't exist in nature, but has served us very well. so why should computer brains work like human brains in order to achieve results? #the-brain
every profession will eventually feel this pressure, and it must, or else it will mean humanity has ceased to make progress. we can either see these changes as a robotic hand closing around our necks or one that can lift us up higher than we can reach on our own, as has always been the case. [...] romanticizing the loss of jobs to technology is little better than complaining that antibiotics put too many grave diggers out of work. #progress #work
we aren't competing against our machines, no matter how many human jobs they can do. We are competing with ourselves to create new challenges and to extend our capabilities and to improve our lives.
Lastly on talent, don't tell me that hard work can be more important than talent. this is a handy platitude for motivating our kids to study or practice piano, but [...] hard work IS a talent. the ability to push yourself, to keep working, practicing, studying more than others is itself a talent. If anyone could do it, everyone would. As with any talent, it must be cultivated to blossom. It can be convenient to frame work ethic as a moral matter, and certainly there is the usual intertwining of nature and nurture involved. And I would hate to provide anyone with a genetic excuse for taking it easy. [but] reaching peak human performance requires maximising every aspect of our abilities whenever we can, including the preparation and training. #talent #committment
as is usually the case in science, what goes wrong teaches us more than what goes right #science #mistakes
as a believer in chess as a form of psychological, not just intellectual, warfare, playing against something with no psyche was troubling from the start #chess #war #spirit
the human need to understand things as a story instead of as a series of discrete events can lead to many flawed conclusions #narrative
it was once believed that brain plasticity ceased before adulthood, but that consensus has been overturned in recent years. Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman wrote extensively about how he thought his eclectic hobbies like playing Brazilian music and lock-picking actually helped him be better at physics instead of distracting him from it. Ken Thompson enjoys piloting himself around in a small plane. And even if it's too late for you to win that Nobel, it's never too late to play chess, especially since various studies now tout the benefits of games like chess and other cognitively demanding activities in delaying the onset of dementia #neuroplasticity #creativity #dementia
nearly everything a modern human does involves the use of technology #humans-and-machines
Thompson - "does an over reliance on machine memory shut down other important ways of understanding the world?" it's an important question, and by no means a new one. the acquisition of knowledge cannot serve only to perform immediate tasks or answer a question, at least not if we wish to approach the higher goal of wisdom. your phone can make you an instant expert on anything, thanks to google and wikipedia, and this is incredibly useful. doing so doesn't make us dumber any more than encyclopaedias, phone books, or librarians made us dumber. it is only the next stage of how our technology allows us to create and to interact with more information faster and faster - and it won't be the last stage. the danger isn't an intellectual stagnation or an addiction to instant fact-finding missions. the real risk is substituting superficial knowledge for the type of understanding and insight that is required to create new things. expertise does not necessarily translate into applicable understanding, let alone wisdom. #memory #pursuit-of-knowledge #knowledge #risk #wisdom
many studies have shown that depression, or a simple lack of self-confidence, results in decision-making that is slower, more conservative, and inferior in quality. [...] intuition is the product of experience and confidence. #depression #self-worth #decision-making #experience
a clever process beats superior knowledge and superior technology. it [doesn't] render knowledge and technology obsolete, of course, but it [illustrates] the power of efficiency and coordination to dramatically improve the results. [...] "weak human + machine + better process" was superior to a strong computer alone and, more remarkably, superior to "strong human + machine + inferior process" #productivity
despite what you may think after watching an hour of cable news, we lead healthier, longer, and safer lives today than at any time in human history #anthropology
resources are limited, so, as one medical researcher put it, do you work on making better mosquito nets or on a cure for malaria? of course we can and should try to do both, but it's an illustration of the practical conundrums that even the most vital research faces #compromise
new isn't always better, but it's just as wrong to believe that new is always worse, and a pessimistic view is more detrimental to the development of our civilisation
the more that people believe in a positive future for technology, the greater chance there is of having one. we will all choose what the future looks like by our beliefs and our actions #intent