A beginner’s guide to the AI apocalypse: The democratization of ‘expertise’

Aug11
by on August 11, 2022 at 1:17 am
Posted In: artificial intelligence, Opinion


In this series we examine some of the most popular doomsday scenarios prognosticated by modern AI experts. Previous articles include Misaligned Objectives, Artificial Stupidity, Wall-E Syndrome, Humanity Joins the Hivemind, and Killer Robots. We’ve covered a lot of ground in this series (see above), but nothing comes close to our next topic. The “democratization of expertise” might sound like a good thing — democracy, expertise, what’s not to like? But it’s our intent to convince you that it’s the single greatest AI-related threat our species faces by the time you finish reading this article. In order to properly understand this, we’ll have to…

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UK government again plugs strike-busting dream of driverless subway trains

Aug09
by on August 9, 2022 at 9:27 pm
Posted In: Insider


It’s strike season on the London Underground, and that means one thing for the UK’s interminable Tory governments: time to rev-up the driverless hype train. Conservative politicians have long called for a fully-autonomous metro. In 2012, then-London Mayor Boris Johnson said Britain’s capital would have driverless trains within 10 years. A decade later, he claimed the switch would free people from being “prisoners of the unions.” The government reiterated the case during recent funding talks with Transport for London (TfL), which operates the local underground network. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps made working towards driverless trains a condition of the bailout. Shapps…

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Drones offer sustainable last-mile parcel delivery

Aug09
by on August 9, 2022 at 3:50 pm
Posted In: Uncategorized


The future of last-mile package delivery is fast and contactless, with delivery providers focused on eliminating traffic and parking challenges. An increasingly prominent option is the use of uncrewed aerial vehicles or drones.  This week research comparing the environmental impact of different forms of last-mile delivery was published in the scientific journal Patterns. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University compared the energy consumption of quadcopter drones against diesel and electric medium-duty trucks, small vans, and electric cargo bicycles on a per-package basis. They found that greenhouse-gas emissions per parcel were 84% lower for drones than for diesel trucks. Unsurprisingly, drones consumed…

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