Scientific American's Fred Guterl Explores the Threats Posed By Technology -via @Slashdot

"Fred Guterl is the executive editor of Scientific American, and in this piece he explores various threats posed by the technology that modern civilization relies on. He discusses West African and Indian monsoons, infectious diseases, and computer hacking. Here's a quote: 'Today the technologies that pose some of the biggest problems are not so much military as commercial. They come from biology, energy production, and the information sciences — and are the very technologies that have fueled our prodigious growth as a species. They are far more seductive than nuclear weapons, and more difficult to extricate ourselves from. The technologies we worry about today form the basis of our global civilization and are essential to our survival.'"
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Scientists See Startling Gains in Artificial Intelligence

NYTimes.com...The technology, called deep learning, has already been put to use in services like Apple's Siri virtual personal assistant, which is based on Nuance Communications' speech recognition service, and in Google's Street View, which uses machine vision to identify specific addresses.

But what is new in recent months is the growing speed and accuracy of deep-learning programs, often called artificial neural networks or just "neural nets" for their resemblance to the neural connections in the brain.

"There has been a number of stunning new results with deep-learning methods," said Yann LeCun, a computer scientist at New York University who did pioneering research in handwriting recognition at Bell Laboratories. "The kind of jump we are seeing in the accuracy of these systems is very rare indeed."

Artificial intelligence researchers are acutely aware of the dangers of being overly optimistic. Their field has long been plagued by outbursts of misplaced enthusiasm followed by equally striking declines.

In the 1960s, some computer scientists believed that a workable artificial intelligence system was just 10 years away. In the 1980s, a wave of commercial start-ups collapsed, leading to what some people called the "A.I. winter."


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Study Claims Human Intelligence Peaked Two To Six Millennia Ago

Slashdot- Professor Gerald "Jerry" Crabtree of Stanford's Crabtree Laboratorypublished a paper (PDF) that has appeared in two parts in Trends in Genetics. The paper opens with a very controversial suggestion: 'I would be willing to wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000 BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions.' From there, Crabtree speculates we're on the decline of human intelligence and we have been for at least a couple millennia. His argument suggests agriculture and, following from that, cities, have allowed us to break free of some environmental forces on competitive genetic mutations — a la Mike Judge's theory. However, the conclusion of the paper urges humans to keep calm and carry on, as any attempt to fix this genetic trend would almost certainly be futile and disturbing."
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http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/11/13/191217/study-claims-human-intelligence-peaked-two-to-six-millennia-ago

The duo ... Bravo

Security Firm VUPEN Claims to Have Hacked Windows 8 and IE10

TNW...If you've never heard of VUPEN, that's because it isn't your typical security company. The firm finds exploits in popular software from major technology companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Google, only to sell the details to governments around the world and various other parties willing to write massive cheques.

That's right; the exploits aren't reported to the companies affected, but are instead sold so that: VUPEN customers can protect themselves (while their competitors are left vulnerable), they can be abused for spying purposes, and they can be used to create malware. This is why, if you read the tweet above again, you'll note that this latest victory was only possible thanks to multiple already-existing 0-days that VUPEN found and did not disclose publicly. If it had, it would not be able to sell them, nor would it be able to hack Windows 8, as Microsoft would have already patched the flaws long ago.

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Does Russia care about children's future more than U.S? Internet Child Protection Law Takes Effect

Slashdot:
"A law that aims to protect children from harmful internet content by allowing the government to take sites offline has taken effect in Russia. The authorities are now able to blacklist and force offline certain websites without a trial. The law was approved by both houses of parliament and signed by President Vladimir Putin in July. If the websites themselves cannot be shut down, internet service providers (ISPs) and web hosting companies can be forced to block access to the offending material."

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http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/11/01/154215/russias-internet-blacklist-law-takes-effienct

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