Digital Digest July 28th 2017
1. Big News

AI is going to be the end of us…or not
Artificial Intelligence is moving fast. It beat us at chess and recently at Go (a game with 300x as many moves, considered the holy grail of AI). AI is better at spotting lung cancer in X Rays, (likely) better at driving cars and even better at coding new AI! In all these domains, once we get bested by AI, humans will never regain the crown.
However, these are all pretty narrow use cases. Artificial General Intelligence (aka AGI aka “the singularity”) is what happens when computer systems reach human level intelligence in all things. Many smart people in tech like Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates fear this moment is coming soon-ish. Others like Andrew Ng think worrying about AGI is “like worrying about overpopulation on Mars.”
This week Elon Musk issued a stern warning about AGI at the National Governors Association meeting and implored government to look into regulation. Mark Zuckerberg went on to criticize AI naysayers as “really negative, and in some ways … pretty irresponsible.” Musk tweeted back: “I’ve talked to Mark about this. His understanding of the subject is pretty limited.” Ouch!
Why it matters
- Our neurons fire at about 200 hertz. Computer processors are measured in gigahertz: billions of cycles per second.
- GAI left running for one week would have the equivalent of 20,000 years of human evolution.
- This creates a mega prime mover advantage. Everyone from tech companies to governments are racing to be first…without oversight or much public debate.
Daniel’s .000007 BTC
- Superhuman AI doesn’t need to be malicious or conscious to be dangerous, just a simple misalignment in goals / unintended consequences can spell our end (see Nick Bostrom’s Paperclip maximizer)
- Like the Manhattan Project that ushered in the nuclear era, AI work is largely happening behind closed doors.
- As citizens, it wouldn’t hurt to have a basic understanding of what is going on. This Sam Harris TED talk is a great place to start.
2. I wish I thought of that

Prisma — style transfer was one of the first “holy shit that’s cool” artistic moments for neural nets. As you can see from the GIF above, this is way beyond a simple Photoshop filter. Download the free app and play around… it’s pretty addictive.
3. Tool of the Week

IFTTT (“If this, then that”) has been around for a LONG time. They allow you to easily combine APIs in a smart web interface. If you have anything in your house that is web controlled it can get pretty fun. You can create a recipe (they call them applets) like: If it’s going to rain today, move my alarm up 15 minutes, turn the lights to blue and wake me up with here comes the rain again by the Eurythmics.” They even have an “applet store” with tons of presets to browse. There is no coding needed and the creative possibilities are endless.
4. Startup Radar

WalkMe — massive old websites, like massive old cities can be confusing to navigate. Wouldn’t it be cool if there was “GPS for websites?” so you could just click along with an overlay? WalkMe did it… and they just raised another 75MM this month so it must be working.
5. From the Archives

Quick, Draw! — is a game that used neural networks to try and guess what you’re drawing! It’s a fun bit of AI with even funnier press built by some pals of mine at Google.
