Dick as philosopher

Dick by R. Crumb.

The AP headline says, "Olympic torch goes out briefly, quickly rekindled". Let's hope civilization can be restarted as easily when it disappears in the coming decades.

Speaking of which, if you're of a philosophic bent and also of a certain age, you may enjoy this Times article about Philip K. Dick, the prominent 1960s sci-fi writer. I, too, have experienced anamnesis, though only for a few moments. I found the article fascinating and hey, part II is on the way.

One step closer to artificial intelligence

One of the most evocative robots.

I love the concept of machine learning. It's how IBM's Watson learned to play Jeopardy. It simply looked at all the questions ever asked on Jeopardy, and read all the wrong and right answers, and from this information, figured out the pattern of "correct answers". I think that's mind-boggling.

There's another story out today about machine learning. The article at physorg explains how a computer system learned to play the computer game "Civilization" -- by reading the manual! It's an amazing story. Check it out. This field is really moving now. It's not quite time to welcome our overlords but machine learning is growing by leaps and bounds.

Like the Chinese, it comes. Zillions!