New Yorker magazine alert thread

however near/far/impossible, it seems like something worth thinking about. (tbh i'm more 'worried' about a cane toads-like mistake with various bioengineering choices)

otm is always otm, and more o. nate is always good

is moore's law still operating?

i keep read references to rumors that it will slow soon, but still operating for now, 50 years on

It's already yielding diminishing returns, because the improvements in recent years have been about multiple cores on a chip, not making those cores run faster. That's harder to take advantage of.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/04/economist-explains-17

If Moore’s law has started to flag, it is mainly because of economics. As originally stated by Mr Moore, the law was not just about reductions in the size of transistors, but also cuts in their price. A few years ago, when transistors 28nm wide were the state of the art, chipmakers found their design and manufacturing costs beginning to rise sharply. New “fabs” (semiconductor fabrication plants) now cost more than $6 billion. In other words: transistors can be shrunk further, but they are now getting more expensive. And with the rise of cloud computing, the emphasis on the speed of the processor in desktop and laptop computers is no longer so relevant. The main unit of analysis is no longer the processor, but the rack of servers or even the data centre. The question is not how many transistors can be squeezed onto a chip, but how many can be fitted economically into a warehouse. Moore's law will come to an end; but it may first make itself irrelevant.

http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-size/images/2015/04/blogs/economist-explains/20150425_woc302.png

I'm pretty sure that whether or not 'strong' AI can ever be achieved, someone will continue to pursue it. It's too deeply connected to the will to power ever to be laid aside. It's as alluring as perpetual motion.

remember when that AI beat a turing test last year bc it mimicked teen-speak

Also, the same guy scared of AI wants to upload himself into computers. At which point what does he think he will be?

it's kind of like a version of pascal's wager, only with something that's actually possible instead of hell/heaven.

Same could be said of go all warming, look how well we've done in mitigating that threat.

remember when that AI beat a turing test last year

lol

go all warming

Alternatively, global

With a purposefully constrained input range and clearly defined objective (win at chess, win at Jeopardy!, pass the Turing Test, navigate a highway) computing is capable of amazing things. Regardless of horsepower, a "superintelligence" that could possibly be a greater existential threat to humankind than climate change, nuclear war or an errant space rock would demand a cosmic leap in information processing techniques so that it doesn't *ever* throw an uncaught exception and fatally shit the bed. Bostrom's a head case.

Kind of like I was saying on the presidential race thread, these people get profiled and written about and people get drawn in because on one level it can be interesting to listen to a sufficiently intelligent nutjob explain their rationale for moving to cloud cuckoo country, but on another level I think writers of these types of pieces (not to mention their conde nast taskmasters, and their readers) are completely sick and tired of climate science, there's no news other than "it's not looking good" and readers are frankly bored by it. So space tycoons and futurist lunatics are great for filling up 17 pages in a magazine. It's not that nobody cares about what's actually most likely going to kill us, we just all have fatigue and need distractions, and a cat like Bostrom fits nicely into the But What If? feature category.

thanks for the new DN there

Had my suspicions tbh

at the risk of being facile, computers aren't humans. which is to say, that when computers make mistakes, they are not the same kind of mistakes computers make. machine intelligence is first and foremost logical, so for instance you would never see a computer which supports donald trump. a computer might, on the other hand, award gaz coombes the mercury prize. a sentient machine also has a non-trivial chance of going all forbin project on us.

I was thinking about this (and having a conversation with someone else about it) today, and bear in mind I barely graduated high school, but:

• All machines are, at this point, reactive in nature. They require external input - stimulus/response. Hence "garbage in, garbage out." So true AI would have to be much more active than reactive, and that's a leap computers haven't made yet.

• Physical logistics are not on superAI's side. Let's say a computer gets smart enough, and active enough, that it wants to build a robot army and kill all humans. There are lots and lots of processes and steps along the way - like, say, mining ore and smelting steel to make the robot army - that can be interrupted. The whole "superAI runs the world" thing only works on a whiteboard. The physical world will intrude. (Right down to the point of "Hey, this computer's getting awfully mouthy - Joe, kick the plug out of the wall, will ya?")

the improvements in recent years have been about multiple cores on a chip, not making those cores run faster. That's harder to take advantage of.

Yeah, I have heard people say in seminars lately that we've built an entire theoretical apparatus on "design an algorithm to perform task X in the fewest number of operations" and that we're going to have to rethink everything to minimize number of TRANSMISSIONS rather than number of operations; operations are stupidly cheap now, but physically getting the results of those operations to interact with each other is the bottleneck (in time, cost, even heat.)

re physical infrastructure, I think the idea is that because all the electronics in the world are just a few years out from all being wirelessly connected to each other, the superintelligence would take control of our own infrastructure, and most importantly, all the Minuteman silos and SSBNs (so basically the Forbin Project crossed with Maximum Overdrive).

This discussion has reached a mass where it should probably take place on an AI thread, but of course, it never will. This typifies what separates ilxors from machine intelligence.

There are lots and lots of processes and steps along the way - like, say, mining ore and smelting steel to make the robot army - that can be interrupted.

doesn't really have to be that complicated. unlock the safeguards on biological weapons storage, say. even just shutting down the power grid would make modern society fall apart pretty quickly.

Why wouldn't that be a good thing tho? This hypothetical AI might have a point, is anyone abt to claim humanity's all that great?

http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/I-m-sorry-everyone-my-e-mail-account-got-hacked-last-night-by-some-alcoh-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i14088490_.htm

I want to start a pool to buy the biggest possible print of this for my house. And then my office. And then a spare in case one of the other ones gets damaged.

i think maybe ben lerner is v stupid ?

He wrote a bad article, and is apparently mind blown by the very idea that art objects are mediated.

The novel belongs to the genre of metafiction. The first-person narrator is a 33-year-old writer who lives in New York City. A successful novelist, he has recently been diagnosed with a heart condition that could prove fatal.[2] The book deals with love, art, city, illness, having children, and writing.

The first-person narrator of the novel, Adam Gordon, is an early 20s American poet participating in a prestigious fellowship in Madrid circa 2004. The stated goal of his fellowship is long narrative poem highlighting literature's role in the Spanish Civil War. Gordon, however, spends his time reading Tolstoy, smoking spliffs, and observing himself observing his surroundings.

adrian chen, new staff writer

so sweet

that piece he did on the woman who left the westboro Baptist church was dece (also was riding high on the "most popular" tab for a while) so makes a lot of sense

i was surprised he didn't get scooped up by somewhere after leaving gawker, guess he wanted to go freelance to beef up his cv before hitting the big leagues

it is possible that i am conflating New Writers with Existing Writers Recently Afforded Illustrated Masthead Avatars but they seem to have like ten, new, good writers, recently, for the blog.

Deeply moving piece:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/01/baby-doe

What do people make of the post-SFJ pop critics? I struggle with the same things I always did: a certain stiffness and need to overexplain every reference. They're all writing in roughly the same voice. I don't know why because Emily Nussbaum's TV criticism is vibrant and characterful, dropping in all kinds of jokes and allusions without feeling compelled to hold the reader's hand. They're all clearly good writers - this isn't a knock on the individuals - but I'd love to see a bit more swagger in that slot.

I may have missed it; surely the Tad Friend squash article needs to be addressed.

Actually, better to pretend it never happened, yah?

The New Yorker wouldn't be the New Yorker if it didn't print things like that and Adam Gopnik rambling about dogs.

I kinda loved the squash article but yea I get the criticism

similarly the mr money mustache dude in this weeks fits in the same realm and I want to see harm come to him tbqh

my younger brother is a die-hard mister money mustache disciple

i read that sentence, and in trying to parse it I feel as though I've had a stroke

Mister money mustache lives a couple blocks away from me -- he's in my neighborhood beer club! I haven't really talked to him about his theories, but reading that article was pretty weird.

My friend's new husband is into that whole scene and it's pretty inoffensive and anti-materialist from what I can tell. At least it's not get rich quick Internet marketing schemes or bullshit like that.
I can't relate because it's all grounded in knowing at 18 you want to major in something super boring to make a buck and be retired by your 30s - but for the people who can think that way from 18-22, good for them?

Yeah it doesn't seem inherently bad. Maybe annoying but not bad. The "guru" thing is funny, he's a pretty soft spoken guy in my experience.

Had no idea he had "followers" of any kind, just thought he had a successful blog.

What do people make of the post-SFJ pop critics? I struggle with the same things I always did: a certain stiffness and need to overexplain every reference. They're all writing in roughly the same voice. I don't know why because Emily Nussbaum's TV criticism is vibrant and characterful, dropping in all kinds of jokes and allusions without feeling compelled to hold the reader's hand. They're all clearly good writers - this isn't a knock on the individuals - but I'd love to see a bit more swagger in that slot.

― impossible raver (Re-Make/Re-Model), Friday, February 12, 2016 10:21 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You're not alone. Because I can't recall NYer pop critics pre-SFJ, everyone post SFJ sounds like SFJ. Sometimes I just pretend SFJ is ghostwriting for them.

I've thought Amanda Petrusich's stuff has been pretty great -- not sure if she's their "pop music" person though?

Sometimes I feel like the magazine really stretches to make A long form piece out of what doesn't really justify it. Reading the piece about the carries interest loophole and it's sort of interesting but it mostly just seems to be saying "carried interest loophole is bad. These guys are so rich. Carried interest loophole bad. "

I'm struggling to get into Jane Mayer's "Dark Money." I respect her work a lot, but I'm a quarter of the way in, maybe, and it's been less than illuminating, or at least relentlessly exactly what I expected. "You know this shadowy cabal of loosely associated assholes who came from money and have been using their wealth to undermine liberal causes and democracy in general? Well, um, yeah, that's what they've been doing." Should I keep going? I hate giving up on books, but it feels a little like, well, the aforementioned long piece that just goes on too long. Only, because it's a book, even longer.

there's admittedly not a whole lot of "story" to it, but subsequent chapters do at least focus on specific ideological battles and key turning points that give the narrative a little more steam, like ACA and climate change and the takeover of state legislatures.

I wish it was just a New Yorker article about one of those subjects. Maybe it was!

the gay talese motel owner/voyeur article is p interesting

"interesting", definitely.

but imo mainly o_O

it's fucking insane