'Moore's Revenge' is upon us and will make the world weird

The Register ^ | 4 June 2018 | Mark Pesce

[miniTAX]

“There was a time when chess playing software was considered an example of artificial intelligence.”

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Chess playing softwares were just brute force iteration, I have programmed them on various microprocessors. No programmer would call them “artificial intelligence”, only ignorant journalist and pseudo-expert do that. Deep Blue, which beat Kasparov, was a massive machine but there was no intelligence in it.

Artificial intelligence meaning is (or should be) quite simple and precise, it’s something involving a neural network which learns by itself from data inputs and involving no programming. A neural network can work by itself (after thousands of tries & error) to control actuators to hold a stick by the base and keep it from falling, no programming is involved.
Most of time, the real-life implementation is the equivalent of some hundreds or thousands neurons adjusting a coefficient or two, eg gains in a PID regulator, all the rest is classic software. So it still remains crude and dumb (human brains have billions of billions neurons) but has been conflated to something extra intelligent or powerfull or whatever by the marketing people.

[kosciusko51]

... but why the hell do I need my thermostat accessible via the internet?

So that the electric company can regulate your home temperature when it deems necessary.

[Still Thinking]

However, she did not know the tax rate for the area, nor did she know how to calculate the tax rate. Luckily, my two items was $2.00, + tax. She asked for $3.00. I told her no, it’s $2.17, because the tax rate is .0825, then taught her, in the drive through, to multiple the total of the bill by 1.0825 and that’s how much the customers will owe.

There's a very similar scene in Daniel Suarez' novel Freedom, where the main character is getting overcharged at a fast food place, and no one including the manager, believes him or understands the math well enough to check for him. They keep insisting he's forgetting about the sales tax when they're charging him like double the pre-tax price for the food, and keep pointing to the register as if it's word is holy writ. He later comments to his fellow traveler that they trust the register so implicitly that he imagines the cashier pulling out a gun and saying "I'm sorry, it says here I have to kill you!".

[Still Thinking]

I wish them good luck with that.

[zeugma]

So that the electric company can regulate your home temperature when it deems necessary.

Your house is too comfortable peasant!

[Calvinist_Dark_Lord]

Oddly enough, i bet it would be difficult to hack in today’s world.

NOBODY would think of monitoring the ham frequencies today in order to listen in to phone conversations.

i can remember getting one of the first ever computer viruses. It was taken care of by simply booting into DOS by using a floppy, and restoring the Memory boot record.

i do miss those days of discovery. It seems to be that the time we had available to us is gone forever with the next glance at the cell phone. It makes one understand the appeal of becoming a Luddite.

BTW, the first computer i ever messed with was an old DEC PDP-8. It didn’t even have a monitor. Input/Output was a dummy terminal with tractor fed paper. It even had an old card reader system for entering programmes. Remember DEC tape?

[GGpaX4DumpedTea]

A few years later, I saw a cash register in McDonalds that had pictures instead of numbers on the keys and I thought "We're on our way".

Apple computers got a big boost because they used icons.

Those of us who knew how to use DOS didn't need the icons. I have rebelled against Apple in every way. Will not use anything Apple.

Saves me money too...everything Apple costs more.

[AFPhys]

Much artificial intelligence in the future will deserve to be referred to as "artificial stupidity".

Unfortunately, this is going to be very true.