Artificial General Intelligence - when?

 According to the Register, Gartner, a respected technological research and consulting firm, has warned about AGI expectations:

"Gartner is warning that any prospect of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is at least 10 years away and perhaps not certain to ever arrive. It might not even be a worthwhile pursuit, the analyst says."

Some great science fiction

 

"The Sundering" series by D Rae Price is a really good read. It achieves the difficult goal of being very engaging, scientifically interesting and ethically satisfying. 

It can be found on Amazon/Kindle here.

What is Kindle?

 This is a brief introduction to Kindle.

Kindle is a service by Amazon which allows ebooks to be created and sold. Usually they cost much less than a printed version and some are free. And there is no shipping or mail charge. They can be downloaded immediately to an app and read on your phone or read online. The Kindle app can be found in the usual places.

Paying for a ebook requires a bank card (VISA, Mastercard etc) unless it is free. The minimum cost for an ebook is $0.99 but $3-$10 is common. 

It is estimated that there are about 9 million ebooks on Kindle.

To buy an ebook you will need to create an Amazon account if you don't have one.

Once you are set up, to get an ebook you login to Amazon, find the book in the Kindle store and click the button to buy. When you go into the app you will find the ebook in your library.

Links

Amazon Kindle home page

Kindle app for Android

Windows needs a grandfather mode

 I have an elderly friend who is a daily user of the internet. Currently he uses a Windows 10 laptop. 

However he has memory problems and his eyesight is imperfect. He finds the experience with Windows very frustrating at times.

His problems I would try to summarise as follows:

- unwanted and unexpected changes in the user interface

- complicated login procedure with PIN, passwords etc

- unresponsive computer due to updates being processed

- text being too small including that of error messages

- too many unwanted features

- on booting up the computer appears ready but is not

He finds it very confusing when unexpected things happen. He needs things too be simple, straight forward and the interface to stay the same from year to year.

New asphalt plant to help recycling

According to reports (Newsroom.gy) a new, larger, asphalt plant is shortly to begin operations. It should have the capability of using recycled tyres and plastic in the mix.

"When completed the new Asphalt Plant will be able to produce 160 tonnes of material per hour, reduce road construction costs and produce better roads.
It was noted that the equipment will also use plastic bags, bottles and used tyres to pave roads."

This seems a significant step in promoting recycling in Guyana.

So what's going on with AI (Artificial Intelligence)?

There have been a number of scare stories about AI recently. This article from Hackaday (a techie news site) attempts to put it into perspective:

"AI techniques include matching natural language to predefined templates. That’s really all these devices are doing today. Granted the neural nets that allow for great speech recognition and reproduction are impressive. But they aren’t true intelligence nor are they even necessarily direct analogs of a human brain."

Hydro-power for Guyana?

A panel discussion on the topic was recently held, sponsored by the EU and occasioned by the visit of a delegation in regarding preparations for the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, COP21.

Reports were seen at Demerara Waves and Guyana Times.

The experts on the panel differed regarding the urgency of using hydro-power but were agreed on the need to do so.

It seems to me that hydro-power is a resource we absolutely must make use of whether multiple small installations or several large ones. It should have been done decades ago - a start was made but not followed up. It takes years for any such project to be planned, funded and built. It is not rocket science and there is abundant expertise available. We need to get over our political infighting, work together and do some long-term planning.

In the short-term we need to continue expanding the use of other alternatives such as bio-fuel and solar.

Too much tech for children?

According to an opinion piece in the New York Times:

"More technology in the classroom has long been a policy-making panacea. But mounting evidence shows that showering students, especially those from struggling families, with networked devices will not shrink the class divide in education. If anything, it will widen it."

Is this too negative - may be. Be we really have to look at the research and not just accept the very effective and motivating promotional hype coming from big tech companies whose main priority is simply to sell their services and hardware.

Civilisation is advancing!

It seems that, despite the impression made by the media, the world is getting to be a better place. This very interesting report in Slate says:

"The only sound way to appraise the state of the world is to count. How many violent acts has the world seen compared with the number of opportunities? And is that number going up or down? As Bill Clinton likes to say, “Follow the trend lines, not the headlines.” We will see that the trend lines are more encouraging than a news junkie would guess."

After examining the statistics the report concludes:

"The world is not falling apart. The kinds of violence to which most people are vulnerable—homicide, rape, battering, child abuse—have been in steady decline in most of the world. Autocracy is giving way to democracy. Wars between states—by far the most destructive of all conflicts—are all but obsolete. The increase in the number and deadliness of civil wars since 2010 is circumscribed, puny in comparison with the decline that preceded it, and unlikely to escalate."

What about fusion energy?

So may be fusion can rescue us? I remember hearing about this in my teens (some 50 years ago). A solution always seems to be 20 years away. I expect this will eventually solve the energy problem but NOT in time to stop global warming. At NextBigFuture there is valuable review of the state of play of this important and promising but complicated and very expensive technology.

A historical note - Guyana tramways

Here is a page describing something which most of us know little about - tramways in Guyana or rather, British Guiana.
"In 1848 the British built a railroad, 5 miles long, from Georgetown to Plaisance, which was the first railroad on the South American continent...
A street railway began carrying passengers in Georgetown in 1877."
Thanks to Mr Allen Morrison.

E-Governance Data Centre started

According to an article by GINA, apparently based on information provided by Project Coordinator Mr. Alexei Ramotar, worked has started on construction of this centre. The core of the data centre will be housed in 3 containers which house power, cooling and servers. This allows relocation in the event of flooding or other disaster. Using special containers is not unusual for a modern data centre.

The centre will be hooked up to the optical fibre cable coming from Brazil. Cables will also connect it to government offices.

Mention is also made of 55 sites around the country and of a 4G network. Presumably these will be the 4G cell towers. True 4G provides a faster mobile data service than is available nationally at present and often it replaces DSL for data service and is used on laptops. This service may tie in to the OLPF project and to internet access for schools but this is not mentioned in the article. There will be many bandwidth and security issues to resolve as the project unfolds but it holds much promise.

Of particular interest to me is mention of open source software: "... an electronic library will be created utilising open software."

Other links
Demerara waves article

A curiosity on Mars

A recent major science event has been the successful arrival and spectacular landing on Mars of the NASA rover Curiosity. This rover will be busy on Mars for years to come and developments are eagerly anticipated. See BBC reports here and here.

While not designed to detect life directly I would expect it to find some positive indications of ancient or recent life or even just of suitable environmental conditions. It has recently been found that lichen can survive under Martian conditions and the same may be true of bacteria.

Research in Natural Sciences

Recently the University of Guyana held what has happily become a valuable annual event - Research Day 2012. A wide range of papers were listed for presentation including the following papers in the natural sciences:

Determination of nitrate anion in waste water from nine selected areas of coastal Guyana via a spectrophotometric method - Raymond Jagessar

Recharge estimation & groundwater modeling of the coastal plain in Guyana - Shanomae Eastman

Harmonics and power quality issues associated with compact fluorescent lamps - Jomo N Gill

Hopefully, with some encouragement, some of the papers will become available on-line later.

Doing some searching for more such research done in Guyana did not turn up much but what was found is listed below. If more is found later another post will be made. Most of what research has been done over the years is not on-line.

Lenandlar Singh - personal website

University of Guyana Library - this is a recent and welcome development but in time this should contain substantial material

Centre for the Study of Biological Diversity - publications, a few on research in Guyana

The University of the West Indies - Barbados. Some faculties have relevant material.

Future Scenarios for Guyana

A thought-provoking 2-day workshop was held recently (May 8 and 9) as a part of the EC-funded COBRA project. Some 30 participants spent the two days developing scenarios for Guyana in 2030 taking into account such factors (drivers) as climate change, mining and economic development. Those present included staff from a variety of government agencies, Iwokrama and indigenous communities. Many of the groups considered policies and instutional framework as important determining factors in future development while climate was assumed to be inevitable. More about this will appear in due course on the COBRA website.

A bit about COBRA:

"Community Owned Best practice for sustainable Resource Adaptive management in the Guiana Shield, South America (COBRA)"

"The COBRA Project brings together key South American and European Civil Society Organisations that have extensive experience in enabling and disseminating grassroots solutions to complex problems in the Guiana Shield region... "

"Our mission is to find ways to integrate community solutions within policies addressing escalating social, economic and environmental crises, through accessible information and communication technologies."

Broadband and GDP

A study conducted by Ericsson, Arthur D. Little and Chalmers University of Technology in OECD countries concluded that "increased broadband speed contributes significantly to economic growth". According to a report:

"A new report... quantifies the isolated impact of broadband speed, showing that doubling the broadband speed for an economy increases GDP by 0.3%."

"This growth stems from a combination of direct, indirect and induced effects. Direct and indirect effects provide a short to medium term stimulus to the economy. The induced effect, which includes the creation of new services and businesses, is the most sustainable dimension and could represent as much as one third of the mentioned GDP growth."

"These results have been derived using rigorous scientific methods where the direction of causality, data quality and significance levels have been appropriately tested..."

It is good to note that this is not just a correlation but that causality was considered too.

Also a similar report last year found "that for every 10 percentage point increase in broadband penetration GDP increases by 1 percent."

It would seem likely that recent economic growth in Guyana may be due, in some part, to recent progress in broadband penetration due to the roll-out of DSL by GTT, limited increases in broadband speed and probably rapid increases in cell phone penetration.

A sustainable future?

A BBC news item on a recently released UN report entitled "Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing " from the UN High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability reviews the report in some detail. Summarising it comments:

"Growing inequality, environmental decline and "teetering" economies mean the world must change the way it does business, a UN report concludes."

There are many recommendations (56), many of which are straight forward. Here are a few that stood out to the writer and looked relevant to us:

• "Governments should accelerate the implementation of commitments to advance gender equality and women’s rights, including through the repeal of discriminatory laws and removal of formal barriers, the reform of institutions and the development and adoption of innovative measures to address informal and cultural practices that act as barriers.
• Government and non-governmental entities should promote the concept of sustainable development and sustainable consumption, and these should be integrated into curricula of primary and secondary education.
• Governments should work with appropriate stakeholders to provide citizens, especially those in remote areas, with access to technologies, including universal telecommunications and broadband networks, by 2025.
• Measures should be taken to strengthen the interface between policymaking and science in order to facilitate informed political decision-making on sustainable development issues. Representatives of the scientific community could be included as members or advisers in relevant national or local bodies dealing with sustainable development issues."

And another noteworthy report, reported in a Wired news item, is the report "Towards a Circular Economy" by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

According to the news item:

"As the report states: "The essence of the circular economy lies in designing goods to facilitate disassembly and re-use, and structuring business models so manufacturers can reap rewards from collecting and refurbishing, remanufacturing, or redistributing products they make.""

Makes sooo much sense.

Nanotechnology

This is a rarely-heard-of topic here in Guyana but one that science and technology students and practitioners need to have some awareness of since we will soon be using products of nanotechnology (if we are not already) or even using the technology directly. I made reference to it back in 2009.

What is nanotechnology? This technology is about manipulating matter at the nanometer scale (less than a thousandth of a millimetre). Often it involves manipulating individual atoms or molecules. For more see here. It has huge areas of application, for example the performance of rechargable batteries and solar cells can be greatly improved and materials made 10 or 100 times stronger.

A recent video by Dr Drexler at Oxford discusses the impact of this technology

"In a talk entitled “Exploring a Timeless Landscape: Physical Law and the Future of Nanotechnology”, pioneering nanotechnology researcher Dr. Drexler invited the audience to consider the intriguing possibility of nano-level manufacture of macro-level products. Such a process, if achieved, would be the next great revolution in the material basis of civilization, offering high-performance components, materials or systems and accelerated productivity."

The talk is about an hour and covers various aspects of the historical development of technology before moving on to nanotechnology. Very good.

Renewable energy - not so renewable?

An interesting article from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists pointing out that no energy source is entirely renewable - there is always a cost for extracting and utilising the energy, sometimes quite significant.

"Renewable energy sounds so much more natural and believable than a perpetual-motion machine, but there's one big problem: Unless you're planning to live without electricity and motorized transportation, you need more than just wind, water, sunlight, and plants for energy. You need raw materials, real estate, and other things that will run out one day. You need stuff that has to be mined, drilled, transported, and bulldozed -- not simply harvested or farmed."

As these costs change with new technologies, constant re-assessment and balancing of pro and cons needs to be standard procedure.

And, of course, reduced and more efficient energy use is always a wise option.

3D printing

Have you heard of this? Most people have not but it is an exciting area of technology destined to have a major impact.
According to one definition it is "a form of additive manufacturing technology where a three dimensional object is created by laying down successive layers of material".
Basically you take a digital file (e.g. from an email), give it to the 3D printer and it recreates an object from scratch out of a polymer.
Here is an article on it from Wikipedia.