I’ve pulled together the links for the online versions of everything that I have written for IEEE Spectrum since 2008. My favorite is a sonnet, very much based on Shakespeare’s most famous one, but mine starts out Shall I compare thee to creatures of God? And I have to love that picture of me the editors dug up from … Continue reading My IEEE Spectrum Columns and Articles

In surveys of AI “experts” on when we are going to get to human level intelligence in our AI systems, I am usually an outlier, predicting it will take ten or twenty times longer than the second most pessimistic person surveyed. Others have a hard time believing that it is not right around the corner … Continue reading An Analogy For The State Of AI

This post is about how much things can change in the world over a lifetime. I’m going to restrict my attention to science, though there are many parallels in technology, human rights, and social justice. I was born in late 1954 so I am 65 years old. I figure I have another 30 years, with … Continue reading How Much Things Can Change

This blog is not peer reviewed at all.  I write it, I put it out there, and people read it or not. It is my little megaphone that I alone control. But I don’t think anyone, or at least I hope that no-one, thinks that I am publishing scientific papers here.  They are my opinion … Continue reading Peer Review

Again and again in human history networks spanning physical geography have both enabled and been enabled by the very same innovations. Networks are the catalysts for the innovations and the innovations are the catalysts for the networks. This is autocatalysis at human civilization scale. The Roman empire brought for people within its expanding borders long distance … Continue reading What Networks Will Co-Evolve With AI and Robotics?

[Phillip Alvelda is an old friend from MIT, and CEO of Brainworks.] Pondering how to close what seems to be a rapidly widening empathy gap here in the U.S. and globally. I used to just be resigned to the fact that many of my white friends who had never felt, or experienced discrimination directed at … Continue reading Guest Post by Phillip Alvelda: Pondering the Empathy Gap

A very recent article follows in the footsteps of many others talking about how the promise of autonomous cars on roads is a little further off than many pundits have been predicting for the last few years. Readers of this blog will know that I have been saying this for over two years now. Such skepticism is … Continue reading AGI Has Been Delayed

This last week has seen an MIT Technology Review story about a startup company, Nectome1, that is developing a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”. The idea is that when you are ready, perhaps when you are terminally ill, you get connected to a heart-lung machine and then, under anesthesia, you get injected with chemicals that … Continue reading Time Traveling Refugees

There are a lot of fears that technology of various sorts is going to reduce the need for human labor to a point where we may need to provide universal basic income, reduce the work week radically, and/or have mass unemployment. I have a different take on where things are headed. I think we are … Continue reading The Productivity Gain: Where Is It Coming From And Where Is It Going To?

Note: This short post is intended as a counterpoint to some claims that are being made about the need to control AI research. I don’t directly refer to those claims. You can figure it out.  When humans next land on the Moon it will be with the help of many, many, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning … Continue reading AI/ML Is Not Uniquely Powerful Enough To Need Controlling