Andrei Zisu

Autonomous vehicles are an interesting piece of technology nowadays. However, car manufacturers are discovering it's non-trivial to move beyond SAE level 2 autonomy. Level 2 autonomy means the driver gives control to the on-board computer but needs to permanently monitor the car's operation and be ready to take control. Even so, most car manufacturers nowadays are not implementing full level 2, but they are limiting the operational design domain (ODD) of this functionality to a few known easy cases (highway traffic mostly). The AI community is finding that the path to level 3, 4 and ultimately 5 is non-trivial.

The paper below find some worrying results. Drivers are affected by mode confusion (not being aware what is mode of operation is the car in right now), they lose situational awareness completely (they become disengage from the task of monitoring), and they place inappropriate levels of trust into the capability of the system.

I've always said that what Tesla is doing with their Autopilot is irresponsible. This is the proof.

"With this in mind the authors of this paper argue that a shift in attitudeis required to ensure that the role of the driver within automateddriving systems is protected. Tesla, along with other vehicle manu-facturers, have designed vehicles that can essentially drive themselvesmost of the time but still require a human driver to monitor its per-formance and intervene when necessary. This design ethos has led to asituation in which humans are bound to fail and so “driver error” be-comes an inevitable outcome (Stanton and Baber, 2002). Systems de-signers have created an impossible task (Stanton, 2015) – one that re-quires the driver to remain vigilant for extended periods. The literatureopenly reports that humans are poor at doing this (e.g. Molloy andParasuraman, 1996). With this in mind, whilst strategies to help im-prove Level 2 systems could be explored, it seems more appropriate atthis time to accept that the DD and DND roles are the only two viableoptions that can fully protect the role of the human within automateddriving systems."

Since the implants were small, the amount of code they contained was small as well. But they were capable of doing two very important things: telling the device to communicate with one of several anonymous computers elsewhere on the internet that were loaded with more complex code; and preparing the device’s operating system to accept this new code. The illicit chips could do all this because they were connected to the baseboard management controller, a kind of superchip that administrators use to remotely log in to problematic servers, giving them access to the most sensitive code even on machines that have crashed or are turned off.

If wages are persistently lagging behind productivity, workers do not receive their fair share of the produced wealth. This is not only deeply unjust but also economically detrimental, as growth remains behind its potential. Labour income remains the main source of income for households and private consumption makes up the largest part of aggregate demand. Real wages falling behind productivity growth means that wage incomes do not grow and consequently consumption does not grow. This depresses demand prospects which also determine investment. Depressed wages do not provide incentive for investments in technology and thus can hamper future productivity growth. For transformation economies low wage trap can be a barrier for a long term catching up process. Europe`s competitiveness should not be based on low wages.

How to make air conditioning more sustainable

To put it bluntly, Europe has saddled itself with an intellectually vacuous decision that will hobble its agricultural output for decades.

This is amazing

“Teenagers want an outlet to express their opinions with the same kind of conviction that they generally might not be able to express at home or other parts of their life,” said Hal, a 17-year-old admin on

Implicații posibile pentru România

This hidden reserve of workers is bigger than economists thought, Mr. Talavera said. But in Europe it appears to have finally been exhausted. “That is one of the reasons you haven’t seen wage growth picking up substantially,” he said.

If he’s right, that should mean that wages will continue to rise.

The fact that low wage growth has afflicted virtually every wealthy country, though, suggests that there are deeper forces at work that are not yet fully understood.

Kissinger on AI

Third, that AI may reach intended goals, but be unable to explain the rationale for its conclusions. In certain fields—pattern recognition, big-data analysis, gaming—AI’s capacities already may exceed those of humans. If its computational power continues to compound rapidly, AI may soon be able to optimize situations in ways that are at least marginally different, and probably significantly different, from how humans would optimize them. But at that point, will AI be able to explain, in a way that humans can understand, why its actions are optimal? Or will AI’s decision making surpass the explanatory powers of human language and reason? Through all human history, civilizations have created ways to explain the world around them—in the Middle Ages, religion; in the Enlightenment, reason; in the 19th century, history; in the 20th century, ideology. The most difficult yet important question about the world into which we are headed is this: What will become of human consciousness if its own explanatory power is surpassed by AI, and societies are no longer able to interpret the world they inhabit in terms that are meaningful to them?

Interesting argument although not sure I fully agree

Starea educației în 2018. Mulțumim guvernanților din ultimii 29 ani.