The March of Technology

[deanb]

 

Not world changing stuff but pretty fucking damn neat.

[TheMightyEthan]

A computer program has finally beat a top player (the European champion) in Go.

 

http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/google-go-playing-computer-beats-pro-first-time-n505481

 

A computer first beat a top human player at chess in 1996, and a human last beat the top computer at chess in 2005.  I'll be interested to see how long it takes before Go-playing computers cross that gap.

[deanb]

Yeah this is quite a big leap because it isn't brute forcing a problem, which is the usual method we make computers work out a problem: throw a lot of CPUs at it.

 

This can work at chess cos you "just" calculate all the possible moves, and sift through them as each move is made, which in chess gets easier and easier as each move limits the amount of possible next moves.

 

Go is the opposite, it's a lot harder as the game goes on. Having a lot more positions doesn't help things either. So it's using pattern matching instead of just brute forcing all the moves.

 

Oh and this is somewhat bigger news in long run purely cos it's been a bit of a dickwaving PR contest between FB n Google yesterday (FB announced they're working on a Go AI, then Google announced there's already works pretty damn well). Google being that company that crawls through all the pages on the internet and Facebook being that crawls through all the people on the planet. Applying Go AI to their two databases can likely lead to interesting things (Google's tools are already becoming common place without folks even really noticing the gradual shift in the results you get, from the "Knowledge Box" in the right hand of searches, to direct answers and more recently "People also asked". The Auto-suggest is just dumb number crunching of what people already typed in, the "People also asked" is understanding what people are putting into Google, what they're asking for, and other queries it's related to that don't contain the exact same search terms.

[Thursday Next]

They sound pretty confident that they're already there. 5-0 vs EU champ. Eyes on world champ.

[TheMightyEthan]

@Dean: Yeah, I thought it was really interesting that they *think this computer plays Go more like how a human does, rather than the traditional computer method.

 

*Think because we don't actually understand much about how human brains process information.

[deanb]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35459054

 

UK scientists given approval for genetic modification of embryos to research miscarriage risks. Won't be implanted.

[TheMightyEthan]

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration the computers that run Google's self-driving cars will be considered the "driver" for federal vehicle regulations, not any of the occupants.

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-autos-selfdriving-exclusive-idUSKCN0VJ00H?utm_source=twitter

 

Current safety rules still require things like "steering wheels" and "brake pedals", so this doesn't give the go-ahead to Google's proposed cars with no possibility for human input, but it's a step in that direction.  Personally I feel like the utility of cars without any method of direct control by humans is going to be limited for quite some time anyway, and the real place to watch are cars that can be driven by a human or a computer.

 

There are also state regulations to consider, although it wouldn't surprise me if states end up following the federal lead with respect to this (though a few states have explicitly passed laws requiring that a human be ready and able to assume control at any moment).  If this approach does become the standard (which I think it should) the thought that comes to mind first for me given my profession is that if the computer is the driver then that means you can get drunk, get in your self driving car, tell it to take you home, and you aren't DUI because the computer is driving, not you.

[deanb]

Yeah it's jsut one of them things that kinda needed nailing down for this to progress. I think it's gonna come around pretty damn quick, bit of an avalanche.

 

And yeah, no drunk driving in a self-driving car. I imagine something in its place will pop up though, since even though you're not driving you're still gonna have to tell the car where to go. (But I imagine that's the same scenario as telling a taxi driver where to go while drunk).

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, I agree that's the right outcome, it's just the way the laws are written now it wasn't obviously how they would be applied.  For instance, in Kansas it's illegal to "operate" a motor vehicle while your blood alcohol level is over 0.08%, and without something specifically addressing it I could see whoever is directing the car to be considered to be "operating" it, even though they're not really driving it in the traditional sense.

 

Thankfully this seems to be one area where the law is actually doing fairly well at keeping up with the technology.

[deanb]

Probably cos car companies have a lot of cash. As do insurance companies (less crashes = less payouts), and also drink companies (no worry of DUI = maybe more folks likely to hit the bottle. If one guy in the party is the designated driver you're gonna be up by at least 20% increase of drinkers if they don't need to go teetotal for the night)

 

(The only guys losing out being taxi drivers, and eventually lorry drivers but the logistics firms will be pro-self driving lorries. That's a massive cut in your expenses).

 

"Back in my day we used to be the operators of cars" "You used to sit inside the control box and still navigate at 150mph. Did people die?" "Err not quite, and yeah all the time. Also we used to wind the windows down with a rotating handle. Also wars were fought by men. And we used to have entire swathes of land for growing animals called cows which we turned into burgers."

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, I've thought before about how our generations (probably grand-) children will be just blown away by how we used to drive cars ourselves, because it will seem so ludicrously dangerous.

 

My mom said she remembers when she was a kid a few of her friends still had party line telephones (one phone line shared between multiple houses), which is super weird to me, and probably exactly how my kids will feel about the fact that I remember when each household had just one phone line shared for everyone who lived there.  Sometimes two if you were fancy and had a teenager or didn't want to be constantly kicked off the internet.

[deanb]

Before they revealed they were working on a self-driving car (though given the advance of things I'd say in secret they were working on the cars at the time), Schmidt had said it was a fluke of history that the car was invented before the computer. Sure it wouldn't have all the fancy GPS n optical sensor tech we have now, but a self-driving car would be fairly doable assuming you built the roads from the ground up based on it (think scaletrix style roads, markers on road side for your car to interact with. It'd be doable. And hey, if Babbage had kicked off when he did then computers might be even further along than they were).

 

It'll be as insane to our grandkids as the concept of coal mining is to us.

 

My mum is all like "when we were kids we didn't have smartphones and the internet, we'd go outside and play" and myself n siblings look at her and go "you do remember that smartphones only really became a thing when we were heading into college, and we didn't get interent until Dean was 13. What do you think /we/ did as kids?".

Also oh god I remember the days of not being able to be on the net and the phone at the same time. Oh the magical black slab that has so enamoured us all.

[Mal]

I can't help but feel that it'll be a mixture of self driving and driven cars with drivers being a sizable minority until the end of time. Might be the old person in me talking though. With that said: Are you all saying that I'll eventually have to pay extra for the privilege to drive off road due to the need for manual controls? God, what a weird gripe about the future...

[deanb]

Yeah, I imagine it'll be like the experience days where you go n drive a Ferrari around a track or whatever (I assume you have them in America).

 

"Come drive a manual car! Shift gears, turn the wheel, push the pedals with your feet. Experience the thrillride of yesteryear with a drive in a Fiat Punto!"

[Mr. GOH!]

"My mom said she remembers when she was a kid a few of her friends still had party line telephones (one phone line shared between multiple houses), which is super weird to me, and probably exactly how my kids will feel about the fact that I remember when each household had just one phone line shared for everyone who lived there.  Sometimes two if you were fancy and had a teenager or didn't want to be constantly kicked off the internet."

 

More like they'll think it's weird that a phone number is tied to a specific location. I mean, I'm 34 and I think it's anachronistic and fussy to have location-based phone numbers. 

 

Edit: driverless self-driving cars will be big in cities as cabs and private car services. Liability for accidents will be on the manufacturers'/programmers' heads, I'd imagine, rather than the driver's. I also imagine insurance policies for self-driving cars will one day be way cheaper than policies for human-driven cars.

Edited February 11, 2016 by Mr. GOH!

[MetalCaveman]

http://www.engadget.com/2016/02/16/5d-discs-can-store-data-until-well-after-the-sun-burns-out/

 

360TB of storage space that can survive 1000°C, and lasts for up to 13.8 billion years. \m/ \m/

[Thursday Next]

What's the read/write speed? Is it just practical for archiving? Or is it viable for consumer use?

[TheMightyEthan]

Even if it's super slow now I'm sure it will improve, or something based off it will.

[MetalCaveman]

For now it seems to be just for archiving, but as Ethan said, it's likely that in the future it'll make its way to consumer hands.

 

[deanb]

Unlikely to hit consumer hands if it's an archiving medium. Most consumers don't need archives for that long (or they actually do, but generally don't care) so the market is pretty small. Most archiving formats, such as tapes, are generally business use only. Blu-Ray was the last archiving format consumers got and that totally didn't take off, most still use DVDs for a whopping 4GB of space.

[TheMightyEthan]

This specific medium might not, but given the density of storage it offers something based on related principles almost certainly will, unless something denser/cheaper is discovered first.

[Thursday Next]

None of that answers what the read/write speed is. I've dropped a message on their G+ account. Hopefully someone there is monitoring it and can answer.

 

Edit: There you go then...Too slow for practical volume use at this time. We have demonstrated amazing stability and life in this technology our next step is to improve the read and write rates and develop equipment on which to read and write these outside of the lab environment. For that we need expert advice from the manufacturing sector/potential industrial partners to take this forward.

 

https://plus.google.com/u/0/116859702774108641923/posts/XvvHu2zR3NT

Edited February 19, 2016 by Thursday Next

[MetalCaveman]

[TheMightyEthan]

When the uprising comes that dude with the stick is going to be the first to die.

 

[deanb]

Yeah I'd seen mention of it floating around but didn't get to watch the video til lunch and was surprised at the abuse giving them. They used to kick the dog too (which has been discontinued )