Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for February 22, 2020

Garry Kasparov looks at the growth of artificial intelligence after his 1997 chess loss to IBM's Deep Blue; A TED talk argues that people should own their digital data; Sweden is testing a government-backed digital currency, the e-krona; Solving the so-called Molyneux's Problem, bumblebees can transfer recognition of a shape from touch to sight; and a Steem essay discusses alkanes, petroleum octane, engine knocking and pollution

Links and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines. I filter them so you don't have to.

First posted on my Steem blog: SteemIt, SteemPeak^*, StemGeeks.

1. Defeated Chess Champ Garry Kasparov Has Made Peace With AI - In this article, Wired magazine interviews the celebrity chess player, Garry Kasparov. The article suggests that Kasparov, who dominated chess in the '80s and '90s, may be the best human chess player in history, but he is best known for losing a match to IBM's Deep Blue in 1997. In the interview, Kasparov refers to himself as the "first knowledge worker whose job was threatened by a computer", but also says that in the long run he thinks it is a good thing. Artificial intelligence (AI), he says, is going to continue advancing because progress is unstoppable, but he thinks that artificial general intelligence (AGI) will remain out of reach for the foreseeable future. He also views AI as a tool, with benefits and drawbacks, suggesting that it's both pointless and counterproductive to try to completely stop it. He also argues that the focus on AI ethics is misguided, because ethical problems arise from humans, not the machines that operate under our control. Finally, he says that the future of work is a combination of human and machine effort, where humans act as a sort of a shepherd that's directing their flock of algorithms to the problems that need to be solved. A final note, is that the article mentions an AI system that I had been unaware of, AlphaZero which taught itself to play chess by studying games, instead of following rules that were given by a programmer. In this way, it has uncovered new methods that have even surprised chess grand masters.


2. Why you should get paid for your data | Jennifer Zhu Scott - This TED talk by Jennifer Zhu Scott was posted in December of 2019, and it came across the site's RSS feed on February 20. Saying that in today's data economy "Somebody else owns everything, but we own nothing.", the speaker begins by comparing today's data ownership landscape to her childhood in China, when everyone had a job, but everyone was poor. Adding to that, she says that today's Internet users are merely uncompensated "raw materials" for today's tech companies. In China, she says that "private ownership was a form of Liberty we (people in China) didn't have before." Similarly, she says that the solution to abuse of data by governments and the big-tech firms is to ensure that people own their own data. The legal definition of ownership that she gives is:

   when you can possess, use, gift, pass on, destroy or trade it or sell your asset at a price accepted by you.

   If individuals own their own data, she says, individuals would be empowered to participate in many different agreements that correspond to each person's highly nuanced privacy preferences. As an example of progress in this direction, she suggests the Brave Browser and the DuckDuckGo search engine. (Personally, I have been using Verizon's OneSearch through PreSearch for a month or two, since the site launched.)


3. Sweden is now testing its digital version of cash, the e-krona - Because almost everyone in Sweden is using a mobile payment application called, Swish, forecasters have predicted that retailers could begin declining to accept cash by 2023. This, in turn, raises concerns about a loss of confidence in the country's government issued currency, the krona. As a result, the country's central bank - the Riksbank - has announced a one year program testing the new e-krona digital currency. According to the announcement, Accenture participated in the development and the currency is based upon a blockchain-like distributed ledger technology. The specifics of the design are not included in the announcement.


4. Bumblebees Solve a 17th-Century Psychological Puzzle - Researchers created an experiment that enabled bumblebees to solve, Molyneux's Problem, first proposed in a letter from William Molyneux to John Locke, the question was a thought experiment that was posed around 1689, and it asked whether people who were blind from birth would be able to recognize shapes if they were suddenly able to see. In recent times, human experiments have shown that - in that situation - some learning is necessary, but not as much learning as it takes to start from scratch. In the latest experiments, researchers examined the question from the perspective of bees. By exposing bees in the light to shapes that they could see but not touch, and in the dark to shapes that they could touch but not see, and issuing a reward of sugary syrup for recognizing shapes, the researchers determined that bees are able to recognize shapes by both sight and by touch. They also found that bees that were trained to recognize a shape by site could also recognize it by touch, when they were switched to the dark/touch scenario. The reverse was also true, bees that learned a shape by touch would also recognize it by sight.


5. Steem @empressteemah: ALKANES, THE CAR ENGINE AND ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION #2 - In this second post on the topic of Alkanes (saturated hydrocarbons), the author discusses, "octane number of a petrol blend, blending an unleaded petrol, the greenhouse effect from pollution and some other interesting topics relating to alkane and atmospheric pollution." With regards to the octane number of a petroleum blend, the article points out that the reason that octane is important has to do with knocking in the engine, which can damage the pistons. The octane number is established by benchmarking it against a blend of 2,2,4-trimethylpentane and heptane. For example, if a blend knocks at the same level as a blend with 10% heptane, that is a 90-octane blend. Moving on, the article tells us that starting in the 1920s, it was realized that adding a small amount of lead to a blend would increase its octane, but the practice has now been banned in all but two countries because exposure to lead causes cognitive and other health problems in people and animals, and also because it reduces the effectiveness of catalytic converters, which are vital for reducing pollution. Next, the article tells us four other ways that can be used to raise the octane without using lead. Finally, the article closes with discussion of Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) emissions, pollution, and the greenhouse effect. (A 10% beneficiary setting has been applied to this post for @empressteemah.)

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