Post Reply 
Who wrote the lines of poetry "quoted" by Lincoln at the Soldiers' Home?
05-31-2018, 12:42 PM
Post: #17
RE: Who wrote the lines of poetry "quoted" by Lincoln at the Soldiers' Home?
(03-18-2016 02:13 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  The New York Times published a story today (March 18) on the NCAA basketball tournament and the continuing academic demands placed on some of these student-athletes. The story is entitled “For Players, Classes Don’t End Just Because the Games Begin” and is written by Juliet Macur. It reads, in part, as it is relevant to this posting thread:

Matt Ryan, a freshman forward for Notre Dame, has Italian to practice and maybe a lecture or two to watch online. Then there’s that big project due Wednesday in his anthropology class called Hacking Life: From Cyber Crime to Human Creativity; for that, Ryan must write a dozen or so pages on how artificial intelligence applies to combat.

. . . .

In case the connection of the NYTimes story to this thread is missed: “Ryan must write a dozen or so pages on how artificial intelligence applies to combat.”

I would like to see what this student-athlete writes on the subject and if he makes any reference to President Lincoln and his advocacy role in the creation and building of the Monitor in response to the threat of the Merrimac by the Rebels.

The internal debate over Maven, viewed by both supporters and opponents as opening the door to much bigger defense contracts, generated a petition signed by about 4,000 [Google] employees who demanded “a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.”

Fei-Fei Li is among the brightest stars in the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence, somehow managing to hold down two demanding jobs simultaneously: head of Stanford University’s A.I. lab and chief scientist for A.I. at Google Cloud, one of the search giant’s most promising enterprises.

Yet last September, when nervous company officials discussed how to speak publicly about Google’s first major A.I. contract with the Pentagon, Dr. Li strongly advised shunning those two potent letters.

“Avoid at ALL COSTS any mention or implication of AI,” she wrote in an email to colleagues reviewed by The New York Times. “Weaponized AI is probably one of the most sensitized topics of AI — if not THE most. This is red meat to the media to find all ways to damage Google.”

Dr. Li’s concern about the implications of [AI] military contracts for Google has proved prescient.

Source: NYTimes story May 31, 2018 - How a Pentagon Contract Became an Identity Crisis for Google

The Monitor was built at Lincoln's direction to counter the military technology of the Merrimack (CSS Virginia).

The United States, at the behest of Einstein and other noted scientists, raced to create the atomic bomb before Germany was able to do so.

Now, how do you stop the race to build warfare technology based on artificial intelligence? And, is there really a choice? Lincoln knew that there was no choice. Einstein knew that there was no choice.

"So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history." -- Plutarch
Find all posts by this user
Quote this message in a reply
Post Reply 


Messages In This Thread
RE: Who wrote the lines of poetry "quoted" by Lincoln at the Soldiers' Home? - David Lockmiller - 05-31-2018 12:42 PM

Forum Jump:


User(s) browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)