Four short links: 27 August 2018
Notebook Future, Arduino CLI, Robot Mind, and Conscious Computers
- Lessons from JupyterCon (Will Crichton) — reactive notebooks are the future, Jupyter is the new Bash, and data science is a gateway drug. I love that line, “Jupyter is the new Bash”…it’s a form of the repl loop that takes the p seriously. For some balance, see I Don’t Like Notebooks.
- Arduino CLI — an all-in-one solution that provides builder, boards/library manager, uploader, discovery, and many other tools needed to use any Arduino-compatible board and platforms.
- How to Make a Robot Use Theory of Mind (SciAm) — A simulation-based approach relies on a pre-programmed internal model instead. Winfield describes the simulation theory of mind system as using a “consequence engine.” In other words, a robot equipped with the system can answer simple “what if” questions about potential actions. If it simulates turning left, it might, for instance, detect that it would bump into a nearby wall. To make this prediction possible, the robots are pre-programmed with a basic grasp of physics so that they understand what happens when objects collide. Winfield describes his robots as having a little bit of “common sense.”
- Hackable Humans and Digital Dictators — There is absolutely no indication that AI and computers are anywhere on the road to becoming conscious. More people saying this, please.
