AIs Won’t Command Us to Obey. They Will Seduce Us.

(FEE) – I just finished listening to Stephen Wolfram’s  three-part podcast titled “The Future of AI and Civilization.” If you have any interest in Artificial Intelligence and are not familiar with Wolfram’s work, you should look into it. Genius polymath, creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language, the author of A New Kind of Science, and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, Wolfram is probably the smartest guy I’ve ever met. The Slow Seduction What makes his stream-of-consciousness podcast so fascinating is listening to Wolfram think out loud about where…

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Five Peculiar Soviet Cartoons for the Holidays

(EAN) – Since it’s that time of year again, readers with (or without) an interest in the Soviet Union could use recommendations for Soviet cartoons to watch over the holidays that are the antithesis of the usual Santa-Claus fare. An outlet for entertainment, propaganda, social commentary and artistic expression, animation was a huge business in the USSR. Arguably, animated films can tell more about the Soviet Union than some history books. Many of them continue to exert vast cultural influence to this day. The list below attempts to look beyond…

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US Foreign Aid: Bad for America, Bad for the World

(Garrison) – Ahead of a vote in the United Nations’ General Assembly on a resolution condemning US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,  president Donald Trump and UN ambassador Nikki Haley threatened states voting for the resolution with the loss of US financial aid. “We’re watching those votes” said Trump. “Let them vote against us, we’ll save a lot. We don’t care. But this isn’t like it used to be where they could vote against you and then you pay them hundreds of millions of dollars and nobody knows what…

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