Leon on Everything

                                “The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else.” Eliezer Yudkowsky AI is a very hot topic today, mainly because of the revolution in pattern recognition which comes under the heading of Deep Learning. Hollywood conditioned us to think of Artificial intelligence as a dangerous technology that will bring forth the end of human civilization. If you are a fan of these ideas, then Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence will not disappoint. In his book, the author asks the question “What would happen when machines achieve a level of intelligence far beyond anything that humans are capable of?”, he calls this ability Superintelligence. Before we get to the review, a little background is in order. First, there is a wide cons...

I had a recent conversation with an American of my generation. It was about education and inequality in the United States. She explained to me how a young person over there can't afford an education anymore and that without a university degree she can't get employment. I remarked that while this might be mostly true, education in of itself today is essentially free with the likes of Coursera and YouTube. Essentially college courses are available online for anyone to watch and when it comes to the likes of Coursera they also come with some sort of certificate of having attended the course and passed the exams. We shifted to where this type of education might be most useful, and naturally given my background I suggested programming. Programmers for a long time have been self taught. In fact, it is estimated that nearly half of all developers are self taught (1). Therefore as far as I was concerned here was one of the most highly paid professions in the United States with no ...

Every international body agrees that the solution for the Israel Palestine conflict is the so called "two state solution". It divides the land of Historic Israel into two nations: one for the Arabs and the other for the jews. It is taken for granted that if this solution is not achieved neither side will ever have peace and they will both be stuck in a state of perpetual war. That may be the case, but what should not be taken for granted is that the state of perpetual war- at least for the foreseeable future- isn't what both sides want. Yes, the people on the ground, especially in Palestine are suffering and paying a heavy toll in this conflict.  But I will argue that there are strong vested interests and strong incentives to keep the conflict going on for as long as possible. For a start, a look at the Israeli policies tell us that there are at least two alternatives to the two state solution. The first is the ignominious one state solution that will turn Israel in...