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Wyświetlanie postów z październik, 2017

AI - Godsent or Humanity's doom?

Obraz
We are the generation of the internet, and we consider ourselves perfectly aware of all that happens there. But are we really? Think of when you scroll through Netflix - you watch movies and then you get recommendations of what else to watch afterwards. How do you think it happens?   No, it’s not a tiny elf with computer guessing what you may like, in case you thought so. For this, and many more tasks AI is used. It analyzes what you watch, and then generates the recommendations according to it - just like a good pal would do. Or maybe let’s take a look at google search algorithms, or even mailbox filters that sort your emails - All AI. It’s everywhere - In the internet, your TV, smartphone. You don’t even notice it, but it makes your life substantially easier. But wait, what this whole AI thing is? Well, the abbreviation AI stands for Artificial intelligence - An entity that has some cognitive qualities of human brain, like ability to learn, solve problems, or maybe even have con

Driverless Cars - the way to get rid of traffic?

Obraz
Some time ago I watched a TED talk about a concept of automated transport world. In that utopia humans wouldn’t waste time in traffic jams, nor would they waste time having to to get to and from public transport like subway, tramways or some future transportation method. The main principle of that concept were driverless cars, which would enable us, the commuters not to waste time driving our vehicles, but rather to spend it doing our work, paying attention to kids, or anything we want just like in the 2009 sci-fi movie „The Minority Report” . All this sounds as if it was way down the road right? Well, it turns out it’s just around the corner! Companies like Google , Uber or Tesla have been working on this undertaking for quite a while and have very promising results. All of them have developed so far fully functional driverless cars, which are said to be „substantially safer than that the ones driven by humans”. Tesla has already started retailing them, with other companies bei

Hyperloop - are we in the future yet?

Obraz
  Some people only care about their own business, others unlike them, really intend to make this world. a better place. Elon Musk, entrepreneur and the man behind Hyperloop project definitely belongs to this second group. Back in 2013, he presented an idea of the fifth major transportation technology, alongside with planes, trains, cars and boats. His vision was to create a form of transport which would be faster, safer, and significantly cheaper than all the other transportation methods available today, so that you could travel from LA to San Francisco in 30 minutes for about 20$. And that’s how the idea to create a web of tubes connecting all major cities of the Earth was born. The basic idea behind this concept is to make vacuum-sealed tunnel, in which the pods could glide using the magnetic levitation or air bearings to move with speed up to 1200 km/h! The system would also be 100% self sustainable, as it would be solar powered. Sounds crazy, right? But it turns out, that this t

Problem with TED talk

What I find disturbing about this TED talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpILR21GWao Usually I enjoy watching TED talks, don't really question their content.  But this one is different. And here are a few things that I don't like about it. First of all, I don't get why the presenter compares the trend for learning English to the Nazi movement, or the Beatles fans, and calls it a mania. As for me this word represents a phenomena that is for us something bad, something not really the way it should be. (I guess the big part of my feeling about this word comes from the mental illness described with this word too) Whereas learning English isn't a bad thing, which he later admits. The second thing that struck me was the generalization Jay Walker uses - He says that the whole world is obsessed about English, while only talking of China. He gives us shocking examples of how English is being taught in China, without adding a single word about the rest of the w