Sterling Proffer

Do you already know that your existence--who and how you are--is in and of itself a contribution to the people and place around you? Not after or because you do some particular thing, but simply the miracle of your life. And that the people around you, and the place(s), have contributions as well? Do you understand that your quality of life and... See more

Emergent properties are linked to another highly promising feature: flexibility. Earlier generations of ai systems were good for only one purpose, often a pretty specific one. The new models can be reassigned from one type of problem to another with relative ease by means of fine tuning. It is a measure of the importance of this trait that, within... See more

Nobody deserves support, public or otherwise, for making something no one wants. Artists, in that respect, are not any different from people who open restaurants or shops, many of which also fail. Being an artist is not a job. In economic terms, it is a business.

Practice too little, and you never become world-class. Practice too much, and you increase the odds of being struck down by injury, draining yourself mentally, or burning out.

I suggest that the foundations of peace cannot be laid by universal prosperity, in the modem sense. because such prosperity, if attainable at all. is attainable only by cultivating such drives of human nature as greed and envy, which destroy intelligence, happiness, serenity, and thereby the peacefulness of man.

The “good computer” which Graphcore, a British chip designer, intends to build over the next few years might seem to be suffering from a ludicrous case of nominal understatement. Its design calls for it to carry out 1019 calculations per second. If your laptop can do 100bn calculations a second—which is fair for an average laptop—then the Good... See more