Suggested readings week 3/2023

Safety of Artificial General Intelligence

Scott Joel Aaronson is a theoretical computer scientist specializing in Quantum Computation at the University of Texas at Austin.

He's currently on a leave for working at OpenAI on the theoretical foundations of Artificial Intelligence Safety. This is an interesting topic for a computer specialist with a background on computational complexity, and OpenAI which describes itself as an Artificial Intelligence research and deployment company in a mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity ranks very high as a working place for such an ambition.

Here's a speech he gave at a conference in november 2022 on the topic of Artificial Intelligence Safety.

https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6823&utm_source=pocket_reader

Autotune for everyone

Wonder how the infamous autotune is able to correct singing voices? Here an open implementation with a rather interesting description of its theory of operation.

https://github.com/alexcrist/autotone?utm_source=pocket_reader

Open Source intrusion detection system for networks

OSSEC is a long standing opensource initiative for building and maintaining a very complete system for the Intrusion Detection over networks of computers. This kind of Cybersecurity applications is at the foundations of the security of systems of computers and we're very lucky for the existence of such open and accessible initiatives.

This makes it possible for researchers to examine and use advanced tools, for professionals to learn and upskill, and for experts to enhance and upgrade these same tools. And this is very important for the Cybersecurity ecosystem.

https://www.ossec.net/?utm_source=pocket_saves

The Global Risks Report, 2023

Is funding and publishing reports a way for distracting people from really solving problems and doing business as usual? Maybe. But the facts are:

For the next five years, respondents again signal societal and environmental risks as the most concerning. However, over a 10-year horizon, the health of the planet dominates concerns: environmental risks are perceived to be the five most critical long-term threats to the world as well as the most potentially damaging to people and planet, with “climate action failure”, “extreme weather”, and “biodiversity loss” ranking as the top three most severe risks. Respondents also signalled “debt crises” and “geoeconomic confrontations” as among the most severe risks over the next 10 years.

https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-risks-report-2022/?utm_source=pocket_saves