Steven Levy via WIRED:

‘For years these billionaires gushed obsessively about AI. But they meekly went along when Trump canceled the term….’

Via Ars Technica:

‘Reminder: The “border exemption” to your rights is real….’

Jacek Krywko via Ars Technica:

‘Deep Blue took down Garry Kasparov at chess in 1997, AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol at Go in 2016, and poker bots have been beating professionals for years. But one classic game called Stratego held out. Even DeepMind, with its exceptional budget, couldn’t build a machine that reliably beat the best human players.

Now, a team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon, MIT, New York University, and Stanford University has done it. Their AI, called Ataraxos, beat Pim Niemeijer, arguably the best Stratego player of all time, 15 games to one, with four draws. And it took just 16 GPUs and a few thousand dollars to train it….’

Stratego was my favorite childhood board game. 

Via Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion:

‘Americans who subscribe to Christian nationalist beliefs tend to be characterized by lower education and substantial knowledge deficits across multiple domains. Building on research connecting lower cognitive ability to religious fundamentalism and reactionary political views, I theorize cognitive ability as an important factor influencing Americans’ adherence to Christian nationalism. Analyses of multiple waves of the General Social Survey reveal that cognitive ability (measured with the wordsum vocabulary exercise) is significantly, negatively associated with believing that being a Christian is important to being “truly American” and favoring mandatory Christian prayers and Bible-reading in public schools. These associations persist after controlling for education and various religious, political, and demographic characteristics. Interactions reveal these associations hold across survey waves and subgroups, disappearing only among the least educated Americans. Findings affirm that Christian nationalism appeals to Americans with lower verbal intelligence, suggesting an underlying role of differential cognitive resources not reducible to educational disparities….’

Adam Clark Estes via Vox:

‘AI can make you more productive while quietly making you less capable on your own. Offloading more tedious or mind-numbing tasks is less likely to make you feel dumber. The long-term solution isn’t necessarily less AI. It’s being more intentional about the tasks you use AI for….’

David Gilbert via WIRED:

‘Robert A. Pape, a leading authority on political violence, wants Americans to understand that the threat is coming not from the fringes, but from the mainstream….’