So far as we know, Skynet remains a fictional creation. And yet, if IBM (NYS: IBM) has its way, a machine capable of thinking as a human might isn't far off. A prototype chip created in Big Blue's labs possesses the ability to make decisions from synthesizing massive amounts of data.

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Thursday 15th of September 2011

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"Ultimately the goal here is not denying treatment but getting people to the right care," Beer said, adding that Watson was not designed to replace humans.

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Wednesday 19th of October 2011

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Check this video out -- One Mainframe To Rule Them All (1of5)

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Monday 31st of October 2011

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IBM describes the work in an intriguing paper (pdf) that compares various animal simulations done by its cognitive computing research group in Almaden, Calif. The group has managed to completely simulate the brain of a mouse (512 processors), rat (2,048) and cat (24,576). To rival the cortex inside your head, IBM predicts it will need to hook up 880,000 processors, which it hopes to achieve by 2019.

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Sunday 5th of February 2012

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Beating lowly humans on Jeopardy was just the beginning. IBM's famed Watson supercomputer will soon be available as a commercialized analytics tool for data-heavy industries like healthcare, telecom and financial services.

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Thursday 1st of March 2012

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[..]listening to data geeks salivating over prospects of ruling the world by 2015 using large scale automated analysis of Web content, I’ve realized that it is up to us bad punners, over-clever reference droppers and metaphor-mixers to prevent the data geeks from accidentally creating Skynet. Or at least delay the takeover. Giving up a few ounces of SEO juice and some traffic is a small price to pay. Call it the Skynet Resistance Tax.

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Wednesday 7th of March 2012

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IBM expects to generate billions in new revenue by 2015 by putting Watson to work. The technology giant has already sold Watson to health-care clients, helping WellPoint Inc. (WLP) and Seton Health Family analyze data to improve care.

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Sunday 24th of March 2013

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Under Nazi Germany, Dehomag leased and maintained the Nazis' collection of card punch machines. The use of this technology increased the efficiency of the Final Solution. IBM in New York established a special subsidiary, Watson Business Machines, to deal with railway traffic in the General Government during the Holocaust in Poland.

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Wednesday 8th of May 2013

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Like it or not, science fiction is becoming science fact. The Terminator was, of course, a work of fiction, but the idea of cyborgs and killer machines is not all that farfetched. In fact, the danger is becoming so real that the Obama Administration found the need to spell out explicit rules that specify under what circumstances machines are allowed to kill humans.

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Monday 13th of May 2013

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Smart machines probably won't kill us all—but they'll definitely take our jobs, and sooner than you think.
And guess who will own all these robots? People with money, of course. As this happens, capital will become ever more powerful and labor will become ever more worthless. Those without money—most of us—will live on whatever crumbs the owners of capital allow us.
It's easy to joke about our future robot overlords—R2-D2 or the Terminator?—but the challenge that machine intelligence presents really isn't science fiction anymore.

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Saturday 18th of May 2013

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'We have to make it happen'. Because Google operates the most widely used search engine in the world, and has hundreds of millions of Gmail, YouTube, and Android users as well, the company has a profound advantage when tuning its artificial intelligence approaches in response to people. It's as though every user of Google services is checking and rechecking Google's AI techniques, correcting the search company when it gets something wrong, and performing an action when it gets it right.

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Wednesday 12th of June 2013

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Hand in hand with the military-industrial complex, U.S. imperialism has created a massive prison-industrial complex that generates billions of dollars annually for businesses and industries profiting from mass incarceration.

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Wednesday 26th of November 2014

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“In the longer term, fully robotic soldiers may be developed and deployed, particularly by wealthier countries,” the paper says (thankfully, no plans to add ‘living tissue’ on the outside are mentioned). The study thus foresees the Pentagon playing a largely supervisory role over autonomous machines as increasingly central to all dimensions of warfare—from operational planning to identifying threats via surveillance and social media data-mining; from determining enemy targets to actually pursuing and executing them.

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Monday 8th of December 2014

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A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence

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Sunday 4th of January 2015

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When we’re told what the future will look like, we always see the version where everyone lives like Minority Report’s John Anderton. Played by Tom Cruise, Anderton is a wealthy police chief, the kind of person who can afford a summer house on the lake or the newest Lexus model. But unfortunately, if the future is anything like the present, his will only be one side of the story.

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Thursday 22nd of January 2015

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The human-fueled automations I saw at Google are also largely out of sight in current international debates about the relationship between digital technology and the future of work. Will technology produce new jobs, new industries, and new forms of comparative advantage? Or will technology take away jobs and concentrate wealth among those who own the machines?

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Sunday 3rd of May 2015

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GNN IBM And The Holocaust

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Saturday 9th of May 2015

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The most significant thing about ARPANET is that it permits the instant connection of computers of different types, ranging from the huge ILLIAC IV to the commercial-class models produced by IBM and others. Complex switching techniques allowing these computers to “talk to each other” are considered a major technological break-through. The question that goes on haunting civil libertarians is whether ARPANET can be used for domestic intelligence by being hooked into CIA, FBI, military intelligence, White House, or other computer systems.

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Sunday 31st of May 2015

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The United States and other developed countries are in the midst of a digital revolution that may be even more profound than the industrial revolutions of the past. Advances in robotics, cognitive computing and other digital technologies promise untold benefits in a world of leisure hard to imagine. But there is also a dark side to this technological change. It could lead to joblessness for most and extreme inequality, threatening economic health and political stability. Tension over rising inequality and a lack of good-paying middle class jobs is growing in Silicon Valley and nearby San Francisco, the epicentre of computerisation and the information economy. In San Francisco, buses for Google, Facebook and other companies ferry high-paid tech workers to their jobs in Silicon Valley. This allows tens of thousands to live in the city, fuelling popular anger over gentrification and high housing prices that are pushing longtime residents out.

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Monday 26th of October 2015

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RT @the_intercept: Drones and IBM: where the technologies of assassination and corporate sales converge

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Wednesday 27th of January 2016

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RT @DefTechPat: Refugee or Terrorist? IBM Thinks Its Software Has the Answer My latest for @defenseone

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Monday 7th of March 2016

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The Terminator and the Washing Machine

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Wednesday 9th of March 2016

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RT @CPJTechnology: IBM’s Terrorist-Hunting Software Raises Troubling Questions

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Monday 2nd of May 2016

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RT @IBMWatson: Personality meets Check out the Watson Personality Insights demo:

So far as we know, Skynet remains a fictional creation. And yet, if IBM (NYS: IBM) has its way, a machine capable of thinking as a human might isn't far off. A prototype chip created in Big Blue's labs possesses the ability to make decisions from synthesizing massive amounts of data.

"Ultimately the goal here is not denying treatment but getting people to the right care," Beer said, adding that Watson was not designed to replace humans.

Check this video out -- One Mainframe To Rule Them All (1of5)

Beating lowly humans on Jeopardy was just the beginning. IBM's famed Watson supercomputer will soon be available as a commercialized analytics tool for data-heavy industries like healthcare, telecom and financial services.

IBM expects to generate billions in new revenue by 2015 by putting Watson to work. The technology giant has already sold Watson to health-care clients, helping WellPoint Inc. (WLP) and Seton Health Family analyze data to improve care.

Hand in hand with the military-industrial complex, U.S. imperialism has created a massive prison-industrial complex that generates billions of dollars annually for businesses and industries profiting from mass incarceration.

A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence

GNN IBM And The Holocaust

RT @the_intercept: Drones and IBM: where the technologies of assassination and corporate sales converge

RT @DefTechPat: Refugee or Terrorist? IBM Thinks Its Software Has the Answer My latest for @defenseone

The Terminator and the Washing Machine

RT @CPJTechnology: IBM’s Terrorist-Hunting Software Raises Troubling Questions

RT @IBMWatson: Personality meets Check out the Watson Personality Insights demo:

the new computer overlord

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