[slideshare id=52986898&doc=robotsandhumans-150920160848-lva1-app6892] In this concept deck I examine some global macroeconomic data from the past sixty years to argue that automation is a major factor behind the increase in global productivity. Cognitive computing and highly adaptable robotics will solve the problem of productivity having flattened out in most industrial countries - the...
Author: George Zarkadakis
Driverless cars should be like horses (not humans)
The new driverless car from Google has no break pedal or steering wheel. And that's because the consensus is that driverless cars should completely replace the human driver. Even blind people would be able to drive them. They will be like elevators: push a button and wait till the thing...
Melancholic android singing
Geminoid F singing True, True, like an ode to the future. How can you not stand still and listen. How can you not feel that she somehow knows what she's singing about....
Writing a cybernetic novel
I would like to define a cybernetic novel as one that writes itself, or one where the reader is also the narrator. A novel that possesses self-reflexivity. I made the sketch (see above) some time ago while thinking about my novel "The Island Survival Guide". When I say "I thought about my novel"...
The big bang of the human mind, and our desire to build artificial beings
[slideshare id=46037137&doc=thebirthofart-150319085231-conversion-gate01] The "big bang of the human mind" took place around 40,000 years ago, when our prehistoric ancestors developed general purpose language. The reasons why this happened are yet unclear, and probably involve a number of genetic mutations. We know that something changed because of the emergence of art,...
Brains wired for “seeing” the invisible
Can you really be an atheist? This question is not often asked, perhaps because one implicitly assumes that not believing in god, or soul, or the afterlife, are philosophical positions, or personal choices, or indeed the result of rational analysis. After all famous atheists, like biologist Richard Dawkins or philosopher...
Welcome the mechasexual
Would you make love to a machine? Although this question may strike one as ludicrous, science’s answer is that it all depends how the machine looks like; as well as whether you are a man or a woman. As evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker tells us in his book “How the...
How to design “digital nudges”
[slideshare id=43348029&w=476&h=400&sc=no] With one of my clients I experimented with ideas from the 2008 book by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein "Nudge". My client was a B2B company active in internet radio technology and selling its product mostly through its website as SaaS. Their challenges were many, including the...
English Language and Science: a lecture and discussion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgb0OALoL08#t=4418 I was honoured to be a participant in a public discussion about Science and the English Language, held at the English Speaking Union in London on 13the November 2014. My co-panelists are astrophysicist Roberto Trotta and geneticist Aarathi Prasad. The discussion follows a lecture by Trotta around his book...
Gerald Edelman and AI
Gerald Edelman passed away on May 17, 2014 in La Jolla, California. In 1972 he won the Nobel Prize (together with Rodney Porter) for solving the antibody structure, and explaining how the immune system functions. His research into antibodies led him to realize the enormous explanatory potential of selective-recognition systems....