Categories
cybernetics

Stochastic Transmission of Volatile Language

Language drifts as matter drifts: clustering, folding, condensing into nodes of repetition that pass for meaning. It is not even significant what the transmission medium is, because entropy finds its own channels; in the end, the medium is us—our beliefs, our institutions, our most sacrosanct assumptions. Politically this volatility is evident, but volatility is precisely […]

Categories
technology

On Training Minds and Machines to be Flexible

One thing humans do share with the machine intelligence we are so enthusiastically refining is a conspicuous (or at least institutionalised) absence of aptitude when it comes to smoothly and efficiently negotiating unexpected events and volatile environments. The benefits of integrated logistical automation are clear but when it comes to training the machine intelligence that […]