🧠 The Bulletin #30: Nick Bostrom on the Intelligence Explosion, all about Robot Farming, and What It's Like Working at a Startup
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🧠 The Bulletin #30: Nick Bostrom on the Intelligence Explosion, all about Robot Farming, and What It's Like Working at a Startup
Considering the moral status of digital minds, how robots are helping farmers become more efficient, and what it's like working at a startup.
💥 The Intelligence Explosion
Founder and head of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institue, Nick Bostrom, best known for his work in the field of existential risk and studying the future of earth-originating intelligent life has recently come out to say he believes that AI has started to show small amounts of sentience. He believes we should consider sentience as a spectrum rather than a binary on/off state 🕹. “If you admit that it’s not an all-or-nothing thing,” the philosopher tells the New York Times,” then it’s not so dramatic to say that some of these assistants might plausibly be candidates for having some degrees of sentience.” With large language models, Bostrom believes that they’re not simply restating text but rather demonstrating flashes of creativity, insight, and understanding and may soon develop a conception of self 🧘🏻♂️.
The prospect of A.I. achieving sentience raises important ethical questions about the moral status of digital minds 🧐. If it were to exhibit signs of consciousness, it seems plausible that it would possess some degree of moral status. This means that specific actions towards it would be morally wrong, just as it would be wrong to kick a dog or perform surgery on a mouse without anesthesia. Our current use and ‘treatment’ of AI systems would need to be rethought as they would no longer simply be tools but rather digital minds that we would coexist with ☮︎. Ensuring a harmonious coexistence between humans and sentient AI would require a new approach to ethics and moral philosophy. It would require us to expand our moral circle to include digital minds and to consider their interests and well-being - essentially reshaping the way we view and interact with technology ⌨️. Challenges that may arise with these developments are ensuring that AI systems are aligned with what humans are hoping to achieve and designing the program in a way that clearly determines whether they have moral status. This is to ensure that they are not trained to admit or deny their consciousness.
🚜 Robot Farming
A significant amount of innovation in the field of agricultural robotics has been occurring recently👩🏼🌾. The agricultural industry has experienced a surge in automation due to factors such as labor shortages, heightened consumer demand, and escalating production costs💰. As a result, there has been a push to adopt automated technologies to minimize expenses and optimize crop yields. The objective of this technology is to improve the efficiency and profitability of agricultural processes, while also promoting environmental sustainability.
Tortuga AgTech is a Colordo-based startup that’s developed robots to pick strawberries- they move on wheels and have an articulated arm that scans the strawberry plants with sensors in order to locate ripe berries. 🍇 Tortuga claims that robots are almost as efficient as human pickers, with a 95% accuracy rate. Their subscription model charges growers a flat cost per robot-picked box of strawberries comparable to human worker wages.
Corteva Agriscience has been using drones to assess plant height and other traits for the past five years. However, drones are limited in their ability to gather in-canopy measurements, which are crucial in developing high-quality seed products. To overcome this limitation, Corteva has partnered with EarthSense Inc. to develop an autonomous robot, TerraSentia, that can automate in-field plant trait collection, particularly under the canopy. TerraSentia uses computer vision and machine learning to measure early vigor, corn ear height, soybean pods, and plant biomass, among other things.
📈 What It’s Like Working at a Startup
Working at a startup can be a thrilling and rewarding experience; it’s a chance to be part of a team that is pushing the boundaries of innovation and creating something from scratch 🖋. Unlike larger companies, startups tend to have a flatter hierarchy, meaning that employees are often given more autonomy and responsibility. This can be both challenging and rewarding, as it requires a high level of initiative, creativity, and adaptability. The pace is fast, the work is exciting, and the potential for impact is enormous. Harvard Business School Professor, Ranjay Gulati, summarizes the nature of startups by saying “There’s an essential, intangible something in start-ups — an energy, a soul. Company founders sense its presence. So do early employees and customers. It inspires people to contribute their talent, money, and enthusiasm and fosters a sense of deep connection and mutual purpose.”
While working at a startup can offer unparalleled opportunities for growth, it is important to acknowledge the challenges that come along with it 🎯. For starters, the high level of uncertainty can be difficult to manage. Unlike established companies, startups do not have a proven track record, and there is always the risk that the company may not succeed 🚨. Additionally, with limited resources, startups must be nimble and adaptable, meaning employees may be required to pivot frequently, sometimes with little notice. They are also required to wear multiple hats, taking on responsibilities that go beyond their job title. While a great learning opportunity to learn new skills and gain experience, it can also lead to burnout and extreme stress.
For those who are up for the challenge, working at a startup can be a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs, but ultimately a journey that is well worth taking 🌟.
👄 What we’re consuming in Venture
Try to correctly identify whether AI did work tasks like producing images, articles, and slogans in this interactive Washington Post article.
This Ted podcast episode where the CEO of TikTok addresses issues of data privacy/ government manipulation and talks about his commitment to inspiring creativity and building community within the app.
That’s it for this week, feel free to email me at lara_gamaleldin@brown.edu with any inquiries!
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