This Week's Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through October 22nd)

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Conscious Exotica Murray Shanahan Aeon "In what follows I attempt to...[describe] the structure of the space of possible minds, in two dimensions: the capacity for consciousness and the human-likeness of behavior. Implicit in this mapping seems to be the possibility of forms of consciousness so alien that we would not recognize them." The answer is simple: We're at a unique intersection where the neural nets we're trying to implement are more suitable to analog designs, while demand for these types of AI circuits is expected to explode." NEUROSCIENCE: How Network Neuroscience Is Creating a New Era of Mind Control MIT Technology Review "Is it possible to exercise the same kind of control over the most complex network we know of: the human brain?...'A critical question…is how to modulate a human brain network to treat cognitive deficits or enhance mental abilities,' they say. 'We posit that network control fundamentally relates to mind control.'" TRANSPORTATION: Will Driverless Cars Really Save Millions of Lives? Lack of Data Makes It Hard to Know. Michael Laris and Ashley Halsey III The Washington Post "Researchers at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, in a study funded by Google, dug into the data and discovered just how incomplete the federal numbers are.