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In his 1958 monograph, The Computer and The Brain, von Neumann speculates that, some important differences aside, the machine he built with digital circuits appeared to work in a similar way to the neural circuits of the brain. What were his insights about the workings of neurons based on? Little more than what could be inferred from the pioneering work of Santiago Ramón y Cajal.
Passages Saved From iOS
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Machine learning’s optimizations are a kind of abstract utilitarianism, a mode of calculative ordering that results in particular ways of structuring systems. The logic of optimization, which has deep Cold War roots, already underpins our systems of logistics and planning, and the combination of granular data and machine learning opens up the opportunity for it to be used for social problems.
Resisting AI
Dan McQuillan
Today the FBI-run center is chewing on National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), Trump’s sweeping policy directive that formally directs the national security state to root out left-wing political violence by monitoring so-called indicators of violence, like “anti-Christianity,” “anti-capitalism” and “anti-Americanism,” as [I’ve reported](https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/trumps-nspm-7-labels-common-beliefs).
Though the text of NSPM-7 is public, the Threat Screening Center’s watchlisting process is a black hole. Even the criteria for how people end up on it is secret.
Secretive Watchlisting Center Executing NSPM-7
Ken Klippenstein
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