While the phrase “Artificial Intelligence” was coined in 1956, it was first conceptualized in the 1600s by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a German mathematician and philosopher.

He theorized that human thoughts, in any capacity, are all quantifiable and hence could be replicated by a machine - a theoretical mechanism he named "the great instrument of reason"

Cool, huh?

From NAB Newsletter

As a species, we possess only the senses that are necessary for our survival. If our survival required additional senses, we would have evolved to possess them.

Given the initial state of a coin, if we can somehow monitor all the forces acting on it, we can determine its final state—whether it will land as heads or tails.
Can the same be said about us, human beings?
Given our initial state, are we similar to the coin in that our final state can be determined by accounting for all the forces influencing us? Do we possess free will to shape our actions and choices, or are we destined to exist in a predetermined state based on all the changes that have occurred in our lives?

I'd like to see the day where conceptual telepathy is a reality
https://youtu.be/qssbbzS3lbM

If we can build and control superintelligence, we can quickly go from being limited by our own stupidity to being limited by the laws of physics

- Max Tegmark, an AI researcher at the MIT

Photo editing tools use matrix transformations to do all sorts of things like...
Rotations
- Clockwise
- Anti-clockwise
Flips
- Horizontal
- Vertical

If you wanna go ahead and try it yourself
https://web.ma.utexas.edu/users/ysulyma/matrix/

Have you ever noticed how some ATMs give you the money first, followed by the card, while others do it the other way around?
It's actually the newer ATMs that give you your card first, and there's a reason they were designed that way. We're more likely to forget the card if we receive our money first.

We often feel like there's nothing left for us to do once we've done what we set out to do.

There is the truth and then there is our perception of it. These are two separate things.

There is how a person lived his or her own life; there is how people close to this person think this person lived his or her life. And then there is some writer who makes money telling stories.

I'm not trying to devalue biographies; I'm just telling you my perception of them.

Dantzig arrived late to his statistics class one day and saw two problems written on the blackboard. Assuming these were the homework assignments, he copied them down. He found the problems to be exceptionally challenging but was determined to solve them. He worked on them for several days, eventually succeeding in solving them.

As it turned out, the problems were not homework assignments, but rather two open problems that had been posed by his professor, Jerzy Neyman, in the field of statistical theory. Dantzig's solutions to these problems were not only correct but also groundbreaking. His work on these problems laid the foundation for the field of linear programming and optimization, which has since found applications in various industries, including economics, engineering, and operations research.

The specific problems Dantzig solved are often referred to as the "diet problem" and the "transportation problem," and they marked a significant advancement in the field of mathematical optimization.

The golden rule, "Treat others as you would want to be treated."
Here's one problem with that. It assumes that others want to be treated the same way we want to be treated.

agora: Would the food we eat reach our stomach if we ingest it upsidedown? If so, why?

ChatGPT: Yes, the food we eat would still reach our stomach if we ingest it upside down. The process is facilitated by the esophagus, which pushes the food down using coordinated muscle contractions, known as peristalsis, regardless of the orientation of the body.

Ever wondered why coin edges are reeded?

Here's what a friend told me:
In the past, when coins were made from precious metals like gold or silver, unscrupulous individuals would shave off small amounts of metal from the edges of coins. This practice, known as "clipping," allowed them to collect precious metal shavings over time and debase the coin's value. The raised edges (reeding) made it easier to detect if a coin had been tampered with in this manner.

IN THE KINGDOM OF THE BLIND

In the Kingdom of the Blind the one-eyed man is a fool
And useless; incredibly pathetically and fantastically useless.
He wastes all precious time trying to convince us
How wonderful sight is and how much we may use him
In this light he names every object in minutiae.
Everything has a description, he tells us, everything quantifiable.
He has the gall to work out somehow that he is a king because
In the Kingdom of the Blind apparently the one-eyed man is king.

In the Kingdom of the Blind the one-eyed man is a fool,
A babbling pompous self-obsessed fool.
We stopped listening to the poor man a long long time ago.
But how could he hear us not listening.
He certainly could not see us not listening.
We noticed over the years his voice developed a quiver
It was as if he was spitting words out
Against his will. Then he disappeared...

I hear he became rabid while shouting a fantastic articulation
Of the froth that curled from his mouth and scabs that clung to his knuckles.
Thoughts stampeded like wolfpacks through his head, he said.
I hear he tried to run away from his own descriptions into the forests and fields;
Describing every twig, every grass whiplash, every cloud form
Until he reached 'the cool and silent hills'. He described them without pause.

We could smell him from far on the other side of the kingdom.
I hear he found a seat beneath a hanging baobab tree
Where no one could see him. He described how alone he was
'cept for the creeping baobab shadow, the crickets and sepia sunlight.
My single unblinking eye stares forward at the gold sunlight
Bouncing from the sheer metal point of the dagger which hovers
Gripped by my steady hand, before my eyelashes.

In the Kingdom of the Blind the one-eyed man is a fool.

A poem by Lemn Sissay