No, Facebook Did Not Panic and Shut Down an AI Program That Was Getting Dangerously Smart. In recent weeks, a story about experimental Facebook machine learning research has been circulating with increasingly panicky, Skynet esque headlines. Facebook engineers panic, pull plug on AI after bots develop their own language, one site wrote. Facebook shuts down down AI after it invents its own creepy language, another added. Did we humans just create Frankenstein asked yet another. One British tabloid quoted a robotics professor saying the incident showed the dangers of deferring to artificial intelligence and could be lethal if similar tech was injected into military robots. References to the coming robot revolution, killer droids, malicious AIs and human extermination abounded, some more or less serious than others. Continually quoted was this passage, in which two Facebook chat bots had learned to talk to each other in what is admittedly a pretty creepy way. Bob I can i i everything else. Alice balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to Bob you i everything else. Windows-Managing-System.png' alt='Time Warner Dvr Recover Deleted Program From Computer' title='Time Warner Dvr Recover Deleted Program From Computer' />Alice balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me. The reality is somewhat more prosaic. A few weeks ago, Fast. How to undelete dvr recordings with dvr data recovery software free. How to recover deleted recordings, tv shows from dvr. DATAIM/images/user_avatar_images/194/7893e416f75d.jpg' alt='Time Warner Dvr Recover Deleted Program From Computer' title='Time Warner Dvr Recover Deleted Program From Computer' />The mindfulness craze has already been tapped for a huge variety of benefitsimproved sleep, increased productivity, cutting out mindless snacking, etc. And we now. Co Design did report on a Facebook effort to develop a generative adversarial network for the purpose of developing negotiation software. The two bots quoted in the above passage were designed, as explained in a Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research unit blog post in June, for the purpose of showing it is possible for dialog agents with differing goals implemented as end to end trained neural networks to engage in start to finish negotiations with other bots or people while arriving at common decisions or outcomes. The bots were never doing anything more nefarious than discussing with each other how to split an array of given items represented in the user interface as innocuous objects like books, hats, and balls into a mutually agreeable split. The intent was to develop a chatbot which could learn from human interaction to negotiate deals with an end user so fluently said user would not realize they are talking with a robot, which FAIR said was a success The performance of FAIRs best negotiation agent, which makes use of reinforcement learning and dialog rollouts, matched that of human negotiators. FAIRs bots not only can speak English but also think intelligently about what to say. When Facebook directed two of these semi intelligent bots to talk to each other, Fast. Co reported, the programmers realized they had made an error by not incentivizing the chatbots to communicate according to human comprehensible rules of the English language. In their attempts to learn from each other, the bots thus began chatting back and forth in a derived shorthandbut while it might look creepy, thats all it was. Agents will drift off understandable language and invent codewords for themselves, FAIR visiting researcher Dhruv Batra said. Like if I say the five times, you interpret that to mean I want five copies of this item. This isnt so different from the way communities of humans create shorthands. Facebook did indeed shut down the conversation, but not because they were panicked they had untethered a potential Skynet. FAIR researcher Mike Lewis told Fast. Co they had simply decided our interest was having bots who could talk to people, not efficiently to each other, and thus opted to require them to write to each other legibly. But in a game of content telephone not all that different from what the chat bots were doing, this story evolved from a measured look at the potential short term implications of machine learning technology to thinly veiled doomsaying. There are probably good reasons not to let intelligent machines develop their own language which humans would not be able to meaningfully understandbut again, this is a relatively mundane phenomena which arises when you take two machine learning devices and let them learn off each other. Its worth noting that when the bots shorthand is explained, the resulting conversation was both understandable and not nearly as creepy as it seemed before. As Fast. Co noted, its possible this kind of machine learning could allow smart devices or systems to communicate with each other more efficiently. Head First Servlets Jsp 2Nd Edition Free here. Those gains might come with some problemsimagine how difficult it might be to debug such a system that goes wrongbut it is quite different from unleashing machine intelligence from human control. In this case, the only thing the chatbots were capable of doing was coming up with a more efficient way to trade each others balls. There are good uses of machine learning technology, like improved medical diagnostics, and potentially very bad ones, like riot prediction software police could use to justify cracking down on protests. All of them are essentially ways to compile and analyze large amounts of data, and so far the risks mainly have to do with how humans choose to distribute and wield that power. Hopefully humans will also be smart enough not to plug experimental machine learning programs into something very dangerous, like an army of laser toting androids or a nuclear reactor. But if someone does and a disaster ensues, it would be the result of human negligence and stupidity, not because the robots had a philosophical revelation about how bad humans are. At least not yet. Machine learning is nowhere close to true AI, just humanitys initial fumbling with the technology. If anyone should be panicking about this news in 2. Nikita TV series Wikipedia. For other uses of Nikita, see Nikita. Nikita is an American television series that aired on The CW from September 9, 2. December 2. 7, 2. United States. 12 The series is an adaptation of the 1. Luc Besson film Nikita, the second such adaptation after the popular 1. TV series La Femme Nikita. The series focuses on Nikita Maggie Q, a woman who escaped from a secret government funded organization known as Division and, after a three year hiding period, is back to bring down the organization. The main cast in various seasons features Maggie Q, Lyndsy Fonseca, Shane West, Aaron Stanford, Melinda Clarke, Xander Berkeley, Noah Bean, Tiffany Hines, Ashton Holmes, Dillon Casey, and Devon Sawa. The series focuses on Nikita Mears, a woman who escaped from a secret U. S. government funded organization known as Division, and after spending three years in hiding, is back to bring Division down. Division, created and supervised by an organization called Oversight, is responsible for black operations including espionage, sabotage, and assassination. Under the leadership of its first Director and founding member, Percival Percy Rose, Division has gone rogue and performs under the table murder for hire. To protect himself, Percy has created a series of black boxes, hard drives containing every job Division has ever done, as leverage to prevent Oversight from removing him andor ending Division. Avira Internet Security 2013 Key To 15/2015 here. Percys black boxes are hidden in secret locations around the world, under the protection of Guardians, high ranking Division agents. Division fills its ranks primarily by recruiting young people with troubled backgrounds, often directly from prison. Division fakes the recruits deaths, erases all evidence of their past lives, and molds them into efficient spies and assassins. The recruits generally do not have the freedom to leave the agency. Recruits may be cancelled killed if their progress is deemed unsatisfactory, and to this end, Division implants the recruits with tracking devices as well as kill chips. Nikita was recruited by Division when she was a deeply troubled teenager, on death row. Division rescued her, faked her death, and told her she was getting a second chance to start a new life and serve her country. Throughout her grueling training, Nikita never lost her humanity. Once she graduated from recruit to field agent, she broke Division rules by falling in love with a civilian, whom she became engaged to and planned to run away with. When Division found out and assassinated Nikitas fianc, Nikita went rogue. She makes it her mission to bring down Division, as a way to avenge her fianc and atone for the sins she committed as a Division agent. Percy orders Michael, the Division operative who trained Nikita, to deal with her. On the outside, Nikita trains a young woman named Alex, who as a child was saved by Nikita during a mission that killed Alexs parents years ago. Nikita has Alex become a recruit inside Division, working as a mole to gain intelligence. Over the course of Season One, Nikita works to disrupt Divisions operations, with the support of Alexs intelligence from the inside. Nikita also encounters Gogol, a Russian security department and established enemy of Division. Nikita slowly brings other allies to her side, including Michael when he realizes the true extent of Percys corruption as well as his own feelings for Nikita. At the end of Season One, Nikita manages to foil Percys plan to take over the CIA and gain its top secret funding. However, she is forced to go on the run with Michael. At the same time, Nikita loses Alex when Alex discovers that it was Nikita herself who killed her father on the Division mission years ago. When Alex is exposed as Nikitas mole and finds herself at the mercy of Division and Oversight, Amanda offers Alex a deal help Division stop Nikita, and Division will help Alex bring down the man who ordered the hit on her father. In season two, Nikita and Michael focus and press their efforts against Oversight, seeking to destroy the group, which will also cripple Division at the same time. Division has changed, with Percy being locked up for his actions in season one, and Amanda taking control of the organization, with Oversight supervising her. Alex has set her sights on Sergei Semak, her fathers right hand man and also the one responsible for ordering his death, who has taken over Zektrov, her fathers company and controller of Gogol. Nikita and Michael manage to expose andor kill most of Oversight, with the help of Seymour Birkhoff, a former Division head technician, who left the organization after Percy was imprisoned. While trying to bring down Oversight, Nikita and Michael hunt down the remaining black boxes, finally destroying all but one, which has fallen into the hands of Gogols leader, Ari Tasarov, who is later revealed to be Amandas lover, later exposes her as a traitor. With the help of the last of the Guardians, Percy escapes his prison and manages to overthrow Amandas control of Division, sending her and Ari into hiding, along with the last black box. Percy also manages to kill all members of Oversight and puts a plan into place to use plutonium to gain membership to an unknown group of powerful people. Having no other choice, Nikita and Michael decide to take the situation to the president, with the help of Ryan, who has been helping Nikita on her mission since season one. Alex reconciles with Nikita, after having finally brought down Semak and restore her fathers company. While her allies attempt to stop Percys most trusted man, Roan, from using the plutonium to blow up Washington D. C., Nikita and Michael infiltrate Division, managing to expose Percy of his corruption and evil deeds, ending his leadership over the organization. Percy is killed by Nikita after trying to escape and Roan is killed by Alex before he could set off the plutonium. The vice president assigns Ryan as the new director of Division and tasks Nikita in hunting down the last of Divisions agents, who have gone rogue, including Amanda. Cast and characterseditCharacters are listed in order of title credit and by appearance on the show. The cast of the final season of Nikita from left to right Noah Bean, Lyndsy Fonseca, Aaron Stanford, Maggie Q, Melinda Clarke, and Shane West. The series borrows many characters, or at least their names, from the 1. La Femme Nikita. Maggie Q portrays Nikita, the protagonist and a former spy and assassin who has gone rogue and now plans to bring down Division. Q also performs her own stunts. Shane West plays Michael, a Division operative who trained Nikita. He sees Division and its recruits as a kind of family to him, the complete opposite of Amanda, portrayed by Melinda Clarke, Divisions psychologist, interrogator, and a master manipulator. Seymour Birkhoff, Divisions computer genius and head technician, is portrayed by Aaron Stanford. The head of Division is Percy, played by Xander Berkeley. In the season one finale, the audience is introduced to a Senator Madeline Pierce, played by Alberta Watson, who also played the part of Madeline in the former La Femme Nikita series Madeline was that series counterpart to Amanda. Lyndsy Fonseca portrays Alexandra Alex Udinov, a former sex slave and drug addict who was arrested after a robbery and later became Divisions newest recruit. She is also a mole whom Nikita is using to destroy Division from the inside.