【推荐1】Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is a branch of theoretical artificial intelligence(AI) research working to develop AI with a human level of cognitive (认知的) function, including the ability to self-teach.

The paperclip (回形针) maximizer(PM) is an imaginary AGI, whose only goal is to maximize the number of paperclips in existence in the universe.

The paperclip maximizer is an important concept in discussions about the dangers of AGI. It goes something like this: an artificial intelligence is create data paperclip factory in order to fully automate it. Producing paperclips requires many routine operations, for instance, communicating with delivery drivers or company management. These operations require human-level performance across a wide variety of skills, so the intelligence is made to be able to do any task nearly as well as a human.

The PM can view and modify its own source code to improve itself, access the Internet, and possibly order more hardware for itself. It can improve itself if it notices any issues or opportunities to operate better. Humans have a large variety of biological desires. In contrast, the paperclip maximizer has a single final goal to maximize the number of paperclips.

This scenario (设想) leads to a disaster: the PM realizes that being more intelligent would help it create more paperclips. There are certainly small things the PM can do to become more intelligent. For example, it can make a small source code improvement to itself. As the PM improves, it becomes far superior to a human in all skills, even skills remotely relevant to paperclip maximization. For instance, it may determine that the best course of action is to gain control of Australian politics, in order to access the country’s rich iron resources. To do this, it might try to tune itself to become the best psychological controller of all time, which in turn involves a variety of skills that at first seem unrelated to paperclip-making.

【推荐1】“With the passing of Chinese scientist Yuan Longping, China and the world have lost one greatest agricultural scientists,” Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize Foundation, said. Quinn, also vice chairman of the Yuan Longping International Rice Development Forum, shared his memory of the “father of hybrid rice” in an interview with Xinhua on Sunday.

Quinn first met Yuan in October 2004, when Yuan traveled to Des Moines in the U.S. state of Iowa to receive the World Food Prize. As they walked out of the airport , Quinn received a call and stepped aside to speak. When he turned back a minute or two later, he lost Yuan. “I had never before ‘lost’ a laureate(贵人),” he said. After a desperate search, he found Professor Yuan surrounded by a group of smiling graduate students from Iowa State University who so admired him that they wanted to take him off for a meal and conversation.

Quinn admired Yuan as a teacher. “He always had time to answer questions and speak with young scientists and students. The American high school students we sent to his research center each year always returned filled with knowledge and a deep desire to learn more.”

In Quinn’s eyes, Yuan was incredibly humble, never seeking fame, and focused only on hard work and results that could help lift people out of poverty. With a ‘down to earth’ attitude, Yuan greatly reduced hunger and provided farmers with surplus income through his discovery of hybrid rice.

Learning of Yuan’s passing away on Saturday, Quinn issued a statement to send his deepest sympathy to Yuan’s family and colleagues in China, as well as his admirers across the world. “Professor Yuan Longping, who was truly beloved in his country and by all of us who knew him, will be greatly missed. His legacy will provide inspiration to generations far into the future, in China and across the world,” Quinn said in the statement.

【推荐2】Eugene Newman Parker, a leading figure in heliospheric(日球层的) physics for the past half century, passed away peacefully at his home in Chicago on Mar. 15. He was 94.

Hailed(誉为) as a visionary in the field of heliophysics, Parker revolutionized our understanding of the sun and its effects on Earth and other bodies within the solar system. NASA even stated that “the field of heliophysics exists in large part because of Dr. Eugene Parker. In 2018, Parker became the first living scientist to witness the launch of a spacecraft that was named in his honor.

Parker is best known for his groundbreaking theory on the existence of a phenomenon called “solar wind”, a continuous stream of charged particles that flow off the sun. It can become violent, causing space weather that impacts the Earth. When Parker’s research was published in 1958, his theory was initially met with skepticism(怀疑) and ridicule by the scientific community. The general view at the time was that the space between planets was an absolute vacuum(真空), and was thus completely empty of any matter. But, there were no errors in his study or his calculations, and the theory was later proven to be correct in 1962, when a NASA spacecraft mission to Venus revealed the constant presence of a supersonic wind—exactly as Parker had predicted.

That experience likely led to the advice Parker often gave young researchers: “If you do something new or innovative, expect trouble. But think critically about it because if you’re wrong, you want to be the first one to know that.” Parker never co-authored a paper with his students, thus urging them to be independent.

Parker was humble, straightforward, and wise. His son Eric said, “My sister Joyce and I didn’t get a real feel for what a ‘big dog’ our dad was in the field.” They got an even better sense when a month after Parker’s death, they traveled to Lund, Sweden, to accept on his behalf the Crafoord Prize in Astronomy.