Do Chatbots Dream of Androids? Prospects for the Technological Development of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

The article discusses the main trends in the development of artificial intelligence systems and robotics (AI&R). The main question that is considered in this context is whether artificial systems are going to become more and more anthropomorphic, both intellectually and physically. In the current article, the author analyzes the current state and prospects of technological development of artificial intelligence and robotics, and also determines the main aspects of the impact of these technologies on society and economy, indicating the geopolitical strategic nature of this influence. The author considers various approaches to the definition of artificial intelligence and robotics, focusing on the subject-oriented and functional ones. It also compares AI&R abilities and human abilities in areas such as categorization, pattern recognition, planning and decision making, etc. Based on this comparison, we investigate in which areas AI&R’s performance is inferior to a human, and in which cases it is superior to one. The modern achievements in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence create the necessary basis for further discussion of the applicability of goal setting in engineering, in the form of a Turing test. It is shown that development of AI&R is associated with certain contradictions that impede the application of Turing’s methodology in its usual format. The basic contradictions in the development of AI&R technologies imply that there is to be a transition to a post-Turing methodology for assessing engineering implementations of artificial intelligence and robotics. In such implementations, on the one hand, the ‘Turing wall’ is removed, and on the other hand, artificial intelligence gets its physical implementation

Security for Expense Statutes: Easing Shareholder Hopelessness?

The quintessential derivative suit is a suit by a shareholder to force the corporation to sue a manager for fraud, which is admittedly an awkward and likely unpleasant endeavor and, according to the Supreme Court, a “remedy born of stockholder helplessness.” Where ownership and control of an enterprise are vested in the same population, the need for a corrective mechanism like a derivative suit is greatly lessened because the owner/managers’ self-interests will arguably guide managerial conduct. But where ownership and control are in separate hands, the incentives change, and managerial conduct may not conform to the owners’ views of the best course of action. This may lead to what the owners consider to be director misconduct. The existing corporate laws have not been effective in stopping this kind of director misconduct, so “stockholders, in face of gravest abuses, were singularly impotent in obtaining redress of abuses of trust.” In these situations, shareholders are arguably in need of legal strategies to protect themselves from abuses by management. Presumably in an effort to limit the abuse of strike suits that would take up managerial time, resources, and corporate dollars, several significant procedural hurdles for derivative plaintiffs have arisen, including the requirement of contemporaneous share ownership—a requirement that derivative plaintiffs make a “demand” on the corporation, in particular, to take requested action—the lack of access to the discovery process, and compliance with any relevant security for expense statutes. Balancing the right of shareholders to hold their directors accountable against the need for directors to have the freedom and autonomy to discharge their statutory and fiduciary duties is no easy feat. That said, these hurdles, when combined, may erode or even undermine the ultimate utility of the derivative litigation process

The Morphology and Histology of New Sex Pheremone Glands in Male Scorpionflies, Panorpa and Brachypanorpa (Mecoptera: Panorpidae and Panorpodidae)

The n~orphology and histology of a previously undescribed sex pheromone gland in male scorpionflies of the genus Panorpa (Mecoptera: Panorpidae) and a morphologically similar gland in Brachypanorpa (Mecoptera: Panorpodidae) are described and discussed. The gland and the associated pheromone dispersing structure consist of an eversible pouch that lies in the ventral part of the male genital bulb at the point where the basistyles diverge. The glandular layer of epithelium is composed of three types of cells that vary in size between species of Panorpa and between Panorpa and Brachyponorpa. It is suggested that the gland may have evolved from a structure that is everted by the male during copulation and used to push the female\u27s terminal abdominal segments out of the way and/or open the female genital aperture

When do Agricultural Exports Help the Rural Poor? A Political-Economy Approach

Agricultural exports have been touted by a number of economists as having important potential to alleviate rural poverty, and poverty more generally since much of it is rural, in developing countries. The logic of this view lies in the ideas that (a) many agricultural export products are relatively labour intensive in production and that in many countries the until-recently-prevailing import substitution strategies have penalized agriculture. Moving to a freer trade regime removes the implicit tax on the sector and should loose its growth potential with resulting benefits for workers and small holders. This view, plausible enough from one perspective, flies in the face of much historical evidence that as new agricultural exports become an option, peasant groups are pushed off the lands they previously operated so that large-scale farmers can dedicate it to export use. This process has yielded much conflict and violence, and rather than helping the rural poor has often made them worse off. Predicting whether agricultural exports will help the rural poor thus involves judging whether the reality in a given situation is closer to the first cited model or to the second one. At present fruit and vegetable exports offer hope of strong employment creation in a number of developing countries, though total trade figures suggest that these products cannot by themselves pull up the rural poor in larger developing countries.

Optiaml Resource Regime in Natural Resource Management: A revised economic theory of commons

The economic theory of natural resource management has its roots in the conventional economic theory of commons that overlooked the role of the institutional structures and the associated transaction costs. Hence, it has not been able to explain the outcomes of the cases of successful management of natural resources, such as forests, as common property. The possible economic optimality of community regimes has been recognised in the empirical literature, but it has not yet been incorporated in production models that would help to elucidate the reasons for its relatively superior performance in selected contexts. In this paper, we incorporate institutional structure into a static analysis of optimal resource management regimes which aims to correct this neglect. Resource regime is included as one variable input in natural resource production models that leads to determine global optimum resource regime. The other specific features of this paper are: i) a continuous array of possibilities varying from open access at one extreme to private regime at the other rather than just the two extreme options of state and private regimes; (ii) the socio-economic characteristics of the resource's "user group" as the main determinant of the relative efficiency of different regimes; and (iii) a specific mathematical form for the transaction function, in order to facilitate empirical studies in this area. Static models for general separable and non-separable transformation and transaction functions are discussed. The possibility of different resource regimes being optimal in different socio-economic conditions is highlighted.

Public school art teacher autonomy in a segregated city: Affordances and contradictions

Over the past two decades, the Chicago Public Schools have seen a lot of change. First there was the opening of magnet schools, and other gestures at reform, followed by school closures and the flourishing of charter schools. In this essay, two former Chicago art teachers, one who taught in a prominent college prep magnet high school on the north side, and one who taught in an under-resourced neighborhood high school on the south side, examine the commonalities of their otherwise divergent experiences, particularly with regard to the freedom allotted to both them and their students by the administrative affordances in their respective situations. While the schools were starkly different in numerous respects, the surprising ability of both teachers to lead collaborative projects that they and their students found engaging, partly through reaching outside the bounds of the institution, may offer an example of teacher autonomy and emergent pedagogy that seems particularly relevant to the public school setting

Agrarian Reform, Land Distribution, and Small-Farm Policy as Preventive of Humanitarian Emergencies

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Pressure rig for repetitive casting

The invention is a pressure rig for repetitive casting of metal. The pressure rig performs like a piston for feeding molten metal into a mold. Pressure is applied to an expandable rubber diaphragm which expands like a balloon to force the metal into the mold. A ceramic cavity which holds molten metal is lined with blanket-type insulating material, necessitating only a relining for subsequent use and eliminating the lengthy cavity preparation inherent in previous rigs. In addition, the expandable rubber diaphragm is protected by the insulating material thereby decreasing its vulnerability to heat damage. As a result of the improved design the life expectancy of the pressure rig contemplated by the present invention is more than doubled. Moreover, the improved heat protection has allowed the casting of brass and other alloys with higher melting temperatures than possible in the conventional pressure rigs