Daily Archives: March 16, 2021

Hope and Healing

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Today’s readings are a combination of the well-known (the Gospel) and the “what’s-going-on” (Ezekiel). The former is the familiar story of the man, afflicted for 38 years, who encounters Jesus, is healed and has hope restored. The latter is a grand vision of living waters flowing from the Temple into all the land bring abundance and life.

The Ezekiel reading is the follow-on to the “dry bones’ vision the prophet had just proclaimed. In his vision, the prophet finds himself standing in a valley full of dry human bones. Before him, the bones begin to move and assemble into human figures, skeletons rising and begin to stand. Almost as in modern computer-generated visual effect, the skeletons begin to receive layers of living flesh: tendons, muscles, organs and skin. They then arise, standing upright, alive and vital. These are the Israelites living in exile who are returning to Jerusalem.

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Hope and Healing

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Today’s readings are a combination of the well-known (the Gospel) and the “what’s-going-on” (Ezekiel). The former is the familiar story of the man, afflicted for 38 years, who encounters Jesus and is heal and has hope restored. The latter is a grand vision of living waters flowing from the Temple into all the land bring abundance and life.

The Ezekiel reading is the epilogue to the “dry bones’ vision the prophet had just proclaimed. In his vision, the prophet finds himself standing in a valley full of dry human bones. Before him, the bones begin to move and assemble into human figures, skeletons rising and standing in the valley. Almost as in modern computer-generated visual effect, the skeletons begin to receive layers of living flesh: tendons, muscles, organs and skin. They then arise, standing upright, alive and vital. These are the Israelites living in exile who are returning to Jerusalem.

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Artificial Intelligence

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) has always been a staple of science fiction writing. Isaac Asimov used AI as part of his writing, introducing the robot R. Daneel Olivaw as an investigating partner to NYC detective Elijah Bailey in the 1954 novel “Caves of Steel” – famously revealing the Three Laws of Robotics. But across the full breadth of the “Robot Series” of short stories and novels, R. Daneel Olivaw grows, develops and, in a way, becomes a better human than human. The hope and promise of AI.

AI is broad category of research and application that includes neural networks, machine learning, and more. The field of AI research was born at a workshop at Dartmouth College in 1956, where the term “Artificial Intelligence” was coined by John McCarthy to distinguish the field from cybernetics. The basic trajectory of the research continues the classic Church-Turing idea of whether a machine can exhibit human behavior – the most basic of which is learning. Which implies it has a teacher who provides an environment and information. In other words, show a neural network enough pictures of a cat, tell it “this is a cat” and the AI learns to identify new pictures as “cat” without being told. It just needed enough information and adequate processing power.

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