Robert J. Marks II

Director, Senior Fellow, Walter Bradley Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence

Besides serving as Director, Robert J. Marks Ph.D. hosts the Mind Matters podcast for the Bradley Center. He is Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor University. Marks is a Fellow of both the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the Optical Society of America. He was Charter President of the IEEE Neural Networks Council and served as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks. He is coauthor of the books Neural Smithing: Supervised Learning in Feedforward Artificial Neural Networks (MIT Press) and Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics (World Scientific). For more information, see Dr. Marks’s expanded bio.

Archives

Fermat’s Last Tango: Lively Musical For Nerds

The ghost of Fermat and other giants from the Aftermath Club help (frustrate?) a mathematician’s effort to prove Fermat’s famous Last Theorem
Robert J. Marks
April 9, 2021
If you are a nerd, the musical Fermat’s Last Tango (2001) is hilarious. Mathematician Pierre de Fermat proposed his last theorem around 1637. He wrote a note in the margin of a copy of Arithmetica, a book written by a 3rd-century Alexandrian mathematician, Diophantus. Fermat’s short scribble claimed that he could prove that a specific Diophantine equation had no solution. But whatever Fermat was thinking died with him in 1665. A proof of Fermat’s last theorem eluded mathematicians over 300 years until Princeton’s Andrew Wiles proved it in 1995. Fermat’s Last Tango is a fantasy account of Wiles’s life while he was working on the proof. The play is a musical sprinkled with nerdy inside jokes. For example, part of…

Five Surprising Facts Re Famous Scientists We Bet You Never Knew

How about juggling, riding a unicycle, and playing bongo? Or catching criminals or cracking safes?
Robert J. Marks
February 2, 2021
We know what famous scientists like Einstein are famous for but we don’t know much about who they are. Here are five personal life facts about scientists who made a big difference to our understanding of the world that you probably didn’t know. The most interesting one is saved for last. 1.Isaac Newton dressed as a bum to mingle with the unwashed and catch criminals. Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727) was the father of classical physics and an inventor of calculus. When students take their first college classes in calculus and physics today, they study the concepts Newton developed in the 17th century. But Newton also wrote over a million words on Biblical prophecy. He was also the Warden and…

The President Pardons the Founder of a Church That Worships AI

On his last day in office, departing President Trump pardoned Anthony Levandowski
Robert J. Marks
January 22, 2021
Anthony Levandowski has an interesting history He transitioned from Silicon Valley wunderkind to inept theologian to convicted felon. Now he is free, due to a pardon given by Donald Trump in Trump’s last day in office. If you are an orthodox materialist, you believe our brains are computers made of meat. Artificial intelligence, brains made out of silicon, will therefore match and eventually exceed human capabilities and become godlike. So it might make sense to form a church that worships this future AI god. That’s what Anthony Levandowski did in 2019. His church was christened Way of the Future. Levandowski reasoned “What is going to be created [by AI] will effectively be a god … if there is something a…

Most Real Numbers Are Not Real, or Not in the Way You Think

Typical real numbers contain an encoding of all of the books in the US Library of Congress
Robert J. Marks
January 21, 2021
Pick a random real number between zero and one. The number you choose, with probability one, will contain an encoding of all of the books in the US Library of Congress. This sounds absurd, but real numbers require infinite precision and every time you deal with the infinite, things get absurd. Infinities, including the infinite number of digits to express almost every real number, don’t exist. Curiously then, real numbers are not real. How do we choose a random number between zero and one? The easiest way to explain is using binary decimals. The binary number 0.1000… with zeros forever denotes the number ½ or, in base 10 notation, 0.5. The binary decimal 0.01000… with zeros forever is the number…

AI Tool Now Predicts Attacks of Locust Swarms for African Farmers

Under the right circumstances, data from the past can be used to predict data in the future
Robert J. Marks
January 7, 2021
A new free AI tool now forewarns African farmers about impending locust attacks: “Farmers and pastoralists receive free SMS alerts 2-3 months in advance of when locusts are highly likely to attack farms and livestock forage in their areas, allowing for early intervention.” The Kuzi early warning tool is one of a number of new tools that can predict reasonably expected futures. This sort of forecasting is possible if there is large body of oracle ergodic data to train machine intelligence. “Oracle ergodic” simply means that data from the past can be used to predict data in the future. That’s not self-evident. Flipping a coin, for example, is not oracle ergodic in the sense that a history of past flips…

Jill Biden: Who Should, and Shouldn’t, Be Called “Doctor”?

The controversy around Jill Biden’s title, “Dr.,” could use some clarification from the dictionary
Robert J. Marks
December 22, 2020
There is a controversy about whether Joe Biden’s wife should be referred to as “Doctor” Jill Biden. Isn’t “Doctor” a title for physicians only?The question is resolved easily by consulting a dictionary. Two of the definitions in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary are: 1.a person skilled or specializing in healing arts especially : one (such as a physician, dentist, or veterinarian) who holds an advanced degree and is licensed to practice 2.a person who has earned one of the highest academic degrees (such as a PhD) conferred by a university Jill Biden has a doctorate (an EdD) from the University of Delaware. Independent of one’s politics (I’m not a Biden fan), Jill Biden can be accurately referred to as Dr. Jill Biden.…

We’re the Walter Bradley Center. But Who Is Walter Bradley?

A new biography, For a Greater Purpose, discusses Bradley’s life and legacy
Robert J. Marks
December 20, 2020
Mind Matters News is published by the Walter Bradley Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence. And a natural question is, who is this guy, Walter Bradley? Find out in a new biography authored by design theorist William Dembski and myself, For a Greater Purpose. The Foreword is written by the extraordinary philosopher J. P. Moreland. From the book, here’s what others are saying about Walter Bradley: ● “Walter Bradley is one of the most extraordinary men I have ever known. I am in awe of him.” —William Lane Craig, PhD, DTh, ReasonableFaith.org ● “One of the great blessings God has granted me in my life is the opportunity to have co-ministered with [Walter Bradley] among faculty and students on university…

Can Blockchain Help Ensure Fraud Free Voting?

Could blockchain have prevented the current controversy around voter fraud in the recent U.S. election?
Robert J. Marks
November 27, 2020
In Wednesday’s meeting between Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Republican senators from the Pennsylvania legislature about potential voter fraud in the state, one state senator suggested blockchain as a potential cure for the type of voter fraud being alleged. A company called VOATZ has the technology to do this and was mentioned by name. Blockchain is the secret sauce that keeps bitcoin working. Each new bitcoin transaction is encrypted as a new link in the chain, which is distributed to numerous sites. If anyone tries to change a link in the blockchain, everyone who stores the bitcoin blockchain knows it, so the fraud is detected and removed. The beauty of blockchain is that trust is assured among people who…

The First War Using Modern AI-Based Weapons Is Here

Most introductions of new technology in warfare will ultimately be canceled by counter-technology. But in the meantime…
Robert J. Marks
October 15, 2020
AI weapons are being used in the border war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. And the results are not pretty: Israel may halt commercial weapon sales to Azerbaijan, Armenian Ambassador to Israel Armen Smbatyan told The Jerusalem Post, as fighting intensified for the ninth day between the two countries… Last week, Armenia recalled Smbatyan for consultations to protest the sale of Israeli made weapons, including drones, to Azerbaijan, which have been used against its forces. Tovah Lazaroff, “Israel may halt its weapons sale to Azerbaijan, Armenian ambassador says” at The Jerusalem Post (October 6, 2020) The most chilling—readily achievable—AI weaponry is a swarm of armed drones. Drones are inexpensive and easily deployed, and if only a few drones make it through…

Should We Really “Listen to Science”? What Should We Listen For?

Politicians who insist that their beliefs represent science might be surprised by the checkered history of that view
Robert J. Marks
October 13, 2020
This political season, politicians are telling us to “listen to science.” But buyer beware. The politicization of science is a long and sad history of so-called “scientific truths” that were not only mistaken but resulted in tragedy. Those who know a bit of this history should be wary of politicians’ table-pounding claims on topics ranging from climate change to COVID. In a 2003 lecture at Caltech, Michael Crichton, MD (pictured in 2002, courtesy Jon Chase CC BY-SA 3.0), author of great science fiction including Jurassic Park, noted, “science has in some instances been seduced by the more ancient lures of politics and publicity.” For example, racism was “settled science” in the early 20th century. So was eugenics, the so-called science…