Awesome, I love A.I. On an obliquely related note, can you predict how close we are to making digital copies of ourselves? (I am referencing the intriguing Black Mirror episodes San Junipero and U.S.S. Callister)

@verifiabliss Nowhere even close to beginning to start doing anything even remotely related to that.
I always enjoyed to work in various fields of AI, mainly machine learning and natural language processing, but one has to be aware the AI does not really have to do anything with intelligence especially not human intelligence. The field of AI is more like the corner of computer science where the aim is to do "real hard things no-one really knows how one could possibly do this on a computer". Eventually, people figure out how to do some of these things and from that point on, they are just computer engineering any more. Take playing chess - when computers started getting good at that, people got all worried about them computers taking over the world soon after. Now playing chess better than a grand master is a solved problem and any computer science student should know how to do it. But it is nowhere closer to actual intelligence than the amazing capability of computers to calculate the products of huge numbers or give you the logarithm of any number in microseconds - something people would have thought to be very "intelligent" 300 years ago.

@josmi6699 ha ha, well that's a relief, those shows were all pretty freaky! so it is the sheer complexity of "human intelligence" that we have yet to imitate in A.I.? or is it the aspects that we don't yet understand about our own neurology and thus cannot replicate?

what work do you do with endangered species?

@btroje Finding them at all is the best part, so a lot of work examining past habitat, potential habitat. I specialise in restoring damaged habitat. It all fits together well for me, I often teach natural area restoration, I am really into ecology, I do wildlife rescue and care as a trained volunteer. My most recent big project that I still advise on was the Mitchell's Rainforest Snail, (Thersites mitchellae) not seen on a site for 13 years, I managed to find some shells of them and the Frasers Rainforest Snail. The site was a critically endangered ecological community that was severely damaged but after 9 years and lots of money and effort is largely recovered and as of a few weeks back now fully enclosed to keep pests and weeds out. I love onychophorans, did discover a peripatus when I was 16 but sadly it died and dissolved before it could be preserved. I went back to the site last November, exactly 43 years later, sadly didn't find any. I am kind of a wetlands specialist though would love to work on coral reefs.

@Rugglesby very cool

@Rugglesby what wonderful work to do, thank you for contributing to wildlife.

what kind of research do you do?

Clinical neuroscience and theoretical quantum mechanics. I also collect plastic cups.

@BurtsTime Gosh, two of my favorite topics... and What do you do with the plastic cups?

@verifiabliss Oh, I stack the cups, some right side up, some up side down, then do computations with 4 at a time. I call them Q-Cups.

(Though I feel sorry for the poor woman who actually needs a Q-cup

@BawdyEclectic -- No, it's just another thing that people do that helps make the world go round. I maintain that anyone who does anything productive or in some little way generates a better world is awesome. Keep doing what you do and do it well.

I think one of our great mistakes is our tendency to stratify our world. We need to stop doing that. Each of us can only be who and what we are and as long as we're doing that to the benefit of the world surrounding us, we are all operating at the same level. We are all ... awesome.

Pretty pictures, evidentialist, thanks! I just have an endless curiosity, and like to find and connect with people who are good at explaining-- that's why.

@verifiabliss -- Curious people are my favorite people. Oops. Wait. That doesn't sound right. Rephrase: People who have curiosity are my favorite people. There, that's better.