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General Assembly of the World Values Survey meets in Qatar
General Assembly of the World Values Survey Associationwill meet in Doha, Qatar, March, 18–22 at the World Conference on “The Rise of Public Engagement, in the region and in the World”. The conference , (Social and Economic Survey Research Institute and the Arab Barometer.

Cogito Machina - Investigating the emergence of artificial general intelligence
Is AGI emergent? In order to know, several questions need to be answered and this project aims to provide the answeres. What is AGI? What is required for a system to have it, and how might we know whether AGI is emergent in a system.
Artificial superintelligence and its limits: why AlphaZero cannot become a general agent
AI & Society (2020) Abstract An intelligent machine surpassing human intelligence across a wide set of skills has been proposed as a possible existential catastrophe (i.e., an event comparable in val
Artificial superintelligence and its limits: why AlphaZero cannot become a general agent
in: AI & SOCIETY AbstractAn intelligent machine surpassing human intelligence across a wide set of skills has been proposed as a possible existential catastrophe (i.e., an event comparable in valueproductivedesires, or desires that can direct behavior across multiple contexts. However, productive desires cannotsui generisbe derived from non-productive desires. Thus, even though general agency in AI could in principle be created by human agents, general agency cannot be spontaneously produced by a non-general AI agent through an endogenous process (i.e. self-improvement). In conclusion, we argue that a common AI scenario, where general agency suddenly emerges in a non-general agent AI, such as DeepMind’s superintelligent board game AI AlphaZero, is not plausible.
What insights can data visualization techniques generate?
Visualizing information is a way to communicate scientific results efficiently and in an appealing way. This is particularly important if scientists want to communicate their results not only to their
The Sustainable Society in Swedish Politics – Renewal and Continuity
The article studies how the ideas of a sustainable society have developed and adapted to Swedish politics between the years 1988-2004. Social democratic welfare ideology seems to have given its imprin
The Origins and Maintenance of Female Genital Modification across Africa
Bayesian Phylogenetic Modeling of Cultural Evolution under the Influence of Selection Human Nature, 27(2), 173-200. DOI 10.1007/s12110-015-9244-5 Abstract We present formal evolutionary models for the oristratification appear to play a more important role in the cross-cultural distribution of FGMo. To explain these cases, one must consider cultural evolutionary explanations in conjunction with behavioral ecological ones.We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our study for policies designed to end the practice of FGMo.
Population Geography Perspectives on the Central Asian Republics
The main traits of the population geography of the Central Asian Republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistanare are outlined, and attempts are made to establish if par
Stability or Change in the Swedish Labour Market Regime
This paper will relate the worsened situation for low educated in general, and youth in particular, to two institutional factors: a changed organisation of vocational education in upper secondary scho

Bi Puranen
Secretary General of the World Values Survey Association and Principal Investigator of WVS Sweden. I am affiliated as Senior Research Fellow to the Institute for Futures Studies. My research is focused