THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WHO IS MAKING HAY WHILE THE SUN SHINES IN SUPPLYING ARMS TO THE UKRIAN?

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( Fifteen minute read)

The human being is apparently the most aggressive and cruel species that has ever inhabited the Earth: There is no other animal that kills members of its own species in such a systematic way as man does (Sangrador, 1982).

So it is not surprising that the current Ukraine war raises difficult political and ethical questions, because these day with technology we fail to see systematic polarisation, because we all assume good and bad are equally distributed among us, but that is just an abstract idea, far from the reality.

If western leaders think that their arms-length encouragement of Ukraine will bring about a Ukrainian military victory, then they are fatally misreading Putin’s intentions and resolve.

Russia’s progress may be slowed, but it’s highly unlikely to be stopped, far less pushed out of Ukraine, and in the meantime the grinding destruction and hideous war crimes continue.

The west’s current approach of supporting Ukraine’s war aim of defeating the aggressor, and providing arms for that purpose while pointedly avoiding direct military intervention, is guaranteed to prolong the war and it is not at all clear that the kind of support we are giving (and not giving) is the right way to go about preserving the Ukrainian nation.

One thing is certain it is that Putin will never accept defeat.

He is already too deeply invested in this war to back off with nothing to show for it.

If Russia’s aim was to exterminate the Ukrainian nation, then the west’s approach is helping to do just that. Encouraging the Ukrainians to continue, however just their cause, is merely making their country uninhabitable.

Of course as with any war the problem is how what and where should support be given but in the background of any war there are those supplying ammunition and arms to both the aggressor and the opposition.

Large defence companies are already seeing their share prices go up as investors anticipate the impact of the war on profits.

Thales shares have risen by 35% since the invasion, while BAE Systems shares are up 32%. Lockheed Martin has seen an increase of 14% and Aero Vironment 63%.

Supplying weapons offers no effective means of reducing violence.

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In wars there is a profound failure to mourn loose of life, because there is nothing good enough to allow the process to begin, leads to an enactment where loss is transferred usually bodily into another.

We accept that no one has the right to take another’s life, however, justified their grievances.

It is true that some people can feel that their own identity, country, belief system, are so under threat that the annihilation of the other, to preserve their own belief systems, is sometimes justified. The aggressive attacker has forfeited their rights and therefore it’s okay to attack them, to kill them, or to hurt them.

In the case of wars people are violent because it feels like the right thing to do.

It follows that supporting Ukraine is the right thing to do, with Britain and Poland now suppling Tanks.

So where are we with the War?

I think when we look at the state of the world we have two conflicting regimes at war with each other: We tend to think that the seed of violence is outside of us and we are exempt from it but ” violence begets violence ” laying the seed for future clashes.

Religious fundamentalism in the form of a particularly virulent form of Islam, which most Muslims do not of course adhere to.

The other is an unfettered fundamentalism, a form of Neo-liberal secular market economics, that promulgates a vicious form of Social Darwinism. “We are all revolutionary in our shopping habits now,” that most of us don’t want to adhere to this idea – but unwittingly play a part in it – and until we realise the damage to climate change and the plight of refugees.

We are actually in a period of profound economic crisis where the human industrial system could threaten to destroy all traces of tradition, certainty and belief.

It is possible that no other currency of communication can be imagined other than death to the enemy. Hence, the dynamic can be perpetuated down the generations. The desire for vengeance and the righting of wrongs can shape an entire life.

Instead of listening to the grievances arising from the Middle East, we in the West continue to employ professional soldiers to perform what might seem acts of state-sanctioned terrorism in the name of foreign policy such as the invasion of Iraq, still a highly peculiar response to the 9/11 attacks.

Can there ever be just wars?

The answer to that question (in a democratic society) is almost always going to be “no” because the test of “Is it a last resort” which is one of the tests for a just war, is never going to be reached, because there is always in a democratic society, an alternative way of reaching your goal, which is to pursue things through the normal political process.

Is this true?

Some violence is more rational or ethically justifiable than others, such as surgical strikes, or limited warfare, the use of things like drones has become very common. The remote drone operator carrying out clean surgical hits allegedly in our name. The pleasure of an Isis general being blown to pieces.

But the question remains. Can there ever be a just war?

How many of us for instance would think it was worthwhile for anyone’s sons or daughters to die in the service of keeping the Falklands Islands British, or during the invasion of Iraq, whether this action is seen as an atrocity or ‘liberation’.

Nelson Mandela was deemed a terrorist, not a rebel with great cause, he remained on the US terrorism list most of his life. Reagan and Thatcher both viewed Mandela as a threat. Indeed, he was at first involved in necessary violent guerrilla actions against the apartheid state.

You can’t defeat an ideology, when it feels based on a justified grievance that belief systems are under threat from the modern world and a wish to regress from the advances of modernity, which seems to lack all spiritual awareness except that of materialism.

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Can violence be fought with violence?   Of course it can.

The paradox of fighting violence with violence is within psychology two opposing concepts, one called “compassion fatigue” and the opposite “substitution trauma.” Both associated with chronic stress and its effect on ceasing to feel empathy for others or feeling sympathetic to others..

Currently, because we are shown violent images daily on Television stations and social media it make’s us reflect on the consequences suffered by victims of aggression as well as the different types of aggression that are shown, making many of these scenes appear as “happy violence.”

However, luckily it is still very rare that you’ll see anybody claim that hurting someone else is an inherently moral thing to do.

Unfortunately morality as understood and practiced by real-world human beings, doesn’t always prohibit violence. In fact they make the case that most violence is motivated by morality.

An emotional abduction (Goleman, 2012) can trigger our violence: a lack of self-control, an unexpected event, the protection of a loved one, defence against an out-of-control animal, or even an attack of zeal, can trigger our most heinous thoughts.

Social interaction influences the brain and the brain influences social interaction.

Social behaviour is learned mainly by observing and imitating the actions of others, and secondly, by being directly rewarded and punished for our own actions. In this regard Putin points to the extermination of the native Indians in West (The Establishment Americas, war list is endless ) as defence of his actions.

The best way to change someone’s behaviour is to understand what motivated that behaviour in the first place.

Political leaders are right to condemn terrorist attacks – we do not have to accept the moral codes of others in order to acknowledge that they exist. However, long-term solutions to terrorist atrocities, as well as many other forms of violence such as wars in our society, might benefit from a taking a perspective that the perpetrators believe that what they are doing is good, just, and right.

Russia’s age-old security concerns, perhaps even the very logic of basing today’s international frontiers in that part of Europe on what were internal borders in the USSR, drawn up by communist leaders precisely to prevent Soviet republics and regions from being viable independent states.

“People are only as mad as the other people are deaf” – Adam Philips.

The greatest acts of violence in the last century have in fact been perpetrated by western colonialism and economic expansionism, we are now arguably reaping the backlash of those policies. The exploitation of the poor by the neoliberal economy is one huge factor in social and state violence, which leads to wars and militarism.

So to create a violent attack firstly ignore the underlying factors, poverty inequality and western exploitation, the severe effects of climate change, global warming, arguably caused by unscrupulous western economic policies.

No day goes past without some senior western politician proclaiming that Ukraine will be “successful” and that Russia is “failing” which is clearly nonsense. The risk involved in this – of a third world war – is obvious, and it’s why the west refuses to intervene directly.

Can violence be fought with violence?

Like all wars, Russia’s barbaric attack on Ukraine will finish at some point. How it ends will determine whether Europe is destined to live with a festering sore of bitterness and division at its heart.

How will the war end?

First, there is outright victory by one side or the other. Second, there is a negotiated ceasefire leading to a peace settlement of some kind. Third, an inconclusive outcome, with the fighting gradually subsiding leaving a stalemate or frozen conflict.

The most pressing question is how do we prevent a repeat of the most violent conflict that humanity has ever seen, the second world war.

Remember that world war two didn’t come out of nothing its starting fuse was the peace agreement of world war one.

Outright victory with unconditional surrender by the losing side is rare and military victory frequently led to a much more ambiguous political outcome sowing the seeds of future conflict.

The third way conflicts end is in a stalemate, with no clear winner and no peace agreement, but a gradual ebbing away of the fighting, leaving a more or less chaotic and unstable situation.

None of these analogies will apply precisely.

How will Putin’s latest Ukraine war end?

Outright victory by one side looks the least likely. Even if Russia managed to topple the Zelensky government and install a puppet regime, subjugating the whole country would require a massive army of occupation, far larger than Moscow can muster.

Moscow and Kyiv have set out their opening positions. But these are light-years apart.

Any amputation of Ukraine’s territory will result in a hostile stand-off, with regular upsurges of fighting along a line of separation. Another words back to a full-scale Cold War with Russia.

If NATO were to actively enter the war and make a quick, massive and decisive strike to cripple Russia’s invasion forces it would be the demise of the EU catapulting it back to a situation of the 1930s where there were individual states in Europe pitted against each other.

In the end there will be no classless society or reign of the Just. It will just carry on in the same kind of way. Meanwhile, all we have is the means. The means is how we will be judged.

As some put it: Peace only be achieved without weapons.

We create refugees with our economics and then blame them for wanting a better life.

Tell them (they have names)

and when they turn the bodies over

To count the number of closed eyes. And they tell you 800’000: you say no. that was my uncle. He wore bright coloured shirts and pointy shoes.

2 million: you say no. that was my aunty.

her laughter could sweep you up like

The wind to leaves on the ground.

6 million: you say no. that was my mother.

her arms. the only place I have ever

Not known fear.

3 million: you say no. that was my love.

We used to dance. Oh, how we used to dance.

Or 147: you say no. that was our hope. Our future. The brains of the family.

And when they tell you that you come from war: you say no. I come from hands held in prayer before we eat together.

When they tell you that you come from conflict: you say no. I come from sweat. On skin. glistening. From shining sun.

When they tell you that you come from genocide: you say no. I come from the first smile of a new born child. tiny hands.

When they tell you that you come from rape: you say no. and you tell them about every time you have ever loved.

Tell them that you are from mother carrying you on her back. until you could walk. until you could run. until you could fly.

Tell them that you are from father holding you up to the night sky. full of stars. and saying look, child.

this is what you are made of. From long summers. full moons. flowing rivers. sand dunes.

you tell them that you are an ocean that no cup could ever hold.

JJ Bola | poet

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In a world where there are disadvantages, neglect and unfairness, there will always be collective and individual activity to reverse the inferior position, by finding other bodies and minds to carry it.

The thing is, no one would ever engage in something that serves the purpose of one’s species’ survival unless one found some pleasure in it.

But does this concept imply while making the revolution enjoying the violence in the process is okay?

Is there really such a convenient separation between a revolution (or rebellion or civil war) and everyday life violence?

If so, one has to use a different register for judgement.

People could receive reinforcement or rewards for their aggressive behaviour in different ways: directly or indirectly.

Every act of violence can feel justified with the currency of communication is the exchange of pain.

It is clear that such questions can and must be discussed.

You can’t defeat an ideology, when it feels based on a justified grievance that belief systems are under threat from the modern world and a wish to regress from the advances of modernity, which seems to lack all spiritual awareness except that of materialism.

When the state is violent, is violence justifiable?

What happens when we tolerate the intolerant? And when we spare the life of a killer? Do we become their enablers?

Is assassination a more justifiable form of political violence than war?

The ethics of selective assassination as a tactic in warfare has not really been given much of consideration until the invention of drones, and with their appears, the acceptance, increasingly that you can execute people before you have tried them.

Freedom is a form of human flourishing that we can only develop or aspire to acquire in relationships with other people.

Violence is destructive of the great fabric of human association that I need in order to develop as a free person.

For example, the Taliban was supposed to be crushed by the invasion of Afghanistan; a very similar kind of organisation to ISIS or ISIL. In the end, as John Alderdice has said, they have to be talked to.

To the Russian President: Vladimir Putin.

Your time will end.

Please end your invasion of the Ukraine . It’s not working. Whatever your reason was for the invasion is no longer valid. You are only hurting your own people. The scansions are incredible and direct and hurtful for your people. It’s not working and it’s not worth destroying both the Ukraine and Russia. However, if you insist on being closed minded an ignorant the please go about it. You will only end up destroying yourself. What you are doing is crazy and stupid.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. IS 2023 GOING TO BE THE YEAR THAT HUMANITY FINDS OUT THAT IT IS NOT THE DOMINANT FORCE OF CHANGE ON PLANET EARTH?

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( Three minute read)

What can be achieved in this decade to put the world on a path to a more sustainable, more prosperous future for all of humanity?

Temptation is to say, that you may rest assured that it will be another year of unadulterated verbal dioramas diarrhoea.

With humanity waging war on nature the risks we are taking are astounding.

What did Earth look like from space in 2022?

It looked beautiful, it looked dangerous. It looked small and inconsequential, it looked incredible.iss066e109851

Nature always strikes back – and it is already doing so with growing force and fury.

About 96% of all mammals by weight are now humans and our livestock, like cattle, sheep and pigs. Just 4% are wild mammals like elephants, buffalo or dolphins. Seventy-five percent of Earth’s ice-free land is directly altered as a result of human activity, with nearly 90% of terrestrial net primary production and 80% of global tree cover under direct human influence.

We have grossly simplified the biosphere, a system of interactions between lifeforms and Earth that has evolved over 3.8 billion years. As the pressure of human activities accelerates on Earth, so, too, does the hope that technologies such as artificial intelligence will be able to help us deal with dangerous climate and environmental change. That will only happen, however, if we act forcefully in ways that redirects the direction of technological change towards planetary stewardship and responsible innovation.2022-05_geocolor_20220505180018_logos-1

Rising greenhouse gas emissions means that “within the coming 50 years, one to 3 billion people are projected to experience living conditions that are outside of the climate conditions that have served civilizations well over the past 6,000 years.

In this decade we must bend the curves of greenhouse gas emissions and shocking biodiversity loss. This means transforming what we eat and how we farm it, among many other transformations.

Nature has now become for us a kind of glossy cardboard, digitized and virtualized, increasingly distant from our lives.

The recent Covid-19 global pandemic is an Anthropocene phenomena. It has been caused by our intertwined relationship with nature and our hyper-connectivity. ( We order Pizza by sending messages into space.)

However our actions are making the biosphere more fragile, less resilient and more prone to shocks than before.

Humans use the majority of natural geo-resources, like minerals, rocks, soil and water.

Two of the biggest barriers are unsustainable levels of inequality and technology that undermines societal goals.

Inequality and environmental challenges are deeply linked. Reducing inequality will increase trust within societies.

It is time to flick the “green switch.   We have a chance to not simply reset the world economy but to transform it.

It is time to integrate the goal of carbon neutrality into all economic and fiscal policies and decisions. And to make climate-related financial risk disclosures mandatory.

It is time to transform humankind’s relationship with the natural world – and with each other. And we must do so together.

It’s is time to get off your smart phone and start to demand transparency of Algorithms that are plundering the world for profit. .

The state of the planet is much worse than most people understand and that humans face a grim.

Because as of yet there is no political or economic system, or leadership, is prepared to handle the predicted disasters, or even capable of such action

The problem is compounded by ignorance and short-term self-interest, with the pursuit of wealth and political interests stymying the action that is crucial for survival.

Most economies operate on the basis that counteraction now is too costly to be politically palatable. Combined with disinformation campaigns to protect short-term profits it is doubtful that the scale of changes we need will be made in time.

We need to be candid, accurate, and honest if humanity is to understand the enormity of the challenges we face in creating a sustainable future.

Without political will backed by tangible action that scales to the enormity of the problems facing us, the added stresses to human health, wealth, and well-being will perversely diminish our political capacity to mitigate the erosion of the Earth’s life-support system upon which we all depend.

Without fully appreciating and broadcasting the scale of the problems and the enormity of the solutions required, society will fail to achieve even modest sustainability goals, and catastrophe will surely follow.

So the Beady Eye wishes all a Happy New Year with the near certainty that the abovementioned problems will worsen over the coming decades, with negative impacts for centuries to come, if we dont now get our fingers out of where the sun does not shine.

No one has a right to pollute the air or the water, which are the common inheritance of all.

We have not inherited the Earth from our parents, we have borrowed it from our children.

The time has come to re-educate to nature and contact with it as a lever to ensure collective well-being, physical and mental; to restore beauty, kindness, ecosystem thinking, emotional intelligence and a formation of values, heritage inherited from the wisdom of the past but negligently neglected.

After all, this is what ecology is all about: looking at reality as it is, understanding its connections, accepting its complexity, and striving for harmony between all parts.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: THE NEW TYPE OF NON- CONSCIOUS INTELLIGENCE DRIVEN BY NON-CONSCIOUS ALGORITHMS IS GOING TO DESTROY WHAT IS LEFT OF DECENCY IN THE WORLD. (Guest post an unknown source.)

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( A six-minute read)

The idea that humans will always have a unique ability beyond the reach of non-conscious algorithms is just wishful thinking.

The fact is, as time goes by it will be easier and easier to replace humans with computer algorithms, not because they are getting smarter and smarter but because humans are professionalising.

One would have to say are we all such naive bonkers that we are going to allow algorithms dictate our lives.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of algorithms"

The answer so far appears to be yes. We are going to become militarily and economically useless.

Technical difficulties or political objections might slow down the algorithmic invasion of the job market but while the systems might need humans, it will not need individuals.

These systems will make most of the important decisions depriving individuals of their authority and freedom.

They are already assembling humans into dividuals ie. humans are becoming an assemblage of many different algorithms lacking a single inner voice or a single self.

Its time we realized that if we continue down this path allowing large corporations platforms to introduce algorithms willy nilly with no overall vetting as to whether they comply with our values we will be replacing the voter, the consumer, and the beholder.

The Al algorithm will know best, will always be right, and beauty will be in the calculation of the algorithm. Individualism will collapse and authority will shift from individual humans to autonomous networks.

People will not see themselves as individuals but as collections of biochemical mechanisms that are constantly monitored and guided by a network of electronic algorithms.

We are already crossing the line. Most of us use Apps without any thought whatsoever.

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You might say that every age has its organizing principles.

The nineteenth century had the novel, and the twentieth had TV; in our more modern times, they come and go more quickly than ever—on Web 1.0 it was the website, for example, and a few years later, for 2.0, it was the app.

And now, another shift is underway:

Today’s organizing principle is the algorithm. (Though you could productively argue that our new lingua franca will either be artificial intelligence or virtual reality.)

Algorithms rule the modern world, silent workhorses aligning data sets and systematizing the world. They’re everywhere, in everything, and you wouldn’t know unless you looked. For some of the most powerful companies in the world—Google, Facebook, etc.—they’re also closely held secrets, the most valuable intellectual property a company owns. 

Perhaps it is naïve to believe algorithms should be neutral? but it’s also deceptive to advance the illusion that Facebook and the algorithms that power it are bias-free.

They are not neutral.

Facebook is intended to be the home of what the world is talking about. Their business model depends on it, even if that’s an impossible goal. As such, with now well over a billion users, and still growing, it’s worth asking:

What role should Facebook play in shaping public discourse? And just how transparent should it be?

After all, Facebook is mind-boggling massive.

It accounts for a huge portion of traffic directed to news sites; small tweaks in its own feed algorithm can have serious consequences for media companies’ bottom lines.

What can be done? ( See previous posts)

Evolution will continue and will need to do so if we humans are to exist.

We therefore should welcome all technology that enhances our chances of this existence in as far that it equates to human values.

All Algorithms that violate these values for the sake of profit or power should be destroyed.

After all if humans have no soul and if thoughts, emotions, and sensations are just biochemical algorithms why can’t biology account for all the vagaries of human societies.?

If Donald Trump is the best that twitter Algorithms can produce it appears to me that there is a long way to go and it’s not too late to change course.

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All human comments appreciated. All like algorithms clicks chucked in the bin.

 

CAPITALISM CONTINUES TO PRIVATIZE THE PLANET.

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This is the first post to this blog .

 The purpose of this blog is to start a world mobile phone movement to effect change by Uniting the combined Communication Powers of us all into one world voice that will have to be listened to by World Organizations  and World Corporations.

These days we are  served up doom and gloom daily with the last decade leading us down the path to disillusionment. 

DEMOCRACY ERODED, LIVELIHOODS DESTROYED.  WITH GOVERNMENTS EVERYWHERE BETRAYING THE MANDATES THAT BROUGHT THEM INTO POWER.

September 11 tragedy now turned into a convenient Excuse for any anti-people legislation denying civil liberties worldwide. The Arab Spring is a quagmire>The Euro a nightmare >The Afghan War a needless lost of life>The Israel Palestine Question a dark cul-de-sac>NATO a war machine>The United Nations a gum shield between the west and the rest>China a supermarket>Climate change a trading commodity>Football a religion>Austerity a goal>Economic Growth an aspiration that no one seems to know how to achieve.

IF WE ARE ALL HONEST WITH OURSELVES THE WORLD IS GOING WRONG:

By the year 2030 there will be 50% more of us-6 million a month.

Humanity will have to put aside the deep divisions it has maintained for thousands of years.

Find a new spirit of human co- operation. Stop spending trillions on arms. One-fifth of the world’s present days population live in the “rich world” consuming 86% of the world’s goods. While over half the people on Earth live on 2$ a day with the absolute  poor on a !$ making up billions. Where is the justice that the gross domestic product of the poorest 48 Nations is less than the wealth of the World’s three riches people.

You don’t have to look far to see why we have Terrorism. Poverty and lack of Education spawns it.

While we turn back the evolutionary clock pumping 8 billion tons of Carbon into the Atmosphere each year wiping out 50,000 species a year in collective denial.

There can be no trade-off between economic development and the protection of the Environment Even if it is possible looking back from the Moon and see no trace of human activities that show up.

Our Democracies seem unable to achieve any progress such as mitigating climate change, better managing ecosystems, creating a fair global trading system. However we have the knowledge, the data and the technologies to do all of these things.

The question is not so much ” How could we have learned so little in all these years after two World Wars? But ” How could we have learned so much and done so little?

So it’s time to stop supporting large World Corporations and the like that don’t show a corporate social responsibility and use the power of getting Smart with our smart phones.

Any comments, suggestions, are welcome.  My next blog posting will out line a plan to create a World Aid Tax to be applied on all World stock Exchanges.

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S : ARE OUR LIVES GOING TO BE RULED BY ALGORITHMS.

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( Ten minute read) 

I am sure that unless you have being living on another planet it is becoming more and more obvious that the manner you live your life is being manipulate and influence by technologies.

So its worth pausing to ask why the use of AI for algorithm-informed decision is desirable, and hence worth our collective effort to think through and get right.

A huge amount of our lives – from what appears in our social media feeds to what route our sat-nav tells us to take – is influenced by algorithms. Email knows where to go thanks to algorithms. Smartphone apps are nothing but algorithms. Computer and video games are algorithmic storytelling.  Online dating and book-recommendation and travel websites would not function without algorithms.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is naught but algorithms.

The material people see on social media is brought to them by algorithms. In fact, everything people see and do on the web is a product of algorithms. Algorithms are also at play, with most financial transactions today accomplished by algorithms. Algorithms help gadgets respond to voice commands, recognize faces, sort photos and build and drive cars. Hacking, cyberattacks and cryptographic code-breaking exploit algorithms.

Algorithms are aimed at optimizing everything.

Self-learning and self-programming algorithms are now emerging, so it is possible that in the future algorithms will write many if not most algorithms.

Yes they can save lives, make things easier and conquer chaos, but when it comes both the commercial/ social world, there are many good reasons to question the use of Algorithms.

Why? 

They can put too much control in the hands of corporations and governments, perpetuate bias, create filter bubbles, cut choices, creativity and serendipity, while exploiting not just of you, but the very resources of our planet for short-term profits, destroying what left of democracy societies, turning warfare into face recognition, stimulating inequality, invading our private lives, determining our futures without any legal restrictions or transparency, or recourse.

The rapid evolution of AI and AI agents embedded in systems and devices in the Internet of Things will lead to hyper-stalking, influencing and shaping of voters, and hyper-personalized ads, and will create new ways to misrepresent reality and perpetuate falsehoods.

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As they are self learning, the problem is who or what is creating them, who owns these algorithms and what if there should be any controls in their usage.

Lets ask some questions that need to be ask now not later concerning them. 

1) The outcomes the algorithm intended to make possible (and whether they are ethical)

2) The algorithm’s function.

3) The algorithm’s limitations and biases.

4) The actions that will be taken to mitigate the algorithm’s limitations and biases.

5) The layer of accountability and transparency that will be put in place around it.

There is no debate about the need for algorithms in scientific research – such as discovering new drugs to tackle new or old diseases/ pandemics, space travel, etc. 

Out side of these needs the promise of AI is that we could have evidence-based decision making in the field:

Helping frontline workers make more informed decisions in the moments when it matters most, based on an intelligent analysis of what is known to work. If used thoughtfully and with care, algorithms could provide evidence-based policymaking, but they will fail to achieve much if poor decisions are taken at the front.

However, it’s all well and good for politicians and policymakers to use evidence at a macro level when designing a policy but the real effectiveness of each public sector organisation is now the sum total of thousands of little decisions made by algorithms each and every day.

First (to repeat a point made above), with new technologies we may need to set a higher bar initially in order to build confidence and test the real risks and benefits before we adopt a more relaxed approach. Put simply, we need time to see in what ways using AI is, in fact, the same or different to traditional decision making processes.

The second concerns accountability. For reasons that may not be entirely rational, we tend to prefer a human-made decision. The process that a person follows in their head may be flawed and biased, but we feel we have a point of accountability and recourse which does not exist (at least not automatically) with a machine.

The third is that some forms of algorithmic decision making could end up being truly game-changing in terms of the complexity of the decision making process. Just as some financial analysts eventually failed to understand the CDOs they had collectively created before 2008, it might be too hard to trace back how a given decision was reached when unlimited amounts of data contribute to its output.

The fourth is the potential scale at which decisions could be deployed. One of the chief benefits of technology is its ability to roll out solutions at massive scale. By the same trait it can also cause damage at scale.

 In all of this it’s important to remember that while progress isn’t guaranteed transformational progress on a global scale normally takes time, generations even, to achieve but we pulled it off in less than a decade and spent another decade pushing the limits of what was possible with a computer and an Internet connection and, unfortunately, we are beginning running into limits pretty quickly such as.

No one wants to accept that the incredible technological ride we’ve enjoyed for the past half-century is coming to an end, but unless algorithms are found that can provide a shortcut around this rate of growth, we have to look beyond the classical computer if we are to maintain our current pace of technological progress.

A silicon computer chip is a physical material, so it is governed by the laws of physics, chemistry, and engineering.

After miniaturizing the transistor on an integrated circuit to a nanoscopic scale, transistors just can’t keep getting smaller every two years. With billions of electronic components etched into a solid, square wafer of silicon no more than 2 inches wide, you could count the number of atoms that make up the individual transistors.

So the era of classical computing is coming to an end, with scientists anticipating the arrival of quantum computing designing ambitious quantum algorithms that tackle maths greatest challenges an Algorithm for everything.

———–

Algorithms may be deployed without any human oversight leading to actions that could cause harm and which lack any accountability.

The issues the public sector deals with tend to be messy and complicated, requiring ethical judgements as well as quantitative assessments. Those decisions in turn can have significant impacts on individuals’ lives. We should therefore primarily be aiming for intelligent use of algorithm-informed decision making by humans.

If we are to have a ‘human in the loop’, it’s not ok for the public sector to become littered with algorithmic black boxes whose operations are essentially unknowable to those expected to use them.

As with all ‘smart’ new technologies, we need to ensure algorithmic decision making tools are not deployed in dumb processes, or create any expectation that we diminish the professionalism with which they are used.

Algorithms could help remove or reduce the impact of these flaws.


So where are we.

At the moment modern algorithms are some of the most important solutions to problems currently powering the world’s most widely used systems.

Here are a few. They form the foundation on which data structures and more advanced algorithms are built.

Google’s PageRank algorithm is a great place to start, since it helped turn Google into the internet giant it is today.

The PageRank algorithm so thoroughly established Google’s dominance as the only search engine that mattered that the word Google officially became a verb less than eight years after the company was founded. Even though PageRank is now only one of about 200 measures Google uses to rank a web page for a given query, this algorithm is still an essential driving force behind its search engine.

The Key Exchange Encryption algorithm does the seemingly impo

Backpropagation through a neural network is one of the most important algorithms invented in the last 50 years.

Neural networks operate by feeding input data into a network of nodes which have connections to the next layer of nodes, and different weights associated with these connections which determines whether to pass the information it receives through that connection to the next layer of nodes. When the information passed through the various so-called “hidden” layers of the network and comes to the output layer, these are usually different choices about what the neural network believes the input was. If it was fed an image of a dog, it might have the options dog, cat, mouse, and human infant. It will have a probability for each of these and the highest probability is chosen as the answer.

Without backpropagation, deep-learning neural networks wouldn’t work, and without these neural networks, we wouldn’t have the rapid advances in artificial intelligence that we’ve seen in the last decade.

Routing Protocol Algorithm (LSRPA) are the two most essential algorithms we use every day as they efficiently route data.

The two most widely used by the Internet, the Distance-Vector Routing Protocol Algorithm (DVRPA) and the Link-State traffic between the billions of connected networks that make up the Internet.

Compression is everywhere, and it is essential to the efficient transmission and storage of information.

Its made possible by establishing a single, shared mathematical secret between two parties, who don’t even know each other, and is used to encrypt the data as well as decrypt it, all over a public network and without anyone else being able to figure out the secret.

Searches and Sorts are a special form of algorithm in that there are many very different techniques used to sort a data set or to search for a specific value within one, and no single one is better than another all of the time. The quicksort algorithm might be better than the merge sort algorithm if memory is a factor, but if memory is not an issue, merge sort can sometimes be faster;

One of the most widely used algorithms in the world, but in that 20 minutes in 1959, Dijkstra enabled everything from GPS routing on our phones, to signal routing through telecommunication networks, and any number of time-sensitive logistics challenges like shipping a package across country. As a search algorithmDijkstra’s Shortest Path stands out more than the others just for the enormity of the technology that relies on it.

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At the moment there are relatively few instances where algorithms should be deployed without any human oversight or ability to intervene before the action resulting from the algorithm is initiated.

The assumptions on which an algorithm is based may be broadly correct, but in areas of any complexity (and which public sector contexts aren’t complex?) they will at best be incomplete.

Why?

Because the code of algorithms may be unviewable in systems that are proprietary or outsourced.

Even if viewable, the code may be essentially uncheckable if it’s highly complex; where the code continuously changes based on live data; or where the use of neural networks means that there is no single ‘point of decision making’ to view.

Virtually all algorithms contain some limitations and biases, based on the limitations and biases of the data on which they are trained.

 Though there is currently much debate about the biases and limitations of artificial intelligence, there are well known biases and limitations in human reasoning, too. The entire field of behavioural science exists precisely because humans are not perfectly rational creatures but have predictable biases in their thinking.

Some are calling this the Age of Algorithms and predicting that the future of algorithms is tied to machine learning and deep learning that will get better and better at an ever-faster pace. There is something on the other side of the classical-post-classical divide, it’s likely to be far more massive than it looks from over here, and any prediction about what we’ll find once we pass through it is as good as anyone else’s.

It is entirely possible that before we see any of this, humanity will end up bombing itself into a new dark age that takes thousands of years to recover from.

The entire field of theoretical computer science is all about trying to find the most efficient algorithm for a given problem. The essential job of a theoretical computer scientist is to find efficient algorithms for problems and the most difficult of these problems aren’t just academic; they are at the very core of some of the most challenging real world scenarios that play out every day.

Quantum computing is a subject that a lot of people, myself included, have gotten wrong in the past and there are those who caution against putting too much faith in a quantum computer’s ability to free us from the computational dead end we’re stuck in.

The most critical of these is the problem of optimization:

How do we find the best solution to a problem when we have a seemingly infinite number of possible solutions?

While it can be fun to speculate about specific advances, what will ultimately matter much more than any one advance will be the synergies produced by these different advances working together.

Synergies are famously greater than the sum of their parts, but what does that mean when your parts are blockchain, 5G networks, quantum computers, and advanced artificial intelligence?

DNA computing, however, harnesses these amino acids’ ability to build and assemble itself into long strands of DNA.

It’s why we can say that quantum computing won’t just be transformative, humanity is genuinely approaching nothing short of a technological event horizon.

Quantum computers will only give you a single output, either a value or a resulting quantum state, so their utility solving problems with exponential or factorial time complexity will depend entirely on the algorithm used.

One inefficient algorithm could have kneecapped the Internet before it really got going.

It is now oblivious that there is no going back.

The question now is there anyway of curtailing their power.

This can now only be achieved with the creation of an open source platform where the users control their data rather than it being used and mined.  (The uses can sell their data if the want.)

This platform must be owned by the public, and compete against the existing platforms like face book, twitter, what’s App, etc,   protected by an algorithm that protects the common values of all our lives – the truth. 

Of course it could be designed by using existing algorithms which would defeat its purpose. 

It would be an open net-work of people a kind of planetary mind that has to always be funding biosphere-friendly activities.

A safe harbour perhaps called the New horizon.   A digital United nations where the voices of cooperation could be heard.   

So if by any chance there is a human genius designer out there that could make such a platform he might change the future of all our digitalized lives for the better.   

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com  

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: IS THIS A NIVE QUESTION. IS IT IN NATO INTEREST TO ALLOW THE UK TO SUPPLY CRUISE MISSILES TO THE UKRAIN.

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( Three minute read) 

My understanding of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is that it is a defence pack, a collective security system with its independent member states agreeing to defend each other against attacks by third parties. An intergovernmental military alliance between 31 member states – 29 European and two North American. Established in the aftermath of World War II, which Finland joined recently, as a result of the Ukraine/ Russian war. 

(An armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all; and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.)

Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty stated that an attack on one signatory would be regarded as an attack on the rest, and this article was first invoked in 2001 in response to the terrorist September 11 attacks against the U.S.

Its member states and their individual sovereignty is unaffected by participation in the alliance.  There is no collective responsibility for a NATO member of any kind when it comes to supply military/ weapons to whatever side of a war it chooses, even if in doing so it could provoke an attack that jeopardies all member getting involvement in a bigger war.

Surely this needs to change 

The US and other countries of NATO have been unwilling to supply long range missiles to the Ukraine in case strikes into Russia lead to escalation.

The United Kingdom has delivered multiple “Storm Shadow” cruise missiles to Ukraine.

This is not the first time Britain has gone further than the US in the weaponry it has been prepared to send to Ukraine.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is understood to have received assurances from President Volodymyr Zelensky that the missiles will not be used for anything other than defensive purposes. It is understood that the UK would allow the missiles to be used to destroy President Vladimir Putin’s supply lines and as part of the counter-offensive to take back Russian occupied territory, including Crimea.

<p>Putin has said that ‘no defense systems’ will be able to defend the Satan-2 </p>

THIS IS A WAR AND IN A WAR ASSURANCES AND CONDITIONS RE USING ANYTHING ARE MEANLESS.

In providing weapons to Ukraine that could help them strike within Russian territory is the UK inviting a missile from Russia with love. One does not need much imagination the results if this were to happen.

There is no dispute that Putin’s penchant for brandishing Russia’s arsenal reflects weakness and insecurity. And that is not a good trait in the leader of a nuclear superpower. (Russia’s 6,000-warhead arsenal is the only thing that makes it a superpower.) The United Kingdom within six minutes, even from a distance of 1,600 miles would be wiped of the map. No defence systems will be able to withstand it.

The challenge for the NATO allies now is maintaining the support Ukraine needs for its survival while making clear Putin has a way out of the crisis, rather than climbing up the escalation ladder to the point where it takes on a logic of its own.

In my view there was “no need or sense in mirroring Putin’s reckless nuclear threats, which should be universally condemned

However, how Putin views the domestic consequences of his backing down – something over which the west has no control is now becoming paramount as to how this war is going to come to a closure or expand. 

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin

Contact; bobdillon33@gmail.com 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHAT IS A CORNATION? HAS IT ANY RELEVANCE IN TODAY’S WORLD WITHOUT HMS BRITIANNIA?

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(Five minute read)

The word coronation means the act or occasion of crowning – putting a crown on the monarch’s head, formally confirming his role as head of state. An occasion for pageantry but it is also a solemn religious ceremony. The pomp and circumstance of the ceremony itself are also a reminder of a time when Britain was the most powerful nation in the world.

A celebration of one man, a trillion billion millionaire taking a job that he has not earned rather by the accident of birth.

Celebrating an institution that has long drawn global fascination. In the age of streaming and social media it’s a spectacle that echoes medieval times, intended to show the king’s authority was derived from God.

There is no legal requirement for a coronation. Charles became the King as soon as Queen Elizabeth died and strictly speaking he doesn’t need a coronation ceremony.

Some argue that it’s grotesque to spend millions on pomp and pageantry amid a cost-of-living crisis that has brought 10% inflation, driven thousands to food banks, and triggered months of strikes by nurses, teachers, and other workers seeking higher pay.

Of all the European monarchies, the UK is the only one that still has a religious coronation ceremony.

Charles's coronation takes place in May

Does King Charles need to do anything to be the monarch?

Not really as it is continuous historical tradition dated back over a thousand years representing England.

On his way to be crowned this week, King Charles III  travelled by gilded coach through streets swathed in red, white, and blue Union flags – and pass a warning from history. At Trafalgar Square stands a large bronze statue of King Charles I, the 17th-century monarch deposed by Parliament and executed in 1649.

There will be no shortage of regalia at the coronation, with thousands of diamonds and kilos of gold shimmering through the service.

The solid gold crown, weighing 2.23kg (almost 5lbs), is worn by a monarch only once, at the moment of coronation.

On the way out of Westminster Abbey, the newly crowned King Charles will wear the Imperial State Crown, which is set with 2,868 diamonds.

The new sovereign is required to make three statutory oaths: the Scottish oath, to uphold the Presbyterian Church of Scotland; the accession declaration oath, to be a true and faithful protestant; and the coronation oath, which includes promising to uphold the rights and privileges of the Church of England.

Here are some of the sacred objects you might have spotted
• Two royal maces
• Three swords, representing mercy, spiritual justice and temporal justice
• The great sword of state, symbolising the sovereign’s royal authority
• St Edward’s staff, dating from 1661
• Spurs, representing knighthood and chivalry
• The jewelled sword of offering, dating from 1820
• The armillas, gold bracelets representing sincerity and wisdom
• The sovereign’s orb, representing Christian sovereignty
• The coronation ring, representing kingly dignity
• Sceptre with the cross, symbolising the sovereign’s temporal power under the cross
• Sceptre with dove – or rod of equity and mercy – symbolising the sovereign’s spiritual role.

The Question of the Monarch being relevant in a world that has moved on from the invention of the wheel to landing on the moon is whether Britain still needs this antiquated institution or if it should become a republic with an elected head of state. A system where power and patronage is based entirely on a hereditary monarchy is unfair and goes against democracy.

One constantly hears that the King must never be involved in politics, but that is in direct contradiction of his continuing duties such as signing all legislation (including the order to prorogue parliament) and delivering the Kings speech.

Because you can’t hold King Charles and his family to account at the ballot box, there’s nothing to stop the Royals abusing their privilege, misusing their influence or simply wasting money. At present it is permitted to vet and influence any proposed legislation that may impinge on the monarchy’s interests.

The British monarchy is therefore essentially self-serving. It should simply be redefined and limited the function of the Royal Family to a ceremonial tourist role.

Indeed with the Royals combined wealth there is every reason that they should carry the expense of its existence and not the nation.

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So here is a suggestion.

To keep the monarchy relevant and beneficial.  King Charles along with the nation and his serfs playing the Lotto should buy back HMS Britannia.

It would give a voice to the crown, repair the isolation of Brexit, create hundreds of jobs, and keep a visible attachment to the commonwealth, give a moral authority that comes with having been crowned if not elected using soft power to address world problems.  

Make her sea worthy, fit for a king.

Surely these days no one should be forced to be a head of state simply because their mother or father was also trapped in this role of silent service.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. WHEN IT COMES TO TECHNOLOGY THE JACK IS OUT OF THE BOX AND IT’S MAKING A PIGS MICKEY OUT OF THE WORLD WE LIVE IN.

( Twenty minute read)

ADVANCING MORE RAPIDLY THAN ANY OTHER INNOVATION IN OUR HISTORY THE PROBLEMS WITH TECHOLOGY ARE BECOMING CLEARER BY THE DAY.  

The sociological/psychological fallout of AI is not decades away: right here, right now, we are watching in slow-motion the major meltdown of our shared sense of reality.

The discovery that AI can treat language as probability, and from there on, most anything as a “language” of sorts:

DNA sequences, yep, robotics and motoric learning, yes actually, music, definitively, generation and recognition of images and sounds, yes, hacking and cryptography, also yes, persuasion, yes of course…

It is that’s term or concept of Augmented Intelligence which implies a replacement of human intelligence that is becoming less threatening than the admittedly ominous-sounding ‘artificial intelligence’.  It will be increasingly hard to know what is real and what is not. It will be hard to resist manipulation and persuasion. It will be hard to know where we begin and the agency of the machine ends.

It will be increasingly hard not to lose our minds as our shared sense of self and reality (our sociality, which we rely upon for our sanity) fractures. The scale and effect of this fact, in its sociological and psychological ramifications (not to mention economic and political ones) is in itself a rollercoaster ride of Nietzschean proportions.

Even if we remain agnostic about Nick Bostrom’s existential risk superintelligence general AI, we can be fairly certain that we have a sociological moment of impact starting more or less yesterday.

There’s just no way new capacities of this magnitude come about with this kind of speed, and then everything just goes back to normal. For all we know, normal might never happen again.

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By definition, the word symbiosis is a term commonly used in biology to describe the relationship between two different organisms that live together in close association, and both partners benefit from the relationship.

TO A CERTAIN EXTENT THIS IS WHAT IS HAPPENING WITH THE APPLICATION OF TECHNOLOGY TO OUR LIVES, AS MANY PROBLEMS SIMPLY CANNOT BE FROMULATED OR RESOLVED WITHOUT THE HELP OF COMPUTERS.

AN OTHER WORDS:

The computers should be acting as a “serving agent,” providing the human with the information they needed to make informed decisions.

Recognized that the human mind have limitations, such as limited memory capacity and the inability to perform complex calculations quickly. Computers, on the other hand, have almost unlimited memory capacity and perform calculations at incredible speeds. By working together, humans and computers could overcome each other’s limitations and achieve a level of productivity that was not possible before.

Computers are now responsible for performing complex computations and storing vast amounts of information, while humans are be removed from making judgements and decisions based on the information provided by the computer.

One of the main objectives with the growing scale and complexity of information processing tasks of human-computer symbiosis is to bring the computer effectively into the formative parts of technical problems.

‘The question is not ‘What is the answer?’ The question is ‘What is the question?

THAT QUESTION BECOMES.   CAN WE LIVE DIGTILIZED LIVES?

Nowadays, many intelligent systems work in a symbiotic relationship with humans.

For example,

Every time we rate a movie on Netflix, we are helping artificial intelligence understand our behaviour and in the future recommend movies based on our preferences.

In the financial industry, computers are widely used to process large amounts of data in real-time, identify trading patterns, and make accurate predictions. Financial analysts rely on computational analysis to buy and sell stocks or make risky financial moves.

The market place, and its movements, which affect global economies are run by Algorithms for profit.

In the e-commerce sites we use, AI can make inferences and anticipate some tasks based on our shopping lists and recommend products. This is also a symbiotic and collaborative relationship.

Grammarly is another example of how the symbiosis between humans and computers is being utilized in the writing field. Through its AI technology, the tool is capable of suggesting real-time grammatical and spelling corrections, and the user’s experience when using it can contribute to the evolution of their ability to improve their vocabulary, as the tool offers suggestions for synonyms and more suitable word choices.

There are hundreds of other examples, but in order to build computational systems that adapt to human needs, we also need to understand how these intelligent systems work and execute tasks, and this is increasingly becoming impossible with machine learning.

Looking at the current context, the human-computer symbiosis becomes increasingly important as interactions between humans and machines become more frequent and complex, enabling users to interact with technology in a natural way.

As our interaction with intelligent systems increases every day, the principles of human-computer symbiosis are also central to living a life.


Defining the term “Augmented Intelligence” can be quite challenging since there are many definitions.

Different researchers and practitioners tend to define it in their own unique way.

I define it as the erosion of our ability to reason for ourselves.

AI-enabled frontier technologies are helping to save lives, diagnose diseases and extend life expectancy. In education, virtual learning environments and distance learning have opened up programmes to students who would otherwise be excluded. Public services are also becoming more accessible and accountable through blockchain-powered systems, and less bureaucratically burdensome as a result of AI assistance. Big data can also support more responsive and accurate policies and programmes.

The use of algorithms can replicate and even amplify human and systemic bias where they function on the basis of data which is not adequately diverse. Lack of diversity in the technology sector can mean that this challenge is not adequately addressed.

Today, digital technologies such as data pooling and AI are used to track and diagnose issues in agriculture, health, and the environment, or to perform daily tasks such as navigating traffic or paying a bill.

They can be used to defend and exercise human rights – but they can also be used to violate them, for example, by monitoring our movements, purchases, conversations and behaviours. Governments and businesses increasingly have the tools to mine and exploit data for financial and other purposes.

Data-powered technology has the potential to empower individuals, improve human welfare, and promote universal rights, depending on the type of protections put in place.

Social media connects almost half of the entire global population.

It enables people to make their voices heard and to talk to people across the world in real time. However, it can also reinforce prejudices and sow discord, by giving hate speech and misinformation a platform, or by amplifying echo chambers.

How to manage these developments is the subject of much discussion – nationally and internationally – at a time when geopolitical tensions are on the rise. This war of information is becoming so important that it can influence democracy and the opinion of people before the vote in an election for instance.

We’re now on the verge, as a society, of appropriately recognizing the need to respect privacy in our Web 2.0 world.A man with freedom taped over his mouth.

In a world where everyone has an opinion and, more importantly, where everyone has the ability, if they choose, to share it with the rest of the world, one person’s hate speech can sometimes be another’s right to free speech.

Social media companies need to take “more responsibility” for what is on their platforms. There has to be a reckoning for what social media is making available [online].

IRELAND IS THE FIRST COUNTRY TO ADDRESS THE ABOVE.

As things stand in Ireland, hate speech is defined as any communication in public intended or likely to be threatening or abusive, and likely to stir up hatred against a person due to their race, colour, nationality, religion, ethnicity, Traveller origins, and/or sexual orientation. The proposed law will also make it an offence to deny or trivialise genocide. It will define a hate crime as any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim, or any other person, to have been motivated by prejudice.

The new legislation will criminalise any intentional or reckless communication or behaviour that is likely to incite violence or hatred against a person or persons because they are associated with a protected characteristic. The penalty for this offence will be up to five years’ imprisonment.

The provisions of the new legislation have been crafted to ensure that they will capture hate speech in an online context.

THIS IS THE FIRST SMALL STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION TO COMBAT UNREGULATED TECHNOLOGY.

For most of the past decade, public concerns about digital technology have focused on the potential abuse of personal data.

This debate is NOW entering a new phase.

As companies increasingly embed artificial intelligence in their products, services, processes, and decision-making, attention is shifting to how data is used by the software—particularly by complex, evolving algorithms that might diagnose a cancer, drive a car, or approve a loan.

The problem crops up in many other guises:

For instance, in ubiquitous online advertisement algorithms, which may target viewers by race, religion, or gender.

Software used by leading hospitals exhibit significant racial bias to prioritize recipients of kidney transplants discriminated against Black patients.

In dealing with biased outcomes, regulators have mostly fallen back on standard antidiscrimination legislation.

That’s workable as long as there are people who can be held responsible for problematic decisions. But with AI increasingly in the mix, individual accountability is undermined.

Some algorithms make or affect decisions with direct and important consequences on people’s lives.

They diagnose medical conditions, for instance, screen candidates for jobs, approve home loans, or recommend jail sentences. In such circumstances it may be wise to avoid using AI or at least subordinate it to human judgment. Using AI could therefore increase human decision-makers’ accountability, which might make people likely to defer to the algorithms more often than they should.

The degree of trust in AI varies with the kind of decisions it’s used for. When a task is perceived as relatively mechanical and bounded—think optimizing a timetable or analysing images—software is regarded as at least as trustworthy as humans.

But when decisions are thought to be subjective or the variables change (as in legal sentencing, where offenders’ extenuating circumstances may differ), human judgment is trusted more, in part because of people’s capacity for empathy. This suggests that companies need to communicate very carefully about the specific nature and scope of decisions they’re applying AI to and why it’s preferable to human judgment in those situations. For example, in machine diagnoses of medical scans, people can easily accept the advantage that software trained on billions of well-defined data points has over humans, who can process only a few thousand.

On the other hand, applying AI to make a diagnosis regarding mental health, where factors may be behavioural, hard to define, and case-specific, would probably be inappropriate. It’s difficult for people to accept that machines can process highly contextual situations. And even when the critical variables have been accurately identified, the way they differ across populations often isn’t fully understood—which brings us to the next factor.

An algorithm may not be fair across all geographies and markets.

Just like human judgment, AI isn’t infallible. Algorithms will inevitably make some unfair—or even unsafe—decisions.

The right…to obtain an explanation of the decision reached” by algorithms, MUST BE ENSHRINNED IN LAW.

But what does it mean to get an explanation for automated decisions, for which our knowledge of cause and effect is often incomplete?

Should we require—and can we even expect—AI to explain its decisions?

However, most people lack the advanced skills in mathematics or computer science needed to understand, let alone determine whether the relationships specified in it are appropriate. And in the case of machine learning—where AI software creates algorithms to describe apparent relationships between variables in the training data—flaws or biases in that data, not the algorithm, may be the ultimate cause of any problem.

If AI starts to listen to us and adapt to our every move, we can only “win” by mirroring it, and being equally attentive to it, even to the point of treating this wild piece of silicon clockwork as though it were alive.

Because, in the end, when we don’t know where we begin and AI ends, then AI is essentially as alive as anything.

AI can only exist because it feeds on human civilization and knowledge coded into text and other digestible data — but humans are in turn subjected to the power of AI, and thus deeply reshaped by it, because AI coordinates more data than we can and knows, well, us. The AI soon knows us better than we can know it, or even know ourselves.

If we seek relational proportionality and resonance across the AI-humanity axis, we must of course also feed this intra-action with socially proportional perspectives, i.e. with social justice.

Our very civilizational sanity and survival depend upon balancing the informational diet of the AI, so that it can itself produce emergent patterns that resonate through and across societies… But the Internet is roughly as skewed and distorted as the power relations of global humanity at large.

It acts on the whole with great efficiency and speed, but it cannot speak for the whole.

What you can expect is increasing dissonance, a spiralling insanity, as the “human-AI-AI-human intra-action” system disconnects from the rest of reality, from the larger scheme that contains the actual multiplicity of the world’s perspectives.

If we don’t want to spiral into virtual madness with real social consequences, we need to balance out the reality projected into the digital realm: the encoded information. It mean’s that AI itself must be used to more proportionally and correctly represent the lives, experiences, and embodied — or intellectual — knowledge of the world.

In short, if we apply the AI to balancing out human-perspectives-as-projected-onto-the-web-as-data, not only can we get a more just and sane society; we can also help to retain an AI that remains on the sane and just side in the first place.

Or, yet more succinctly: A sane AI is also a social justice AI, but one that dodges the traps of present-day social justice and intersectionality discourses.

Let me underscore: If we fail to do this, we instead unleash AI powers that widen social gaps and fracture knowledge systems into different continents where people become entirely unable to comprehend one another, leading to social and psychological decay.

If we want a world that is not driven by digitalization ,THE TIME IS NOW TO DO SOME THING ABOUT IT.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: IS OUR BIOLOGICAL REASONING BEING REPLACED BY DIGITAL REASONING.

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(Ten minute read)

We all know that massive changes need to be made to the way we all live on the planet, due to climate change.

However most of us are not aware of the effects that artificial intelligence in having on our lives.

This post looks at our changing understanding of ourselves, due digitalized reasoning, which is turning us into digitalized

citizens, relying more on and more on digitalized reasoning for all aspects of living.

Does it help us understand what is going on? Or to work out what we can do about it?

It could be said that the climate is beyond our control,  but AI remains within the realms of control.

Is this true?

It is true that the human race is in grave danger of stupidity re climate change which if not addressed globally could cause our extinction.

We know that using technology alone will not solve climate change, but it is necessary to gather information about what is happing to the planet, while our lives are monitored in minute detail by algorithms for profit.

There are many reasons why this is happing and the consequences of it will be far reaching and perhaps as dangerous if not more than what the climate is and will be bringing.

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While biology reasoning usually starts with an observation leading to a logical problem-solving with deductive conclusions

usually reliable, provided the premises are true.

Digital AI reasoning on the other hand is a cycle rather than any logically straight line.

It is the result of one go-round becomes feedback that improves the next round of question asking to ask machine

learning, with all programs and algorithms learning the result instantly.

Example  One Drone to the next. One high-frequency trade to the next. One bank loan to the next. One human to the next.

Another words.

Digital Reasoning, is combining artificial intelligence and machine learning with all the biases program’s in the code in the first place without any supervision oversight, or global regulation

It combined volumes of data in real-time to remove the propose a hypothesis, to make a new hypothesis without conclusively prove that it’s correct.  An iterative process of inductive reasoning extracts a likely (but not certain) premise from specific and limited observations. There is data, and then conclusions are drawn from the data; this is called inductive logic/ reasoning. 

Inductive reasoning does not guarantee that the conclusion will be true.

In inductive inference, we go from the specific to the general. We make many observations, discern a pattern, make a generalization, and infer an explanation or a theory.

In other words, there is nothing that makes a guess ‘educated’ other than the learning program.

The differences between deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning.

Deductive reasoning is a top-down approach, while inductive reasoning is a bottom-up approach.

Inductive reasoning is used in a number of different ways, each serving a different purpose:

We use inductive reasoning in everyday life to build our understanding of the world.

Inductive reasoning, or inductive logic, is a type of reasoning that involves drawing a general conclusion from a set of specific observations. Some people think of inductive reasoning as “bottom-up” logic the  one logic exercise we do nearly every day, though we’re scarcely aware of it. We take tiny things we’ve seen or read and draw general principles from them—an act known as inductive reasoning.

Inductive reasoning also underpins the scientific method: scientists gather data through observation and experiment, make hypotheses based on that data, and then test those theories further. That middle step—making hypotheses—is an inductive inference, and they wouldn’t get very far without it.

Inductive reasoning is also called a hypothesis-generating approach, because you start with specific observations and build toward a theory. It’s an exploratory method that’s often applied before deductive research.

Finally, despite the potential for weak conclusions, an inductive argument is also the main type of reasoning in academic life.

Deductive reasoning is a logical approach where you progress from general ideas to specific conclusions. It’s often contrasted with inductive reasoning, where you start with specific observations and form general conclusions.

Deductive reasoning is used to reach a logical and true conclusion. In deductive reasoning, you’ll often make an argument for a certain idea. You make an inference, or come to a conclusion, by applying different premises. Due to its reliance on inference, deductive reasoning is at high risk for research biases, particularly confirmation bias and other types of cognitive bias like belief bias.

In deductive reasoning, you start with general ideas and work toward specific conclusions through inferences. Based on theories, you form a hypothesis. Using empirical observations, you test that hypothesis using inferential statistics and form a conclusion.

In practice, most research projects involve both inductive and deductive methods.

However it can be tempting to seek out or prefer information that supports your inferences or ideas, with inbuilt bias creeping into  research. Patients have a better chance of surviving, banks can ensure their employees are meeting the highest standards of conduct, and law enforcement can protect the most vulnerable citizens in our society.

However, there are important distinctions that separate these two pathways to a logical conclusion of what Digitized reasoning is going to do or replace human reasoning.

First there is no debate that Computers have done amazing calculations for us, but they have never solved a hard problem on their own.

The problem is the communication barrier between the language of humans and the language of computers.

A programmer can code in all the rules, or axioms, and then ask if a particular conjecture follows those rules. The computer then does all the work. Does it  explain its work.  No. 

All that calculating happens within the machine, and to human eyes it would look like a long string of 0s and 1s. It’s impossible to scan the proof and follow the reasoning, because it looks like a pile of random data. “No human will ever look at that proof and be able to say, ‘I get it.’ They operate in a kind of black box and just spit out an answer.

 Machine proofs may not be as mysterious as they appear.  Maybe they should be made to explain. 

I can see it becoming standard practice that if you want your paper/ codes/ algorithm to be accepted, you have to get it past an automatic checker – re transparency because efforts at the forefront of the field today aim to blend learning with reasoning.

After all, if the machines continue to improve, and they have access to vast amounts of data, they should become very good at doing the fun parts, too. “They will learn how to do their own prompts.”

company will enable customers to spot risks before they happen, maximize the scalability of supervision teams, and uncover strategic insights from large

The Limits of Reason.

Neural networks are able to develop an artificial style of intuition, leverage communications data to spot risks before they happen, and identify new insights to drive fresh growth initiatives, creating a large divide between firms investing to harvest data-driven insights and leverage data to manage risk, and those who are falling behind.

This will bear out in earnings and share prices in the years to come.

The challenge of automating reasoning in computer proofs as a subset of a much bigger field:

Natural language processing, which involves pattern recognition in the usage of words and sentences. (Pattern recognition is also the driving idea behind computer vision, the object of Szegedy’s previous project at Google.)

Like other groups, his team wants theorem provers that can find and explain useful proofs. He envisions a future in which theorem provers replace human referees at major journals.

Josef Urban thinks that the marriage of deductive and inductive reasoning required for proofs can be achieved through this kind of combined approach. His group has built theorem provers guided by machine learning tools, which allow computers to learn on their own through experience. Over the last few years, they’ve explored the use of neural networks — layers of computations that help machines process information through a rough approximation of our brain’s neuronal activity. In July, his group reported on new conjectures generated by a neural network trained on theorem-proving data.

Harris disagrees. He doesn’t think computer provers are necessary, or that they will inevitably “make human mathematicians obsolete.” If computer scientists are ever able to program a kind of synthetic intuition, he says, it still won’t rival that of humans.

“Even if computers understand, they don’t understand in a human way.”

I say the current Ukraine Russian war is the labourite of AI reasoning this war with all its consequence is telling us that AI should never be allowed near nuclear weapons or….dangerous pathogens.

An inductive argument is one that reasons in the opposite direction from deduction.

Given some specific cases, what can be inferred about the underlying general rule?

The reasoning process follows the same steps as in deduction.

The difference is the conclusions: an inductive argument is not a proof, but rather a probalistic inference.

When scholars use statistical evidence to test a hypothesis, they are using inductive logic.

The main objective of statistics is to test a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a falsifiable claim that requires verification.

  • Most progress in science, engineering, medicine, and technology is the result of hypothesis testing.

When a computer uses statistical evidence to test a hypothesis it’s assumption may or may not be true. To prove something is correct, we first need to take reciprocal of it and then try to prove that reciprocal is wrong which ultimately proves something is correct.

Finally this post has been written or generated by a human reasoning, that see the dangers of losing that reasoning to Digital reasoning of Enterprise Spock.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASKS: DOES ENGLAND NEED A CORNATION?

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( Ten minute read)

Before answering this question I am not a Royalist fan.

King Charles III’s Coronation will take place on Saturday 6 May 2023.

It formalises the monarch’s role as the head of the Church of England and marks the transfer of their title and powers.

However, it is not actually necessary for the monarch to be crowned to become King, Edward VIII reigned without a coronation – and Charles automatically became King the moment Queen Elizabeth II died.

This coronation it’s about privilege and everything that a multi-faith, multi-ethnic Britain isn’t about.

European monarchies got rid of coronations long ago.  The British ceremony is the only remaining event of its type in Europe.

The idea that one man, who by accident of birth, is being anointed and set above the rest, who is unelected, and doesn’t represent Britain religiously or ethnically, jars badly.

It is an state affair, littered with curiosities: which means the government controls the guest list.

A medieval oath, holy oil poured on to a 12th Century spoon, and a 700-year-old chair housing a stone that supposedly roared when it recognised the rightful monarch.

850 community representatives have been invited to the ceremony in recognition of their charitable contributions. More than 6,000 armed forces members will take part, making it the largest military ceremonial operation in 70 years.

The Coronation will be paid for by the UK government. Clearly it won’t be cost-free.

St Edward's Crown

In an uncertain world where leaders break international rules of law all the time,  all of this sounds like something from a bygone age, it is.

It has no constitutional value, ( not that England has a written constitute.) but has remained much the same for more than 1,000 years. The monarchy’s legitimacy is based on tradition and continuity, any meaningful change would require a major overhaul, like disestablishment of the Church of England or a referendum on the monarchy.

In the coming days, there will be endless commentators ready to declare that the coronation makes them “proud to be British”, while anyone who criticises any aspect of it will be accused of “hating their country”

While standing beside the 700-year-old Coronation Chair, the monarch is presented to those gathered in the Abbey by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The congregation shouts “God Save the King!” and trumpets sound. The sovereign swears to uphold the law and the Church of England. (The UK’s religious landscape for example has “changed beyond all recognition” since the last coronation in 1953)

A gold cloth is held over the chair to conceal the King from view. The Archbishop of Canterbury anoints the King’s hands, breast and head with holy oil made according to a secret recipe, but known to contain ambergris, orange flowers, roses, jasmine and cinnamon.( It’s an Anglican ceremony and the anointing is essential to that as the conferment of God’s grace on the monarch.)

The sovereign is presented with items including the Royal Orb, representing religious and moral authority; the Sceptre, representing power; and the Sovereign’s Sceptre, a rod of gold topped with a white enamelled dove, a symbol of justice and mercy.

Finally, the Archbishop places the solid gold, 17th Century St Edward’s Crown on the King’s head. (That crown contains the Cullinan II diamond, sometimes called the Second Star of Africa. It was given to Edward VII on his 66th birthday by the government of the Transvaal – a former British crown colony – in what is now South Africa. The other controversial stone is the Koh-i-Noor, which is part of the Queen Mother’s coronation crown. It is one of the largest-cut diamonds in the world. India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran have all made claims to it.)

The King leaves the Coronation Chair and moves to the throne. Peers kneel before the monarch to pay homage. The Queen Consort will then be anointed in the same way and crowned.

The Coronation Procession is also expected to be more modest than Queen Elizabeth’s furnal procession which had 16,000 participants, and took 45 minutes to pass any stationary point on the 7km (4.3 miles) route at cost estimated to be 6/7 million.

The Queen Mother’s in 2002 reportedly cost £5.4m.

Clearly Charles coronation won’t be cost-free with an estimate of 100 million. ( Two for the price of one)

———King Charles and Camilla at a military standards ceremony at Buckingham Palace on 27 April 2023.

The coronation is the King’s chance to plug into the power of the past and shape his future.

The royals seem to prefer ad hoc philanthropy to actually funding public services with an event that is literally about deference to hereditary privilege. (The £1bn Duchy of Cornwall estate – previously inherited by Charles and recently passed on to Prince William – is not liable for either corporation tax or capital gains tax.) 

Charles notably didn’t pay a single penny of inheritance tax on the fortune the late Queen left him last year (the jewellery alone was estimated to be worth at least £533m), though he has “volunteered” to pay income tax, as he also did on the duchy estate.

Volunteering” to pay tax feels a little like a wanted criminal “volunteering” to hand himself over to the authorities. It doesn’t seem to be something you typically get a choice in.

It is inevitable that many Britons will view the coronation with a more gimlet eye this time around. Many in the country are more focused on navigating a cost-of-living crisis than celebrating a dysfunctional royal family.

Now, England is a competitive society, based on people who’ve earned their position through achievement.  Many Britons, viewed it mostly as a welcome holiday.

He’s inheriting a crown that has been shaken by events over the last five years.

Perhaps he might make a jester to the state of the nation  (The Firm or Monarch PLC is worth an astounding $28 billion at least.) and reimburse the tax payer.  A man whose car collection alone is estimated to be worth more than £6m asking the rest of us to celebrate his kingship by helping out at the local food bank feels, shall we say, a little “let them eat quiche”.

Perhaps in order to have a voice he will buy back HMS Britannia. The “soft power” of the monarchy cannot be underestimated.

Finally:

Can a modern nation call itself democratic if it retains an unelected head of state? Is a growing reliance on charity a point of celebration or shame?  Does sanitising the existence of royalty normalise wider inequality? 

In the end in a world run more and more by Artificial Intelligence, monarchies seem to be purposeless antiquated relics, anachronisms that ought to eventually give way to republics.

To understand why, it is important to consider the merits of monarchy objectively without resorting to the tautology that countries ought to be democracies because they ought to be democracies.

Here are the benefits of a Monarchs in the 21st century.

Monarchs can rise above politics in the way an elected head of state cannot. Monarchs represent the whole country in a way democratically elected leaders cannot and do not. The choice for the highest political position in a monarchy cannot be influenced by and in a sense beholden to money, the media, or a political party.

Monarchs are especially important in multi-ethnic countries.

The existence of a monarch makes it difficult to radically or totally alter a country’s politics. Monarchies have the gravitas and prestige to make last-resort, hard, and necessary decisions — decisions that nobody else can make.

Monarchies are repositories of tradition and continuity in ever changing times.

Most monarchies rule within some sort of constitutional or traditional framework which constrains and institutionalizes their powers.  

 Since anyone, regardless of their personality or interests, can by accident of birth become a monarch, all types of people may become rulers in such a system.

Today’s heirs are educated from birth for their future role and live in the full glare of the media their entire lives.

The pomp and pageantry attracts million in tourist revenue and no place does it better than the land of King Arthur and the knight of the round table. As in previous centuries, monarchy will continue to show itself to be an important and beneficial political institution wherever it still survives.

As a diamond-encrusted crown is placed on the king’s head, your packed local homeless shelter is desperate for help. Don’t you feel proud to be British?

The Beady Eye wishes him and his wife all the best on the 6th May.

Long may the Monarchs exist providing they are solely a tourist attraction that pay for themselves.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S . THE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY MUST BE BROUGHT TO HEAL WITH NEW LAWS TO REDUCE CONSUMPTION.

( Seven minute read)

It is crystal clear that consumption is a major donator to the problems of both the environment and all of us are now facing. There is consistent evidence that exposure to marketing for unhealthy commodities – for example advertising for alcohol or food and drinks high in fat, salt, or sugar – is associated with consumption, including among children and young people.

To confront the climate emergency, the amount we consume needs to drop dramatically. Yet every day we’re told by the advertising industry to consume more.

The purpose of advertising is to boost revenue, gain an advantage over competitors, and build brand awareness, so it latch on to what ever is topical – Climate change – Energy – Sustainability – Cost of living etc.

Now with technology it has billion-dollar persuasion machines, promoting not quality of life but rather quantity of stuff.

It’s woven into our personal communications whenever we use social media platforms. In public spaces, where we have little choice over where we look, adverts are invasive, appearing without our consent, with the trend towards digital billboards only exposes us ever more.

Its so prevalent as to be invisible but with an effect no less insidious than air pollution.

We all have a role to play — from making sustainable choices to help safeguard the ocean and our environment, to urging world and business leaders to take the urgent, widespread, and ambitious action needed to tackle climate change and protect the planet.

———

This is an industry capable of quickly shifting global public opinion, with the power to change hearts, minds and behaviour resulting in action, potentially on a global scale and also with profound and rapid effect.

It must be made to take responsibility for consumption, instead of continuing to drive the high carbon lifestyles and hyper-consumption that is killing us.

If we were to introduce new laws restricting marketing agencies from taking work from clients who aren’t actively reducing their own contributions to climate change, earning money from high carbon clients, the sort of companies from whom the investment community is increasingly divesting; promoting unnecessary and over-consumption, these companies  would eventually be forced to match their green advertising slogans with real green investment.

The questions for the advertising industry would become what are our obligations to tackle climate change i.e. how might we have contributed to climate change and how do we stop doing so, and what are our opportunities i.e. where can we make a positive contribution to the issue?

What other than laws will forced  it to rethink their strategies so the industry will go through a transition period, to discover a purpose beyond profit?

In fact, many would argue that the move to “doing well by doing good” will only become truly mainstream when the corporate social responsibility agenda and the growth agenda become one and the same.

There is no reason that governments could not introduce restricted areas and venues where the advertising of consumption is not allowed.

Buses covered in advertising at London's Piccadilly CircusA billboard advert in Manchester

For example:  Sporting events, Natural Reserves/ Public Park’s, Billboards and bus stops, Out door digital advertising.

We could stop television programming being sponsored by consumption  – Eat now.

Of course in a free society, businesses have the right to advertise their wares, and individual citizens are not the helpless brainless automatons that advertising industry’s considers them to be.

All advertising plays a crucial role in brand competition, drives product innovation, and fuels economic growth but would we not rather see community ads and art than have multi-billion companies putting logos and images everywhere?

If they are allowed to get the message out, the public has a right to reply to those ads.

We don’t want our city’s children bombarded with animated advertising on TV screens in the street.

Critically, the more that people prioritise materialistic values and goals, the less they embrace positive attitudes towards the environment – and the more likely they are to behave in damaging ways. If you think this is a fanciful aim, then you might need to think again with the state the world is in.

We’re in a place where major behaviour change is required.

To question the legitimacy of corporate outdoor adverting and draw attention to the impact they can have on social issues, mental health, wellbeing, the climate, and the communication of public space where governments are too inert/broke/ill-intentioned/in thrall to vested interests to take effective action.

Business leaders must increasingly look beyond short-term profitability to address the pressing need to reduce emissions.

——

.The advertising industry is in a very different place to where it was a year ago.

Where, how, and when you advertise will constantly change with the times. That’s one thing we can count on.

Culture has always defined marketing and brand marketers have a lot of power to dictate.

The rise of the internet, computers, and mobile devices only provided more platforms for video ads to appear. It’s probably still going to be one of the most important advertising trends in the next 5 years.

We have our hands on the levers of behaviour change, but in an era in which attention is often only ever partial, puncturing the collective consumer inertia with a complex message is no easy feat.

We spend every day thinking of ways to change people’s behaviours,

These skills are the ones needed more than ever by the world to halt the human causes of climate change.

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Advertising has always evolved with the technology at hand. This includes tracking of clicked links, customer behaviour, purchase history, survey responses, and more.

Marketers can then use that information to create custom messages or content that’ll match the target audiences’ interests.

Finding out which people to show a particular ad to and the right time to show them is crucial in the world of smartphones

Next step, profit.

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In a cut-throat and viciously competitive market, pioneering new technology can have a major impact on the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.

Another big use of mobile advertising is through games.

A lot of mobile games are created with the format of being able to purchase resources with real-world money.

This means that ads will now be geared towards targeting real people through emails and other registered user data. With more information available, marketers can provide customers with a better offer that’ll most likely translate into sales.

Social advertising is the use of Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms for advertising potentials.

The format itself is undergoing rapid transformation because most people watch for content and not for production quality.

Data collection and cookies naturally have poor public perception, often being viewed as encroaching on private information and stealing data, with ads following consumers around the internet.

Now, these apps aren’t just for sending messages and emoji cause it’s also a place to find advertisements relevant to users.

As the climate crisis bites

————

We need new metrics and measurement tools – and new bonus and remuneration systems to underpin our value systems, not just legislation against high-carbon advertising, focusing on fossil fuel companies, petrol- and diesel-engine cars and aviation.

Because, marketing has been transformed by digital speed, relevance and reach of advertising campaigns.

Because, overconsumption in general, encouraged by advertising, has a climate and ecological impact.

Because, programmatic advertising uses AI to automatically buy ads that can target audiences more specifically. ( Programmatic advertising is a combination of big data processing, technical skills, and automation.)

Because, advertising works by getting under your radar, introducing new ideas without bothering your conscious mind.

Because, contextual advertising is a form of targeted advertising where site content and keywords are analyzed in real time to determine their suitability for a brand’s message.

Because, children are now at the mercy of so-called “surveillance advertising”. It is estimated that by the time a child turns 13, ad-tech firms would have gathered 72m data points on them. The more data collected from an early age, the easier it is for advertisers to turn young children into consumer targets.


A transformation of marketing is underway as we spend more time on our mobiles, tablets and laptops. The real-time conversations brands have with people as they interact with websites and mobile apps has changed the nature of marketing

We know that advertising is a key engine of the economy. There are visual images and marketing messages that have insinuated themselves into the nervous systems of humans.

There’s a long way to go and a lot to be done. The ad business, with strategy tools and processes that were for the most part developed in the 60s to accommodate the advent of commercial TV, is a lot closer to where it started the journey than where it needs to get to.

Let’s create a movement and band together to save the planet in a non-branded or political way.

New checks and balances need to accommodate the natural concerns of councils and residents around climate, air pollution, environmental light pollution, the “attention economy”, mental health and the dominance of non-consensual adverts in public spaces.

I’m sure most advertisers and agencies would rather work on solving this global crisis, and if we can use just 5% of the industry’s time toward this initiative.

It isn’t clickbait that is needed but a genuine concern for the fate of the planet or a cynical hunch that doing the right thing will drive growth and profit – if the improved behaviour is real.

I believe that would lead to greater satisfaction, retention and more.

Break the Silence and comment.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

Contact; bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: IT’S TIME TO REMOVE THE BLINKERS WHEN IT COMES TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

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( Three minute read)

Yes.  Artificial Intelligence will most likely be needed to help us solve a lot of the big challenges facing society today, be that health, cures for diseases, climate change, etc.  It is already predicting the shape of every protein in the human body.

However, in my mind it is deeply wrong that a small group of people ( under the skin of private technology enterprises) without any democratic oversight are making decisions with potentially to affect every life on earth.

Its time to take our blinkers off and let the world have a say in what they are doing.

Why?

Because a three-letter acronym ( God like AI)  doesn’t capture the enormity of what Artificial General Intelligence (AIG) will represent, or do. This would be a force beyond our control or understanding and one that will usher in the obsolescence or destruction of the p

The Beady Eye has been bleating on about this and profit seeking algorithms, now for some considerable time, but from the number of comments on the subject it seems not many of us give a hoot for the need for transparencies, regulations, and overall safeties when it comes to technology. So we are running to the finishing line without any understanding of what on the other side.

Since the arrival of the internet/smart phone one only has to look at the state of the Planet to realise that we have gone training – AI ALGORITHMS / TECHNOLOGY TO GENERATE TEXTS/ RECONGISING EVEREYDAY IMAGES/  GENERATING REALISTIC PHOTOS/ AND REPLICATION OF VOICES, BY FEEDING THEM WITH THE ENTIRE INTERNET STRIP-MINING THE LIFEWORLD. (The focus on games and chatbots is sheltering people from the more serious implications of this work.)

The world already has many existential threats, but the threat posed by AIG is the number one risk of this century, with an engineered biological pathogen a close second. The potential for scams and misinformation is significant.

An God like super intelligent machine would be light out for all of us.

So the question is.

Why are these organisation racing to create God like AI ?

Is it that it gives an illusion of illimitable power.

For now the race is being driven by markets, with the Ukraine war the labourite of cyber wars, making private investment not the only driving force but nations also contributing to this contest.

If we put the wrong objects into a super intelligent machine we are bound to lose.

Unlike the human brain that grows large Ai systems are quite different.

They grow themselves with machine learning and their capabilities jump sharply.

We don’t yet full understand how they work and cannot demonstrate likely out comes in advance.

The present harms and AI/AIG are not mutually exclusive and overlap in important ways.

One of the most challenging aspects of thinking about this topic is working out which precedents we can draw on.

WE ARE NOT POWERLESS TO SLOW DOWN THIS RACE.

If we can get our governments to ask under oath about the timeline for developing God’s like AIG. To demand under law a complete record of the safety tests with evidence of understand how the system works, to ensure their aliment with our common values, we might save humanity, before we humans are cut out of the loop.

Unfortunately economics has not been flexible enough to take on this obvious truth  The whole field and discipline of economics, by which we plan and justify what we do as a society, is simply riddled with absences, contradictions, logical flaws, and most important of all, false axioms and false gaols.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: IT BEGGARS BELIEF AND IS BEYOND PATHETIC THAT WE ARE UNABLE TO FULLY UNDERSTAND THERE WILL BE NO FUTURE WITHOUT NATURE AND IT’S BIODIVERSITY.

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( Twenty-six minute read)

We have heard all of this over and over, but it is impossible to get serious about climate change, because it has been turned into a product to be traded.

The very words Climate Change, Global warming, Biodiversity, Sea levels, Natural disasters, Droughts, Melting  ice, the list goes on and on as a result they are falling on deaf ears. For example  “sustainable development”: a phrase at which many people quietly glaze over and switch off.  Or “Global warming” is another of those deceptive phrases. It doesn’t sound that threatening.

So if words like “climate change” and “global warming” have become a turn-off for most ordinary people, maybe we should change the words.  Perhaps we should talk instead about what those things actually mean:

Killer weather, a world under water, and a mortgaged future.

We have been told for over three decades of the dangers of allowing the planet to warm.

We all know this and we know that it’s urgent. The world listened, but it didn’t hear. The world listened, but it didn’t act strongly enough. It hasn’t been enough to change our behaviours on a scale great enough to stop climate change.

As a result, climate change is a problem that is here, now. Nobody is safe. And it is getting worse faster and faster, till one tipping point is reached causing a rolling coaster of from here to eternity.

There are many tipping points to choose from.

Here is mind. The Arctic Ocean’s ice cover melts.

This is a feedback loop with teeth.

Back in the 50s it was more than ten meters thick, reflecting as much as 3% of the sun’s incoming light back into space.

That light is now heating the Oceans of the Arctic and the Antarctic, both becoming the fastest places on Earth with rising temperatures. Which means a greater and greater release of permafrost carbon and methane, 20 times stronger than Co2.

The Arctic permafrost contains as much methane as all the Earth’s cattle could create over the next six centuries.

If released this fart would push the Earth into an irreversible tipping point at which point the sea level would be 110 meters higher than at present, with the global temperatures 5/6 degrees Celsius higher. At that point civilisation would be over.

One would think that such a scenario would be sufficient to make all of us pay attention but not so.

Why?

A big part of the reason is our own evolution. The same behaviours that once helped us survive are, today, working against us.

We lack the collective will to address climate change, because of the way our brains have evolved. We have evolved to pay attention to immediate threats. We overestimate threats that are less likely but easier to remember, like terrorism, and underestimate more complex threats, like climate change. Too much information can confuse our brains, leading us to inaction or poor choices that can place us in harm’s way.

Our brains evolved to filter information rapidly and focus on what is most immediately essential to our survival and reproduction.

In our modern reality it’s causing errors in rational decision-making, known as cognitive biases. “Cognitive biases that ensured our initial survival make it difficult to address complex, long-term challenges that now threaten our existence, like climate change.

  • Hyperbolic discounting. This is our perception that the present is more important than the future. Throughout most of our evolution it was more advantageous to focus on what might kill us or eat us now, not later. This bias now impedes our ability to take action to address more distant-feeling, slower and complex challenges. While we may understand what needs to be done to address climate change, it’s hard for us to see how the sacrifices required for generations existing beyond this short time span are worth it.

Families carry water during a drought in Ethiopia; temperature rise already has altered weather and water systems in profound ways (Credit: Creative Commons)

  • To address the issue of climate change it requires collective action on a scale that exceeds our evolutionary capacities.
  • The larger the group, the more challenging it gets.

The future value is the value of it at some time in the future. The farther into the future we look, the fuzzier our view, but there will be no future unless we invest trillions and trillions into sustainability.

On a warming planet, no one is safe.

The air you breathe, the water you drink and the food you eat all rely on biodiversity.

Unfortunately, we have created a world where an asset from a business perspective, has no value unless it can produce cash flows in the future. The difference in value between the future and the present is created by discounting the future back to the present using a discount factor, which is a function of time that is running out right in front of our eyes.

The world’s ecosystems are capital assets that up to now have escaped valuation and have therefore been mismanaged.

Now they are being bought by rich privateers, together with financial instruments and institutional arrangements that will allow individuals to capture the value of ecosystem assets.  For example, Sovereignty Wealth Funds.  They buy environmental protection, but only by liquidating natural capital (for example, prairies, forests, fisheries) to generate the funds; even “information” economies are built in proportion to such liquidation. The reinvestment in natural capital never equals the amount liquidated because of procedural inefficiency and profit-taking.

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The process of valuation in the short term might lead to profoundly favourable effects on the stock market, but the decision of how much to spend now to avert climate changes hinges on assessing how much it is worth to us now to prevent that future damage.

Since most of us would prefer money now, over money later, economists typically figure that we’re willing to spend only less than a dollar now to prevent a dollar’s worth of damage in a year, or in a decade.

The percentage less is called the “social discount rate.”

This implies that we either accept an assumption that many argue is economically unjustified (a near-zero social discount rate), or conclude that we should just accept climate change without much of a fight. (A third alternative is perhaps even less appealing to economists: accepting that their calculations simply can’t illuminate the question.)

We’re much happier to have good stuff now than later, so our short-term discount rate is high.

But we hardly distinguish between goods in the pretty far future and goods in the very far future, so our discount rate in the future is far lower to manage the essentials to life.

Now more than ever we must use the power of the law to fight those who would harm our communities, our climate, and the natural world we value so deeply.

We have an International criminal court, why not use it to fine this lot of polluters.

Peabody Energy

Company summary: Coal company
Based in: Missouri, United States
Founded: 1883
Emissions per capita: 2,231,818 tonnes – or, 449,057 return flights from London to Sydney.

Kuwait Petroleum Corporation

Company summary: Petroleum company
Based in: Kuwait City, Kuwait
Founded: 1980
Emissions per capita: 2,133,248 tonnes – or, 445,354 return flights from London to Sydney

ConocoPhillips

Company summary: Crude oil and natural gas
Based in: Texas, United States
Founded: 1875
Emissions per capita: 1,464,423 tonnes – or, 305,725 return flights from London to Sydney

Chevron

Company summary: Oil and gas company
Based in: California, United States
Founded: 1879
Emissions per capita: 900,218 tonnes – or, 187,936 return flights from London to Sydney

Saudi Aramco

Company summary: Petroleum and natural gas company
Based in: Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
Founded: 1933
Emissions per capita: 750,126 tonnes – or, 150,930 return flights from London to Sydney

ExxonMobil

Company summary: Oil and gas company
Based in: Texas, United States
Founded: 1999
Emissions per capita: 559,412 tonnes – or, 116,787 return flights from London to Sydney

BP

Company summary: Oil and gas company
Based in: London, United Kingdom
Founded: 1909
Emissions per capita: 485,306 tonnes – or, 97,647 return flights from London to Sydney

National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC)

Company summary: Government-owned national oil and natural gas company
Based in: Tehran, Iran
Founded: 1948
Emissions per capita: 407,542 tonnes – or, 82,000 return flights from London to Sydney

Royal Dutch Shell

Company summary: Oil and gas company
Based in: The Hague, Netherlands
Founded: 1907
Emissions per capita: 384,939 tonnes – or, 77,452 return flights from London to Sydney.

Chevron topped the list of the eight investor-owned corporations, followed closely by Exxon, BP and Shell. Together these four global businesses are behind more than 10% of the world’s carbon emissions since 1965. The worst offenders are investor-owned companies that are household names around the world and spend billions of pounds on lobbying governments and portraying themselves as environmentally responsible.

The top plastic polluting companies

Company Examples of products             Number of countries plastic was found in Pieces of plastic found
Coca-Cola       Coca-Cola, Fanta, Sprite                                            51                                              13,834
Pepsico            Pepsi, Lays, Doritos                                                  43                                              5,155
Nestlé              Nescafé, Kit Kat, Nestea                                           37                                              8,633
Unilever          Persil, Cornetto, Sunsilk                                            37                                              5,558
Mondeléz International  Oreo, Cadbury, Milka                                34                                                1,171
Mars              Mars bars, M&Ms, Snickers                                      32                                                  678
P&G              Tampax, Pantene, Ariel                                              29                                              3,535
Philip Morris International  Parliament, Merit, Marlboro               28                                                2,593
Colgate Palmolive  Colgate Palmolive                                           24                                              5,991
Colgate, Ajax, Palmolive
Perfetti          Mentos, Chupa Chups, Fruittella                             24                                                465

It’s important to remember that, as a consumer, you do have the power to change the future of these polluting companies. As more people switch to renewable energy, cut down on plastic, and live a little more sustainably, these polluting companies will have no choice but to change their habits to stay on trend.


Economists develop new methods to quantify the trade-off between spending now and spending later.

To figure out how much we should spend fighting climate change, economists have some questions for you:

The health of the planet may hinge on the answers.

Most economic analyses of climate change have concluded that we should be spending only small amounts to combat climate change now, ramping up slowly over time. This conclusion mystifies most climate scientists, who argue that immediate action is the only way to forestall dreadful consequences. And at the heart of the disagreement are these very questions, about the value of future generations’ welfare in monetary terms.

The worst consequences of climate change are likely to unfold only over decades or centuries — in other words, in our children’s or grandchildren’s or great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren’s lifetimes, not ours.

The higher the price payed, also equates with a higher level of risk, which generates a higher discount and lowers the present value of any action.  The higher the level of risk is represented as beta in the capital asset pricing model, means a higher discount, which lowers the present value of  nature.

Discounting is the primary factor used in pricing a stream of tomorrow’s crises. .

By reiterating the importance of the world’s natural capital to the human prospect, the next step, is to focus on stabilizing the scale of human economy.  This requires taking on the advertising industry that is promoting consumption. It should be illegal to advertise any product that is not sustainable in their manufacture. Put restrictions on all advertising that is in contradiction to health of not just us, but the earth.  It has become a voracious top predator across the entire globe.

Biodiversity?

It is the variety of life on Earth, in all its forms and all its interactions. Bio means living, and diversity is the variety of life on earth. It represents different relationships (like ecological, cultural, or evolutionary) between several types of organisms on this planet. All living beings on from human beings to the tiny creatures like microbes combined to form Biodiversity.

Starting with genes, then individual species, then communities of creatures and finally entire ecosystems, such as forests or coral reefs, where life interplays with the physical environment. These myriad interactions have made Earth habitable for billions of years.

Wildlife is not something you watch on television. The reality is that the air you breathe, the water you drink and the food you eat all ultimately rely on biodiversity.

It represents the knowledge learned by evolving species over millions of years about how to survive through the vastly varying environmental conditions Earth has experienced. We all interdependent with one another. Hence each species plays an essential role to boost ecosystem productivity.

Some examples are obvious: without plants there would be no oxygen and without bees to pollinate there would be no fruit or nuts.

Humans and our livestock now consume 25-40% of the planet’s entire “primary production”, i.e. the energy captured by plants on which all biodiversity depends.

The intricate jigsaw of life, constructed over hundreds of millions of years, has been thrown into disarray in the last 10,000 years by humans relocating species around the world. These invasive species can devastate ecosystems that have never developed defences – from rats devouring albatross chicks in their nests to snakehead fish decimating native species.

If money is a measure, the services provided by ecosystems are estimated to be worth trillions of dollars – double the world’s GDP. Biodiversity loss in Europe alone costs the continent about 3% of its GDP, or €450m (£400m), a year.

From an aesthetic point of view, every one of the millions of species is unique, a natural work of art that cannot be recreated once lost. “Each higher organism is richer in information than a Caravaggio painting, a Bach fugue, or any other great work,”

The extinction rate of species is now thought to be about 1,000 times higher than before humans dominated the planet, which may be even faster than the losses after a giant meteorite wiped out the dinosaurs 65m years ago. The sixth mass extinction in geological history has already begun, according to some scientists.

The results are scary.

Humans can’t have power over nature in nature.

—–

Despite the fact that natural resources are limited and take millions of years in the formation, the human is exploiting them for their endless greed and comfort.

Species extinction provides a clear but narrow window on the destruction of biodiversity.

The huge global biodiversity losses now becoming apparent represent a crisis equalling – or quite possibly surpassing – climate change.

Billions of individual populations have been lost all over the planet, with the number of animals living on Earth having plunged by half since 1970. Abandoning the normally sober tone of scientific papers, researchers call the massive loss of wildlife a “biological annihilation” representing a “frightening assault on the foundations of human civilisation”.

Humans may lack gills but that has not protected marine life. The situation is no better – and perhaps even less understood – in the two-thirds of the planet covered by oceans. Seafood is the critical source of protein for more than 2.5 billion people but rampant overfishing has caused catches to fall steadily since their peak in 1996 and now more than half the ocean is industrially fished.

Even much-loathed parasites are important. One-third could be wiped out by climate change, making them among the most threatened groups on Earth. But scientists warn this could destabilise ecosystems, unleashing unpredictable invasions of surviving parasites into new areas.

Today, 75% of the world’s food comes from just a dozen crops and five animal species, leaving supplies very vulnerable to pests or disease that can sweep through large areas of monocultures. Add in the falling yields expected from climate change, and the world’s growing global population faces a food problem.

Locating the tipping point that moves biodiversity loss into ecological collapse is an urgent priority. This being the only living world we are ever likely to know, let us join to make the most of it.

Could the loss of biodiversity be a greater threat to humanity than climate change?

Yes – nothing on Earth is experiencing more dramatic change at the hands of human activity.

Changes to the climate are reversible, even if that takes centuries or millennia.

That call is more urgent than ever. Our posterity is running out of chances.

But once species become extinct, particularly those unknown to science, there’s no going back. To put the matter as concisely as possible, biological diversity is unique in the evenness of its importance to both developed and developing countries is beyond any technical advances.

To spread technical capability where it is most needed, arrangements can be made to retain specimens within the countries of their origin while training nationals to assume leadership in systematics and the related scientific disciplines. Science is the best way to establish links with other cultures because it is concerned not with ideology but with nature and humanity’s relation to nature.

Cognitive biases that ensured our initial survival now make it difficult to address long-term challenges that threaten our existence, like climate change.

It is already clear enough that the missing ingredient is political will.

For example

Recognising the power of small groups.

Humans are more likely to change behaviour when challenges are framed positively, instead of negatively. In other words, how we communicate about climate change influences how we respond.  To get people to act, we need to make the issue feel direct and personal by focusing the issue locally, pointing both to local impacts and local solutions: Like moving one’s city to 100% renewable energy.

The key is having a large-scale, organised effort – but one supported and understood by hundreds of smaller groups and communities.

It’s true that no other species has evolved to create such a large-scale problem – but no other species has evolved with such an extraordinary capacity to solve it, either.  If academia, business, government, and citizens act together toward this common goal, we can create a pollution-free energy system; form a prosperous, adaptable and resilient society; keep human, animal, and plant life flourishing; and create a better world for ourselves and generations to come.

We can’t undo the mistakes of the past. But this generation of political and business leaders, this generation of conscious citizens, can make things right. This generation can make the systemic changes that will stop the planet warming, help everyone adapt to the new conditions and create a world of peace, prosperity and equity.

The world is now experiencing the early effects of climate change.

The overall effect of inadequate actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is creating a human rights catastrophe, and the costs of these climate change related disasters are already enormous. The Colorado river in the USA is drying up, the ice shelf is the Antarctic is melting, the glaciers in the Himalayas are melting five time faster. Somali is no the threshold of a Famine.

—–

If we don’t act, who will?

We have evolved to be able to stop human-induced climate change. Now we must act.

The risk that without intervention we could cross a threshold leading to runaway climate change. An inconvenient truth.

To save natural resources and to bring a change we have to change our habits that exploit our natural resources and directly or indirectly.

If you could ask one question of Global Leader.

What is the main motivation of your leadership?

Which competencies do you see as instrumental to develop in global leaders in order for them to thrive in this new world?

The key to multicultural leadership is in understanding the difference between intent and impact, as well as engaging in supportive interactions that cultivate a nurturing environment.

Sitting in Davis/ G20  ivory tower’s ONE cannot develop global mindset.

“The secret to success is sincerity. Learn to fake that, and you’ve got it made.”

Feel free to add your question.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S : SOON THERE WILL BE NO OPTION BUT TO CHANGE THE CASINO CAPITALIST SYSTEM.

( Twenty minute read)

It would be fair to say that up to now Casinos Capitalism has had an adverse and positive history, because of its understanding of the science of reward and reinforcement, but beneath this past history, our current problems lie.Casino Capitalism -  Hans-Werner Sinn

It, along with colonialism, the brutal subjugation of indigenous peoples created the world of consumerism.

(The concept of colonialism is closely linked to that of imperialism, which is the policy or ethos of using power and influence to control another nation or people that underlies colonialism.)

The result is the planet was divided into a world of North and the South.

The North consumerism and the South cheap slave production to serve the North.

A perpetual Growth system of consumption for products that are not essential to life.

Over centuries and more so in recent decades this is the reason we see inequality growing, with the environment on the verge of collapse due to the exploration of natural resources to fuel profits at all costs – GDP before the people.

———-

One only has to look at the attempts to turn our economic system into green sustainability production and one see, that we now have a market place claiming,  buy this or that because its Bio/ Save energy.

Most of these items still have a built in replacement in order to ensure market growth.  –  Vehicles, Electrical Items, Smartphone, TVs, the list is endless, all fuelled by an advertising industry promoting their use behind unaccountable technology of algorithms the new looming menace.

Profit seeking  Algorithms hidden beneath the surface of the web.

They are the invisible nonhuman workforce that powers the web—and they’re foreshadows the true future of world.

There are no labour laws to govern this kind of work. 

The harms from so-called AI are real and present and follow from the acts of people and corporations deploying automated systems.

Regulatory efforts so far focus on transparency, accountability and preventing exploitative labour practices are dim to the affects on society as a whole. While many of us hear about the latest and greatest breakthrough in AI technology, what we hear less about is its environmental impact .

In fact, much of AI’s recent progress has required ever-increasing amounts of data and computing power. And this all comes at a cost — while currently cloud computing represents roughly 0.5% of the world’s energy consumption, that percentage is projected to grow beyond 2% in the coming years .

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are in a phase of rapid development, and are being adopted widely.

While the concept of artificial intelligence has existed for over sixty years, real-world applications have only accelerated in the last decade due to three concurrent developments: Better algorithms, Increases in networked computing power and the tech
industry’s ability to capture and store massive amounts of data.

Data discrimination is a real social problem.

As search engines and their related companies grow in importance—operating as a source for email, a major vehicle for primary and secondary school learning, and beyond—understanding and reversing these disquieting trends and discriminatory practices is of utmost importance.

We need when we using AI to combat online problems and urging policymakers to exercise “great caution” about relying on it as a policy solution.

For Example:

Facebook’s algorithm amplified misinformation” and “it consistently chose to maximize its growth rather than implement safeguards on its platforms.

———

We all know Climate Change is the last thing that the world now needs, but there is a deeper crisis:

A lack of imagination.

The global response to the pandemic was in a sense a testing ground for the international community’s capacity to deal with the biggest and most complex international challenge of all – climate change.

While we’re at it, we should think about the question of scale, not just at global and national levels but at community levels.

WHAT’S IS NEEDED IS A REDUCTION IN PRODUCTIVITY OF NON ESSENTIALS ITEMS.

MORE OF AN EMBRACMENT OF PROGRAMS THAT ARE FOCUSED ON TURNING IDEAS AND THEIR IMPACT.ON LOCAL COMMUNITIES.

Let’s not beat around the bush — we all want something from someone. And while the importance of networking and asking for help is undeniable, why aren’t we taking a more human approach to the process?

We need transformation not just in our economies but across the whole of our societies – from the economy and our politics, to our family structures and media and communications systems – as all these social spheres are interlinked and all are fundamental to our well-being. We need to transform the structures of our societies so that changes which put the brakes on climate disaster become, not just verbal ambitions but real actions.

With 57% of people worldwide say  “Capitalism as it exists today does more harm than good in the world, we all know by our nature we are selfish and greedy, that we have insatiable needs.

THE TIME HAS COME FOR LOCAL COLLECTIVE SOCIALISM.

A sort of confederalism where small-scale communities manage their own provisioning systems, working in partnership with other communities where necessary. Social norms are when you help a friend without expecting payment. Market norms are when you base your actions on how much money people will pay or cost you. When people act on social norms — that is, when they do things because they want to.

In short: people are much more likely to go above and beyond for tasks that they’re emotionally (rather than financially) invested in.

With this insight in mind, consider tapping into social norms to create situations where both parties walk away with more value than they anticipated. How can you use value exchanges to get what you want, give others what they want, and nurture a relationship in the process?

This doesn’t mean replacing capitalism with state socialism. It means diversified ‘ecologies of ownership’, where co-operatives and community owned enterprises sit beside publicly owned initiatives.

For example.

Councils should be able to make available non repayable grants to set up village gardens, to produce for their community’s.

It doesn’t have to be huge. It can be as simple. Lead with value: Start the interaction by offering something that’s need.

Every village has retired gardening people, why not pay four or five of them to run a garden/ polytunnel/garden shop.

Another example.

Why not create combination of local energy co-operatives and regional public energy companies in the framework of a cap on energy prices and a publicly owned national grid – all based on renewable energy.

( The average home in the UK would need around 9.2m² of solar panels to satisfy its yearly electricity demands, estimated at 2,900kWh, costing an estimated £2,588.  A five-bedroom house will usually need 14 panels. The return on a solar panel takes between 10 to 25 years, depending on the cost of the installation, the power produced, the amount resold and where you live.

If you divide your annual electricity usage by 265, you’ll end up with roughly the right number of solar panels for your home .Most countries in Europe would be able to satisfy their electricity needs with less than 1% of their total land area being devoted to solar power.

The world would need around 85,894km² of solar panels.

——

While we may think of capitalism more as the absence of the state in favour of the market, in reality, the domination of the market is impossible without a domineering state to impose it.

The state institutionalised hierarchy, and with capitalism, state domination and bureaucracy reached into every corner of society, resources, or what we call the ‘means of life’ should not be owned by anyone, they form a commons based on the principle of ‘usufruct’ – everyone is free to use them as long as they do not damage or deplete them.

The principle of the ‘irreducible minimum’ means that everybody is entitled to the means of life no matter what they contribute – an even more generous maxim than Marx’ famous ‘from each according to his [sic] ability to each according to his needs!’

The sentiments behind these slogans are not confined to the ash heaps of history, rather, many of the policies from the political left today fit under this simple slogan.

“From each according to ability” is what underlies a concern for the common good and a conception of society as a cooperative venture, with mandatory public service as a matching policy proposal. Overall, the phrase from each according to his abilities is a phrase associated with socialist and communist ethics, but with the arrival of AI it is transferring people into digitalized citizens, with ownership of natural resources such as fresh water, fresh air becoming the exclusive ownership of profit seeking algorithms.

Why is this happing?

Because, most of our institutions set up after world War 11 are not working.

Because,  western capitalism is not irretrievably bound to fail; but it does need to be rethought like the return of public ownership.

The key principle in all this is removing profit from a significant portion of economic activity, and bringing democracy in.

Indeed, if you judge by measures such as inequality and environmental damage, “the performance of Western Capitalism in recent decades has been deeply problematic..

Perhaps most significantly, in many developed nations late-20th Century capitalism has contributed to a significant gap between the wealth of the richest and poorest people. The richest billionaires in the word have amassed staggering fortunes.

So, will capitalism as we know it continue in its current form – or might it have another future ahead?

If the gap grows between rich and poor, then instability can follow (Credit: Jay Directo/Getty Images)

The inequality gap may matter more than some politicians and corporate leaders would like to believe.

Why?

Because, to build a better world, a world where many worlds fit; linked worlds of collective liberation and ecological sustainability.

Because, While industrial capitalism exploited and controlled nature with devastating consequences, surveillance capitalism exploits and controls human nature with a totalitarian order as the endpoint of the development. This leaves surveillance capitalism as an exceptionally useful tool for businesses, but also an invasion of privacy to users who do not want their private experience to be owned by a company.

Because, as a result of rising inequality, the ever-rising cost of living, people have less trust in institutions.

Because, economies will with AI, become completely divorced from the demands of people, who seek jobs, affordable housing, education, healthcare and a clean environment.

Because, there is ample evidence that social and environmental impacts are relevant and need to be incorporated into development models.

Because, the desire to earn profits from business activity, is the driving force of capitalism. It’ flaws as with any system are numerous, but the one that stands out is the trickle down aspiration.

Because, it is obvious that these issues must also be considered within the social contract underpinning capitalism, so that it is more inclusive, holistic and integrated with basic human values.

Because, capitalist growth is driven by profit expectations, it fluctuates with the changes in technological, climate change, or social opportunities for capital accumulation. It is held accountable only to the test of profitability.

Because, government must stop ignoring the needs of ordinary citizens and companies must do more than deliver profits to their shareholders.

Because, if we don’t seize this opportunity to build back better – to reset and reinvent rather than ‘return to normal’ – systemic risks and vulnerabilities will continue to accumulate, making future shocks both more likely and more dangerous.

Because, the shift toward greater individual liberty changed the social contract.

Because, technology will have an important role to play, but the principle has to be that the technologies we develop will enhance rather than harm our relationship with nature. What is certain is that technology won’t save us while the current drivers of the economy – capital accumulation and the profit motive – remain in place. Unfortunately as people increasingly asserted their right to individual liberty, they are being exploited by AI.

While one response to the downsides of capitalism in its current form is for nations to take a defensive posture, seeking to protect themselves by minimising external ties, protectionism is short-sighted, particularly when it comes to trade, – Brexit.

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Will capitalism as we know it evolve into something new?

With  artificial intelligence capitalism, lifting a substantive number of people out of absolute poverty people expected less from governing authorities, in exchange for greater civil liberties, including individual, political and economic freedom. But at the same time, critics argue that its tenets of lowering taxes and deregulating business has done little to support political investment in public services.

This newer strain of capitalism has NOT led to increased economic growth worldwide.

Previously, many resources were provided by those in power (land, food and protection) in exchange for significant contributions from citizens (for instance, from slave labour to hard labour with little pay, high taxes and unquestioning loyalty).

The economic system of Capitalist is characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.

Capitalism has fuelled the industrial, technological and green revolutions, reshaped the natural world and transformed the role of the state in relation to society.

However, the story is not universally positive.

In recent years, capitalism’s shortcomings have become ever-more apparent. COVID-19 has exposed the fragility and societally negative outcomes of contemporary capitalist economies. The virus has highlighted many vulnerabilities – within businesses, supply chains, economies, health systems and political institutions – that will need to be addressed in the post-crisis world.

Functionally, capitalism instead of planning economic decisions through centralized political methods, as with socialism or feudalism, economic planning under capitalism occurs via decentralized, competitive, and voluntary decisions.

The profit motive, an indispensable, if regrettable, by product of capitalism, is being exposed daily, with social media, climate change, the environmental dangers of the free market and profit seeking algorithms.

Capital is wealth—that is, money and goods—that’s used to produce more wealth with underpaid work for profits.

Governments and regulators must intervene to ensure the costs of environmental and social damage are internalized by the companies responsible:

Profits cannot come at the expense of long-term societal resilience.

The green recovery is vital if we are to create more resilient economies and a world in which business can thrive, not just now but long into the future.

Reach out to people with a genuine intention to connect and add value to their lives, and you’ll see how much more you’ll be able to get from the interaction than if you just treated it like a transaction.

What can be done to change the inequality that is the main feature of capitalism?

Just-in-time” may be superseded by “just-in-case” as the mantra of procurement. 

The case for ‘green’ stimulus measures is clear: they are likely to deliver more jobs and higher (equitable) growth in the short-term, while reducing longer-term risks linked to climate change and biodiversity loss – crises that, if unaddressed, will cause a level of disruption to our economies and societies orders of magnitude greater than COVID-19.

Now, more than ever, integrating climate goals into business strategy will be a vital driver of long-term success.

Ultimately, it is worth remembering that citizens in a capitalist, liberal democracy are not powerless.

So it follows that we might be similarly blind to what capitalism could look like in another two centuries. However, that does not mean we should not ask how it might evolve into something better in the nearer term.

The future of capitalism and our planet depend on it.

——–

To destroy democratic capitalism and replace it with authoritarian socialism is not the solution.

Communism, socialism, capitalism, and democracy are all among our top all-time lookups, and user comments suggest that this is because they are complex, abstract terms often used in opaque ways. They’re frequently compared and contrasted, with communism sometimes equated with socialism, and democracy and capitalism frequently linked.

I believe that  beneath the political, and driving it, is a justified, if poorly articulated differences.

Communism referred to an economic and political theory that advocated the elimination of private property and the common sharing of all resources among a group of people

Revolutionary socialism, which advocates a proletariat overthrow of capitalist structures within a society; societal and communal ownership and governance of the means of production; and the eventual establishment of a classless society.

———

Why should our life chances be so far determined by the accident of where we are born?

Why would we want to live in societies that benefit some people in some places at the expense of other people in other places?

The good societies that we build now, during the ‘great pause’, need to work for everyone in the world.

There’s a tension when we’re thinking about scale – when formulating alternatives, should we be thinking global or local? The universal or particular?

Our current capitalist economy is certainly global – there probably isn’t a person in the world whose life isn’t integrated into it somehow, though in different ways in different places. So it makes sense to start there.

We know the dangers involved with huge corporations sucking up data on the most intimate aspects of our lives – how they collaborate with governments to enable wholesale spying, crackdowns on democratic freedoms, and dystopian predictive policing and facial recognition practices; how voters are manipulated during elections; how discrimination is built into algorithms; how the data-based business model encourages fake news, polarisation and hate; and how these companies resolutely dodge tax.

The data frenzy is also wreaking havoc on the environment – a 2015 report found that data centres are responsible for about 2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, putting them on par with the aviation industry. And it’s exacerbating global inequality.

It is China and the US who are set to reap the biggest rewards from AI, while Africa and Latin America will see the lowest gains. It is unlikely that the profits accrued to multinationals based in the US or China from data mined in lower-income countries will ‘trickle down’ to those supplying that data.

The concept of cultural imperialism has been around for decades. Now we can also speak of data imperialism. Again, it is the profit motive that’s at the bottom of all this.

In our attempts to understand the new from the old and the unknown from the known, we risk either stripping away too much truth or adding too much falsehood so that our inquiries inevitably become futile.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

Contact: bobdillon33@gail.com.