Category Archives: Algorithms.

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHY IS IT THAT WE ARE ALLOWING ALGORITHMS TO RUN OUR LIVES.

28 Tuesday Jan 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Climate Change., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Innovation., Modern day life., Post - truth politics., Reality., Robot citizenship., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The Future, The Internet., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., WiFi communication.

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(Twenty-minute read)

Technology is getting increasingly personal.

With algorithms becoming the masters of social media are we all just becoming clickbait?

Devices are providing immediate information about our health and about what we see, where we go and where we have been.

Our lives are being shaken to their very core.

With 5G technology what we experienced at the moment will pale in comparison to the vast array of possibilities carried under its belt by this new generation of wireless connectivity, which is being built over the foundations of the previous one.

It will allow millions of devices to be connected simultaneously.

All stakeholders – business, government, society and individuals – will have to work together to adjust so these technologies and rapid changes are harnessed for the development of all, not just profit.

Swathes of the globe will be left behind.

Regardless it is no longer just about repetitive factory jobs rather an increase in inequality globally.

It is not only a moral imperative to ensure that such a scenario does not happen as it will pose a risk to global stability through channels such as global inequality, but migration also flows, and even geopolitical relations and security.

We already live in a world that has been profoundly altered by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Yet there is not much debate on the likely size of the impact.

Why?

Because there are such divergent views it is difficult to measure.

But within the next decade, it is expected that more than a trillion sensors will be connected to the internet. By 2024, more than half of home internet traffic will be used by appliances and devices that are connected to internet platforms.

With almost everything connected, it will transform how we live never mind how we do business.

If there is no trusted institution to regulate it we can kiss our arses.

Now is the time to make sure it is changed for the better.

The internet of things will create huge amounts of data, raising concerns over who will own it and how it will be stored. And what about the possibility that your home or car could be hacked?

The internet is great for ideas, but ultimately, the things that will amaze you are not on your computer screen.

Artificial Intelligence may well invent new life forms but if we as humans do not contrive and manage global acceptable ethical parameters for all its forms – (bioengineering, gene editing, nanotechnology, and the algorithms) that run them we are more than idiots.

As Yuval Noah Harari says in his most recent book ( 21 Lessons for the 21st Century) ” There is no such thing as ‘Christian economics’, ‘Muslim economics’ or ‘Hindu economics’ ” but there will be Algorithms economics run by big brother. 

The digital age has brought us access to so much information in just a few clicks of the mouse button or the remote control everything from the news, Tv programmes with the internet becoming somewhat glorifying sensationalism rather than giving us the truth.

The question is.

Are the technologies that surround us tools that we can identify, grasp and consciously use to improve our lives?

Or are they more than that:

Powerful objects and enablers that influence our perception of the world, change our behaviour and affect what it means to be human?

What can we do?

The Second Industrial Revolution and the Third Industrial Revolution have lead us to this revolution the Fourth Industrial Revolution which can be described as the advent of “cyber-physical systems” involving entirely new capabilities for people and machines.

Unlike previous revolutions, it is not the world as a whole that will see any of its benefits or disadvantages it is individuals and groups that could win – or lose – a lot.

Unfortunately, expanded connectivity does not necessarily lead to expanded or more diverse worldviews it will be the opposite with our increased reliance on digital markets.

At the moment it’s just not very evenly distributed nor will it be.

At best we can moan about it and hope that climate change shifts our reliance on biomass as primary sources of energy.

Back to Clickbait.

The issue with clickbait is that the reader or site visitor is being manipulated into clicking something that is misleading.

Clickbait is not one-dimensional. Each time you run a Google search, scan your passport, make an online purchase or tweet, you are leaving a data trail behind that can be analysed and monetized.

Most clickbait links forward a user to a page that requires payment, registration or a series of pages that help drive views for a specific site.

It can also point to any web content that is aimed at generating online advertising revenue.

We’re all guilty of being gullible of clicking links online but Clickbait websites are notorious for spreading misinformation and creating controversy in the name of generating hits.

Have you not ever felt that you’re being played as dumb individuals whenever you watch the news or scroll through a media site?

Thanks to supercomputers and algorithms, we can make sense of massive amounts of data in real-time. Computers are already making decisions based on this information, and in less than 10 years computer processors are expected to reach the processing power of the human brain. A convergence of the digital, physical and biological spheres challenging our notion of what it means to be human.

Today, 43% of the world’s population is connected to the internet, mostly in developed countries.

Cooperation is “the only thing that will redeem mankind”.

We can use the Fourth Industrial Revolution to lift humanity into a new collective and moral consciousness based on a shared sense of destiny, and that’s until 6G comes along or living robots.

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

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WHY IS THE OBVIOUS SO DIFFICULT TO RECOGNIZE?

20 Monday Jan 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Digital age., Facebook, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google, HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Nanotechnology, Our Common Values., Post - truth politics., Reality., Robot citizenship., Social Media, Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Organisations., World Politics

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(Twelve-minute read) 

We live in a world where the obvious cannot be addressed.

Each and every aspect of our daily lives, work, relationships are somehow influenced or mediated by technology today, not only as individuals but collectives.

It makes one wonder about the sheer volume of ignorance which not only allows the same problems to persist decade after decade but to even get worse.

It is obvious that our very sustainability is under threat but we remain “Oblivious”

Why? 

Consider the paradoxical and strategic implications of the fact that people do not perceive things being too small or too big, too far away or too close, too wide or too narrow, too unimportant or too important for us, too slow and gradual or too sudden and fast, always present or usually absent, too often repeated or not often enough to be remarked, too general, complicated and abstract or too simple, too respectable or too unworthy, too familiar or too alien, too similar or too different too few or too many… Imagine the practical implications of such blindness!

Some of the biggest things around us dissolve into background scene, too huge to count and seemingly too big to fail.

To defeat this blindness we must ask what exactly is obvious? Why? obvious to whom? To me? to you? To everybody? Everywhere? All the time? 

Decisions about technology should not be irreversibly delegated to technocrats, corporations and tech monopolies. 

We think unknowingly with other people’s thoughts.

The conclusion is that our senses and memories cheat us, our common sense is no good and our judgement false.

It is self-evident that basic assumptions are the riverbeds of our thoughts, the compass of our judgment and choices and our actions; most of them we inherited from trusted people and from authorities, they look inherent, seem to be there from eternity, as if out of sight, so that we would not question them.

This is now leading to a ready-made thinking world of algorithms used by Facebook- Utube – Google – Smartphones -Twitter -and Social media. An invisible prison of social media where it is easier to observe other people’s basic assumptions than yours; particularly when they are dissimilar with yours; then, other people have not yet grown into your culture may be useful to detect your unquestionable beliefs; especially very different people coming from somewhere else; or you, visiting somewhere else.

I do not see much good in convincing people not to trust their own mind; we must instead accept and work around this “blindness” without moving our life into monasteries at the feet of gurus or into laboratories at the feet of the experts of the day.

After a while, you don’t notice. They become references.

The Right to an Algorithmic Opt-Out…

How to notice, by ourselves, the obvious turned imperceptible? How to detect it, how to discern it from the merely neutral “obvious” background? How to evaluate the importance and potential of change of something so evident that it escapes your attention?  How to wake up to it? How to seek and get help? How to help other people to do the same? What to do when people cannot or do not want to see the obvious? How to awaken people?

The question is still “How to open my eyes when they are open already?”

The intelligent reason should visit its basic assumptions, regularly; but it doesn’t.

Our worst enemy in discerning the obvious is a certainty, to be convinced that we know it all and that the obvious is obvious for us.

The obvious is best disguised into itself. One obvious hide another.

How banal to say that the obvious is that which is right in front of us, readily accessible to our observation, to our senses or being credible knowledge we have!

With commercial profit-seeking algorithms, this hidden price of selective blindness and thus freedom diminished.

if you repeat slogans endlessly they will become obvious for you (even some false ones), and you will end up believing them.

The most amazing for me is to observe how we only apprehend things fit to our size and relative to us. We do not grasp the incommensurable, out of proportion with us, with which we have no common standard of measurement: the trillions of billions.

Because of compression, we have become an incredibly stupid species.

The obvious known comes alive for us to do something about it only when understanding turns it into a personal image, vivid and simple enough to be of our size; otherwise, we stay paralysed and dumb. 

Perhaps it because our body believes that big things don’t move and unmoving things are harmless. 

Perhaps its because we are weak, unable to face them and we allow our judgment to slumber; we do not see what we do not wish to see, hoping that it will go away or solve itself.

Perhaps only when understood does the evidence become awareness, we are able to respond to, so that we would do something because of what it means. 

Perhaps figuring out that the elusive 20th-century social contract is gone, is too enormous for us. Therefore we will go on like cattle to the slaughterhouse. 

Why is this becoming true? 

Because as Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations states. 

“The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something because it is always before one’s eyes.) The real foundations of their inquiry do not strike people at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck them. And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful.”

Only by understanding how and when common sense fails can we improve how we plan for the future. 

Then, question and challenge the obvious at the root: “Why exactly it must be so? Why it is impossible? Who says so? Where is it necessary or impossible? Only here or everywhere? Really?! For whom; for you or for the entire humanity? With what means? At what size? Within what frame of time? Forever? Which pieces in this puzzle would, if changed, make the impossible possible and the necessary less so? Maybe you or somebody else, somewhere else, with different means have other self-evidence. 

Where it will end?

Either there will be a technological or psychological breakthrough or we will see worldwide degradation like we’ve never seen before.

Old labels often obscure the obvious. 


 

I’d like to state the obvious:

Problem-solving is the only thing in life that holds value. Anything that isn’t a solution to a problem is pure excess.

The truth is that the world is not a democracy. We don’t all decide what is best – only a select few do.

We are egocentric through and through – but creating a lasting, meaningful change feeds our egos like nothing else.

Unfortunately, creating change takes time, patience and perseverance.

It appears that for every one step we take forward as a global community, we end up taking two steps backwards.

Every problem in the world is a function that is processed in an environment, on a platform with certain bounds, certain rules, and certain major players.

As far as I can see, life has little certain purpose. If there is a real reason for it, then we have to accept that we simply don’t know the reason.

However, don’t give up until you have to – until there is a better, more logical option.

Big ideas can change the world, can’t they?

Of course, we don’t know. Nobody does. It is really about what we want to happen and whether we go out there and make it happen.

Will we be able to shift direction to avoid the worst impacts of climate change?

Yes.

We face risks, called existential risks, that threaten to wipe out humanity.

These risks are not just for big disasters, but for the disasters that could end history.

Nuclear war.

Climate Change.

Bioengineered pandemic.

Superintelligence.

Nanotechnology.

Inequality. 

Unknown unknowns.

Anyone of them might mean that value itself becomes absent from the universe.

In doing so we will get the economy back on its feet again and re-orientate our financial institutions so that they cannot place the world in a similar situation to what we experienced in 2008.

In the daily hubbub of current “crises” facing humanity, we forget about the many generations we hope are yet to come.

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

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: IS THE ACCELERATING TECHNOLOGY AND THE ONGOING REVOLUTION IN INFORMATION MAKING THE WORLD SO COMPLICATED IT IS NOW BEYOND OUR UNDERSTANDING.

11 Saturday Jan 2020

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence.

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The plain truth can often be so obvious as to be invisible.

There are so many obstacles to change on the scale we so desperately need.

We are fast reaching a point that no humans can or will be able to understand the world we live in.

We pass this way just once.

Artificial algorithms are taking over.

Yuval Noah Harari in his latest book ( 21 lessons for the 21st Century) puts his finger on the problem.

” In the coming century biotech and infotech will give us the power to manipulate the world inside us and reshape ourselves, but because we don’t understand our own minds, the changes we will make might upset our mental system to such an extent that it too might brake down.

Surely its time we stop being the free fodder that feds big data. It’s much harder to struggle against irrelevance than against exploitation.

What will be the point to education if algorithms make us redundant?

It is difficult to discern world-wise whether there is any sincere conversation on AI Ethics.

Is it being addressed by any of the big tech companies or are they just giving token nods to what is right or wrong, while taking advantage of all human beings out there?

Are there just pushback from the outside organisations.

What we are witnessing is their profit growth with economic disparity worldwide increases at a starting rate. This certainly rings true if one looks at the state of the world with people judged by their wealth.

So what is the ethics of creating a sentient life form on a planet that is burning?

Perhaps it will be for the best if we continue not to understand the planet we all live on and leave it to AI to sort us out.

Or can we now start contributing to better governance solutions?

If we don’t grasp the nettle soon there will be no coming back.

To have any relevance now and in the future, we need billions to take to the streets to demand the sustainability of our planet (Human vote with their feet, not Social media) before profit-making goes underground.

When it comes to making the world a better place, corporations are often accused of apathy (the flip-side of blind self-interest). But if consumers are truly committed to social change, they must answer the same challenge.

If we can get consumers to make mindful shopping choices, to support brands that act responsibly and to purchase goods from those that dedicate a portion of the sale proceeds to causes, we are well on our way to re-purposing everyday purchases.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and become

THE BEADY EYE SAYS; SO YOU ARE NOW 30 BY THE TIME YOU ARE 70 HERE IS WHAT A DAY IN YOUR LIFE WILL LOOK LIKE.

10 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Communication., Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Digital Friendship., Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Reality., Robot citizenship., Social Media, Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Twenty-minute read)

The Dead Sea will be almost completely dried up, nearly half of the Amazon rainforest will have been deforested, wildfires will spread like, umm, wildfire, and the polar ice caps will be only 60 per cent the size they are now.

Wars will involve not only land and sea but space. Superhurricanes will become a regular occurrence.

Should you be worried, of course not AI/Algorithms are here to guide you.

AI-related advancements have grown from strength to strength in the last decade.

Right now there are people coming up with new algorithms by applying evolutionary techniques to the vast amounts of big data via genetic programming to find optimisations and improve your life in different fields.

The amount of data we have available to us now means that we can no longer think in discrete terms. This is what big data forces us to do.

It forces us to take a step back, an abstract step back to find a way to cope with the tidal wave of data flooding our systems. With big data, we are looking for patterns that match the data and algorithms are enabling us to find patterns via clustering, classification, machine learning and any other number of new techniques.

To find the patterns you or I cannot see. They create the code we need to do this and give birth to learner algorithms that can be used to create new algorithms.

So do you remember a time, initially, when it was possible to pass on all knowledge through the form of dialogue from generation to generation, parent to child, teacher to student?  Indeed, the character of Socrates in Plato’s “Phaedrus” worried that this technological shift to writing and books was a much poorer medium than dialogue and would diminish our ability to develop true wisdom and knowledge.

Needless to say that I don’t think Socrates would have been a fan of Social Media or TV.

The machine learning algorithms have become like a hammer at the hands of data scientists. Everything looks like a nail to be hit upon.

In due process, the wrong application or overkill of machine learning will cause disenchantment among people when it does not deliver value.

It will be a self-inflicted  ‘AI Winter’.

So here is what your day at 70th might be.

Welcome to the world of permanent change—a world defined not by heavy industrial machines that are modified infrequently, but by software that is always in flux.

Algorithms are everywhere. They decide what results you see in an internet search, and what adverts appear next to them. They choose which friends you hear from on social networks. They fix prices for air tickets and home loans. They may decide if you’re a valid target for the intelligence services. They may even decide if you have the right to vote.

7.30 am 

Personalised Health Algorithm report.

Sleep pattern good. Anxiety normal, deficient in vitamin C. Sperm count normal.

Results of body scan sent health network.

7.35 am

House Management Algorithm Report.

Temperature 65c. House secure. Windows/ Doors closed Catflap open. Heating off. Green Energy usage 2.3 Kwh per minute. (Advertisement to change provider.) Shower running, Water flow and temperature adjusted, shower head hight adjusted. House Natural light adjusted. Confirmation that smartphone and I pad fully charges. Robotic housemaid programmed.

8 am.

Personalised Shopping/Provisions Algorithm report.

Refrigerators will be seamlessly integrated with online supermarkets, so a new tub of peanut butter will be on its way to your door by drone delivery before you even finish the last one.

8.45 am. Appointments Algorithm.

Virtual reality appointment with a local doctor.

Voice mails and emails and the calendar check.

A device in your head might eliminate the need for a computer screen by projecting images (from a Skype meeting, a video game, or whatever) directly into your field of vision from within. It checks

9 am.

Personalised Financial Algorithm.

Balance of credit cards and bank accounts including citizen credit /loyalty points. Value of shares/ pension fund updated.

10 am. Still in your Dressing gown.

11 am.  The self-drive car starts. Seats automatically shift and rearrange themselves to provide maximum comfort. Personalised News and Weather Algorithm gives a report. The car books parking spot places order for coffee. Over coffee, you rent out a robot in Dublin and have it do the legwork for your forthcoming visiting – hotels.

12 pm.

Hologram of your boss in your living room.

1 pm.

Virtual work meeting to discuss the solitary nature of remote work.

Face-to-face meeting arranged.

 

2 pm. Home. Lunch delivered.

3 pm. Sporting activity with a virtual coach.

5 pm. Home

7 30 pm.

Discuss and view the Dubin robot walk around containing video and audio report. 

Dinner delivered. Six quests. The home management algorithm rearranges the furniture.

8 30 pm

Virtual helmets on for some after-dinner entertainment.

10 pm 

Ask Alixia to shut the house down not before you answer Alixia question to score points and a chance to win — Cash- Holiday- Dinner for two- a discount on Amazon- e bay- or a spot of online gambling.

                                                       ———

The fourth industrial revolution is not simply an opportunity. It matters what kind of opportunity is for whom and under what terms.

We need to start thinking about algorithms.

The core issue here is of course who will own the basic infrastructure of our future which is going to be effect all sectors of society.

They are not just for mathematicians or academics. There are algorithms all around us and you don’t need to know how to code to use them or understand them.

We need to better understand them to better understand, and control, our own futures. To achieve this we need to better understand how these algorithms work and how to tailor them to suit our needs. Otherwise, we will be unable to fully unlock the potential of this abstract transition because machine learning automates automation itself.

The new digital economy, akin to learning to read, has obscured our view of algorithms. Algorithms are increasingly part of our everyday lives, from recommending our films to filtering our news and finding our partners.

Building a solid foundation now for governance for AI the need to use AI responsibly
and to consider the broader reaching implications of this transformational technology’s use.

The world population will be over 9 billion with the majority of people will live in cities.

So here are a few questions at 30 you might want to consider.

How does the software we use influence what we express and imagine?

Shall we continue to accept the decisions made for us by algorithms if we don’t know how they operate?

What does it mean to be a citizen of a software society?

These and many other important questions are waiting to be analyzed.

If we reduce each complex system to a one-page description of its algorithm, will we capture enough of software behaviour?

Or will the nuances of particular decisions made by software in every particular case be lost?

You don’t need a therapist; they need an algorithm.

We may never really grasp the alienness of algorithms. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn to live with them.

Unfortunately, their decisions can run counter to our ideas of fairness. Algorithms don’t see humans the same way other humans do.

What are we doing about confronting any of this –  Nothing much.

So its no wonder that people start to worry about what’s left for human beings to do.

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

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: IS THIS AS GOOD AS IT GET’S WITH MAN’S ACHIEVEMENTS FOR EVOLUTION?

29 Friday Nov 2019

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Climate Change., Dehumanization., Evolution, HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Reality., Sustaniability, Technology, The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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( An essential twenty five -minute read)

Everyone sees the world in different ways however the greatest innovations of man are found in the most simple things:

Starting with Fire, Language, Tools, and Wheel writing has been the sole reason that mankind has been able to accumulate knowledge.

Since then the use of our inventions have taken us a long way, they’ve allowed us to land on the moon, travel over oceans, and even eliminate major health threats with various medicines.

You could not be blamed for asking what was actually gained by landing on the moon — a handful of rocks and a game of low-gravity golf — was of virtually no value and yet the act of the journey was invaluable beyond all measure as it personified our continuing evolution.

The same is true with technology today.

The development of it is mind-blowing but its application is almost entirely mindless – profit-seeking algorithms and weaponized drones.

Setting aside why do we exist and what is the purpose of life? (These are hard questions that demand answers) it is what we have not achieved that will be judged by future generations.

Karl Marx once famously observed that capitalism carried within it the seeds of its own destruction but he was wrong. It’s not capitalism that’s the problem, it’s people.

The human race ended the 20th century in pretty good shape, at least comparatively speaking.

The first half of the 1900s was almost certainly the most bloody and brutal phase of humanity’s existence.

Now we have all the information in the world yet it has made us only more ideological and more ignorant; we have access to limitless opinions yet we seek to criminalise those who don’t agree with us. We are so advanced and yet so backward, so cynical and yet so stupid, that we can no longer even agree on what constitutes a fact.

Welcome to the 21st century.

Consider the internet itself, probably the most revolutionary invention in the history of humankind. Its potential to share information thus to accelerate the advancement of science and keep the world running in the event of a catastrophic disaster — the purpose for which it was first intended — is all but limitless.

And what do we use it for most? Porn.

Consider the smartphone, the match to the powder keg of the worldwide web. Almost everyone in every half-developed part of the world, even people living on the streets, has a device more powerful than supercomputers that once took up whole buildings. We can access virtually any image, any idea, any information from anywhere in the world.

And what do we overwhelmingly use it for?  Taking pictures of ourselves.

Let’s look at medical technology — the smartest minds on the planet developing machines and medicines that keep the average person today alive for longer than was once ever dreamt of.

And what is the result?

We are fatter and lazier than ever, resulting in spiralling hospital costs that will send most Western governments broke in a matter of decades. It was once said that the only two certainties in life were death and taxes and yet now we are defying death and there aren’t enough taxes to pay for it.

We are too dumb to even know when to die.

It may well be impossible to connect a full chronological series of species, leading to Homo sapiens, but over millions of years of evolution, we’ve picked up some less than ideal characteristics.

Why? Because of greed.

It will take the efforts of several scientific disciplines and sophisticated technology, probably over many years, to discover the underlying nature of our mental faculties, their neurological basis, and their development over time.

And it’s fair to say that we have little idea of what we’ll evolve to in the future, but there is one thing for certain, evolution is about adapting to your environment – Weaponized drones, Climate change, Algorithms.

Algorithms that are feeding Social media, are stripping us of a collective understanding of what is going on in the world.

People like to blame fake news on Facebook, and that is true enough.

But the far greater truth is far worse than that. Neither fake news nor Facebook emerged like Athena fully-formed from nothing. They were made by us. By us and for us and of us.

While the positive uses for technology are endless I marvel as I read Asimov to see the way in which he foresaw the ethical conundrum in which we now find ourselves embroiled.

Of course, when they (the future generations) look at our achievements the one thing they will not be able to comprehend is why we have not been able to stop killing each other.

Weaponized drones are now more acceptable than land mines, cluster bombs, or chemical weapons.

It might be argued that this would be a way of sparing human beings who could stay comfortably at home and let our intelligent machines do the fighting for us. If some of them were destroyed — well, they are only machines. This approach to warfare would be particularly useful if we had such machines and the enemy didn’t.

Just like those tried at Nuremberg who attempted to wash their hands of mass killings we have now developed weaponized drones to kill, with a Punches Pilot immunity, that is violating all existing international law.

So humans through the use of technology may eventually reach a point where they can force evolution upon themselves.

Perhaps the result (if we are not already wiped out by Nuclear or a Weather bomb) will be that we’re no longer subject to the driving force of evolution – but unnatural selection by drones. 

Now the question is, how accurate is this statement?

Is technological progress actually taking us backwards?

Are we advancing ourselves to death? At what point do many deaths become too many deaths?

This is the first problem with technology.

If it is accurate, we’re already screwed.

Of course, none of this is important given the glacial pace of evolutionary change, we probably won’t have to worry about that for thousands of years.

Wrong.

We’ve come to believe that, with enough information, human behaviour is predictable.

But number-crunching algorithms are leading us perilously wrong. There’s something unsettling in the idea that, amid the vagaries of choice, chance, and circumstance, mathematics can tell us something about what it is to be human.

Who we are together, as a collective entity?

Despite the grand promises of Big Data, uncertainty remains so abundant that specific human lives remain boundlessly unpredictable. The more data that are collected, cross-referenced, and searched for correlations, the easier it becomes to reach false conclusions.

It might be true that in large groups, the natural variability among human beings cancels, however, if we end up with algorithms setting thresholds extremely unlikely outcomes are bound to arise eventually.

The gift is not a technology to enable us to realise evolution for the cruel being it is, but giving mankind the intelligence and tools to exclude ourselves from the other species on the planet and take a step back to interpret for ourselves where we as a race are going?

Leaving the brutality of evolution behind is not a gift given to us by evolution.

We have evolved to the point whereby we stand on the threshold of controlling our genetic and ultimately evolutionary destiny. Unfortunately, the problem with humans is, whenever we encounter a problem we have evolved to the point where we think that we can overcome it with technology.

Advances in technology, medicine and culture mean it isn’t just the fittest who get to pass their genes on to the next generation.

External aids could be entirely responsible for our survival.

All of this relies on earth’s natural resources which are supposedly gonna be gone by 2050!

The problems in this world are manmade therefore man can solve them.

The sad truth is that we have Governments and World Organisations that pay lip service when the real debate is a knowledge- and research-based exchange of argument and counterargument that should be focused at the analysis of a specific question, our survival. 

Passion and competition, yes, but, more than anything else, debate is an exercise in critical thinking! The human brain, being a machine striving for maximum efficiency, typically remembers where information is stored, rather than the information itself.

Technology has already affected the way our memory works.

AI. After all, natural evolution wouldn’t be able to mould and program devices to a point of sophistication that may lead to sentience, but we may be able to and maybe at that point even though its not natural, it is an evolution born of natural origins and most likely would go on to create newer better versions of itself.

In theory, humans are exercising their judgement in the process, but in reality, the computer system is viewed as too “smart” to be second-guessed by a human being.

So . . . what do we need to be more afraid of?

Robots with a compulsion to out-think humans? or humans that are afraid to second-guess the robots?

We must confront an urgent problem related to technology: the automation of “pre-emptive violence” – front-loaded with a bias to kill, with little impetus to contradict that bias.

At present drones are the most devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilization around the world.

So are we at the peak of human evolution?

Certainly not. Certainly not as long as there are humans, there will be human evolution.

We are not even close to the peak of evolution.

Just look at wthat we recently found > The Higgs Boson, Mapped the Human Genome, Cloned a sheep, built the International Space Station, discovery the Double Helix Structure of DNA, Split the Atom, invented the Internet, we’re revisiting the theories of Relativity with Quantum Mechanics.

We have Created Nuclear Weapons, the Periodic Table of the Elements,  Created the Internet Developed Vaccines, Created Music, Created Photography, Flight, Electronic Devices, Traveled to the Moon, Eradicated Small Pox, Created the Television, Discovered Mathematics, Invented the Printing Press, The Phone,  Discovery and Control of Electricity, Cars, Invented Zero, Created of United Nations, Discovered World is Round. 

AND STILL, WE ARE UNABLE TO ACT TOGETHER.

Why?

Because you know the downfall of civilisation has really passed the point of no return when even a rich white guy can’t get anything done.

Humans are the only organism that can alter their environment to suit them (instead of the other way around)

Finally, people must take into account that nature will commence exerting its own controls LONG BEFORE the human race has reached the point where it can step off the evolutionary treadmill.

With our increasing reliance on technology – and in particular machinery – to do our dirty (but muscle-enhancing) work. The less each generation depends on physical strength, the more likely it is that the whole species will grow weaker to the point of stagnation. 

As evolution relies on the survival of the fittest, evolution itself will evolve everything else in all our lives will be transitory and every other artificial intelligent goodwill application will become visionary.

Only when we’ll be able to repair and augment our children’s DNA. Then we really will have triumphed over evolution. Race” will no longer be an issue. Perhaps we will stop killing each other.

Yet we’ve got our problems. A lot of them but the very things we invented to sustain us will destroy us.

The exact nature of our evolutionary relationships with the planet and AI will be the subject of debate for the foreseeable future.

It doesn’t matter if we’re uncovering evidence for climate change or deciding whether a drug has an effect: the concept is identical.

By setting an arbitrary threshold, and agreeing that anything beyond that point gives you grounds for suspicion with greed this is the evolutionary path we are setting our selves.

Mentally the world appears to be de-evolving with smartphones and social media platforms.

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

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: IS IT TIME TO REGULATE SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS WITH LAWS.

25 Monday Nov 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Democracy, Digital Friendship., Elections/ Voting, Facebook., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google, Humanity., Modern Day Democracy., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Politics., Reality., Social Media, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Twitter, Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, World Politics

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(Ten-minute read) 

The beady eye is far from the first voice to ask this question and it certainly will not be the last.

We might even come to “question whether we still have free will.

There is no doubting that the social web has created amazing opportunities to learn, discover, connect, but its downside as it penetrates our daily lives is becoming more and more prevalent in the creation of our future lives and the societies we live in.

If the public discussion is shifting increasingly to online fora, and those fora are having more and more influence over democracy it becomes increasingly important to apply principles to them. 

Honest political debate is essential for the health of a democracy.  

If discussions of import move into space where they can be readily censored, then we will simply no longer live in a society with a free exchange of ideas, because the playing field will always be tilted.

One only has to look at how social media platforms are amplifying what is wrong with the world.  

While we all reveal a huge amount of personal information online we are losing the ability to determine honest facts that democracy depends.

Basically, companies that run social media platforms are monopolies or near-monopolies in their areas of operation, and the only way we can achieve the desired outcomes is through clear, effective legal regulations. 

We can’t always control how others use their platforms but we can apply the same regulations that govern all other forms of Media.

The public cannot rely on these company’s self-regulation, because self-regulation raises more questions than it answers.

The fact is that the formation of a platform takes place in a vacuum, whereas the formation of any competitors do not, so they cannot be considered parallels in any way. 

If we take companies like Facebook and Google they both derive most of their revenue from advertising. They essentially constitute a duopoly because they have access to the best data about individuals. Every memory, picture, emoji, song, video, link, gripe, fear, hope, want, dream and bad political opinion posted is mined and monetized as data.

As a result of their algorithms, they are creating and reinforcing divided and insular online communities that do not interact with people or information with which they disagreed.

At the end of the day, how Facebook and Google conduct their businesses undermines privacy and raises questions about ethical behaviour in the uses of our information and their role in society.

The Internet is a “utility” like water or electricity. It is essential to modern life, not an optional subscription service.

Determining how to regulate Facebook or any other platform may first require some kind of definition of what it is.

Facebook brags about connecting us to our family and friends — but it also about directly influencing the outcomes of elections across the globe.

It sits on top of industries including journalism, where it, together with Google, essentially controls the distribution channels for online news and, in effect, the way people discover information about politics, government and society.

They ( Google, Facebook, Twitter,etc) have figured out how to take advantage of this dynamic to distribute false information about political candidates and hot-button political issues in order to drive up traffic and advertising revenue.

Protecting our community is more important than maximizing their profits.

They are given protections that no one can sue them for any reason — that is Google and Facebook nither are responsible for the fake news that appears on their sites.

They are completely shielded from any responsibility for the content that appears on their service.

Changes to legal protection (which has been interpreted by judges to provide a safe harbour for online platforms even when they pay to distribute others’ content and decline the option to impose editorial oversight) would likely be devastating to online platforms like Google and Facebook and would transform the way people interact across the entire internet.

However, with legal protection, sites like these could be held responsible for libellous comments posted by readers, Google could lose lawsuits over potentially false or defamatory information surfacing in search results, and Facebook could be sued for any potentially libellous comment made by anyone on its platform against any other person.

The legal bills to defend against libel and defamation claims would be enormous.

We all need protection and the ability to request platforms to provide us with control over online information by making it accessible and removable at an individual’s request.

The government, on the other hand, has a regulatory intent to protect citizens from content that is obscene or violent.

Should Facebook and their like be regulated?

A question that is never going to end. 

However, until we recognize that there is no fool-proof safeguard to keep horrific content away from the eyes of children we rely on huge fines to the detriment of us all. 

Till then with all internet platforms deflecting criticism, social media will be more psychologically damaging than anyone expected. 

We need a radical shift in the balance of power between the platforms and the people.

It is beyond comprehension that we tolerate the present position.

Or is it? When you see the below.   

Would you ever be prepared to use a nuclear weapon?

This question is increasingly put to politicians as some kind of virility test.

The subtext is that to be a credible political leader, you must be willing to use an indiscriminate weapon of mass destruction.

We should be baulking at the casual way in which political discourse on this topic has developed which is politically unacceptable and morally despicable. 

If a mainstream politician unblinkingly said that they would use chemical weapons against civilians there would be uproar. If a self-proclaimed candidate for prime minister boasted that they would commit war crimes, it would be a national scandal. Nuclear weapons should be seen no differently. 

It’s time that nuclear advocates spelt out the reality of what their position means.

The human race is so good at speaking, it’s lost the art of listening.

It might be easy to brush away the febrile atmosphere online as a nasty byproduct of free expression: I don’t want Facebook having everyone’s verified identities. I do want their platform and other platforms to be held responsible legally for content that is false, racest, hateful, rightwing fascist propaganda.  

I do know that if the big platforms, as they already do in part, forced some verifiable information to back up use, we could tame this wild west with legal requirements

I’ll give up on the consensus-building when I can open a platform knowing who to hold legally responsible.  


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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WILL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SEE THE END OF DETERMINING MEANING.

23 Saturday Nov 2019

Posted by in Algorithms.

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(Five-minute read)

We all know that new data-driven technology is transforming our society.

Our digital society is creating new and profound challenges and carry significant ethical risks to us all.

To be human means that you are persuadable in every single moment.

If you need any evidence of this you don’t have to look any further than the current impeachment hearing in the USA and England with its general election.

The troubling influence algorithms have on how we make decisions are now treating the foundations of our Societies.

Algorithms are now usually a component in a broader decision- making process involving human decision-makers. Far from being neutral and all-knowing decision tools, complex algorithms are shaped by humans, who are, for all intents and purposes, imperfect.

Determining the meaning of sensory input is one of the most constantly ongoing, and important, functions of any brain. By refining our awareness, we transform existence into beauty, thinking into philosophy.How Artificial Intelligence Will Revolutionize Our Lives

Our increasing reliance on artificial intelligence is destroying the meaning of life.

Few of us understand them or the implications they are having or will have. .

They are taking the creativity away from the decision-making process for instance.

They could turn us humans into mush-minded creatures who can’t be bothered to make our own choices.

What if the new algorithm rated my friend and another woman as a 90% match, would that mean he would simply trust the algorithm and go straight for a proposal of marriage?

Important parts of our lives are being run by AI without sufficient scrutiny.

Self-learning systems are not autonomous systems however they could lead to a Master Algorithm that could match Einstein’s theory of relativity in its world-transformative power.

Algorithms are changing our relationship with each other, with doctors, police, politics, work, health care.

They are at work where ever you look. When you do a web search, machine learning chooses the results you get. Interactive processing allowing the software to learn automatically from patterns. Algorithms are not only being used just to make a profit but life-changing decisions, from your Credit rating, how your will and who you will vote for.

With machine learning, you are programming a computer to learn by itself.

Amazon uses them to recommend products; Netflix uses them to recommend movies; Facebook and Twitter use them to choose which posts to show you.

Pretty much everything that happens online involves machine learning.

So are we putting to much trust in smart systems that learn from data?

The systems are only as good as the data it learns from.

Their goal is to provide software that can reason on input and explain on output by becoming classifiers and predictors.

Alexa – Google is an example. Like most machine-learning algorithms, Google not only analyses our behaviour: it shapes it. This goes round and round until one viewpoint dominates people’s thinking. It will control the information its algorithm pays attention to and the secretive nature of algorithms means people cannot scrutinise the decisions they make.

Since much of the data that is feed into AI’s is imperfect and bias the decision processes built on top of the Ai’s need to be made open to scrutiny.

Why?

Because Algorithms learn differently than us. They look at things differently.

It might enhance the speed, precision and effectiveness of human efforts but in the long run, it will replace our decision making.

They are also moving into areas where the benefits to those applying them may not be matched by the benefits to those subject to their ‘decisions’— We have to demand to know what kind of influence these algorithms have over us.

Google is an algorithm that we are all familiar with, but it is far from being the only algorithmic decision-making tool to influencing our daily lives.

What can be done to combat their growing influence?

Governments should play their part in the algorithms revolution in two ways

Governments should produce, publish, and maintain a list of where algorithms with significant impacts are being used.

The index to the internet should be a public instrument, owned and controlled by the public. It should be a public utility. It should be an index, pure and simple – not a tracking device or a mechanism of manipulation, put the control of algorithms back into the hands of the people that are affected by them.

Government oversight of such algorithms, where they are used by the
public sector, and to co-ordinate departments’ approaches to the development and
deployment of algorithms and partnerships with the private sector.

Governments should offer significant rewards for societies that can find the right combination of market-driven innovation and regulation to maximise the benefits of data-driven technology and minimise the harms.

We must subsequently make decisions that require value judgements and trade-offs between competing values.

New functions and actors, such as third party auditors, may also be required to independently verify claims made by organisations about how their algorithms operate.

Many of the most consequential algorithms currently being used in the public and private domains are complex and opaque, making it hard to attribute accountability to their actions.

Humans are often trusted to make these trade-offs without having to explicitly state how much weight they have put on different considerations. Algorithms are different. They are programmed to make trade-offs according to unambiguous rules.

The ethical questions in relation to bias in algorithmic decision-making vary depending on the context.

For example, High-frequency trading is an algorithm-fueled method of buying and selling stocks – among other things.

The fact that while the problematic implications of many algorithms have been exposed, we may have only just begun to skim the surface.

Improving transparency, however, is no easy task.

Companies with algorithmic products would lose their competitive edge if they were forced to make their algorithms public.

Transparency is not enough. In fact, because algorithms are quite complicated.

This is a simple matter.

What is required is a means of certification as to whether an algorithm is safe or fair to use.

Who knows, an algorithmic slider could, one day, form part of our daily lexicon. But, in the meantime, algorithms need to be managed; ensuring those with the power to shape our lives do so with some code of conduct.

In the end, all technology revolutions are propelled not just by discovery, but also by business and societal need. We pursue these new possibilities not because we can, but because we must.

As I have already said  “To be human means that you are pursuable in every single moment”

This morning without any action on my part through the post I am in receipt of an Amazon prime video card.

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

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WITH THE SATURATION OF THE WEB BY GREEDY ALGORITHMS ARE WE SEEING THE END OF CHOICE.

20 Wednesday Nov 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Dehumanization., Democracy., Digital Friendship., Education, Elections/ Voting, Fake News., Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Modern Day Democracy., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Post - truth politics., Reality., Robot citizenship., Social Media, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World

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(Seven-minute read) 

The degree of choice on the web can be overwhelming, but who, exactly, is making the “Choice”

Has The web has been highjacked by Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Social Media and their like?

Why?

Besause they are absorbing their users’ personal data and feeding greedy algrithms who in the end are disempowered by isolation from the wider web. 

(By clicking continue below and using our sites or applications, you agree that we and our third party advertisers can:)

Greedy algorithms can be characterized as being ‘short-sighted’, and also as ‘non-recoverable’. The choice made by a greedy algorithm may depend on choices made so far, but not on future choices or all the solutions to the subproblem.

It is important, however, to note that the greedy algorithm can be used as a selection algorithm to prioritize options within a search, or branch-and-bound algorithm. They iteratively make one greedy choice after another, reducing each given problem into a smaller one.

They can make commitments to certain choices too early which prevent them from finding the best overall solution later.

Without any accountability, they are drastically changing the ways we conduct our daily lives.

There are a few variations to the greedy algorithm:

  • Pure greedy algorithms.
  • Orthogonal greedy algorithms.
  • Relaxed greedy algorithms.
  • It’s no wonder that Berners-Lee isn’t particularly pleased with the way things have gone with his creation.

With Social networks, slowly algorithms are growing more and more powerful and their predictions growing more accurate. It won’t be long before we could see living, breathing, as the choices of a greedy algorithm.  

In other words, a greedy algorithm never reconsiders its choices. 

The web is cleaving into the haves and have-nots of news readership. Wealthy readers will pay to opt-out of advertising; less privileged readers will have to stick with news that’s ad-supported.

For example, take Google, one of the leaders in using big data and algorithms to support human decision-making. Google has developed both a hiring algorithm and a retention algorithm it analyzes candidates against this profile to make hiring decisions.

Algorithms to develop lists of “flight risks” — that is, people who are likely to leave their jobs soon. 

Amazon’s Choice” algorithm, which leverages a machine learning model to discern what products a customer most likely wants. Amazon Alexa and other voice assistants are drastically changing the ways consumers encounter products.

Customers are no longer putting themselves in front of physical products before purchasing them.

As more users are turning to voice ordering through the Amazon Alexa platform and its competitors we are losing control over our personal data. 

Hopefully, Amazon’s algorithms are capable of remaining unbiased.

(We can make whatever choice seems best at the moment and then solve the subproblems that arise later.) 

On top of all of this, we have all become blind to the damage that the internet can do to even a well-functioning democracy. Brexit/ USA.

It might be true that around the world, social media is making it easier for people to have a voice in government — to discuss issues, organize around causes, and hold leaders accountable, but these governments are winning elections by false news, echo chambers where people only see viewpoints they agree with — further driving us apart.

Social media can distort policymakers’ perception of public opinion.

If there’s one fundamental truth about social media’s impact on democracy it’s that it amplifies human intent — both good and bad.

Unprecedented numbers of people channel their political energy through this medium, it’s being used in unforeseen ways with societal repercussions that were never anticipated. 

So it is inevitable that Facebook to influence public sentiment — essentially using social media as an information weapon.

Some 87% of governments around the world have a presence on Facebook.

And they’re listening — and responding — to what they hear.

Misinformation campaigns are not amateur operations.

Increasingly the web will become profoundly useless unless we demand the Web we want from Governments and the Monomorphic platforms that dominate it today. 

We are all part of the web so what we endorse must be questioned as to the transparency as to where the information comes from in the first place.

Today the bulk of people who are or not doing this are isolated from each other by Apps.

The like button is not a public metric for the popularity of content. It is a flattener of credibility.

There is no point waking in the morning with Alexa telling you what to do, where to go and what it has bought and who to vote for.  

Even if social media could be cured of its outrage -enhancing effects it is undermining democracy.

Even though we have unprecedented access to all that was ever written and digitized we are less familiar with the accumulated wisdom of humanity becoming more and more misguided. 

The Web is now a global experiment that will test the very foundation of our global communities

There can not be self -governance for the web.

Fake news, Racism, Pornographic content and unfounded crap should be removed by not allowing anything to be posted without a traceable verified name or source.  

Are you sure you want to post this? It is your choice and your choice alone.

Perhaps its time we all franchise our data as we are entering into a continuous partnership so both parties need to be confident it’s the right fit. It’s all a choice. Just do something about it- YOU CAN, what is true technology integration? 

How we are going to learn content is one of the ways forward.

In fact, everywhere we look we are starting to be presented with more choices.

Resolve to avoid false comparisons on the web is not possible so the future of the web is all about choice but it is important to understand the paradox of choice.

Choice without education or choice with education.

you ultimately do have to choose. so be the difference that

makes the difference. 

 

Events change our perception and our perspective changes

with experience but at least let our choices about Our lives

which are constantly in flux be our choices. 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE OBSERVES WHAT TECHNOLOGY IS DOING TO THE PURSUIT OF PROFIT.

05 Tuesday Nov 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Climate Change., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Inequality, Modern day life., Our Common Values., Politics., Reality., Sovereign wealth fund, Technology, The common good., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., Wealth., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., WORLD POVERTY WHERE'S THE GLOBAL OUTRAGE

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( A twenty-minute read)

The Internet is an incredibly spectacular thing, and only now — after so many years — we are understanding its power.

In spite (and many times because of) all the social media and internet news, we tend to have a skewed view of the world around us.

But there is one thing that is certain.

It has given rise to highly profitable digital platform monopolies, ‘superstar firms’ which are able to use aggregation and analysis of data to make supernormal profits which are disappearing into the cloud.

But what’s really happening in the global economy?

These multi-conglomerations dominate not just the current digital markets but future ones in artificial intelligence and machine learning, with workforces which are relatively small proportional to value-added, putting downward pressure on labour’s share of income.

It is becoming easier and cheaper to replace human work by increasingly
capable robots and artificial intelligence, this automation will accentuate existing trends in the capital and labour shares.

Whatever the future path of the global economy, with growing automation in

the economies of the world substituting capital for labour more and more

of the wealthiest fortunes are held almost exclusively in financial assets.

                                                     —-

We’re not just entering into a period of severe distress with climate change

we are also entering a period of a new uneven distribution of capital

ownership that is now the driver of inequality.

It’s a “new, harsh reality”, ( from weapons of mass destruction, water crises, large-scale involuntary migration and severe energy price shock, extreme weather events, failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation, interstate conflict with regional consequences and major natural catastrophes) that the spending power of governments is dimensioning.

Most of us haven’t quite realized there is something extraordinary happening.

Isn’t it absurd that we, 7 billion of us living on the same planet, have grown further apart from each other? Everything is going through change and that most of us are unaware of that.

What sense does it make to turn your back on the thousands, maybe millions, of people living around you in the same city on the same planet in poverty?

You might be lead to believe that the Internet is taking down mass control and the small are no longer speechless. This might well be true when it comes to the rising failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation or if you look at the Arab Spring, Brexit, and the people’s climate revolution/ pollution.

But its not true when one looks at how and by whom the economy of the world that is driven by growth at all costs.

Why?

Because the natural resources industry is owned by sovereignty wealth funds with financial instability around the world as the net result.

But don’t panic.

With Climate change and Ai, and with all of us exchanging half-truths civilisation is in for a rough ride.

However, technological crises have yet to impact economies or securities in a systemic way.

Which panic button to press?

The only category not to feature in the above harsh realities is algorithm profit from profit technological that is spreading inequalities between individuals and families, between countries, generations and genders, as well as between people from different ethnicities and class backgrounds.

Fleckenstein – David Rosenberg’s Proposal To Print Trillions Of Dollars Is Not Helicopter Money, It’s Cold Fusion

Normally revenue, as you know, is generated by profit/taxes but most revenue sources are already accounted for in government budgeting except the supernormal profits made by in no particular order – Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Cisco Systems, Intel, to mention just a few.

It’s sometimes hard to fathom the sheer scope of profits made by the world’s most profitable companies.

1. Saudi Aramco: $304.04 M daily – Earns $1 M in 4.7 minutes
2. Apple: $163.1 M daily – Earns $1 M in  8.8 minutes
3. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China: $123.29  M daily – Earns $1M in 11.7 minutes
4. Samsung Electronics: $109.3 M daily – Earns $1 M in 13.2 minutes
5. China Construction Bank: $105.48 M daily – Earns $1 M in 13.7 minutes
6. JPMorgan Chase & Co.: $88.97 M daily – Earns $1 M in 16.2 minutes
7. Alphabet: $84.21 M daily – Earns $1 M in 17.1 minutes
8. Agricultural Bank of China: $83.99 M daily – Earns $1 M in 17.1 minutes
9. Bank of America Corp.: $77.12 M daily – Earns $1 M in 18.7 minutes
10. Bank of China: $74.59 M daily – Earns $1 M in 19.3 minutes

and these are not Sovereign Wealth Funds.

They exist somewhere between the murky grey of return-maximizing, mega-cap asset managers, and clandestine government agencies quietly used to further sovereign agendas.

It is estimated that SWFs combined to hold more than $7.4 trillion in AUM, (Assets under management) representing approximately 6% of global assets under institutional management.

And you wonder with government print trillions to stimulate sagging economies why the world is and still is in a state of meltdown not just climate-wise but capitalistic wise.

We now have both the EU and the UK floating the idea of establishing Citizens wealth funds.

The trouble is that existing wealth funds have already bought up most of the world. Latecomers like THE UK/EU will have nothing to invest in other than technologies that produce profits.

The character of a sovereign wealth fund depends on its purpose and is shaped by how it is capitalised and governed, how it invests its funds and how returns are spent.

A Sovereign Wealth Fund is a state-owned investment vehicle established to channel balance of payments surpluses, official foreign currency operations, proceeds of privatizations, government transfer payments, fiscal surpluses, and/or receipts from resource exports, into global investments on behalf of sovereigns and in the advance of goals that are not transparent.

Economic theory wise, it is important to understand that SWFs form part of their respective country’s total national capital base, where total national capital is defined as the total combination of net financial assets, total physical capital stock (e.g., real estate, machines, infrastructure), unexploited environment, human capital, and unexploited natural resources.

Commodity SWFs are financed from the proceeds of non-renewable commodity exports (oil, gas, precious metals), which grow the AUM base in times of high prices but destabilize their source economies and budgets in times of low. Non-commodity funds, on the other hand, are typically financed from currency reserves or current account surpluses, driven by corporate or household saving rates.

They were once the mainstays of the global investment landscape.

Despite is name the era of neoliberalism was far from liberal.

We are now experiencing the political consequences of this great deception with the rise of popularism.

This blog has been suggesting for some time the setting up of a perpetual funded World Aid fund by applying a 0.05% commission on all profit for profit sake seeking financial activities. ( See previous posts)

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: ARE PROFIT SEEKING ALGORITHMS BUILDING A DIGITAL POORHOUSE, AUTOMATING INEQUALITY WHILE HURTING THE MOST VULNERABLE.

03 Sunday Nov 2019

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Humanity., Inequality, Modern day life., Our Common Values., Poverty, Reality., Technology, The common good., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Twenty-minute read)

Should we worry about the rise of artificial intelligence or celebrate it?

Both is the answer.

We all inhabit this new regime of digital data but we don’t all inhabit it in the same way and the pursuit of rapid growth by way of technology won’t solve the huge challenges we face.

A more honest, humane approach is the answer.

If you believe the hype, technology is going to help us end global poverty, that’s easier said than done in a world where most product innovations are geared toward the rich.

The prospect of billions rising up from poverty with nothing more than gadgets is indeed a fanciful notion. This is because poverty is entirely a man-made creation. Capitalism is driven by greed, generating a power structure, which moves wealth disproportionately into the hands of the few.

But why are our societies becoming increasingly unequal, and what can we (or should we) do about it?A homeless man outside Victoria Station in London.

Forget where science ends and ideology begins it is the mechanisms behind the persistence of poverty that counts.

Technology cannot solve the problem of economic disparity.

We often believe that our digital decision-making tools, like algorithms or artificial intelligence or integrated databases, are more objective and more neutral than human beings.

Totally false.

We are building not just ill-conceived mathematical models now micromanage the economy, from advertising to prisons but also hiding the profit of multinational companies in the cloud.

We are building:  A DIGITAL POOR HOUSE.

Even though we live in a hyperconnected world we are watching inequality exploding as we walk past people on the street looking at our smartphones.

The spreading of these kinds of systems is now way beyond just the public service systems that they’re in now. For example, high-frequency trading algorithms that run 99.9% of the world stock exchanges are plundering not just finite resources they are jeopardising our peaceful existence.

Feel free to ignore the weight of the evidence that is now becoming crystal-clear, so stark, that the trade-off of the growth of the economy and the survival of the planet are now intertwined. So we have to go into a mode where we are first educating the people about what’s causing this inequality and acknowledging that technology is part of that cost, and then society has to decide how to proceed.

Deep cultural and political changes are needed in order to think through these technologies in order to get to better systems.

This should apply to all technology – nanotechnology, biotech.

I also really believe we need to stop using these systems to avoid some of the most pressing moral and political dilemmas of our time, which is not just poverty but racism.

Unfortunately, we have Profit-seeking Algorithms that have no moral or ethical bases.

Algorithms — a set of steps computers follow to accomplish a task — are used in our daily digital lives to do everything from making airline reservations to searching the web. They are also increasingly being used in public services, such as systems that decide which homeless person gets housing.

AI with faceless algorithms is worsening the effects and concentrating the power of the wealthy. They are likely to dramatically increase income disparity, perhaps more so than other technologies that have come about recently.

Digital innovation in the form of profit-seeking algorithms that it’s not just going to be benefitting a small fraction of the world’s population, or just a few large corporations. is reinforcing, rather than improving, inequality.

Institutions have embraced digital technologies they are outsourcing the decision to a machine to cut costs avoiding the human costs. They say, “We have this incredible overwhelming need. We don’t have enough resources, so we have to use these systems to make these incredibly difficult decisions.”

If all the resources are automated, then who actually controls the automation?

Is it every one or is it a few select people?

My great fear with these systems is we’re actually using them as a kind of empathy override, meaning that we are struggling with questions that are almost impossible for human beings to make.

We’re smuggling moral and political assumptions into them about who should share in prosperity.

There’s already an expectation that people will be forced to trade one of their human rights, like their information or their privacy, for another human right.

The economic prosperity created by AI should be shared broadly, to benefit all of humanity otherwise they will lead to an even greater disparity between the wealthy and the rest of the world.

If AI takes away people’s jobs and only leaves wealth in the hands of those people owning the robots, then that’s going to exacerbate some trends that are already happening.

People now with “predictive data” have real concerns about informed consent. About how their data is being shared, whether it’s legal and whether it’s morally right.

Why?

Because it is impossible to work out why the algorithms had gone against them, or to find a human caseworker to override the decision.

How can we change the societal mindset that currently discourages a greater sharing of wealth? Or is that even a change we should consider?

We’re using these technologies to avoid important political decisions. Exacerbating the divides between the developed and developing world, and the haves and have nots in our society.

The change will only occur when policymakers and voters understand the true scale of the problem. This is hard when we live in an era that likes to celebrate digitisation — and where the elites are usually shielded from the consequences of those algorithms.

Restoring human dignity to its central place has the potential to set off a profound rethinking of economic priorities and the ways in which societies care for their members, particularly when they are in need. If enough of us want to change the status quo for good, then with our collective creativity, with our hunger to solve really hard problems, we will find technology an incredibly powerful tool in our arsenal.

Technology can move commodities (food, jobs, wealth) from areas of surplus supply to regions with under-served markets.

Technology can only help us if we chose to make the best use of it.

Computing has long been perceived to be a culture-free zone — this needs to change.

Today more people have access to a cell phone than a toilet.

I use that metaphor specifically because I think that these systems, although we talk about them often as disruptors, are really more intensifiers and amplifiers of processes that have been with us for a long time, at least since the 1800s.

At a time of unprecedented global challenges platforms like Google Facebook, Twitter and there like must be made to use the power of their platforms to stop the DIGITAL POOR HOUSE instead of hoarding profits with profit-seeking algorithms.

If not because bias has been a historical norm, it because us the users of your platform will develop self-defence.

So, next time if you think AI is not affecting you, take out your smartphone.

If Twitter’s not your choice of poison, maybe it’s Facebook or Instagram, or Snapchat or any of the myriad of social media apps out there they are all affecting your decisions and our lifestyles every day.

They are all tailored according to what we are likely to respond to. specifically designed to attract the attention of its members – and so inevitably to confirm them in their opinions and prejudices,  with several extra bills to pay in order to remain a normal citizen. 

Its a ‘mean’ not the ultimate solution.

AI has become so successful in determining our interests and serving us ads that the global digital ad industry has crossed trillions.

artificial intelligence concept Stock Photo - 90948450

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