I realize that restricting technology might be an unrealistic demand to impose on the up and coming generation but Smartphones are killing the planet faster than anyone expected.
Electronic waste is a huge problem around the globe.
The worst-case scenario is that electronic trash winds up in unregulated or mismanaged heaps, slowly leaking corrosive chemicals into the soil and water table.
All phones require 16 of the 17 rare-earth metals.
This is more than just an amusing detail about the device that never leaves your side.
Suddenly your smartphone is looking a lot more valuable than you might think. Pocket-sized vaults of precious metals and rare earths.
A typical iPhone is estimated to house around 0.034g of gold, 0.34g of silver, 0.015g of palladium and less than one-thousandth of a gram of platinum. It also contains the less valuable but still significant aluminium (25g) and copper (around 15g).
One tonne of iPhones would deliver 300 times more gold than a tonne of gold ore and 6.5 times more silver than a tonne of silver ore.
One million mobile phones could deliver nearly 16 tonnes of copper, 350kg of silver, 34kg of gold and 15kg of palladium.
And that’s just the start.
Smartphones also contain a range of rare earth elements – elements that are actually plentiful in the Earth’s crust but extremely difficult to mine and extract economically – including yttrium, lanthanum, terbium, neodymium, gadolinium and praseodymium.
Despite the recycling programs run by Apple and others, currently less than 1% of smartphones are being recycled.
With an estimated of 3.6 billion using smartphones tech’s carbon footprint is beyond what any one designer, one company, or even one government regulator can contain. Those 3.6 billion smartphone users upgrade to a new phone roughly every 11 months.
That’s because every Google search, every Facebook refresh, and every dumb Tweet we post requires a computer somewhere to calculate it all in the cloud.
Smartphone consumes as much energy as using an existing phone for an entire decade. That means buying one new phone takes as much energy as recharging and operating a smartphone for an entire decade.
But that is not the main problem. It is the building a new smartphone–and specifically, mining the rare materials inside them–represents 85% to 95% of the device’s total CO2 emissions for two years.
Even as the world shifts away from giant tower PCs toward tiny, energy-sipping phones, the overall environmental impact of technology is only getting worse. They’re more or less disposable.
Whereas ICT represented 1% of the carbon footprint in 2007, it’s already about tripled, and is on its way to exceed 14% by 2040.
That’s half as large as the carbon impact of the entire transportation industry.
The list of ICT components is exhaustive, and it continues to grow. ICT’s importance to economic development and business growth has been so monumental, in fact, that it’s credited with ushering in what many have labelled the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The overall largest culprit with regards to CO2 emissions belongs to servers and data centres themselves, which will represent 45% of ICT emissions by 2020. Although there is no single, universal definition of ICT, the term is generally accepted to mean all devices, networking components, applications and systems that combined allow people and organizations (i.e., businesses, non-profit agencies, governments and criminal enterprises) to interact in the digital world.
Mobile apps actually reinforce our need for these 24/7 servers in a self-perpetuating energy-hogging cycle. More phones require more servers. And with all this wireless information in the cloud, of course we’re going to buy more phones capable of running even better apps.
The future will only get more dire if the internet of things takes off and many more devices are hitting up the cloud for data.
Wearable devices, to home appliances, and even cars, trucks and airplanes. If this trend continues . . . one can only wonder on the additional load these devices will have on the networking and data centre infrastructures, in addition to the incremental energy consumption incurred by their production.
The average teen spends about two and a half hours a day on electronic devices.
What can be done?
Recognising that changing consumer behaviour is probably the least viable option, we need to come up with something better.
Governments should pass a law that requires all companies manufacturing these deceives to make a cash refund payment to encourage the return of the devices for recycling. which could make it the ultimate cottage industry,
The internet is omniscient, our phones omnipotent, and together they demand and are destroying our values however there is life beyond the phone, but experiencing its richness requires mindfulness and discipline.
All human comments appreciate. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Human brains are the product of blind and unguided evolution, therefore one day hit a hard limit – and may already have done so.
So a population of human brains is much smarter than any individual brain in isolation.
But does this argument really hold up?
Can our puny brains really answer all conceivable questions and understand all problems?
What made our species unique, is that we were capable of culture, in particular cumulative cultural knowledge. With the arrival of Artificial Intelligence this applies as we now have Apps that select what we hear, see and believe to be true.
Considering that human brains did not evolve to discover their own origins either, and yet somehow we managed to do just that. Perhaps the pessimists are missing something.
It is right that our brains are simply not equipped to solve certain problems, there is no point in even trying, as they will continue to baffle and bewilder us. Assuming we could even agree on a definition of “truth,” the list of reasons we can’t or don’t wish to know the truth would be quite long and well beyond the scope of this blog post.
We all know that we are destroying the planet we all live on. One of the reasons that we have difficulties with perceiving this truth, is with seeing reality, has to do with the purpose of truth.
The purpose of truth is rooted in the purpose of life itself. Truth isn’t desirous for its own sake, it serves a higher master than AI.
Our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life and death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness.
Our ancestors needed to be able to discriminate friend from foe, healthy from unhealthy, and safe from dangerous (e.g., “It is good to eat this and bad to eat that.”).
Within an evolutionary framework, ignorance of what is true or real could be dangerous or deadly.
In order to survive, it was critical for our ancestors to learn to make predictions based on available information. It motivates them to move from a state of not knowing to knowing.
Thus, our ancestors didn’t need to see the world for what it reallywas. They just needed to know enough to help them survive. For example, the world looks flat. It looks like the sun rises in the sky and is a relatively small object. Our eyes (or our brains) deceive us though. The Earth, as well as other planets, are roughly spherical in shape. A million Earths could fit inside the Sun, and it is 93,000,000 miles away from us.
If our ancestors had no need to understand the wider cosmos in order to spread their genes, why would natural selection have given us the brainpower to do so?
At some point, human inquiry will suddenly slam into a metaphorical brick wall, after which we will be forever condemned to stare in blank incomprehension.
We will never find the true scientific theory of some aspect of reality, or alternatively, that we may well find this theory but will never truly comprehend it?
No one has a clue what this means.
To day, why is it that some cannot accept the Truth?
Truth is something we have to face now or after some time..
I think its mostly because of the fear of having to accept it, face it and deal with it, even though it may contradict what one might already believe.
A person’s belief system is built on a foundation. If the facts are outside of the foundation and cannot be supported by it, the person may not believe it, or remain very sceptical about it.
Lets take a few examples.
The past:
The Holocaust:
While no master list of those who perished in the Holocaust exists anywhere in the world. The shelves of the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem contain four million pages of testimony in which survivors and families have contributed information, but for those who were never known, there can be no record.
Towards the end of the war thousands of Hungarians Jews could have being saved if the the railways were bomb.
They were not because the reports of what was happing were not believed.
The Future.
An Asteroid or Meteorite heading towards earth. Most of us would have no comprehension of such an event and would probably not believe it to be true.
The present:
This talk about man-made climate change.
People have been predicting catastrophic events for the last hundred years or so. None of them have happened, so people have a hard time believing new predictions.
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Today, fewer and fewer people understand what is going on at the cutting edge of theoretical physics – even physicists.
The unification of quantum mechanics and relativity theory will undoubtedly be exceptionally daunting, or else scientists would have nailed it long ago already.
The same is true for our understanding of how the human brain gives rise to consciousness, meaning and intentionality.
But is there any good reason to suppose that these problems will forever remain out of reach? Or that our sense of bafflement when thinking of them will never diminish?
Who knows what other mind-extending devices we will hit upon to overcome our biological limitations? Biology is not destiny.
As soon as you frame a question that you claim we will never be able to answer, you set in motion the very process that might well prove you wrong: you raise a topic of investigation.
With all the data that is at our disposal theses days, Truth is analysed by Algorithms and self learning software programs.
The data-driven revolution is prefaced upon the idea that data and algorithms can lead us away from biased human judgement towards pristine mathematical perfection that captures the world as it is rather than the world biased humans would like.
Truths that do not always align with our values. “Truth” told by data with the preordained outcome they desire.
Algorithms And Data Construct ‘Truth,’ Not Discover It.
There is no such thing as perfect data or perfect algorithms.
All datasets and the tools used to examine them represent trade-offs. Each dataset represents a constructed reality of the phenomena it is intended to measure. In turn, the algorithms used to analyse it construct yet more realities.
In short, a data scientist can arrive at any desired conclusion simply by selecting the dataset, algorithm, filters and settings to match.
It is more imperative than ever, that society recognizes that data does not equate to truth.
The same dataset fed into the same algorithm can yield polar opposite results depending on the data filters and algorithmic settings chosen.
But the important thing to note about these unknown unknowns is that nothing can be said about them.
The basic premise of the data-driven revolution in bringing quantitative certainty to decision-making is a false narrative.
To presume from the outset that some unknown unknowns will always remain unknown, is not modesty – it’s arrogance.
There’s always a human strategy behind using algorithms.
The exact details of how they works are often incomprehensible. Is this what we really want?
I think we need more transparency about how algorithms work, and how owns and operated them.
The problem with this is that demanding full transparency will have an adverse effect on the self-learning capacity of the algorithm. This is something that needs to be weighed up very carefully indeed.
There are certainly causes for concern but the need for regulations as profit seeking algorithms are plundering what is left of our values.
If not regulated, I think that we’ll also see lots more legal constructions determining what we can and cannot do with algorithms.
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Algorithms are aimed at optimizing everything.
They can save lives, make things easier and conquer chaos.
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. Every time someone sorts a column in a spreadsheet, algorithms are at play, and most financial transactions today are 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.
They are mostly invisible aids, augmenting human lives in increasingly incredible ways. However, sometimes the application of algorithms created with good intentions leads to unintended consequences.
We have already turned our world over to machine learning and algorithms.
Algorithms will continue to spread everywhere becoming the new arbiters of human decision-making.
The question now is, how to better understand and manage what we have done?
The main negative changes come down to a simple but now quite difficult question:
How are we thinking and what does it mean to think through algorithms to mediate our world?
How can we see, and fully understand the implications of, the algorithms programmed into everyday actions and decisions?
The rub is this: Whose intelligence is it, anyway?
By expanding collection and analysis of data and the resulting application of this information, a layer of intelligence or thinking manipulation is added to processes and objects that previously did not have that layer.
So prediction possibilities follow us around like a pet.
The result: As information tools and predictive dynamics are more widely adopted, our lives will be increasingly affected by their inherent conclusions and the narratives they spawn.
Our algorithms are now redefining what we think, how we think and what we know. We need to ask them to think about their thinking – to look out for pitfalls and inherent biases before those are baked in and harder to remove.
Advances in algorithms are allowing technology corporations and governments to gather, store, sort and analyse massive data sets.
This is creating a flawed, logic-driven society and that as the process evolves – that is, as algorithms begin to write the algorithms – humans may get left out of the loop, letting “the robots decide.”
Dehumanization has now spread to our, our economic systems, our health care and social services.
We simply can’t capture every data element that represents the vastness of a person and that person’s needs, wants, hopes, desires.
Who is collecting what data points?
Do the human beings the data points reflect even know or did they just agree to the terms of service because they had no real choice?
Who is making money from the data?
How is anyone to know how his/her data is being massaged and for what purposes to justify what ends?
There is no transparency, and oversight is a farce. It’s all hidden from view.
I will always remain convinced the data will be used to enrich and/or protect others and not the individual. It’s the basic nature of the economic system in which we live.
It will take us some time to develop the wisdom and the ethics to understand and direct this power. In the meantime, we honestly don’t know how well or safely it is being applied.
The first and most important step is to develop better social awareness of who, how, and where it is being applied.”
If we use machine learning models rigorously, they will make things better; if we use them to paper over injustice with the veneer of machine empiricism, it will be worse.
The danger in increased reliance on algorithms is that is that the decision-making process becomes oracular: opaque yet unarguable.
If we are to protect the TRUTH. Giving more control to the user seems highly advisable.
When you remove the humanity from a system where people are included, they become victims.
Advances in quantum computing and 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 to the point of no return.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE ASKS; WHEN ARE WE GOING TO WAKE UP TO THE POWER OF PERSONALIZE TECHNOLOGY THAT IS CREATING AN OPEN AIR (INVISABLE) PRISON – WHERE THE FUTURE IS NO LONGER THE FUTURE?
Technology is here to stay and we are supposedly on an unstoppable path towards driverless vehicles, fully automated internet-connected “smart homes”, and godlike artificial intelligence, when if fact we are on a path to the oblivion of our private lives.
As society is moving away from social interactions we take these technologies for granted and lose sight of reality.
So when are we going to wake up to the the pitfalls of personalized technologies that are targeting our lives, and what it is all ready doing, to what is left of what are supposed to be democratic societies.
It is difficult to manage the awesome power that is embedded in today’s technology however should we just sit back and let it exploited us with unregulated profit seeking algorithms and unauthorised data collection.
Its never to late to start asking questions.
We are so used to hearing that technological progress is smooth and inevitable these days, that it just seems like common sense.
However this idea may not be unrelated to the fact that the people who promote personalized technology are mainly the people with a large financial interest in the adoption of new technology -Facebook-Twitter-Google-Apple- LinkedIn – Instagram – Snapchat – Pinterest – Reddit and the rest.
Today, a plethora of personalization software tools, including AI and machine learning algorithms that are destroying individualism.
Just as our past futures need not be dead to us, our present future, with our reliance on devices, are becoming habitual, and if not already could be compulsory.
There’s is no app for that.
On a social level, the two dimensional world of the flat screen does not support the development of communication.
It’s just sad that people really don’t even have to use their brains anymore. If you don’t use it, you lose it.
It is estimated that as much as 93% of communication is non-verbal, leaving only 7% to the words themselves.
( Not much less alarming, and far closer, is the moment when “deep fakes” – computer-generated pictures and video – become indistinguishable from the real thing.) People who buy into this garbage is being taken for such a ride every month.
The vast majority of people were simply never given the choice to accept the trade-off between personalized technology for profit or technology for the common good. For example tracking due the Covid Pandemic against tracking for profits.
Not convinced?
It is now increasingly clear that many, if we had understood what was at risk, would have never agreed to tracking Apps.
For example, back in 2018, Amazon filed a patent that would allow its Echo device to detect when someone is ill from the change in their voice, nasal tones, and stuffed nose. When synced with Amazon’s website personalization engine, this is invaluable information to make personalized recommendations for cold medicine, recipes, etc.It allow them to achieve 1:1 personalization like never before.
Mobile devices themselves are truly turning people into mindless zombies and simpletons with personalized technology turning into the enemy. Yet most people are too blind to see it. 89% of businesses are investing in personalization.
I.E. Target the right person, at the right time, with the right offer. Analysing every aspect of the customer journey, companies can incorporate real-time dynamic pop-ups.
Here’s a fraction of the stats showing the power and importance of personalization:
80% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a brand that provides personalized experiences.
The idea of greater convergence and connectivity between personal electronics is correct. One only has to look at the smartphone that trigger customised adverts or programme your phone based on where you are. A company could tie itself to the Apple ecosystem, using an API to acquire data captured by each user’s Watch device into its own cloud-based system.
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As society pressures leaders for a more environmentally-friendly agenda the world of 2050 will be unimaginably different in many ways – other than climate change.
Carbon management solutions will be an integral part of emission reductions.
For that, real-time measurement, abatement, and offset integration will help ensure companies not only talk the talk but also walk the walk and transparently meet their net-zero targets. Setting a target is just the first step; the second is to understand and quantify the real emission baseline into measurable units. This can only be achieved with massive data collection. and analyzation
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The amount of information we share shared on social media networks is phenomenal.
A media company is now any company that helps pass information across the globe. Before mobile technology, you had to search through a dictionary to understand the meaning of a word. Now you can look words up in a dictionary app or quickly search the Internet. Communication has even evolved beyond mobile devices and personal computers. We can now send messages through tablets, voice assistants, smartwatches, and more. That’s right. Your fridge needs a Facebook account. It can e-mail you when your shopping time comes around with what all groceries you need to buy.
So one can see so clearly that society is not going to stop moving away from using technology as our primary communication methods, but here is a word of advice do not rely heavily on technology to live your lives, learn skills. Your life is yours to control. Because without them, you will struggle to move on as a society.
It is said that by 2050, “computational machines will have surpassed the processing power of all the living human brains on Earth.
It is said that a AI – a machine that can do everything a human can do – will arrive, they think it’s about 50/50 whether it will be before 2050.
By this time if we dont tackle climate change the cloud will have absorbed the thinking of the many dead brain on Earth.
If we assume that transcendentally brilliant artificial minds won’t be along to save or destroy us, and live according to that outlook, then what is the worst that could happen – we build a better world for nothing?
It is said that AGI will develop. If it does, every other prediction we could make is moot, and this story, and perhaps humanity as we know it, will be forgotten.
With the destruction of genuine human interaction you know, that technology will happen anyway, so I predict that we will see a lasting cooperation between the human race and the computational machines of the future.
However we are mow just beginning to see the down side to all of this technology.
Technology has changed how we entertain ourselves, meet each other, and consume all types of media.
We might be walking around with biometric healthcare data chips on your clothes, in a world in which mega scale injections of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere turn the heavens a milky-white, and a whole generation never sees a clear blue sky, in order to reflect more of the sun’s rays and pause the greenhouse effect. Artificial intelligence brains simply cannot cope with change and unpredictable events such as the climate change will create, whole cities that are abandoned and populations relocated, to avoid the worst effects we can’t prevent. We all need to work together to survive.
Society used to be able to make a long-term plan, now it is driven by data with its chaotic effect on our lives shows no sign of abating, it is at least predictably unpredictable.
We need a cultural change in values, to enable more deliberate decision-making.
Future technology is sure to transform our lives in unbelievable ways, but how among us wants to live a life based on private data collected – by the fridge – the smart TV – your clothes – your mobile devices -whether you looked left or right – how many shits you had a day- face recognition – what emotions you had at looking at an emoji- what your are eating, reading, saying- what twitters you like or don’t,- where you were, where you going – all analysed by an invisible algorithm that has no oversight, or conscious.
Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do with this information and data except hope that people come to realize it needs to be regulated.
The changes in the world over the next 30 years, wont be down to technology nor will they be online, thanks to climate change they will metalize mostly through low-cost smartphones receiving increasingly ubiquitous cellular connections as the world fights for resources that are necessary for life.
Remember when people used to sleep and dream at night?
Now all we do is zone out in front of a computer screen all night. It’s time to unplug from all this craziness and go back to nature.
Nature does not spy on itself , in order to evolve.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
There are 52 distinct human abilities, that cover a broad spectrum of perceptual, cognitive, and motor abilities.
However in this post we are not going to exam each and every one.
So rather than start from the fifty-two human abilities let’s exam how the human ability is interacting with AI and how the AI is interacting with the environment.
We defined AI in terms of sense, think, and act that correspond to the perceptual, cognitive, and motor abilities of humans.
We have two extremes, where at one end the AI is independently taking actions and making decisions; and at the other end we have a human-in-the-loop system, where the human is ultimately responsible for the decisions and actions, but is using the AI to inform his or her decisions and actions.
We have four distinct ways by which AI is being used today and has been used in the past:
As we go through these four types of intelligences — from automated to assisted to augmented to autonomous, we require progressively more scrutiny, governance, and oversight.
Why?
Because today, AI is all-pervasive but still in its infancy .It is expected to be one billion times more powerful than human intelligence.
With every passing day, AI solutions are getting more powerful. From conducting wars with drones, to the majority of the online content that we consume in our daily lives is AI -generated.
If we have a look at our surroundings, we must be convinced that it is not just the future, rather it is the present.
To days world is run on software. It has become the lifeblood of the modern economy, by destroying our ability to understand the meaning of words and written language?
The way AI is getting incorporated into our existence is more than fascinating.
OUR ELECTRONIC AGE HAS GIVEN RISE TO AN EXPLOSION IN LANGUAGE THAT IS HAVING A DIFFERENT EFFECT ON ALL OF US.
Voice assistant is one of the most powerful AI software agents people have ever worked on.
Because we are entering a world of generative language and remember that AI has little or no human oversight once it is in use.
70–80% of our thought process is influenced by our external environment or distractions so we are loosing control over our thought process.
Thanks to AI we are now showered with pictures and content selected by AI every minute of our lives.
Are emoji a step back to Egyptian Hieroglyphs?
Emoji meanings can be incredibly confusing.
Is he crying from laughter, or just crying?
They appear in advertising, in captions, and in videos, but their meaning and misinterpretations are extremely common.
Despite its similarity to words like “emotion” and “emoticon,” the word “emoji” is actually a Japanese portmanteau of two words: “e,” meaning picture, and “moji,” meaning character.
The language of emojis wont allow us to look into the past as words do with written history.
Words are enormously powerful tools that most people don’t fully appreciate like words of wisdom, healing, and life to others—words that edify richly, identify beautifully; words that multiply health and wholeness.
Language is a neurocognitive tool by which we can:
· Transmit and exchange information.
· Influence and control the behaviour of others.
· Establish and demonstrate social cohesion, and Imagine and create new ways of experiencing life.
In fact, we can’t stop ourselves from reading when we see what looks like a word.
We understand others best when we can identify the purpose that frames the words. AI on the other hand has no idea what a word imparts. It cannot “read” other people by the words they use and the way they use them.
We are becoming non attuned to the nuances of words.
To give this some perspective Shakespeare had around a hundred thousand words to chose from.
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Neuroplasticity is probably the most powerful attribute we have.
We hold the future of all species in our very hands, including our own, but it is our DNA and environment that control us with
the power of words fundamental to life—and they can be instrumental in causing things to die.
We all have heard that a picture is world a thousand words but this seems not to be true when it comes to climate change.
Compassion:
With it and the above attribute we can achieve great good in the world, if we choose to do so.
Creativity:
To be creative, you need to be able to look at things in a new way or with different and new perspectives.
Allows for amazing human social and natural progress when combined with the other two above.
Greed /Money:
It is often said that money is the root of all evil but greed is an inner condition. By contrast, the virtue of generosity is most present not only when we share, but enjoy doing so. Any decision to take from others or to enrich yourself at the expense of others is an example of greed.
A deeper understanding of greed can help us to see that it is not only material goods that we desire money for, but also the security and independence that wealth can bring.
Where are we, what should change, and how?
We can start with a simple thought exercise.
You exist on Earth and, therefore, are in some location, right? So, from where you live, what do you see beyond Earth?
Get off the Smartphone. Dump emoji’s that communicate illiteracy.
Read to increase the understanding of imagination, the meaning of words, how they are used, when to use them.
Education, Education and more education to enhance creativity.
Money is only an instrumental good. that is, it is only good for the sake of something else, namely, what we can get with it.
Our combined inability to recognize this is down to the fact that we have created a Capitalist World on the foundations of greed, a culture of I am all Right Jack. We’re being fleeced. It is disgusting, and everyone should be outraged that we are unwilling to share wealth to save our world.
comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
They are either the savior of the world or the annihilator.
It would not be an exaggeration to say the world would not be able to continue without the Chip that drives technology.
They are around us everywhere. Our phones, of course, our laptops, our iPads – all of those things we’re now surrounded by this technology.
More than likely.
THEY WILL END UP BEING IMPLANTED IN OUR BODIES IF WE ARE TO STAY OR EVER LEAVE THIS PLANET.
THEY ARE NOT ONLY SHAPING THE PLANET BUT OUR EXPLORATION OF THE UNIVERSE (WITH THE JAMES WEBB TELESCOPE RECENTLY SENDING THE DEEPEST PENETRATION PICTURE OF SPACE.)
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Despite being a piece of real estate no larger than a fingernail, the modern microchip is home to billions of transistors, miles of metallic interconnects, and layers of structures stacked on top of each other like skyscrapers.
Overall, a microchip is a structure that stands in abject defiance of the second law of thermodynamics: It creates a region of extreme order from a whole lot of chaos, and that does require a lot of energy.
One or more microchips run every one of the 40 billion connected devices currently in use—a figure that’s expected to jump to 350 billion by 2030.
Every time we make a Zoom call, between our personal devices, routers, data centers, satellites, and peripheral devices, at least a quintillion microchips were called to work.
Unfortunately, these chips consume an immense amount of resources and generate truckloads of waste.
The microchip is essentially made from sand—albeit sand that has been melted, purified, and refined until it is over 99.9999 percent pure silicon.
The arduous task of turning these disc-shaped, purple-colored wafers into microchips and memory devices falls on the fabs,(a fab or fabs is a term commonly used to describe a fabrication plant responsible for making semiconductor devices) which are high-tech facilities scattered across the world, with the majority in Southeast Asia.
A “fab” that processes 50,000 wafers—the silicon platform on which chips are built—per month consumes over 1 TWh of electricity a year.
That’s as much power as is required by a city of 100,000 residents.
Moreover, a rough estimate pegs the water consumption of a fab at over 19 million liters per day. That’s the amount of water consumed by a city of 60,000—for a whole year! In addition, these facilities utilize tons of chemicals, most of them expensive and toxic, and generate tons of waste, which include greenhouse gases like SF6, CF4, NF3, and C4F8.
There are over 1,000 semiconductor fabs operating globally today.
They make $450 billion worth of microchips a year and generate 50 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.
This complex semiconductor fabrication process is nestled at the heart of an elaborate web of international assembly lines. The company that makes the wafers and the fabs that create the microchips can be located in different parts of the globe. The assembly of the actual device likely takes place in a different company at a third location, and the end user could be anywhere in the world.
This means that the company whose name is on the final product might have very little control over the conditions and practices of the fabs.
Further, different parts of the semiconductor lifecycle are regulated by different environmental legislation, making not just the implementation of sustainability efforts, but also the tracking of their environmental footprints, complicated.
Given the size of the microchip, these numbers seem extraordinary.
However, this could very well be the price that we pay for the complexity of a chip, and the comfort it brings into our lives.
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Advances in the technology sector have seen revolutionary gadgets surfacing because of this little mysterious device.
Microchip technology has modified existing patterns of human activities such in personal, social, political, and economic spheres.
Microchips are clearly being utilized for several other purposes.
In military applications, the microchips were used to build the Minuteman II missile in the 1960s. To add to that, a Z-40 semi-automatic pistol with a microchip embedded in its grip was released to avoid the use of the pistol by any unauthorized user.
In Industrial applications, scientists have employed the use of a microchip-based technology to detect the type and the progression of cancer in patients. Because of this technology, patients can now be informed of their prognosis within a few hours.
Chip improvements have led to increased computing power and incredible memory function.
Microchips have enabled applications like on-device artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual augmented reality to come to life.
Gains in data transfer such as 5G connectivity have been enhanced by the microchip technology.
Microchip technology has made huge advances in technology.
Objects and devices such as communication devices, vehicles, personal entertainment devices, GPS tracking devices, weapons, identification cards, micro-ovens, supercomputers, and many other applications use microchipMicrochips’ distinctive mode of collecting data and transmitting data to its exact destination has made information easier to handle.
The epic and revolutionary manufacturing techniques of microchips have created a storm of microchip-embedded devices that affect our daily lives, both positively and inevitably negatively
Regardless of the industry, modern electronics use thousands, millions, or even billions of semiconductors on a single chip.
As a result, today as consumers demand more electronics, one of the most important components of any circuitry has become something of a scarcity. is that there is a massive shortage.
This has happened over the past year, largely due to a significant shortage of the most basic building block of technology:
Semiconductors.
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It is likely that microchip manufacturing will continue to be a major consumer of electricity, water, and chemicals.
So in shaping our world we could ensure that the energy is supplied by renewables, that the water is recycled, and the chemicals are processed without damage to the environment. In other words, we must be relentless in our efforts to make microchips more sustainable. And we should never forget that the comforts of modern life gifted by these wonder chips come at the expense of a vast amount of resources.
Microchips act as a key unit for programming the conversion of the car industry to electric cars, which is increasingly dependent on electronics, the lithography industry, the smartphone industry, and the internet to name just a few of the trillion applications over the past several decades.
The microchip industry filled by the need for big science is growing exponentially year on year.
The problem is embedding them in objects is one thing, deciding in which devices to embed them and what systems to build around them is another matter altogether.
Laws governing their application are literally in human hands for now but not much longer.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
AS YOU KNOW IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO EXPERIENCE EVERYTHING LIFE HAS TO OFFER. EVEN IF IT WAS POSSIBLE THERE ARE MANY EXPERIENCES WE WOULD WISH TO AVOID AT ALL COSTS.
SUCH AS THE LATEST MASS KILLINGS IN TEXAS, THE CURRENT WARS, POVERTY, BEING BURIED ALIVE, RAPED, JAILED FOR LIFE, CANCER, AND GOING BLIND NOT TO MENTION A SELECTION OF DISEASES.
The list is endless, but there is another aspect of the matter.
Every genuine experience has an active side that changes to some degree the objective conditions under which experiences are had and I believe that experiences are the basis upon which society progresses.
Experience does not go on simply inside a person they influence the formation of attitudes of desire and purpose, but they do not define a society as either developed or civilized.
However, it is experience alone that guides decisive action through hands-on. They teach you how to apply learnings to produce favorable outcomes regardless of any concepts you might have learned.
In a world that values differentiation more than anything else, experience lets you craft your own story while the rest of the people stick to an old and obsolete script.
Experience gives you access to a huge network of people who have been there and done that but the most valuable contribution of experience comes from the self-awareness it gives you.
Experience vs education is a constant battle.
A mixture of experience and education is the best. But the stats beg to differ.
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Across the globe, mobile devices dominate in terms of total minutes spent online. As a result influence, Social media. It is now being used in ways that shape politics, business, world culture, education, careers, innovation, and more to rewire human society.
Because social networks feed off interactions among people, they become more powerful as they grow. Enabled people of all ages to just google things, not actually try to remember or memorize information.
The phones have become our masters. It was intended to make our lives easier in terms of communication, now it has become an extension of our hands.
Unregulated Social media is promoting social ills.
LIVING IN SYSTEMS THAT ARE PREVENTING US FROM BECOMING WHO WE TRULY ARE. WE ARE LOSING OUR INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE CULTURE LIVING IN A WORLD WHERE EXPERIENCING REAL LIFE IS BECOMING VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE.
As a result, the real problems of the world are being ignored.
Increased visibility of issues has shifted the balance of power from the hands of a few to the masses but this awareness is not translating into real change because people are given options that absolve them from the responsibility to act. Injustice is one of the biggest issues in today’s society, there are many consequences.
Technology is anything that makes life simpler but the cellphone as a branch of technology is destroying us.
We need to think much deeper and critically to be certain that we have the authority over our own lives. When you’re not in a room with someone, it can be hard to express your personality and how you could fit into a new environment.
Let’s start with a few quotes.
“Without sensibility, no object would be given to us, and without understanding, none would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind”.
“Experience arises together with theoretical assumptions, not before them, and an experience without theory is just as incomprehensible as is (allegedly) a theory without experience.” Paul Karl Feyerabend, Against Method pg 151. Against Method (1975)
“Experience by itself teaches nothing…Without theory, experience has no meaning. Without theory, one has no questions to ask. Hence without theory, there is no learning.” W. Edwards Deming, The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education (1993)
Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes. Oscar Wild
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There is so much more to life than what you experience right now.
Here are a few reasons why you should value experience over education.
Experiencing’ attaches itself to nothing while at the same time being everything.
Experiencing’ does not get concerned about not remembering. ‘Experiencing’ has no need to remember.
Experiencing’ holds nothing yet is aware deeply of everything.
When we realize there is nothing to capture we relax in the awareness of just ‘experiencing’.
Experiencing ‘experiencing’ is the Fullness. When ‘It’ Is all here where else could we go?!
Everyone has to start somewhere in a world where doing is highly valued. It’s one of the most well-known conundrums of the career world. No experience, no job. No job, no experience.
EVIDENCE THAT OUR CULTURE IS IN DECLINE.
This becomes obvious to those who are willing to actually travel the world learning about the cultures of others. They gain a more reliable picture of life as it is lived.
The most important thing that one can do to rise above the insanity of this world, is to be willing to get educated by those who have zero financial interest in their taking their stand for what they believe.
Just because you don’t have ‘direct’ experience, it doesn’t mean you don’t have anything to offer.
It’s been said that information is power. Without a means of distributing information, people cannot harness its power. Ultimately, sharing is about getting people to see and respond to content.
Birds of a feather tend to hang out in the same ponds. And the best way to prove you’re a duck is to spend as much time as possible in the right pond.
History does not lie – it is just that the masses do not know their history.
There is a line by Verlaine that I will not remember again. There is a street nearby that is off-limits to my feet. There is a mirror that has seen me for the last time. There is a door I have closed until the end of the world. Among the books in my library (I’m looking at them now) Are some I will never open. This summer I will be fifty years old. Death is using me up, relentlessly. —from Inscriptions (Montevideo, 1923) by Julio Platero Haedo
Where are?
Stormzy wore a flat jacket in (2019) at Glastonbury, and Abba appeared digitally yesterday.
What are days for? Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over. Larkin
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked into the bin.
We all know that there is an invisible world and that today it is undeniably digital.
This invisible world is becoming both powerful and dangerous leading to digitalizing without a system of oversight of the way we operate in the world, resulting in not just hidden powers but a decoupling between human rights and democracy.
On one hand, digital democracy, or eDemocracy, uses the internet, social media, and technology to improve our democratic systems of governance.
On the other with our electronic overlords, ( Smartphones, Pads, Apple watches, TV, Web Services), this world of invisibility is been driven by non-accountable, non-transparent commerce, operating profit-seeking algorithms, with self-learning data collection codes, that no one comprehends.
As our day-to-day lives are increasingly immersed in technology, it is easy to lose perspective on things that matter.
The capitalist world of profit and power is disappearing underground.
New technologies – from social media and GPS systems to artificial intelligence and digital twins – make the planet we inhabit unrecognizable from even 20 years ago and it’s only going to get faster, changing how we live.
The rise of the sharing economy, online marketplaces, and digital platforms are shattering old barriers and reducing the distances between industries, societies, and places, all of which are without adequate regulations are vanishing from scrutiny and accountability.
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While it’s true that today, leaders need to deal with unprecedented changes and an unpredictable and challenging future due to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Climate change, and the covid pandemic they need to be more agile, to deal with sudden changes and challenges that any one of these will bring.
Why?
Because the status quo as the inertia of past success can be crippling for the future.
The paradox of leadership lies in staying focused on the present, while also visualizing the future and creating a roadmap to reach it.
This is a major problem requiring Statmanship on a global scale.
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Why is all of this happening now?
What’s interesting about this question is, there’s no answer to that question.
What I think is so true about that is, with technology even nonconformists are conforming.
Why?
Because these days it’s difficult to not see how real the invisible world is affecting our lives and the systems that govern life.
Today, with the covid pandemic’s we see it is very rare that you find someone that’s not influenced by anyone else.
You don’t have to be a digital native to behave like one.
It’s the invisible world we want to connect with in order to maintain the magic in life.
Why?
Because a world without emotions will be a sterile world.
Yes, the invisible world is real.
It is the limited life of a limited mind.
Increasingly, this limited value is delivered through new cross-sector, outcome-based propositions, rather than traditional sector-specific products and services.
We have all experienced trying to get to speak to a human to solve a problem with a service – press one press two – listen to music – you inquiry- will be answered – press 3 if – till you give up.
If you can spell it you can’t enter it. A society that is dependent on technology can create inequality.
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To stopthis invisible world people must take ownership of things as the digital world is not about technology, but people.
At a time when geopolitical tensions are on the rise are at their highest level this century. And this turbulence is escalating. Even nuclear non-proliferation can no longer be taken for granted.
At the same time, we see trade and technological conflicts that fracture world markets, undermine growth and widen inequalities.
And all the while, our planet is on fire. The climate crisis rages on.
With Climate Change, we are risking a ‘great fracture’ between world powers, each with their own internet and AI strategy, as well as dominant currency, trade, and financial rules, and contradictory geopolitical and military views.
With dwindling natural resources, an unstable world climate, viruses on the rampart, not to mention the effects of pandemics on world trade, inequality, the world does not need politicians that do not think of the next election but statesmen of the next generation.
It is crucial to ensuring a united world.
Those yet to be connected remain cut off from the benefits of this new era and remain further behind. People need money to access the internet and buy the latest devices.
By 2050 there will be 9 billion people to feed, clothe, transport, employ and educate.
Maybe that’s not really bad when you think of what’s coming next. You couldn’t call it a fully digital world yet. It’s not even close.
However, there’s room to dream about building the world we want, instead of the one we’re turning into.
As we pursue unlimited growth, our limitless consumption threatens to crowd out everything else on Earth. We are warming the climate, overspending our financial resources, requiring more fresh water than we have, increasing income inequality, diminishing other species, and triggering shockwaves whenever we can’t cope with a problem. Billions are committed to a growth-driven world economy.
Our world is full of screens. We keep them in our hands, purses, and pockets, next to our beds while we sleep, and surround ourselves with screens on our desks and countertops. Our TV sets are morphing into interactive screens as we put them online so they display everything for free.
What if that networked system brought everyone the world’s best services, resources, and knowledge-based on what we do, as a normal part of everyday life?
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The top-down approach is no longer sustainable in the Economic/ Power/ or Democracy Capital Accountability. Leadership needs to be vigilant and create a long-term sustainable value proposition for all stakeholders.
The same technologies are giving rise to new business models, with organizations using digital to create and monetize new forms of value. Disruptions in the digital world occur at a phenomenal rate.
They have the power to impact the way entire industries operate reshaping entire industries with profit-seeking algorithms.
Although giving up your data was once an afterthought when gaining access to the newest internet services such as Facebook there aren’t many great options available to limit what is seen and known about you online.
YOU BECOME A DIGITAL FORM OF YOURSELF IN THE VIRTUAL WORLD OF THE INTERNET.
How do we define what a digital human is?
Worthless, a form of entertainment to have conversations with yourself without being able to show emotion and behavior as a real human.
So, is the invisible world the real world?
Hard to say, but I think it’s what makes the visible world worth living in.
When someone dies, the essence of that being merely inhabited that form – the life within the form was always invisible.
Digital leaders will have the power to shape the future of our world.
When we want to believe, there is still time to interrupt the announced disappearances of so many plant and animal species which, if we are not careful, will lead to our own end.
This situation cannot go on. It is our common duty to avoid it.
While risks intersect and technologies develop quickly, too often our institutions for governing international security remain reactive and slow-moving.
ALL HUMAN COMMENTS ARE APPRECIATED. ALL LIKE CLICKS AND ABUSE CHUCKED IN THE BIN.
Here we are at the start of another year and we are truly living in a very unique time in the history of our civilization, facing several simultaneous challenges and converging crises:
A deteriorating environment, very unequal distribution of dwindling resources, widespread poverty, wars, climate change, oppression of many peoples, and dissatisfaction with life even in those countries with a surplus of material wealth.
For the most part, these crises we humans have brought upon ourselves over the course of many centuries by our attitudes towards each other and towards nature, and by the concepts, we have developed regarding who we are and the very purpose of our being here — in other words, Our worldview.
Who are we?
Where do we come from?
What is our purpose?
Where are we going?
All of these questions are fundamental to how we individually and collectively make meaning. As such they are questions asked by all spiritual traditions and since the very beginning of our species. Even the first cave paintings suggest that as soon as we were human, we started to ask these kinds of questions.
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The only evidence you have that you exist as a self-aware being is your conscious experience of thinking about your existence.
Beyond that, you’re on your own.
You cannot access anyone else’s conscious thoughts, so you will never know if they are self-aware. Nonexistence is the absence of existence, by definition. Therefore there is no such thing as nonexistence.
To say that something does not exist thus seems to be a fallacy since NOTHING does exist.
How are you?
By far the biggest constituent of you is emptiness are atoms, and since all atoms are 99.9% empty space, technically, you’re made of nothing.
We call ourselves humans. We think we behave intelligently but we humans are animals! defined less by rationality and more by stupidity.
At the basic level, you are made of just four types of particles, which have been around for the majority of the lifetime of the Universe.
Atoms make up your body, 12 kg of bones, 33 kg of muscles, and 15 kg of fat. More than half of those cells aren’t exactly your own. They’re bacterial cells that weigh around 2 kg. Your body contains at least 60 chemical elements. For the most part, it’s oxygen and hydrogen forming H2O or water. 99% of the mass of your body is made up of just 6 elements. Of that, 65% is oxygen.
If you wanted to be more poetic, you could say you are made of stardust. All the elements you’re made of were once cooked up in the stars.
By the way, in case you wondered, the uncoiled DNA from all the cells in your body would stretch from here to Pluto and back.
What are you?
Mentally, humanity was created as a rational, volitional agent.
According to the Bible, you are a god. ( God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness” (Genesis 1:26) but God does not have a body so your physical being is nowhere near a god.
Physiologically and anatomically you are an animal struggling for survival on the basis of evolution.
Within just the past 12,000 years, your species, Homo sapiens, made the transition to producing food and changing our surroundings. We have been so successful that we have inadvertently created a turning point in the history of life on Earth.
We have altered the world in ways that benefit us greatly. But this transformation has unintended consequences for other species as well as for ourselves, creating new survival challenges, with our megacity incubators of viruses such as the flu and now Covid.
Where are we going?
Will our species go extinct?
The short answer is yes, replaced by Artificial Intelligence, but not life.
Why?
Because mankind will control life through its varied reproductive activities manipulating life, whether it be by cloning, gene splicing, genetic breeding, etc.
Life in its simplest form, a single-celled organism, has microbial intelligence and can learn and adapt behavior to its environment. However, everything starts with something already alive. Only life begets life and intelligence doesn’t come from non-intelligent sources.
Even the most simple of life forms is beyond our ability to create from non-living sources.
Life is created and is not the result of abiogenesis it controls and regulates the physical processes within each cell.
So since there is no evidence or logical consideration to believe that life is the result of a physical process, we can dismiss the concept of Artificial life as impossible. It isn’t just a gap in our understanding it is a physical impossibility.
However, there may well be life, with or without consciousness, interfacing with the physical components that support life created by an outside intelligence.
This is probably the most pressing and interesting question for the future. How much of life will be controlled by AI?
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The current Covid pandemic is being fought against by a new form of vacation that instructs our immune systems to operate in a particular way rather than the immune system reacting. A step in evolutionary development towards part AI life.
Where is this interpretation of behavior taking place?
What part of the cell decides one food-foraging pattern is preferable to another?
Where is the information stored while it’s being coded into an arrangement of molecules and atoms?
The nucleus of a living cell is often referred to as the “brain” of the cell because it controls cellular processes and functions. However, the nucleus is not capable of conscious levels of intelligence. In fact, we can’t point to any cell part and say, that’s where the intelligence has to be coming from.
Signals received by cells must be transmitted effectively into the cell to ensure an appropriate response. This step is initiated by cell-surface receptors.
How do conscious levels of intelligence now suddenly originate or emerge from unconscious atoms and molecules?
We have to bear in mind that in an evolutionary sense, nothing can influence where we wind up biologically unless it affects individual success in passing along genes. When a new behavior is written to the DNA, the information has to be assigned to an arrangement of atoms that advocate that consciousness exists at the microbial level.
If so, that creates even greater problems, and without going into all of them, the chief problem is that survival sets a pretty low bar.
The question isn’t so much whether humans survive the next three or three hundred thousand years, but whether we can do more than just survive.
The current virus pandemic highlights this problem. The virus hasn’t yet committed to any direction.
However, it is as with all viruses an evolving entity, subject to the same processes of evolution.
With the new mRNA vaccines, we have a choice to make!
Why?
Because it is inevitable that Genome editing is going to be the future.
Because now being alive is not a prerequisite for experiencing, evolution.
We either move into a new phase in the evolution of consciousness and a new era of life on the planet, or we will witness the unraveling of the web of life and the immature end of our species and much of the community of life with us.
The time to make this choice is now!
It starts with a fundamental shift in our dominant worldview.
It is time to grow up! and for us to respect all life.
What is our purpose?
This is explained in the following story.
“In a mother’s womb were two babies. One asked the other: “Do you believe in life after delivery?” The other replied, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.”
“Nonsense,” said the first. “There is no life after delivery. What kind of life would that be?”
The second said, “I don’t know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths. Maybe we will have other senses that we can’t understand now.”
The first replied, “That is absurd. Walking is impossible. And eating with our mouths? Ridiculous! The umbilical cord supplies nutrition and everything we need. But the umbilical cord is so short. Life after delivery is to be logically excluded.”
The second insisted, “Well I think there is something and maybe it’s different than it is here. Maybe we won’t need this physical cord anymore.”
The first replied, “Nonsense. And moreover, if there is life, then why has no one ever come back from there? Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery, there is nothing but darkness and silence and oblivion. It takes us nowhere.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said the second, “but certainly we will meet Mother and she will take care of us.”
The first replied “Mother? Do you actually believe in Mother? That’s laughable. If Mother exists then where is She now?”
The second said, “She is all around us. We are surrounded by her. We are of Her. It is in Her that we live. Without Her, this world would not and could not exist.”
Said the first: “Well I don’t see Her, so it is only logical that She doesn’t exist.”
To which the second replied, “Sometimes, when you’re in silence and you focus and listen, you can perceive Her presence, and you can hear Her loving voice, calling down from above.”
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When you hear the word slavery, it conjures images of shackles, mistreated people of color, forced to work.
This image was once a true, vivid picture;
However, the term slavery has broadened, and now slavery comes with many more definitions creating a new image for the vile term slavery.
THERE IS A NEW, MODERN,INVISIBLE SLAVERY THAT ENSLAVES PEOPLE AND THEY DON’T EVEN KNOW IT ! !! AND MOST OF US CHOSE THIS FORM OF SLAVERY.
This new strain is much more virulent and deadly adding hundreds of thousands of new slaves to the mix every minute of the day – Algorithms Slavery. A hidden world programming its self.
Slaves are cheap these days.
There are an estimated as high as 45.8 million people in modern slavery around the world. More than in the 18th century at the height of the transatlantic slave trade.
Simply knowing the statistic that 45.8 million individuals are enslaved in our world is not enough to put an end to the malpractice of modern-day slavery.
We all can and should play a part in the international advocacy for the freedom and rights of all, not only as fellow human beings but also as concerned community leaders and consumers in the global economy.
They’re the step-by-step instructions working quietly behind the scenes of everyday life; in internet search engines, satnavs, air traffic control, and food delivery services.
Companies and governments increasingly rely upon algorithms to make decisions that affect people’s lives and livelihoods – from loan approvals to recruiting, legal sentencing, and college admissions – from internet search results to product recommendations, dating matches, and what content goes up on our social media feeds.
Slavery today includes:
10 million children.
24.9 million people in forced labor.
15.4 million people in forced marriage.
4.8 million people in forced sexual exploitation.
Human trafficking and slavery are the fastest-growing illegal activities in the world today.
Keep the National Human Trafficking Resource Center’s 24/7 confidential hotline handy.
Saving this number in your contacts and using it whenever suspicious of having seen a victim of human trafficking is one of the easiest and most effective ways to aid law enforcement officials in uncovering exploitation, bringing traffickers to justice, and victims to freedom and restoration.
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Algorithms have been rising fast and saturating our modern world.
We should not take the path of least resistance by sitting in judgment on the past while ignoring the injustices of our day.
Most algorithms in the world today are created and managed by for-profit companies, and many businesses regard their algorithms as highly valuable forms of intellectual property that must remain in a “black box.”
Every time a site is opened we are confronted with an Agreement Templates a choice to Agree or not. Many websites prompt you to agree to their terms of use before you can register on the website or even use it.
There are two different types of website agreements: browsewrap and clickwrap.
A browsewrap agreement is connected to the main page of the product by a hyperlink. The hyperlink leads to another webpage that will have the terms and conditions of the agreement detailed.
A clickwrap agreement is designed to ensure that the user has a chance to see the terms of use and they must also actively agree to the terms in order to agree. (This one is more legally binding.)
But are not transparent as they do not reveal the source code, inputs, and outputs of the algorithm that is running the site.
Without this transparency, the question is how can they be legally binding.
Specifically, machine learning algorithms – and deep learning algorithms in particular – are usually built on just a few hundred lines of code. The algorithm’s logic is mostly learned from training data and is rarely reflected in its source code. Which is to say, some of today’s best-performing algorithms are often the most opaque.
This is the new form of slavery. Now being promoted by track and trace, with the current Coivid pandemic digital certifications that no one knows how or who will control, the data that they are now producing and in the future.
It suggests that technical transparency – must become law.
Essentially such laws would mandate that users be able to demand the data behind the algorithmic decisions made for them, including in recommendation systems, credit, and insurance risk systems, advertising programs, and social networks.
In doing so, it tackles “intentional concealment” by corporations.
But it doesn’t address the technical challenges associated with transparency in modern algorithms. Here, a movement called explainable AI (xAI) might be helpful.
However, this approach merely shifts the burden of belief from the algorithm itself to the regulators.
In the world of data analytics, it’s frequently assumed that more data is better.
But I firmly believe that the resistance to getting vaccinated is founded on this dilemma of trust.
Risk management, data itself is often a source of liability. That’s beginning to hold true for artificial intelligence as well.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
With or without technology there will always be inequalities in the world.
So why do we keep trying to solve poverty with technology?
Because this way of thinking is so ingrained that is adopted by organizations that fight poverty—which often refashion themselves to resemble technology startups.
Inequality has been growing so much that all governments and civil society speak about it with increasing worry, trying to understand its causes, but unable to find solutions, because of greed.
It is our policy on technology that drives inequality.
There is no better example of this than in the way the world is handling the current Covid pandemic unable to share the know-how to make the vaccinations.
Patents and copyrights are not guaranteed as individual rights, like the right to free speech or religion.
After all, why would a drug company pay large amounts of money to people to develop new drugs if the drugs can be copied and sold by competitors from the day they enter the market?
If it is not already obvious, patent and copyright monopolies are instruments of public policy, not acts of God.
This is why there is still not enough coronavirus vaccine to meet worldwide demand.
A year ago there was no commercial market for mRNA products.
Vaccine manufacturers long ago should have been sharing technology and expertise to boost production in the U.S. and Europe, and especially in developing countries.
The same would be true of software developers, makers of medical equipment, computer manufacturers, smartphone companies, and any other product where the cost of research and development was a substantial portion of the price of the product.
The complete elimination of patents and copyrights is of course an extreme scenario, but it is a possible policy option.
If we did choose this policy option, we would have a much more equal distribution of income, in spite of having the same technology.
In short, the fact that there was a huge increase in inequality associated with the development of technology over the last four decades was the result of policy choices, not technology.
There should be serious public debate about both how strong we want to patent and copyright protection to be and also whether they are always the best way to promote innovation and creative work, as opposed to alternatives like direct public funding.
If we acknowledge the extreme case, where we literally have no patent or copyright protection, then we have to recognize that there is nothing inherent in our technology that would cause inequality.
Few things, in principle, can’t be delivered through technology.
It is entirely our rules on technology that can cause inequality to increase.
So on one hand, technology can eradicate poverty — not by making poor people less poor, but by making it less valuable to be rich.
On the other as technology spreads, making its creators rich, but treating its users the same, we should expect more monopolies and more financial inequality.
Although it is your data you can’t pay for a better Facebook experience.
Companies are incentivized to offer a product if it makes more than it costs. And technology ends up not costing much once you’ve built it.
So, in the end, you charge people whatever they can pay and in poorer countries, people just pay and get paid less.
Times are changing from the days that growth in inequality was largely an organic process independent of government policy.
“Owning” the robot/algorithm is not a technical relationship, it is a legal one, and therefore one that depends on our laws.
The reason some people might get very rich from owning robots or algorithms is that they own patents and copyrights that are needed for the making of the robots/ algorithms.
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In the past, technological improvements would be beneficial to all:
Extreme economic inequality is corrosive to our societies.
Around 8% of the world’s population lives in extreme poverty — but do you know why?
Gender inequality, caste systems, marginalization based on race or tribal affiliations are all economic and social inequalities that mean the same thing:
You might think that poverty causes hunger (and you would be right!), but hunger is also a cause — and maintainer — of poverty. This is why now with climate change, negotiating international trade agreements behind closed doors with only bureaucrats and corporate lobbyists present has to end.
Economics should take into account ethics and the environment, and treat its claims less like invariable truths.
It goes without saying that any actions coming out of Cop 26 climate change conferences to reduce temperatures will be derailed by not just income inequality, (only the higher income household will be able to afford green energy technologies. Solar panels, electric cars, heating pumps, etc.) but by the total lack of shared responsibility to do anything about it.
Of course, there are hundreds of other elements that contribute to the problems our world is now facing.
World poverty isn’t a problem of limited resources, it is a problem of inequality and this inequality is upheld by the idea that aid creates dependence.
Climate change will drive up to 132 million more people into extreme poverty by 2030.
The pricing carbon emissions on average is at a mere $3 a tonne.
The price of inequality in all its forms is greed. There are vast fortunes to be made with Technology/ Algorithms for profit and nothing blurs ethical lines faster than greed.
So far, any decoupling has either been largely relative – in the sense of merely achieving higher rates of economic growth than gains in emissions – or achieved by shifting dirty production from one national territory to another.
And that is why, for now, global emissions are still rising.
The idea of “Just Transition” without financing is pie in the sky.
Take the aftermath of the Afghan 20-year war.
The country is now facing starvation. Why not bomb it with food.
By coming together to tackle the plague of destitution around the world, we have the opportunity to advance the human condition and eliminate global poverty in a way no one has done before.
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