Category Archives: Artificial Intelligence.

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. IS THIS THE WORLD YOU WANT TO LIVE IN NEVER MIND LIVE ON.

14 Thursday Nov 2019

Posted by in 2019., Artificial Intelligence., Humanity., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Reality., 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

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(Twenty-minute read) 

Never mind standing on the moon here are some depressing reality about your planet Earth.

We live in a world of trillions of living organisms and billions of humans and few millions of other species.

There are over 35 major conflicts going on in the world today.

There are nearly 210 million orphans in the world.

More than 500 million small arms and light weapons are in circulation around the world.

There are approximately 30,000 nuclear warheads in the world today.

Current global military spending is approximately $800 billion per year; more than the total annual income of the poorest 45% of the global population.

Genocide and other mass murders killed more people in the 20th century than all wars combined.

AND THAT JUST FOR OPENERS. 

35% of the world’s people live in countries in which basic political rights and civil liberties are denied (such as freedom of speech, religion, press, fair trials, democratic political processes, etc).

Over 100 million people live in slums.

1 billion people – 1/3rd of the world’s labour force, are unemployed or underemployed.

Cows earns more than 1.2 billion of the world’s poorest people.

An estimated 27 million people are enslaved around the world, including an estimated 20 million people held in bonded labour (forced to work in order to pay off a debt, also known as ‘debt bondage’). 

At least 700,000 people annually, and up to 2 million, mostly women and children, are victims of human trafficking worldwide (a modern form of slavery — bought, sold, transported and held against their will in slave-like conditions)..

About 246 million, or 1 out of 6, children ages 5 to 17 worldwide are involved in child labor

3 billion of the world’s people (one-half) live in ‘poverty’ (living on less than $2 per day). 1.3 billion people live in ‘absolute’ or ‘extreme poverty’ (living on less than $1 per day). Both in rich countries and poor, a staggering 30-50% of all food produced rots away uneaten.homeless

By 2025, at least 3.5 billion people or nearly 2/3rd’s of the world’s population will face water scarcity. More than 2.2 million people, mostly children, die each year from water related diseases.

The richest 1% of the world’s people earned as much income as the bottom 57% (2.7 billion people) The top 5% of the world’s people earn more income than the bottom 80%. One fourth of humanity lives without electricity.

The wealth of the world’s 7.1 million millionaires ($27 trillion) equals the total combined annual income of the entire planet.

The combined wealth of the world’s richest 300 individuals is equal to the total annual income of 45% of the world’s population. 

The world’s 3 wealthiest families have a combined wealth equal to the annual income of 600 million of the world’s people.  The wealthiest one-fifth of the world’s population receive an average income that is 75 times greater than the poorest one-fifth.

Half of the forests that originally covered 46% of the Earth’s land surface are gone.

Between 10 and 20 percent of all species will be driven to extinction in the next 20 to 50 years.

Almost a quarter of the world’s mammal species will face extinction within 30 years. Up to 47% of the world’s plant species are at risk of extinction.

60% of the world’s coral reefs, which contain up to one-fourth of all marine species, could be lost in the next 20-40 years.

Land degradation threaten nearly one-quarter of the land surface of the globe.

An estimated 40-80 million people have been forcibly evicted and displaced from their lands to make way for the construction of large dams,

Global warming is expected to increase the Earth’s temperature by 3C (5.4F) in the next 100 years.

While we witness the horrific events that are occurring within our society and world today now with a blink of an eye, our world is constantly changing, for the good, but also for the worst.

With technology, we are losing sight of what is important.

We have begun to categorize people based on how they act, what they wear, their political party, their skin color, where they live and so many other factors. 

We are always forgetting ourselves until someone wakes up to remind us of who we really are.  Humans?

The world was always beautiful. It’s only becoming lesser and lesser.

There is only this world, only this single reality, and its shared by everybody, everyday… Not created.

 Were economically and morally bankrupt.

THIS IS THE WORLD WE LIVE IN.

The world has no one society. Surely its time we started to vote with our eyes not our ears. 

All human comments appreciated

. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin. 

 

THE BEADY EYE LOOK’S AT THE IMPLICATIONS OF NON REGULATED FACIAL RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY.

11 Monday Nov 2019

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence., Facial Recognition., Technology, The cloud., 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, Where's the Global Outrage., World Politics

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(Twenty-minute read)

Advanced technology no longer stands apart from society; it is becoming deeply infused in our personal and professional lives.

Perhaps as much as any advance, facial recognition raises a critical question: what role do we want this type of technology to play in everyday society?

The issues relating to facial recognition go well beyond questions of bias themselves, raising critical questions about our fundamental freedoms.

You might not think it but we are in the midst of a facial recognition technology race.

Imagine a government tracking everywhere you walked over the past month without your permission or knowledge.

Imagine a database of everyone who attended a political rally that constitutes the very essence of free speech.

Imagine the stores of a shopping mall using facial recognition to share information with each other about each shelf that you browse and the product you buy, without asking you first.

Imagine an inability to protest your government.  What if health insurance providers can track how often you eat at Burger King.

There is no shortage of tragic scenarios when such technology becomes ingrained in our society. It has vast potential to enslave society.

There could be dire consequences for citizens around the world.

So will facial recognition become part of everyday life?

This technology is actively being tested all around the world and it will only keep improving.

Presently smartphones utilize sensors and accelerometers to track our every behaviour, understanding exactly when we wake up in the morning, where our offices are, where we shop for groceries, what our interests are and how we spend our time.

We are willingly giving up our personal information that these “free” services offer, then turn around and sell for profit, all for a split-second hit of dopamine when someone “likes” a picture we post on Facebook.

Facial recognition surveillance is powerful not only because it is highly accurate, but also because of how discreet the set up is. You don’t realize when it’s surveilling you or your family. It runs in the shadows creating no noises, you don’t’ walk through any detectors, you don’t sign anything, and you don’t press your fingertips against a pad.

It just happens.

Increasingly it will define the decade ahead.

It can’t be left to tech companies to limit the way government agencies use facial recognition and other technology. Facial recognition technology raises issues that go to the heart of fundamental human rights.

Protections like privacy and freedom of expression.

So let me ask you.

  • Should law enforcement use of facial recognition be subject to human oversight and controls, including restrictions on the use of unaided facial recognition technology as evidence of an individual’s guilt or innocence of a crime?
  • Similarly, should we ensure there are civilian oversight and accountability for the use of facial recognition as part of governmental national security technology practices?
  • What types of legal measures can prevent the use of facial recognition for racial profiling and other violations of rights while still permitting the beneficial uses of the technology?
  • Should the use of facial recognition by public authorities or others be subject to minimum performance levels on accuracy?
  • Should the law require that retailers post visible notice of their use of facial recognition technology in public spaces?
  • Should the law require that companies obtain prior consent before collecting individuals’ images for facial recognition? If so, in what situations and places should this apply? And what is the appropriate way to ask for and obtain such consent?
  • Should we ensure that individuals have the right to know what photos have been collected and stored that have been identified with their names and faces?
  • Should we create processes that afford legal rights to individuals who believe they have been misidentified by a facial recognition system?

The questions listed above – and no doubt others – will become important public policy issues around the world, requiring active engagement by governments, academics, tech companies and civil society internationally.

Issues relating to facial recognition go well beyond the borders of Countries.

Given the global nature of the technology itself, there likely will also be a growing need for interaction and even coordination between national regulators across borders.

  • The need for government leadership does not absolve technology companies of our own ethical responsibilities.
  • The future is not simple. We, therefore, need a principled approach for facial recognition technology, embodied in law, that outlasts a single administration or the important political issues of a moment.
  • As in so many times in the past, we need to ensure that new inventions serve our democratic freedoms pursuant to the rule of law. Given the global sweep of this technology, we’ll need to address these issues internationally, in no small part by working with and relying upon many other respected voices. We will all need to work together, and we look forward to doing our part.

It’s apparent that other new technologies will raise similar issues in the future.

This makes it even more important that we use this moment to get the direction right.

Public authorities may rely on flawed or biased technological approaches to decide who to track, investigate or even arrest for a crime.

Governments may monitor the exercise of political and other public activities in ways that conflict with longstanding expectations in democratic societies, chilling citizens’ willingness to turn out for political events and undermining our core freedoms of assembly and expression.

Similarly, companies may use facial recognition to make decisions without human intervention that affect our eligibility for credit, jobs or purchases.

All these scenarios raise important questions of privacy, free speech, freedom of association and even life and liberty.

If we don’t stop or regulate it now, it will be more difficult to reel in after it’s already deployed on every lamppost.

The government needs to play an important role in regulating facial recognition technology.

As a general principle, it seems more sensible to ask an elected government to regulate companies than to ask unelected companies to regulate such a government.

After all, even if one or several tech companies alter their practices, problems will remain if others do not. There will always be debates about the details, and the details matter greatly.

The surveillance data can be deeper and more extensive than any of us understand, “trade a little of your privacy and we’ll keep you safer” motto.

You could say that education is the crux to this resistance and once society recognizes the overwhelming benefits offered as a result of facial recognition we will be able to move past the mental hurdles.

But the ability to use the cloud to connect all this data and facial recognition technology with live cameras that capture images of people’s faces and seek to identify them – in more places and in real-time will lead to a gender and racial bias developing because some facial recognition technology will not like you at the moment of recognition.

Facial recognition will require the public and private sectors alike to step up – and to act as the General Data Protection Regulation in the European Union.

It seems especially important to pursue thoughtful government regulation of facial recognition technology, given its broad societal ramifications and potential for abuse.

Today’s advanced facial recognition in the 21st century comes along with deep learning.

The algorithm compares different facial features as against an image encompassed within a database. It calculates facial parameters such as mouth, nose, eyes, lips and their relative intensity.

So smile.  You might see what is under the  – A human.

We’re Being Blinded to the Danger of Facial Recognition. A perpetual lineup.

If we don’t implement legal restrictions on face recognition, the future looks

like a Chinese-style surveillance state, one that violates our right to privacy,

our right to anonymity in public, and our right to free speech.

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

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: HAS FRIENDSHIP CHANGE. WHAT IS FRIENDSHIP THESE DAYS?

08 Friday Nov 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Artificial Intelligence., Communication., Digital Friendship., Education, Emotions., Facebook, Happiness., Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Reality., Social Media, Technology, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World

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(Twenty-minute read)

The dawning of the digital age has not just changed communication, facilitating individual and group interaction in previously unimaginable ways it has fundamentally changed human relationships, or more specifically, the establishment of fraternity amongst people?

The internet has made it so you don’t need to physically see people feel close to them.

I miss those days of pre-digital friendship.

Thirty years ago we asked what we would use computers for.

children-1149671_640

Facebook. Twitter. SecondLife. “Smart” phones. Robotic pets. Robotic lovers.

Now the question is what don’t we use them for.

Technology promises to let us do anything from anywhere with anyone and the introduction of social media platforms has changed the “friendship playing field”.

The way friendships are played out in the digital world is changing how young people express themselves, how they define ‘good’ friendships and interact with each other.

Now, through technology, we create, navigate, and perform our emotional lives.

In a surprising twist, relentless connection leads to a new solitude.

We turn to new technology to fill the void, but as technology ramps up, our emotional lives ramp down. At the threshold of “the robotic moment,” our devices prompt us to recall that we have human purposes and, perhaps, to rediscover what they are.

The huge role that technology plays in supporting young people’s friendships, with over half (55%) saying they interact online with their closest friends several times an hour and 63% saying they are closer to their friends because of the internet.

The basic components of friendship USE TO BE interdependence and voluntary participation but technology is now embedded throughout our relationships.

So the question is.  Has friendship changed because technology changed it? Or both?

The popular platforms 8-17-year-olds are using to chat to their friends on a daily basis are YouTube (41%), WhatsApp (32%), Snapchat (29%), Instagram (27%) and Facebook or Facebook Messenger (26%)

Technology provides an important way for them to support their peers who are going through difficult times with Social media providing a vehicle of self-promotion, a means of fixing an idea of yourself in the social sphere, without people actually knowing you at all.

Has it made friendship less personal, less connective, less real?

The distinction in the online world is that the effort it takes to present ourselves in a certain way is much less.

Not to mention the fact that technology has allowed us to maintain friendships that might have otherwise waned when time, distance, and the constant demands of parenting take hold.

The lines between real friendships and fleeting acquaintances have become

blurred in the virtual world, not just but also because of many Social media

users showcase more than 1000 friends on their profiles, while the realistic

maximum number of people we are able to maintain relationships with lies at

150 people.

Our brains are just not wired to cope with.

——————

True friendships are hallmarked by each member’s desire to engage with the other – it’s about a mutual interest in one another’s experiences and thoughts, as well as a sense of ‘belongingness’ and connection, there’s no telling when and where a friendship will develop.

The cornerstone of friendship isn’t the public nature of the relationship, but the private connection of it and that private uniqueness hasn’t been eliminated; it just looks different now.

The Internet is undoubtedly an invaluable link between people separated by distance. But this link must be built on a stronger foundation of intimacy and familiarity and a balance of online and offline interactions will pave the way to better relationships in the world.

We “met” through a mutual friend on Twitter.

(Posts Tagged With friendship in the digital age,

 “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.” is number five.)

Sexual online meetings themselves may be a replacement for deeper longings in couples. It may be an extension of particular needs not being met within the relationship.

They find that the relationship to their primary partner is more undervalued than in the past and that traditional definitions of intimacy are vaguer. They explain that couples who once experienced a secure relationship now struggle with the new –often ambiguous– rubrics surrounding agreed-upon Internet conduct.

Young people also need to be empowered to take control of their digital wellbeing, by recognising their emotions and the way that their use of digital technology can impact on their self-esteem and mood so that they are able to implement strategies to achieve a healthy relationship with technology.

Social exclusion can have just as much of a damaging impact on young
people but may not be easy to detect and manage in digital spaces.

Facebook has completely redefined the definition of a friend.

It wont be long before we could be seeing the following.

“We’d like to say a big ‘thank you’ every time you recommend a friend to us by rewarding you with a retail shopping voucher £250 will be paid for a friend.

Two in five adults (40%) first look at their phone within five minutes of waking up, climbing to 65% of those aged under 35. Similarly, 37% of adults check their phones five minutes before lights out, again rising to 60% of under-35s.

The average amount of time spent online on a smartphone is 2 hours 28 minutes a day. This rises to 3 hours 14 minutes among 18-24s.

A decade of change in digital communications.

Infographic timeline showing notable events and products or services launched between 2007 and 2018. 2007: first iPhone released; Amazon Prime launched. 2008: first Android smartphone; up to 50 Mbit/s broadband launched; Spotify and Amazon Kindle launched. 2009: Ashton Kutcher becomes first person to amass one million followers; YouTubers Fred becomes first to reach one million subscribers; WhatsApp launched. 2010: National launch of fibre-to-the-cabinet broadband; iPad goes on sale in the UK; 3DTV and Instagram launched. 2011: Snapchat launched. 2012: 4G mobile service launched in UK by EE; completion of digital switchover; Netflix and Candy Crush launched. 2013: Chromecast launched. 2014: Netflix begins streaming content in 4K; Amazon Prime Video and FireTV launched. 2015: Apple iWatch makes debut; Samsung VR headsets on sale; Facebook Live launched. 2016: Friends Reunited, pioner of social networking, closes; Amazon Echo launched. 2017: Sonos (with Amazon Alexa built in) released; Google Home launched. 2018: Share of digital radio listening exceeds 50%; 78% of adults have a smartphone; Apple HomePod and YouTube Premium launched.

It is said that in the course of a normal life one is lucky to have a handfull of friends.

Now its social mobile, analytics, and cloud all want to be your friend.

When we think about social, the key is to consider why social is happening, rather than think of it as just a set of tools.

For example, Facebook, Twitter, and so on are tools, but why people use them is much more important. The same was true with the internet when we first started using that — that was a tool, but what it did to the lives of normal people in terms of access to information, increased freedom, etc., was much more important.

Mobile is a similar shape to social in that it’s the why as to why people use mobile devices as opposed to anything structural about the devices themselves.

The idea behind big data is that you can derive understanding about behaviour through statistical analysis of clumps of data. You can then take that understanding and implement some form of control to either get more of what you want, or get less of what you don’t want.

Finally, we come to the cloud.  This is really about how companies buy. There are all sorts of reasons to like outsourcing IT functions to the cloud, whether it’s just outsourcing compute power into a load of servers that you run as if they were your own, or buying functionality on an SaaS basis ( Software as a service)

Is cloud necessary for digital?

To an extent, it likely does not. However, as a fashion/trend, it’s clearly important, and a lot of the tools and services involved in digital are unlocked as part of a cloud-based approach, hence it’s likely important.

It’s a sociological change, rather than a technical one.

You can see that by the fact that this is generally all about the “why” this is happening — why are customers using social, why are they using mobile, why big data is showing the trends that it is, why are companies able to buy and use consumer products, and why is running systems in the cloud easier.

Because they all your Friend without you knowing and couldn’t care less who or how they share that friendship with or what they do with it.  Google it.

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

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: IS IT TIME TO REVISIT DARWIN ASSERTION OF SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST?

25 Friday Oct 2019

Posted by in #whatif.com, Artificial Intelligence., Dehumanization., Evolution., Humanity., Our Common Values., Reality., Technology., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The world to day., Unanswered Questions.

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(Five-minute read)

With technology and new technique in artificial intelligence redefining how life can be created opening a research window into the early moments of a human life perhaps the above question is not so farcical, despite some thorny ethical constraints like artificial embryos.

In a breakthrough that redefines how life can be created, embryologists working at the University of Cambridge in the UK have grown realistic-looking mouse embryos using only stem cells. No egg. No sperm. Just cells plucked from another embryo.

What if they turn out to be indistinguishable from real embryos?

Then there are advances in genomic biotechnology presenting the possibility of bringing back long-extinct species.

To get from the genome work in the lab to herds of Woolly Mammoths would definitely bring the survival of the fittest into question.

Generative adversarial network, or GAN, takes two neural networks—the simplified mathematical models of the human brain that underpin most modern machine learning—and pits them against each other in a digital cat-and-mouse game. It is endeavouring to give machines imagination. 

DNA has linked 206 variants to intelligence. One day, babies will get DNA report cards at birth. BBVA-openmind

Herbert Spencer coined the term “Survival of the Fittest” in 1864.

Darwin intended “fittest” to mean the members of the species best suited for the immediate environment, the basis of the idea of natural selection.

Darwin’s distinctive idea was to emphasize natural selection as the main mechanism of evolution: if certain heritable traits increase or decrease the chances of survival and reproduction in the struggle for life, then those traits that favour survival and reproduction will increase in frequency over generations, and thus organisms will become more adapted to their environments, and over a long period of time the differences between varieties of a species can become so great that the varieties become new species.

On the one hand, he tells the reader to disregard his metaphorical personification of Nature as implying “conscious choice” or “intelligent power,” because nature should be understood as “only the aggregate action and product of many natural laws.”

On the other hand, he refuses to give up his personification of Nature, apparently because he senses that this engages the mind of the reader through the poetic imagery of Nature as a person.

The survival of the fittest that determines everything is stuck in our lexicon. With the phrase today commonly used in contexts that are incompatible with the original meaning as intended.

When it comes to technology “Survival of the fittest” is inaccurate for two important reasons.

First, survival is merely a normal prerequisite to reproduction.

Second, fitness has specialized meaning in biology different from how the word is used in popular culture. In population genetics, fitness refers to differential reproduction. “Fitness” does not refer to whether an individual is “physically fit” – bigger, faster or stronger – or “better” in any subjective sense.

It refers to a difference in reproductive rate from one generation to the next.

But in evolutionary terms, survival is only half the picture; you must also reproduce to be “fit” in the Darwinian sense.

The influence of the environment on life expectancy in the future will be far greater political, not a biological issue. It will be the survival of those best able to adapt to change.

Resources, especially those necessary for survival, will become more valued.

Artificial intelligence may gain, along with a sense of imagination, a more independent ability to make sense of what it sees in the world but is the technology ready?

If the AI revolution is going to spread Darwin natural selection it will have to be updated, then the real AI revolution can begin. Darwin always brought in information and made a whole new picture out of it. evolution

Is Darwin still relevant today?   Yes. You’d be hard-pressed to find a biology class that isn’t based on evolutionary biology. Yet the explanatory power of the evolutionary theory is not bound to biology.

Why? Because the theory of evolution is still evolving.

As the late Russian Orthodox Christian Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”

Darwin not only made us aware of how nature works, but also of our place within nature. ( Unfortunately for him the discovery of DNA and that Quantum Mathematics  governs all biology had not been discovered)

Evolution now needs to be critically evaluated in the classroom, rather than dogmatically indoctrinated.

Artificial intelligence is and will take both to a whole new level and transform them into something relevant to our time and our discoveries.

Thus, we say that all the individuals of a species comprise a gene pool from which selection (either artificial or natural) can select. The important point is that we cannot select for genes that are not in the gene pool of the species. Only clones have the same genes and are essentially identical—including the same sex.

In the future, the evolutionist must look to mutations, their most ludicrous mechanism of all.

A new DARPA research program is developing brain-computer interfaces that could control “swarms of drones, operating at the speed of thought.” What if it succeeds?

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WE ARE WELL ON THE WAY TO TOTALITARIANISM

23 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Dehumanization., Democracy, DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Enegery, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Modern Day Democracy., Modern day life., Our Common Values.

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(Twenty-minute read.)

If we are not vigilant we might by accident and neglect combined with the erosion of civil liberties and with the increasing disenchantment of politicians easily sleepwalk into a form of a totalitarian society.

You could say at present that the world has more pressing problems but I consider this as a very dangerous trend and, sadly, unlike climate change perhaps unstoppable.

Why?

Because corporations belong to no land, no country, no people and have no loyalty to anything apart from profit – their profits and the profits today are on an unimaginable scale. 

Because individual liberty which our ancestors fought for generations to establish are now been blowing away in the wind with Artifical Intelligence turning our politics into a form of Digital Dictatorship.

Control of society above personality.

The modern sense of entertainment, for example, has led to the shallowness

of life that permeates all aspects of life, separates us from the seriousness of

existence, and fills this existence with false content.

What we are seeing is a widening of inequality, a rise in racism and ant semitic traits all of which are essential to a totalitarian society. Individualism itself is diminishing and in the end, people will embrace the totalitarian state’s ideology.

This fourth industrial revolution as it is called is presently without any AI laws other than the EU guidelines on the trustworthiness of AI – what data to use or not use to train other Algorithms.

The last industrial revolution taught us a lot about basic human rights and social values to wake us up, to help us prepare for the future however what we are seeing with smartphones is a form of doublethinking that leads to banality or to implicit acceptance of the standard of psychological normality, the lost of limits.

You are going to work with a digital colleague that has no set rules, no personal judgment. 

The threat of climate change with the rise of stateless refugees is forcing millions around the world to realistically confront a future in which their lives, at a minimum, look radically worse than they are today.

At the same time, emerging algorithms are giving a small technocratic elite the power to radically alter our species to a point when it will no longer resemble itself.

They both will call into question the basic ideas of who are and how we think about ourselves.

There are technologies now already emerging that are asking this question with the very fundamental assumptions about what it means to be human.

Why is this?

Because by limiting the choices and activities that have given us our basic sense of identity we can’t express our own opinions because they fear individual power.

There is nothing we can really do to change the course of our civilization except to patiently and persistently saying the truth about false worldviews, both on climate change and materialistic algorithms for profit both of which are and will have dramatic consequences. 

Take Climate change and  Fossil fuel:

It seems that fossil fuel owners and technology only goals are to protect their business models at all cost.

Climate change will shrink the size of the world that is livable on. while allowing unregulated technologies to rule it.

Algorithms Data Apps are tools by means of which, once installed, they start making decisions on your behalf. They will enable governments to assert their ideological and intellectual authority over party members and employees of party-run institutions, including schools and media.

Their messages becoming inescapable.

The beauty of digital media technology — disquieting for those who care about privacy and freedom from intrusion — is that our smart apps know a great deal about our actual behaviour.

Technology now interacts with you and takes the measure of you. It can determine just how “smart” you are when it comes to your devotion and your grasp of the ideological essentials.

This is where we seem to be headed for compelling materialist reasons, not ethical reasons. 

Habitual smartphone user was spending a great deal of time glued to the screen, as a result, the potential of the smartphone to be used as a tool through which authoritarian regimes can shape and reinforce dominance over the population is no longer a fantasy – China.  

It is reinventing the process of ideological dominance for the digital era.

In China, censorship, is now largely automated, reaching “unprecedented levels of accuracy, aided by machine learning and voice and image recognition.  It has an estimated 200 million surveillance cameras, with plans for 626 million surveillance cameras by 2020.

China is building a digital dictatorship to exert control over its 1.4 billion citizens. For some, “social credit” will bring privileges — for others, punishment.

If successful, it will be the world’s first digital dictatorship.

The flawless totalitarian state, powered by digital technology, where the individual has nowhere to flee from the all-seeing eye of the Communist state. who has done what (and for how long)

They can leverage digital media products to reshape the whole process of ideological control in ways that are far more personal, and far more effective, than anything we have witnessed in the reform era.

We, on the other hand, need to find out once again how to make decisions not just as individuals but as a society.  We need new economics theories of not top-down but bottom-up. Its isn’t capital that creates economic growth its people. It isn’t competition that creates prosperity its cooperation. The economics that is not inclusive will not allow modern society to thrive. 

Its painfully obvious that the fundamental assumptions of neoliberal economics are wrong.

The market now with profit-seeking algorithms can never distribute wealth because there is no equilibrium.

So is there any way of combating the technological growing algorithm market.

Inclusion will be the only brake.

We must allow people to get involved while improving all stakeholders in the market. The laws of economics are a choice.

So give people the choice to invest in the future by the creation of Nation backed non-trading Green deal bonds. ( See previous posts) This is about creating a platform for real and measurable engagement.

Algorithms all ready control 99.9% of stock exchanges. 

Taking self-responsibility and living life the fullest will not only enrich our own lives but as well the lives of others.    

Then the question arises:

No government in what used to be called “the free world” seems prepared to take the steps that can stop this inexorable decline.

Totalitarianism is a political concept of a mode of government that prohibits opposition parties, restricts individual opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high degree of control over public and private life.

Big data:  The length of time that it took them to use unfettered free speech to subvert and undermine all of our core institutions. Thus we arrive at the present situation where the brief a historical version of freedom of speech has reverted back towards what the state deems controversial today might be very different to what it deems controversial tomorrow.

Take Brexit for example. Nostalgia is that it’s become a political weapon. Politicians are creating nostalgia for an England that never existed and selling it, really, as something we could return to.

Do we want to be told what to think and do? Or are we ready to come up with our own solutions for the consequences we’ve caused?

The idea of the totalitarian state can never be a true and effective form of government rule. Increasing state interference, a crumbing electoral system, the loss of a free press and loss of freedom of speech are grave threats to our democratic system. 

The potential consequences that come from using AI, such as giving up privacy are only the ice cubes in the bucket. 

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S : IS 5 G GOING TO CHANGE THE WORLD WE LIVE IN?

17 Tuesday Sep 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Dehumanization., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Humanity., Inequality, Medical, Modern day life., Reality., Robot citizenship., Sustaniability, Technology, The cloud., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Internet., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., War, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Ten-minute read)

 

Right now nobody knows for sure but it is going to radically upend many aspects of our lives, as it is a technological paradigm shift.

3G or 4G was just a trailer, and the movie is about to begin.This picture, posted on Twitter by Inga Sarda-Sorensen, shows dark storm clouds over the New York skyline

Why?

Because it is going to marry data collection and computation with billions of devices.

But there is a debate on the necessity for it, considering human physical and mental limitations.

It will become the underlying fabric of an entire ecosystem of fully connected intelligent sensors and devices, capable of overhauling economic and business policies, and further blurring geographical and cultural borders.

It will create a world populated by digital citizens in continual interaction with their surroundings, their peers and public services.

It will enable communications & computing power to come together creating a hyperconnected ‘Internet of everything’ world.

It will release the spectrum for mobile devices, bring about dramatic transformations in our daily lives.

It is going to change everything about everything else.

It will rock the world economy over the next decade as we haven’t yet

conceived that will be tied into the 5G network.

For example:

Your car will know your every move faster than your mind. Cars will be able to use 5G to talk to other cars and sensors built around cities, from street lamps to gas stations.

Think about your relationship between the smart city and an autonomous car.

Think about predictive care. It will enable advanced data transfer from wearables and sensors, facilitating remote clinical decisions and robotic surgery

Think about bring virtual reality into the classroom, allowing students to face real-life situations without real-life consequences.

Think about living in a world of always-on, always-sharing, cloud applications and services.

Think about it leading to seamless and ubiquitous information control.

It will potential to unlock trillions of revenue across a broad range of industries creating a different hidden economy with wireless consumption.

This revenue will be equivalent to total U.S. consumer spending in 2016, and more than the combined spending of China, Japan, France, Germany, and the U.K. This revenue also represents about 4.6 per cent of all global real output in 2035.

Another words countries without 5G will become less competitive globally, spreading inequality on a scale not seen before. This inequality leads to more than just differences in consumption and wealth distribution. It affects access to healthcare, education, nutrition, employment, financial and technological platforms; it exacerbates poverty, exclusion and violence.

By 2020, analysts estimate that there will be more than 20 billion installed IoT devices around the world, supporting 22 million jobs generating massive amounts of data.

With access to this kind of information, industries of all kinds will be able to reach new levels of efficiency as they add products, services, and capabilities.

It will mean that a surgeon may not need to be in the same room as a patient in the future. A surgeon could use a VR headset and special glove to control a robot arm that would perform an actual operation in another location.

With haptic feedback, you’ll be able to transmit the tactile sensation of experience, enhancing the sights and sounds of a video experience.

It will make drone warfare affordable and drone defence essential.

It will make consumption and production distant and broad concepts that are somehow unattached from us.

So what can we, as consumers, do, instead of feeling powerless and distraught?

We must ensure that 5G respect nature, and the interconnectedness of everything that matters for humanity.

An unofficial trade war is already afoot in the tech industry due to the imminent rise of 5G technology.

But it will not happen overnight. Think in terms of a decade or more for it to fully unfold.

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. HUMANITY MUST NOW COME FIRST.

16 Monday Sep 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Climate Change., Dehumanization., Democracy, Environment, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google Knowledge., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Reality., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The state of the World., The world to day., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Politics

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( Seventeen-minute read)

The world has been so depleted and is being so depleted even at this moment, that the future sustenance and stability for humanity is now imperilled.

Your future and your destiny will not be determined within the next decades. It will be determined now.

It will be determined by humanity’s wisdom or by its ignorance.

The future and fate of humanity will be decided in the years to come, and it will be determined by how humanity responds to the great change that is coming over the horizon in the form of climate change to the world.

No religion nor religious institution as it stands today can prepare humanity for the complexities of life in the universe or what humanity must know to preserve human freedom and sovereignty within this world.

It is what humanity must do to prepare both collectively and individually for climate change and our collective inability to regulate AI.

But because humanity as a whole is dull and ignorant, self-absorbed and unresponsive to a changing world we are still writing ourselves out of the script.

Our universities for years have taught classical/neoclassic/neoliberal economics; like these theories are unmovable divine pillars of reality.

Therefore, while most people see we need a more reasonable and democratic version of our current extreme capitalism, the dominant discourse insists the story not be changed at all. The dominant political narrative of our times is that we must live as individuals crushed between market and state. The relationship between the individual and the state boils down to a zero-sum game where everyone one eventually looses. The state is a pure and simple force.

With the effects of climate change (to come) people are waking up to the deception, let’s hope we can do right, because on all fronts of civilization as we know it time is running out.

We have political failure everywhere leading to the malfunctioning of our altruistic nature.

There is a disconnect between mass (commercial) media, even political science and common sense or popular wisdom.

Sounds to cynical?

Let me oil up my bow.

Present-day political failures are at heart of our problems.

Why?

Because there is a failure of imagination when it comes to the societal structure we evolved to live in and that our brains are still programmed for.

Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, etc.

These new organizations are actually not creating a dream environment of maximum social cooperation.

They are instead removing people’s needs to fulfilling each other’s needs!

Gnawing away our collective and individual identity our senses of belonging to a community for the sake of profit.

We need politics of belonging, but the trouble is, it requires a moral, ethical and educated populations which we don’t have and are now with AI are more than likely than ever never going to have.

As we rely on more and more Algorithms to make decisions without a discussion of facts and morals, against a background of pure data narrative can lead society to dark places.

We are unaware of what I call honest pricing that shows the cost of profit for profit sake to the environment.

If we were to charge fees proportional to harmful impacts on the environment, we would create a monetary representation of the value of natural resources.A Brazilian protester stands before gunfire during protests against corruption and police brutality.

So overcoming the material world would be the first step to a sustainable world-shifting us into a new reality.

We are left with the ever-present questions.

Do we give a toss and if so what can be done about it?

What roles do religion and our deepest beliefs play in contemporary life?

What lifestyles are we adopting in an increasingly technological world?

What is the balance of power–and the balance of trade?

What is the pattern of war and peace?

What are the issues facing local and regional communities, and what issues must we confront on a global scale?

What do we remember about our collective past, and how do we see the future?

Have the great issues that preoccupied people since the beginning of time taken new, distinctive forms after more than a hundred years of the fastest technological and cultural change in the history of the planet?

What challenges remain intractable?

What emerging solutions seem to offer the greatest promise?

Social media is full of video on the state of the world.

The need for clear-headed prioritisation of resources to tackle real, not imagined problems.

Despite that long record of success, agricultural production is stressed by floods, deforestation, drought, urbanization (land-devouring cities), and a growing appetite for resource-intensive meat.

More than 150 million people worldwide are at risk from rising sea levels and extreme storms that cause coastal flooding.

In the past 50 years, thanks to education and technology, more than 2 billion people joined the middle class, swelling the human footprint of nearly 50 per cent. At the same time, millions of acres of cropland have been devoured by population growth.

Today more than 6 billion people live in cities—about 70 per cent of the world’s population, roughly double the proportion of a half-century ago.

The Arctic may hold 22 per cent of the world’s undiscovered conventional oil and natural gas resources. Melting ice is liberating immense oil and natural gas reserves.

Although mounting worldwide energy demand continues to stress the environment, it has powered large-scale development of renewable energy.

Artificial intelligence will soon dominate the Earth—it could take decades, it could take millennia. At that point, AI will also take control of the Earths process. Refashioning the planet in ways that are optimal for synthetic life but quite possibly deadly for us.

You can’t help but wonder where it will lead. It’s a very dodgy future.

It may be true that the cosmos started with the Big Bang, some 14 billion years ago, but it took an awfully long time for the consequences of the Big Bang to settle down.

To have an optimistic view is the only one worth having.Our world relies on vast global networks.

So may you recognize that you as an individual must make these decisions and not simply rely upon others to make them for you.

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: SHOULD FACIAL RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY BE BANNED?

15 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., Face Recognition.

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(Ten-minute read) 

It too late.

This technology is a crucial part of one of the most extensive, intrusive, and oppressive surveillance apparatus in history.

All over the world private businesses, law enforcement agencies, and national governments are using facial recognition algorithm systems.

You only have to look at China home to one of the world’s most powerful facial recognition systems and advanced street surveillance cameras in the world. Equipped with one of the world’s largest photo identification databases and nearly 200 million surveillance cameras, China is at the cutting edge of facial recognition technology, one that is capable of tracking more than a billion people.

Jaywalkers are already learning that they could suddenly find their face projected on screens erected along the streets. Once they identify your face, all your information (like mobile phone number) is linked.

It even has public toilet paper dispensers that remember the user’s face.

All contributing to an overly oppressive surveillance state with unprecedented power to track people going about their daily lives.

You might say that’s all of this is incompatible with a healthy democracy like ours! 

How would you feel if you knew that every time you went out in public you were being watched and could easily be identified through this technology?

How would it change your behaviour?

Large databases — such as social media profiles, financial transactions, and telecommunication signals — may begin working in tandem, as a backend service, with recording devices to correlate, analyze and extract even greater amounts of granular information about an individual once he/she is recognized on a facial recognition device.

The recording is and can extract a host of interconnected inferences about an individual’s associations, subtle proclivities, nascent behaviours, and more.

It is going to end up breaking our fundamental rights.

Think about it, what happens when they know your face?

You can say there are positives which there are but they do not outweigh the negatives.

Cameras around will be so advance they will have the where with all to know you.

Your face and info will be in some random person hands with a click of a button.

It’s too early to completely ban this technology?

If surveillance does have public safety value, is it irresponsible not to use it? Could a ban limit its future development and potential? Or, is outlawing it the best way to make sure it doesn’t spiral out of control?

It is hard to deny that there is a public safety value to this technology.

What is urgently needed is regulations that acknowledge the usefulness of face recognition.  Banning users of commercial face recognition technology from collecting and sharing data for identifying or tracking consumers without their consent.

There are seriously conflicting interests here, but I think my principal objection is the use of data obtained to profile me or target me for advertising.

I think that aspect of technology has advanced much too far beyond what our laws are prepared to deal with.

I don’t believe there is any real expectation of privacy in a public place.

We are constantly watched on security cameras virtually everywhere, and I don’t have a real problem with that, so long as my face is not tied to my name or other personally identifiable information.

Fair restrictions must be written into law to be effective.

The next thing we will see is face recognition combined with body gesture recognition edging over into e-commerce through unmanned stores.

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

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