At the moment with AI and its algorithms, the forces of change driven by machines that use them are unpredictable.
Previous industrial revolutions changed human labor with machinery this time it’s our mental functions that are being replaced.
Our ability to make predictions and make decisions are more and more being controlled by our general acceptance of allowing our living data to be analyzed by computers.
AS A RESULT, IT IS PLAIN TO SEE THAT CAPITALISM IS MAKING A TRANSITION TO AN ECONOMY DRIVEN BY SMART MACHINES BASED ON ALGORITHMS THAT ARE BASES ON BIG DATA.
This process owned by monopolies on internet platforms is rampant and unregulated.
When it should be subject to careful oversight by a new world governing body that ensures transparency, responsibility, with the right framework to make decisions as to whether all our common values are being protected.
Should we be concerned?
Yes, we should be.
We are already living in an economic system that is not working for people with the gaps of inequality becoming wider and wider. As each and every day goes by with our politicians turning a blind eye to the long-term social effects.
We are seeing the rise of short-term populist politicians who are in effect ( and more than likely than not in denial) representing to days social media’s bad side which is run on monopoly platforms.
The overriding aim of these present-day monopolies is to make a profit.
Therefore, theoretically, a capitalist free-market economy may not be ideal for the future AI and robot world, for capitalism is primarily driven by human greed.
Don’t expect these tech overlords who invent and own robots or AI to share the benefits with the rest of us.
Governments cannot afford to let selfish profit-seeking big corporations rule the roost.
If we are not vigilant the one percent of the world upper class- those in control of the robots will build empires that will govern and dictate the AI and robot economy.
For the present, there is little concern that we are in danger of becoming technological slaves, but the concept of self is almost lost.
Without technology and our mobile phones, in particular, we feel naked, stripped and alone. Vacations now include a laptop. What’s a trip without photos that we immediately upload to Facebook and Instagram? It’s like it didn’t happen, at least if we don’t share them in real-time.
Human- level Ai might well be centuries away but it is no wonder that there have been voices calling for taxes on AI and robots, so as to use the money collected to make society more egalitarian.
However, this is not the ultimate solution, because big sleazy corporations can always find ways to avoid paying tax. Therefore, we may need a fundamental change in our economic structure and society.
If the government is going to have to look after the millions of idle human workers deprived of any means to support themselves and their families after they are replaced by AI and robots.
Perhaps a sort of planned economy is one of the answers?
IT’S TIME TO WAKE UP.
A business must have a conscience as well as a counting algorithm.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
This may be the reason why AI is able to add fuel to the fire of other technologies such as analytical tools that monitor our behavior online, what we buy, who we talk to, where we have been, where we might go, with whom, and why.
All for a competitive advantage to make a profit.
AI’s use is rising exponentially with volumes of free data flooding every nook and nanny of our existence.
You might believe that this all harmless leading to the smarter handling of big data but we need to wake up if we think so.
Siri and Alexa are not machines with just catchy names nor are they AI assistants. Bring one into your life and you will be inviting general AI to take over your decisions. Aping the nuances of the human brain they will adapt to their environment demonstrating empathy and perception whether you are an idiot or not, inevitably it’s the former element that they are after. The blurring of the lines between man and machine.
The ramifications of which remain an elusive shadow on the digital horizon.
So what potential does artificial intelligence really have to change our lives.?
THE ANSWER IS VAST.
THE DIFFICULTY IS HOW DO YOU GET A BALANCED VIEW OF DATA AS ALL DATA IS BIAS.
Very often, when talking about AI, we like to automatically couple it with other terms such as Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Neural Networks. This makes it sound like over 90% of AI is this kind of statistical algorithm that only PhDs can understand.
This is where we are dead wrong about AI.
In order for AI to have a significant impact on our society, it must understand not only how to act like a human, but also how to think like us.
Unfortunately, while the information revolution has enabled us to collect petabytes of data on how we act in a certain situation, not much data has been collected on how we think. This makes it impossible to properly train an AI system.
Machines need to start learning how we conceptualize the world.
What this means for AI researchers and companies, is that the true future of AI lies in design, in an AI’s ability to interact with and learn from humans, and in understanding human contexts — not in more powerful CPUs and algorithms.
This also means technical prowess will become less and less important in building a great AI, relative to deep empathy toward the needs and challenges of the end users who will be interacting with these AI systems.
We must fully align the AI’s goals with ours, which is going to be strikingly difficult.
We must also ensure that every AI program has a surefire way of predicting how it will behave.
All AI’s programmes must have a shutdown button.
Human level AI may be centuries away however we are already witnessing the effects of both the good and bad they are bringing to societies.
What will it mean to be human in the age of AI?
THERE IS ONE THING FOR CERTAIN:
IF WE CONTINUE TO ALLOW MONOPOLY PLATFORMS TO RULE THE ROOST WITH PROFIT SEEKING ALGORITHMS WE WILL SEE INEQUALITIES ON GLOBAL SCALE.
SLAVE OR FREEDOM.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks dumped in the bin.
Our neurology is primed to establish rapport with other humans, not artificial intelligence driving algorithms or machine learning that are disconnecting us all from what really matters on the planet.
The establishment of rapport depends on eye contact, breading and recognition of subtle changes in voice timbre.
IT’S TIME THAT WE DEMAND THAT ALL SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANIES ARE SUBJECT TO REGULATION AND LAWS.
THEY TRULY DON’T UNDERSTAND THE TECHNOLOGIES THEY ARE USING AND THE RAMIFICATIONS THAT ARE LESS AND LESS PREDICTABLE.
They ( by which I mean Facebook, Twitter, and all other platforms) are now using technologies to clean up their acts that are biased and driven by profit. Since they are monopolies they will only encourage regulation that cements their power.
WORST OF ALL;
Since these platforms, appear so interactive and democratic, we are seeing a degradation of our social processes as a form of personal empowerment. They are encouraging regardless of content, immune reactions, discouraging cooperation, consensus, or empathy.
MESSAGES ON THESE PLATFORMS MAY COST PENNIES OR NOTHING AST ALL, AND THEY ARE SOLD AND PLACED BY BOTS WITH NO REGARD TO THEIR CONTENT.
Social media manipulates us individually one private screen at a time.
It is no wonder :
WHEN SOCIAL MEDIA IS PROGRAMMED TO ATOMIZE US AND THE MESSAGING IS ENGINEERED TO PROVOKE OUR MOST COMPETITIVE, REPTILIAN SENSIBILITIES.
You ask:
Why Brexit? Why is there a rise in violent crime? Why DONALD DUMPS? Why mass immigration,? Why terrorism? Why inequality is on the rise? Why there is no effective battle against climate change?
FOR THAT MATTER WHY IS THE WORLD IN SUCH A MESS.
BECAUSE WE ARE ALL NOT CONNECTED TO REALITY.
IF WE WANT A WORLD WORTH LIVING IN OR ON RATHER THAN IN THE SOUP OF COMMUNICATIVE HUMAN AND MACHINE LOOPS CALLED BOTS AND ALGORITHMS WE MUST BE ABLE TO INTELLIGENTLY DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN HIGH AND LOW INFORMATION.
Data sound bits may enhance a particular agenda like build a wall but they do not compete for dominance by appealing to our intellect, our compassion, or anything to do with humanity.
BYPASSING OUR HIGHER FACULTIES, OUR REASONING, AND OUR COLLECTIVE AUTHORITY IS UNETHICAL AND WILL BE IN THE LONG RUN, INEFFECTIVE.
Our DNA is not a static blueprint that acts differently in different situations, it does however to some extent depend on what protein soup in which we are swimming around in. IS IT THE IDEOLOGICAL SOUP OF ALGORITHMS, WITHOUT BRING OUR HUMANITY ALONG WITH US.
NOW IS THE TIME TO SEPARATE THIS SYNTHETIC IDEOLOGICAL LANDSCAPE FROM HUMAN TO HUMAN CONTACT SO WE ALLOW ENOUGH TIME FOR NON-CONNECTED, SOCIAL EXPERIENCES.
TO RE-ESTABLISH ORGANIC HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS AND A LOCAL SOCIAL FABRICS.
A good start would be to banning all smartphones at sporting events, schools.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin
Modern day technology with its Artificial Intelligence does not point in any single direction. However, the gap between words and deeds is growing.
In times such as ours where there is a slow disengagement of truth, we need to be reminded that our central calling, our main task on the planet, is survival, which with the ever-growing use of AI gives rise to a host of new ethical problems and dilemmas.
With most of us chocking on non-truths, new technologies, and AI, the earth and our living conditions on the planet are worsening faster than ever.
Both AI and technology are begging for attention in order to be harnessed to our common values rather than profit for profit sake.
This is a debate that is only just beginning.
Since time memorial man does not seem to be able to ” help ” his selfishness, the desire to stand out.
They say that we are stuck with our character, we can’t evolve beyond it or without it.
So let’s not ask what is wrong with modern-day society, but ask where it is leading us?
It seems to me that we are living in a period where the overproduction of truth and non-truth cannot be consumed.
We are tranquilized with trivial.
We can’t control our own actions and there is no control over the actions of others.
So are we going to end up living with an inner sense of chaos that robot will not have?
At the moment we are split in two we have the awareness of our splendid uniqueness, but yet we end up feeding worms.
However, if the fear of death is removed by Technology we will lose the ability of our self- preservation.
( Anxiety is something we all share, now more than ever – normality is a neurosis.)
Then it will become impossible for us to have the ability to organize our own perceptions and our relationships to the world.
If we remove the idea of death, we remove what it means to live.
So is technology and AI going to create a greater social- historical truth, by omitting religious and spiritual ideas for our lives?
To do so it must replace what in our conscious life is called fear.
Our present-day fears are fashioned out of the ways in which we perceive the world. So we continue to design societies of symbolic action systems with structures of statuses ( Likes, Hits, Followers, Tweets, Posts, ) and roles, customs, and rules for behavior designed to service vehicles for earthly heroism. It doesn’t seem to matter whether the cultural hero-system if frankly, magical, religious, primitive or secular, scientific, technological driven or not.
The question is how conscious are we of what we are doing to earn our feeling of heroism?
Is there a need to create a larger theoretical structure to society?
Or is it too late as there is no harmony that unites different positions so that the sterile and ignorant polemics can be abated.
The crises of modern society are precise that the youth no longer feel heroic in the plan for action that their culture has set up.
We have been unable to this day to give an overall sense of heroism to any present-day capitalist industrial society mainly because of inequality.
As profit for profit sake dons the cloak of AI it is disguising the way society sets up its hero system with virtual reality and false promises.
Indeed it will not be far into the future when Robots will invent reasons for anxiety even where there is none to allow humans to exist.
The fear of death is a biological and evolutionary problem. It is an expression of the instinct of self-preservation, which functions as a constant drive to maintain life and to master the dangers that threaten life.
If AI removes the fear of death what will our mental functions be- will it be just living in the moment.
All historical religious address themselves to how to bear the end of life.
If we remove death, our biology and evolution must transfer into Trans-humans.
Will we really be able to call such hypothetical trans-humans “human” at all?
We must be more realistic about our situation in nature.
(Just look at Donal Trump who has more trouble with his lies than others.)
If we don’t do so we are we all going to end up as children living in others dependence – or on Artificial Intelligence.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
Perception is at the heart of this question and of course, there are hundreds of inventions that could and should be mentioned if we had the time and space.
We began the 20th century with the infancy of airplanes, automobiles, and radio. We end the 20th century with spaceships, computers, smartphones, AI and the wireless Internet all being technologies we now take for granted.
However, the world is steeped in poverty with precious little in the way of humanitarian advancement.
HERE IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER IS MY LIST AND WHY.
The credit card:
Part of the fabric of modern day life. Credit no longer the prerogative of the elite. The ultimate symbol of the triumphant Anglo-American consumer culture. The modern manifestation of money. Allowed modern Banks to transcend national boundaries. Guarantees payment of debts.
Microchip: Fiber Optics: Microprocessor: Windows
Created the Credit Card. The Internet and the World Wide Web.
Artificial Fertilizers:
Enabled the further expansion of agriculture and pollution.
Internal combustion engine:
The why is obvious:
The pneumatic tire:
Did more for the engine.
The condom/ Birth pill.
The why is obvious.
Nuclear Power:
Nuclear power has long provoked ardent policy fights, historically centered on the perceived safety or danger of splitting atoms to keep consumers’ refrigerators running.
Today, it’s not local or environmental opposition but economics that’s crippling nuclear power.
It may be very difficult to meet international carbon-cutting goals without the widespread addition of nuclear plants.
This still leaves the problem of waste, and a choice between nuclear waste—deadly but the concentrated poison that lasts thousands of years—and fossil-fuel waste—invisible, diffuse carbon pollution that in sufficient amounts will transform the Earth for thousands of years.
While nuclear waste is nasty stuff, so are the conventional pollutants of fossil-fuel burning. Nuclear power avoids air emissions of over one million tons of sulfur dioxide and 650,000 tons of nitrogen oxides each year, as well as significant particulate emissions.
Since CO2 emissions persist for many years in the atmosphere emissions cuts made today are worth more than the same cuts made down the road.
The best invention may be Toyota’s Hybrid.
AK-47 Kalashnikov: M16:
The twenty century can be characterized by mass warfare and mass killing- two world wars, Stalin’s purges, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, Cambodia’s killings fields, Rwanda the list goes on.
No firearm of any kind has killed more people.
It is the weapon of choice for terrorists, rebels with 75 million in circulation around the world accounting for 20% of the entire global stock of firearms. Every year, small arms kill between 20,000 and 100,000 people in the world’s conflicts. AK-47s Kalashnikov accounts for a high proportion – and quite possibly the majority – of this human toll. In the 68 years since the first prototype was made, the AK-47 has probably dealt death to millions.
This is the decade of AI (run by the Algorithm) I PAD, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook. Social Media. 3d Printing.
Will there use glorify peace? Not on the evidence so far.
Feel free to add yours and why.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
When we look at the world it is important to recognize that we are looking at the history of different civilizations, however, we all have a common story.
We are born and we die.
Today the story is the same but with more mobility in-between, however, we’ve not changed a dot and it is certain that we will go on making things that will change or existence.
With to days technology, we are on the threshold of not just a new Industrial revolution but changing how we exist and where we exist.
The outline of a mobile phone as we know has changed not just rural Africa and Asia – putting communities in touch, giving access to information and money it is now also creating Social media platforms which are in the process of disconnecting us from reality.
This week Facebook, Google, and Twitter appeared in front of Congress. After which it is obvious, that we are not asking the right questions yet, or we have not found any good answers just yet as to why our world is getting sicker and sicker and it’s not Einstine science as to why.
When it comes to the world we can not cure just one aspect of the sickness, we must address an array of inherited illness.
Our new technological world is removing the need to think, to read, to imagine, to function, to communicate, to earn respect, to know why is true or a false pleasure, to plan long-term.
In other words, the internet has been infected by the problems that we all suffer.
What is need is that we need to take our existence back, whether it be as consumers, as citizens, and say we actually want to have some say over how all of this technology works, because we’ve really given that over to the tech companies ( outside of China, for the rest of the world, there are five big tech companies who really run everything) that have little or no ethical interest in other than profit
Why?
Because before we become the product for internet service providers, no longer just customers. we need a social movement around this issues to stop us all being run by the same algorithms brains driven by different programs that are incapable of acting for the common good.
Greed, inequality, you name it, our political affiliation, based upon the top-level domain information of websites you visit, your sexual orientation, where you like to shop, your financial status, race, gender can now be figured out based on the information that they collect and use.
If we didn’t have the bullshit movies, TV shows and sports pumping fake feel-good emotions into our systems, we would all feel the great weight of our inaction in an era where we need to get off our fucking asses and take a stand.
All the world’s problems are not on the internet.
We’re not supposed to watch a screen that pumps fake feel-good emotions into us.
It is quite plausible in the not so distant future we will have nothing serious to contribute when the hype – intelligent software supersedes humanity with genomics, nanotechnology, and robotics. New computer chips specialized for AI will power how we engineer genes, proteins, materials. Quantum computing a million times quicker than present-day computers will change the fields of drug development, manufacturing, and material science.
It will all be very murky but the potential is truly staggering.
Its now or never that we harness all this technology for if a day comes that the final decision is left to a Robotic brain rest assured that,Hal 9000 VS Dave will come true.
I am sure you will agree with me when I state the obvious that the world has more than enough problems on its plate.
While we are all distracted there is not a day that goes by without some new App appearing.
( What lies behind our current rush to automate everything we can imagine?
Perhaps it is an idea that has leaked out into the general culture from cognitive
science and psychology over the past half-century — that our brains are
imperfect computers. If so, surely replacing them with actual computers can
have nothing but benefits. Yet even in fields where the algorithm’s job is a
relatively pure exercise in number- crunching, things can go alarmingly wrong.)
I HAVE JUST WATCHED ON TV THE FIRST PERSON WHO COULD BE DESCRIBE AS ALGORITHM SLAVE AND IT MADE ME WONDER.
One day, the makers of an algorithm-driven psychotherapy app could be sued by the survivors of someone to whom it gave the worst possible advice.
When we seek to hand over our decision-making to automatic routines in areas that have concrete social and political consequences, the results might be troubling indeed.
However, we are where we are with most of us unable to conduct our lives without our smartphones, the internet, and algorithms.
Is there still a place for human judgment?
Our age elevates the precision-tooled power of the algorithm over flawed human judgment.
From web search to marketing and stock-trading, and even education and policing, medical care, credit rating, the power of computers that crunch data according to complex sets of if-then rules is promised to make our lives better in every way.
Automated retailers tell you which book you want to read next; dating websites compute your perfect life-partner; self-driving cars will reduce accidents; crime will be predicted and prevented algorithmically.
If only we minimize the input of messy human minds, we can all have better decisions made for us. So runs the hard sell of our current algorithm fetish which is eroding our free will.
Automatic analysis of our smartphone geolocation, internet-browsing and
social-media data-trails grows ever more sophisticated, and so we can thin-
slice demographic categories ever more precisely.
From such information, it is possible to infer personal details (such as sexual
orientation or use of illegal drugs) that have not been explicitly supplied, and
sometimes to identify unique individuals. Even when such information is simply
used to target adverts more accurately, the consequences can be
uncomfortable.
So let me ask you.
How do algorithms decide exactly what should count as ‘hate speech’ or obscenity?
No one knows, because the company, quite understandably, isn’t going to give away its secrets. Rather than pursuing mere lexicographical analysis, such a system of automated pre-censorship is, making moral judgments.
We need to create a class of ‘algorithmic auditors’ — trusted representatives of
the public who can peer into the code to see what kinds of implicit political and
ethical judgments are buried there and report their findings back to us. This is a
good idea, though it poses practical problems about how companies can retain
the commercial edge provided by their computerized secret sauce if they have
to open up their algorithms to quasi-official scrutiny.
It is very unlikely that this will happen. We are however in danger of
App exploitation not only for profit but when there is no immediate cash peril –
culture, education, and crime.
We are well on the road to becoming slaves to the algorithms with computers
taking more than some tough choices out of our hands if we let them.
Such automated augury might be considered relatively harmless if its use is
confined to figuring out what products we might like to buy.
But it is not going to stop there.
There is so much out there that even the most popular human ‘curators’ cannot possibly keep on top of all of it.
If we erect algorithms as our ultimate judges and arbiters, we face the threat of difficulties not only in law-enforcement but also in culture.
Would it then be acceptable to deny people their freedom on such an algorithmic basis?
If you are feeling gloomy about the automation of higher education, the death of newspapers, and global warming, you might want to talk to someone — and there’s an algorithm for that, too. A new wave of smartphone apps with eccentric titular orthography (iStress, myinstantCOACH, MoodKit, BreakkUp) promise a psychotherapist in your pocket. Thus far they are not very intelligent and require the user to do most of the work — through this second drawback could be said of many human counselors too. Such apps hark back to one of the legendary milestones of ‘artificial intelligence’, the 1960s computer program called ELIZA.
Indeed, a backlash to algorithmic fetishism is already underway — at least in those areas where a dysfunctional algorithm’s effect is not some gradual and hard-to-measure social or cultural deterioration but an immediate difference to the bottom line of powerful financial organizations.
Are we all so brain dead that we are passively becoming technological slaves.
I now that there is little point in closing the gate when the cow has departed, but we got to start somewhere and soon if the next generation is to function as intelligent free people. It cannot be stopped.
At the moment there are a lot of dummy robots existence but if they acquire intentional desires what then. What happens when they can adjust those desires.
It’s too late. Scientist Fiction will be a lie that tells the truth.
At the moment they are no set of values for AI. Just write a little program and wait and see what happens.
HISTORY IS LITTERED WITH THE ANSWER, AND IT’S NOT GOOD.
It is time for the United Nations to establish A CLOUD STRONGROOM, WHERE ALL AI PROGRAMMES ARE REQUIRED TO DEPOSIT A COPY OF THE ORIGINAL PROGRAM OR ALGORITHM WHICH IS AVAILABLE TO ONE AND ALL.
ON DOING SO THE UN ISSUES AGAINST ITS FOUNDING CHARTER.
# A WORLD VALIDATION APPROVED LICENSE.
All human comments appreciate. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WILL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE BE IN THE HANDS OF A HANDFUL OF ECCENTRIC BILLIONAIRES?
(A six minute read)
The big question that is going to confront us is arriving quicker than we think.
Where will AI or machine learning ultimately take us?
Should we allow AI or Machine Learning be simply set by those that directly profit from it (or the machines themselves) or should direction beset by all of us.
If so how?
If machines end up thinking for themselves then what?
If we don’t open our minds to these questions they will be opened for us by many artificial scientists whether we like it or not.
We are now in a race against the growing power of technology and what wisdom we have left.
In my mind, it should be made mandatory that we humans participate in how present-day technology is being used.
It’s not white Algorithms that we should be engaging with but the voices of common sense. We need people who can think and not technologists solely to decide what evolutionary surprises are in the long tall grass.
We can afford to risk letting Ai or Machine Learning breed in real time.
If we do there will be many perverse outcomes that will cause catastrophes.
Algorithms are developing that are exploiting rules and seeking the greatest possible rewards to such extent that we are already losing control to little green boxes called Siri. Alexa, and our smartphones.
Increasingly polarized and radicalized political movements, constant surveillance, leaked health data, manipulation of elections using Facebook data are only the tip of the iceberg.
With computer science ethics is optional.
A conscious Robot built first and fixed later will not work. It needs to learn both social and ethical implications of its actions prior to operating at any level of compatibility.
We, therefore, must ensure that it is impossible for scientists to be able to abdicate the responsibility for their creations.
There is no room for some nerd-sighted geniuses of our day to make a mistake.
I.E. That’s not my problem I just programmed or built it is not good enough.
All of us should be consulted through appointed representatives to determine whether a technology once introduced is usable by all with in the resources available.
All technology programmes whether they are Algorithms for profit or otherwise should under Law be required to submit a verified copy of the program to be held in a virtual world strongroom, accessible to all ensuring transparency and accountability.
The information inside our brains is being extracted quicker and quicker by Ai and it will end up in the hands of a machine owned by a program Android called Connecto with over one hundred billion neurons.
Now you might think that this is total hogwash but Connecto is a Neuroscience research program already going on.
Scientists aren’t sure if technology is destroying our brains but it’s only a question of time before a brain is uploaded to a computer and you may rest assured that only a few will understand what it will produce.
Our apps are taking advantage of our hard-wired needs for security and social interaction and researchers are starting to see how terrible this is for us. The more tapping, clicking and social media posting and scrolling people do, the “noisier” their brain signals become.
Decode our thoughts and our private minds will no longer to private.
If it’s in your mind it is in your brain.
Therefore because all brains are of a similar structure no matter what language, what religion what color your skin is whether you rich or poor we all walk and we all think much the same way we are in danger of a commonality that can be used and exploited to create a social interaction that is common to us all.
All day long, we’re inundated by interruptions and alerts from our devices.
This is why all those Like clicks are helping to create a systemic programme that could lead to being able to decode our thoughts and our personalities.
For me, the question is where is all this leading as we don’t yet quite know what intelligence is.
Is it the brain of Sapiens or the biological structure of plants that have made us subsistence to them or the structure of atoms that are the foundation to both or some other forces that we are unaware of that is the real intelligence.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
Do you ever stop to ask yourself why you should trust the information or decisions that algorithms produce?
AI smartphones will soon be standard, using machine learning from the cloud and sooner than later smartphones will have personalized algorithms that will run even when offline.
These algorithms will be own by the companies that both sell and manufacture the phone and will, therefore, carry inbuilt biases depending on which platforms they are attached to.
Imagine a cheap little device that can compute as much data as all the brains in the world. It will have a deep and irreversible affect on everyone and there is no way of predicting what exactly will happen as the developers of such a device will have no idea what it is doing.
How far do we want to go- Robots that obey no matter what with us blind human as their allies.
Today the world faces a number of hugely complex challenges, from global warming to conflicts to nuclear weapons to rampant inequality. But one the real seismic change is how we are going to respond to each other when we all trusting algorithms to make decisions on our behalf.
Now is it the time to put in place world standards and regulations that govern the use of all biological data.
THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT THE WORLD IS GOING TO NEEDS AS MUCH COMPUTER POWER POSSIBLE TO TACKLE ITS PENDING PROBLEMS.
HOWEVER, IT SHOULD BE A HUMAN RIGHT TO INSPECT THE SOURCE CODES OF ANY TECHNOLOGY THAT HAS BIOLOGICAL DATA IN ITS TARGETED SOFTWARE ALGORITHMS.
IT IS OBVIOUS THAT THE COST OF POWER/ENERGY WILL DRIVE THE USE OF TECHNOLOGY AND ITS SYSTEMS IN THE WORKPLACE AND COMMERCIAL WORLD MARKETS NOT TO MENTION SURVEILLANCE EITHER BY GOVERNMENTS OR OTHER ORGANISATIONS.
NOW IS THE TIME TO START DEMANDING STANDARDS.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
I have posted on this subject before with little reaction.
There is often an implicit connection between discourses of the future and notions of technology, so that if we see a television programme with a title such as Click or Tomorrow’s World we expect that the topic will be technology.
The single most astonishing point about technologies is that they can move from being emblematic of an almost unreachable future to becoming so taken for granted that it feels like a personal slight when they do not work.
In this way technology in and of itself becomes a symbol of being modern is one of the reasons it becomes expressive of, rather than distinct from, cultural values.
Perhaps this is the reason that the relationship between social media and the conceptualisation of the future is still blurred and will remain so.
New technology does not just change the manner in which people go about their everyday lives: It also facilitates our imagination of the future.
All the above speak to a new, imagined future that strives towards idealism. However within the vast field of technology the consequences of AI there are a few devices and algorithms that will battle it out over the next twenty odd years for supremacy.
Will it be Smartphones, or Smart Wearable or Cryptocurrency that will augment reality.
All need software in the form of algorithms to run.
AI algorithms will make the physical and digital world interchangeable.
Practically every non- iPhone smartphone relies on an Android operating system?
One way or the other we are entering an age where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away.
Not surprising.
So it’s not Social media technology platforms like Facebook or Twitter and the others ( that talks a lot about connectivity but not accountability) that will change the world but the power of ever where at once.
That requires total knowledge on all aspects of life.
Google or should I say the Google Cloud is trying to achieve this.
Which is possibly both the best and the worst thing that could happen.
So let’s look at a few of the top combats in the world of technology in no particular order.
( Obviously it would take page after page to give a comprehensive insight so I am only going to give a few lines to each.)
Microsoft Corporation:(LinkedIn -Skype – Mojang – Yammer- Hotmail)
It operates through the following segments:
Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing.
Market Cap As of May 2017
$507.5 Billion
Microsoft could be worth $1 trillion by 2020 — if not sooner. It is moving further and further into a digital landscape for everything from movies, music, books, games and software.
Twitter: Owned mostly by Venture Capitalist:
An online breaking news and social networking service. Using Twitter bots, (live streaming video.) With 450 million monthly active users it is ranked the eleventh most visited website. It has mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows 10, Windows Phone,BlackBerry, and Nokia S40.
Capable of influencing public opinion about culture, products and political agendas by automatically generating mass amounts of tweets through imitating human communication. World leaders and their diplomats have taken note of Twitter’s rapid expansion and have been increasingly utilizing Twitter diplomacy. Television programs use it to amplify their programs.
It could become the emergency communication system for track epidemics or sensor for automatic response to natural disasters.
Amazon:
The largest Internet retailer in the world. The company is now worth more than $560 billion. Electronic commerce and cloud computing company.
Amazon announced that it would acquire Whole Foods, a high-end supermarket chain with over 400 stores, for $13.4 billion.
eBay Inc: (PayPal)
There are now literally millions of items bought and sold every day on eBay, all over the world. For every $100 spent online worldwide, it is estimated that $14 is spent on eBay. What’s more, eBay doesn’t care who you are, where you live, or what you look like:
The race is on to control mobile payments and the upside remains enormous:
Apple:(Shazam – Emagic- Siri – Beats Electronics – Next Inc.- Novauris-PrimeSense -The Bottom Line – Invest in Yourself.)
Quarterly revenue of $52.6 billion 2017.
Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV. Apple’s four software platforms — iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS.
Facebook:(Whats App and Instagram Oculus VR.)
A publicly traded company worth more than $500 billion.
More than two billion monthly users. It is developing a new social platform in virtual reality called Facebook Spaces, which it believes will form the foundation for the future of communication.
Tencent and Alibaba: aren’t far from the half-trillion dollar mark either.
These are the main contenders as we know them to-day
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So the Question is:
Which one if any of the above will be the top dog by 2025.
Will it be : ( All knowledge, All Gossip, All purchases, All Apps/ Software)
At this point you will have noticed that I have left out the company mentioned in Title of this posting.
While in the future devices may be more ubiquitous in all corners
of the globe, inequality will therefore remain in terms of the services
available in certain locations and the lack of attention paid to the needs
and desires of certain populations.
Companies like Amazon and Google will be fighting to lock you into one voice ecosystem. You may have to declare your allegiance for Alexa, Siri, Cortana or Google Assistant.
One could say that:
Amazon represents de-socialising of commerce. Face book represents self ego. Twitter represents myths and gossip. Apple represents profit. E bay represents selling and buying of stuff, Google represents doming down.
All are represented on Social Media which is being used in ways that shape politics, business, world culture, education, careers, innovation, and more.
Social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have increasingly been adopted by politicians, political activists and social movements as a means to engage, organize and communicate with citizens.
So is the power and the winner going to be Social Media which is owned by the Internet.
I think Not.
In short, one consequence of this prediction is that the very idea of ‘social media’ might gradually disappear; instead we simply have an increasingly diverse set of media and increasingly sophisticated exploitation of the possibilities these media have created, including other trends such as obtaining information, sharing information or making communication more visual.
Social media is slowly killing real activism and replacing it with ‘slacktivism, and we all know where that might lead us. Awareness is not translating into real change. Support is limited to pressing the ‘Like’ button or sharing content which absolve them from responsibility to act.
The role of social media as symbolic of the future may already be in decline.
“The election of Donald J. Trump is perhaps the starkest illustration yet that across the planet, social networks are helping to fundamentally rewire human society.”
The one I left out, with 65% of all online searches – is Google.
Google has expanded far beyond its original claim to fame as a search engine.
Google and their competitor platforms are programming the world for profit. The reach of this technology giant is so vast it is hard to imagine an area of modern life it has not touched.
Alphabet owns Google, as well as many other companies. However, Google itself owns companies.
Google has reorganized itself into multiple companies, separating its core Internet business from several of its most ambitious projects while continuing to run all of these operations under a new umbrella company called Alphabet.
Google owns more than 200 companies, including those involved in robotics, mapping, video broadcasting, telecommunications and advertising.
Simply put, the company has been visionary in recognizing the income potential for information products.
Their profit seeking algorithms ensuring that every recommendation, from whether you should buy this or that, stay here or there, fly or drive, connect to this or that, live or die, will earn them a few cents.
By 2025 all will be connected to the Cloud. With one winner.
The Google Monopoly.
Once a Google client always a Google client.
How do you stop using Google?
Already impossible.
Move and your G Mail becomes blocked mail.
Say anything on you website that smacks about google, you site gets flooded with google ads.
It is becoming more and more difficult for anyone to extricate themselves from the clutches of any of its platforms as deactivating means little or nothing.
Social media apps ensure you are still engaged and if they don’t work your friends and family smartphones are searching for you nonstop supplying little hits of dopamine. ( Someone likes you photo or you are mentioned in their contact. It’s a social validation feedback loop..exploiting a vulnerability in humans psychology.)
Will Social Media destroy or rain back Google dominance?
The whole Social media thing is turning into an addictive cancer effecting our brains and tearing our emotions and attentiveness a sunder which in turn is encouraging self-segregation and exacerbating social divides.
Every facet of our life is touched or being integrated by the social media today.
In this sense social media has become an instrument of democratic renewal.
On the other hand it is evident that this uncensored and unmonitored medium of communication is exposing us all to a gradual breakdown of social cohesion and the destruction of our traditional value systems.
Though the advantages of social media are emphasized quite often, as opposed to its negative aspects which are very rarely discussed.
I feel that this will change in the coming years.
All said, social media is here to stay. The power of social media is exponential. Numbers tell the story.
Just as difficult as forecasting the future is knowing the present.
After all not everything moves over time to become more functional
or efficient.
It is obviously going to be hard to predict the future for something as
dynamic as social media. How can we know what social media has already become for oil workers in Alaska, tribal people in Amazonia and the nouveau riche of Moscow?
Unless we take responsibility to ensure that our understanding of social media and its impacts are constantly evaluated with what’s happening in the world. Once we appreciate that knowing social media is not an exercise in delineating the properties of a set of platforms, but rather of acknowledging what the world has already turned these into, by way of content, the immensity of the problem is revealed.
So it will be important to continue monitoring and exploring the extent to which collective action is individualised through social media use.
= Can the use of social media for campaigning help to bring about genuine and lasting empowerment; or does it serve largely to re-inforce pre-existing relationships?
= Is social media a means of building dialogue and consensus in diverse communities or does its use encourage increased fragmentation or, alternatively, a homogeneity of interests?
= Can meaningful impact measures be developed that can be used by small, under-resourced organisations at local level (or indeed within larger voluntary organisations)?
Social media is seen in much of the literature as a means of promoting dialogue beyond the mainstream media. Voluntary and community groups have been criticized, however, for using social media as little more than a means of broadcasting.
Why might this be the case – and does it matter?
Social media expands our capacity but, it does not change our
essential humanity.
It is used to repair the rupture sustained by separated transnational families or for overcoming previously frustrated desires to share photographs more easily.
It allows couples living in different countries who ‘sort of’ live together online;
Soon, however, things move on to new realms.
Should a clear relationship be expected between the (apparently empowering) use of social media in mobilizing large national and global movements, and its use at the micro-political neighborhood level.
An increasing number of social media platforms can be aligned with the diversity of the social groups to which we might want to relate.
Social media however has little impact on the overall outcomes in terms of empowerment, equalities or social justice.
However powerful and important the advent of social media has become, it would be hard to place it ahead of the impact and significance of smartphones, within which social media platforms may often be seen as just another kind of app.
It is smartphones that facilitate social media’s importance as a mix of polymedia, making clear the range of media possibilities as they lie side by side within one easily accessible device.
It is the Smartphone that drives social media input and out put.
Will that will be the One Winner, changing our sense of collective memory, creating a new form or combination of internal and external faculties for retaining information.
As Smartphones become smarter, they may well accelerate the dissolving of social media into this wider array of communicative possibilities.
The increasing ubiquity of the smart phone is the catalyst for more general usage of social media. Recognizing that this may not necessarily impact on any other aspect of inequality should not prevent us from recognizing that there is in one aspect an increasing and significant equality:
The more individuals live within culturally imposed constraints on communication, the more a new technology may mean that what was previously forbidden now becomes possible.
This fluid mix of communicative forms suits the way users flow between activities such as talking, gaming, texting, masturbating, learning and purchasing. The social connection is more important than how well a platform meets their needs.
Comparative anthropology creates particular varieties of knowledge of both breadth and depth. What makes these essential within the context of our complex modern world, however, is that these are forms of understanding based on empathy.
Merely having a smart phone provides a significant change with respect to the capacities of its owner.
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What happens to our online materials at death.
Finally: Capitalism can never be ethical.
There are no laws requiring Google to be fair.
If we don’t open our eyes soon technology ( whether it’s Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon Inc or some equivalent service) is going to F—k us all from some Cloud or other that is just over the horizon.
Just look at the annual release of new smartphones.
Of course there are other things in the long tall grass waiting to caught us by the short and hairy and most have being around for yonks. War, Natural Disasters, Greed, Inequality and the like.
My advice is to beware of the man with a smartphone. Because knowledge is not knowledge until someone else knows that one knows.
Google it.
All human comments much appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.