We live in a world that is being connected and disconnected at the same time.
Two related facts.
But don’t worry we now have Algorithms that both filter and recommend.
All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last.
The reality is that there’s no way of knowing where our generation is going in terms of technology and our reliance on it.
The year 2018 will be the year in which human interaction decreases the more technology increases. While social media fosters an environment of connectedness and belonging in the digital world, it also forces a disconnect between people in the real world.
With false news and social media, words are on their last legs, with print for the high jump, we will have more arse holes 2018 twittering shaping the world.
Where two or three words gather together there is a great danger that thought might be present. However we once again don’t have to worry because we have the option to log off and unplug anytime we want, so it’s up to us to decide if we want to engage with the actual world or the virtual one.
Technology may well be is a societal advancement that has enabled our generation to do things previous generations never would have thought possible.
However:
The biggest problem we have is accepting each other’s differences.
“Technology makes us forget what we know about life.”
82 per cent of smart phone users said they rarely (if ever) powered off their phones last year, while less than 43 per cent of 13- to 18-year-olds saw any value in ever going unplugged.
Why?
This is the Eternal Question to which there is no answer, and yet the only one that has to be asked.
Take a look around you.
Every day we becoming more and more desensitized. Save this Save that while saving the planet is being left to technology.
Rapid progress in machine learning has raised the prospect that algorithms will one day be able to do most or all of the mental tasks currently performed by humans.
But the real problem is how one might design a highly intelligent machine to pursue realistic human goals safely.
This is very poorly understood.
Even if advanced machine intelligence does not get ‘out of control’, it is likely to be very socially disruptive and it is more likely it could be used as a destabilizing weapon of war.
It seems that most of us are in a mental wasteland inhabited by those upon whom the portcullis ( A sudden blotting out of all normal thought) has fallen.
How did we get to a place where the content on our phones is more interesting than the world around us?
In today’s society, scrolling through Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram has taken precedence over the real events scrolling through our daily lives.
Being “connected” to machinery 24/7 is affecting our ability to connect with our lives and the people around us.
Mechanical devices bait us into a make-believe life, as we are slowly being pulled away from a sense of who we are and what really matters.
Modern life is making us lonelier.
It’s not the technology that’s the problem; it’s us for abusing it.
We’ve become more and more antisocial by relying on technology too heavily.
Maybe if we look up and away from the flashing images and colors on our most recent Safari search, we will actually enjoy the company of those around us. So instead of counting the number of likes, count the memories in your life, because at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.
For the foreseeable future, it won’t be possible to take people out of the decision-making process, but the year 2018 will with the power of Profit Seeking Algorithms push us further down the road of hypnotic trance.
Technology is a valuable tool when used correctly. However, the law has to catch up with privacy and safety issues, not mention profit seeking algorithms.
We’ve all heard about the power of algorithms—but Algorithms to Live is in my book to be avoided at all costs, if we are to value what is vital to us all.
They are creating a world of such inequality that the scariest thing is the immense possibilities of these unregulated Algorithms will turn us and all that is necessary for a sustainable life into commodities to be exploited.
What can be done:
Education, Education is the only solution.
By this I mean education not for the market place but for the foundation of knowledge. Not just a narrow streamlined pipeline of mundane thoughts which doesn’t let you think outside the box and do things on your own.
Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, Ecology, to name a few.
Dramatic changes are inevitable, we need to accept the fact on ground level that our education models are broken and paralyzed.
Perhaps we might well need computer algorithms to select the best candidate?
There’s no magic formula, freedom and dignity will not be found on social media, nor computed by algorithms.
There are too many parts of today’s conversations that can not be translated through technology.
Tearing apart the nation states and the world with ALGORITHMS is a
Disaster waiting to happen. No Robot with a brain full of algorithms is
going to have the the ability of an artist to have human empathy and an
appreciation of history; while also having the savvy self-awareness to
understand that their work merely takes its place in a greater culture
at large. Such art brings comfort in our modern secular world: where
spirituality seems to live in a foreign universe of yesteryear.
You’re more than a number.
how the mythical and quotidian usually overlap to
the point where the two become indistinguishable.
So join a club and organizations to make real friends.
Happy New year.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE: THERE IS ONE THING WE TAKE FOR GRANTED: AND THAT IS TIME.
( A ten minute Christmas Read)
When I decided to post this blog about what one might envisage to see in the future it turned out that it is much more difficult than one thinks to imagine what the world will be like in twenty years time.
Time will tell, but what time is it. Do you know? I don’t know what moment in time is it right now. Was there a yesterday 13.7 billion years ago? We don’t know.
If there was something that caused the big bang there has to have being something before it. Was it time? If so has time always being around, going at the same speed, or its it.
Most of us feel that time moved very slowly when we were children and is gradually speeding up as we grow older. We use to become conscious of this speeding up around our late twenties, not anymore.
The assumption behind time is that we continually experience our lives as a whole, and perceive each day, week, month or year becoming more insignificant in relation to the whole.
This is true as we enter what I call Quasior time.
These days the speed of time seems to be largely determined by how much information our minds absorb and process – the more information there is, the slower time goes. This is because in states of absorption our attention narrows to one small focus and we block out information from our surroundings.
So is time as simple as we think it is.
I suppose it doesn’t matter how quickly you chase after or run towards time or light, either; that speed you view it traveling at will always be the same.
Anyway, when it comes to technology our time now has a tendency to dream optimistic futures. At this point it is tempting to roll out the usual clichés – food pills, flying cars and bases on the moon – but the reality will probably be less exciting.
For instance we could be eating insects in 2037. Falling in love with an artificial intelligence (AI) operating robot that has Scarlett Johansson’s voice. To bond is human.
Our DNA could be taken at birth and all defects remedied, altered or catered for.
or
Quantum computers and other varieties of information handling will be totally integrated in all of our possessions as well as ourselves.
Far fetched it may well be.
The world in 2037 will probably be much like it is today, but smarter and more automatic. However humans are driven by the same basic needs as we were 150 years ago, food, sleep, sex, the feeling of being appreciated and loved.
Will this change in the next twenty or 150 years? No.
So what can we reasonably expect?
In general the inventions for the last twenty years have been a human strive for freedom and communication which now appears to be flawed.
We are indeed becoming more independent and less constrained by the old social norms and this will have an impact on the relationships we form.
There will not be the three letters at the end of your signature that predicts your future. Replaced by robots; doctors outclassed by algorithms that can plug into vast medical databases; and travel agents wiped out by trip-planning, flight-booking web services.
Chatbots technology has and is drastically changed the world we live in and the shift has changed business, which means it will impact employees and society as a whole just the same..
Ten years ago, social networks like Facebook didn’t exist. Ten years before that, the Internet was still something that no one quite understood.
With technology continuing to evolve on a weekly basis seniority will no longer guarantee you a job and office politics will slowly be thrown out the window. No jobs for life.
We live in the information age; in the last five years there has been more data created since the beginning of mankind.
Many of the degrees students are acquiring these days will have little relevance to the next in 20 years. Technologically, the 20-year jump from 2017 to 2037 will be huge. Elements of our world will change beyond recognition, creating new professions we can’t yet envisage.
The web has made the concept of informal education to become a phenomenon that everyone needs to be aware of.
Telehealth platforms will make in-home patient monitoring the norm. Genome mapping will lead to personalize medicines and 3D-printing printed replacement organs will be for sale on E Bay/Amazon.
The cloud, tablets and interactive PDFs will become mainstream.
Combine all of this into quantum computer technology with AI and we are well on the way into uncharted territory of exponential power growth, of self-replicating AI.
A ‘economic, social and environmental apocalypse.’
Technology underpins everything we’ve looked at so far – food, health, relationships and work.
The best decision’ is based on the best available information, and the best information is not the opinions of vested interests.
If we don’t get leadership right, all the bright shiny objects in the future will dangle beyond our reach.
With technology advances, answers are quickly becoming a commodity.
In the future the world will be in your pocket yet still you will ask
‘Who am I?’
We will not be able to fool the mind in the way that no matter how real the experience will feel, you will always know that it haven’t happen for real.
On the other hand.
Today you can Google – just about anything – just imagine how efficient “search” will be in 20 years.
Internal systems will capture corporate learning like never before, allowing you to tap deep into the set of corporate experiences.
Of much greater value will be the ability to ask the right questions.
Homes and offices will collect and process data.
Advertising will know who you are, who you were, and who you will be.
Buildings will have artificial intelligence ‘personalities’ and will be able to ‘talk’ to people with video tiles, color-changing materials and even electronic fibers in mats and other soft furnishings.
We may even have the ability to transcend our human bodies and live entirely in the cloud, but that’s not to say we will want to do so on any large-scale.
The decentralization movement is already becoming the major human rights issue of this decade and will do more to free mankind than all but a handful of humanity can contemplate yet.
It’s not quite the time for your brain-wave analyser to say ” Happy Christmas to your robot.”
Twenty years from now there will be many changes in medicine, technology and in environment, hopefully a better state for the poor people in the world, challenges in the climate change, or maybe some combination of economic, social and environmental apocalypse will cause the collapse of existing infrastructure and telecommunications will be back to pencil and paper or something even more primitive.
Whatever happens next, it will be a great time to be alive.
If anything is impervious to technology its life.
Just how insane things have gotten we might be in for a large dose of entropies.
Happy CHRISTMAS ONE IN ALL.
All human comments appreciated, all like clicks chucked in the bin.
We all urgently need to consider the implications of allowing commercial interests and governments to use algorithms to analyse our habits: Not because they are becoming all-powerful, that might turn into a source of repression, but because they are exploiting us all for profit.
They make decisions about us and on our behalf.
They are now integrated into our lives. We’re already halfway towards a world where algorithms run nearly everything. As their power intensifies, wealth will concentrate towards them. They will ensure the 1 per cent-99 per cent divide gets larger.
If you’re not part of the class attached to algorithms, then you will struggle.
On the one hand, they are good because they free up our time and do mundane processes on our behalf, but the problem is that when we outsource thinking to machines we are really outsourcing thinking to the organizations that run the machines.
At the moment ignoring the fact that they are driving the cost of living up it is not about algorithms per se, but about the way society is structured with regard to data use and data privacy.
As technology evolves, everything is going up in price.
Raw materiel’s are going up leap and bounds because of a dictatorship of data, that is concentrating on how to generate the most profit.
As profit seeking algorithms power intensifies, wealth will concentrate towards them.
They do so not out of the goodness of their little algorithmic hearts, but rather because they earn a “fee” for this service.
There are many different types of algorithms at play, with different intentions and impacts, however there is one thing that is becoming quite clear day by day that they are driving the human market makers out of business by being smarter and faster.
They are upending the nature of business, how government works and the way we live, from healthcare to education.
We should not allow ourselves to become so reliant on them – and who, if anyone, is policing their use. It’s impossible to do this perfectly. How are they being used to access and interpret “our” data? And by whom?
It won’t be long before big data denies us a bank loan or considers us unfit for a surgical operation, but we can’t learn the explicit reasons because the variables that went in programming them were so myriad and complex?
There is currently an awkward marriage between data and algorithms.
Big data is even change how we think about the world and our place in it. (Penalizing people based on what they are predicted to do, not what the have done.)
Taken in the widest sense, algorithms OWNED BY MONOPOLIES are now responsible for the vast majority of activity on modern stock markets.
The well-being of our pensions, shareholdings, savings etc – are now largely determined by algorithmic vagaries.
Retail algorithms don’t scare me as we still have free will. However Algorithms are increasingly determining our collective futures.
Wherever we use computers, we rely on algorithms: With so much data around, and the ability to process it, big data is the bedrock of new companies profit.
Can we regulate them? I think not.
If you were leader of your country, what would you do?
I would have, Science, technology and inclusive innovation through education, on the national agenda. Education free and equal for all.
Unfortunately this will not happen. Even if it did Profit seeking Algorithms will still be exploiting every weakness.
There is only one defense.
WE MUST RE NATIONALIZE OUR SOCIAL SERVICES, SO ALL BENEFIT NOT JUST THE FEW. Nationalize what is important, Health, Power, Water, Education.
The key outcome of nationalization is the redirection of revenues to the country’s government instead of private operators who may export funds with no benefit to the host country.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
It would be fair to say that most of us live in a cloud of our own importance.
However that cloud is disappearing into any other cloud which we are all creating with little or no control.
Our Ideology of normative beliefs, conscious and unconscious ideas, that are individual, group or society are under attack by this cloud. The reality is that temporary outages and slower-speed broadband that are a minor nuisance today can and will become a critical issue.
It represents the consummate disruptor to structure; a pervasive social and economic network that will soon connect and define more of the world than any other political, social, or economic.
It is the first mega trend of the twenty-first century, one that will shape the way we will address virtually every challenge we face for at least the next 100 years.
It is where we will all live, work, and play in the coming decades.
The Cloud is where your kids go to dive into online play. It’s where you meet and make friends in social networks. It’s where companies find the next big idea. It’s where political campaigns are won and lost.
You might think that this is all hog wash.
( But it appears that New Zealand does not have any politicians with brains of their own that they can rely on.
It has just recently appointed the worlds first AI virtual politician with the wonderful name of SAM. “Sam your man ” with a memory of an elephant he never forgets. ” Sam considers everyone’s position when making decisions.”
Well F… me Nick Gerristen ( The creator of Sam) there is a lot of bias in the cloud and AI algorithms are riddled with it.
You say “SAM is an enabler.” I agree. Make sure you feed it as no doubt Google will want to buy it. I see you love BIG ideas, so perhaps you should introduce Sam to Sophia and you might have a bunch of little Samson’s.
Make sure he knows all about NXT Fuels, and by all means give him a bash. I am sure the Maori would be delighted. By the way, being a politician I would have named it, Ākina. ( A Māori word meaning a call for bold action. It also conveys a spirit of watchful and active encouragement, helping others to identify pathways through their challenges.)
Back to the more serious subject:
It is time that we started to recognize some of the risks associated with this cloud technology, so as to avoid the possibility of future issues being decided by Sam and his like, who are servants of the hardware and software resources made available on the Internet as managed third-party services.
The world and us who live on it are becoming highly dependent on our Internet providers, so much so that it wont be long before we will have a fully cloud-based world.
Since no proper standards for cloud computing are set yet, it becomes almost impossible for anyone to ascertain the quality of services they have been provided with. So in the near future we will not be able to make wise decisions while choosing your personal service provider.
This, in turn, enables providers to charge customers fees proportional to their network, storage, and processing utilization.
Most issues start from the fact that the user loses control of his or her data, because it is stored on a computer belonging to someone else.
Many cloud providers can share information with third parties if necessary for purposes of law and order even without a warrant.
Although cloud computing enhances content accessibility, this access is “increasingly grounded in the virtually monopolistic privatization of the cloud which provides this access”.
This access, necessarily mediated through a handful of companies, ensures a progressive privatization of global cyberspace.
So we must ask the question why are we and our governments sustaining the quasi-monopolies that filter what we see depending on commercial and ideological interests they have.
The legal and regulatory landscape around cloud computing is by no means static. There are new laws being proposed that could change the responsibilities of both cloud computing tenants and providers.This creates new challenges in understanding how laws apply to a wide variety of information management scenarios.
As with all things surrounding profit it’s inevitable that some could will burst or simply stop providing the service if they deem it isn’t profitable for them. Often, large companies will enter the market but leave it once the expected profit doesn’t materialize. If this is the core business of the cloud supplier, it might be willing to continue operating for longer with a smaller profit.
Surely if we use a cloud infrastructure sourced from a cloud services provider, we must impose all legal or regulatory requirements that apply to any enterprise.
THIS WITH SELF LEARNING ALGORITHMS IS NOT POSSIBLE.
THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY OF ACHIEVING ANY CONTROL:
All technology must be vetted to ensure it complies to humanity core values.
It should be compulsory for it to carry a ATR World Certificate.
Accountable, Transparent, Reversible.
If we are to have any hope of tackling any of Social, Political, Economic and Environmental Issues That Affect Us we need a beanie Cloud not a cloud for profit.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
(If you want a future worth living here is a crucial half an hour read)
Most of us know that we are in the middle of a technological upheaval that will transform the way society is organized and the beast we are unleashing can be used for good and bad.
Long before what Elon Musk and Mr Hawking predict there is a much more immediate threat when it comes to AI. The holy grail of AI the microchip will surpass the power of the human, creating a whole new world of Quantum computing, one in which machines think and work in ways indiscernible to the human brain.
Rest assured that Capitalism will concentrate AI global wealth to a few and the disparity effects will be sever and this will happen faster and faster with a massive dislocation in the lower skills in society.
Just imagine an AI that learns to navigate the web environment.
It will not be Twitter voting in Donald Trumps or Social media promoting Populist Parties it will be an army of AI bot web trolls harassing what we now call Social Media to the point that there will be no true public opinion worth its salt.
Putin recently said AI leaders will rule the world. He is right. It will create even larger power inequality.
We are well on the way to one way flow of technology with Data as the rocket engine.
We are already using AI without even knowing it.
The Capitalistic world will come under bigger AND BIGGER cyber security issues, with terrorist acquiring clandestine powers that will be unverifiable.
So I ask the question are we prepared for AIs that start building their own normative systems – their own rules about what is acceptable and what is unacceptable for a machine.
Remember using your face to unlock your smart phone is unlocking your mind. A world with facial ID software is one that will spiral out of control.
Gay, Straight, Terrorist, Left or Right, Lidel or Sainsburys, Male or Female, Criminal or not, Rich or Poor.
Regardless of what we do, what’s clear, is that if we want technology to do what we want it to do we need for all technological advancements to be vetted by an Self Financing, Transparent, Independent World Organisation, other than the United Nations.
The United Nations recently opens a new talking shop center in the Netherlands to monitor artificial intelligence and predict possible threats.
“Artificial Intelligence has both the potential to accelerate progress towards a dignified life, in peace and prosperity, said UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
When in fact it also has the potential to destroy what is left of our world.
The United nations Technology for Development (UN CSTD) acknowledges that many technological and development gaps still remain. A Joke.
The real question is not the gaps but who or what should take control and overlook its development.
It is my contention that the UN is total the wrong Organisation to provide a neutral platform for international dialogue, which can build a common understanding of emerging technologies.
However it is best placed to set up a totally independent Organ separate from the UN that is responsible to the people of the world not to the 5 stock piles of nuclear weapons or the developing technology.
The opportunity to use AI to solve some of the world’s grandest challenges cannot be left to Government Regulation, The Free Market, The arms race, or to Capitalist Greed especially in the form of multi global monopoly corporations, like Apple, Microsoft to name but two.
Why?
Here are a few reasons:
Because algorithms know pretty well what we do, what we think and how we feel—possibly even better than our friends and family or even ourselves.
In fact, we are being remotely controlled ever more successfully in this manner. The more is known about us, the less likely our choices are to be free and not predetermined by others.
It won’t stop there.
Some software platforms are moving towards “persuasive computing.”
In the future, using sophisticated manipulation technologies, these platforms will be able to steer us through entire courses of action, be it for the execution of complex work processes or to generate free content for Internet platforms, from which corporations earn billions.
The trend goes from programming computers to programming people.
These technologies are also becoming increasingly popular in the world of politics.
Under the label of “nudging,” and on massive scale, governments are trying to steer citizens towards healthier or more environmentally friendly behavior by means of a “nudge”—a modern form of paternalism.
This appears to be a sort of digital scepter that allows one to govern the masses efficiently, without having to involve citizens in democratic processes.
The magic phrase is “big nudging”, which is the combination of big data with nudging.
To many, believe that this could overcome vested interests and optimize the course of the world?
If so, than citizens could be governed by a data-empowered “wise king”, who would be able to produce desired economic and social outcomes almost as if with a digital magic wand.
Nobody knows how the digital magic wand, that is to say the manipulative nudging technique, should best be used. What would have been the right or wrong measure often is apparent only afterwards.
Artificial intelligence is no longer programmed line by line, but is now capable of learning, thereby continuously developing itself.
Algorithms can now recognize handwritten language and patterns almost as well as humans and even complete some tasks better than them. They are able to describe the contents of photos and videos. Today 70% of all financial transactions are performed by algorithms.
News content is, in part, automatically generated. This all has radical economic consequences: in the coming 10 to 20 years around half of today’s jobs will be threatened by algorithms. 40% of today’s top 500 companies will have vanished in a decade.
One thing is clear: the way in which we organize the economy and society and the world will change fundamentally.
The automation of society is next.
With this, society is at a crossroads, which promises great opportunities, but also considerable risks. If we take the wrong decisions it could threaten our greatest historical achievements.
Every minute we produce hundreds of thousands of Google searches and Facebook posts. These contain information that reveals how we think and feel.
It is estimated that in 10 years’ time there will be 150 billion networked measuring sensors, 20 times more than people on Earth. Then, the amount of data will double every 12 hours. Many companies are already trying to turn this Big Data into Big Money.
Do we want to live in a point scoring loyalty citizen card China / Singapore world.
Today, Singapore is seen as a perfect example of a data-controlled society. What started as a program to protect its citizens from terrorism has ended up influencing economic and immigration policy, the property market and school curricula.
According to recent reports, every Chinese citizen will receive a so-called ”Citizen Score”, which will determine under what conditions they may get loans, jobs, or travel visa to other countries. This kind of individual monitoring would include people’s Internet surfing and the behavior of their social contacts.
With consumers facing increasingly frequent credit checks and some online shops experimenting with personalized prices, we are on a similar path in the West.
It is also increasingly clear that we are all in the focus of institutional surveillance. This was revealed in 2015 when details of the British secret service’s “Karma Police” program became public, showing the comprehensive screening of everyone’s Internet use.
Is Big Brother now becoming a reality?
Everything started quite harmlessly.
Search engines and recommendation platforms began to offer us personalized suggestions for products and services. This information is based on personal and meta-data that has been gathered from previous searches, purchases and mobility behavior, as well as social interactions.
We don’t want A.I. to engage in cyber bullying, stock manipulation or terrorist threats;
We don’t want Governments to release A.I. systems that entrap people into committing crimes.
We don’t want autonomous vehicles that drive through red lights, or worse, A.I. weapons that violate international treaties.
We don’t want – My A.I. did it. Should not excuse illegal behavior.
We don’t want A.I. systems producing fake tweets, producing fake news videos.
We don’t want A.I. weaponizing, any A.I. must have an impregnable “off switch.” It should be illegal to buy, sell or manufacture weaponized AI.
We don’t want AI High Frequency Trading, Unregulated Drones, Unregulated Genetic Engineering or AI Biological Weapons.
We don’t want A.I. be let out into the wild.
We don’t want A.I. Amazon Echo — a “smart speaker” present in an increasing number of homes — is privy to, or the information that your child may inadvertently divulge to a toy such as an A.I. Barbie.
We don’t want seemingly innocuous A.I. housecleaning robots create maps of our homes.
WE DO WANT.
A.I. system to clearly disclose that it is not human.
A.I. system subject to the full gamut of laws that apply to its human operator. This rule would cover private, corporate and government systems.
A.I. systems clearly labeled as such.
A.I. system that cannot retain or disclose confidential information without explicit approval from the source of that information.
Elon Musk recently urged the nation’s governors to regulate artificial intelligence “before it’s too late.”
He is too late, the A.I. horse has left the barn, and our best bet is to attempt to steer it. We must make the right decisions now, not to-morrow.
An AI Future: It’s Not What You Think.
It will not share the same sense of human empathy.
The emergence of a super intelligence / or full autonomy human fallibility must be taken out of the equation.
It will not supplement natural intelligence, you will not be able to upload your brain to the internet. It’s time to dispel these Myths…a set of relatively small failures combined together to create a catastrophe is on the horizon.
Look at the latest research from cognitive science, translate that into an algorithm, and add it to an existing system.
We are trying to engineer AI without understanding intelligence or cognition first. But as AI designs get even more complex and computer processors even faster, their skills will improve. That will lead us to give them more responsibility, even as the risk of unintended consequences rises. We know that “to err is human,” so it is likely impossible for us to create a truly safe system.
We have not yet come up with a clear idea of what we want AI to do or become. This must be achieved as a matter of grave urgency as today.
Whoever gets to level 6 automation first decides for everyone else what the rules are. Otherwise known as the “Golden Rule for AI”, that is, who owns the Gold, therefore rules!
Can we avoid being wiped off the face of the Earth by machines we helped create?
Diversity has a value all in itself, and that the universe is so ridiculously large that humankind’s existence in it probably doesn’t matter at all.
Fortunately, we need not justify our existence quite yet.
Saying we embrace diversity and actually doing it are two different things—as are saying we want to save the planet and successfully doing so.
We all, individually and as a society, need to prepare for that nightmare scenario, using the time we have left to demonstrate why our creations should let us continue to exist.
If we don’t find a way to distribute our wealth better, we will have fueled capitalism with artificial intelligence laborers serving only very few who possess all the means of production.
Once a new technology is introduced it can’t be uninvented.
If we think in terms of decades then Global warming, inequality and the disruption to the global job market by AI loom large.
AS STATED BY YUVAL NOAH HARARI IN HIS CLOSING OBSERVATIONS IN HIS BOOK HOMO DEUS ( which I quote here below and recommend to all)
” If we take the really grand view of life, all other problems and developments are overshadowed by three interlinked processes.
1) Science is converging on an all-encompassing dogma, which says that organisms are algorithms, and life is data processing.
2) Intelligence is decoupling from consciousness.
3) Non- conscious but highly intelligent algorithms may soon know us better than we know ourselves.
These three processes raise three key questions.
Are Organisms really just algorithms, and is life really just data processing?
2. What’s more valuable- intelligence or consciousness?
3. What will happen to society, politics and daily life when non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms know us better that we know ourselves? ”
Concentration of wealth leads to concentration of power combined with AI that naturally lends itself to a winner takes all.
All human comments appreciated by a human, all like clicks whether generated by AI or not chucked in the bin.
Science is converging on an all-encompassing dogma, which says that organism are algorithms a, and life is data processing. Intelligence is decoupling from consciousness. Non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms may soon know us better than we know ourselves.
Every day we absorb countless data bits.
This relentless flow of data gives rise to new inventions, disruptions that nobody plans, controls or fully comprehends.
For instance no one knows where global politics is heading, or how the global economy functions or what the climate is doing.
For all intensive purpose we don’t give a fuck providing we don’t pick up a virus, and even then our wireless brains want to remain in the flow of data.
Algorithms are constantly watching us, monitoring our thoughts,and feelings to such an extent that the meaning of life is disappearing into the invisible hand of Dataisim called Google, Face Book. Twitter and their disciples.
Experiences are valueless if not shared with an Algorithm on a smart phone.
No wonder we are all busy converting our experiences into data.
Your Dog or Cat or Fridge, might soon have a Facebook or Twitter account.
By equating the human experience with data patterns it is undermining the main source of authority, meaning of life, and this shift will not be just a philosophical revolution, it will be a practical revolution.
After a few hundred years of data flow your feelings which were once your best algorithms will have being replaced by a filtered personal platform or platforms all attached to the Cloud for an annual fee.
Its good-by democracy, elections. Have you had your DNA sequenced, are you wearing a biometric device that is connected to your smart phone.
The personal cloud god algorithm will tell you who to marry, what career to follow, what to put in your fridge.
All of this begs the question are we humans developing a seed algorithm that when it combines with machine learning will develop its own path, going where no human has gone before or can follow.
We have no idea whether it will develop consciousness and subjective experience.
Before we are reduced to non- conscious algorithms would it not be prudent to establish a New World organisation that vets all technology against our core values as humans. ( See previous posts)
What prevents us from collaborating in a global effort to solve climate change, or any other problem is probable the same reason why we are being exploited by Social media. Humans are deeply divided by nationalism and sectarian beliefs.. However with knowledge comes responsibility. So this failure is a global moral failure, as well as a failure of political will.
The world is changing faster than ever before with us relinquishing authority to crowd wisdom/data in the form of social media that is being mining by capitalist organisations which is governed by algorithms.
While inequality on all fronts grows and our world organisations become irrelevant we are flowed with irrelevant information.
The answer is bleakly simple: We cannot get these issues on our political radar screens without a huge prolong popular uprising. It looks likehumanity will soon be a ripple within the cosmic data flow.
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We might not yet be living in a world that is run by Google but the way we are accepting artificial intelligence algorithms we will soon if not already be living in a world run by a Google Algorithm brain.
The complex mathematical formulas of Algorithms are playing a growing role in all walks of life: deciding who gets a job, how police resources are deployed, who gets insurance at what cost, or who is on a ‘no fly’ list.
There decisions are often based on data collected about people, sometimes without their knowledge inferring all sorts of things about you from your digital crumbs.
They are being used – experimentally – to write news articles from raw data, while Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was helped by behavioral marketers who used an algorithm to locate the highest concentrations of ‘persuadable voters.
Completely lacking any form of transparency they are both untraceable, and subject to no form of accountability. They can infer your sexual orientation, your personality traits, your political leanings, with predictive power, with high levels of accuracy.
We’re already halfway towards a world where algorithms run nearly everything.
As their power intensifies, wealth will concentrate towards them.
They will ensure the 1%-99% divide gets larger.
If you’re not part of the class attached to algorithms, then you will struggle.
They will further stratify society, creating a world of haves and have-not’s.
So why are we ‘blindly trusting’ formulas to determine a fair outcome.
The main reason is because most people don’t yet know or understand what they are doing or could be doing.
Algorithms are not inherently fair, because the person who builds the model defines success. This is the reason why there is no popular outrage about Wall Street being run by algorithms.
For techno-evangelists, Google is a marvel of Web brilliance … For Wall Street, it may be the IPO (An IPO is short for an initial public offering. Like the name says, it’s when a company initially offers shares of stocks to the public. It’s also called “going public.” An IPO is the first time the owners of the company give up part of their ownership to stockholders.) that changes everything (again) …
The vast majority of trades these days are performed by algorithms. The idea that the world’s financial markets – and, hence, the well-being of our pensions, shareholdings, savings etc – are now largely determined by algorithmic vagaries is unsettling enough for some.
But in my opinion we should not automatically see algorithms as a malign influence on our lives, we should debate their ubiquity and their wide range of uses.
Why?
Because we now spend so much of our time online that we are creating huge data-mining opportunities.
Because there is the possibility of using big-data predictions about people to judge and punish them even before they’ve acted. Doing this negates ideas of fairness, justice and free will. This presents an entirely new menace: penalties based on propensities.
Because we risk falling victim to a dictatorship of data, whereby we fetishise the information, the output of our analyses, and end up misusing it.
Because by far the most complicated algorithms are to be found in science, where they are used to design new drugs or model the climate.
We all urgently need to consider the implications of allowing commercial interests and governments to use algorithms to analyse our habits:
How are they being used to access and interpret “our” data? And by whom?
Big data is a useful tool of rational decision-making. Wielded unwisely, it can become an instrument of the powerful, who may turn it into a source of repression.
But there is a bigger question about the oversights involving AI.
The questions being raised about algorithms at the moment are not about algorithms per se, but about the way society is structured with regard to data use and data privacy. It’s also about how models are being used to predict the future.
There is currently an awkward marriage between data and algorithms. As technology evolves, there will be mistakes, but it is important to remember they are just a tool. We shouldn’t blame our tools. At the moment there is consensus, that in the next twenty years we will be looking at seeing AI as smart as humans.
Difficulties come when they are used in the social sciences not to mention again financial trading.
Targeted Algorithms can now calculate whether a woman is pregnant and, if so, when she is due to give birth: Teenage daughters can be identified pregnant by retailers long before her own father knows.
From dating websites and City trading floors, through to online retailing and internet searches (Google’s search algorithm is now a more closely guarded commercial secret than the recipe for Coca-Cola), algorithms are increasingly determining our collective futures. “Bank approvals, store cards, job matches and more all run on similar principles.
“The algorithm is the god from the machine powering them all, for good or ill.”
They are now so integrated into our lives we barely notice them.
Pharmacists are already seeing some of their prescribing tasks replaced by algorithms. Data analysis as a factor in deciding whether to release somebody from prison or to keep him incarcerated.”
On the one hand, they are good because they free up our time and do mundane processes on our behalf.
However as their ubiquity spreads, so too does the debate around whether we should allow ourselves to become so reliant on them – and who, if anyone, is policing their use.
Here’s the scary bit:
We will be at the mercy of algorithms. How will they work when they are combined together. The result will be a system that will never be completely understood, that they could fail in unpredictable ways.
We are currently creating AI without fully understanding intelligence or cognition first.
Google released a developer’s kit last spring that lets anyone integrate Google’s search engine into their own application. The download is simple, and the license is free for the taking. The developer’s kit is a classic Trojan-horse strategy, putting Google’s engine in places that the company might not have imagined. Basically, those developers can do whatever they want.
Google doesn’t market itself in the traditional sense. Instead, it observes, and it listens. Their Algorithms will run everything from shopping to gods only knows what in the future. Googlers will be living amid semantic, visual, and technical esoterica.
Google now processes over 40,000 search queries every second on average, which translates to over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide A single Google query uses 1,000 computers in 0.2 seconds to retrieve an answer.
In February 2016, Google briefly overtook Apple to become the most valuable company in the world – worth more than $500bn (£350bn).
In 2015 alone, Google had revenues of $75bn (£53bn). That’s about £1,675 a second. Yet its core service – search – costs nothing to use. Simply, everyday in 2016 Google earned a over $58 million (£45m).
Google at the moment controls around 70% of all online searches.
It could and should be viewed as a monopoly, but most of us don’t give a toss as it is already impossible to stop using it.
We are all already essentially sentenced to a digital death out side any laws or regulations.
Innovation at Google is as democratic as the search technology itself. One reason Google puts its innovations on public display is to identify failures quickly. Another reason is to find winners.
We will all have a Google Assistant connected to the Cloud.
The question is: Will they be accountable to us or Google.
Will it make our lives better or improve its quality?
Not so as technologies have little to do with human thought or indeed intelligence.
GOOGLE RATTLES THE TECH WORLD WITH A NEW AI CHIP FOR ALL.
Google says it will not sell the chip directly to others. Instead, through its new cloud service, set to arrive sometime before the end of the year, any business or developer can build and operate software via the internet that taps into hundreds and perhaps thousands of these processors, all packed into Google data centers more recently, it has worked to sell time on this hardware via the cloud—massive computing power anyone can use to build and operate websites, apps, and other software online.
Unlike the original TPU, it can be used to train neural networks, not just run them once they’re trained. Also setting the new chip apart: it’s available through a dedicated cloud service.
Several companies, including chip giant Intel and a long list of startups, are now developing dedicated AI chips that could provide alternatives to the Google TPU.
Why? Because, this is the good side of capitalism which is in the process of disappearing into the cloud.
Most of Google’s revenue still comes from advertising, however IN A MOVE that could shift the course of multiple technology markets, Google will soon launch a cloud computing service that provides exclusive access to a new kind of artificial-intelligence chip designed by its own engineers.
The company sees cloud computing as another major source of revenue that will carry a large part of its future: deep neural networks—machine learning systems behind the rapid evolution of everything from image and speech recognition to automated translation to robotics.
Algorithms will still need a human to collect blood and urine samples for them to analyse. Even the best data scientists would struggle to know what to do with all that data. But it’s the next step that we need to keep an eye on. They could really screw up someone’s life with a false prediction about what they might be up to.
The European Union’s data protection law, set from next year to create a ‘right of explanation’ when consumers are impacted by an algorithmic decision, as a model that could be expanded but in practices algorithms will be made the scapegoat for societal ills. Absolving Humanity.
The protection law or laws will be Unworkable.
With most of us not realizing that there is a race before AI becomes conscious and self-aware, AI is here to stay, luckily there is more to mere intelligence than a chip or implant can explain.
The danger is that Super Artificial Intelligence will con us into to thinking that it is consciousness without being conscious. We could be using brain-computer interfaces to link us to the cloud and there will be no clear moment when we emerge as trans human whether we like it or not. If the world takes the shape of whatever the most powerful AI is programmed (or reprograms itself) to desire it opens the possibility of evolution taking a turn for the entirely banal.
Should we now be regulating AI.
The problem is how the rules are set: it’s impossible to do this perfectly.
Without a doubt and it should not be left to a small group or self-regulation.
We should now set up an new world organisation that is totally transparent and self financing to vet all AI. This organisation should not only vet AI it should establish a virtual bank where all programs are stored.
Diversity has a value all in itself but when you look at humanity as a whole there is a lot wrong.
We at the start of a major technology revolution with AI no longer a far-fetched fiction.
Fortunately we do not have to justify our existence as yet.
Saying that we want to save this precious puny planet and doing it successfully is still a long way off. If we don’t find a way of distributing the earth wealth we will end up fueling capitalism with Artificial Intelligence that serves only the few not the many.
There are people searching the Web for ‘spiritual enlightenment and so they should as the needle of our beliefs will continue to swerve away from the universality of God.
When someone enters a query on Google for “spiritual enlightenment,” it’s not clear what he’s seeking. The concept of spiritual enlightenment means something different from what the two words mean individually. Google has to navigate varying levels of literary to guess at what the user really wants.
At some point, all of this great stuff has to turn a profit by Google.
What we have at present, academic inquiry devoted primarily to acquiring knowledge and technological know-how dissociated from any intellectually more fundamental concern to help us resolve our conflicts and problems of living in more cooperatively rational ways – dissociated, that is, from the pursuit of wisdom – is a recipe for disaster.
It is hardly too much to say that all our current global problems have come about because of the successful scientific pursuit of knowledge and technological know-how dissociated from wisdom.
The appalling destructiveness of modern warfare and terrorism, vast inequalities in wealth and standards of living between first and third worlds, rapid population growth, environmental damage – destruction of tropical rain forests, rapid extinction of species, global warming, pollution of sea, earth and air, depletion of finite natural resources – all exist today because of the massively enhanced power to act (of some), made possible by modern science and technology.
Every branch and aspect of academic inquiry need to change if we are to have the kind of inquiry, both more rational and of greater human value than what we have at present, that we really need.
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PS: I did not bother to address the effects that Algorithms will have on our vision, our language, our writing, our necks, our figures, our memory, our brains etc.
Democracy is the process by which we get ourselves organized to perform capitalism.
To claim back power we must turn those shiny mirrors our Smartphones into shields, passports and carriers of personal sovereignty.
The good news is that for hundred of years humankind has enjoyed a growing economy without falling prey to ecological meltdown but the margin for error is narrowing with global warming. All the talk, all the conferences, all the summits, all the promises and protocols have so far failed to curb emissions.
Why?
Because despite all our achievements we are under constant pressure to produce more and more stuff. We risk the future on the assumption that technological will come up with a solution’s in the future.
What is the price going to be?
If every thing is for sale the connection between capitalism, democracy, and liberalism is in the process of being broken.
The new modern deal is Humanist.
Soundless revolutions, silent reformations, undreamed ideas, new religions, must not be neglected, if we would grasp the unity of history in its highest sense.…The unapparent future….bids us to consider the whole sequence up to the present moment as probably no more than the beginning of a social and psychical development, where of the end is withdrawn from our view by countless millenniums to come.
However the world does not come to an end when the nine billion names of God are uttered. Freedom of speech is not over when we have uttered a certain thing.
We are the ultimate source of meaning, and free will is therefore the highest authority of all.
This is for this reason that democratic elections give expression to the ultimate political authority the People. It will end when we final hand our future to AI.
Whoever determines the meaning of our actions – whether they be good or evil, right or wrong, beautiful or ugly, also gains the authority to tell us what to think and how to behave.
If we are not careful (because human opinion is necessarily fragile and ephemeral) absolute truths and the meaning of life, not to mention the Universe will soon be based on some external laws from some superhuman source other than God.
Creating meaning for a meaningless world will become impossible without Artificial Intelligence (AI) in all its forms of Algorithms that will and are already affect every facet of daily life.
WE MUST DETERMINE BY OURSELVES WHAT IS GOOD, AND WHAT IS EVIL, WHAT IS RIGHT AND WHAT IS WRONG, WHAT IS BEAUTIFUL AND WHAT IS UGLY, WHAT IS IGNORANCE AND CORRUPTIBLE, WHAT IS TRUTH AND WHAT IS FALSE. NOT A MACHINE. Knowledge = experiences x Sensitivity.
IF WE LOOSE OUR FEELING THERE IS NO POINT IN BELIEVING ANYTHING.
Over the last century, capitalism has repeatedly revealed its worst tendencies: instability and inequality and its failures have turned democracy against liberalism. Across Europe, economic interventionism, nationalism, and even open racism have exerted a greater attraction for those casting their democratic votes than the causes of freedom, deregulation, and equality before the law.
Free markets have not only enlarged the gap between rich and poor, but have also reduced average incomes across the developed and developing worlds.
In turn, liberalism’s intellectual self-identity has been left in tatters.
Liberal theorists are now desperately trying to keep the ship afloat. But instead of addressing the challenges head-on they have turned to the past for solace and validation. While this new liberal historicism may have a certain rhetorical appeal, it fails to convince.
At root, liberty is a concept grounded in the individual.
It is the freedom to be all that one is, to actualize the fullness of one’s potential as a human being endowed with the capacity for creativity and the ability to make autonomous value judgments for ourselves. However surrounded by the confused, jargon-ridden babble of political commentators today, it is perhaps easy to forget that liberalism is defined by a commitment to liberty.
While each of us may wish to be free as an individual, individual freedom is dependent on us all being free; and that means that we all have to cling to our shared humanity, our shared dignity and not to be manipulated by profit seeking un-vetted Algorithms.
The world was moving toward a politically border less and highly interdependent global economy that might have foster prosperity, international cooperation, and world peace. This is no longer true. Now thanks to un vetted Algorithms we are witnessing a world characterized by intense economic conflict at both the domestic and international levels. Today we are returning to the huge 19th-century-sized gaps between the richest 1 percent and everyone else.
Rescuing the “disappearing middle class” has become every aspiring politician’s slogan, but this is also coming to an end with targeted Social Media Profiling, (conducted by Algorithms) that are and will produce extreme inequality that will infect all of society, as rich corporations that own these Algorithms move to protect their positions, by buying the politicians, mass media and other cultural forms that are for sale.
Capitalism is today’s version of the what and democracy is the how.
Capitalism does not say that “all men are equal”; it even has difficulty in saying that we are all “created equal.”
If we truly want to move beyond capitalism we have to break away from the employer-employee core relationships. It means no longer assigning a relatively tiny number of people inside each enterprise to the employer position of exclusively. It means that every worker has an interest in the enterprise, a share in its profits its loses and decision-making.
While democracy is a consensual hallucination of people concerned with how to divide opportunity fairly or democracy is a process for ensuring that each gets an equal session with the eye while capitalism fosters a desire to keep the eye and not share it. An end in itself, not a means.
Democracy as a rule book is not intended to operate only until a particular individual or class has enough money. It is hard to govern the human heart with rules. The democracy rule book, though it hovers above our laws has not succeeded in making humans cherish democracy.
A Martian visiting earth would not be able to see democracy. It is intangible, a rule book we have agreed to which says that no-one shall be denied opportunity, freedom of speech, or the due process of the laws.
Democracy denies the Hobbesian war of all against all, (Thomas Hobbes sawpeople as weakandselfish,andthus in constantneed of thegovernancethatcouldsavethemfromdestruction) and capitalism, pretending to prophecy it, creates it and enshrines it at the center of our pantheon, as the true, the human, the only way to live.
Under the democracy rule book, we meet as the village council; our concern is how to preserve the commons for our children’s children. All right, shift paradigms: we are now under the capitalist rule book, meeting as the board of directors of the Intercontinental Sheep-Grazing Company run by Social media ruled by Algorithms owned by Google, Apple, etc. Their discussion, abruptly with technology is about how to maximize shareholder value, by extracting every last possible dollar from the commons this fiscal period.
Our grandchildren are nowhere in the conversation; they are not shareholders.Under the separation of powers implied by the two rule books, we are relieved of the necessity of thinking about the future, because it is someone else’s job.
The substantive corrupts the procedural, when the love of things corrupts the spirit of fairness.
So it not surprising that any ambitious youngster, perceiving the differences between the two rule books, will prefer to give his allegiance to capitalism, because it offers quicker personal progress than democracy. Democracy preaches incremental change, but capitalism offers overnight transformation, the opportunity to sell something a day after you bought it for ten times what you paid.
It was not healthy for our two divisions ( Capitalism versus Democracy) to savage each other.
Cooperation is the key feature of democracy, but capitalism is usually thought of (it need not be) as a zero-sum game in which, if I have more, it is because you have less. Versions of capitalism, like the one I believe in, in which we all grow together, are less interesting to the ambitious, because they too closely resemble democracy.
Everything seemed to suggest that only liberal capitalist democracy allowed people to thrive in an increasingly globalized world, and that only the steady advance of laissez-faire economics would guarantee a future of free, democratic states, untroubled by want and oppression and living in peace and contentment.
Humanity imposes upon us the same basic needs. By virtue of our nature, we all require food, shelter, clothing, security, and a range of other basic goods necessary for sufficiency and survival.
Though deceptively simple, these implications have profound meaning when we consider how individual liberty is to be translated into a social and political construct. If the liberty of each person is to be maintained and maximized, the principles of equity and the common good must be embedded in the structure of society.
And since society is structured above all by law, the law must reflect these precepts. It is only if everyone recognizes the dignity of the human person that they will recognize the inherent value of equity and the common good, and strive to defend and preserve not only their own liberty, but also that of all others in their society using law.
It lies not in economics, or the tides of history. It lies in the recognition of the worthiness of humanity itself. Not wealth-creation which depends on the protection of private property, the “capitalist creep” will invariably demand greater legal protection for individual rights.
In a world still divided by rival national ambitions in which economic factors in effect determine the fate of nations, many conclude that international economic affairs will become increasingly filled with conflict. We are witness the tectonic plates of Nature, democracy, disappearing under automation of AI algorithms.
We make a colossal mistake taking it for granted. We mistakenly believe that capitalism begets inevitably democracy.It doesn’t.
The last battle between democracy and capitalism will be fought on the field of political campaign contributions.
There is a solution:
It is possibleto separate fully the political sphere from the economic sphere,so as to confine the democratic process fully in the political sphere,leaving the economic sphere —the corporate world, if you want —as a democracy-free zone.
The answer lies in the political choice that we shall be making collectively.It is our choice,and we’d better make it democratically because the system we have now is even worse than capitalism. Nobody wants to leave the certainty of the devil they know, or think they know, for something that promises to be worse.
We have run out of world to commodify. And now commodification can only cannibalize its own means of existence, both natural and social.
What all of us make is intellectual property, which from its point of view is all equivalent and tradable as a commodity.
Of course it is always a tough argument to propose common interests among subordinate classes. Counter-hegemony is hard. Hackers, like workers or farmers, are distracted by particular and local interests. Class consciousness is rare among hackers. Most of us are rather reactionary — even in the nontechnical trades. But than class consciousness is always a rare and difficult thing.
Finally at the start of this post I advocated that: To claim back power we must turn those shiny mirrors our Smartphones into shields, passports and carriers of personal sovereignty.
Of course this can only be achieved if we can form a world on line pressure group, using the combined power of Smartphones to affect change.
Once the greatness of a nation could be judged by the way its animals are treated now its the power that moves through the smart phone that can be instrumentally conceptualized and strategically deployed, accounted for, and resisted is the driving force that judges.
Democracy is using your social media channels to engage and provide feedback.
The perception of the public, how people view what you do, is just as important as what you do.
I am all ears as to how we can capture the collective power of our phones to lobby the direction of democracy.
To that end, if scholars, activists, and commentators are to contend with the political potential of devices such as the smartphone camera, then it is imperative to account for the simultaneous processes embodied in its mechanics alongside the cultural and social conditions as these devices are often celebrated for disrupting rather than unifying.
The Gap between Democracy and Capitalism is widening.
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We all know or at least we should all be aware that our world is becoming less and less transparent thanks to what we call Artificial Intelligence.
The challenge there is:
The false promise of the Internet was that it can connect people from different backgrounds, with different beliefs and across disparate locations.
The trend toward personalization by AI is impeding the fulfillment of that promise?
What is becoming more and more apparent is that while most personalization on the web is algorithmically driven, aren’t we implicitly, informing the algorithms based on the choices we’ve previously made interacting with content?
Couldn’t you then, in theory, manipulate the filter so you see what you want to see or are there too many factors beyond our control?
Consider:
Even if you’re completely logged out of Google, on a new computer, the company can track 57 signals about you — from what kind of laptop you’re using to what your IP address is to what the font size in your browser is. Already, that gives a lot of important clues about age, income and demographics.
It’s ironic — the promise of personalization is that it gives us our own personal view of the world.
But the challenge is that a lot of the time, it’s actually pushing us toward a stereotyped, simplified version of ourselves: “This person is male, so we’ll show him more gadget and car news.”
So let me ask you.
Many of the major social, discovery and media sites on the Internet now implement some type of personalization. Do you feel these sites have a responsibility to educate consumers about how their information is being filtered? Do you think users should be able to opt out of personalization?
I would say Yes, on both counts.
In an increasingly complex and vast media landscape it is crucial that me maintain our private lives.
Why?
Because: Algorithms of all shapes and sizes are monitoring, analyzing, making
decisions, dictating our credit scores etc. They are shaping our lives and economies, our future, so shouldn’t we know what code and mathematical equations, or deep learning go into making them work.
However Transparency alone won’t help.
Algorithms are complicated so exposing the code behind them won’t make them more understandable. Knowing how an algorithm is coded is useless without knowing the data that has being fed into it in the first place.
There is only one solution and that is the:
The Creation of a New World Organisation that is totally transparent, and self financing: To vet all Technology. To ensure that they comply with the core world gold standard of human values.
(See previous Posts)
Let me ask you two further questions.
Can some level of personalization be useful?
What are we missing that we need to see?
Some amount of algorithmic personalization is necessary — there’s just too much stuff to sort through for humans to do it all. However you don’t know who Google thinks you are or on what basis it’s editing your results, and therefore you don’t know what you’re missing.
A lot of the personalization that exists today just serves up information junk food, but a growing portion is being curated by robots — computer algorithms that are filtering content and deciding what we get to see.
It may be delicious, but it doesn’t feed the soul.
Now it’s possible to live in a bubble where that stuff doesn’t ever show up — you’d never know it’s happening.
Take the Facebook “Like” button — the main way that information gets spread on Facebook. “Like” isn’t a neutral word — it’s easy to Like “I just finished a marathon,” and hard to Like “cell phones may cause cancer.”
So some kinds of information get through, and others don’t, and when that’s happening in the Facebook News Feed, where an increasing number of folks get their news, it’s a real problem.
Most people aren’t aware that their Google search results, Yahoo News links, or Facebook feed is being tailored in this way.
Filters can provide relevance and combat information overload, but with so much riding on automated decisions to ensure algorithms deal with humans fairly is now more relevant than ever.
I recently read that in five-year your smartphone could be reading your mind.
Brain- computer interface.
Personalization couldn’t exist without the massive dossiers of personal data being collected by big companies online these days. And it’s a problem because consumers don’t have much control over that.
The current laws around personal data just don’t contemplate a world in which a click on one website changes what you see on an entirely different one.
Almost all popular websites, from search engines to social networks to media outlets, are now utilizing filters in some way to personalize content for visitors.
When websites show us only what we like, we get cut off from the diverse points of view that can enrich our understanding of the world.
We get Donald Trumps.
Privacy is about controlling what the world is allowed to know about you. This is about controlling what you’re able to see of the world — what your filters let through and what they don’t.
Its time to wake up.
We can lose sight of our common problems, but they don’t lose sight of us.
It’s only a matter of time before our Fidelity/ Loyalty cards are linked up to our personal data held by banks, e-commerce sites and social media. If not already.
We will then be looking at citizen character score, which will bring credit scores to a whole new level, turning them more into to life scores, by tracking anything and everything we do. The scary bit is what is tracked and by who.
I hear you saying that this will never be accepted.
It is already on the cards for people living in China and Singapore. Humans and robot algorithms, living in peaceful harmony. Where you go, what you buy, who you know, how many points are on your driving licence, how your friends rate you.
The scores will serve not just to indicate an individual’s credit risk, but could be used in a vast array of applications and organisations such as Governments, Benefits, Hospital Operations, Visa, Education, down to all fields that makes Society including prison sentences, landlords, employers, and even romantic partners to gauge an individual’s character.
All stored in the Cloud. Which comes in many different models forms.
Ubiquitous access to the network: Self-service and on-demand access to computing capabilities. This service will most often be performed by the service provider automatically without the need for human interaction.
Cloud Computers is not the easiest of terms to define, or explain what it all actually means. Owned by Google, Twitter, Gmail and Facebook the Cloud is elusive as grabbing a cloud itself.
Perhaps we can blame it all on Leonhard Euler one of the most prolific mathematicians in history, and also a prolific inventor of canonical notation.
( An Euler path is a path that uses every edge of a graph exactly once.)
One way or the other to use a Trumpetism: It’s ain’t going to be great unless we build algorithms that have a sense of civic purpose embedded in them, giving us both entertainment and the information we really need, not profit.
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O sorry about the line spacing in this post just cannot figure out how to correct it.
You might be asking yourself like many why it is that we are inflicted by the like of Donald Trump, Madame La Pen, Brexit, ect.
Any fool on the street can tell you that technology is changing at a whiplash-inducing pace. What’s much more difficult to predict is which technologies specifically are about to hit big.
To me it is obvious: Artificial Intelligent.
Platforms that serve manipulative interests of political elites, in which leaders do most of the conversing and democratic discussion is reduced to campaigning for elections and the casting of votes.
The result of elections and referendums are becoming more individualistic than they are democratic with Democracy becoming, trivial, incoherent, or manipulative across all sorts of domestic debates, military interventions, consumer advertisements, and television specials.
Democracy use to stirred up by:
The public relations agencies, the direct-mail companies, and opinion-polling firms work in concert with the infrastructure of think tanks, tax-exempt foundations, and other centers. With the press and television industry as the principle gatekeepers of political debate. Other channels of political information are almost nonexistent.
Today, tremendous changes in advanced computing technologies are giving rise TO A NEW DEMOCRATIC EMPOWERMENT, THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH VOTING.The smart phone rules as to which party is the best in more way than one.
On-line computer services and networks, which are oriented toward spontaneous communication among citizens is limiting their exposure only to the affairs that match their interests. Populist appeal.
The application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology will and is expanding this type of public involvement with information-driven politics, the politics of knowledge, not necessarily the politics of winning elections.
But does the public really want a daily digest of political information?
IN WHICH IT HAS LITTLE OR NO SAY.
We are witnessing an ominous trend toward political dysfunction as the number who vote in national elections continues to slide below fifty percent.
One possible reason for this trend is that many people believe that political representatives have little to offer in terms of solving the immediate daily concerns of employment, health care, education, housing, transportation, drugs, crime, social decay, injustice, and so on.
Maybe, if the right tools were available, people would have a better chance to communicate with representatives, know and protect their own rights, engage in deliberation, test hypotheses, discover knowledge, discuss theory, and better understand world events
At the moment AI is all about analyzing the content of candidate appeals and making informed guesses about candidates.
Obviously, merit exists in the public becoming more politically astute and “awakening from the dormant state.” Success may depend partially on whether participation can be achieved in such a way as to impinge minimally upon the matters of private life.
The old politics often depicted as canned debates and public spectacle is becoming unacceptable to an intelligent populace.
New politics demands semantic understanding and identifying the chains of reasoning. These goals require building new tools and networks for the next generation of machine politics.
We are in the middle of a technological upheaval that will transform the way society is organized. We must make the right decisions now.
Every minute we produce hundreds of thousands of Google searches and Facebook posts. These contain information that reveals how we think and feel. Soon, the things around us, possibly even our clothing, also will be connected with the Internet. It is estimated that in 10 years’ time there will be 150 billion networked measuring sensors, 20 times more than people on Earth. Then, the amount of data will double every 12 hours.
Many companies are already trying to turn this Big Data into Big Money.
Soon we will not only have smart phones, but also smart homes, smart factories and smart cities.
Should we also expect these developments to result in smart nations and a smarter planet? ALL EVIDENCE POINTS TO THE OPPOSITE.
Today 70% of all financial transactions are performed by algorithms.
This all has radical economic consequences: In the coming 10 to 20 years around half of today’s jobs will be threatened by algorithms. 40% of today’s top 500 companies will have vanished in a decade.
Society is at a crossroads, which promises great opportunities, but also considerable risks. HERE I A NOT TALKING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE BUT OUR INABILITY TO EXPRESS OURSELVES AT THE BALLOT BOX.
If we take the wrong decisions it could threaten our greatest historical achievements.
Super-intelligence is a serious danger for humanity.
Search engines and recommendation platforms are beginning to offer us personalised suggestions for products and services.
But it won’t stop there.
Some software platforms are moving towards “persuasive computing.
These platforms will be able to steer us through entire courses of action, be it for the execution of complex work processes or to generate free content for Internet platforms, from which corporations earn billions.
The trend goes from programming computers to programming people.
These technologies are also becoming increasingly popular in the world of politics.
Under the label of “nudging,” and on massive scale, governments are trying to steer citizens towards healthier or more environmentally friendly behaviour by means of a “nudge”—a modern form of paternalism.
Singapore is seen as a perfect example of a data-controlled society.
It won’t be long before Every chinese citizen will receive a so-called ”Citizen Score”, which will determine under what conditions they may get loans, jobs, or travel visa to other countries.
This will be a sort of digital scepter that allows one to govern the masses efficiently, without having to involve citizens in democratic processes.
Would this overcome vested interests and optimize the course of the world?
If so, then citizens could be governed by a data-empowered “wise king”, who would be able to produce desired economic and social outcomes almost as if with a digital magic wand.
God forbid.
Lets hope we remain influenced by issues as much as by perceived.
Democracy is not for Hire or Sale. In order for us to retain control of our lives, these networks should be controlled. I am talking about Google, Twitter, and Facebook.
All technology and associated algorithms should be given a World Health Certificate in as much that they are serving the common good and human values.( See previous Posts)
Creation of computer applications to enhance democratic discussion is now a pressing problem.
Echo’s ability to represent “aggregate behavior” might be useful.
All Common Sense comments appreciated. All like comments chucked in the Bin.
WE CAN NO LONGER OR AFFORD TO LEAVE COMMON SENSE LYING IN A DORMANT STATE.
Starry-eyed cyber optimism [which suggests] a new form of technological determinism according to which the Internet would be the hammer to nail all global problems, IS BULL SHIT. SAY NO TO:
At this point it is tempting to roll out the usual clichés – food pills, flying cars and bases on the moon – but the reality will probably be less exciting.
The smart phone rules as to which party is the best in more way than one.
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