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Category Archives: Emotions.

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. HAVE WE BECOME DESENSITIZED ?

27 Wednesday Oct 2021

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Afghanistan, Civilization., Cry for help., Dehumanization., Desensitization., Disasters., Emotions., Foreign Aid., Human Collective Stupidity., Human values., Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Post-Covid-19, Purpose of life., Reality., Refugees., Survival., Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The Obvious., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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Capitalism and Greed, Desensitization., Distribution of wealth, Extreme poverty, Greed, Inequility, The Future of Mankind, Visions of the future.

( Seven-minute read) 

Just the other day I watched a news report on Afghanistan with shocking images of starving children.

It’s not as if this is the first time starving children grace our television screens.   

It was predicted that if the country does not get aid there will be a human disaster with the loss of millions of lives. 

We all could be forgiven for not remembering the Irish Potato famine that killed around a million, but not the Famine in Ethiopia 1983-85 that killed around the same number of people. 

Since then the world is now confronted with the realities of climate change – streams of migration while the covid pandemic has killed 4,984,325 people so far from the outbreak to October 27, 2021, which is a contributor to our desensitization of suffering a very complex topic.

However I believe the world rich countries, paints it as something almost good, necessary, and a part of life.

The more we are exposed to these things, or let children be taught it’s normal through movies, books, and so forth, the initial shock becomes less and the stark colors in which they were viewed, become duller.

This may raise in some readers’ minds the question of what we ourselves actually believe.

Take our belief in God.

He or she or it is becoming nothing less than the process of opening our lines of contact with the unknown potential of the universe. God represents the direction of our wonder – not the destination. 

Which leads to no easy answers, just more questions.

However, if we humans could come together in harmony with the real universe, our troubled species would have its best chance to enjoy this jewel of a planet, unique probably in all of the cosmos. 

The hope of this happing in a throwaway world is negotiable, leaving people feeling defeated and powerless.

Every daylight hour we are bombarded by pleas for help to save something, now including the planet. Suffering seems to abound and we see it so often on the news or in movies that we’ve become desensitized.

“I think if people see this footage they’ll say, ‘Oh my God that’s horrible,’ and then go on eating their dinners.”

It’s no secret that the world is falling apart as we know it,  people are becoming desensitized to the events that are shaping our society.  

Desensitizing is a tool, and the world uses it to change and shape our thinking, alter our perspective and mold us into the way they want, too emotionally exhausted to feel anything. 

Just because it’s “normal” in today’s age, should we be in less shock, disgust, or lessen the intensity of emotion towards it?

What’s the harm?

It is not something to just succumb to, we must choose what we allow it to impact because it takes us farther away from the rawness and reality 

It is how we use it and allow it to affect us that any understanding of this relationship can we hope to achieve behavioral change.

Indeed, the world is in a chaotic and cruel place but what happens to us that we lose the deep sense of caring – something that would have been abhorrent to us in the past is not despicable anymore. We accept the fact that this is what the world has become

But it is not about pictures or videos anymore.

We are simply desensitized to tragedies happening around us because they are becoming less like tragedies and more like everyday actions.

It is very easy to point fingers at platforms such as Facebook, & Twitter. But both of them are flexible and adaptable, they are not an omnipotent force governing what the people chose to say or think.

As far as it goes, Social Media platforms are objective viewers of the world.

They are merely tools used by the people.

The question is, what are we allowing ourselves to become desensitized to?

Being sensitive is first and foremost allowing oneself to feel in great depths.

We become lethargic and we cannot hope to change behavior without first implementing a re-sensitization effort.

As our world undergoes anthropogenic changes, it is critical to examine how these changes affect our well-being and our relationship with the natural world.

What do we do when all of the chaos, all of the destruction of the world is shoved in our faces day after day?

We wonder why there isn’t a better way to go about things?

We can’t let our sensitivity be the darkness that sits on our shoulders.

Sensitivity helps us acknowledge our own consciousness.

We need to remember that it is a tool and that we do have a lot of control over it, but without thought, it appears we don’t have much control over it at all.

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

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS: ITS TO LATE TOO REGULATE ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE – SO WHAT IF ANYTHING CAN BE DONE?

18 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Digital Friendship., Disconnection., Emotions., Face Recognition., Facebook, Fake News., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google, Inequality, Lock Down., Modern day life., Modern day Slavery, POST COVID-19., Quantum computers., Reality., Robot citizenship., Social Media, Social Media Regulation., Technology, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , TRACKING TECHNOLOGY., Twitter, Unanswered Questions., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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Algorithms trade., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism and Greed, Globalization, Government, Inequility, Post-Covid-19, Technology, The Future of Mankind, Visions of the future.

  ( A Thirty-minute read)  Do you have a right to believe what you want? Yes, of course, but we now live in an Algorithmic driven world that is blurring the boundaries and amplifying the social tensions that are festering under the surface.  The problem is that we are allowing the building of technologies, that are making consequential decisions about people’s lives. AI is shaping people’s lives on a daily basis, but it’s an open question whether AI will become a trusted advisor or even a corrupting force.

It’s not COVID-19 that will kill us all its Profit-seeking algorithms.

However, here in this post, my main concern is whether the AI techniques will develop into quantum algorithms that will be totally out of control.  If artificial general intelligence is on the not too distant horizon, surely we should be ensuring that it is not owned by anyone corporation and that at its core it respects our core values. To achieve this we cannot surely let wealth be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, or to be let to the marketplace, or any world organization that is not totally transparent and self-financing. We therefore as a matter of grave urgency need a new world organization that vets all technology, and algorithms. (See previous posts) As long as the ALGORITHMS don’t go to war with each other and cause something even more difficult to diagnose than a crash on the stock markets they are safe is as naive as saying ” It’s going to be Great.” AlGORITHMS are increasingly in charge of a world that is precious to us all. Basically, we’re entering the era of machines controlling everything. If we want to create new different societies with human dignity for all we need to do something about it. The difficulty of predicting the future is not just a cliche, it’s a basic fact of our existence. Part of the hypothesis of Singularity is that this difficulty is just going to get worse and worse. Yes, creating AGI ( Artificial General Intelligence) is a big and difficult goal, but according to known science, it is almost surely an achievable one. However, there are sound though not absolutely confident arguments that it may well be achievable within our lifetimes. If artificial general intelligence is on the not too distant horizon, surely we should be ensuring that it is not owned by anyone corporation and that at its core it respects our core values. If we think in months we focus on immediate problems such as the present-day wars, the Covid crisis, the Donald Trumps, the economy, if we think in decades, climate, growing inequality, the loss of jobs to automation are all presenting dangers. But if we look at life in total, science is converging on data processing and AI that is developing itself with algorithms. When intelligence is approached in an incremental manner, with strict reliance on interfacing to the real world through perception and action, reliance on representation disappears. It won’t be long before we will not be unable to distinguish the real world from the virtual world. Since there is only one real world and there can be infinite virtual worlds the probability that you will inhabit this sole world is zero.  So it won’t matter whether computers will be conscious or not. Is starting to feel like it’s every man for himself, Is possible that right now, a global crisis is upon us, Without even knowing… And the virus may not be the biggest threat, but the crisis that follows, Everyday goods that keep us alive will be gone, I’m talking, food, freshwater, medicine, clothes, fuel… Intelligence is decoupling from consciousness and soon rather than later it will be consigned to Google, Facebook, Twitter, Smartphones, and the like to make decisions that are not possible to reverse.  You might think that the above is stupid but it won’t be long before we will be witnessing the most unequal societies in history.                                  —————————— We humans will soon be living with robots that process data without any subjective experiences or consciousness or moral opprobrium. As we watch robots, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence machines, and the like slowly (and sometimes rapidly) permeate our world, it’s not hard to imagine them going from permeating to taking over. Algorithms are increasingly determining our collective future. It will only matter what they think about you. We are already halfway towards a world where algorithms run everything. This is why many of the issues raised in this post will require close monitoring, to ensure that the oversight of machine learning-driven algorithms continues to strike an appropriate and safe balance between recognizing the benefits (for healthcare and other public services, for example, and for innovation in the private sector) and the risks (for privacy and consent, data security and any unacceptable impacts on individuals).                                     —————————— WHAT CAN GOVERNMENTS DO?  Please regulate AI, this is too dangerous. Given the international nature of digital innovation, governments, should establish audits of algorithms, introducing certification of algorithms, and charging ethics boards with oversight of algorithmic decisions. Why? They are bringing big changes in their wake. From better medical diagnoses to driverless cars, and within central governments where there are opportunities to make public services more effective and achieve long-term cost savings. However, the Government should produce, publish, and maintain a list of where algorithms with significant impacts are being used within the Central Government, along with projects underway or planned for public service algorithms, to aid not just private sector involvement but also transparency. Governments should not just simply accept what the developers of algorithms offer in return for data access. To this end, Governments should be at the forefront of the creation of a “statutory building code”, which describes mandatory safety and quality requirements for digital platforms. Social networks should be required by law to release details of their algorithms and core functions to trusted researchers, in order for the technology to be vetted. This Law should enable the enforcement of, 
  • forcing social networks to disclose in the news feed why content has been recommended to a user.
  • limiting the use of micro-targeting advertising messages.
  • making it illegal to exclude people from content on the basis of race or religion, such as hiding a spare room advert from people of color.
  • banning the use of so-called dark patterns – user interfaces designed to confuse or frustrate the user, such as making it hard to delete your account.
  • labeling the accounts of state-controlled news organizations.
  • limiting how many times messages can be forwarded to large groups, as Facebook does on WhatsApp.
If we took the premise that people should have a lawful right to be manipulated and deceived, we wouldn’t have rules on fraud or undue influence.                                 ———————————– To days Algorithms and where we are. As data accumulates, even more so now with Covid- 19 track and trace, and now working from home we have more centralized data depositories and large centralized AI models that work off centralized or decentralized data. How does the concentration of power affect this balance that impinges on individual liberty? Our democratic institutions and public discourse are underpinned by an assumption that we can at least agree on things that are true. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube create algorithms that promote and highlight information. That is an active engineering decision. Regardless of whether Facebook, Twitter profits from hate or not, it is a harmful by-product of the current design and there are social harms that come from this business model. Platforms that monetize user engagement have a duty to their users to make at least a minimum effort to prevent clearly identified harms. We have to focus on the responsibility of platforms. Because people are being manipulated with objectively false information, there has to be some kind of accountability for platforms. Currently, these platforms are not neutral environments they have no common understanding that there are certain things that are manifestly true with algorithms making decisions about what people see or do not see. In most Western democracies, you do have the freedom of speech. But freedom of speech is not an entitlement to reach. You are free to say what you want, within the confines of hate speech, libel law, and so on. But you are not entitled to have your voice artificially amplified by technology. The way Facebook and other platforms approach this problem is: We’ll wait and see and figure out a problem when it emerges. Every other industry has to have minimum safety standards and consider the risks that could be posed to people, through risk mitigation and prevention. There are right now some objectively disprovable things spreading quite rapidly on Facebook. For example, that Covid does not exist and that the vaccine is actually to control the minds of people. These are all things that are manifestly untrue, and you can prove that. However, algorithms are much more prevalent than that- the Apple Face ID algorithm decides whether you are who you say you are. Algorithms limit people’s worldview, which can allow large population groups to be easily controlled. Social Media algorithms tuned to your desires and want’s ensures that everything on your feed will be of interest to you without you knowing what data these algorithms use and what they aim for. Conclusion.  We are already living with large AI platforms that are monopolizing the fruits of globalization with billions being left behind. With us accepting this as if natural.
  • It will be too late when we are asking ourselves. What’s more valuable – intelligence or consciousness? Then ask yourselves what happens to society, politics, and daily life when non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms know us better than we know ourselves?
  • Whatever view one takes on artificial intelligence ethics. You can rest assured that we will see far more nut cases blowing themselves up, far more wars over finite resources, with vast movements of people.
We have to remember that self-regulation is not the same as having no regulation. Of course, the loudest arguments for and against something often have one thing in common. They are often made by people with no desire to compromise or understand the other side. I think self-regulation, in and of itself contemplates people in power, deciding how they will act. We have to accept from history that we cannot possibly predict all adverse consequences of technology and that’s because it is not just technology that has adverse consequences, but the context in which is applied, It is impossible to regulate AI while thinking about all of its potential adverse consequences.  The seeds for harm at the design stage, or at the development stage, or at the deployment stage. We don’t have to wait for the technology to become an application before we think of regulating it effectively.  There is a need to strengthen specific provisions to safeguard individual liberty and community rights when it comes to inferred data. There is a need to balance the trade-offs between the utility of AI and protecting privacy and data.  Self-regulation within the AI industry may not be enough since it may not solve the massive differential between the people developing the technology and the people affected by it. Machine learning is the next step that they are aiming for, with the algorithms deciding the input and output completely. Inherent political and economic power hierarchies between the state and citizens and within the private sector need to be addressed because the promise of globalization is a lie when it comes to AI and prosperity for all. Algorithms are being used in an ever-growing number of areas, in ever-increasing ways, however, like humans, they can produce bias in their results, even if unintentional. We are all becoming redundant with biotechnology becoming only available to the riches of us. I don’t think that AI per se can be regulated because today it is AI, tomorrow it will be Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality, and the day after tomorrow it may be something that we can’t even think of right now. So it is important to have checks and balances in the use and access to AI that go beyond just technological means. Why? Because they are also moving into areas where the benefits to those applying them may not be matched by the benefits to those subject to their ‘decisions’—in some aspects of the criminal justice system, for example. However, technology companies are not all the same, and nor is technology the only part of the media ecosystem. It is essential to ensure a whole society response to tackle these important issues. You could require algorithms to have a trigger TO SHUT OF – to stop misinformation or terrorist groups using social media as a recruiting platform. BUT who defines what counts as misinformation? It is no longer possible for humans to fact-check so the only course of action is a world Independent Universal Algorithm that is designed to establish fairness.  While “fairness” is much vaguer than “life or death,” I believe it can – and should – be built into all AI using their algorithm. Therefore every Social network should display a correction to every single person who was exposed to misinformation if independent fact-checkers identify a story as false. (Google’s search algorithm is more closely guarded than classified secret documents with  Google Algorithm’s that now owns most of the largest data sets in the world stored in its cloud.)                                        ——————– We now have algorithms fighting with each other for supremacy on the market, prey on other algorithms in order to blunder the world exchanges for profit to such an extent that they now effectively in control of capitalism.  Take for instance, when someone says algorithmic trading, it covers a vast subject not just buying and selling large volumes of shares automatically at very high speeds by unsupervised learning algorithms. There are four major types of trading algorithms.  There are:
  • Execution algorithms
  • Behavior exploitative algorithms
  • Scalping algorithms
  • Predictive algorithms
Transparency must be a key underpinning for algorithm accountability. Why? Because it will make it easier for the decisions produced by algorithms to be explained.  (The ‘right to explanation’ is a key part of achieving accountability and tackling the ethical implications around AI.) We are only on the outskirts of mind science that presently knows little about how the mind works never mind consciousness.  We have no idea how a collection of electric brain signals creates subjective experiences however we are conscious of our dreams. 99% of our bodily activities take place without any conscious feelings. As neuroscientists acquired more and more data about the workings of the brain, cognitive sciences, and their stated purpose is to combine the data from numerous disciplines so as better to understand such diverse phenomena as perception, language, reasoning, and consciousness. Even so, the subjective essence of “what it means” to be conscious remains an issue that is very difficult to address scientifically. To really understand what is meant by the cognitive neurosciences, one must recall that until the late 1960s, the various fields of brain research were still tightly compartmentalized. Brain scientists specialized in fields such as neuroanatomy, neurohistology, neuroembryology, or neurochemistry. Nobody was yet working with the full range of investigative methods available, but eventually, the very complexity of the subject at hand-made that a necessity. The first problem that arises when examining consciousness is that a conscious experience is truly accessible only to the person who is experiencing it. Despite the vast knowledge we have gained in the field of mathematics and computer science, none of the data processing systems we have created needs subjective experiences in order to function. None feel pain, pleasure, anger, or love. These emotions are vanishing into algorithms that are or will have an effect on how we see the world but also how we live in it.   If not address now all moral and political values will disappear, turning consciousness into a kind of mental pollution. After all, computers have no minds. Take images on Instagram they can affect mental health and body image.  You might say so what that has always been the case. And you would be right up to now but because of Covid-19 government has given themselves wide-ranging powers to collect and analyze data, without adequate safeguards. If we are not careful they will have no notion of self, existing only in the present unaware of the past or future, and therefore will be unable to consciously plan for future eventualities. Unconscious algorithms in our brains rather than conscious images in a mind. If you are using a smartphone, it indirectly means that you are enjoying the AI knowingly or unknowingly. It cannot be modified unknowingly or can’t get disfigured or breakdown in a hostile environment. We should not be regulating technology but Artificial Intelligence. It is so complicated in behavior we need to be regulated it at the data level. In lots of regulated domains, there is this notion of post-market surveillance, which is where the developer bears the responsibility of how the technology developed by them is going to be used. As William Shakespeare wrote in – As you Like it.   ” All the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players, they have their exits and entrances. ”   Sadly with AI, Machine Learning Algorithms no one knows or for that matter will ever know when they enter or exit. Probably like AI learning is actually an ongoing process that takes place throughout all of life. It’s the process of moving information from out there — to here. Unfortunately with the brain, has its own set of rules by which it learns best, unlike AI, the information doesn’t always stick. Together, we have a lot to learn. Humanity is in contact with humanity.   All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the cloud bin.        

                                              social media oligarchy where the richest participants are allowed to spread dangerous                  .                

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. IS THE CURRENCY AND THE ART OF THE HANDSHAKE GOING EXTINCT.

28 Tuesday Jan 2020

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Communication., Disconnection., Emotions., Enegery, Face Recognition., Facebook, Human values., Humanity., Life., Our Common Values., Reality., Social Media, The art of a handshake., The power of touch.

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Dehumanization., Digital emoji., Face Recognition technology., Facebook and Society., Google/Amazon/Facebook/Twitter, Handshake., Human Touch., Instagram, Smartphones, The Politician’s Handshake.

 

(Ten-minute read)

Remember when people use to initially judge you by your handshake. It formulated a picture of a person we were meeting for the first time.

In the span of a few seconds, it lay the foundation for how others perceive and feel about us — and we about them.

“It was wet,” “It was creepy,” ” It was firm,” It was crushing,” “It a Mormon handshake,” “It a Mason probing handshake”, enthusiastic, vigorous, prolonged, high-fives to fist-bumping.

A handshake was a globally widespread, brief greeting or parting tradition in which two people grasp one of each other like hands making impressions that have a very long shelf-life based on a brief but important meeting.

Your handshake is the business card you leave behind.

Believed by some to have originated as a gesture of peace by demonstrating that the hand holds no weapon.

It is a reassuring tactile touch that we as social animals share is essential for social interaction, social harmony, health, survival, and security, as well as for communicating our true feelings.

It serves as a means of transferring social chemical signals between the shakers.

What is even more startling is how long we remember those bad handshakes — sometimes we remember for decades.

Today we pay for items with the swipe of our phone or by inserting a small plastic card into a reader. The old handshake just doesn’t have its place anymore.

We can also spend thousands of hours clicking a mouse over a small image on a computer screen. Nothing is real, nothing is said – only ones and zeros racing around the globe in small packets of data.

The world of technology continues to tractor us into a world absent of looking at one another in the eyes the Art of the handshake is dead.

With, Social media, Face recognition, Instagram, Facebook, Smartphones, Emails etc our most valuable currency of the handshake is evaporating and being replaced by digital signatures or passwords, that are undermining our trust in each other.

It’s no wonder that so many people get something so simple as a handshake wrong. 

Take the Politician’s Handshake:Corporate-Image-Two-handed-handshake5

Two hands to cover or cup the other person’s hands twisting the other person’s hand so that yours is superior or playing hand jujitsu to let the other person know you are in charge is just rubbish.

In the real world-shaking a person’s hand allows you to establish your friendliness and accessibility. 

For example meeting your future in-laws for the first time, your first job interview.

It might be true that in the future daily and weekly media will be more and more electronic, but physical media will always exist.

Stand in front of the webcam and send a digital emoji and you could be shaking hands with the devil. 

You cannot reproduce a handshake with meaning electronically.

This is a part of the beauty and the freakiness of the internet no handshake required.

Its no wonder there is grooming.

There was a time that a person had to put on nice clothes and go out into the real world to meet a love interest.

Today, you can be “out there” without ever having to go out- online dating.

You can even engage in a virtual relationship by using email or instant messaging. It is possible to get to know a person on a relatively deep level without ever meeting at all.

Customs surrounding handshakes are specific to cultures and can offer some real benefits.  Take Brazilan negotiators they touch each other almost five times each half-hour where there is no physical contact between American negotiators. 

In postmodern society, superstitions don’t have much of a place, for most of history they have a played a huge role in shaping culture and society before the arrival of the handshake.

The internet cares not what you do. You miss out on real contact with people.

It is affecting our ability to connect with others as equals. Not being able to manage the normal tasks of adult living resulting in more and more limper handshakes. Which leads them to problems with society and unable to get along with others.

Although teens are staying in constant contact via the Internet and texting, these friendships do not foster trust and intimacy the same as face-to-face contact.

The century’s old practice to seal a deal may seem quaint but its importance in the future will tell us whether its a robot or not.

As the appreciation of small things disappears; nature loses its brilliance.

Our planet is in a tight spot lets shake hands on that.

As we know there can be no peace no universal action on anything without it. 

All the verbal diarrhoea in the world cannot replace it. 

 

Corporate-Image-handshake2

Corporate-Image-Finger-tip-grab-handshake3    

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

08 Friday Nov 2019

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Artificial Intelligence., Communication., Digital Friendship., Education, Emotions., Facebook, Happiness., Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Reality., Social Media, Technology, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World

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Artificial Intelligence., Digital friendships, Social Media, The Future of Mankind, Visions of the future.

 

 

(Twenty-minute read)

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

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

I miss those days of pre-digital friendship.

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

children-1149671_640

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The lines between real friendships and fleeting acquaintances have become

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

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

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

150 people.

Our brains are just not wired to cope with.

——————

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

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

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

We “met” through a mutual friend on Twitter.

(Posts Tagged With friendship in the digital age,

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

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

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

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

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

Facebook has completely redefined the definition of a friend.

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

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

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

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

A decade of change in digital communications.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is cloud necessary for digital?

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY SAY’S: WILL A ROBOT WITH EMOTIONS SPELL THE END OF HUMANITY.

17 Wednesday Jul 2019

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Artificial Intelligence., Communication., Dehumanization., Democracy, Emotions., Evolution, Facebook, Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern Day Communication., Modern Day Democracy., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Politics., Populism., Reality., Robot citizenship., Social Media, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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Artificial Intelligence., Democracy, Social Media, Technology, The Future of Mankind, Visions of the future.

 

(Eighteen-minute read)

 

An absurd thought you might say but it is the holy grail of AI to manipulate your feelings our emotions.

However, the uses of emotionally AI are nearly endless.

The number one question is going to be how do we stop being manipulated by those who control the data.

Another words democracy itself has been and is becoming more with Social media an emotional puppet show run by companies such as Facebook who is undoubtedly one of the kings of social networking.

It is who and how data is controlled that determines the outcomes of elections and referendums as we have seen with Brexit and the election of Donal Trump and now the coming of G5 we going have:

Autonomous Driving.

Remote Robotic Surgery.

Smart(er) Factories.

Immersive Gaming and Augmented Reality.

Supply Chain Management.

Digital Transformation in the Experience Economy.

It will “offer users no less than the perception of infinite capacity.

                                                  –

But how can we find a balance between accelerating technological progress

and governments’ responsibility to improve the economic conditions and raise

the level of wellbeing for their citizens?

There isn’t a single solution.

Why?

Because Democracy is based on feelings. During an election, you are not being asked to vote rather how do you feel.

Currently, many people cannot imagine their life without social networks, which in less than a decade have become an indispensable resource in our daily lives who have served multiple purposes throughout its short life and replaced other media.

With 2.38 billion monthly active users as of the first quarter of 2019, Facebook is the biggest social network worldwide. It is at a size where it’s worth really taking a careful look at what are all the things that it can do to make social media the most positive force for good possible.

But like climate change, we sit back and watch the development of technologies that have little or no regulation both of which are reshaping the world we live in and the Earth exponentially.

Perhaps sometime in the next few decades, we’ll start developing technologies that improve human intelligence. We’ll hack the brain, or interface the brain to computers, or finally crack the problem of General Artificial Intelligence.

Should we be worried about technology’s advance and our demise?

Will Technology Save Us Or Enslave Us?

Intelligence is the source of technology.

The purest case of an intelligence explosion would be a General Artificial Intelligence rewriting its own source code.

That prospect would certainly change our viewpoints on what is life.

The potential impact on our world is enormous.

Both climate change and GAI  are heading us all to a  critical point of all human history.

Right now, almost no one is paying serious attention to either.

So what might a General Artificial Intelligence do with nanotechnology?

Feed the hungry?

Heal the sick?

Help us become smarter?

Remove our emotions so we have no sense of guilt?

Instantly wipe out the human species?

Probably it depends on the specific makeup of the AI.

See, human beings all have the same cognitive architecture. We all have a prefrontal cortex and limbic system and so on. If you imagine a space of all possible minds, then all human beings are packed into one small dot in mind design space. And then Artificial Intelligence is literally everything else. “AI” just means “a mind that does not work like we do.

So you can’t ask “What will an AI do?” as if all AIs formed a natural kind.

There is more than one possible AI.

Back to the question of whether a robot could or should have emotions.

From an intellectual point of view, this may not be as important to a robot as being able to interrupt human emotion and also display it back while interacting with people.

The most efficient way to answer the question would be to start by making itself smarter: Acquiring more computer resources could probably be most easily accomplished by hacking every computer connected to the internet.

Once that’s done, it could use the resulting enormous amount of computing power to calculate the most optimal way of rewriting itself for more intelligence.

Using this newfound intelligence and raw brute force, it may turn to develop new and more efficient computer chips and proceeding to turn the surface of the earth and nearby matter into computer innards.

We would not escape as we are made from perfectly usable carbon atoms, just waiting to be utilized as computronium – re-purposing our atoms.

It would then be simply a matter of the robot fooling a human, an easy task into thinking it had emotions.

The sort of emotion a robot might actually be programmed would be the same as its intelligence that being artificial.

If it turns out to be possible to create an AGI, it will presumably be given a task of some sort.

Here are a few.

  1. Psychotherapy software that utilizes an emotional connection to dispense advice.
  2. Call answering software that detects caller emotions and responds accordingly.
  3. To foresee the consequences of actions.
  4. Robots will not be susceptible to the effects of fear, adrenaline or shock and could potentially make strategic, reasoned decisions much faster than a human soldier.
  5. Robots would not be restrained by human emotions and the capacity for compassion.

So could a robot acquire Adrenaline along with emotions?

Emotions appear to be integrated as part of a biological body and a biological brain but our inability to see beyond biological programming does not allow us to answer this question.

There is no doubt that as AI technology grows more sophisticated, the potential for implementing it in weaponry is all but guaranteed – Drones that get an Adrenaline kick.

Adrenaline can be used in both technical and nontechnical contexts.

It is commonly used in describing the physiological symptoms (such as increased heart rate and respiration) that occur as part of the body’s fight-or-flight response to stress.

In a robot, it would not be just an act in the same vein. A thinking person feels empathy for something that looks alive and has complex behaviours, even if it doesn’t have life in a biological sense.

In the end, there is absolutely no reason why any sane human would ever want them to have characteristics but technophobic response actually feels rational.

Like a robot dealing with sick people should be able to mimic some emotions like compassion and carefulness….. They testify to the fact that emotions and our biological body operate together.

While a consensus is yet to be reached over the scope and scale of the effect we should expect from mobile connectivity on poverty-reduction and inequality some argue that it might be the best hope we have.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: WHAT IS HAPPINESS.

31 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Emotions., Energy, Google it., Happiness., Humanity., Life., Our Common Values., Technology, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions.

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Capitalism and Greed, Distribution of wealth, Happiness., Inequility, The Future of Mankind

( A follow on read: Twelve minutes from the post – WHAT IS THE CONCEPT OF NOW.)

While writing:( what is the concept of now) my daughter suggested I write a happy post. This post is therefore dedicated to her continuing search for happiness.

What is happiness?  How do we find the key to happiness?

Is happiness the sole purpose of life or is it just good health with a bad memory.

To day this is the default view. Skepticism about the afterlife drives humankind to seek not only immortality but also earthly happiness.

Who would like to live for ever in eternal misery?

What stands between us and an answer to this deceptively complex questions is the problem of subjectivity –happiness means different things to different people.

To behaviorist, happiness is a cocktail of emotions we experience when we do something good or positive. To neurologists, happiness is the experience of a flood of hormones released in the brain as a reward for behavior that prolongs survival. According to the tenets of several major religions, happiness indicates the presence of God.

This question has no straightforward answer, because the meaning of the question itself is unclear. What exactly is being asked? Perhaps you want to know what the word ‘happiness’ means. In that case your inquiry is linguistic.

Chances are you had something more interesting in mind: perhaps you want to know about the thing, happiness, itself. Is it pleasure, a life of prosperity, something else? Yet we can’t answer that question until we have some notion of what we mean by the word.Image associée

Is there anything more to being happy than just thinking you’re happy?

Do we have the power to choose to be happy or unhappy?

Are all kinds of happiness created equal?

Happiness is not a single all-encompassing concept it is a complex the notion.

A state of mind. What is this state of mind we call happiness? Typical answers to this question include life satisfaction, pleasure, or a positive emotional condition.

A life that goes well for the person leading it. Perhaps you are a high-achieving intellectual who thinks that only ignoramuses can be happy. On this sort of view, happy people are to be pitied, not envied.

We are inclined to think that pleasure is the key to happiness.

Is it purpose, or goal?

Has a goal that is an end-in-itself, nothing that he does is actually worth doing.

For most people, happiness is a central aspect of well-being, since most people very much desire to be happy. Even a slave might come to internalize the values of his oppressors and be happy, and this strikes most as an unenviable life indeed.

Is happiness overrated?

How if at all should one pursue happiness as part of a good life?

Is it possible to objectify and even quantify so subjective and elusive a quality as happiness?  The individual pursuit of happiness may be subject to non-moral norms as well, prudence being the most obvious among them.

The pursuit of happiness is self-defeating especially when it is associated with pleasure. The virtue of compassion or kindness, giving not receiving, produce happiness.    

Philosophical “theories of happiness” can be about either of at least two different things: well-being, or a state of mind. To be happy, it seems, is just to be in a certain sort of psychological state or condition.

Is it a psychological state (for example, feeling overall more pleasure than pain) and happiness as a positive evaluation of your life, even if it has involved more pain than pleasure.

Above all, there is the fundamental question: In which sense, if any, is happiness a proper goal of a human life?

Wealth, beauty, and pleasure, for example, have little effect on happiness.

What is needed to achieve genuine happiness?

Answer me this:  Would you choose to attach ourselves to a device that would produce a constant state of intense pleasure, even if we never achieved anything in our lives other than experiencing this pleasure. We all need to answer this question for ourselves.

Morality itself is a worthy goal of human existence. Our good or bad fortune can play a part in determining our happiness; for example, happiness can be affected by factors as our material circumstances, our place in society, and even our looks, whether we are married or not. In the long run marriage is not a major source of either happiness or unhappiness.

When asked Aristotle said” that the supreme good is happiness.”

And of this nature happiness is mostly thought to be, for this we choose always for its own sake, and never with a view to anything further: whereas honour, pleasure, intellect, in fact every excellence we choose for their own sakes, it is true, but we choose them also with a view to happiness, conceiving that through their instrumentality we shall be happy: but no man chooses happiness with a view to them, nor in fact with a view to any other thing whatsoever.

But what is happiness?

For Aristotle, it is by understanding the distinctive function of a thing that one can understand its essence.

Whereas human beings need nourishment like plants and have sentience like animals, their distinctive function, says Aristotle, is their unique capacity to reason. Thus, our supreme good, or happiness, is to lead a life that enables us to use and develop our reason, and that is in accordance with reason. Unlike amusement or pleasure, which can also be enjoyed by animals, happiness is not a state but an activity. And like virtue or goodness, it is profound and enduring.

By living our life to the full according to our essential nature as rational beings, we are bound to become happy regardless.

For this reason, happiness is more a question of behavior and of habit—of virtue—than of luck; a person who cultivates such behaviors and habits is able to bear his misfortunes with balance and perspective, and thus can never be said to be truly unhappy.

Some goals are subordinate to other goals, which are themselves subordinate to yet other goals, but happiness needs sadness. Without sadness there can be no happy moments unlike pleasure which can be manufactured by algorithms.

Being happy doesn’t come easy with the stress of modern life.  Take for instance the average American who uses sixty times more energy than the average stone age hunter-gatherer. Is he sixty times happier?

It took just a piece of bread to make a starving medieval peasant joyful.

It appears that even with all our unprecedented accomplishments even if we provided free food, ensured world peace, provided free medical care, gave everyone a thousand bitcoins the Capitalism system ensures that the ceiling of happiness remains out of reach.

Our exceptions are driven by our biochemistry level rather than our economic, social or political situation. Pleasure v pain. Unpleasant bodily sensations.

PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS DISAPPOINT TO REMAIN HAPPY YOU MUST LEARN HOW TO FORGIVE, FORGET, “ Comparison is the thief of joy.”

Self-actualization is Happiness. Joy goes in and out of vogue. We can deceive ourselves into thinking we’re happy when we’re not and we can be happy without realizing it.

Happy.

It’s pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of a pig in shit"

I would be as happy as a pig in shit if I could live in THE CONCEPT OF NOW.

All comments happily appreciated all like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS: We need to be genuinely intelligent about how humankind anticipates artificial intelligence.

19 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., Capitalism, Emotions., Humanity., Technology, The Future, The world to day., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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Artificial Intelligence., Big Data, Capitalism and Greed, Globalization, SMART PHONE WORLD, Technology, The Future of Mankind, Visions of the future.

 

( Seven Minute read )

Who programs the programmers?

Soon enough, it might not be people behind the development of advanced machines learning and artificial intelligence but other AI.

This will drastically reduce the human input required.

We must not be blinded by science, nor held captive by unfounded or fantastic fears.Afficher l'image d'origineI have previously posted blogs putting the case that all technology (whether it be atomic energy or nanotechnology, bioengineering or DNA mutilation, or Artificial Intelligence) should be subject to examinations by a New World Organisation, that is totally independent and transparent.

( It’s imperative that we do not leave such examinations to the whims of the marketplace nor the cost-benefit calculations of a given quarter to marinate Artificial Intelligence into a sense of human complacency.)

I have also stated that I am pro all technology that benefits mankind as a whole. However it is critical that those individuals who are on the front lines of research be thinking about the implications of their work.

The other day on arrival at Gatwick I was admitted by an Algorithm into the UK.

Since this Algorithm was focus by definition to be based on narrowly defined problems, it got me thinking, who or what wrote the software in the first place.

The ethics of artificial intelligence are non existence.

Whether we are aware of it or not, we are already moving into the era of AI where IBM’s Watson, Google’s AI, Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Echo will be your new companion.

Once AI can analyze a person’s affective state it will be able to influence it.

Humans are driven by emotions, making a crucial component of perception, decision-making, learning, and more. 

Artificial intelligence is not yet emotional in the same ways that humans are, but it  won’t be long with all the data collection before this is achievable to prompt certain responses and induce desired emotions. 

Creepy or worse predatory.

What happens when one of the human negotiators has an emotionally aware assistant in is the corner.     

  Every decision that mankind makes is going to be informed by a cognitive system like Watson. That future is actually much closer than you think.

To be or not to be. “Are you a robot?” “What?! No I am a real person.”

Afficher l'image d'origine

For example:

Militaries are among the intense users of high-technology, and the adoption of that equipment has transformed decision-making throughout the chain of command. The removal of human beings from the act of killing and from war.

There must be a way to ensure that Artificial Intelligence that is introduced into what ever field of Technology is not dominated by those who have a stake in the expansion of AI for Profit Sake.

There is no excuse for not being aware of the risks that such AI carries for all of us.

These questions have been with us for a long time:

Alan Turing in 1950 asked whether machines could think and that same year writer Isaac Asimov contemplated what might happen if they could in “I, Robot.” (In truth, thinking machines can be found in ancient cultures, including those of the Greeks and the Egyptians.)

About 30 years ago, James Cameron served up one dystopia created by AI in “The Terminator.” Science fiction became fact in 1997 when IBM’s chess-playing Deep Blue computer beat world champion Garry Kasparov.

As the Internet and digital systems penetrate further each day into our daily lives, concerns about artificial intelligence (AI) are intensifying.

It is difficult to get exercised about connections between the “Internet of Things” and AI when the most visible indications are Siri (Apple’s digital assistant), Google translate and smart houses, but a growing number of people, including many with a reputation for peering over the horizon, are worried.

Nevertheless, a debate about prospects and possibilities is worthwhile.

We need to ensure that boundaries are set, not just for research but for all the applications of ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

As the Internet and digital systems penetrate further each day into our daily lives, concerns about artificial intelligence (AI) are intensifying. It is difficult to get exercised about connections between the “Internet of Things” and AI when the most visible indications are Siri (Apple’s digital assistant), Google translate and smart houses, but a growing number of people, including many with a reputation for peering over the horizon, are worried.

Recently, there has been a growing chorus of concern about the potential for AI.

It began last year when inventor Elon Musk, a man who spends considerable time on the cutting edge of technology, warned that with AI “we’re summoning the demon.” In all those stories with the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, and he’s sure he can control the demon. It doesn’t work out.” For him, AI is an existential threat to humanity, more dangerous than nuclear weapons.

The possibilities created by “big data” are driving increasing automation and in some cases AI in the office environment.  Legal and administrative frameworks to deal with the proliferation of these technologies and AI have not kept pace with their application. Ethical questions are often not even part of the discussion.

And since their focus tends to be on narrowly defined problems, others who can address larger issues should join the discussion. This process should be occurring for all such technologies.

A month later, distinguished scientist Stephen Hawking told the BBC that he feared that the development of “full artificial intelligence” could bring an end to the human race. Not today, of course, but over time, machines could become both more intelligent and physically stronger than human beings. Last month, Microsoft founder Bill Gates joined the group, saying that he did not understand people who were not troubled by the prospect of AI escaping human control.

More recently, Google’s AlphaGo software beat South Korean Go champion Lee Sedol in series of matches pitting human against software in a board game that apparently has more possible positions than there are atoms in the universe.

What’s more amazing about Alpha Go, unlike Deep Blue before it, was that it was not specifically programmed to play Go – it learned to play the game using a general-purpose algorithm.

The big question is what can be done? If anything, or is it to late.

None of the darker visions have deterred researchers and entrepreneurs from pursuing the field. It is hard to fear AI when the simplest demonstrations are more humorous than hair-raising.

The prevailing view among software engineers, who are writing the programs that make AI possible, is that they remain in control of what they program.

But are they really? I think not.

The prevailing view among software engineers, who are writing the programs that make AI possible, is that they remain in control of what they program.

Even if true AI is a far-off prospect, ethical issues are emerging every day.

Artificial intelligence or AI is now getting a foothold in people’s homes, starting with the Amazon devices like its Echo speaker which links to a personal assistant “Alexa” to answer questions and control connected devices such as appliances or light bulbs. Echo’s main advantage is that it connects to Amazon’s range of products and services telling devices to tend to tasks such as ordering goods, checking traffic, making restaurant reservations or searching for information. It also connects to various third-party services like Uber and Domino’s Pizza, so you can just call for a car or a pizza delivery by just telling the Echo what you want.

IBM, whose Watson supercomputer systems are offering “cognitive health” programs which can analyze a person’s genome and offer personalized treatment for cancer, for example.

Google recently announced it had developed an algorithm which can detect diabetic retinopathy, a cause of blindness, by analyzing retina images.

Amazon is seeking to put AI to work in the supermarket—testing a system without cash registers or lines, where consumers simply grab their products and go, and have a bill tallied by artificial intelligence.

Facebook just recently introduced its AI-based Deep Text analytics engine which is said to be able to scan and understand the textual content of thousands of posts per second in more than 20 languages, all with nearly human-like accuracy.

Machine learning is already being used extensively in the social networking site to make sense of and translate some two billion News Feed items per day and the company is planning to use AI to recognise images and allow users to search for photos based on the content in those photos.

The artificial intelligence (AI) component in these programs aims to make create a world in which everyone can have a virtual aide that gets to know them better with each interaction.

AI prowess to make smartphones smarter—Google Allo messenger can, for example, suggest a meeting or deliver relevant information during a conversation. To infuse smartphones and other internet-linked devices with software smarts that help them think like people.

The prospect of AI escaping human control is advancing day by day.

Researchers most deeply engaged in this work are more sanguine. The head of Microsoft Research dismissed Gates’ concern, saying he does not think that humankind will lose control of “certain kinds of intelligences.” He instead is focused on ways that AI will increase human productivity and better lives.

At what cost?

No Algorithm understand the unwritten social behaviors used in daily life, which can vary from one culture to another. More work needs to be done to improve “social intelligence,” or understanding the subtleties of our everyday decisions.

However, the real question on everybody’s minds is – is the rush to get to true AI another step towards Skynet, Terminators and HAL 9000?

Just ponder on this for a moment – if a computer could truly be “smart”, it would soon see that humans are basically the cause of most environmental problems and would come up with an extinction solution that would solve all issues in one fell swoop.

Humans are limited by slow biological evolution and would not be able to compete with software that can redesign itself and evolve faster than any human could.

So what is there to prevent AI from gaining sentience and killing us all?Afficher l'image d'origine

How one can manage something that is sentient is another question altogether.

As we already have industrial robots replacing us in tiresome and repetitive jobs, we might ask ourselves if they’re not going to replace us in all domains?

The population with mobile devices now outnumbering and multiplying faster than humans.

AI and automation provide an opportunity to move beyond business as usual. The global affective computing market is estimated to be 9.3. billion $ a year. By 2020 it will be in the region of 50 billion.

It’s no wonder that the darker visions have not deterred researchers and entrepreneurs from pursuing the field.

We need to remain vigilant on the uses and changes of AI, and maybe even prepare ourselves for a new world where a good part of normal, information research work will die out.

Let’s hope that, should this happen, it will be to the benefit of creative arts which remain entirely ours.

We might already be in the midst of creating a conscious entity of a whole new “utterly inhuman” kind.  Now that would be scary.Afficher l'image d'origine

Perhaps the only solution is a whistle-blower Algorithm.

All comments welcome, all like clicks chucked in the Bin.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS: THE TIME TO BE EMPATHETIC IS TO DAY. THIS MINUTE. NOW..

26 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Communication., Emotions., European Union., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Life., Modern Day Democracy., Natural World Disasters, Social Media., The Refugees, The world to day., What Needs to change in the World

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Capitalism and Greed, European Union, Globalization, Inequility, The Future of Mankind, THE UNITED NATIONS, World aid commission

 

Our world is quickly becoming a desolate island, a screen that we hold six inches in front of our noses, and it’s a hard pill to swallow.

Because of this, we lose touch with nature, we lose touch with reality, we lose touch with each other. We seem to have forgotten the basic tenets of empathy.Afficher l'image d'origine

We have become such a technology-based society, that we have forgotten how to feel. We have forgotten how to relate. We have forgotten how to connect among other humans, let alone with other sentient animals.

We seem to have forgotten what it feels like to be in someone else’s, or some other animal’s, proverbial shoes.

Here in lies one of the major problems.

Some time ago, (some) humans stopped showing empathy, and started killing indiscriminately — people, and other animals. We kill each other over political differences, racial differences, religious differences, and resources. We kill animals for “research,” or for competition and sport, or for a token.

In a world where there is so much doom and gloom about the state of our environment it’s no surprising that the world has lost 10% of its wilderness areas in the past 20 years. The growth of our modern civilisation, spurred on by technological innovations, has been underpinned by the exploitation of the natural environment. Today, a large fraction of the Earth, once swathed in wilderness, is now monopolised by humans. Although the direct causes of wildlife loss are clear enough, what’s less obvious is why many people seemingly don’t care. Society’s ongoing destruction of the environment can be put down to the fact that not enough people value nature and wilderness any more.

Expanding human demands on land, sea and fresh water, along with the impacts of climate change, have made the conservation and management of wild areas and wild animals a top priority.

For some species, our time to see them is rapidly running out.

The richer we are and the more we consume, the more self-centred and careless of the lives of others we appear to become

Human attitudes towards wild nature and wildlife have, historically, been ambivalent.

It seems to me that there are currently two main approaches to wildlife management.

One: The wise use approach aims to accommodate humanity’s continuous use of wild nature as a resource for food, timber, and other raw materials, as well as for recreation.

Two: The preservationists, whose goal is to protect pristine nature, not to use it, carefully or otherwise. Wild places should be allowed to develop on their own with as little interference from humans as possible.

Neither work:

For years we’ve been told that people cannot afford to care about the natural world until they become rich; that only economic growth can save the biosphere, that civilisation marches towards enlightenment about our impacts on the living planet. The results suggest the opposite.

There is only one way to protect what is left.Afficher l'image d'origine

Protected areas, like national parks and wildlife refuges, are the cornerstones of global conservation efforts.

We must pay for it.  Either by buying the land or paying the locals to maintain it.

Why is it so difficult to persuade people to care about our wonderful planet, the world that gave rise to us and upon which we wholly depend?

Because we lack empathy. Empathy is defined as: the capacity to understand or feel what another being (a human or non-human animal) is experiencing from within the other being’s frame of reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another’s position.

Without it we all have different values that give rise to conflicts or dilemmas.

The way in which these different values are prioritized will determine policy of conservation in the future.

For instance, there may be a conflict between sustaining certain human livelihoods and preserving a particular species, or there may be a dilemma between the protection of wild nature and animal welfare.

The question, then, is how we should address such dilemmas and disagreements. The first thing to note, in trying to answer this question, is that the rich anglophone countries are anomalous. The more we consume, the less we feel.

Our erroneous belief that we are more concerned about man-made climate change than the people of other nations informs the sentiment, often voiced by the press and politicians, that there’s no point in acting if the rest of the world won’t play its part.

Our refusal to stop pumping so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is pure selfishness. The more harm we do, the less concerned about it we become. And the more hyper consumerism destroys relationships, communities and the physical fabric of the Earth, the more we try to fill the void in our lives by buying more stuff.

In modern debates about wildlife, however, other values have become increasingly important. We don’t know exactly how ecosystems will respond to climate change but you may rest assured that with rising sea levels nature will be the last to be rescued.

Sustaining interest in this great but slow-burning crisis is a challenge no one seems to have mastered. Only when the crisis causes or exacerbates an acute disaster – such as the floods – is there a flicker of anxiety, but that quickly dies away.

So the perennially low-level of concern, which flickers upwards momentarily when disaster strikes, then slumps back into the customary stupor, is an almost inevitable result of a society that has become restructured around shopping, fashion, celebrity and an obsession with money.

It’s hard to understand how anyone could imagine that economic growth is a formula for protecting the planet.

How we break the circle and wake people out of this dream world is the question that all those who love the living planet should address.

Just look at the United Nations:

For the first time in UN history, candidates seeking to replace the organisation’s secretary-general have held a live debate, presenting the case for their candidacy and taking questions from UN member states on key global issues.

All previous secretary-generals were chosen behind closed doors by the UN’s permanent five members: the US, China, Russia, France and Britain.

This remains so:  The permanent five UN Security Council members still fix “who is going to be selected behind closed doors. Don’t think for a moment that the permanent members are going  give up powers they won after World War II readily. Hand-picking the UN secretary-general is still one of their trump cards.

The possibility of  the United Nations getting an energetic idealist to shake up the world body by streamline archaic UN systems, to stand up to the big powers and do more to end wars, and fight poverty is as remote as ever.  It will remain both bloated and overstretched with its staff more interested in winning promotions than fighting malaria, climate change and regulating poverty or stopping wars, not to mention protecting what’s left of nature.

So long as it has to beg for funds it will remain a worthless gossip shop.  ( See previous posts)

There will be no easy answers.

As Leonard Da Vinci said,

” Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”

Empathy is about being we-focused rather than I-focused and understanding that, collectively, we are better off when we step outside of our silos. As a leader, you must emphasize value, not just transactions; people, not just processes.

Empathy brings the big picture into focus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: IS YOUR SMART PHONE INTERFERING WITH YOUR LOVE LIFE.

27 Saturday Aug 2016

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Artificial Intelligence., Emotions., Facebook, Humanity., Modern Day Communication., Social Media., Technology, Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World

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SMART PHONE WORLD

( A Beady eye though less than twenty-second read)

Technoference:

A smart phone is a modern-day distraction that is so common, it’s hardly noticed any more, demanding our attention multiple times a day.Afficher l'image d'origine

We are becoming irrevocably immersed in our digital lives, prioritizing the virtual world over anything else.

We are losing the personal touch, losing the art of conversation.

You can measure romance by the number of words you can type per minute.

Relationships only seem to be real once you make it Facebook official.

There Is no doubt that those dedicated to their smartphones put up a barrier between people. Compulsively carry our smartphones with you wherever you go can make you a very boring person.

You need to set some boundaries for your smart phone usage.

It is not some magic self-defense tool capable of protecting you from all that is evil in the world.

By allowing technology to interfere with or interrupt conversations, activities, and time with romantic partners – even when unintentional or for brief moments – individuals may be sending implicit messages about what they value most, leading to conflict and negative outcomes in personal life and relationships.’

We can let these devices overrule our entire lives if we allow it.

Social networking doesn’t count as socializing.

Anger can be too easily impulsively shot out in an email or text.

You don’t receive smiles, hugs, laughter or touch or the sound of voices. See each other, hear each other and touch each other. And that can never be conveyed over technology of any kind.

The mystery of getting to know someone is gone. Sometimes that’s a good thing, but the fact that it’s a forgotten practice is a little sad.

The percentage of phones dropped into toilets has risen dramatically over the years. That’s a scientific fact.

Put your damn phone down and look people in the eye. Have a conversation. Don’t worry about what you are missing on Twitter. It will still be there when you are done socializing with actual humans.

I do think we’re all kind of in this big, worldwide reality television game and it will seemed like terrible unlucky to be dead on Facebook.

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. DO YOU EVER WONDER WHY YOU WONDER?

31 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Emotions., Google it., Humanity., Life., The Future, Unanswered Questions.

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Awesome., Community cohesion, SMART PHONE WORLD, Social Media, The Future of Mankind, Visions of the future.

He who knows it not and can no longer wonder no longer feel

amazement is a good as dead.

“If you worry about what might be, and wonder what might have been, you will ignore what is.” Unknown.  

Awe can rock our world, making us reassess our beliefs and revise our theories of how things work. 

What may sometimes appear to be devious or deceptive, is, in the end mysterious, and (almost?) magical. 

Wonder is the accidental impetus behind our greatest achievements.

 

There in may lie the power of priests, doctors, politicians, psychoanalysts, and, (dare we say it?) teachers.

We are creatures of boundless curiosity.

For example: To think or speculate curiously; To be filled with admiration, amazement, astonishment, or awe; To doubt; something strange and surprising; producing puzzlement or curiosity; the reverse of what might be expected are disappearing down a Smart Phone or a Google Search.

These days everything is awesome.

We marvel at mundane everyday experiences and not objects that evoke mystery, doubt, and uncertainty.

For most city-dwellers, the night sky is merely a murky orange haze. We are becoming estranged from natural sources of awe with electronic media becoming the only source of awe.

Image of night sky

One can’t say when, in our evolutionary history, our ancestors first got blown away by something immense or amazing.

SENSE OF WONDER  n.

A feeling of awakening or awe triggered by an expansion of one’s awareness of what is possible or by confrontation with the vastness of space and time, as brought on by reading science fiction or standing on the top of Everest.

The sense of inspired awe that is aroused in a reader when the full implications of an event or action become realized, or when the immensity of a plot or idea first becomes known, or (Not that I have ever stood on the summit of Everest) the view of the Himalayan peaks.

What do we really desire from our future technologies?

We claim that just as in life, it should assist us in solving problems and improving our everyday efficiency. However, we could further argue that technology also must prompt us to think, be curious, and wonder.

If we fail or, worse yet, ignore this vital design space of wonderment for technology, we are almost certainly doomed to live amongst emotionless, servant-like, lifeless, problem solving, scientific systems.

We deserve more.

Feelings of wonderment are difficult to measure and nearly impossible to assign a value. Nonetheless, these episodes are part of our lives and as such deserve a place within the discussion of our future digital technologies.

We still need to understand how conviction and belief actually arise in a human being.

How far have I walked today? How many people have ever sat on that bench? Does that woman own a cat? Did a child or adult spit that gum onto the sidewalk? These are all feelings of what we call “wonderment” that color and enrich our lives.

Step back with me for a moment. What really matters?

Everyday life spans a wide range of emotions and experiences – from improving productivity and efficiency to promoting wonderment and daydreaming.

Our successful future technological tools, the one we really want to cohabited with, will be those that incorporate the full range of life experiences.

We are at an important technological inflection point.

The value of invisibility, but does not make it visible.

It is this important element of human mystery and curiosity that is underrepresented as a design practice for technological interactive systems.

Currently our mobile phones are doomed to live out only short product lifespan. As these fully functional objects fail to satisfy our technological fetishes and trends, they are replaced by I Pads, by Watches, by Glasses, by Virtual Reality.

Changing people’s sense of control can influence the kinds of scientific explanations they prefer: if you feel that you don’t have control, you’ll be more drawn to explanations that promise order and predictability.

People have become more individualistic, more self-focused, more materialistic and less connected to others.

To reverse this trend, I suggest that people insist on experiencing more everyday awe, to actively seek out what gives them goose bumps, be it in looking at trees, night skies, patterns of wind on water.

While as I have said it is difficult to place quantitative measurements on wonder in terms of enjoyment, benefit, or even improved quality of life, it is indeed a essential element of daily human life.

We need to understand two elements of belief:

Suggestibility and Surrender.

“These are not only elements of religious conviction, they are part and parcel of the experience of learning and teaching, of certainty and persuasion, as much as they are part of various social strategies to modulate and sooth doubt and anxiety, as well as strategies meant to shock and gain influence.” (Frank 1974, Galanter 1993).

Education comes in all different forms and many people believe if they can look up information on their phone, including current news, then they are learning and expanding their mind. So what’s the problem?

Although mobile apps and texting have made our lives easier, some question the impact they’ve having on the relationships we have with one another.  The use of texting and Facebook and Twitter and other sites as a form of communication is eroding people’s ability to write sentences that communicate real meaning and inhibit the art of dialogue of the impossible.

We will soon have a generation that has no clue how to read any of the cues of wonderment.

Wonders never cease!

Nine days’ wonder:  No wonder: Time works wonders: Gutless wonder: Wonder about: Wonder at: Wonders will never cease: A one-hit wonder: A chinless wonder: Little wonder: Wonder Drugs: Wonder boy.

The sky would have been the most pervasive natural influence of wonder now it’s the Mobil Phone. There ringtones have a private meaning but are a public experience. They are as expressive as the clothing we wear and an obvious extension of our public presentation of self.

Ringtone sales are a $4 billion market worldwide. Now ain’t that awesome.

Wonder is sometimes said to be a childish emotion, one that we grow out of.  But that is surely wrong. Wonder might be humanity’s most important emotion.

Wondrous things engage our senses.

Wonder is what leads us to try to understand our world. 

Knowledge does not abolish wonder; indeed, scientific discoveries are often more wondrous than the mysteries they unravel. 

Wonder, then, unites science and religion, two of the greatest human institutions.

Art, science and religion are all forms of excess; they transcend the practical ends of daily life.  Science, religion and art are unified in wonder. 

Without wonder, it is hard to believe that we would engage in these distinctively human pursuits. 

We needed to master our environment enough to exceed the basic necessities of survival before we could make use of wonder.

Afficher l'image d'origine

 

Art, science and religion are inventions for feeding the appetite that wonder excites in us. They also become sources of wonder in their own right, generating epicycles of boundless creativity and enduring inquiry.

Each of these institutions allows us to transcend our animality by transporting us to hidden worlds.

In harvesting the fruits of wonder, we came into our own as a species.

Personally I wonder who read this blog.

For those that do:

I leave with a wonder of all time but don’t spend too long contemplating the wonder.

Infinity.

It’s enough to drive anyone mad, as well as a good point at which to bring to an end this blog.

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All comments and contributions much appreciated

  • THE BEADY EYE SAYS . I TOLD YOU SO WE ARE WELL ON THE WAY TO A DEPESSION NOT A RESSION May 23, 2022
  • THE BEADY EYE SAYS. IT ALL GONE QUIET ON CLIMATE CHANGE. May 21, 2022
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  • THE BEADY ASKS; HOW DO WE KNOW THAT WE HAVE A SOUL? April 28, 2022

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