(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.

1. 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.