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Category Archives: Modern day life.

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: ARE GOVERNMENTS BECOMING OBSOLETE.

05 Thursday Dec 2019

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Cyberocracy., Democracy., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Political voting systems., Politics., Robot citizenship., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Politics

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Algorithms Democracy., Cyberocracy., Direct Democracy, Erosion of democracy., Government’s., Information revolution., Modern Day Democracy., NEW DEMOCRATIC EMPOWERMENT, old monarchies and governments, Out of Date Democracy, Political Trust

 

 

(Twenty-minute read)

In terms of almost everything, no one can be sure what the next fifty years will hold nor can anyone be sure just what a government will be doing fifty years from now, never mind next year.

As history has repeatedly shown, political systems come and go.

Given our rapid technological and social advances, (a trend we can expect to continue) we will be looking at many different possible futures because there is a new kind of creature that has entered the world.

When we change the way we communicate, in today’s increasingly interconnected world we change society, creating entirely new systems of thought to deal with complex issues like climate change, and by whom/what and how we are governed.  

We are in the throes of the digital age with all of its unknown consequences and it along with Climate Change is ushering in a new phase of the world. Perhaps we are looking at democracy being replaced by Cyberocracy. (Computer(s) make the decisions.)

A precise definition of cyberocracy is not possible at present as it is still hypothetical in form, but it may bring a new emphasis on ‘soft’ symbolic, cultural, and psychological dimensions of policymaking and public opinion.

It will be however a product of the information revolution and it may place a premium on gaining information from any source, public or private, radically affect who rules, how and why.

(That is, information and its control will become a dominant source of power, as a natural next step in political evolution.)

In essence, a smartphone could show us how and can train us in the latest developments to increase effectivity, while making sure a human or a group of people are not directly interacting with the information.

In theory a great idea for efficiency but in practice, those in charge will probably use the information to crush dissent and sell the information off to private companies.

Ideally, the point of cyberocracy would be to ultimately overcome the faults that lie in typical bureaucratic systems, effectively creating an artificially intelligent head of state.

Luckily there is a pitfall, in that the control of all gathered information would then ultimately lie in the proverbial hands of a machine, wherein true humanity becomes lost to the legislative and governmental processes.

The consequence of the information revolution may thus mean “greater inequalities. speeding the collapse of closed societies and favouring the spread of open ones.

Algorithms are already undermining the power base of old monarchies and governments, and these same technologies will subsequently “turned into tools of propaganda, surveillance, and subjugation that enabled dictators to seize power and develop totalitarian regimes.

New modes of multiorganizational collaboration are taking shape, and progress toward networked governance is occurring to enable hybrid systems to take the form that do not fit standard distinctions between democracy and totalitarianism.

A double-edged sword that revolves around symbolic politics and media savvy with governments straining to adapt.

For example vast new sensory apparatuses for watching what is happening in societies and around the world. Of all the uses to which the new technologies are being put, this may become one of the most important for the future of the state and its relationship to society.

Each generation must address its own challenges even though it is not yet clear which future will emerge with the current climate crisis.

Policy problems have become so complex and intractable, crossing so many jurisdictions and involving so many actors, that governments should evolve beyond the traditional bureaucratic model of the state.

Only time will tell.

We now have communications tools that are flexible enough to match our social capabilities, and we are witnessing the rise of new ways of coordination activities that take advantage of that change.

Setting priorities among government’s current endeavours need to  involve at least four decisions:

Which endeavours should be continued or stopped; Which are most important; Which are the government’s greatest responsibility; and which should have the highest priority?

Back to the present with climate change.

There is one thing for certain that with climate change there will be tragedies not yet imagined. It will drive people into compact groups and we know that if a group of humans get together without some sort of organised leadership they end up killing each other.

So for the good of all humankind, in fact, all life on earth and the earth itself, we need to push ahead in this area. Or else go back to pre-industrial times and abandon modern life as we know it. Staying the course we are on will lead only to ruin.

Government’s greatest priorities of the next fifty years can be found in their greatest disappointments of the past.

My point is, the government doesn’t remind us of the good things in life, not often. When it works, we barely notice, but when things go wrong, the glaring deficiencies of the system present themselves everywhere.

As a result, the Government used to be for the lack of a better word the parent of the group/ nation hated some days and loved other days.

Should they now be limited to the implementation of certain social norms desirable for holding the structure of society in place?

I want to see some politicians with the forethought and imagination to understand this.

That’s because I need to be reminded of what I’m living for, not an Algorithm of everything, not a government elected on lies, false news, predictive algorithms which is a two-way relationship manipulated by social media platforms, owned by monopolies that are no longer trusted by the citizens they represent.

Without knowing how decisions are taken or who the decision-makers are, and without knowing how decisions are implemented or to what end, citizens feel undervalued and disenfranchised.  They do not believe that the government is listening to their concerns.

So where are we?

The freedom that we see emerging from the networked environment allows people to reach across national or social boundaries, across space and political division. It allows people to solve problems together in new associations that are outside the boundaries of formal, legal-political association like governments. 

If the past is prologue, however, the government will continue to the extent that a society is measured by what it asks its government to do.

Sure the information revolution will foster more open and closed systems; more decentralization and centralization; more inclusionary and exclusionary communities; more privacy and surveillance; more freedom and authority; more democracy and new forms of totalitarianism.

Yet setting priorities is not just about addressing past failures. It is also about protecting past achievements.

To solve the problems and understand the role and limitations of government, will require a new way of thinking and working and a new level of trust and understanding of people.

The revolution in global communications thus forces all nations to reconsider traditional ways of thinking about national sovereignty.

A longer view of history provides little assurance that the new technology favours democracy.

Firstly, governments must be seen as capable and effective in carrying out their activities. Secondly, the government must be seen as treating all people equally and impartially, without favouritism or discrimination.

And thirdly, the dimension of human concern and personal connectedness: government must be seen to be sincerely caring about each person’s welfare.

Digital is offering a great way to respond to this at a service level but is only part of the answer when it comes to mending and building relationships with people.

Even in the best of times, delivery is hard for governments: objectives are not always clear; they change in response to events or leadership transitions.

An endeavour cannot be a top priority, or a priority of any kind if it is not worth pursuing at all. The term “greatest” does not mean either “most successful,” or “most important,” or even “most appropriate.” Rather, the greatest endeavours of the present are the ones in which the government has made the greatest investment.

This fact base speaks for itself.

The first step, then, is to choose three to six priority outcomes—any more will be too many. They can’t all be equally important.

These priorities must be written into the constitution of a nation so they cannot be tampered with.

And establishing the right metric for each priority to ensure it does not yield unintended, negative consequences must be set by citizens assemblies rather than relying on leaders political instincts.

People must feel ownership of the plan by agreeing on criteria for continuation funding.

Communicating is only the beginning.

Stakeholders must be engaged all the way through to delivery of the promised outcomes. Accountability is established,outcome-based budgeting, so that funding is directly linked to and contingent on the delivery of key outcomes.

This, as we know, is notoriously difficult to pull off in a world of silos, disparate agendas, and competition for funding. But a small number of priorities will go a long way toward securing the support required.

Government achievement ebbs and flows with changing economic, social, and political circumstances, with the mere passage of time.

The worst form of government is the tyrannical form, where all power is with one man, a leader who rises from the chaos of democracy, thirsting for power but not having the wisdom or learning to use it wisely.

With the issue of government Citizens, bonds targeting citizens funding will resolve this problem. They could unite as a human race and get our priorities in check so we can find out what’s really out there and perhaps where we really came from.

Their performance should be measured against agreed international benchmarks a portfolio of targets at varying levels of ambition.

Who would set the levels?

The U.N. is essentially an incredibly weak confederacy it should be disbanded, and a new, better UN made, with a written Constitution. All member countries hereby agree to uphold and abide by all constitutional clauses upon entry to the United Nations and any violation of any of the several clauses herein will be punished with the full force of each member state.

And finally, here are a few endeavours.

Reduce Carbon emissions.

Continue reducing nuclear weapons.

Reduce discrimination, pollution, poverty, and inequality.

Expand health care.

Devolve digitally responsibility to promote and protect democracy with the right to vote by electronic voting.

Create a Digital government performance platform.

As to which type of government is the best for mankind, well, if only we had the answer to that…Hierarchy does not end. 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: IS THIS AS GOOD AS IT GET’S WITH MAN’S ACHIEVEMENTS FOR EVOLUTION?

29 Friday Nov 2019

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in #whatif.com, 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Climate Change., Dehumanization., Evolution, HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Reality., Sustaniability, Technology, 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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Evolution, fabric of human civilization., Human achievements., Technological revolution, Weaponized drones.

( An essential twenty five -minute read)

Everyone sees the world in different ways however the greatest innovations of man are found in the most simple things:

Starting with Fire, Language, Tools, and Wheel writing has been the sole reason that mankind has been able to accumulate knowledge.

Since then the use of our inventions have taken us a long way, they’ve allowed us to land on the moon, travel over oceans, and even eliminate major health threats with various medicines.

You could not be blamed for asking what was actually gained by landing on the moon — a handful of rocks and a game of low-gravity golf — was of virtually no value and yet the act of the journey was invaluable beyond all measure as it personified our continuing evolution.

The same is true with technology today.

The development of it is mind-blowing but its application is almost entirely mindless – profit-seeking algorithms and weaponized drones.

Setting aside why do we exist and what is the purpose of life? (These are hard questions that demand answers) it is what we have not achieved that will be judged by future generations.

Karl Marx once famously observed that capitalism carried within it the seeds of its own destruction but he was wrong. It’s not capitalism that’s the problem, it’s people.

The human race ended the 20th century in pretty good shape, at least comparatively speaking.

The first half of the 1900s was almost certainly the most bloody and brutal phase of humanity’s existence.

Now we have all the information in the world yet it has made us only more ideological and more ignorant; we have access to limitless opinions yet we seek to criminalise those who don’t agree with us. We are so advanced and yet so backward, so cynical and yet so stupid, that we can no longer even agree on what constitutes a fact.

Welcome to the 21st century.

Consider the internet itself, probably the most revolutionary invention in the history of humankind. Its potential to share information thus to accelerate the advancement of science and keep the world running in the event of a catastrophic disaster — the purpose for which it was first intended — is all but limitless.

And what do we use it for most? Porn.

Consider the smartphone, the match to the powder keg of the worldwide web. Almost everyone in every half-developed part of the world, even people living on the streets, has a device more powerful than supercomputers that once took up whole buildings. We can access virtually any image, any idea, any information from anywhere in the world.

And what do we overwhelmingly use it for?  Taking pictures of ourselves.

Let’s look at medical technology — the smartest minds on the planet developing machines and medicines that keep the average person today alive for longer than was once ever dreamt of.

And what is the result?

We are fatter and lazier than ever, resulting in spiralling hospital costs that will send most Western governments broke in a matter of decades. It was once said that the only two certainties in life were death and taxes and yet now we are defying death and there aren’t enough taxes to pay for it.

We are too dumb to even know when to die.

It may well be impossible to connect a full chronological series of species, leading to Homo sapiens, but over millions of years of evolution, we’ve picked up some less than ideal characteristics.

Why? Because of greed.

It will take the efforts of several scientific disciplines and sophisticated technology, probably over many years, to discover the underlying nature of our mental faculties, their neurological basis, and their development over time.

And it’s fair to say that we have little idea of what we’ll evolve to in the future, but there is one thing for certain, evolution is about adapting to your environment – Weaponized drones, Climate change, Algorithms.

Algorithms that are feeding Social media, are stripping us of a collective understanding of what is going on in the world.

People like to blame fake news on Facebook, and that is true enough.

But the far greater truth is far worse than that. Neither fake news nor Facebook emerged like Athena fully-formed from nothing. They were made by us. By us and for us and of us.

While the positive uses for technology are endless I marvel as I read Asimov to see the way in which he foresaw the ethical conundrum in which we now find ourselves embroiled.

Of course, when they (the future generations) look at our achievements the one thing they will not be able to comprehend is why we have not been able to stop killing each other.

Weaponized drones are now more acceptable than land mines, cluster bombs, or chemical weapons.

It might be argued that this would be a way of sparing human beings who could stay comfortably at home and let our intelligent machines do the fighting for us. If some of them were destroyed — well, they are only machines. This approach to warfare would be particularly useful if we had such machines and the enemy didn’t.

Just like those tried at Nuremberg who attempted to wash their hands of mass killings we have now developed weaponized drones to kill, with a Punches Pilot immunity, that is violating all existing international law.

So humans through the use of technology may eventually reach a point where they can force evolution upon themselves.

Perhaps the result (if we are not already wiped out by Nuclear or a Weather bomb) will be that we’re no longer subject to the driving force of evolution – but unnatural selection by drones. 

Now the question is, how accurate is this statement?

Is technological progress actually taking us backwards?

Are we advancing ourselves to death? At what point do many deaths become too many deaths?

This is the first problem with technology.

If it is accurate, we’re already screwed.

Of course, none of this is important given the glacial pace of evolutionary change, we probably won’t have to worry about that for thousands of years.

Wrong.

We’ve come to believe that, with enough information, human behaviour is predictable.

But number-crunching algorithms are leading us perilously wrong. There’s something unsettling in the idea that, amid the vagaries of choice, chance, and circumstance, mathematics can tell us something about what it is to be human.

Who we are together, as a collective entity?

Despite the grand promises of Big Data, uncertainty remains so abundant that specific human lives remain boundlessly unpredictable. The more data that are collected, cross-referenced, and searched for correlations, the easier it becomes to reach false conclusions.

It might be true that in large groups, the natural variability among human beings cancels, however, if we end up with algorithms setting thresholds extremely unlikely outcomes are bound to arise eventually.

The gift is not a technology to enable us to realise evolution for the cruel being it is, but giving mankind the intelligence and tools to exclude ourselves from the other species on the planet and take a step back to interpret for ourselves where we as a race are going?

Leaving the brutality of evolution behind is not a gift given to us by evolution.

We have evolved to the point whereby we stand on the threshold of controlling our genetic and ultimately evolutionary destiny. Unfortunately, the problem with humans is, whenever we encounter a problem we have evolved to the point where we think that we can overcome it with technology.

Advances in technology, medicine and culture mean it isn’t just the fittest who get to pass their genes on to the next generation.

External aids could be entirely responsible for our survival.

All of this relies on earth’s natural resources which are supposedly gonna be gone by 2050!

The problems in this world are manmade therefore man can solve them.

The sad truth is that we have Governments and World Organisations that pay lip service when the real debate is a knowledge- and research-based exchange of argument and counterargument that should be focused at the analysis of a specific question, our survival. 

Passion and competition, yes, but, more than anything else, debate is an exercise in critical thinking! The human brain, being a machine striving for maximum efficiency, typically remembers where information is stored, rather than the information itself.

Technology has already affected the way our memory works.

AI. After all, natural evolution wouldn’t be able to mould and program devices to a point of sophistication that may lead to sentience, but we may be able to and maybe at that point even though its not natural, it is an evolution born of natural origins and most likely would go on to create newer better versions of itself.

In theory, humans are exercising their judgement in the process, but in reality, the computer system is viewed as too “smart” to be second-guessed by a human being.

So . . . what do we need to be more afraid of?

Robots with a compulsion to out-think humans? or humans that are afraid to second-guess the robots?

We must confront an urgent problem related to technology: the automation of “pre-emptive violence” – front-loaded with a bias to kill, with little impetus to contradict that bias.

At present drones are the most devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilization around the world.

So are we at the peak of human evolution?

Certainly not. Certainly not as long as there are humans, there will be human evolution.

We are not even close to the peak of evolution.

Just look at wthat we recently found > The Higgs Boson, Mapped the Human Genome, Cloned a sheep, built the International Space Station, discovery the Double Helix Structure of DNA, Split the Atom, invented the Internet, we’re revisiting the theories of Relativity with Quantum Mechanics.

We have Created Nuclear Weapons, the Periodic Table of the Elements,  Created the Internet Developed Vaccines, Created Music, Created Photography, Flight, Electronic Devices, Traveled to the Moon, Eradicated Small Pox, Created the Television, Discovered Mathematics, Invented the Printing Press, The Phone,  Discovery and Control of Electricity, Cars, Invented Zero, Created of United Nations, Discovered World is Round. 

AND STILL, WE ARE UNABLE TO ACT TOGETHER.

Why?

Because you know the downfall of civilisation has really passed the point of no return when even a rich white guy can’t get anything done.

Humans are the only organism that can alter their environment to suit them (instead of the other way around)

Finally, people must take into account that nature will commence exerting its own controls LONG BEFORE the human race has reached the point where it can step off the evolutionary treadmill.

With our increasing reliance on technology – and in particular machinery – to do our dirty (but muscle-enhancing) work. The less each generation depends on physical strength, the more likely it is that the whole species will grow weaker to the point of stagnation. 

As evolution relies on the survival of the fittest, evolution itself will evolve everything else in all our lives will be transitory and every other artificial intelligent goodwill application will become visionary.

Only when we’ll be able to repair and augment our children’s DNA. Then we really will have triumphed over evolution. Race” will no longer be an issue. Perhaps we will stop killing each other.

Yet we’ve got our problems. A lot of them but the very things we invented to sustain us will destroy us.

The exact nature of our evolutionary relationships with the planet and AI will be the subject of debate for the foreseeable future.

It doesn’t matter if we’re uncovering evidence for climate change or deciding whether a drug has an effect: the concept is identical.

By setting an arbitrary threshold, and agreeing that anything beyond that point gives you grounds for suspicion with greed this is the evolutionary path we are setting our selves.

Mentally the world appears to be de-evolving with smartphones and social media platforms.

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

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: IS IT TIME TO REGULATE SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS WITH LAWS.

25 Monday Nov 2019

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Democracy, Digital Friendship., Elections/ Voting, Facebook., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google, Humanity., Modern Day Democracy., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Politics., Reality., Social Media, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Twitter, Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, World Politics

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Algorithms., Capitalism and Greed, Facebook and Society., Google/Amazon/Facebook/Twitter, Platforms regulation/laws., Social Media, Social media platforms., The Future of Mankind

 

 

(Ten-minute read) 

The beady eye is far from the first voice to ask this question and it certainly will not be the last.

We might even come to “question whether we still have free will.

There is no doubting that the social web has created amazing opportunities to learn, discover, connect, but its downside as it penetrates our daily lives is becoming more and more prevalent in the creation of our future lives and the societies we live in.

If the public discussion is shifting increasingly to online fora, and those fora are having more and more influence over democracy it becomes increasingly important to apply principles to them. 

Honest political debate is essential for the health of a democracy.  

If discussions of import move into space where they can be readily censored, then we will simply no longer live in a society with a free exchange of ideas, because the playing field will always be tilted.

One only has to look at how social media platforms are amplifying what is wrong with the world.  

While we all reveal a huge amount of personal information online we are losing the ability to determine honest facts that democracy depends.

Basically, companies that run social media platforms are monopolies or near-monopolies in their areas of operation, and the only way we can achieve the desired outcomes is through clear, effective legal regulations. 

We can’t always control how others use their platforms but we can apply the same regulations that govern all other forms of Media.

The public cannot rely on these company’s self-regulation, because self-regulation raises more questions than it answers.

The fact is that the formation of a platform takes place in a vacuum, whereas the formation of any competitors do not, so they cannot be considered parallels in any way. 

If we take companies like Facebook and Google they both derive most of their revenue from advertising. They essentially constitute a duopoly because they have access to the best data about individuals. Every memory, picture, emoji, song, video, link, gripe, fear, hope, want, dream and bad political opinion posted is mined and monetized as data.

As a result of their algorithms, they are creating and reinforcing divided and insular online communities that do not interact with people or information with which they disagreed.

At the end of the day, how Facebook and Google conduct their businesses undermines privacy and raises questions about ethical behaviour in the uses of our information and their role in society.

The Internet is a “utility” like water or electricity. It is essential to modern life, not an optional subscription service.

Determining how to regulate Facebook or any other platform may first require some kind of definition of what it is.

Facebook brags about connecting us to our family and friends — but it also about directly influencing the outcomes of elections across the globe.

It sits on top of industries including journalism, where it, together with Google, essentially controls the distribution channels for online news and, in effect, the way people discover information about politics, government and society.

They ( Google, Facebook, Twitter,etc) have figured out how to take advantage of this dynamic to distribute false information about political candidates and hot-button political issues in order to drive up traffic and advertising revenue.

Protecting our community is more important than maximizing their profits.

They are given protections that no one can sue them for any reason — that is Google and Facebook nither are responsible for the fake news that appears on their sites.

They are completely shielded from any responsibility for the content that appears on their service.

Changes to legal protection (which has been interpreted by judges to provide a safe harbour for online platforms even when they pay to distribute others’ content and decline the option to impose editorial oversight) would likely be devastating to online platforms like Google and Facebook and would transform the way people interact across the entire internet.

However, with legal protection, sites like these could be held responsible for libellous comments posted by readers, Google could lose lawsuits over potentially false or defamatory information surfacing in search results, and Facebook could be sued for any potentially libellous comment made by anyone on its platform against any other person.

The legal bills to defend against libel and defamation claims would be enormous.

We all need protection and the ability to request platforms to provide us with control over online information by making it accessible and removable at an individual’s request.

The government, on the other hand, has a regulatory intent to protect citizens from content that is obscene or violent.

Should Facebook and their like be regulated?

A question that is never going to end. 

However, until we recognize that there is no fool-proof safeguard to keep horrific content away from the eyes of children we rely on huge fines to the detriment of us all. 

Till then with all internet platforms deflecting criticism, social media will be more psychologically damaging than anyone expected. 

We need a radical shift in the balance of power between the platforms and the people.

It is beyond comprehension that we tolerate the present position.

Or is it? When you see the below.   

Would you ever be prepared to use a nuclear weapon?

This question is increasingly put to politicians as some kind of virility test.

The subtext is that to be a credible political leader, you must be willing to use an indiscriminate weapon of mass destruction.

We should be baulking at the casual way in which political discourse on this topic has developed which is politically unacceptable and morally despicable. 

If a mainstream politician unblinkingly said that they would use chemical weapons against civilians there would be uproar. If a self-proclaimed candidate for prime minister boasted that they would commit war crimes, it would be a national scandal. Nuclear weapons should be seen no differently. 

It’s time that nuclear advocates spelt out the reality of what their position means.

The human race is so good at speaking, it’s lost the art of listening.

It might be easy to brush away the febrile atmosphere online as a nasty byproduct of free expression: I don’t want Facebook having everyone’s verified identities. I do want their platform and other platforms to be held responsible legally for content that is false, racest, hateful, rightwing fascist propaganda.  

I do know that if the big platforms, as they already do in part, forced some verifiable information to back up use, we could tame this wild west with legal requirements

I’ll give up on the consensus-building when I can open a platform knowing who to hold legally responsible.  


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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WITH THE SATURATION OF THE WEB BY GREEDY ALGORITHMS ARE WE SEEING THE END OF CHOICE.

20 Wednesday Nov 2019

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Dehumanization., Democracy., Digital Friendship., Education, Elections/ Voting, Fake News., Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Modern Day Democracy., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Post - truth politics., Reality., Robot citizenship., Social Media, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World

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Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Democracy, Future Choice., Future generations., Future Society., Social Media, The future effect of the Internet, The Web., Visions of the future.

 

(Seven-minute read) 

The degree of choice on the web can be overwhelming, but who, exactly, is making the “Choice”

Has The web has been highjacked by Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Social Media and their like?

Why?

Besause they are absorbing their users’ personal data and feeding greedy algrithms who in the end are disempowered by isolation from the wider web. 

(By clicking continue below and using our sites or applications, you agree that we and our third party advertisers can:)

Greedy algorithms can be characterized as being ‘short-sighted’, and also as ‘non-recoverable’. The choice made by a greedy algorithm may depend on choices made so far, but not on future choices or all the solutions to the subproblem.

It is important, however, to note that the greedy algorithm can be used as a selection algorithm to prioritize options within a search, or branch-and-bound algorithm. They iteratively make one greedy choice after another, reducing each given problem into a smaller one.

They can make commitments to certain choices too early which prevent them from finding the best overall solution later.

Without any accountability, they are drastically changing the ways we conduct our daily lives.

There are a few variations to the greedy algorithm:

  • Pure greedy algorithms.
  • Orthogonal greedy algorithms.
  • Relaxed greedy algorithms.
  • It’s no wonder that Berners-Lee isn’t particularly pleased with the way things have gone with his creation.

With Social networks, slowly algorithms are growing more and more powerful and their predictions growing more accurate. It won’t be long before we could see living, breathing, as the choices of a greedy algorithm.  

In other words, a greedy algorithm never reconsiders its choices. 

The web is cleaving into the haves and have-nots of news readership. Wealthy readers will pay to opt-out of advertising; less privileged readers will have to stick with news that’s ad-supported.

For example, take Google, one of the leaders in using big data and algorithms to support human decision-making. Google has developed both a hiring algorithm and a retention algorithm it analyzes candidates against this profile to make hiring decisions.

Algorithms to develop lists of “flight risks” — that is, people who are likely to leave their jobs soon. 

Amazon’s Choice” algorithm, which leverages a machine learning model to discern what products a customer most likely wants. Amazon Alexa and other voice assistants are drastically changing the ways consumers encounter products.

Customers are no longer putting themselves in front of physical products before purchasing them.

As more users are turning to voice ordering through the Amazon Alexa platform and its competitors we are losing control over our personal data. 

Hopefully, Amazon’s algorithms are capable of remaining unbiased.

(We can make whatever choice seems best at the moment and then solve the subproblems that arise later.) 

On top of all of this, we have all become blind to the damage that the internet can do to even a well-functioning democracy. Brexit/ USA.

It might be true that around the world, social media is making it easier for people to have a voice in government — to discuss issues, organize around causes, and hold leaders accountable, but these governments are winning elections by false news, echo chambers where people only see viewpoints they agree with — further driving us apart.

Social media can distort policymakers’ perception of public opinion.

If there’s one fundamental truth about social media’s impact on democracy it’s that it amplifies human intent — both good and bad.

Unprecedented numbers of people channel their political energy through this medium, it’s being used in unforeseen ways with societal repercussions that were never anticipated. 

So it is inevitable that Facebook to influence public sentiment — essentially using social media as an information weapon.

Some 87% of governments around the world have a presence on Facebook.

And they’re listening — and responding — to what they hear.

Misinformation campaigns are not amateur operations.

Increasingly the web will become profoundly useless unless we demand the Web we want from Governments and the Monomorphic platforms that dominate it today. 

We are all part of the web so what we endorse must be questioned as to the transparency as to where the information comes from in the first place.

Today the bulk of people who are or not doing this are isolated from each other by Apps.

The like button is not a public metric for the popularity of content. It is a flattener of credibility.

There is no point waking in the morning with Alexa telling you what to do, where to go and what it has bought and who to vote for.  

Even if social media could be cured of its outrage -enhancing effects it is undermining democracy.

Even though we have unprecedented access to all that was ever written and digitized we are less familiar with the accumulated wisdom of humanity becoming more and more misguided. 

The Web is now a global experiment that will test the very foundation of our global communities

There can not be self -governance for the web.

Fake news, Racism, Pornographic content and unfounded crap should be removed by not allowing anything to be posted without a traceable verified name or source.  

Are you sure you want to post this? It is your choice and your choice alone.

Perhaps its time we all franchise our data as we are entering into a continuous partnership so both parties need to be confident it’s the right fit. It’s all a choice. Just do something about it- YOU CAN, what is true technology integration? 

How we are going to learn content is one of the ways forward.

In fact, everywhere we look we are starting to be presented with more choices.

Resolve to avoid false comparisons on the web is not possible so the future of the web is all about choice but it is important to understand the paradox of choice.

Choice without education or choice with education.

you ultimately do have to choose. so be the difference that

makes the difference. 

 

Events change our perception and our perspective changes

with experience but at least let our choices about Our lives

which are constantly in flux be our choices. 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

14 Thursday Nov 2019

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in 2019., Artificial Intelligence., Humanity., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Reality., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World

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Capitalism and Greed, Climate change, Distribution of wealth, Inequility, Technology, The Future of Mankind, Visions of the future., World aid commission

 

(Twenty-minute read) 

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

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

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

There are nearly 210 million orphans in the world.

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

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

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

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

AND THAT JUST FOR OPENERS. 

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

Over 100 million people live in slums.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Were economically and morally bankrupt.

THIS IS THE WORLD WE LIVE IN.

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

All human comments appreciated

. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin. 

 

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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 EYE OBSERVES WHAT TECHNOLOGY IS DOING TO THE PURSUIT OF PROFIT.

05 Tuesday Nov 2019

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Climate Change., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Inequality, Modern day life., Our Common Values., Politics., Reality., Sovereign wealth fund, Technology, The common good., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., Wealth., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., WORLD POVERTY WHERE'S THE GLOBAL OUTRAGE

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Algorithms trade., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Business and Economy, Capitalism, Capitalism and Greed, Distribution of wealth, Globalization, Inequility, Sovereign wealth fund, Technology, The Future of Mankind, Visions of the future., World aid commission

 

( A twenty-minute read)

The Internet is an incredibly spectacular thing, and only now — after so many years — we are understanding its power.

In spite (and many times because of) all the social media and internet news, we tend to have a skewed view of the world around us.

But there is one thing that is certain.

It has given rise to highly profitable digital platform monopolies, ‘superstar firms’ which are able to use aggregation and analysis of data to make supernormal profits which are disappearing into the cloud.

But what’s really happening in the global economy?

These multi-conglomerations dominate not just the current digital markets but future ones in artificial intelligence and machine learning, with workforces which are relatively small proportional to value-added, putting downward pressure on labour’s share of income.

It is becoming easier and cheaper to replace human work by increasingly
capable robots and artificial intelligence, this automation will accentuate existing trends in the capital and labour shares.

Whatever the future path of the global economy, with growing automation in

the economies of the world substituting capital for labour more and more

of the wealthiest fortunes are held almost exclusively in financial assets.

                                                     —-

We’re not just entering into a period of severe distress with climate change

we are also entering a period of a new uneven distribution of capital

ownership that is now the driver of inequality.

It’s a “new, harsh reality”, ( from weapons of mass destruction, water crises, large-scale involuntary migration and severe energy price shock, extreme weather events, failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation, interstate conflict with regional consequences and major natural catastrophes) that the spending power of governments is dimensioning.

Most of us haven’t quite realized there is something extraordinary happening.

Isn’t it absurd that we, 7 billion of us living on the same planet, have grown further apart from each other? Everything is going through change and that most of us are unaware of that.

What sense does it make to turn your back on the thousands, maybe millions, of people living around you in the same city on the same planet in poverty?

You might be lead to believe that the Internet is taking down mass control and the small are no longer speechless. This might well be true when it comes to the rising failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation or if you look at the Arab Spring, Brexit, and the people’s climate revolution/ pollution.

But its not true when one looks at how and by whom the economy of the world that is driven by growth at all costs.

Why?

Because the natural resources industry is owned by sovereignty wealth funds with financial instability around the world as the net result.

But don’t panic.

With Climate change and Ai, and with all of us exchanging half-truths civilisation is in for a rough ride.

However, technological crises have yet to impact economies or securities in a systemic way.

Which panic button to press?

The only category not to feature in the above harsh realities is algorithm profit from profit technological that is spreading inequalities between individuals and families, between countries, generations and genders, as well as between people from different ethnicities and class backgrounds.

Fleckenstein – David Rosenberg’s Proposal To Print Trillions Of Dollars Is Not Helicopter Money, It’s Cold Fusion

Normally revenue, as you know, is generated by profit/taxes but most revenue sources are already accounted for in government budgeting except the supernormal profits made by in no particular order – Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Cisco Systems, Intel, to mention just a few.

It’s sometimes hard to fathom the sheer scope of profits made by the world’s most profitable companies.

1. Saudi Aramco: $304.04 M daily – Earns $1 M in 4.7 minutes
2. Apple: $163.1 M daily – Earns $1 M in  8.8 minutes
3. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China: $123.29  M daily – Earns $1M in 11.7 minutes
4. Samsung Electronics: $109.3 M daily – Earns $1 M in 13.2 minutes
5. China Construction Bank: $105.48 M daily – Earns $1 M in 13.7 minutes
6. JPMorgan Chase & Co.: $88.97 M daily – Earns $1 M in 16.2 minutes
7. Alphabet: $84.21 M daily – Earns $1 M in 17.1 minutes
8. Agricultural Bank of China: $83.99 M daily – Earns $1 M in 17.1 minutes
9. Bank of America Corp.: $77.12 M daily – Earns $1 M in 18.7 minutes
10. Bank of China: $74.59 M daily – Earns $1 M in 19.3 minutes

and these are not Sovereign Wealth Funds.

They exist somewhere between the murky grey of return-maximizing, mega-cap asset managers, and clandestine government agencies quietly used to further sovereign agendas.

It is estimated that SWFs combined to hold more than $7.4 trillion in AUM, (Assets under management) representing approximately 6% of global assets under institutional management.

And you wonder with government print trillions to stimulate sagging economies why the world is and still is in a state of meltdown not just climate-wise but capitalistic wise.

We now have both the EU and the UK floating the idea of establishing Citizens wealth funds.

The trouble is that existing wealth funds have already bought up most of the world. Latecomers like THE UK/EU will have nothing to invest in other than technologies that produce profits.

The character of a sovereign wealth fund depends on its purpose and is shaped by how it is capitalised and governed, how it invests its funds and how returns are spent.

A Sovereign Wealth Fund is a state-owned investment vehicle established to channel balance of payments surpluses, official foreign currency operations, proceeds of privatizations, government transfer payments, fiscal surpluses, and/or receipts from resource exports, into global investments on behalf of sovereigns and in the advance of goals that are not transparent.

Economic theory wise, it is important to understand that SWFs form part of their respective country’s total national capital base, where total national capital is defined as the total combination of net financial assets, total physical capital stock (e.g., real estate, machines, infrastructure), unexploited environment, human capital, and unexploited natural resources.

Commodity SWFs are financed from the proceeds of non-renewable commodity exports (oil, gas, precious metals), which grow the AUM base in times of high prices but destabilize their source economies and budgets in times of low. Non-commodity funds, on the other hand, are typically financed from currency reserves or current account surpluses, driven by corporate or household saving rates.

They were once the mainstays of the global investment landscape.

Despite is name the era of neoliberalism was far from liberal.

We are now experiencing the political consequences of this great deception with the rise of popularism.

This blog has been suggesting for some time the setting up of a perpetual funded World Aid fund by applying a 0.05% commission on all profit for profit sake seeking financial activities. ( See previous posts)

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: ARE PROFIT SEEKING ALGORITHMS BUILDING A DIGITAL POORHOUSE, AUTOMATING INEQUALITY WHILE HURTING THE MOST VULNERABLE.

03 Sunday Nov 2019

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Humanity., Inequality, Modern day life., Our Common Values., Poverty, Reality., Technology, The common good., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Big Data, Capitalism and Greed, Distribution of wealth, Greed, Inequility, Technology, Visions of the future.

(Twenty-minute read)

Should we worry about the rise of artificial intelligence or celebrate it?

Both is the answer.

We all inhabit this new regime of digital data but we don’t all inhabit it in the same way and the pursuit of rapid growth by way of technology won’t solve the huge challenges we face.

A more honest, humane approach is the answer.

If you believe the hype, technology is going to help us end global poverty, that’s easier said than done in a world where most product innovations are geared toward the rich.

The prospect of billions rising up from poverty with nothing more than gadgets is indeed a fanciful notion. This is because poverty is entirely a man-made creation. Capitalism is driven by greed, generating a power structure, which moves wealth disproportionately into the hands of the few.

But why are our societies becoming increasingly unequal, and what can we (or should we) do about it?A homeless man outside Victoria Station in London.

Forget where science ends and ideology begins it is the mechanisms behind the persistence of poverty that counts.

Technology cannot solve the problem of economic disparity.

We often believe that our digital decision-making tools, like algorithms or artificial intelligence or integrated databases, are more objective and more neutral than human beings.

Totally false.

We are building not just ill-conceived mathematical models now micromanage the economy, from advertising to prisons but also hiding the profit of multinational companies in the cloud.

We are building:  A DIGITAL POOR HOUSE.

Even though we live in a hyperconnected world we are watching inequality exploding as we walk past people on the street looking at our smartphones.

The spreading of these kinds of systems is now way beyond just the public service systems that they’re in now. For example, high-frequency trading algorithms that run 99.9% of the world stock exchanges are plundering not just finite resources they are jeopardising our peaceful existence.

Feel free to ignore the weight of the evidence that is now becoming crystal-clear, so stark, that the trade-off of the growth of the economy and the survival of the planet are now intertwined. So we have to go into a mode where we are first educating the people about what’s causing this inequality and acknowledging that technology is part of that cost, and then society has to decide how to proceed.

Deep cultural and political changes are needed in order to think through these technologies in order to get to better systems.

This should apply to all technology – nanotechnology, biotech.

I also really believe we need to stop using these systems to avoid some of the most pressing moral and political dilemmas of our time, which is not just poverty but racism.

Unfortunately, we have Profit-seeking Algorithms that have no moral or ethical bases.

Algorithms — a set of steps computers follow to accomplish a task — are used in our daily digital lives to do everything from making airline reservations to searching the web. They are also increasingly being used in public services, such as systems that decide which homeless person gets housing.

AI with faceless algorithms is worsening the effects and concentrating the power of the wealthy. They are likely to dramatically increase income disparity, perhaps more so than other technologies that have come about recently.

Digital innovation in the form of profit-seeking algorithms that it’s not just going to be benefitting a small fraction of the world’s population, or just a few large corporations. is reinforcing, rather than improving, inequality.

Institutions have embraced digital technologies they are outsourcing the decision to a machine to cut costs avoiding the human costs. They say, “We have this incredible overwhelming need. We don’t have enough resources, so we have to use these systems to make these incredibly difficult decisions.”

If all the resources are automated, then who actually controls the automation?

Is it every one or is it a few select people?

My great fear with these systems is we’re actually using them as a kind of empathy override, meaning that we are struggling with questions that are almost impossible for human beings to make.

We’re smuggling moral and political assumptions into them about who should share in prosperity.

There’s already an expectation that people will be forced to trade one of their human rights, like their information or their privacy, for another human right.

The economic prosperity created by AI should be shared broadly, to benefit all of humanity otherwise they will lead to an even greater disparity between the wealthy and the rest of the world.

If AI takes away people’s jobs and only leaves wealth in the hands of those people owning the robots, then that’s going to exacerbate some trends that are already happening.

People now with “predictive data” have real concerns about informed consent. About how their data is being shared, whether it’s legal and whether it’s morally right.

Why?

Because it is impossible to work out why the algorithms had gone against them, or to find a human caseworker to override the decision.

How can we change the societal mindset that currently discourages a greater sharing of wealth? Or is that even a change we should consider?

We’re using these technologies to avoid important political decisions. Exacerbating the divides between the developed and developing world, and the haves and have nots in our society.

The change will only occur when policymakers and voters understand the true scale of the problem. This is hard when we live in an era that likes to celebrate digitisation — and where the elites are usually shielded from the consequences of those algorithms.

Restoring human dignity to its central place has the potential to set off a profound rethinking of economic priorities and the ways in which societies care for their members, particularly when they are in need. If enough of us want to change the status quo for good, then with our collective creativity, with our hunger to solve really hard problems, we will find technology an incredibly powerful tool in our arsenal.

Technology can move commodities (food, jobs, wealth) from areas of surplus supply to regions with under-served markets.

Technology can only help us if we chose to make the best use of it.

Computing has long been perceived to be a culture-free zone — this needs to change.

Today more people have access to a cell phone than a toilet.

I use that metaphor specifically because I think that these systems, although we talk about them often as disruptors, are really more intensifiers and amplifiers of processes that have been with us for a long time, at least since the 1800s.

At a time of unprecedented global challenges platforms like Google Facebook, Twitter and there like must be made to use the power of their platforms to stop the DIGITAL POOR HOUSE instead of hoarding profits with profit-seeking algorithms.

If not because bias has been a historical norm, it because us the users of your platform will develop self-defence.

So, next time if you think AI is not affecting you, take out your smartphone.

If Twitter’s not your choice of poison, maybe it’s Facebook or Instagram, or Snapchat or any of the myriad of social media apps out there they are all affecting your decisions and our lifestyles every day.

They are all tailored according to what we are likely to respond to. specifically designed to attract the attention of its members – and so inevitably to confirm them in their opinions and prejudices,  with several extra bills to pay in order to remain a normal citizen. 

Its a ‘mean’ not the ultimate solution.

AI has become so successful in determining our interests and serving us ads that the global digital ad industry has crossed trillions.

artificial intelligence concept Stock Photo - 90948450

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: PERPETUAL GROWTH IS COMING TO AN END.

26 Saturday Oct 2019

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Enegery, Environment, Evolution, Fresh Water., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Reality., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., 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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( Seven-minute read)

Economics is not an unbiased academic discipline, it’s an ideology. Furthermore, economics is based on the false premise that perpetual growth is achievable.

Can economic growth be sustainably achieved?

Finite resources make perpetual growth theoretically impossible. No amount of technological breakthrough or creative accounting can counter that physical fact.

Is economic growth desirable?

The short answer appears to be no.

Exponential growth will eventually take you to impossible places.

Unfortunately, we live in a world of capitalists that thrive on the great Myth of Perpetual Growth, endless growth, ad infinitum, forever, till the end of time.

It seems as though we are damned if we grow and damned if we don’t.

We’ve now with Algorithms for profit sake got to a position where there’s nothing to keep us in check – so we have to do it ourselves.

It’s a waiting game now – to see if we can learn to behave differently to bacteria in a petri dish before it’s too late and we kill our host.

It’s not worth the risk.

Ecology and economics have to be intertwined, or we’re in serious trouble.

It’s time we all get our head out of the smartphone and become smart.

We can have debates about what we’re going to do about this and that, but if you can’t see the reason in the core of what I am saying, we’ll be having two very different conversations.

There is little point in arguing any longer whether Neoliberalism is to blame for damaging ecology beyond its ability to support us. It has lead to the inevitable collision between an insatiable economic model and a finite planet whose resources are stretched to the hilt.

The perception of the need for perpetual economic growth is a fraud and this assumption creates massive risk when reaching the limits of our natural systems.

With a world population nearly at 7 billion people, the implication for economic growth seems obvious as we cannot assume that the status quo will hold in a changing climatic environment. Reaching the earth’s resource limit is inevitable if it is not already occurring.

However changing our society’s behaviours cannot be achieved through some overseeing organization.

Perpetual growth has been ingrained through exposure to intensive branding and marketing by the very corporations who provide jobs and economic growth, and round and round we go…… Enacting such dramatic change through a highly centralized governing structure that dictates appropriate resource use, population levels, and actively redistributes wealth is a hard sell even in dire times.

As a result, we cannot continue consuming more and more water, spewing out more and more carbon dioxide and burning more and more coal.

In the past 22 years, half of all of the oil ever burned has been burned.

At present, the global population is increasing by 83 million people annually and we are already consuming natural resources as if we have “1.5 Earths.”

If every person used as many resources as the average North American, more than four Earths would be required to sustain the total rate of consumption. Other words if everyone lived like the average American, the Earth could sustain only 1.7 billion people — a quarter of today’s population.

27 billion people will inhabit the planet by the end of the century and hidden in every calorie of food eaten are 10 calories of fossil fuels.

Technology can lead to greater efficiencies, it requires energy — it does not create it.

Water is obviously a key component of human life. It is also vital to energy, industry, agriculture and livestock.

With all of this in mind, it’s time to abandon the perpetual growth economic model and move instead to a model that stresses conservation, efficiency, recycling and renewability. Clearly, the world is on an unsustainable path and, by definition, anything that is unsustainable won’t last.

Above all else, we must redefine the quality of life as something other than just having “more.” The goal should be to simply have enough. Our quality of life should not be measured by “stuff,” but instead by the things that make life rich; our relationships, our hobbies, our work and our passions.

GDP merely measures what people are willing to pay for, which is not necessarily connected to the use of energy, or any other physical resource.

The world will be confronting shortages of hydrocarbons, metals, water and fertilizer, which will dramatically affect global agriculture. The latter is critical.

So why are we unable to change direction.

Because of the threat, transnational organizations have over the nation-state.

Because no one is willing to bear the costs.

Because of the amount of power capital has over labour.

As it stands, nearly half the world’s population — more than 3 billion people — lives on roughly $2 per day.

The solution is to get profit for profit sake to pay:

By introducing a World Aid commission of 0.05% on all High-frequency trading, on all sovereign wealth funds acquisitions on all foreign exchange transaction over $50,000, on all gambling and lottos wins creating a perpetual world aid fund.

By issuing United Nation Green Deal non-trading Bond.

By the introduction of a World Day of non-consumerism Advertising.

By building non atomised Societies that are attached geographical – belonging not defined by competition.

By eating together one a week.

The question is how do we communicate this obvious message, in the face of corporate control of the media, and increasingly academia, science and the political system?

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

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

23 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Dehumanization., Democracy, DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Enegery, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Modern Day Democracy., Modern day life., Our Common Values.

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Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Community cohesion, SMART PHONE WORLD, Technology, The Future of Mankind, Visions of the future.

 

(Twenty-minute read.)

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

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

Why?

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

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

Control of society above personality.

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

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

existence, and fills this existence with false content.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why is this?

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

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

Take Climate change and  Fossil fuel:

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

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

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

Their messages becoming inescapable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inclusion will be the only brake.

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

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

Algorithms all ready control 99.9% of stock exchanges. 

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

Then the question arises:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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← Older posts

All comments and contributions much appreciated

  • THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: ARE GOVERNMENTS BECOMING OBSOLETE. December 5, 2019
  • THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: ARE WE BECOMING A NON READING SOCIETY.? December 2, 2019
  • THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: THE WORLD HAS YET TO GRASP PROPERLY THE CLIMATE CHANGE PROBLEM. November 30, 2019
  • THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHY IS TRUST IN POLITICIANS AT AN ALL TIME LOW? November 30, 2019
  • THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: IS THIS AS GOOD AS IT GET’S WITH MAN’S ACHIEVEMENTS FOR EVOLUTION? November 29, 2019

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