Category Archives: Technology.

THE BEADY EYE TAKES A LOOKS AT THE WORLD:

11 Monday Jun 2018

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence., Evolution, HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Life., Our Common Values., Sustaniability, Technology., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Organisations.

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( A ten-minute read)

Putting religious beliefs aside ask yourself or Google a question :

WHAT IS WRONG IN THE WORLD?

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "what is wrong with the world today"
There is no shortage of people who know what is wrong.

The most frequently cited reason is probably the decline of religion, specifically the religion of the person writing it.

The list is endless.

Lack of respect for elders, unregulated capitalism, greed, alcohol, the economy, the rich, attachment, premarital sex, liberals, the unemployed, pride, lawyers, apathy, Starbucks.

The planet itself is fine and does what it does best which is to exist, orbit, and rotate.

The real question is what is wrong with our civilization?

We live in a world where text messages surpass face to face conversations.

We live in a world where if you didn’t snapshot it or post it to Facebook, “it didn’t happen”.

We live in a world where our self-esteem is managed by the amount of “likes” on our selfies and statuses.

We live in a world where our tv’s and cell phones get thinner and our bodies get thicker.

What happened to the world where everyone minded their own damn business?

What happened to the world where people actually knew their neighbors and didn’t fear them?

What happened to the world where people got together and lost track of time because they didn’t have their phone attached to their hip?

What happened to the world where people could voice their opinion without getting hate mail?

What happened to the world as one nation under God?

The answer I suppose depends on seeing the world within framed views of rich and poor.

What is clear is that people’s desires are contradictory, so it becomes a matter of democracy.

The problem is that most people fail to see things from other peoples perspectives. There’s no right or wrong. Just different point of views. People have become greedy and have forgotten their own truth but what happens when people stop caring.

I’m going to assume almost everyone knows that poverty is a huge problem in so many countries across the world, you’re not starving right now but you know there are hundreds of thousands of people that are.

I thought by the end of writing this, I would know what was wrong with humanity, but I don’t and I would be most grateful to anyone that can offer an explanation.

I think it was Einstein who said that ” we seem to have found the way but lost the destination”. We all seek understanding and sympathy if not empathy.

Industrial Civilization leaves us slaves to nothingness and our last days are spent in a hospital where machines are our mothers.

The only thing that is certain in life is the depravity of mankind.

As a species, we generally are self-destructive, greedy, and overpopulated.

We are the only species that hunts on a full stomach, enact genocide, and create wars by selling arms.

Unfortunately, the current technological advances are not going change the fundamental problem of what we call civilization.

Ever since the dawn of our species through no fault of our own, we have been unable to act as one : (FOR THE COMMON GOOD).

EVER POLITICAL IDEOLOGY HAS BEING BASED ON GROWTH.

We now enter a new age of TECHNOLOGY where data is feeding artificial intelligence that is, in turn, fanning advances in the world of scientific research, that is and will have far-reaching consequences on all aspect of living.

However, despite thousands of academic papers on the subject, our current civilization relies on trial and error.

The core of our present-day technology is flawed in as much as it is going to created greater inequality. While we are busy focusing on computer intelligence artificial intelligence might arrive in a living form first and bring with it unprecedented ethical challenges.

THE CORE OF SCIENCE SHOULD BE TO GENERATE KNOWLEDGE THAT OTHER PEOPLE CAN TAKE AND BUILD ON.

We need to push the frontiers of our knowledge with deep knowledge far beyond cool social apps, and neural networks that are presently trampling over moral boundaries.

We need more minds thinking about where it’s all going to end up and not allow computers to figure out for itself.

OUR CIVILIZATION NEEDS TO WIN THE RACE BETWEEN THE GROWING POWER OF TECHNOLOGY AND THE GROWING WISDOM WHICH WE WILL MANAGE IT.

EVEN IF THERE IS AN AMAZING OPPORTUNITY TO HELP HUMANITY FLOURISH THERE MUST BE A LINE DRAWN SOMEWHERE.

As always it is our complacency that is the real threat to the world.

So I leave you with these questions.

How can we ensure that artificial intelligence is developed in ways that benefit all parts of society, and serves the public interest?

How can we design meaningful public engagement around the future impact of AI technologies?

FINALLY, ANY AI THAT GAINS CONTROL OVER IMPORTANT SYSTEMS WITH UNSUPERVISED INTELLIGENCE IS GOING TO POSE AN EXISTENTIAL RISK NOT JUST TO THE PLANET BUT TO HUMANITY AS A WHOLE. SO EMPOWERED IT WILL BECOME UNQUESTIONABLE.

The more AI advances into a general purpose technology that permeates every corner of life, the less sense it makes to allow it to remain in the hands that serve a few instead of the many.

Most of today’s and past world problems have their roots in Inequality.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: ARE WE EVER GOING TO STOP RAPEING OUR WORLD FOR PROFIT.

02 Saturday Jun 2018

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Environment, Evolution, Fake News., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google, Humanity., Life., Our Common Values., Robot citizenship., Sustaniability, Technology., The cloud., The common good., The Future, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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( Five Minute read)

We are just beginning to realize that our societies are founded on a very limited definition of power.

Google it and you will see where the real power is.

Data:

As software devours the world (we are all producing trillions of it) – to be exploited by Algorithms, that are aligning us all in one direction of living, without awareness or the ability to truly see the world around us.

There is no argument that Artificial Intelligence is the way forward but what is the point if we are not citizens anymore.

We’re consumers AND WILL REMAIN SO FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of technology in the future"

AI for profit is infiltrating every aspect of our lives and is going to expand the world inequality beyond wars.  

If we want to change the direction of AI to serves us all we have to change the way corporations view us and the world.

And we all know that this is impossible.

There is no point in hoping that our governments are going to introduce regulations that are going to stick, as AI has passed the threshold of any transparency.

The warnings surrounding the AI revolutions are plenty.

The voiced by Elon Musk: ( Do you Trust this Computer) The not so late Prof Stephen Hawking warns us, Westworld: shows us.

Unfortunately, there is no money to be made ensuring that AI servers us rather than the owners of the algorithms. So we end up working on symptoms all the time, ignoring the causes till its too late.

This too late scenario is not an option with AI for profit that’s is now developing its own rules as to who gets what at what price, with little or no obligations for any of this technology to contribute to the core values of life. 

AI might stabilize our environment, allow us to share more equally in the opportunities of life without damaging the planet, but this is pie in the sky.

The need for a balance needed for this technology which brings such benefits in terms of health, communication, education, safety, business, is now paramount.

In this, I am all right Jack world such an achievement would be surely something miraculous.

The reality is while we are all distracted, bombarded with false news no one has a crystal ball to see the future, but we do have the cultural history to know what happens when power is abused.

What will artificial intelligence do to us?

AI deals with ends: It establishes its own objects.  In essence, AI represents thoughtless.

AI makes its own decisions about who and where to target.

We are in danger of losing the essence of human cognition. U Tube is full of disinformation rhetoric, social media full of weird views.

With social media playing such a big part in our lives, could we be sacrificing our mental health and well-being as well as our time? In some ways, the AI explosion represents the latest challenge for transparency.

What does the evidence actually suggest?

Conclusive findings are limited.

People use social media to vent about everything from customer service to politics, but the downside to this is that our feeds often resemble an endless stream of stress.

It won’t be long before marketers will be buying data science products that autonomously construct audience segments and our world organizations such as Governments will not be able to cope.

At the moment most of AI is narrow, meaning it is specifically programmed to accomplish one task or two, however it is well on the way to developing what is called general AI that will assist us with practically everything we do.

It must be remembered that machines will not learn the same way as humans do. They will think in an abstract way whether they are managing multiple goals simultaneously or not.

An example is Face recognition.

Before all of this happens:

Surely we as the creators of AI should be passing laws that require all AI programs to be vetted against human values. That a copy of the original program should be held in a virtual cloud strongroom available to one and all. (See previous Posts)

Until we have a viable path forward.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of technology in the future"

There are now billions of people walking around with supercomputers in their pockets, and they are all connected to each other by the internet. Unless we use this power to replace Capitalism with a form of Direct democracy that really recognize that we are interconnected, that our well being is inextricable from that of our ecosystems, profit-seeking Algorithms and there like will continue to rape our Planet.

In Jason Silva latest video (below) he conveniently ignores in his presentation the power of the planet to move not just continents but all of us.

When he advocates that AI, Biology, and Nanotechnology will combine to make nature with technology one and the same to become the motherboard of technology he ignores nature.

Nature is the physical world collectively, plants, animals, landscapes, oceans, air, and all other features and forces that are not created by man.

It won’t be the coming together of AI,Biology, Nanotechnology, nor big data, or patterns, that is going to tax the human imagination, rather the rewards of climate change that is well on the way to changing the planet we all live on. 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S : IN THIS AGE OF TECHNOLOGY ARE WE REALLY TALKING TO ONE ANOTHER?

13 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by in Algorithms., Technology., The cloud., The Future, The Internet., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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( A twenty-minute read)

Today’s atomizing forces are brand new and far less tangible: ubiquitous Internet access, constant email and social-media updates, all distracting us from our surroundings, loved ones and other people around us.

Are we indeed socially hobbled by our little screens?

If matters have gotten worse, how would we know?

We’re disengaged.’ Compared to what?

If the new technologies are to fulfill their promise, it is necessary to direct attention towards the costs and concerns that come with the globalization of technology.

Although information technology and increased knowledge can empower everyone on an individual level, the limitations of the existing structures within the job market, socioeconomics, and governmental sovereignty are hard to cast away; an underlying irony has yet to be eliminated.

We are only just beginning to replacing vague theories with some hard data and the overarching effects so far point to the disruptive nature of technology.

So here are a few facts explaining how digital-age technologies have already transformed our world, for better and for worse.

Wealth boosted by technology has not been equally distributed.

By 2020, it is estimated that the 1 percent will own 54 percent of global wealth.

Thanks to technology, we can vent our frustration in increasingly visible ways.

Jobs will be computerized in the next 10-20 years.

With the rise of websites like WebMD, LegalZoom, and E*Trade, even white-collar professionals like lawyers, doctors, and financial middlemen are under threat from technology. Are any jobs safe? For the time being, positions that require empathy—say, nurses over doctors—are better positioned to withstand the technological blow.

Furthermore, governmental programs do not provide the assistance needed to help workers transition to the technological age, further wedging the gap between rural and urban. This disparity is also magnified within the stratification of international systems: The digital divide that exists among developed and developing countries is obvious and the high cost of bringing broadband and technology to third-world countries is an issue that needs to be solved.

Health will be run by algorithms attached to the cloud.

To put this in perspective, a full human genome sequence cost $100 million in 2002. Today, it can be done for $1,000; by 2020 it may cost less than a cup of coffee.

Technology can be a double-edged sword, but at least when it comes to our health (if not necessarily our medical professionals), it has largely been a force for good but just imagine what is going to happen to Health Insurance when your health is monitored by the Cloud.

Education.

Today, there are more than 80,000 education apps available for download through Apple’s App Store; 72 percent of those are aimed at toddlers and preschoolers. But while parents and app developers have obviously embraced the tech education revolution, the link between technology and educational performance is murky at best.

Technology can help save the planet…

The World Bank estimates that climate change may push more than 100 million people into extreme poverty by 2030.

Of course, technology has played a role in our current predicament. The shale revolution—which at its core is a technological revolution—has given a new lease on life to the oil and gas era. That may be good for falling oil prices, but it’s horrible for our environment.

But what makes the difference is that the global economy grew by 3 percent in 2014 while world emissions remained flat.

People are not willing to fundamentally change their lives for problems far off in the future, even ones as potentially catastrophic as climate change. To avoid the worst effects of climate change, alternative energies need to become as cheap and reliable as their carbon-emitting counterparts, and quickly.

Cheaper alternative energy is the best hope the world has left.

Global Security:

Technology has also created a whole new set of global security concerns.

The thoroughly modern phenomenon of cybercrime and economic espionage is estimated to cost the world more than $445 billion every year. That’s roughly 1 percent of global income. And while it hasn’t happened yet, the fear that cyber attacks can spill over and trigger real-world conflicts remains an ongoing concern.

Technology has also changed the face of modern warfare. A decade ago, the Pentagon had a stockpile of fewer than 50 drones; today it has an arsenal of about 7,000. The Pentagon estimates that China will build nearly 42,000 drones by 2023. Others will follow suit. Yet another possible complication.

But the most worrisome development?

Technology has given terrorist groups like ISIS an unparalleled platform to spread their messages of hate. The knowledge needed to build bombs in the comfort of your own home is now just a few short clicks away. Technology is capable of empowering every single individual in the world, even the worst of us.

Finance and the world economy.

It is quite obvious that money in the form of cash is going to disappear.

World stock market is now run by high-frequency trading algorithms. Personal credit lines are governed by algorithms. World trade is reverting to protectionism. Inequality is widening.

Communication:

We are all talking on our cell phones. Public spaces aren’t communal anymore. No one interacts in public spaces.

On the other hand, access to the wealth of information and opinion available on the internet is exposing people of all ages to views, lifestyles, and knowledge they might never have encountered otherwise, potentially generating greater compassion and understanding both within local communities and for people on the other side of the world.

In the next few years, virtual reality could offer a further means of breaking down geographic and social barriers.

Project Syria, for instance, uses virtual-reality goggles to place people inside the meticulously researched world of a Syrian citizen caught in the Syrian conflict, cutting through the ‘empathy fatigue’ often brought about by constant access to global news.

THEN THERE IS:

CRIME:

WHAT LAWS SHOULD APPLY TO AI.

SHOULD THEIR CREATORS BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ITS ACTIONS?

An AI programme could be an innocent agent with either the software programmer or the user being held to be the perpetrator-vi another.

Does the programmer know that if the machine is used in a certain way that a certain outcome is inevitable?

Who or what should be punished if for an offense of which an AI system is directly liable.

Is Ai a service or a product. The legal implications will be profound.

PRIVACY: 

Nothing is private any longer. Whether you like it or not everything is data.

Should AI platforms Pay us for the Data?

FALSE NEWS:

There is no longer a source of Facts. Campaigns to manipulate public opinion through false or misleading social media postings have become standard political practice across much of the world.

Exploiting every social media platform — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and beyond — and relying on human users and computerized “bots” that can dramatically amplify the power of disinformation campaigns by automating the process of preparing and delivering posts. Bots interact with human users and also with other bots. They generate so much content — and they share each other’s content — that it’s hard to disaggregate the networks.

The impact goes beyond electoral politics to hot-button issues such as climate change and the safety of vaccines.

So should we put aside these value judgments and focus on how technology will simply make the world different going forward. 65 percent of children entering primary school today will end up working in jobs that don’t even exist yet. Our time is better spent figuring out how to live in this new world rather than lamenting the old one.

Unfortunately, by the time we get around to waking up to Algorithms, we will be owned by one.

History also advises that the measures taken must be developed through close consultation between governments, private sector experts, and stakeholders and citizens. Experience with previous technologies suggests that prudent policies can help us effectively manage the risks associated with new technologies without harm to their benefits. But can we say that this is honestly true with Algorithms that are learning from each other or driven by profit, filtering platforms in order to supply personalized information?

The result is having corrosive effects across the whole political arena worldwide.

Whether you are techno-utopians or techno-skeptics technology is changing our lives and the world we all live in and on IN MORE WAYS THAN WE YET OR WILL EVER BE CAPABLE OF COMPREHENDiING.

This is why I advocate a strong room for technology. Where all software is stored and available to all. (See the previous post)

If we are not careful the very thing that we all cherish Freedom will become the sole prerogative of the Algorithms world OF APPLE, MICROSOFT, FACEBOOK, TWITTER, AND THEIR LIKE.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of technology"

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revolutionary.

What was still missing from the research, he decided, was historical perspective.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY ASKS: FROM NAKED APE TO ROBOT – WILL IT BE WORTH IT?

08 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence., Evolution., Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Sustaniability, Technology., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Internet., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World Organisations., World Politics

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 ( A Fifteen minute read)

We are becoming less and less effective in the face of enormous but slow-moving crises such as the loss of biodiversity or climate change. Deforestation, Freshwater Species Extinctions, Climate Change and Destruction of Natural Resources, Large-scale Wars and Religious Conflicts.

“human cost” of the current system:

Not to  Mention Technology.

What we prioritize, the way we shape our lives, affects the evolutionary future of our species, so we would do well to start asking some simple question about the untended consequences of technology? 

Is it likely that in the near future humans are going to speciate? ( Humans one species and robots another. )

If you can’t explain Artificial intelligence/ Machine learning stored in the cloud and what it is doing to the public, there’s a good chance it doesn’t merit doing.

Mannequin heads sitting on a shelf in a factory The number of people on the planet is set to rise to 9.7 billion in 2050 with 2 billion aged over 60.

 That is only 30 odd year away.

We are entering the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a technological transformation that is robbing us of the essence of our humanity.

Driven by a ubiquitous and mobile internet, we are perhaps witnessing the end of human evolution as we know it.

Up to now human evolution proceeded extremely slowly and within historical memory, man has exhibited aggressive territorial behavior. Even as we bask smugly in the comforts of our smart phones natural selection to-day still ensured that only the fittest survived.

However it may not be long before computers are hooked up to the human brain with genetic trade-offs till we can’t be improved any further,

Then evolution will really have come to a stop for us. We will be the only species to have put a halt to natural selection, of its own free will, as it were.

Stopping natural selection is not as important, or as depressing, as it might sound — because our evolutionary process will then be cultural.

One way or the other by the time we get there our current social, political and economic systems will have driven inequalities with profit seeking algorithms off the map, rather than reducing them.

The challenge is to manage this seismic change in a way that promotes the long-term health and stability of the planet.

The writing has been on the wall for some time.Homo floresiensis

So where do we stand:

Since 1992 CO2 emissions have jumper 62% and the global temperature is up 29%. Fresh water is down 26%. Ocean dead zones up 76% . Forestland down 300 million acres. People up 35%.

You would think that we the biggest dimwit on the planet looking at this evidence would conclude that there is something very wrong. If you dont know what it is, we have evolved beyond our needs, trampling other species in the process.

We are now at a turning point we can either push ahead on our path to destruction or we can reshape our place in nature and prosper or we can face a humongous environmental crisis.

You would think that with everything connected by the internet, it would transform how we do business and help us manage resources more efficiently and sustainable.

As you can see this is not the result.

On the contrary the way we’ve set up corporations, world organisations, where even a majority vote cannot demand that a corporation’s or world organisation policies reflect the public good or preserve the environment for future use.

That’s because profit is the one and only motive.

It’s up to government and it’s up to people to protect the public interest. Corporations and world organisations are simply not allowed to.

Within the next decade, it is expected that more than a trillion sensors will be connected to the internet. By 2025, 10% of people are expected to be wearing clothes connected to the internet and the first implantable mobile phone is expected to be sold.

However today, 43% of the world’s population are connected to the internet, mostly in developed countries.

In a world driven by short-term profit, the connectivity theory is and will remain so far off the mark it can only be believed by artificial intelligence.

Growing unease over globalization, which is evident from the number of questions being asked about the power of corporations and the adequacy of the regulations governing employment, environmental issues and taxation, is causing economic and social ills, ranging from low consumption to social and political unrest, and is damaging to any future.

There is no need for me to tell you that we are living in turbulent times.

It is clear that the old stories are dying and if we continue to poison ourselves and the planet by self-interest, fragmentation and profit for profit sake there will be no point to the age of technology other than becoming slaves.

However evolution is going on invisibly all the time. Species evolve in response to whatever environment they encounter. No despots have ever set out to select for increased or decreased longevity in the populations they control.

By 2050, the world must feed 9 billion people. Yet the demand for food will be 60% greater than it is today.

The scale of the employment challenge is vast. Rapid progress in machine learning has raised the prospect that algorithms will one day be able to do most or all of the mental tasks currently performed by humans. These advances could lead to extremely positive developments, presenting solutions to now-intractable global problems, but they also pose severe risks.

This might be the most important transition of the next century – either ushering in an unprecedented era of wealth and progress, or heralding disaster.

But it’s also an area that’s highly neglected: while billions are spent making AI more powerful. The problem of how one might design a highly intelligent machine to pursue realistic human goals safely is very poorly understood. It is estimated that there are fewer than 100 people in the world working on how to make AI safe.

If AI research continues to advance without enough work going into the research problem of controlling such machines, catastrophic accidents are much more likely to occur.

It’s generally agreed that, among the forces that led to the immense sophistication of the human brain, the most powerful was a kind of feedback loop between the growing complexity of our ancestors’ physical and social environment and the ability of our ancestors to adapt to it. But why, you may ask, has the enormous increase in complexity of our recent technological environment not had a measurable physical impact on our brains?

The rate at which we are changing our environment now has outstripped even the fastest biological evolution.

However the ineluctable laws of evolution will continue to operate, probably even more strongly, in the overcrowded, ecologically damaged world of the future. And if things get really bad, the evolutionary consequences could be extreme. Any survivors of a nuclear holocaust or an ecological catastrophe are likely to be a small and highly selected subset of today’s population.

If, for example, destruction were so widespread that people could not form viable social groups, the evolution of our descendants would inevitably be driven in the direction of brutishness.

If our technologies fail to protect us against these forces of nature our genetic heritage could fail us too, meaning human evolution will return with a vengeance.

Then again if everyone had exactly the same set of genes controlling the brain’s development, there would be no genetic differences among people on which natural selection could act–and evolution really would come to a stop!

War then would be the strong life; it is life in extremism; war taxes are the only ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations show us.

There is no doubting the force of [the] arguments above, call me back in 3 million years time, because I may well be wrong on that one.

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