( Seventeen minute read)

As our technological prowess has increased, so has our ability to transform landscapes and the planet.

Up to now the defining trait of the human species has been our tendency to shape our environment and surroundings to suit us.

Today we can divert entire rivers, reclaim land from the oceans, chop down swathes of forest, level mountainsides and build new ones as we constantly seek to improve the physical world around us.

However isn’t it clear that our actions are taking a toll on the health of our planet, in the guise of climate change, the destruction of habitats, the loss of species and pollution. Attempts to resurrect species that have gone extinct or use gene-editing technologies to create artificial life are examples of this.

Right now, we’re in this era of stopgaps.

Society used to be able to make a long-term plan: people built long-term infrastructure and thought a bit further out.

That’s not something that happens now: We go to quick fixes, when we need a cultural change in values.

To enable more deliberate decision-making, if we focus on trying to make the world  better rather than simply protecting what remains of the natural world are we just turning our species with algorithms into an senility of greed, paying lips service to what is really happing

The way we talk about climate change can impact the solutions we develop. We can’t solve any problems, especially at the global scale, if we don’t talk about the problem and the best way to address it.

I think this is because of people do not wanting to talk about it as they are incapable of imaging just like a nuclear war the concepts of a world unliveable, because they don’t have the body of knowledge, and it would need 20 or 30 years to develop it. “Humans are a very flawed species.”

So the world of 2050 will be unimaginably different in many ways, even if we can safely assume people will still generally have two arms, two legs and an unpleasant smell if they don’t wash for long periods of time.

Right about mid-century means it will be a crunch point: Climate change will be really apparent.

However over the past couple of years new AI tools have emerged that threaten the survival of human civilisation from an unexpected direction. For example, AI has gained some remarkable abilities to manipulate and generate language, whether with words, sounds or images. AI has thereby hacked the operating system of our civilisation.

Language is the stuff almost all human culture is made of. Human rights, for example, aren’t inscribed in our DNA.

Let’s look at the present scenario with the Climate.

Why all the silence about climate change?

Why isn’t this topic filling our conversations, the way a tsunami would, or a major earthquake?

I ask again, why are not more people crying out?

Some of the smartest people think we will not be able to act in time, that we will continue to delay until we can’t stem the rising waters, the droughts, the refugees, the failed states, the wars fought over precious resources like arable land, food, water.

If we have no hope of having a better world, then it becomes a more divided world.

Let me suggest some of the reasons.

Continued efforts that largely focus on persuading people about the realities of climate change “is going to be wasted money, wasted effort, wasted air. It sometimes seems as though climate change conversations can be divided into two narratives: People are either overly optimistic about solutions — or claim it’s “too late” to act.

Will enough human beings actually undertake any of the necessary actions?

Climate change is a complex problem and proposing “simplistic, all-encompassing grand solutions” is not the answer.

We have to focus on where most emissions are and focus on reducing that as quickly as possible. Its not possible for any one person to be capable of single-handedly creating major change. Individual action should be seen as part of an ecosystem of change that requires systemic level changes. Social solutions that address inequities and environmental justice issues “need to go hand-in-hand” with discussions about physical or economic solutions to climate change.

A key component of talking about climate issues revolves around making climate solutions equitable.

If we just addressed the question from the standpoint of, ‘Climate change is here, we have to reduce greenhouse gases,’ but don’t talk about how we do that, then you end up with communities being presented with what we call false solutions or our legislature being presented with false solutions.

THE CLIMATE  IS NOW IN THE PROCESS OF CHANGING NOT JUST WHERE WE WILL LIVE, BUT HOW WE LIVE.

The specifics of what will change are not for this piece, but the human response very much is. humanity, in time, reaches net zero when it comes to emissions.

In that scenario, we will live in a world where plant proteins replace meat in everyday consumption, where electrically powered networked mass transit reaches into the suburbs and beyond, a world of video-conferencing and remote attendance steadily chipping away at business flights. A world in which mega scale injections of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere turn the heavens a milky-white, and a whole generation never sees a clear blue sky, in order to reflect more of the sun’s rays and pause the greenhouse effect.

It is one in which we turn on gigantic processing plants that do nothing but extract carbon dioxide from the air and pump it underground into disused oil wells. It is one in which whole cities are abandoned and populations relocated to avoid the worst effects we can’t prevent.

We need everyone to be a climate communicator and not just rely on one or two people or not just scientists because we’re going to be living with this problem for a long time.

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So what are the key ideas and designs that could influence the world of tomorrow?

(Look, it can’t all be high-tech. There is also this way of looking at it.)

There is, perhaps, little point in dwelling on the 50% chance that AGI does develop.

If it does, every other prediction we could make is moot, and this story, and perhaps humanity as we know it, will be forgotten.

And if we assume that transcendentally brilliant artificial minds won’t be along to save or destroy us, and live according to that outlook, then what is the worst that could happen – we build a better world for nothing?

How ever if we are guessing the future from simple trend lines, there is another one that we need to acknowledge:

The engineering of any possible transition that can avert catastrophic climate breakdown must be paramount in the minds of governments actions because there are not enough rare earth metals for wind turbines and all the other hardware we will need for renewable energy which means eight billion people will go to hell.

We all know this.

However what we see are countries governments offering billions in sub’s to attract the manufacture of batteries for electrical cars. The producing the average 60kWh battery alone generates nine tonnes of CO2.

In fact, the batteries that power electric vehicles may also be their Achilles heel.

These manufacturing companies will go broke in the long term.

Well, fair enough, but questions arise when we dig into the inner layers of electrical vehicles and see how sustainable their components are. They already have a significant environmental impacts, ranging from the mining for materials and the water and energy used in making new batteries and vehicles, through to the hazardous waste from discarded batteries.

So even though EVs may help reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions over their lifetime, the battery that powers them starts its life laden with a large environmental footprint.

In about 2025, when millions of EV batteries reach the end of their initial life cycles, a streamlined recycling process will be needed.

A plug-in hybrid has a battery and an electric motor, are made from advanced materials to reduce its weight but it also has a petrol or diesel engine. At a stroke, the efficiencies of one are cancelled out by the inefficiencies of the other. Not even a 30-mile electric-only touring range can fix that.

The reason all manufacturers currently use lithium is that it provides a lighter battery that lasts longer. That gives the car greater range without recharging, and it make possible a much lighter car. In other words, lithium batteries are cheaper.

You can’t tinker with an electric car as you can a conventional one because you’ll very likely be electrocuted.

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In the age of electrification, we take rechargeable batteries for granted. From phones and laptops to hi-tech cameras.

The main use of rare earth metals now is for screens, smart phones, games consoles, electronics and laptop computers. You can have a phone, a computer or a screen without rare earth metals. – these batteries have one thing in common. They’re all made of lithium and it costs more to recycle them than to mine more lithium to make new ones.

Lithium is a metal used in almost all electric vehicle batteries today. About half of global production of lithium currently goes to electric vehicles. And in future we will need to increase the production of electric vehicles from hundreds or thousands to hundreds of millions. That will require vast amounts of lithium.

In South America, huge lithium reserves are using up water by the gallon, causing devastating water-related conflicts among locals. Most of the known deposits of lithium rich brine are in the arid highlands where Bolivia, Chile and Argentina come together. It is also mined from hard rock in China or the United States where a whopping 2.2 million litres of water is needed to produce one ton of lithium. The mining is also toxic, because large amounts of acid are used in the processing.

The result is that ancestral homelands become unliveable.

That’s not to mention that the world’s oceans contain an estimated 180 billion tons of lithium. But it’s diluted.

Lithium is not the most environmentally friendly chemical element we could be using. The transition to green energy does not have to be powered by destructive and poisonous mineral extraction.

More important, batteries do not have to be made out of lithium. The way forward is hydrogen fuel cells.

We can no longer treat the batteries as disposable.

Similar arguments apply to rare earth metals.

It is not possible now to tell what metals will be needed for which industries in ten years’ time.

There are several different kinds of rare earth metals, each with different properties. They are widely used, in small amounts, in wind turbines, car batteries and much other technology necessary for climate change.

It is often said that this rarity is an obstacle to decarbonizing the world.  This is not quite right.

Right now most rare earth metals are mined in China. There is nothing special about the geology of China.  Most of them could be mined in the United States, or a range of other countries.

Next we have AI. 

There is no doubt that if AI is used for the benefit of humanity it could able us to conquer many of our problems, like new medical treatments diseases, exploring the universe and beyond, addressing inequality etc, the list is endless with our own very extinction at the end.

With self learning algorithm’s, killings drones and the internet far more entrenched now, with its chaotic effect on our lives showing no sign of abating, its far too late for regulation.  It is at least predictably unpredictable and has to be harnessed by International laws before it develops its own fee will. 

Technology really has made great leaps and bounds in the past 16 years, nowhere more clearly than AI  hidden behind all its hype is data hoarding which can be misguided or well-intentioned, but it’s always bad for the environment.

Take the I Cloud the great AI techno rubbish dump of data. Pumping 5.8 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere this year as a result of storing unnecessary ‘dark data’ – this translates to more emissions than 80 individual countries. 

Its no wonder the cost of energy is going up.

90% of what’s stored in the Cloud is undulating rubbish produced by social media weapon – the Smart Phone.

(After half a century of single-purpose consumer electronics, it was difficult to perceive how all-encompassing a single device like the smartphone could become.)

Smartphone penetration in the west is now as high as it looks likely to go, with a loss of privacy that is going to be very difficult for people that haven’t figured out how to deal with that. However the world changes over the next 30 years, won’t be as a result of more Britons or Americans getting phones.

Computational machines will have surpassed the processing power of all the living human brains on Earth. The cloud will also have absorbed the thinking of the many dead brains on Earth, too – and we all need to work together to survive.

So I predict that we will see a lasting cooperation between the human race and the computational machines of the future, as to which sets the playing field is still up for grabs.  

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Is there any other way people live their lives?

Artificial intelligence brains simply cannot cope with change and unpredictable events.

The complexity and ambivalence of people’s relationship with daily mobility is decreasing with services and shopping going online  Here, commuting is seen simultaneously as a tiresome burden, but also as a key source of interaction with the wider world which is important in sustaining people’s sense of daily balance.

Furthermore, ‘compensatory mobilities’ emerge as a widespread practice which helps people retain aspects they miss about commuting while working from home. This practice, underscores the intrinsic enjoyment associated with being on the move, and is important for unravelling the potential impacts of working from home on people’s mobility carbon footprint.

Understanding experiences of a less mobile life under COVID-19 offers insights into the taken-for-granted meanings of mobility in daily life, and into new opportunities for low-carbon mobility transitions associated with working from home.

Perhaps if we were to consider turning our villages and towns, districts of our cities, into green spaces, surrounded with local businesses. WE COULD RETURN TO LIVING WITHOUT THE NEED TO COMMUTE FROM OR TO SUPERMARKETS THAT SUCK THE SOUL OUT OF TOWN CENTERS FOR PROFIT.

WE MIGHT DISCOVER NEW EXPERIENCES AND ROUTINES THAT HOLD OUR DAILY LIFE TOGETHER AND MAKE IT PLEASANT, RATHER THAN BEING DRIVEN BY ALGOTHRIMS.

The bottom line is that Western Civilization, as we know it is unsustainable, because everything about Capitalism is built around economic growth and continuous accrual of increasing wealth, while despising those who fail to win a growing stake.

All for brief moments of superficial comfort that are considered vital for happiness.

It is too late to stop our climate from getting worse, no matter what we do, and it is highly unlikely we

( Twenty minute read)

ADVANCING MORE RAPIDLY THAN ANY OTHER INNOVATION IN OUR HISTORY THE PROBLEMS WITH TECHOLOGY ARE BECOMING CLEARER BY THE DAY.  

The sociological/psychological fallout of AI is not decades away: right here, right now, we are watching in slow-motion the major meltdown of our shared sense of reality.

The discovery that AI can treat language as probability, and from there on, most anything as a “language” of sorts:

DNA sequences, yep, robotics and motoric learning, yes actually, music, definitively, generation and recognition of images and sounds, yes, hacking and cryptography, also yes, persuasion, yes of course…

It is that’s term or concept of Augmented Intelligence which implies a replacement of human intelligence that is becoming less threatening than the admittedly ominous-sounding ‘artificial intelligence’.  It will be increasingly hard to know what is real and what is not. It will be hard to resist manipulation and persuasion. It will be hard to know where we begin and the agency of the machine ends.

It will be increasingly hard not to lose our minds as our shared sense of self and reality (our sociality, which we rely upon for our sanity) fractures. The scale and effect of this fact, in its sociological and psychological ramifications (not to mention economic and political ones) is in itself a rollercoaster ride of Nietzschean proportions.

Even if we remain agnostic about Nick Bostrom’s existential risk superintelligence general AI, we can be fairly certain that we have a sociological moment of impact starting more or less yesterday.

There’s just no way new capacities of this magnitude come about with this kind of speed, and then everything just goes back to normal. For all we know, normal might never happen again.

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By definition, the word symbiosis is a term commonly used in biology to describe the relationship between two different organisms that live together in close association, and both partners benefit from the relationship.

TO A CERTAIN EXTENT THIS IS WHAT IS HAPPENING WITH THE APPLICATION OF TECHNOLOGY TO OUR LIVES, AS MANY PROBLEMS SIMPLY CANNOT BE FROMULATED OR RESOLVED WITHOUT THE HELP OF COMPUTERS.

AN OTHER WORDS:

The computers should be acting as a “serving agent,” providing the human with the information they needed to make informed decisions.

Recognized that the human mind have limitations, such as limited memory capacity and the inability to perform complex calculations quickly. Computers, on the other hand, have almost unlimited memory capacity and perform calculations at incredible speeds. By working together, humans and computers could overcome each other’s limitations and achieve a level of productivity that was not possible before.

Computers are now responsible for performing complex computations and storing vast amounts of information, while humans are be removed from making judgements and decisions based on the information provided by the computer.

One of the main objectives with the growing scale and complexity of information processing tasks of human-computer symbiosis is to bring the computer effectively into the formative parts of technical problems.

‘The question is not ‘What is the answer?’ The question is ‘What is the question?

THAT QUESTION BECOMES.   CAN WE LIVE DIGTILIZED LIVES?

Nowadays, many intelligent systems work in a symbiotic relationship with humans.

For example,

Every time we rate a movie on Netflix, we are helping artificial intelligence understand our behaviour and in the future recommend movies based on our preferences.

In the financial industry, computers are widely used to process large amounts of data in real-time, identify trading patterns, and make accurate predictions. Financial analysts rely on computational analysis to buy and sell stocks or make risky financial moves.

The market place, and its movements, which affect global economies are run by Algorithms for profit.

In the e-commerce sites we use, AI can make inferences and anticipate some tasks based on our shopping lists and recommend products. This is also a symbiotic and collaborative relationship.

Grammarly is another example of how the symbiosis between humans and computers is being utilized in the writing field. Through its AI technology, the tool is capable of suggesting real-time grammatical and spelling corrections, and the user’s experience when using it can contribute to the evolution of their ability to improve their vocabulary, as the tool offers suggestions for synonyms and more suitable word choices.

There are hundreds of other examples, but in order to build computational systems that adapt to human needs, we also need to understand how these intelligent systems work and execute tasks, and this is increasingly becoming impossible with machine learning.

Looking at the current context, the human-computer symbiosis becomes increasingly important as interactions between humans and machines become more frequent and complex, enabling users to interact with technology in a natural way.

As our interaction with intelligent systems increases every day, the principles of human-computer symbiosis are also central to living a life.

Defining the term “Augmented Intelligence” can be quite challenging since there are many definitions.

Different researchers and practitioners tend to define it in their own unique way.

I define it as the erosion of our ability to reason for ourselves.

AI-enabled frontier technologies are helping to save lives, diagnose diseases and extend life expectancy. In education, virtual learning environments and distance learning have opened up programmes to students who would otherwise be excluded. Public services are also becoming more accessible and accountable through blockchain-powered systems, and less bureaucratically burdensome as a result of AI assistance. Big data can also support more responsive and accurate policies and programmes.

The use of algorithms can replicate and even amplify human and systemic bias where they function on the basis of data which is not adequately diverse. Lack of diversity in the technology sector can mean that this challenge is not adequately addressed.

Today, digital technologies such as data pooling and AI are used to track and diagnose issues in agriculture, health, and the environment, or to perform daily tasks such as navigating traffic or paying a bill.

They can be used to defend and exercise human rights – but they can also be used to violate them, for example, by monitoring our movements, purchases, conversations and behaviours. Governments and businesses increasingly have the tools to mine and exploit data for financial and other purposes.

Data-powered technology has the potential to empower individuals, improve human welfare, and promote universal rights, depending on the type of protections put in place.

Social media connects almost half of the entire global population.

It enables people to make their voices heard and to talk to people across the world in real time. However, it can also reinforce prejudices and sow discord, by giving hate speech and misinformation a platform, or by amplifying echo chambers.

How to manage these developments is the subject of much discussion – nationally and internationally – at a time when geopolitical tensions are on the rise. This war of information is becoming so important that it can influence democracy and the opinion of people before the vote in an election for instance.

We’re now on the verge, as a society, of appropriately recognizing the need to respect privacy in our Web 2.0 world.

In a world where everyone has an opinion and, more importantly, where everyone has the ability, if they choose, to share it with the rest of the world, one person’s hate speech can sometimes be another’s right to free speech.

Social media companies need to take “more responsibility” for what is on their platforms. There has to be a reckoning for what social media is making available [online].

IRELAND IS THE FIRST COUNTRY TO ADDRESS THE ABOVE.

As things stand in Ireland, hate speech is defined as any communication in public intended or likely to be threatening or abusive, and likely to stir up hatred against a person due to their race, colour, nationality, religion, ethnicity, Traveller origins, and/or sexual orientation. The proposed law will also make it an offence to deny or trivialise genocide. It will define a hate crime as any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim, or any other person, to have been motivated by prejudice.

The new legislation will criminalise any intentional or reckless communication or behaviour that is likely to incite violence or hatred against a person or persons because they are associated with a protected characteristic. The penalty for this offence will be up to five years’ imprisonment.

The provisions of the new legislation have been crafted to ensure that they will capture hate speech in an online context.

THIS IS THE FIRST SMALL STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION TO COMBAT UNREGULATED TECHNOLOGY.

For most of the past decade, public concerns about digital technology have focused on the potential abuse of personal data.

This debate is NOW entering a new phase.

As companies increasingly embed artificial intelligence in their products, services, processes, and decision-making, attention is shifting to how data is used by the software—particularly by complex, evolving algorithms that might diagnose a cancer, drive a car, or approve a loan.

The problem crops up in many other guises:

For instance, in ubiquitous online advertisement algorithms, which may target viewers by race, religion, or gender.

Software used by leading hospitals exhibit significant racial bias to prioritize recipients of kidney transplants discriminated against Black patients.

In dealing with biased outcomes, regulators have mostly fallen back on standard antidiscrimination legislation.

That’s workable as long as there are people who can be held responsible for problematic decisions. But with AI increasingly in the mix, individual accountability is undermined.

Some algorithms make or affect decisions with direct and important consequences on people’s lives.

They diagnose medical conditions, for instance, screen candidates for jobs, approve home loans, or recommend jail sentences. In such circumstances it may be wise to avoid using AI or at least subordinate it to human judgment. Using AI could therefore increase human decision-makers’ accountability, which might make people likely to defer to the algorithms more often than they should.

The degree of trust in AI varies with the kind of decisions it’s used for. When a task is perceived as relatively mechanical and bounded—think optimizing a timetable or analysing images—software is regarded as at least as trustworthy as humans.

But when decisions are thought to be subjective or the variables change (as in legal sentencing, where offenders’ extenuating circumstances may differ), human judgment is trusted more, in part because of people’s capacity for empathy. This suggests that companies need to communicate very carefully about the specific nature and scope of decisions they’re applying AI to and why it’s preferable to human judgment in those situations. For example, in machine diagnoses of medical scans, people can easily accept the advantage that software trained on billions of well-defined data points has over humans, who can process only a few thousand.

On the other hand, applying AI to make a diagnosis regarding mental health, where factors may be behavioural, hard to define, and case-specific, would probably be inappropriate. It’s difficult for people to accept that machines can process highly contextual situations. And even when the critical variables have been accurately identified, the way they differ across populations often isn’t fully understood—which brings us to the next factor.

An algorithm may not be fair across all geographies and markets.

Just like human judgment, AI isn’t infallible. Algorithms will inevitably make some unfair—or even unsafe—decisions.

The right…to obtain an explanation of the decision reached” by algorithms, MUST BE ENSHRINNED IN LAW.

But what does it mean to get an explanation for automated decisions, for which our knowledge of cause and effect is often incomplete?

Should we require—and can we even expect—AI to explain its decisions?

However, most people lack the advanced skills in mathematics or computer science needed to understand, let alone determine whether the relationships specified in it are appropriate. And in the case of machine learning—where AI software creates algorithms to describe apparent relationships between variables in the training data—flaws or biases in that data, not the algorithm, may be the ultimate cause of any problem.

If AI starts to listen to us and adapt to our every move, we can only “win” by mirroring it, and being equally attentive to it, even to the point of treating this wild piece of silicon clockwork as though it were alive.

Because, in the end, when we don’t know where we begin and AI ends, then AI is essentially as alive as anything.

AI can only exist because it feeds on human civilization and knowledge coded into text and other digestible data — but humans are in turn subjected to the power of AI, and thus deeply reshaped by it, because AI coordinates more data than we can and knows, well, us. The AI soon knows us better than we can know it, or even know ourselves.

If we seek relational proportionality and resonance across the AI-humanity axis, we must of course also feed this intra-action with socially proportional perspectives, i.e. with social justice.

Our very civilizational sanity and survival depend upon balancing the informational diet of the AI, so that it can itself produce emergent patterns that resonate through and across societies… But the Internet is roughly as skewed and distorted as the power relations of global humanity at large.

It acts on the whole with great efficiency and speed, but it cannot speak for the whole.

What you can expect is increasing dissonance, a spiralling insanity, as the “human-AI-AI-human intra-action” system disconnects from the rest of reality, from the larger scheme that contains the actual multiplicity of the world’s perspectives.

If we don’t want to spiral into virtual madness with real social consequences, we need to balance out the reality projected into the digital realm: the encoded information. It mean’s that AI itself must be used to more proportionally and correctly represent the lives, experiences, and embodied — or intellectual — knowledge of the world.

In short, if we apply the AI to balancing out human-perspectives-as-projected-onto-the-web-as-data, not only can we get a more just and sane society; we can also help to retain an AI that remains on the sane and just side in the first place.

Or, yet more succinctly: A sane AI is also a social justice AI, but one that dodges the traps of present-day social justice and intersectionality discourses.

Let me underscore: If we fail to do this, we instead unleash AI powers that widen social gaps and fracture knowledge systems into different continents where people become entirely unable to comprehend one another, leading to social and psychological decay.

If we want a world that is not driven by digitalization ,THE TIME IS NOW TO DO SOME THING ABOUT IT.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

( Twenty minute read)

It would be fair to say that up to now Casinos Capitalism has had an adverse and positive history, because of its understanding of the science of reward and reinforcement, but beneath this past history, our current problems lie.

It, along with colonialism, the brutal subjugation of indigenous peoples created the world of consumerism.

(The concept of colonialism is closely linked to that of imperialism, which is the policy or ethos of using power and influence to control another nation or people that underlies colonialism.)

The result is the planet was divided into a world of North and the South.

The North consumerism and the South cheap slave production to serve the North.

A perpetual Growth system of consumption for products that are not essential to life.

Over centuries and more so in recent decades this is the reason we see inequality growing, with the environment on the verge of collapse due to the exploration of natural resources to fuel profits at all costs – GDP before the people.

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One only has to look at the attempts to turn our economic system into green sustainability production and one see, that we now have a market place claiming,  buy this or that because its Bio/ Save energy.

Most of these items still have a built in replacement in order to ensure market growth.  –  Vehicles, Electrical Items, Smartphone, TVs, the list is endless, all fuelled by an advertising industry promoting their use behind unaccountable technology of algorithms the new looming menace.

Profit seeking  Algorithms hidden beneath the surface of the web.

They are the invisible nonhuman workforce that powers the web—and they’re foreshadows the true future of world.

There are no labour laws to govern this kind of work. 

The harms from so-called AI are real and present and follow from the acts of people and corporations deploying automated systems.

Regulatory efforts so far focus on transparency, accountability and preventing exploitative labour practices are dim to the affects on society as a whole. While many of us hear about the latest and greatest breakthrough in AI technology, what we hear less about is its environmental impact .

In fact, much of AI’s recent progress has required ever-increasing amounts of data and computing power. And this all comes at a cost — while currently cloud computing represents roughly 0.5% of the world’s energy consumption, that percentage is projected to grow beyond 2% in the coming years .

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are in a phase of rapid development, and are being adopted widely.

While the concept of artificial intelligence has existed for over sixty years, real-world applications have only accelerated in the last decade due to three concurrent developments: Better algorithms, Increases in networked computing power and the tech
industry’s ability to capture and store massive amounts of data.

Data discrimination is a real social problem.

As search engines and their related companies grow in importance—operating as a source for email, a major vehicle for primary and secondary school learning, and beyond—understanding and reversing these disquieting trends and discriminatory practices is of utmost importance.

We need when we using AI to combat online problems and urging policymakers to exercise “great caution” about relying on it as a policy solution.

For Example:

Facebook’s algorithm amplified misinformation” and “it consistently chose to maximize its growth rather than implement safeguards on its platforms.

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We all know Climate Change is the last thing that the world now needs, but there is a deeper crisis:

A lack of imagination.

The global response to the pandemic was in a sense a testing ground for the international community’s capacity to deal with the biggest and most complex international challenge of all – climate change.

While we’re at it, we should think about the question of scale, not just at global and national levels but at community levels.

WHAT’S IS NEEDED IS A REDUCTION IN PRODUCTIVITY OF NON ESSENTIALS ITEMS.

MORE OF AN EMBRACMENT OF PROGRAMS THAT ARE FOCUSED ON TURNING IDEAS AND THEIR IMPACT.ON LOCAL COMMUNITIES.

Let’s not beat around the bush — we all want something from someone. And while the importance of networking and asking for help is undeniable, why aren’t we taking a more human approach to the process?

We need transformation not just in our economies but across the whole of our societies – from the economy and our politics, to our family structures and media and communications systems – as all these social spheres are interlinked and all are fundamental to our well-being. We need to transform the structures of our societies so that changes which put the brakes on climate disaster become, not just verbal ambitions but real actions.

With 57% of people worldwide say  “Capitalism as it exists today does more harm than good in the world, we all know by our nature we are selfish and greedy, that we have insatiable needs.

THE TIME HAS COME FOR LOCAL COLLECTIVE SOCIALISM.

A sort of confederalism where small-scale communities manage their own provisioning systems, working in partnership with other communities where necessary. Social norms are when you help a friend without expecting payment. Market norms are when you base your actions on how much money people will pay or cost you. When people act on social norms — that is, when they do things because they want to.

In short: people are much more likely to go above and beyond for tasks that they’re emotionally (rather than financially) invested in.

With this insight in mind, consider tapping into social norms to create situations where both parties walk away with more value than they anticipated. How can you use value exchanges to get what you want, give others what they want, and nurture a relationship in the process?

This doesn’t mean replacing capitalism with state socialism. It means diversified ‘ecologies of ownership’, where co-operatives and community owned enterprises sit beside publicly owned initiatives.

For example.

Councils should be able to make available non repayable grants to set up village gardens, to produce for their community’s.

It doesn’t have to be huge. It can be as simple. Lead with value: Start the interaction by offering something that’s need.

Every village has retired gardening people, why not pay four or five of them to run a garden/ polytunnel/garden shop.

Another example.

Why not create combination of local energy co-operatives and regional public energy companies in the framework of a cap on energy prices and a publicly owned national grid – all based on renewable energy.

( The average home in the UK would need around 9.2m² of solar panels to satisfy its yearly electricity demands, estimated at 2,900kWh, costing an estimated £2,588.  A five-bedroom house will usually need 14 panels. The return on a solar panel takes between 10 to 25 years, depending on the cost of the installation, the power produced, the amount resold and where you live.

If you divide your annual electricity usage by 265, you’ll end up with roughly the right number of solar panels for your home .Most countries in Europe would be able to satisfy their electricity needs with less than 1% of their total land area being devoted to solar power.

The world would need around 85,894km² of solar panels.

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While we may think of capitalism more as the absence of the state in favour of the market, in reality, the domination of the market is impossible without a domineering state to impose it.

The state institutionalised hierarchy, and with capitalism, state domination and bureaucracy reached into every corner of society, resources, or what we call the ‘means of life’ should not be owned by anyone, they form a commons based on the principle of ‘usufruct’ – everyone is free to use them as long as they do not damage or deplete them.

The principle of the ‘irreducible minimum’ means that everybody is entitled to the means of life no matter what they contribute – an even more generous maxim than Marx’ famous ‘from each according to his [sic] ability to each according to his needs!’

The sentiments behind these slogans are not confined to the ash heaps of history, rather, many of the policies from the political left today fit under this simple slogan.

“From each according to ability” is what underlies a concern for the common good and a conception of society as a cooperative venture, with mandatory public service as a matching policy proposal. Overall, the phrase from each according to his abilities is a phrase associated with socialist and communist ethics, but with the arrival of AI it is transferring people into digitalized citizens, with ownership of natural resources such as fresh water, fresh air becoming the exclusive ownership of profit seeking algorithms.

Why is this happing?

Because, most of our institutions set up after world War 11 are not working.

Because,  western capitalism is not irretrievably bound to fail; but it does need to be rethought like the return of public ownership.

The key principle in all this is removing profit from a significant portion of economic activity, and bringing democracy in.

Indeed, if you judge by measures such as inequality and environmental damage, “the performance of Western Capitalism in recent decades has been deeply problematic..

Perhaps most significantly, in many developed nations late-20th Century capitalism has contributed to a significant gap between the wealth of the richest and poorest people. The richest billionaires in the word have amassed staggering fortunes.

So, will capitalism as we know it continue in its current form – or might it have another future ahead?

The inequality gap may matter more than some politicians and corporate leaders would like to believe.

Why?

Because, to build a better world, a world where many worlds fit; linked worlds of collective liberation and ecological sustainability.

Because, While industrial capitalism exploited and controlled nature with devastating consequences, surveillance capitalism exploits and controls human nature with a totalitarian order as the endpoint of the development. This leaves surveillance capitalism as an exceptionally useful tool for businesses, but also an invasion of privacy to users who do not want their private experience to be owned by a company.

Because, as a result of rising inequality, the ever-rising cost of living, people have less trust in institutions.

Because, economies will with AI, become completely divorced from the demands of people, who seek jobs, affordable housing, education, healthcare and a clean environment.

Because, there is ample evidence that social and environmental impacts are relevant and need to be incorporated into development models.

Because, the desire to earn profits from business activity, is the driving force of capitalism. It’ flaws as with any system are numerous, but the one that stands out is the trickle down aspiration.

Because, it is obvious that these issues must also be considered within the social contract underpinning capitalism, so that it is more inclusive, holistic and integrated with basic human values.

Because, capitalist growth is driven by profit expectations, it fluctuates with the changes in technological, climate change, or social opportunities for capital accumulation. It is held accountable only to the test of profitability.

Because, government must stop ignoring the needs of ordinary citizens and companies must do more than deliver profits to their shareholders.

Because, if we don’t seize this opportunity to build back better – to reset and reinvent rather than ‘return to normal’ – systemic risks and vulnerabilities will continue to accumulate, making future shocks both more likely and more dangerous.

Because, the shift toward greater individual liberty changed the social contract.

Because, technology will have an important role to play, but the principle has to be that the technologies we develop will enhance rather than harm our relationship with nature. What is certain is that technology won’t save us while the current drivers of the economy – capital accumulation and the profit motive – remain in place. Unfortunately as people increasingly asserted their right to individual liberty, they are being exploited by AI.

While one response to the downsides of capitalism in its current form is for nations to take a defensive posture, seeking to protect themselves by minimising external ties, protectionism is short-sighted, particularly when it comes to trade, – Brexit.

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Will capitalism as we know it evolve into something new?

With  artificial intelligence capitalism, lifting a substantive number of people out of absolute poverty people expected less from governing authorities, in exchange for greater civil liberties, including individual, political and economic freedom. But at the same time, critics argue that its tenets of lowering taxes and deregulating business has done little to support political investment in public services.

This newer strain of capitalism has NOT led to increased economic growth worldwide.

Previously, many resources were provided by those in power (land, food and protection) in exchange for significant contributions from citizens (for instance, from slave labour to hard labour with little pay, high taxes and unquestioning loyalty).

The economic system of Capitalist is characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.

Capitalism has fuelled the industrial, technological and green revolutions, reshaped the natural world and transformed the role of the state in relation to society.

However, the story is not universally positive.

In recent years, capitalism’s shortcomings have become ever-more apparent. COVID-19 has exposed the fragility and societally negative outcomes of contemporary capitalist economies. The virus has highlighted many vulnerabilities – within businesses, supply chains, economies, health systems and political institutions – that will need to be addressed in the post-crisis world.

Functionally, capitalism instead of planning economic decisions through centralized political methods, as with socialism or feudalism, economic planning under capitalism occurs via decentralized, competitive, and voluntary decisions.

The profit motive, an indispensable, if regrettable, by product of capitalism, is being exposed daily, with social media, climate change, the environmental dangers of the free market and profit seeking algorithms.

Capital is wealth—that is, money and goods—that’s used to produce more wealth with underpaid work for profits.

Governments and regulators must intervene to ensure the costs of environmental and social damage are internalized by the companies responsible:

Profits cannot come at the expense of long-term societal resilience.

The green recovery is vital if we are to create more resilient economies and a world in which business can thrive, not just now but long into the future.

Reach out to people with a genuine intention to connect and add value to their lives, and you’ll see how much more you’ll be able to get from the interaction than if you just treated it like a transaction.

What can be done to change the inequality that is the main feature of capitalism?

Just-in-time” may be superseded by “just-in-case” as the mantra of procurement. 

The case for ‘green’ stimulus measures is clear: they are likely to deliver more jobs and higher (equitable) growth in the short-term, while reducing longer-term risks linked to climate change and biodiversity loss – crises that, if unaddressed, will cause a level of disruption to our economies and societies orders of magnitude greater than COVID-19.

Now, more than ever, integrating climate goals into business strategy will be a vital driver of long-term success.

Ultimately, it is worth remembering that citizens in a capitalist, liberal democracy are not powerless.

So it follows that we might be similarly blind to what capitalism could look like in another two centuries. However, that does not mean we should not ask how it might evolve into something better in the nearer term.

The future of capitalism and our planet depend on it.

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To destroy democratic capitalism and replace it with authoritarian socialism is not the solution.

Communism, socialism, capitalism, and democracy are all among our top all-time lookups, and user comments suggest that this is because they are complex, abstract terms often used in opaque ways. They’re frequently compared and contrasted, with communism sometimes equated with socialism, and democracy and capitalism frequently linked.

I believe that  beneath the political, and driving it, is a justified, if poorly articulated differences.

Communism referred to an economic and political theory that advocated the elimination of private property and the common sharing of all resources among a group of people

Revolutionary socialism, which advocates a proletariat overthrow of capitalist structures within a society; societal and communal ownership and governance of the means of production; and the eventual establishment of a classless society.

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Why should our life chances be so far determined by the accident of where we are born?

Why would we want to live in societies that benefit some people in some places at the expense of other people in other places?

The good societies that we build now, during the ‘great pause’, need to work for everyone in the world.

There’s a tension when we’re thinking about scale – when formulating alternatives, should we be thinking global or local? The universal or particular?

Our current capitalist economy is certainly global – there probably isn’t a person in the world whose life isn’t integrated into it somehow, though in different ways in different places. So it makes sense to start there.

We know the dangers involved with huge corporations sucking up data on the most intimate aspects of our lives – how they collaborate with governments to enable wholesale spying, crackdowns on democratic freedoms, and dystopian predictive policing and facial recognition practices; how voters are manipulated during elections; how discrimination is built into algorithms; how the data-based business model encourages fake news, polarisation and hate; and how these companies resolutely dodge tax.

The data frenzy is also wreaking havoc on the environment – a 2015 report found that data centres are responsible for about 2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, putting them on par with the aviation industry. And it’s exacerbating global inequality.

It is China and the US who are set to reap the biggest rewards from AI, while Africa and Latin America will see the lowest gains. It is unlikely that the profits accrued to multinationals based in the US or China from data mined in lower-income countries will ‘trickle down’ to those supplying that data.

The concept of cultural imperialism has been around for decades. Now we can also speak of data imperialism. Again, it is the profit motive that’s at the bottom of all this.

In our attempts to understand the new from the old and the unknown from the known, we risk either stripping away too much truth or adding too much falsehood so that our inquiries inevitably become futile.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gail.com.

( Five minute read)

THE PROOF IN THE PUDDING.  ENGLAND IS IN A MESS.

THE FIRST THING TO UNDERSTAND CONCERNING THE ABOVE QUESTION IT THAT THE EU IS A LEGIALITIC ORGANSATION BOUND BY ITS TREATIES.

(A former member state seeking to return must apply under Article 49 – that is, the normal accession procedure.)

It therefore would be unwise for the UK to push for a different accession procedure.

( Instead, it could accelerate the process by ensuring that its laws and policies meet EU standards and by fulfilling all the requirements placed upon it expeditiously.)

The UK would have to demonstrate that it satisfied the Copenhagen criteria for EU membership, and secure agreement from the member states that they had the political will and the EU had institutional capacity to readmit it.

Enlargement requires unanimity – so would any member potentially veto the UK’s application?

This prospect raises important political questions which would have to be addressed before the UK took even the first step towards renewed membership.

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These political dynamics would depend in large part upon how the UK conducts itself in the Brexit era, and the UK’s approach to the forthcoming future relationship negotiations, how it treats EU citizens and their families, and its trade, tax, social, environmental and labour regimes in the years ahead would all be factors. The shape of the EU-UK strategic partnership would also be an important consideration.

A successful future application for EU membership would have to be predicated upon a new political consensus in the UK.

So the EU would look for significant, stable and long-lasting majority public opinion in favour of re-joining.

It would require support for EU membership on the order of 60-65 per cent or more for several years would likely be a minimum standard.

If the UK were to bid for membership in the absence of such consensus, its application would undoubtedly be rejected.

Why?

Because the EU will not voluntarily import an unstable member state or risk another Brexit down the road.

The UK would have to start from scratch and accept being a more normal member state – and thus make its second EU membership much more positive and inclusive.

The first problem is the euro.

Ordinarily new member states of the European Union are expected to adopt the euro and to join the currency union.

During the accession process, the UK would have to undo whatever divergence it had effected from EU values and standards in the Brexit era and converge back with the EU acquis.

Depending on its depth, the EU-UK partnership could be the basis for the pre-accession phase, potentially complemented by a new Association Agreement.

If the UK did in future depart from the European Convention on Human Rights – either by leaving the Convention or suspending implementing Court judgements – the EU would insist it fully reintegrate into that as well.

Provided it was successful in re-joining the EU, the UK would have the opportunity to conduct its second EU membership completely differently. It could develop a comprehensive EU strategy, outlining its major policy themes and priorities for the EU and setting out the UK’s positive and forward-looking vision for Europe.

The UK could put in place structures to include the devolved political institutions of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (assuming they all remain in the UK) in its EU decision-making, providing them with genuine access and influence.

Seeking to re-join the EU would have to result from genuine reflection, not expedient self-interest.

After the Brexit saga, the UK will owe that much to the EU – and to itself.

The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is an international treaty between the States of the Council of Europe. The United Kingdom was one of the States that drafted the ECHR and was one of the first States to ratify it in 1951. The Convention came into force in 1953.

The substantive rights and freedoms contained in the Convention are:

• Article 2: the right to life
• Article 3: the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment
• Article 4: the prohibition of slavery and forced labour
• Article 5: the right to liberty and security
• Article 6: the right to a fair trial
• Article 7: the prohibition of retrospective criminal penalties
• Article 8: the right to private and family life
• Article 9: the freedom of thought, conscience and religion
• Article 10: the freedom of expression
• Article 11: the freedom of assembly and association
• Article 12: the right to marry
• Article 13: the right to an effective national remedy for breach of these rights
• Article 14: the prohibition of discrimination in the protection of these rights

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is an international court which rules on individual or State applications regarding possible violations of the rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights. Under Article 3 of the Human Rights Act, asylum seekers and refugees are protected from being returned to countries where they are at risk of torture, harm or death.

Even though an asylum seeker has no valid passport or identity document, or prior permission to enter the United Kingdom, this does not make his arrival at the port a breach of an immigration law.

The likely hood of the UK re-join the EU is zero.

The UK could instead join an outer tier.

However, the EU will be unlikely to move in that direction in the foreseeable future, not least due to opposition from those member states which fear being relegated to the outer tiers.

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

Contact: bobdillon333@gmail.com

Where does all our tax go?

There is plenty of talk about ways to increase income, reduce illiteracy and ill-health, and empower women.

The increased attention given to these issues and pledges of additional financial assistance by world leaders are not matched by new and effective national initiatives that can significantly reduce poverty..

There are more poor people in the world today than a quarter century ago. Nearly half the world’s population, over three billion people, lives in poverty.

We know that not all of us cam be rich, but all of us could be giving dignity to living.

On their own, policies and laws are seldom sufficient to achieve tangible social change. The underlying challenge is often the
existence of enduring social and cultural norms that create relations of power and disadvantage between different social groups based on gender, class, disability, age, caste or ethnicity.

Empowerment to dignity needs to be driven by local context, culture and history.

Almost as important as what governments can do, is what they should avoid doing. In the complex, fragile construction of excluded people’s power ‘within’, ‘with’ and ‘to’, the first priority should be for governments to avoid becoming part of the problem.

Governments should avoid the temptation to try and identify some form of ‘best practice’ that can be imported and ‘rolled out’ wholesale, they need to remain receptive to new ideas – models promoted by organised social actors for innovative policies and approaches that might better meet their needs.

An empowerment approach is both an end in itself, and a means to eradicate poverty and exclusion in their broader (multidimensional) sense.

So we need local initiatives, that have teeth.

How is our hard earned taxes distributed and spent.

Of course under various states of tax laws, there is a limited amount of tax revenue to go around at any one time.

Basic math, right?

Up to now governments have taken taxpayers’ money with no explanation of what that means to each individual taxpayer. As a result, we have forced people to question not how their tax is actually spent but how they believe it has been spent.

Armed with a tax statement, taxpayers SHOULD have a precise and accurate understanding of how their tax pounds are really spent.

Without taxes, governments would need to be accountable to its constituency.

Of course there are far more important things that we should change about how expenditure is revealed to taxpayers.

( Like tax rate that produces maximum growth in the economy is not the same as the rate that produces maximum revenue.)

.A country is wealthy if it has better resources and over time, more growth will result in more revenue.

So what is real wealth?

1. Land – All natural resources; including water, mines, minerals, oil etc.

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Without these resources, the economy cannot produce anything. They can be exchanged with each other. However, that can happen only if you can sell something that another person wants to buy, and in return wants to sell exactly what you wanted to buy. This is called barter system.

The real difficulty is in valuing the resources. Hence, we created “money”

Money however only represents the wealth; money is not wealth in itself.  Merely printing more money will not give you real wealth. You see, when we realise that money is a symbol of whatever wealth is there in the system, we should understand that the only way we could create more money is if we create more wealth.

How can we create more wealth?

More wealth can be created by production.  But wealth can be destroyed or eroded. Wealth is not permanent. You cannot print more money without creating wealth.

The question then is: Can we print money without creating wealth?

Theoretically, yes. Well even practically this happens. So yes we can print.

The real issue here is not whether we can do it, the real issue is: should we?

Thinking that giving more money will make poor people eligible to buy the products?

What a shame that now the products have become costly, and we are back to square one.

We didn’t really help them, did we?

You see, when you print more money without any actual economic value addition, there are essentially more people buying the same number of products. Therefore the prices of those products will rise.  Inflation.

As I have said, not all can be wealthy and there are too many impediments to poverty reduction.

If poverty alleviation were a matter of lending, the world could eradicate poverty easily. Handouts will not solve poverty, so we must embrace this reality.

 The only solution is to provide resources. What are these resources?

Education.

Employment.

Skill development.

Investments.

Governance. (law & order)

This is what will alleviate general poverty. Nothing else will.

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Governments are inefficient, but no big society has functioned well without one.

Even as technology and communication mean more ways for citizens to make their voices heard, democratic participation remains largely limited to casting a vote between parties once every few years. If governments do not change with the times, they become less and less capable of addressing people’s needs, and citizens grow more dissatisfied and disenfranchised.

Elections-based political systems already operate with short-term mentalities, with officials often thinking only a few years ahead.

Now, as societies around the world have become more complex, diverse, demanding and connected, governments have become even more incentivised to implement superficial patchwork fixes. Most years, it doesn’t take in enough money to pay for all of this so it borrows more, thus increasing the national debt with each tax cut stubbornly refused to pay for itself.

A single simple GDP graph can capture tax policy, is completely ludicrous.

If you think about it, this cannot continue forever. Sooner or later we need to pay higher taxes, cut benefits to citizens, or go bankrupt.

And then there’s the big complication: Our tax laws have a variety of rates and deductions.

1. Payment of Interest:

The Central government spends the lion’s share of its total expenditure towards payment of interest every year. When the government takes a loan, it has to pay interest on such credit.

2. Defence Allocation:

Your money also helps pay for the country’s defence and security-related expenditure.

3. Government and Welfare Schemes:

Government spending kind of is split between for all intents and purposes several schemes, generally such as healthcare, education, fairly social security, and others.

4. Subsidies:

 Fertilizers, train tickets, LPG, metro rail fares.

5. Pension:

Pensions are another major expense.

6. Central government gives few percentage in the form of grants to county counsels for emergency management and development

None of the above address poverty DIRECTLY TO a local level.

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Championing dignity as an essential part of reform.

Some human rights are instantly familiar to people: the right to freedom of expression; the right to life; the right to a fair trial; and freedom from slavery .It is important to understand that human rights, far from being an abstract concept, have a real and tangible impact on the lives of everyone. Human rights are about living in a country where the state looks after people that are struggling.

Living with dignity shouldn’t be too much to ask of a countries government.

The first attitude that we should have when we contemplate our dignity is respect, and rejection of anything that turns human beings into a means to an end, not an end in and of themselves. We cannot treat any human being as an object, a “thing,” a means to achieve our personal goals.

Every human being has equal intrinsic dignity and value, due to their basic condition of being human.

Human beings, have unlimited value, because as individuals with a unique identity, capable of knowing and choosing, they are unique and irreplaceable. “Treat others as you would have them treat you.”

This idea isn’t unique to Christians; it is common in many religions and cultures.

Any westerner country that has people sleeping on the street, relying on food banks to eat, is a glaring display to all that makes a country a woeful failure to server the dignity of its people. Thus the overreliance on charities highlights a huge structural flaw in the system. There are currently more food banks than McDonald’s in the UK, almost at a 2:1 ratio.”

One of the most attractive characteristics of big projects is the contribution they can make to high-level economic objectives. This includes boosting productivity, restructuring the economy and regeneration but they do not impart self dignity.

The solution is to restore dignity, by restoring purchasing power, not by handouts, but by paying for involvement in local projects.

Here are a few sustainable suggestions that will not cost the earth but reduces the cost to benefit all involved.

Community; Pay-as-you-go solar power units will cut  tonnes of carbon emissions.

Grow your own: Filling in unkempt lots or small patches of untendered land with plants, fruit trees and flowers.

Improve: Access to rehabilitation services for children with difficulties by connecting their parents with individuals, groups and communities that can offer them support.

Set up a local: Telemedicine platform that connects patients and frontline health workers with doctors.

Convert: Front house gardens in cities to allows water to naturally percolate into the ground – Storm water gardens.

Bring back: The mobile free library. 

Turn:  Unused parking and abandoned lots into community gardens and parks.

Medical: Skills training.

Forest and River: Conservation.

Waste: Management service’s.

Desolator’s: Solar-powered water purification systems>

Encourage:  Riding a bike.

Government Small Grants Program: Clearly, climate change and environmental degradation can´t be tackled by a single community.  50,000 directly to local communities, community-based organizations and other non-governmental groups investing in projects related to healing our planet.

Just think about it – if we all did one small thing, even if it was only now and then, imagine the impact we could have on the world!

The years to 2030 will be a time of rapid and unpredictable change, and we do not know how these complex realities will play out

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com