In a world where nearly 20 people are forcibly displaced every minute by violence, war and persecution ARE WE KIDDING OURSELVES TO THINK THAT TECHNOLOGY WILL SOLVE THE WORLD PROBLEMS.
One in every 113 people on the planet is now a refugee AND THAT IS WITHOUT CLIMATE CHANGE THAT IS GOING TO BE THE BIGGEST MOTIVE TO BECOME ONE.
At the moment ( According to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR) it might be true to say that out of the 65.6 million 40.3 million – are people displaced within their own country.
Here are below are four UNHCR videos that should be shown on World TV, across Social Media, in every school to every man woman and child.
I have posted on this subject before with little reaction.
There is often an implicit connection between discourses of the future and notions of technology, so that if we see a television programme with a title such as Click or Tomorrow’s World we expect that the topic will be technology.
The single most astonishing point about technologies is that they can move from being emblematic of an almost unreachable future to becoming so taken for granted that it feels like a personal slight when they do not work.
In this way technology in and of itself becomes a symbol of being modern is one of the reasons it becomes expressive of, rather than distinct from, cultural values.
Perhaps this is the reason that the relationship between social media and the conceptualisation of the future is still blurred and will remain so.
New technology does not just change the manner in which people go about their everyday lives: It also facilitates our imagination of the future.
All the above speak to a new, imagined future that strives towards idealism. However within the vast field of technology the consequences of AI there are a few devices and algorithms that will battle it out over the next twenty odd years for supremacy.
Will it be Smartphones, or Smart Wearable or Cryptocurrency that will augment reality.
All need software in the form of algorithms to run.
AI algorithms will make the physical and digital world interchangeable.
Practically every non- iPhone smartphone relies on an Android operating system?
One way or the other we are entering an age where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away.
Not surprising.
So it’s not Social media technology platforms like Facebook or Twitter and the others ( that talks a lot about connectivity but not accountability) that will change the world but the power of ever where at once.
That requires total knowledge on all aspects of life.
Google or should I say the Google Cloud is trying to achieve this.
Which is possibly both the best and the worst thing that could happen.
So let’s look at a few of the top combats in the world of technology in no particular order.
( Obviously it would take page after page to give a comprehensive insight so I am only going to give a few lines to each.)
Microsoft Corporation:(LinkedIn -Skype – Mojang – Yammer- Hotmail)
It operates through the following segments:
Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing.
Market Cap As of May 2017
$507.5 Billion
Microsoft could be worth $1 trillion by 2020 — if not sooner. It is moving further and further into a digital landscape for everything from movies, music, books, games and software.
Twitter: Owned mostly by Venture Capitalist:
An online breaking news and social networking service. Using Twitter bots, (live streaming video.) With 450 million monthly active users it is ranked the eleventh most visited website. It has mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows 10, Windows Phone,BlackBerry, and Nokia S40.
Capable of influencing public opinion about culture, products and political agendas by automatically generating mass amounts of tweets through imitating human communication. World leaders and their diplomats have taken note of Twitter’s rapid expansion and have been increasingly utilizing Twitter diplomacy. Television programs use it to amplify their programs.
It could become the emergency communication system for track epidemics or sensor for automatic response to natural disasters.
Amazon:
The largest Internet retailer in the world. The company is now worth more than $560 billion. Electronic commerce and cloud computing company.
Amazon announced that it would acquire Whole Foods, a high-end supermarket chain with over 400 stores, for $13.4 billion.
eBay Inc: (PayPal)
There are now literally millions of items bought and sold every day on eBay, all over the world. For every $100 spent online worldwide, it is estimated that $14 is spent on eBay. What’s more, eBay doesn’t care who you are, where you live, or what you look like:
The race is on to control mobile payments and the upside remains enormous:
Apple:(Shazam – Emagic- Siri – Beats Electronics – Next Inc.- Novauris-PrimeSense -The Bottom Line – Invest in Yourself.)
Quarterly revenue of $52.6 billion 2017.
Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV. Apple’s four software platforms — iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS.
Facebook:(Whats App and Instagram Oculus VR.)
A publicly traded company worth more than $500 billion.
More than two billion monthly users. It is developing a new social platform in virtual reality called Facebook Spaces, which it believes will form the foundation for the future of communication.
Tencent and Alibaba: aren’t far from the half-trillion dollar mark either.
These are the main contenders as we know them to-day
—————————————————————————————
So the Question is:
Which one if any of the above will be the top dog by 2025.
Will it be : ( All knowledge, All Gossip, All purchases, All Apps/ Software)
At this point you will have noticed that I have left out the company mentioned in Title of this posting.
While in the future devices may be more ubiquitous in all corners
of the globe, inequality will therefore remain in terms of the services
available in certain locations and the lack of attention paid to the needs
and desires of certain populations.
Companies like Amazon and Google will be fighting to lock you into one voice ecosystem. You may have to declare your allegiance for Alexa, Siri, Cortana or Google Assistant.
One could say that:
Amazon represents de-socialising of commerce. Face book represents self ego. Twitter represents myths and gossip. Apple represents profit. E bay represents selling and buying of stuff, Google represents doming down.
All are represented on Social Media which is being used in ways that shape politics, business, world culture, education, careers, innovation, and more.
Social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have increasingly been adopted by politicians, political activists and social movements as a means to engage, organize and communicate with citizens.
So is the power and the winner going to be Social Media which is owned by the Internet.
I think Not.
In short, one consequence of this prediction is that the very idea of ‘social media’ might gradually disappear; instead we simply have an increasingly diverse set of media and increasingly sophisticated exploitation of the possibilities these media have created, including other trends such as obtaining information, sharing information or making communication more visual.
Social media is slowly killing real activism and replacing it with ‘slacktivism, and we all know where that might lead us. Awareness is not translating into real change. Support is limited to pressing the ‘Like’ button or sharing content which absolve them from responsibility to act.
The role of social media as symbolic of the future may already be in decline.
“The election of Donald J. Trump is perhaps the starkest illustration yet that across the planet, social networks are helping to fundamentally rewire human society.”
The one I left out, with 65% of all online searches – is Google.
Google has expanded far beyond its original claim to fame as a search engine.
Google and their competitor platforms are programming the world for profit. The reach of this technology giant is so vast it is hard to imagine an area of modern life it has not touched.
Alphabet owns Google, as well as many other companies. However, Google itself owns companies.
Google has reorganized itself into multiple companies, separating its core Internet business from several of its most ambitious projects while continuing to run all of these operations under a new umbrella company called Alphabet.
Google owns more than 200 companies, including those involved in robotics, mapping, video broadcasting, telecommunications and advertising.
Simply put, the company has been visionary in recognizing the income potential for information products.
Their profit seeking algorithms ensuring that every recommendation, from whether you should buy this or that, stay here or there, fly or drive, connect to this or that, live or die, will earn them a few cents.
By 2025 all will be connected to the Cloud. With one winner.
The Google Monopoly.
Once a Google client always a Google client.
How do you stop using Google?
Already impossible.
Move and your G Mail becomes blocked mail.
Say anything on you website that smacks about google, you site gets flooded with google ads.
It is becoming more and more difficult for anyone to extricate themselves from the clutches of any of its platforms as deactivating means little or nothing.
Social media apps ensure you are still engaged and if they don’t work your friends and family smartphones are searching for you nonstop supplying little hits of dopamine. ( Someone likes you photo or you are mentioned in their contact. It’s a social validation feedback loop..exploiting a vulnerability in humans psychology.)
Will Social Media destroy or rain back Google dominance?
The whole Social media thing is turning into an addictive cancer effecting our brains and tearing our emotions and attentiveness a sunder which in turn is encouraging self-segregation and exacerbating social divides.
Every facet of our life is touched or being integrated by the social media today.
In this sense social media has become an instrument of democratic renewal.
On the other hand it is evident that this uncensored and unmonitored medium of communication is exposing us all to a gradual breakdown of social cohesion and the destruction of our traditional value systems.
Though the advantages of social media are emphasized quite often, as opposed to its negative aspects which are very rarely discussed.
I feel that this will change in the coming years.
All said, social media is here to stay. The power of social media is exponential. Numbers tell the story.
Just as difficult as forecasting the future is knowing the present.
After all not everything moves over time to become more functional
or efficient.
It is obviously going to be hard to predict the future for something as
dynamic as social media. How can we know what social media has already become for oil workers in Alaska, tribal people in Amazonia and the nouveau riche of Moscow?
Unless we take responsibility to ensure that our understanding of social media and its impacts are constantly evaluated with what’s happening in the world. Once we appreciate that knowing social media is not an exercise in delineating the properties of a set of platforms, but rather of acknowledging what the world has already turned these into, by way of content, the immensity of the problem is revealed.
So it will be important to continue monitoring and exploring the extent to which collective action is individualised through social media use.
= Can the use of social media for campaigning help to bring about genuine and lasting empowerment; or does it serve largely to re-inforce pre-existing relationships?
= Is social media a means of building dialogue and consensus in diverse communities or does its use encourage increased fragmentation or, alternatively, a homogeneity of interests?
= Can meaningful impact measures be developed that can be used by small, under-resourced organisations at local level (or indeed within larger voluntary organisations)?
Social media is seen in much of the literature as a means of promoting dialogue beyond the mainstream media. Voluntary and community groups have been criticized, however, for using social media as little more than a means of broadcasting.
Why might this be the case – and does it matter?
Social media expands our capacity but, it does not change our
essential humanity.
It is used to repair the rupture sustained by separated transnational families or for overcoming previously frustrated desires to share photographs more easily.
It allows couples living in different countries who ‘sort of’ live together online;
Soon, however, things move on to new realms.
Should a clear relationship be expected between the (apparently empowering) use of social media in mobilizing large national and global movements, and its use at the micro-political neighborhood level.
An increasing number of social media platforms can be aligned with the diversity of the social groups to which we might want to relate.
Social media however has little impact on the overall outcomes in terms of empowerment, equalities or social justice.
However powerful and important the advent of social media has become, it would be hard to place it ahead of the impact and significance of smartphones, within which social media platforms may often be seen as just another kind of app.
It is smartphones that facilitate social media’s importance as a mix of polymedia, making clear the range of media possibilities as they lie side by side within one easily accessible device.
It is the Smartphone that drives social media input and out put.
Will that will be the One Winner, changing our sense of collective memory, creating a new form or combination of internal and external faculties for retaining information.
As Smartphones become smarter, they may well accelerate the dissolving of social media into this wider array of communicative possibilities.
The increasing ubiquity of the smart phone is the catalyst for more general usage of social media. Recognizing that this may not necessarily impact on any other aspect of inequality should not prevent us from recognizing that there is in one aspect an increasing and significant equality:
The more individuals live within culturally imposed constraints on communication, the more a new technology may mean that what was previously forbidden now becomes possible.
This fluid mix of communicative forms suits the way users flow between activities such as talking, gaming, texting, masturbating, learning and purchasing. The social connection is more important than how well a platform meets their needs.
Comparative anthropology creates particular varieties of knowledge of both breadth and depth. What makes these essential within the context of our complex modern world, however, is that these are forms of understanding based on empathy.
Merely having a smart phone provides a significant change with respect to the capacities of its owner.
——
What happens to our online materials at death.
Finally: Capitalism can never be ethical.
There are no laws requiring Google to be fair.
If we don’t open our eyes soon technology ( whether it’s Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon Inc or some equivalent service) is going to F—k us all from some Cloud or other that is just over the horizon.
Just look at the annual release of new smartphones.
Of course there are other things in the long tall grass waiting to caught us by the short and hairy and most have being around for yonks. War, Natural Disasters, Greed, Inequality and the like.
My advice is to beware of the man with a smartphone. Because knowledge is not knowledge until someone else knows that one knows.
Google it.
All human comments much appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
” Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist” I would add technology in the form of profit seeking Algorithms.
Infinite growth might have seemed possible when Captain Cook was around, unfortunately it no longer holds.
However we are all still lead to believe that GDP marks human progress.
Our world is rapidly changing. Markedly defined by the Internet.
We are now standing on the threshold of divorce between Money and State with natural systems under enormous pressure which I am sure I don’t have to high light here.
With the planet groaning, ever trade deal is a new frontier of accumulation a form of World GDP exploitation that was and still is promoted by the help of the World Bank, and the IMF.
We are now at a stage where GDP growth is beginning to create more poverty, and inequality than it eliminates.
Unfortunately the resources of the world have been exploited both for debt and profit rather than sustainability, and as long as GDP growth remains the main objective of Globalization we will see more and more countries going into irreversible debt, and war over freshwater, air, and energy.
These profound changes are emboldened by the evident failures on both levels of political control: Technological Regulations/ Laws and the growing power of monopoly platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, the Cloud etc.
Don’t worry say’s technology we can decouple sustainability and material throughput.
A beguiling vision of a future lightweight economy.
Facebook and the Cloud are gathering an unprecedented amount of power and allowing their business practices to be a disruptive force for democracy.
All pointers signaling the widespread decay of the economic and political frameworks in which our institutions operate.
With profit seeking algorithms rich countries are in fact increasing consumption, still producing stuff and by 2030 it will be in the 100 billion tons.
There is also a growing belief as we convert to renewable energies and begin to use negative – emissions technologies that we can change the damage to the climate.
However if we continue to ignore that energy use is only part of the problem.
It is what we are doing with it is the problem.
Polluting our sea, chopping down our forests, producing cement, creating land fills with waste, eroding our land, all contributing more and more greenhouse gases. Switching to clean energy will do nothing to slow this down.
The problem is much deeper than we are willing to admit.
We need a new consciousness for a different world.
Our crucial first step would be to get rid of GDP as a measure of economic growth/progress and well-being.
We need to have an open discussion about what we really value.
We are all aware of the individual problems, but the main problem remains the same – Inequality due to the distribution and exploitation of the world’s wealth.
Any rich country that has food banks, people sleeping on the street, is for me a failed state.
I have written many a post with a solution that to date has fallen on deaf ears.
it is my conviction that at this point and time its impossible to correct the imbalances of Capitalism. We can only ensure that Capitalism pays for the damage by introducing a World Aid Commission.
0.05%
On all High Frequency trading, on all Sovereign Wealth Fund Accusations,on all Foreign exchange transactions over $50,000, on all Social Media platforms postings, on all Bitcoin’s, and other digital currency transactions.
This fund would be a perpetual source of money.
It could replace the begging Organisations.Re Establish the United Nations an effective world organisation that could address and react to world needs, where ever, when ever.
It could be managed under the UN umbrella, provided it was totally independent/ transparent of any lobbing and political veto interference.
Its funds could be granted with no repayments requirements.
It would change the world for the better, by spreading its wealth where it is needed most.
Of course the problem remains as to how we get our Capitalist Master to implement such a course of action.
Perhaps Bitcoin’s ability to promote the divorce between Money and State, might be a place to start.
All suggestions appreciated.
All human comments appreciated. All Like clicks chucked in the bin.
PROBLEMS are caused by our actions, and can only be
resolved by us changing these actions.
The scientific innovations and new technologies thus
generated seem limitless, as they unfold everywhere
and on all kinds of fronts. It is the wild west where
rules are made up as we go and hope for the best.
There is no central body GOVERNING the use of the
cloud.
In a constantly evolving world transformed by cloud, social and mobile technologies, we’ve become accustomed to the idea of storing our personal data in the cloud, whether it’s via Dropbox, the iCloud or even Facebook.
as confusing as it may be we are never far from a new
era of revolt.
But this really only tells half the story. So far cloud computing has, for the most part, been used to speed up and reduce the costs of existing processes.
However we’re moving into what is becoming known as the mobile/cloud era. Cloud computing is set to impact not only on the way we do business, but how we live or lives.
Our thinking is being shaped by several key areas:
Applications we’re seeing at the moment really are the tip of the iceberg and, as the technology matures further, who knows how we may be using the cloud in even a year from now.
Smart cities are growing ever closer to becoming the norm as organisations begin to realize that the cloud can do so much more than simply speed up or reduce the cost.
Eight years from now we are likely to see low-power processors crunching many workloads in the cloud, housed in highly automated data centres and supporting massively federated, scalable software architecture.
So far we know that the following things are likely to happen:
There will be larger clouds. Some of these clouds will link to others. Many services that businesses consume will sit on top of clouds. Software will be much, much larger.
As with any technology, a lot of the true problems could come in implementation. Who will be the police? Who will be the judge? Who will be the jury for penalties?
We don’t have a clue what the procedures, policies and infrastructure really are.
It is said that changing the world is a noble, innate, haunting idea that, when flirting with it, ends up becoming as beautiful as it is dangerous.
Experts estimate cloud apps will account for a whopping 90 percent of worldwide mobile data traffic by 2019.
Cloud computing brings with it a whole new set of applications that will sit on multiple tiers of cloud infrastructure.
All the cloud promises is that you will have to turn over your security interests to a third-party in the clouds, and secondly that you are going to turn over your ability to do ANY real work to some third-party software provider in the cloud and become totally dependent on an internet connection to even work on the most simple of application based tasks.
Cloud data centers will “become much like a breathing and living organism with different states.
They will be differentiated by their infrastructure capabilities into a whole new set of classes.
So where are we.
How are we going to operate them efficiently?
Will they have standards and full technical disclosure?
The answer to both questions is that it is highly unlikely will we see either.
What we will see is a pitched battle fight for dominance with us reduced to an “inside-out” perspective.
For instance, “The more the president [of the United States] scandalizes the world with Tweets, rather than embracing the future together with minimal barriers, we see the Western world retreating and starting to look inwards.
Technology has brought meaning to the lives of many technicians, but it is also destroying what it left of any world community spirit, with the smart phone embodying this state of affairs.
Technological advances in the fields of robotics, artificial intelligence or augmented reality are upset the global economy. The ability to acquire new knowledge will be worth more than the knowledge already learned, with people becoming brand-proof, it will become very difficult to exist the devil’s boots that don’t creak.
Behold the Cloud.
Every revolution up to now has had a common thread with the resulting conflicts largely boiling down to pervasive economic inequality.
The Cloud revolution however is wireless dogma, not a guide for action, accepting connections and doling out information anywhere, anytime if you have the money to pay.
The Internet revolution of tomorrow with the cloud as it’s center of power, will be the content revolution ,that does not bode well for the state of the world to-day and that could be inviting the collapse of society as we know it.
We are heading for a unilateral and silent war, which I think its going to be horrendous.
The difficulty will not come from governments that will be held hostage to a communication that it does not control but from profit seeking AI that feeds off the cloud.
A whopping 90% of businesses already use at least one cloud computing service.
The main players, Amazon, Google Drive, Apple Cloud, Microsoft, with revenue estimated to be in trillions by 2020, know this.
It’s now totally the way of the future.
The cloud it is not just a metaphor for the internet it is more than a motor, it is a fuel that is constantly renewed, tirelessly feeding self learning algorithms.
The crisis of technological capitalism opens the prospect of new revolutionary waves everywhere.
Many economists extol the fact that “It’s very good for the economy” but this is not true. The world in which Beethoven grew up was in turmoil. It was a world of wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions – just like ours today.
This is not a war in the traditional sense of the term: it is and will be more and more a confrontation between belligerent technological armies; it is a war waged by the “civilized world”, firmly entrenched in its positions, against hundreds of millions of deprived civilians.
The divide between rich and poor started with the domesticate plant and animals, which lead to farming – based societies resulting in land ownership. It became easy to acquire wealth and to pass it down from generation to generation, till we arrived to-day with half of the world’s wealth owned by 1%.
We have never being able to decrease inequality peacefully and we never will be able to do so in the future with self learning profit seeking algorithms.
However we are now looking at a new revolution that will be governed by time in the cloud.
Why?
Because Revolutions are voluble, and the cloud is highly suited to exploiting that volubility.
Because capitalism is and always will be set up for consumerism profit, to acquire wealth for the few not the many.
The frenetic pace of change has caused enormous social disruption as entire industries and employment have migrated to lower cost centers in Asia and other developing regions.
Throughout the course of human history, wealth, or the lack thereof, has driven social unrest.
And so while the incredible benefits of globalisation have lifted many from poverty, profit seeking AI are going to create alienation and isolation in those areas that have lost out.
All new inventions and technologies have one thing in common:
They derive their strength from digital and information technologies. All innovations are made possible and are enhanced by digital power. That power is in the Cloud.
Similarly, without computing power, no artificial intelligence and, without it, no sophisticated robots.
To live this transition means first to become aware of current and future changes, and to consider their impact at all levels of society as a whole.
However, the reasons to rise up are not lacking: economic precariousness, multiplication of political scandals, crisis of legitimacy of democratic institutions are all ringing warning bells.
Globalisation didn’t create multinational corporations but those that can take advantage of the changes have and will enriched themselves beyond imagination. While swathes of society will find themselves left behind, forced to compete for jobs at ever lower wages.
The free flow of money and the demolition of trade barriers fostered their growth and delivered them the political power to challenge the fundamental ideals of democracy.
The planet can deal with human demands on it at only 30 percent of what we take from-dump on it now (anyone who thinks that we can double our demands on the planet and people every 12-20 years in perpetuity or that technology will save us should be excluded from serious discussions, I think).
The world has limited resources and cannot go on consuming and squeezing people into every available space. That sense of powerlessness now threatens to overwhelm the positives of globalisation and free trade; such as cheaper consumer goods and higher global living standards.
Forcing nations into a tax rate race to the bottom.
And then there’s Donald Trump, who takes venality to an entirely new level. For all the good it has done, however, it has come at a significant cost, particularly in the developed world. Today, this translates into a crisis of political authority: we are not only frustrated by the incapacity of politicians to solve our problems, but we also question their legitimacy to act on our behalf since we discover, in certain situations, more capacities to act and find solutions than they do.
Tomorrow, this may result in an awareness that citizens can, in some cases, do without policies to make politics.
There are two major threats to us all. Climate Change and The Cloud.
If we do not wake up and demand change we will all indeed be living with zero intelligence.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
Climate change is real and so are its effects, despite what Trump and his 22 Republican senators might stubbornly, short-sighted and nonsensical choose to believe.
Indeed, that climate change is real and caused by human activity is no longer an issue up for debate. That time has long passed.
It’s true that the train may be out of the station when it comes to avoiding climate change altogether, but we can still attempt to mitigate and alleviate the worst of the effects.
The fact that an agreement was achieved was a breakthrough. Never before have 195 countries agreed to some form of emissions reductions, even if they aren’t exactly binding.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced he was pulling United States out of the agreement, which means the US would join Syria and Nicaragua as the only nations that did not agree to the pact. Even Palestine and North Korea signed it.
In that context, Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement, the most promising global initiative addressing climate change, seems like a big deal. And it is, but not because his decision to withdraw will catapult us toward assured and quick global demise.
It is perhaps the best thing that could happen for the future of the agreement and, by side effect, the planet. After all, the accord is largely a voluntary gentleman’s agreement.
Trump’s decision might actually have a positive effect on the future of climate negotiations, freeing world leaders to pull together a stronger agreement that forces greater action.
It sends the message that the agreement is more about symbolism than action. Despite all of the fanfare that went on at the time, it seems that there are currently only 3 European Union countries pursuing climate policies that put them in line with the agreements made at the Paris Climate Change Talks.
The great majority of countries want to rig the law with loopholes so they can continue business as usual.
Some of the primary loopholes in question, are the use of higher baselines for measuring CO2 emissions reductions and a greater use of forestry credits (tree planting as an offset). Also, 9 member states “want to exploit the ETS’s huge surplus of 100 million allowances, worth an expected €2 billion, to help them meet their emissions obligations on paper.”
In effect, the U.S. risks becoming an unreliable country run by an administration that explicitly prioritizes corporate greed, short-termism, isolationism and nepotism over science, reason, growth and global sustainable prosperity.
The response to such a senseless act by the Trump administration should be a renewed and strengthened international commitment to combat climate change and the maintenance of a global climate governance regime that will be effective in keeping global warming below the critical 2 degrees Celsius.
This will never be achieved.
Why ?
Because man down through the age has demonstrated that he is incapable of cooperate with each other in large groups.
The modern deal offers power provided we renounce our belief in a great cosmic plan that gives meaning to life. On an individual level we are inspired to constantly increase our income and our standard of living. Greed comes easily to humans.
Don’t worry, The ecological meltdown is going to be great.
God like technology has it downside, like how or what is going to control these structures as traditional political structures can no longer process the data fast enough to produce meaningful visions.
We live in a world full of small interest groups and ruthless billionaires, we becoming chips enabled and manipulated by algorithms.
An international fund to help countries transition to green economies and cope with climate change will have an expected $100 billion US dollars per year. So far, only $62 billion US dollars has been gathered.
The whole thing will end in gridlock.
The climate change narrative is beginning to change.
There is only one way to stop climate change and that is to place a world aid commission of 0.05% on all transactions that exploit us and the world for profit sake.
For Example: High Frequency Trading, Sovereign Wealth Fund Acquisitions, Foreign Exchange Transactions over 50,000$, World Lotteries etc.
This will create a perpetual funded world aid fund to address climate change and the inequality that drives it.
Failure to act—or worse, acting to exacerbate—climate change could have lasting implications for the entire planet. The world has already burned more than two-thirds of the carbon that is expected to raise global temperatures by 2 degrees celsius (the previous target)–a catastrophic threshold.
If developing nations followed similar development trajectories as the US, for instance, then there would be no possibility for keeping climate change under control.
Emissions targets will never be legally binding, but report cards and updated promises are binding. No penalties will be given out for countries who fail to meet targets.
There is no doubt that the work of modern-day leaders is complicated
around the world. Leaders will need to demonstrate a different set of behaviors IF WE ARE TO SAVE THIS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENT DRIVEN WORLD FROM GOOGLE, FACEBOOK, TWITTER, AND SOCIAL MEDIA.
It is true that today’s leaders are already facing challenges and changes that are rapidly transforming where, how, and with whom they do business.
WHY?
Because of the shrinking talent pool.
Unfortunately with climate change the world now needs:
Agility, Authenticity, Talent, Sustainability, with better deliver value that embrace social responsibility, all combining to give a distinctive leadership framework of connectivity for the further.
We all know that in the past the world has seen some good, some rotten to the core, however some of the current bunch take the biscuit.
So let’s have a look at a few of them.
Donald Trump: Age 71. Elected by the power of money, twitter, and social media. Woman grouper. A real estate developer, reality television star. Turned his name into a brand. Three marriages. 5 children. Filed for bankruptcy several times. Represents 325 million people.
Chinese President Xi Jinping: Installed. Undergraduate degree in chemical engineering and a doctorate degree in law. Not much is known about Xi’s policies. Supports the large state-owned enterprises that have allowed high-ranking Communist Party officials to make millions of dollars. Represents 1 billion 342 million people.
Vladimir Putin: Age 65. Married Divorced. Two children. KGB.Appointed acting president after Boris Yeltsin’s resignation. Named Time Person of the Year. Represents 143 million people.
Narendra Modi. Age Teetotaler. Bachelor’s degree in Political Science.Unsuccessful arranged marriage. Childless. Poet. 26 million followers on Twitter. Represents 1 billion 342 million people.
Kim Jong-il World’s youngest head of state, believed to be turning 33 on 8 January.Married to Ri Sol-Ju.Move over Jesus. Based on Kim Jong-iI’s official biography, he was born on Korea’s most sacred mountain, Mt. Baekdu. Fashion icon. Invented The Hamburger. Never used a toilet. Head of one of the largest armies in the world. Awarded an honorary doctorate in economics by a private Malaysian university called the HELP University.To break from its “imperialist past”, North Korea announced it would follow “Pyongyang time” in August 2015 – which is half an hour later than the previous time zone it shared with South Korea and Japan. In 2014, a UN report found: “The gravity, scale and nature of these [human rights] violations reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world.” Represents 25 million people.
Bashar al-Assad : Age 52. Married 3 children. Elected unopposed. The second son of former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad. Study medicine at the University of Damascus, graduating in 1988. Leader of the Ba’ath Party and commander-in-chief of the military. Using chemical weapons against civilians with assistance from Russian president Vladimir Putin. April 2017, following news of another round of chemical weapons unleashed on civilians, new U.S. president Donald Trump ordered airstrikes on a Syrian airbase. By February 2016, the conflict had led to an estimated 470,000 deaths in Syria. Controls 25 percent of Syrian territory, and he’ll hold on to it as if his life depends on it. Controls 25 percent of Syrian territory, and he’ll hold on to it as if his life depends on it. 4 million people have left the country and another 7.6 million Syrians have been forced from their homes but remain inside Syria. Turkey highlights the fundamental problem with the war in Syria: every actor has his own agenda. Turkey wants to fight Kurds, Iran wants to beat back Syrian rebels backed by Saudi Arabia, the US is focused on ISIS, and Putin gains political ground by “standing up to the West.” Alliances and rivalries overlap, with just one clear winner: Bashar al-Assad. He may be fighting ISIS for control of Syria, but it’s the rise of ISIS that’s keeping him in power. Represents himself.
Ayatollah Khamenei: Age 78. Married 6 children. The supreme religious leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, now the religious and political leader of Iran for life.Well known for releasing a fatwa (a legal document issued by a Muslim cleric) calling for the death of Indian-British author Salman Rushdie for his book The Satanic Verses in 1989. No friend of Israel. Recently stated “We however thank this new guy in the White House, since he largely did the job we had been trying to do in the past decades: to divulge the true face of the US. We had been working to show the world the depth of corruption in US government and ranks and files of the ruling elite; Trump did it in few days after coming to the White House.” Represents 81 million people.
Angela Merkel: Chancellor of Germany, Age 53. Married divorced. No Children. University of Leipzig, B.S., 1978; German Academy of Sciences, Ph. D, 1986. Named Person of the Year by Time magazine 2015. Forbes named her as the “Most Powerful Woman in the World” in May, 2016. A former research scientist. The only leader in the history of G20, to have attended every meeting, since the first in 2008. The longest-serving incumbent head of government in the history of European Union, as of March 2014. Described as the “Liberal West’s Last Defender.” Honored with the Grand Cross Special Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the highest class of the Order. Awarded with the President’s Medal the highest civil medal given by the State of Israel, in the year 2014. Awarded the title Doctor Honoris Causa, by the Comenius University in Bratislava in 2014, the University of Bern in 2015 and the Ghent University and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in the year 2017. Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the United States.Had “private and informal talks,” with the 14th Dalai Lama in the Chancellery in Berlin in the year 2007, amid China’s protests. Following this meeting, China cancelled any kind of separate talks with all the officials from Germany. Opened the doors to Syrian Refugees. Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the United States. Represents 81 million people.
Francois Gerard Georges Hollande. Age 53. Married divorced. 4 children. First Socialist president since Francois Mitterrand left office in 1995. Taught economics at the elite Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, or Sciences Po.Receives 28.6% of the vote in France’s presidential election in April 2012. Won in runoff election for the presidency of France by 51.62% of the vote. Enjoys a wide range of holiday residences. Commander-in-Chief of the French Armed Forces and may order the use of nuclear weapons. At the forefront of securing a global climate deal and after the Paris attacks he persuaded Europe and the US to step up the fight against Isis. One of the very last European leaders to believe in Europe. Represents 65 million.
Theresa May: Age 60. Married. No children. Incumbent Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. A graduate in Geography from Oxford University. Suffering with Type 1 diabetes and Brexit. Worked at the Bank of England. Head of the European Affairs Unit of the Association for Payment Clearing Services. The second longest-serving home secretary in the past 100 years. Fashion-conscious. Instinctively secretive and very rigid. Holds herself at one remove.. Her wider political appeal is, as yet, untested. Mrs May will not have to face a general election until May 2020 unless she decides to seek a fresh mandate – something she has seemingly ruled out but the folly of brexit ill see her overseeing the brake up of the UK.One does not know unless one is educated about or knows the culture. Represents 65 million people.
Dilma Rousseff. (suspended) Age 70. Married,divorced twice. One child. Democratized Brazil’s electricity sector through the “Luz Para Todos” (Light for All) program, which made electricity widely available, even in rural areas. Her chairmanship of the state oil company Petrobras and misuse of election funds, all of which she denies, soon plunged her presidency into crisis. Impeach. Petrobras are accused of illegally “diverting” billions from the company’s accounts for their personal use or to pay off officials. Rousseff served as chair of Petrobras during many of the years when the alleged corruption took place. Did Represent 211 million people.
Malcolm Turnbull. Age 63. Married Two children. The country’s fourth Prime Minister since 2013. One of Australia’s wealthiest and most prominent lawmakers. Prone to remind the people of his intelligence and their stupidity. A journalist, a barrister, a banker, a developer of shopping centres, a businessman, a politician, a Rhodes scholar, a student at Oxford. Represents 25 million people.
Muhammadu Buhari. Age 73. Married Divorced. 10 Children. A farmer, cattle rearer. Retired Major General in the Nigerian Army Latest in a family of 23 children. He contested four times (2003,2007,2011 and 2015) under the platform of CPC, ANPP and APC. The first man to overthrow (by the poll) a sitting Nigerian president. He was one of the two African “not in government ” individuals invited to President Barack Obama’s inauguration. Represent 175 million people.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Age 53. Married. 4 children. Semi-professional football player.Accused of autocratic tendencies, corruption and extravagance, including the 1,000 room-plus palace he built on publicly protected land. Erdogan has also been heavily criticized for failing to protect women’s and human rights, curbing freedom of speech and attempting to curb Turkey’s secular identity. Mayor of Istanbul. Co-founds the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP). Elected president during the first-ever direct elections. Recent attempted coup by a faction of the military squashed, at least 161 people are killed and 1,140 wounded. Says that women and men are not equal “because their nature is different. Wants to transfer power from parliament to the presidency. Represents 81 million people.
Susuga Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi Age 63. Married has been in office for eighteen years and is the leader of the Human Rights Protection Party. Bachelor of Commerce and Master of Commerce degrees. He holds Chairman positions in many organisations and corporations in Samoa as well as in international organisations. Represents 195 thousand people.
Considering there are 195 countries in the world,6,909 distinct languages and 4,200 different religions, it’s no wonder that the world is in a mess.
Some behaviors may be the norm in one country but different in another.
What is accepted in one culture may be unacceptable or taboo in another.
It is essential to be aware of the cultural nuances. One does not know unless one is educated about or knows the culture
All existing human speech is one in the essential characteristics which we have to consider, even as humanity is one in its distinction from the lower animals; the differences are in nonessential.
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
( A two-minute follow-up read to the Post ” What is happening to what we call common values.)
Perhaps with the election of Donald Trump it has already happened.
Why?
Because capitalism has and still is creating an explosion in economic and geographic inequality which is now fueled by commercial Artificial Intelligence.
The tragedy is that our World leaders and World Organisations seem inapt to do anything about it.
The main lesson for European and the rest of the world is clear:
As a matter of urgency globalization must be fundamentally reorientated.
Trade agreements must be revisited to become a means in the service of higher ends.
They must include quantifying and binding measures to combat the digital fiscal and climate dumping.
They must have a prosecutor capable of enforcing what is agreed.
Its time to change the political discourse on globalization, trade is a good thing, but fair and sustainable development also demands public services, infrastructure, health and education. These demand fair taxation systems
If we fail to deliver these the ludicrous fantasy of Trumpism testosterone imperialism will win with the dignity of world leaders reduced to one’s shopping choices.
Here are a few other thought as to why:
Because: Globalisation it is being replaced in economic by Artificial Intelligence calculation to satisfy consumer demands.
Because: With Trump closing of the USA will change the domination of the capitalism globe. It will now exist for a Chinese Communist party that gives delocalised capitalist enterprise cheap labour to lower prices.
Because: Technology – along with its turbo economic disruption is causing what seems to me to be the hastening of both a cultural and environmental apocalypse.
Because: Digital consumerism makes us too passive to revolt or save the world. Humans have been transferred into desirable readily exchangeable commodities. Culture appears more monolithic than ever. Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, are now presiding over unprecedented monopolies.
Because: The Internet discourse has become tighter, more coercive.
Because: Human personality is being corrupted by false news creating false consciousness that there is hardly anything worth the name anymore.
Because: Common Values are scarcely signifies any more – than white skin, white teeth and freedom from odour and emotions.
Because: Popularising, is a failure of the US and the EU to democratise in an attempt to create a one-dimensional society.
Because: Social Media operates on an eternal feeding loop.
Because: Our world organisations are out of date.
Because: Trade agreements aren’t worth the paper they are written.
Because: If we destroy or Atmosphere , or Seas, or Fresh Water all for the sake of profit, there is little reason to believe in a Christian or Muslim God or for that matter any other Gods that will make a difference.
All comments appreciated. All likes clicks chucked in the bin.
Soon enough, it might not be people behind the development of advanced machines learning and artificial intelligence but other AI.
This will drastically reduce the human input required.
We must not be blinded by science, nor held captive by unfounded or fantastic fears.I have previously posted blogs putting the case that all technology (whether it be atomic energy or nanotechnology, bioengineering or DNA mutilation, or Artificial Intelligence) should be subject to examinations by a New World Organisation, that is totally independent and transparent.
( It’s imperative that we do not leave such examinations to the whims of the marketplace nor the cost-benefit calculations of a given quarter to marinate Artificial Intelligence into a sense of human complacency.)
I have also stated that I am pro all technology that benefits mankind as a whole. However it is critical that those individuals who are on the front lines of research be thinking about the implications of their work.
The other day on arrival at Gatwick I was admitted by an Algorithm into the UK.
Since this Algorithm was focus by definition to be based on narrowly defined problems, it got me thinking, who or what wrote the software in the first place.
The ethics of artificial intelligence are non existence.
Whether we are aware of it or not, we are already moving into the era of AI where IBM’s Watson, Google’s AI, Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Echo will be your new companion.
Once AI can analyze a person’s affective state it will be able to influence it.
Humans are driven by emotions, making a crucial component of perception, decision-making, learning, and more.
Artificial intelligence is not yet emotional in the same ways that humans are, but it won’t be long with all the data collection before this is achievable to prompt certain responses and induce desired emotions.
Creepy or worse predatory.
What happens when one of the human negotiators has an emotionally aware assistant in is the corner.
Every decision that mankind makes is going to be informed by a cognitive system like Watson. That future is actually much closer than you think.
To be or not to be. “Are you a robot?” “What?! No I am a real person.”
For example:
Militaries are among the intense users of high-technology, and the adoption of that equipment has transformed decision-making throughout the chain of command. The removal of human beings from the act of killing and from war.
There must be a way to ensure that Artificial Intelligence that is introduced into what ever field of Technology is not dominated by those who have a stake in the expansion of AI for Profit Sake.
There is no excuse for not being aware of the risks that such AI carries for all of us.
These questions have been with us for a long time:
Alan Turing in 1950 asked whether machines could think and that same year writer Isaac Asimov contemplated what might happen if they could in “I, Robot.” (In truth, thinking machines can be found in ancient cultures, including those of the Greeks and the Egyptians.)
About 30 years ago, James Cameron served up one dystopia created by AI in “The Terminator.” Science fiction became fact in 1997 when IBM’s chess-playing Deep Blue computer beat world champion Garry Kasparov.
As the Internet and digital systems penetrate further each day into our daily lives, concerns about artificial intelligence (AI) are intensifying.
It is difficult to get exercised about connections between the “Internet of Things” and AI when the most visible indications are Siri (Apple’s digital assistant), Google translate and smart houses, but a growing number of people, including many with a reputation for peering over the horizon, are worried.
Nevertheless, a debate about prospects and possibilities is worthwhile.
We need to ensure that boundaries are set, not just for research but for all the applications of ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.
As the Internet and digital systems penetrate further each day into our daily lives, concerns about artificial intelligence (AI) are intensifying. It is difficult to get exercised about connections between the “Internet of Things” and AI when the most visible indications are Siri (Apple’s digital assistant), Google translate and smart houses, but a growing number of people, including many with a reputation for peering over the horizon, are worried.
Recently, there has been a growing chorus of concern about the potential for AI.
It began last year when inventor Elon Musk, a man who spends considerable time on the cutting edge of technology, warned that with AI “we’re summoning the demon.” In all those stories with the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, and he’s sure he can control the demon. It doesn’t work out.” For him, AI is an existential threat to humanity, more dangerous than nuclear weapons.
The possibilities created by “big data” are driving increasing automation and in some cases AI in the office environment. Legal and administrative frameworks to deal with the proliferation of these technologies and AI have not kept pace with their application. Ethical questions are often not even part of the discussion.
And since their focus tends to be on narrowly defined problems, others who can address larger issues should join the discussion. This process should be occurring for all such technologies.
A month later, distinguished scientist Stephen Hawking told the BBC that he feared that the development of “full artificial intelligence” could bring an end to the human race. Not today, of course, but over time, machines could become both more intelligent and physically stronger than human beings. Last month, Microsoft founder Bill Gates joined the group, saying that he did not understand people who were not troubled by the prospect of AI escaping human control.
More recently, Google’s AlphaGo software beat South Korean Go champion Lee Sedol in series of matches pitting human against software in a board game that apparently has more possible positions than there are atoms in the universe.
What’s more amazing about Alpha Go, unlike Deep Blue before it, was that it was not specifically programmed to play Go – it learned to play the game using a general-purpose algorithm.
The big question is what can be done? If anything, or is it to late.
None of the darker visions have deterred researchers and entrepreneurs from pursuing the field. It is hard to fear AI when the simplest demonstrations are more humorous than hair-raising.
The prevailing view among software engineers, who are writing the programs that make AI possible, is that they remain in control of what they program.
But are they really? I think not.
The prevailing view among software engineers, who are writing the programs that make AI possible, is that they remain in control of what they program.
Even if true AI is a far-off prospect, ethical issues are emerging every day.
Artificial intelligence or AI is now getting a foothold in people’s homes, starting with the Amazon devices like its Echo speaker which links to a personal assistant “Alexa” to answer questions and control connected devices such as appliances or light bulbs. Echo’s main advantage is that it connects to Amazon’s range of products and services telling devices to tend to tasks such as ordering goods, checking traffic, making restaurant reservations or searching for information. It also connects to various third-party services like Uber and Domino’s Pizza, so you can just call for a car or a pizza delivery by just telling the Echo what you want.
IBM, whose Watson supercomputer systems are offering “cognitive health” programs which can analyze a person’s genome and offer personalized treatment for cancer, for example.
Google recently announced it had developed an algorithm which can detect diabetic retinopathy, a cause of blindness, by analyzing retina images.
Amazon is seeking to put AI to work in the supermarket—testing a system without cash registers or lines, where consumers simply grab their products and go, and have a bill tallied by artificial intelligence.
Facebook just recently introduced its AI-based Deep Text analytics engine which is said to be able to scan and understand the textual content of thousands of posts per second in more than 20 languages, all with nearly human-like accuracy.
Machine learning is already being used extensively in the social networking site to make sense of and translate some two billion News Feed items per day and the company is planning to use AI to recognise images and allow users to search for photos based on the content in those photos.
The artificial intelligence (AI) component in these programs aims to make create a world in which everyone can have a virtual aide that gets to know them better with each interaction.
AI prowess to make smartphones smarter—Google Allo messenger can, for example, suggest a meeting or deliver relevant information during a conversation. To infuse smartphones and other internet-linked devices with software smarts that help them think like people.
The prospect of AI escaping human control is advancing day by day.
Researchers most deeply engaged in this work are more sanguine. The head of Microsoft Research dismissed Gates’ concern, saying he does not think that humankind will lose control of “certain kinds of intelligences.” He instead is focused on ways that AI will increase human productivity and better lives.
At what cost?
No Algorithm understand the unwritten social behaviors used in daily life, which can vary from one culture to another. More work needs to be done to improve “social intelligence,” or understanding the subtleties of our everyday decisions.
However, the real question on everybody’s minds is – is the rush to get to true AI another step towards Skynet, Terminators and HAL 9000?
Just ponder on this for a moment – if a computer could truly be “smart”, it would soon see that humans are basically the cause of most environmental problems and would come up with an extinction solution that would solve all issues in one fell swoop.
Humans are limited by slow biological evolution and would not be able to compete with software that can redesign itself and evolve faster than any human could.
So what is there to prevent AI from gaining sentience and killing us all?
How one can manage something that is sentient is another question altogether.
As we already have industrial robots replacing us in tiresome and repetitive jobs, we might ask ourselves if they’re not going to replace us in all domains?
The population with mobile devices now outnumbering and multiplying faster than humans.
AI and automation provide an opportunity to move beyond business as usual. The global affective computing market is estimated to be 9.3. billion $ a year. By 2020 it will be in the region of 50 billion.
It’s no wonder that the darker visions have not deterred researchers and entrepreneurs from pursuing the field.
We need to remain vigilant on the uses and changes of AI, and maybe even prepare ourselves for a new world where a good part of normal, information research work will die out.
Let’s hope that, should this happen, it will be to the benefit of creative arts which remain entirely ours.
We might already be in the midst of creating a conscious entity of a whole new “utterly inhuman” kind. Now that would be scary.
Perhaps the only solution is a whistle-blower Algorithm.
All comments welcome, all like clicks chucked in the Bin.
Can machines achieve “common sense” in the near future?
We have no clue right now how to go about solving this problem.
We are living in a world where common sense ironically is very uncommon.
When you look at the way Artificial Intelligence is destroying what is left it is hard to even define it.
We have to force our ideas to conform to the evidence of reality rather than the other way around.
Commercial Algorithms for profit and big data are creating a world of insecurity with false news destroying the very fabric of society by removing basic knowledge about how the world of human beings works.
Common sense is not rule-based. It is not entirely logical. It is a set of heuristics almost all human beings quickly acquire. Commonsense knowledge encompasses facts that people know and use in their daily lives. It is assumed to be known by average people, therefore it is not verbally communicated most of the time.
Much of the interaction in this digital world happens at a distance, which can diminish the rules of cause and effect, action and consequence. Additionally, much of digital life takes place under the cloak of anonymity, making it easier to participate in unethical and even illegal behaviors.
Common sense, by contrast, is regarded – or rather, it is often disregarded – as a low-level, practical, ‘everyday’ phenomenon, hardly noticed, except when its absence is suddenly revealed in the actions of an otherwise apparently intelligent, capable adult.
It not necessary for us to understand how the software works for the software to be effective.
The universe doesn’t care about our common sense.
With enough data, enough computing power and trial and error, there is no telling what we can find.
A world where brains have been replaced with digital computers.
In some sense, this is what software is all about: extending our intelligence.
What is this “intelligence” we are talking about?
Is AI using nonstandard logics natural deduction, to predict the future of a sequence from observation of its past.
Is there commonsense reasoning in AI- what role of logic is there in AI?
Is there such a thing as AI Philosophy?
Will it be genetically engineered intelligence.?
Though I don’t know much about biology, I doubt that any brain runs at twice the speed of another brain.
Is it logic of obligation and permission;
What facts are observed by AI and how are these facts represented in the memory of a computer, smart phone, iPad?
What rules (if any) permit legitimate conclusions to be drawn from these facts?
Humans up to now are the source of commonsense rules with memory as a constraint.
We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely intellectual fields. But which are the best ones to start with? Even this is a difficult decision.
We call our phones “smart”, don’t we?
Lots of people want to judge machine intelligence based on human intelligence.
Your intelligence is actually an aggregate of your brain with your environment and the tools and ideas around you. Tools extend our intelligence… with computers and robots being obvious examples. They can always extend your memory with external support (in this case, use a pen and paper, or just Google) and all it might do is slow you down. Except for storage capabilities (memory) and speed, all hardware is equivalent.
I am not sure understanding language and common sense are the same thing. For example, many human beings are illiterate and yet they can be said to have common sense.
Do machines really offer: a new kind of intelligence, a new form of common sense. It is not necessary for the software to play at “human level”.
By definition, digital media is participatory. To adults it looks like a brave new world – but to kids, it’s “just life.”
Digital life describes the media world our kids inhabit 24/7 – online, on cell phones and mobile devices, and anywhere media is displayed.
The users create the content, and anything created in this digital life becomes instantly viral, scalable, replicable, and viewable by vast, invisible audiences.
This implies an educative process rooted in, and respectful of, people’s lived experience. Unfortunately this is not so. We now have instant gratification, irrelevant of where or how we get it.
As sensing technologies become increasingly distributed and democratized, this dynamic new world requires new comprehension and communication skills, as well as new codes of conduct, to ensure that these powerful media and technologies are used responsibly and ethically.
We all know about Artificial Intelligence.
But is Common sense and the Plane Truth being replaced by machines, simple facts, plain arguments, simplistic assumptions with reliable, independent data have all but disappeared.
The chaotic and contradictory nature of ‘common sense’, makes it impossible for Machines to evaluate. They are programmed by humans and therefore will never be able to predict their future performance without prejudice and let their feelings decide for themselves.
To achieve any common sense we will need a database containing all the general knowledge that most people possess, represented in a way that it is available to artificial intelligence programs that use natural language or make inferences about the ordinary world. Such a database is a type of ontology of which the most general are called upper ontologies.
” Common sense is the best distributed commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.” Rene Descartes (1596-1650) French philosopher and mathematician.
Le Discours de la method (1637) long-term goals of Artificial Intelligence research. Commonsense reasoning is relevant for many applications, including systems in which robots and humans interact.
To maintain a sophisticated civilization, we have to keep out-innovating our problems. You may have heard that our civilization is not sustainable. We burn too much fossil oil, we pollute too much, there are too many of us, and so on. This is all true. If we are going to keep on surviving, let alone get better, we need to keep on getting smarter even if our brains are standing still biologically at a rate that exceeds our growing problems.
I am generally favorable to any biological technology that can enhance intelligence.
I also think that any long-term intelligence improvement strategy has to take into account that we are become hybrids, part machine, part human beings…The line between digital life’s perils and possibilities is thin.
I am still waiting for a chip that will give me access to the web at the speed of the thought.
The question is whether Gramsci’s distinction between good sense and common sense will be predicated on an irredeemably hierarchical conception of knowledge. One data base against another – Google vers Facebook. Commonsense rule extraction requires minimal human interaction.
Endowing computers with common sense is one of the major problems facing the world.
The relationship between ethics, common sense, and rationality is not just simply feeds books and articles into the computer and has it understand them.
We are if you look at the present state of the Planet we are far from broad deep and robust commonsense reasoning.
Unfortunately, at some point in our lives we give into the fast paced world around us and disregard the faculties of our own mind.
While everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, don’t just turn your brain off and not think about it. I’m not saying one person or another is right, or wrong. I’m simply saying that you need to free your mind from the dogma that holds you down from seeking the principles and truths that govern these areas of life.
If we dont start to veting all technology that is not for the betterment of humankind we will have such a fucked up world with some people desperately unrehearsed that the rest of us can forget it.
( See previous posts: Re the need to give all technology a bill of health)
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( A ten minute read if you are over fifty, a lifetime read for those under.)
I could go down the road of Predictions like: In Germany, Angela Merkel looks likely to win re-election or there will be a Climate-Change-Driven Refugee Crisis, or there will be a Cyber war the West v Russia or England will come to its sense and vote again, or that the United Nations and the European Union will reform.
But we are standing on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before.
Now it’s true that we do not yet know just how it will unfold, but one thing is clear: the response to it must be integrated and comprehensive, involving all stakeholders of the global polity, from the public and private sectors to academia and civil society.
However it is already changing not only what we do but also who we are.
It will affect our identity and all the issues associated with it: our sense of privacy, our notions of ownership, our consumption patterns, the time we devote to work and leisure, and how we develop our careers, cultivate our skills, meet people, and nurture relationships.
As the physical, digital, and biological worlds continue to converge, new technologies and platforms will increasingly enable citizens to engage with governments, voice their opinions, coordinate their efforts, and even circumvent the supervision of public authorities.
Governments will increasingly face pressure to change their current approach to public engagement and policy making, as their central role of conducting policy diminishes owing to new sources of competition and the redistribution and decentralization of power that new technologies make possible.
Given the rapid pace of change and broad impacts, legislators and regulators are being challenged to an unprecedented degree and for the most part are proving unable to cope.
It is already having a profound impact the nature of national and international security, affecting both the probability and the nature of conflict. The distinction between war and peace, combatant and non-combatant, and even violence and nonviolence (think cyber warfare) is becoming uncomfortably blurry.
It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres. The breadth and depth of these changes herald the transformation of entire systems of production, management, and governance.
The possibilities of billions of people connected by mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge, are unlimited. And these possibilities will be multiplied by emerging technology breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing.
More than 30 percent of the global population now uses social media platforms to connect, learn, and share information. In an ideal world, these interactions would provide an opportunity for cross-cultural understanding and cohesion. However, they can also create and propagate unrealistic expectations as to what constitutes success for an individual or a group, as well as offer opportunities for extreme ideas and ideologies to spread.
Digital fabrication technologies, meanwhile, are interacting with the biological world on a daily basis. Engineers, designers, and architects are combining computational design, additive manufacturing, materials engineering, and synthetic biology to pioneer a symbiosis between microorganisms, our bodies, the products we consume, and even the buildings we inhabit.
AI in recent years, driven by exponential increases in computing power and by the availability of vast amounts of data, from software used to discover new drugs to algorithms used to predict our cultural interests.
Our lives are accelerating even faster, but the largest beneficiaries of innovation tend to be the providers of intellectual and physical capital—the innovators, shareholders, and investors—which explains the rising gap in wealth between those dependent on capital versus labor. Yield greater inequality.
The speed of current breakthroughs has no historical precedent.
Next year promises to be one of the most exciting and tragic in the history of the world with tech more overpowering, and the global climate more complex.
Populism will remain on the ballot, with great powers brace for change, challenges loom for news organizations, and the debate on automation and job creation will continue.
We are in the midst of serious challenges that threaten the whole world, and which require collective responsibility: extreme poverty, climate change, and the refugee crisis.
Even after an opposition defeat in east Aleppo, President Bashar al-Assad may struggle to reassert control over a fragmented Syria.
The conflict in Ukraine’s east will remain unresolved.
The West will become even more flummoxed by Putin.
Nationalism, political uncertainty, and stunted trade will create new headaches in 2017.
The election of Donald Trump to the presidency represents a seismic shift in American politics, an event with implications nearly impossible to predict. A Trump White House may defy predictability.
Russia has been most blatant in supporting France’s far-right National Front, which received an 11 million euro loan in 2014 from a Moscow-based bank and wants another 27 million euros to fight next year’s elections.
In an increasingly connected world, the UK Prime Minister Theresa May will trigger Article 50.
Deeply entrenched mindsets and beliefs sustain the culture of violence and impunity – the need to radically shift the consciousness of people is what the world has been missing.
We must release the tentacles of our false securities and interrupt the world as we know it. We must assume that anywhere we live or anything we are doing can change or disintegrate.
Widespread government access to encrypted communications has the potential to demolish internet privacy and devastate security.
It’s not all doom. There will be new food retailers with brands to speak to and advertise to consumers. There will be edible cannabis for medicinal use. Drones Will Deliver Pizza (but Not Toilet Paper)
There will be a shift in focus from broad-based attacks to more targeted attacks against specific firms or individuals. New rules for U.S. internet service providers will unleash a flurry of lawsuits.
There will be a new kind of consciousness – one where violence will be resisted until it is unthinkable.
I wonder whether the inexorable integration of technology in our lives could diminish some of our quintessential human capacities, such as compassion and cooperation. Our relationship with our smartphones is a case in point.
Constant connection may deprive us of one of life’s most important assets: the time to pause, reflect, and engage in meaningful conversation.
We need to shape a future that works for all of us by putting people first and empowering them.
Debates about fundamental issues such as the impact on our inner lives of the loss of control over our data will only intensify in the years ahead.
Barack Obama Will Get a $20 Million Book Deal. The transparency in the UN will be vetoed. The UK will have to vote again between being a British citizen, serving our local community and people, and being a Global Citizen, taking responsibility for their world as a whole?
Technology it’s here to stay.
The global dance of connection is both a disruption, a curse, with all beat, no heart.
Internet, artificial intelligence, robotics… all lead to one fundamental trend almost absent from the political debate despite its potential social impact.
These transformations (the premises of which we already feel) will produce their full effect after one or two decades, so there is still time to rationally analyze their consequences, without showing complete panic in regard to their extreme evolutionary perspectives.
Since there is still time to calmly consider the problems of AI, which is perhaps one of the most serious that humanity has ever faced.
I recommend the rapid creation of think-tanks focused on this technological revolution, groups composed of citizens, politicians, scientists, psychologists and … why not even science fiction writers, who will consider uninhibited possible future ways to keep human beings at the heart of our future.
From human enhancement to human … obsolescence?
This is no time for Amen. The only way forward is with a technologist’s mindset.
Francois Gerard Georges Hollande. Age 53. Married divorced. 4 children. First Socialist president since Francois Mitterrand left office in 1995. Taught economics at the elite Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, or Sciences Po.Receives 28.6% of the vote in France’s presidential election in April 2012. Won in runoff election for the presidency of France by 51.62% of the vote. Enjoys a wide range of holiday residences. Commander-in-Chief of the French Armed Forces and may order the use of nuclear weapons. At the forefront of securing a global climate deal and after the Paris attacks he persuaded Europe and the US to step up the fight against Isis. One of the very last European leaders to believe in Europe. Represents 65 million.
Dilma Rousseff. (suspended) Age 70. Married,divorced twice. One child. Democratized Brazil’s electricity sector through the “Luz Para Todos” (Light for All) program, which made electricity widely available, even in rural areas. Her chairmanship of the state oil company Petrobras and misuse of election funds, all of which she denies, soon plunged her presidency into crisis. Impeach. Petrobras are accused of illegally “diverting” billions from the company’s accounts for their personal use or to pay off officials. Rousseff served as chair of Petrobras during many of the years when the alleged corruption took place. Did Represent 211 million people. 
Muhammadu Buhari. Age 73. Married Divorced. 10 Children. A farmer, cattle rearer. Retired Major General in the Nigerian Army Latest in a family of 23 children. He contested four times (2003,2007,2011 and 2015) under the platform of CPC, ANPP and APC. The first man to overthrow (by the poll) a sitting Nigerian president. He was one of the two African “not in government ” individuals invited to President Barack Obama’s inauguration. Represent 175 million people.
I have previously posted blogs putting the case that all technology (whether it be atomic energy or nanotechnology, bioengineering or DNA mutilation, or Artificial Intelligence) should be subject to examinations by a New World Organisation, that is totally independent and transparent.
In Germany, Angela Merkel looks likely to win re-election or there will be a Climate-Change-Driven Refugee Crisis, or there will be a Cyber war the West v Russia or England will come to its sense and vote again, or that the United Nations and the European Union will reform.
