This question tends to arise in the face of a moral dilemma or existential crisis but in this world of technology, social media, and advanced scientific discoveries, it’s important to keep asking this crucial question.
Are humans really biologically and socially different from the rest of the created world?
The physical similarities between humans and other mammals are quite plain. We are made of the same flesh and blood; we go through the same basic life stages but how is the value of a human determined?
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One of the key characteristics that make us human appears to be that we can think about alternative futures and make deliberate choices accordingly.
But we are living in an age that makes defining what makes humans human tricky, not because we are both unique and paradoxical but because technological advancements are changing our very existence.
While we are the most advanced species intellectually, technologically, and emotionally—extending human lifespans, creating artificial intelligence, traveling to outer space, showing great acts of heroism, altruism and compassion—we also have the capacity to engage in primitive, violent, cruel, and self-destructive behavior.
It is particularly challenging to name all of the distinctly human traits or reach an absolute definition of “what makes us human” for a species as complex as ours.
So we remain even in this age of modernity and intellectual freedom, no closer to any concrete answers.
It is our intellect that transcends us from simply existing.
Apart from the obvious intellectual capabilities that distinguish us as a species, humans have several unique physicals, social, biological, and emotional traits which are also changing.
Not too long ago as a species we humans used storytelling for communicating and transmitting our ideas. Now we use smartphones and internet platforms without much consideration for what effect they are having on our minds.
(The mind consists of the intangible realm of thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and consciousness.)
We assume that others have minds somewhat like ours—filled with beliefs and desires—but we can only infer those mental states. We cannot see, feel, or touch them. We largely rely on language to inform each other about what is on our minds.
Our memories are stored in the Cloud adding to the data collected by machine learning algorithms that shape them into products.
(Memory allows human beings to make sense of their existence and to prepare for the future, increasing their chances of survival, not only individually but also as a species.)
“As far as we know, humans have the unique power of forethought to think consciously: The ability to imagine the future in many possible iterations and then to actually create the future we imagine.
This awareness gives meaning to humanity and the awareness of our mortality. We are human because of our reason.
We are determined and capable of knowledge, and the ability to act on it, without depending on anyone else, even religion or some divine intervention but we are not self-sufficient. We need others.
because of this, we interact with the world based on our perception of it.
Regardless of one’s religious beliefs and thoughts about what happens after death, the truth is that, unlike other species who live blissfully unaware of their impending demise, most humans are conscious of the fact that someday they will die.
The story of what made us human is probably not going to focus on changes in our protein building blocks but rather on how evolution assembled these blocks in new ways by changing when and where in the body different genes turn on and off.
Species evolve to fit the particular environment that they are occupying at a given time, not to “advance” to a different evolutionary stage.
So us of us who are alive today with this realization yet to come are the guinea pigs of the future. In the meantime, we can only be human in society not driven by machine learning harvesting data but by the planet, we live on.
It will be a big moment in what truly makes us human when we do so.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Answering this question is not as straightforward as it might appear.
We can ask, what am I? What is this place? And how am I related to it?
We have a record of history, moral behavior, economics, political and social institutions.
Is it to be human is to be one of us?
This begs the question of the class of creatures to which “us” refers.
In deciding that all and only Homo sapiens are humans, one is expressing a preference about where the boundary separating humans from non-humans should be drawn, rather than discovering where such a boundary lays.
We’re probably unique in our ability to investigate the future, imagine outcomes, and display images in our minds.
In fact, one could know everything there is to know biologically about a human, but still not know what is unique to humanity now, what will be unique about humanity in the future, and what is important about humanity.
Why?
Because the steady growth of computing power and sheer reality-describing data will eventually give scientists an unprecedented understanding of biological systems, including the human body, and the ability to hack it in ways that may ultimately defy death.
All of this will lead to a point at which our tools are so proficient at making themselves that more-human-intelligences emerge, and this change is now so accelerated that we can barely make sense of it.
Cells might be persuaded to develop new collective goals and assume shapes totally unlike those that normally develop from an embryo.
A new type of creature—one “defined by what it does rather than to what it belongs to developmentally and evolutionarily.
————- What will the future mean for us, for our relationships with other people, for our hopes and strivings?
When we look at how ordinary people have used the term “human” and its equivalents across cultures and throughout the span of history, we discover that often (maybe even typically) members of other species are explicitly excluded from the category of the human.
For example, Nazis considered Jews to be non-human creatures.
Generally, in wars, soldiers give nicknames to the enemy to dehumanize them.
And another example is provided by the seemingly interminable debate about the moral permissibility of abortion, which almost always turns on the question of whether the embryo is a human being.
But if we think of the human as an indexical expression – a term that gets its content from the context in which it is uttered – a very different picture emerges.
When we describe others as human, we are saying that they are members of our own kind or, more precisely, members of our own natural kind. ie natural kinds are to contrast them with artificial kinds.
If ‘human’ means ‘my own natural kind,’ then referring to a being as human boils down to the assertion that the other is a member of the natural kind that the speaker believes herself to be.
However, when it comes down to it, human beings have nothing special but our highly evolved brains that do something that other species can’t:
We remember, but so do elephants.
So our inquisitive, reflective, pondering minds are forced to wrestle with some big questions in one way or another.
We have cultures and ways of transmitting information, and I guess we may come to realize that it is just us in the future.
Rest assured humans will need humans to be human and the planet we presently call Earth will remain the only place that this is achievable.
You may be certain that AI will want to use satellites to look inside other cultures and will eventually create a human geography information system that uses satellite imagery as the baseline and overlays the satellite maps with datasets and other detailed information covering history, culture, education, economy, religion, weather, and political landscapes.
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Who gave EARTH its name? No one knows.
Earth is the only one in our solar system that does not come from Greco-Roman mythology. All of the other planets were named after Greek and Roman gods and goddesses.
Also, there is no particular Homo sapiens individual that researchers recognize as the specimen that gave Homo sapiens its name.
Self-awareness is in its infancy with Artificial intelligence, and the identity and authenticity of an individual in this melted world ahead will be daunting as we don’t yet understand who we are.
Undoubtedly, in the case of humans, we are more creative than any other animals currently alive or pre-human descendants with the same genes, but the problem with evaluating creativity in extinct species is that you can’t talk to them.
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We don’t know everything about our own species—but we keep learning more as we are rendering a new world with new opportunities and perspectives that will either go in two directions.
Either we harness technology to human values or technology is turning us into products for exploration.
Presently to live a human life which in essence is determined by an accident of birth is becoming more and more expensive so that ordinary people simply cannot afford to be born.
Moreover, we can scarcely go a day without using inventions and innovations that were once the stuff of science fiction. Cell phones, flat-screen TVs, airbags and antilock brakes, CT scans, digital video players, portable computers, and, of course, the World Wide Web were completely unavailable a few decades ago.
But of course, in a future world where accidents of birth and the fortunes of good genes are even more critical determinants of success than they are now, inequalities that persist will be especially galling.
Because social and positional inequalities already distort existing measures of income and wealth, many seemingly clean-cut economic debates are more intractable than one would imagine. And of course, social anxieties over the unavoidable differences will become even more troubling, the less we can constructively address these issues.
Even if biology could somehow be conquered to the point that genetic good fortune could be parceled out equally to all, the minor differences that remained would loom ever larger.
Whether you view such an eventuality as desirable or irrelevant, more of our intellectual effort should be devoted to this future scenario. Not simply because we are heading there, but in many ways, because parts of that world are already here.
Even today, we routinely exaggerate the extent of material inequality and make foolish comparisons between different time periods and between countries at different levels of development. This does not mean that inequality has disappeared, or that it is unimportant
And as COVID-19 pulls the rugout from under economic growth, money will have so much power that it with AI will control society.
As the need for money grows, so does the greed of it.
Ever since money was introduced as a value to exchange goods, every action that we take exacts a cost and produces consequences and none will be bigger than climate change.
In the economy of the future where knowledge is the most valuable commodity, a person or a country will have to offer more than just money.
Money should never be the master of anyone it is a tool to be used to accomplish the things you want in life.
Even if money does not buy happiness, raising as many people as possible to a middling level of prosperity (an important first step to endure day-to-day economic agony of inequality we are still creating a recipe, not just for disaster but exiting this world.
People are waking up to a story that was already there.
This Recipe for the human stew we are in.
Viruses have been on the planet for millions of years, much longer than Homo sapiens. After a year COVID has infected more than 115 million people and caused over 2.5 million deaths, with over half a million in the US alone.
The world population of 8 billion is doubling every 61 years with 55 percent of us living in urban areas or cities, which is set to rise to 68 percent over the coming decades. Currently, Cities house more than half of the world’s population and are expected to see another 2.5 billion new residents by 2050.
Cities consume over two-thirds of the world’s energy and account for more than 70% of global CO2 emissions.China’s co2 emission exceeded those of all developing countries. 14 gigatons, 25% of global emissions.
Producing enough food to feed the world includes raising large numbers of animals in close quarters, and they represent breeding grounds for viruses and infectious agents that can jump to humans. The spillover from animals to humans is closely linked to environmental change such as Climate change.
60% of all Mammals are livestock. Unsustainable.
80 % of all birds are Poultry. Unsustainable.
83% of wild animals are exterminated along with 50% of plants.
Because of selective breeding, future generations of selectively bred plants and animals will all share very similar genes which will reduce variation perfect for future Pandemics.
Mix all of this with Profit for Profit sake and we got a recipe for the future that will rise quicker than you can say I am all right Jack.
And I’m not saying we should go back and live like nomads. But when you put it all together — population pressure, urbanization, agricultural practices, deforestation, high mobility . . . and then climate change is going to make all these things worse.
Whatever the next event will be — and we know there’ll be another event — it’s already out there. A wake-up call is an understatement.
The Dominant role that humanity now plays on Earth – is unsustainable and we must have pandemic memory, even if we want to forget the past year.
What if anything can be done to reverse centuries of mismanagement?
The future of automation is only possible with the Internet of Things (IoT), the hub of collected data where devices interconnect. To get the most from automation, it’s essential to look beyond convenience toward efficiency.
416.2 terawatt-hours of electricity are used by data centers equaling 1% of world energy.
There is now a great urgency for the world to convert to green energy but solar panels and wind farm electrical cars are not the solutions unless they all operate on Hydrofusion. Yet commercial electricity generation from fusion still remains a goal rather than a reality and it’s a solid bet that it will not arrive on the grid before the 2030s and it will be expensive.
We are left with our whole system of living that requires radical structural change away from profit to beneficial sustainability.
This change requires giving the means to Humans to live their lives with dignity while protecting what is left of our planet.
There are other, more ethical ways to provide social services.
At the moment we have sales taxes, gasoline taxes, poll taxes, food taxes (yes, they tax what you need to survive), sin taxes (cigarettes, alcohol, gambling), “fat taxes” (taxes on unhealthy foods), housing taxes, Social Security taxes, payroll taxes, and income taxes…taxes galore! All harm the poor more than they do the rich. And of course, we have the income tax, which is a progressive tax, a tax that affects the rich more than the poor.
What if we had a cutoff point where at a certain income you pay no taxes, and those below that income get money back from the government. A Universal income.
This alone would be revolutionary for the poor and working-class! Coupled with the removal of all regressive taxes, it would be even better.
Instead of using hundreds of billions to fund programs like Social Security and free medical care, food banks, those who would require those programs would probably just be able to afford most of what they need anyway!
The demands for all goods would skyrocket as people now have free money to put into the market.
On top of this, all education including University should be made free.
If we want humans to protect, the ecosystem we have to make it more profitable to protect than destroy. Pay them to protect it.
To do this see previous posts – A 00.05% World Aid commission.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
One way humans gain self-esteem, importance, and significance, and hence assuage mortality concerns, is by raising themselves above other animals’ status.
We attribute fewer thoughts and emotions to animals and this is only true when people are primed to think about human-animal similarities – death.
All human beings begin life by being born – and all human beings die.
In these two ways, we are finite: our lives are not endless, but they begin and they come to an end. We thereby come into the world with a specific body, and in a given place, set of relationships and situation in society, culture, and history.
We share a common ancestor with Apes but unlike an animal that has instinct we begin life utterly dependent on the people who care for us physically and emotionally.
First and foremost, we are inheritors and receivers of culture and history. We may develop capacities to question, criticise and change what we have received, but this happens on the prior basis of reception.
So being born is a fundamental, not a trivial or accidental, feature of human life – and human existence overall has the shape it does because we are born.
However an animal is also conceived and born.
But, as far as I know, no species except mankind can think about thought itself, can reason, can form alliances and coordinate wars to destroy other thinking people, can create a global interdependent society, can allow millions to starve in third world countries (“We’ve got to think of our own economies…”), can pollute the environment to dangerous levels, and can mess with the very stuff of life itself in their search to challenge God.
What future lies ahead for humans in space?
None.
We can manipulate the human genome as we like, we could manufacture a new set of beings designed for space travel but there will never be any humans colonizing any other plant.
If we can’t solve humanity’s problem on our home planet, we seem highly unlikely to be able to do so by establishing ourselves in space.
Any lunar or planetary colonists will bring the same human attributes that have caused problems on Earth.
Maybe if we got excited enough to treat Earth as though it were Mars, some of the energy currently pointed towards the stars could be repurposed to doing something even more audacious—ensure that the space station we already have can take us into the next millennium.
Wherever we land, we inevitably leave behind traces of our own forms of life.
We won’t survive here on this planet unless we learn to live in a resource neutral way. We are in the process of destroying this planet with nowhere to go.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
In a few days, we enter a new year but not a new beginning as all of us began with Adam and Eve.
SOME TIME AGO I WROTE A POST: Adam and Eve were black. They lived in Africa but never meet each other.
Good and evil existing in every single human being and despite their extreme differences, one couldn’t exist without the other.
In this follow up post I will once again ENDEAVOUR TO STEER CLEAR of the Bible’s account of humanity which is, in fact, both frustrating and ambiguous because of the truth of human nature in and of itself are the acceptance of the impossibility of separating good from evil, two powerful entities that live inside us all.
So there was Adam one and Adam two, Eve one and Eve two.
Adam One wants to be famous, rich, and win it all for himself and aggressively pursues that goal by calculating survival.
Adam Two seeks internal satisfaction and stability for himself and humbly offers healing and service to others.
Eve One also wants to be famous, rich and to be there for our children. Security.
Eve Two also seeks to attract love, a relationship, to be a mother.
Both care about themself first and both will kill to survive, which is the tension of One and Two that never goes away.
Adam I’s desires are infinite and always leap out ahead of whatever has just been achieved.
Only Adam II can experience deep satisfaction.
Throughout our lives, we’ve all done irrational, incoherent things and acted in totally unexpected ways. There’s a nature within us that, on occasions, pushes us to act or think against the norms.
Homo erectus was a very successful early human, spreading across the ancient world and surviving Earth’s changing environments for nearly two million years—at least five times longer than our own species has been around.
Science has taught us that the first humans were in central Africa but does not say that the first humans were black.
They could have been black, dark, reddish, pinkish, yellowish, or whatever, but the bottom line is every ethnic group, every skin colour, started with the Black Africans, because all human beings were black clear up to 10,000 BC.
Therefore Adam and Eve were black-skinned.
Biblically, there is no evidence that they were “white”.
There is still only one race of Human beings because within Adam and Eve were all the genetic material necessary to produce the variety of humans we have today. Now we are one race with a blueprint written in a code (or language convention) which is carried on very long chemical strings of DNA.
Back to Adam and Eve.
In the first post, I said they never meet each other so they were created both Androgynous.
Since the word, Adam is not used previously in the Bible before either of them arrived there is no evidence that this word must denote a male. Indeed, the explanatory phrase, “male and female he created them,” could be read as clarifying what the nature of this Adam actually was.
“Jesus and God are the “us”.
Just as Eve was taken from Man, so Jesus was taken from God… So my thoughts are not my thoughts, nor your ways are my ways.
To this end, a number of rabbinic passages preserve what may have been a popular interpretation of this passage, which indicates that the first human actually comprised of both genders.
When one looks at humanity now if we could ever all get on the same page again there is no telling what advancements and accomplishments we could attain.
Unfortunately, men have honed and refined the practice of separation into the art of alienating, persecuting and even enslaving other men by virtue of our differences; whether they be nationality, race, gender, sexual orientation or any other excuse to ostracize someone different from themselves; sometimes even to the point of genocide.
This was and is the message that Hitler and the Nazis and all-white supremacists needed and need to hear today.
No man is better than any other man. We are all just little specks of dust.
There is no empirical evidence for the hypothesis of evolution and it has never been shown that evolution happened in any degree.
If we are prepared to dismiss the Genesis narrative, then we have the problem of deciding just when in the scriptures God begins to tell the truth.
Evolution in all aspects, including theistic evolution, is a myth.
Like today, when efforts are often made by intellectual theologians to harmonize modern science with the creation account in Genesis, the rabbis of ancient times were aware of the popular scientific philosophy of their day and integrated it – albeit in a way that also subjugated it – to fit within their broader worldview.
We are now on the threshold of discovering that subatomic particles can exist in two places at once. So gravity has self-awareness, in which the quantum state of one part of the system cannot be written without reference to another part of the system.
What are my circumstances calling me to do?
At what points do my talents and deep gladness meet the world’s deep need?
Happy New year.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE CAN’T HELP BUT WEEP WHEN IT LOOKS AT CLIMATE CHANGE. WITH THE STATE THE WORLD IS IN AT THE MOMENT THERE IS ZERO HOPE OF US COMING TOGETHER WITH A REALISTIC SOLUTION.
For the past year, I have been adding to my Flipboard ( # Silent Witness to Climate Change) anything connected to the subject.
In the last few months, the shit really started hitting the fan.
Record heat waves in Pakistan, India, each killing thousands of people, while California burns, Port Rico has little or no water and the Helheim glacier in Greenland lost 10 billion tons of ice.
Countries and communities around the world are already experiencing stepped-up climate change impacts – including droughts, floods, more intense and frequent natural disasters, and sea-level rise – and the most vulnerable are being hit the hardest.
It is not difficult nor does it require Artificial intelligence to realize that if the world does not address Co2 emissions we are looking at mass migration, economic collapse, not to mention wars that will threaten the very fabric of civilization.
GLOBAL WARMING IS ALREADY HAPPING FAR FASTER THAN THE 2 DEGREES CELSIUS LIMITED SET BY THE PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT. THE CURRENT RATE OF EMISSIONS WITHIN THE PRESENT CENTURY WILL EFFECT OUR OCEANS – IRREVERSIBLE.
The appearance of low-oxygen regions is doubling every ten years, spreading from coastal areas into deep and deeper water, forcing fish whales and pretty much every living ocean creatures upwards. Cold patches in the ocean are slowing warm ocean circulation currents while acidifying continuous unabated with over six percent of the world reefs disappearing before the end of the decade.
SURELY WE DON’T NEED TO BE TOLD THAT HURRICANES ARE GETTING STRONGER AND MORE AND MORE DEVASTATING NATURAL DISASTER ARE OCCURRING WORLDWIDE. Considering all of the other climate forces surely its time that our world leaders whether in or out of government stand up and take notice.
We are all however through our self-image underestimate climate change.
If you ask me no one can comment on how far in the future these changes will occur but what is happing to the Bearing sea is already providing us with a snapshot of what is to come and it won’t be gradual. (The Bearing sea was once a barrier between the Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean it is now an arm of the Atlantic.)
Rather than seeing lots of regional tipping points, the future will be the sum of all the climatic events and their interaction. It won’t be Florida that is wiped off the map but the whole of the earth ecosystems.
With the Donald Trump promoting America First, fueling trade wars and opting out of the Paris Climate agreement it would be a brave political leader to be advocating that we should cut consumption for obvious economic reasons.
Social media continues to dilute any long-term coordinated political engagement, aiding populous ends, and fragmented partitions.
To reduce Co2 emissions we are left with one option and that NEEDS to engage all of us.
So what if anything can be done?
All TV stations should be legally obliged to provide their viewers with a weather forecast once a month that is dedicated to the effects of climate change in order to bring the subject to the attention of the viewing public.
We are beginning to see small communities developing their own sustainable energy supply. GOVERNMENTS NEED TO SUPPORT THIS TRANSFORMATION WITH REWARDS AND SUBSIDIES WHETHER ITS TAX BRAKES OR PAYING FOR THE ENERGY GENERATED.
WHAT IF YOU WERE REWARDED FOR CONVERTING TO SOLAR PANELS.
To make a difference worldwide we must make GREED IN THE FORM OF PROFIT CONTRIBUTE. ( see previous posts on a WORLD AID FUND)
Will any of this happen?
Nuclear power – Infusion – Technology- Paris Climate Agreement, you name it, will not stop natures environmental response to our abuses of sustainability.
THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT IF WE ARE TO TURN THE TIDE ON CLIMATE CHANGE GOVERNMENTS AND ALL OF US MUST RESHAPE THE FUTURE OF ENERGY.
TO BENEFIT SOCIALLY AND FINANCIALLY FROM THE ENEGERY WE MUST TRANSITION TO COMMUNITIES MODELS.
While we are all becoming aware that we are at the edge of a new phase of human history. To get there we must act not as machines driven by data and algorithms ungoverned by ethical philosophical norms.
INDIVIDUALS TURNED INTO DATA TO FUEL PARTIES FOR POLITICAL OR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES IS NOT GOING TO TACKLE THE PROBLEMS THAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS BRING TO THE WORLD.
ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE ALGORITHMS ARE WEAKENING THE FORTITUDE REQUIRED TO ACT.
POLITICAL LEADERS OVERWHELMED BY NICHE PRESSURES ARE DEPRIVED OF TIME TO THINK OR REFLECT ON CONTEXT, CONTRACTING THE SPACE AVAILABLE FOR THEM TO DEVELOP VISION.
THE DIGITAL WORLD WITH ITS INCENTIVES IS EMPOWERING THE RADICAL OVER THE THOUGHTFUL TO SUCH AN EXTENT THAT WE MUST EXPECT AI TO MAKE MISTAKES FASTER- AND OF GREATER MAGNITUDE THAT HUMANS DO.
AI may well in the future reach its intended goals, but it will be unable to explain the rationale for its conclusions.
THE TERM ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE IS A MISNOMER.
THE TECHNOLOGICAL WORLD IS PREOCCUPIED WITH COMMERCIAL VISTAS RATHER THAN EXPLORING THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE HUMAN CONDITION THAT IT HAS BEGUN TO PRODUCE.
THERE IS ONE THING FOR CERTAIN IF WE DO NOT START TO ADDRESS CLIMATE CHANGES SOON WITH A GLOBAL EFFORT TO CLEAN UP OUR ACT WE SHALL DISCOVER THAT WE STARTED TOO LATE.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
The problem is that the concept of “artificial intelligence” is way too potent for its own good.
Ai, Machine learning, Deep learning neural networks have no obvious ways of performing logical inferences all are still a long way from integrating abstract knowledge, such as information about what objects are, what they are for, and how they are typically used.
These are the three terms you’re most likely to have heard lately, and, to be as simple as possible, we can think of them in layers. Neural networks are at the bottom — they’re a type of computer architecture on to which artificial intelligence is built.
Machine learning is next — it’s a program you might run on a neural network, training computers to look for certain answers in pots of data; and
Deep learning is on top — it’s a particular type of machine learning that’s only become popular over the past decade, largely thanks to two new resources: cheap processing power and abundant data (otherwise known as the internet).
The concept of neural networks goes all the way back to the ‘50s and the beginning of AI as a field of research.
In a nutshell, these networks are a way of structuring a computer so that it looks like a cartoon of the brain, comprised of neuron-like nodes connected together in a web. Individually these nodes are dumb, answering extremely basic questions, but collectively they can tackle difficult problems. More importantly, with the right algorithms, they can be taught.
In other words, they don’t have any common sense.
BUT WILL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE EVER DEVELOP IMAGINATION.
In most cases, the systems making claims to artificial intelligence aren’t sentient, self-aware, volitional, or even surprising. They’re just software.
AI platforms should do more than answer simple questions. They should be able to learn at scale, reason with purpose, and naturally, interact with humans TO BE CALLED INTELLIGENT.
THERE IS PRESENTLY A GREAT MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE TERM ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AMONG THE PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS WHEN IT COMES TO NOT ONLY IDENTIFYING AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.
With Artificial intelligence poised to disrupt everything, it’s time we get on the same page as to what AI is, and perhaps more importantly, what we want it to be so that we can regulate and control the technology.
IF WE DON’T ANYONE LOOKING TO DRAW BUZZ TO THEIR PRODUCTS WILL CONTINUE TO CO-OPT THE PHRASE.
If we don’t we won’t NOTICE WHEN A TRUE REVOLUTIONARY AI SYSTEM DOES ARRIVE.
AND HOW PROBLEMATIC THAT WILL BE.
NOW IS THE TIME THAT WE MUST FULLY ALIGN THE GOAL’S OF AI WITH OURS WHICH IS ALREADY STRICKLING DIFFICULT WITHOUT AN OVERALL GOVERNING WORLD BODY.
IT IS PARAMOUNT FOR WORLD PEACE NOT TO MENTION IN THE COMING YEARS TO REDUCE THE INCREASING GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR THAT EVERY AI PROGRAM SHOULD BE VETTED NOT JUST FOR A SUREFIRE WAY OF PREDICTING HOW IT WILL BEHAVE BUT TO ENSURE IT COMPLIES WITH OUR COMMON HUMAN VALUES.
FOR TRANSPARENCY AND RESPONSIBILITY EVERY AI PROGRAM SHOULD BE REGISTERED WITH THIS WORLD BODY WITH A SHUTDOWN PROGRAM.
ALL HUMAN COMMENTS APPRECIATED. ALL LIKE CLICKS CHUCKED IN THE BIN.
This may be the reason why AI is able to add fuel to the fire of other technologies such as analytical tools that monitor our behavior online, what we buy, who we talk to, where we have been, where we might go, with whom, and why.
All for a competitive advantage to make a profit.
AI’s use is rising exponentially with volumes of free data flooding every nook and nanny of our existence.
You might believe that this all harmless leading to the smarter handling of big data but we need to wake up if we think so.
Siri and Alexa are not machines with just catchy names nor are they AI assistants. Bring one into your life and you will be inviting general AI to take over your decisions. Aping the nuances of the human brain they will adapt to their environment demonstrating empathy and perception whether you are an idiot or not, inevitably it’s the former element that they are after. The blurring of the lines between man and machine.
The ramifications of which remain an elusive shadow on the digital horizon.
So what potential does artificial intelligence really have to change our lives.?
THE ANSWER IS VAST.
THE DIFFICULTY IS HOW DO YOU GET A BALANCED VIEW OF DATA AS ALL DATA IS BIAS.
Very often, when talking about AI, we like to automatically couple it with other terms such as Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Neural Networks. This makes it sound like over 90% of AI is this kind of statistical algorithm that only PhDs can understand.
This is where we are dead wrong about AI.
In order for AI to have a significant impact on our society, it must understand not only how to act like a human, but also how to think like us.
Unfortunately, while the information revolution has enabled us to collect petabytes of data on how we act in a certain situation, not much data has been collected on how we think. This makes it impossible to properly train an AI system.
Machines need to start learning how we conceptualize the world.
What this means for AI researchers and companies, is that the true future of AI lies in design, in an AI’s ability to interact with and learn from humans, and in understanding human contexts — not in more powerful CPUs and algorithms.
This also means technical prowess will become less and less important in building a great AI, relative to deep empathy toward the needs and challenges of the end users who will be interacting with these AI systems.
We must fully align the AI’s goals with ours, which is going to be strikingly difficult.
We must also ensure that every AI program has a surefire way of predicting how it will behave.
All AI’s programmes must have a shutdown button.
Human level AI may be centuries away however we are already witnessing the effects of both the good and bad they are bringing to societies.
What will it mean to be human in the age of AI?
THERE IS ONE THING FOR CERTAIN:
IF WE CONTINUE TO ALLOW MONOPOLY PLATFORMS TO RULE THE ROOST WITH PROFIT SEEKING ALGORITHMS WE WILL SEE INEQUALITIES ON GLOBAL SCALE.
SLAVE OR FREEDOM.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks dumped in the bin.
If the shoe was on the other foot we be howling blue murder.
I always thought any one fleeing a war was called a Refugee not an Immigrant. Many important issues depend greatly on definitions of who is a migrant.
The vicious civil war in Syria has triggered a huge exodus. Afghans, Eritreans and other nationalities are also fleeing poverty and human rights abuses. All created by us in the first place.
There is no such thing as an EU or European immigration policy.
Immigration has become a toxic political issue; especially as high levels of unemployment and the economic crisis have fueled a growing anti-immigration sentiment across Europe.
Throughout history, people have migrated from one place to another.
People try to reach European shores for different reasons and through different channels. They look for legal pathways, but they risk also their lives, to escape from political oppression, war and poverty, as well as to find family reunification, entrepreneurship, knowledge and education.
Every person’s migration tells its own story.
Since the beginning of the year some 153,000 migrants have been detected at Europe’s external borders.
Faced with that influx, Europe is currently the most dangerous destination for irregular migration in the world, and the Mediterranean Sea the world’s most dangerous border crossing.
With nationalist parties ascendant in many member states and concerns about Islamic terrorism looming large across the continent, it remains unclear if political headwinds will facilitate a new climate of immigration reform.
Hungary has urged its EU partners not to send back migrants who have traveled on from Hungary. And it plans to fence off the whole border with Serbia.
The UK has high levels of opposition to immigration. Opposition to the arrival of immigrants in the UK is far from new. People in Britain are more likely than the people of other nations to view immigration negatively – to see immigration as a problem rather than an opportunity, and to view the immigrant population as already too large.
This is not surprising, given that members of the public are often not well-versed in the details of policy in any area.
After months of argument EU leaders agreed to triple funding for Triton, to some €120m (£86m) – taking it back to the spending levels of Italy’s Mare Nostrum.
A drop in the Ocean.
A portfolio of policies is required to reduce irregular migration, certainly including border control, but combined with addressing the root causes of conflict and poverty, combating smuggling and trafficking, effective migration management and return, and the regulation of labor markets.
More restrictive policies will only narrow options for desperate people and drive more of them into the arms of migrant smugglers and traffickers.
Experience around the world demonstrates that border control is not a silver bullet. In the absence of a coordinated EU approach, migrants — and their smugglers — will continue to target countries like Greece, Italy, and Spain as entry points;
They will remain clandestine even if they may have a strong asylum claim;
They will continue to work in the informal labor market or turn to crime to survive; and their rights will not be recognized or respected.
The downside of making policy on immigration in this environment strongly outweighs the upside.
There is no political space to promote liberal policies on migration; while politicians at least behind closed doors know that restrictive policies are unlikely to work.
In the absence of a reasoned debate, a comprehensive policy response, a coordinated EU approach, and the political courage to confront irregular migration, Europe’s immigration nightmare has only just begun.
This is an opportunity for the EU to face up to the need to strike the right balance in its migration policy and send a clear message to citizens that migration can be better managed collectively by all EU actors.
A clear and well implemented framework for legal pathways to entrance in the EU (both through an efficient asylum and visa system) will reduce push factors towards irregular stay and entry, contributing to enhance security of European borders as well as safety of migratory flows.
The EU is facing a series of long-term economic and demographic challenges. Its population is ageing, while its economy is increasingly dependent on highly-skilled jobs. It is going to need thousands of immigrants if it going to survive Climate Change.
We need a new model of legal migration:
A summer of “Europe’s shame” headlines looms. The politicians may well lose control as events dictate political outcomes.
Give a door to Humanity a try rather than the I’am all right Jack Economy.
May all of those that have lost their lives in vane rest in peace.
There go I but for the grace of The European Union should be our Mantra.
How are you? If you stretched out all the DNA in your body and put them end to end, it would be about six times the distance that Pluto is from the Sun.
You are capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection, and emotion. You are notable for your desire to understand and influence the world around you, seeking to explain and manipulate natural phenomena through science, philosophy, mythology and religion.
Your brain weights about 2% of our body mass but consumes 20% of our oxygen at resting state.
The changes in your DNA are completely random.
But not all evolutionary changes make inherent sense.
Sperm hold a much higher chance of carrying an error or mutation than an egg, especially among older men.
You decide who to have as a mate or how best to rear your children.
You have develop in a cultural sense; inheriting knowledge from previous generations and building upon it.
Your intellectual and emotional abilities are genetically surprisingly fragile.
Although you are now surrounded by the technological and medical benefits of a scientific revolution, these have masked an underlying decline in your brain power which is set to continue into the future leading to the ultimate dumbing-down of the human species.
You cannot step away from evolution.
In fact no matter how unique you think you are: you are living and dying like me on this planet called Earth.
“Uniquely in the living world, what makes humans what we are is in our minds, in our society, and not in our evolution.”
So what type of Modern Human are you.?
This is who you are.
Many people conceptualize evolution to be a gradual process, with natural selection blindly tinkering away at genetic and phenotypic diversity across generations. As long as people are tempted to confuse evolution with improvement dramatic changes in a species, under certain circumstances, can accelerate rapidly.
You don’t have to be right to be doing something useful.
Modern day human evolution is a contentious topic.
Is the human species doomed to intellectual decline?
Will our intelligence ebb away in centuries to come leaving our descendants incapable of using the technology their ancestors invented?
In short: Will Homo be left without his sapiens?
Our intelligence is designed to allow us to build houses and throw spears straighter at pigs in the bush, but that is not the real driver of brain size… In reality, what has driven human and primate brain evolution is the complexity of our social world, [and] that complex world is not going to go away.
Will the fruits of science and technology enabled humans to rise above the constraints of nature and cushioned our fragile intellect from genetic mutations. I don’t think so.
Humans of the future may have less hair.
Humans of the future may be more resistant to diabetes and heart disease.
Humans of the future may be physically weaker and more susceptible to pathogens.
Humans of the future may lack wisdom teeth.
Race differences may disappear.
But natural forces of evolution will still continue to shape humanity despite the power we have to profoundly alter the world around us.
This time does seem to mark a watershed where modern humans are pushing the boundaries further and further.
In my last post (The beady eye look’s at history’s greatest frauds) I argued that humanity’s collective intelligence has gone downhill ever since we started living on farms.
Its continuing with the iPad man.
The cost of greater intelligence is marginally more expensive.
Human beings have stopped evolving after becoming the only species to “put halt to natural selection of its own free will”. Says David Attenborough
Humanity is fragile.
Are we genetically different from our Homo sapiens ancestors who lived 10-20,000 years ago?
When we think of human evolution, our minds wander back to the thousands of years it took natural selection to produce the modern-day man. But are we still changing as a species, even today.
But not only are we still evolving, we’re doing so even faster than before.
In the last 10,000 years, the pace of our evolution has sped up 100 times, creating more mutations in our genes, and more natural selections from those mutations.
In recent years, enormous advances in techniques for the recovery and analysis of ancient DNA have unlocked new secrets about our human evolutionary family tree. These advances indicate that modern humans did not completely replace other human species, as had once been suggested. Instead there was some interbreeding. This model has become known as replacement-hybridisation, ‘leaky replacement’, or ‘mostly out of Africa’.
All people today are classified as Homo sapiens.
Living in cities has produced a genetic variant that allows us to be more resistant to diseases like tuberculosis and leprosy. While we may like to believe our big brains make us smarter than the rest of the animal world, our brains have actually been shrinking over the last 30,000 years.
The average volume of the human brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimeters to 1,350 cubic centimeters, which is equivalent to a chunk the size of a tennis ball.
But about 10,000 years ago, someone who lived near the Black Sea developed a genetic mutation that turned brown eyes blue. It is virtually impossible for two blue-eyed mates to create a brown-eyed baby, our blue-eyed male ancestors may have sought out blue-eyed mates as a way of ensuring fidelity.
Finally, can we say what direction human evolution will take in the future?
This is a fascinating question to consider but impossible to answer because of innumerable unknown factors. Though, it is certain that we will continue to evolve until we reach the point of extinction.
Is Technology making modern-day MUMMIES: The world suffers global recession, enormous inequity, hunger, deforestation, pollution, climate change, nuclear weapons, terrorism, etc.
Are we going to stand back and spectate while the ugly foundations of a modern-day. More people have a mobile phone than a toilet.
It’s obvious to anybody that looks around at the behavior of Homo sapiens that we’re not really perfected in any way.
The violence and vandalism unleashed by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the Middle East in recent years is seen from Yerevan as a logical continuation of the world’s failure to properly recognize and condemn the past genocides, including the Ottoman-era massacres of 1.5 million Armenians.
To those who say we’re are really making progress, there are more slaves than at any time in human history — 27 million. On average, in the past half-hour, one more person will have been trafficked to the United States into slavery. Never mind the rest of the word.
But there are also other forms, where people voluntarily agree to take what’s presented to them as a job. It’s usually an opportunity for a better life and much-needed income. They go willingly.
There’s a lot of illegal money being made buying, selling, and exploiting humans — about $32 billion a year.
Until human rights are elevated to a serious consideration for all decision-making, the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration will remain an unattained goal. We are all human beings therefore we all have a stake in our history.
What if Darwin Got Wrong? Has our culture and our technology stopped or changed our evolutionary trajectory?
The Judeo-Christians believed that nature was placed here on Earth to be dominated by humans.
What is the present day relationship between nature and society?
Men are presented as being more powerful in society than women. As a species, we have naively disconnected ourselves from the ecology of life and have never fully credited our interdependence with nature. We are acting in ignorance to this whole and we are only beginning to feel the repercussions. The results of any evolution right now won’t really be visible until thousands of years in the future.
This is what we did look like:
This is what we might look like 100,000: years in the future.
So where does this leave us, evolutionarily speaking?
Don’t take received wisdom as the truth. All scientific knowledge is provisional. Question everything.
We differ from each other not only in our outward appearance, but also in the inner workings of our bodies. If humans had access to more than the 10% of the mental capacity that they now use, we would be able to control our body’s involuntary functions.
Evolution Has Never Been Observed.
But we are on the path to liberal eugenics?
Liberal eugenics is the idea of using genetic technologies to enhance human abilities and characteristics. Imagine the possibility of giving birth to your child without the possibility of any genetic mutations or ‘undesirable’ traits being passed along.
What would happen if we could change our physical appearance by the power of our own minds.
I believe that one day, we will be left with only two human races: those privileged enough to go through the process of designing their offspring’s own genome and those who will continue to roll the evolutionary die.
Is this the way we simply must go?
Society is the sum of the inventions, institutions, and relationships created and reproduced by human beings across particular places and times.
You would be right to say that we are all endow with one, but fuck me, just look around the World at the moment and you would be lead to believe that we are all using some prototypes.
It is a no Brainer when it comes to understanding what the future will holds if we don’t cop on to ourselves soon.
Worldwide, some 827.6 million people live in urban slums.
By 2020, it is estimated the world slum population will reach almost 1 billion.
About 50 percent of the world’s population now live in urban areas. Every day millions of people world-wide call our streets their home.
Lack of clean water and sanitation claim the lives of more than 1.8 million young children every year.
In the United States, 48.5 million people are living in poverty. One third of Londoners using Food banks.
A child dies of poverty in the world every minute.
Now while I appreciate that with seven billion human beings in the world, it generate’s diverse problems in different social areas and that the entirety of the human populous does not express the same comprehension of morals. It is beyond me that we are all in the process of building a world worse than hell.
We might be perplexed and disoriented by the Higgs boson
and a life in the shadows of science and technology.
But let’s face the facts. If asked, 99.9% of us could not give a dogs bollix whether the Higgs boson matters or not. An Inconvenient Truth.
At the current rate of births in fifty years ( most of you will be still living) there will be around 12 billion people. Hopefully Five billion more with brains asking where was our common sense and compassion when it was needed.
You think, humans are capable of heart-breaking compassion and, on rare occasion, will sacrifice their own sense of self to reach out to another in a time of need..selfish genes, tried to eliminate the “soul” from our professional vocabularies.
The mundaneness of our daily lives cause us take our existence for granted — but every once in a while we’re cajoled out of that complacency and enter into a profound state of existential awareness.
The media influences the public by broadcasting starving children, misrepresenting poverty showing us only the worst cases of poverty that have led to the formation of the “haves” and “have-nots”. “Those poor people! I need to call and donate.” Reluctantly, you never pick up the phone to pledge your money.
Instead we have come to accept that we are entering a world where all truth is relative. Where power struggles are assassins with an insatiable appetite for destruction, where beggar thy neighbor banking, misery merchants ruin lives for the sake of profit, where inequalities are creating terrorist groups such as ISIS, NATO, where greed is king, where making sense of humanity is a measure of madness.
So how do we find meaning? through experiential values, that is, by experiencing something – or someone – we value. To choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
Just look at Kashmir if you don’t believe what I am saying. 76000 people displaced by recent flooding, 13 year after 9/11, 50 years after partition, thousands disappeared, mass graves, a scar on the conscious of Humanity.
Are we all insane?
Our world right now is being shaped by water not by the like of ISIS, not by ethnic or religious differences, not be the Higgs Boson, or anything else.
Game, set match is coming.
By not tackling Climate change, Inequality, and unadulterated greed, which those with brains are crying out to do so the coming Tragedy is our home Earth not the observable universe.( see previous postings)
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