Tag Archives: Privatization

THE BEADY EYE SAYS: COMPUTER ALGORITHMS THAT ARE FILTERING CONTENT ARE STARTING TO ISOLATE US FROM ONE ANOTHER. 

30 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., Facebook, Google Knowledge., Humanity., Privatization, Social Media., Technology, The Future, The Internet., The Obvious., The world to day., Twitter, Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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( A five-minute read)

We all know or at least we should all be aware that our world is becoming less and less transparent thanks to what we call Artificial Intelligence.

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of cloud computing"

The challenge there is:

The false promise of the Internet was that it can connect people from different backgrounds, with different beliefs and across disparate locations.

The trend toward personalization by AI is impeding the fulfillment of that promise?

What is becoming more and more apparent is that while most personalization on the web is algorithmically driven, aren’t we implicitly, informing the algorithms based on the choices we’ve previously made interacting with content?

Couldn’t you then, in theory, manipulate the filter so you see what you want to see or are there too many factors beyond our control?

Consider:

Even if you’re completely logged out of Google, on a new computer, the company can track 57 signals about you — from what kind of laptop you’re using to what your IP address is to what the font size in your browser is. Already, that gives a lot of important clues about age, income and demographics.

It’s ironic — the promise of personalization is that it gives us our own personal view of the world.

But the challenge is that a lot of the time, it’s actually pushing us toward a stereotyped, simplified version of ourselves: “This person is male, so we’ll show him more gadget and car news.”

So let me ask you.

Many of the major social, discovery and media sites on the Internet now implement some type of personalization. Do you feel these sites have a responsibility to educate consumers about how their information is being filtered? Do you think users should be able to opt out of personalization?

I would say Yes, on both counts.

In an increasingly complex and vast media landscape it is crucial that me maintain our private lives.

Why?

Because: Algorithms of all shapes and sizes are monitoring, analyzing, making
decisions, dictating our credit scores etc.  They are shaping our lives and economies, our future, so shouldn’t we know what code and mathematical equations, or deep learning go into making them work.
However Transparency alone won’t help.
Algorithms are complicated so exposing the code behind them won’t make them more understandable. Knowing how an algorithm is coded is useless without knowing the data that has being fed into it in the first place.

There is only one solution and that is the:

The Creation of a New World Organisation that is totally transparent, and self financing:  To vet all Technology. To ensure that they comply with the core world gold standard of human values.
(See previous Posts)
Let me ask you two further questions.
Can some level of personalization be useful?
What are we missing that we need to see?
Some amount of algorithmic personalization is necessary — there’s just too much stuff to sort through for humans to do it all. However you don’t know who Google thinks you are or on what basis it’s editing your results, and therefore you don’t know what you’re missing.

A lot of the personalization that exists today just serves up information junk food, but a growing portion is being curated by robots — computer algorithms that are filtering content and deciding what we get to see.

It may be delicious, but it doesn’t feed the soul.

Now it’s possible to live in a bubble where that stuff doesn’t ever show up — you’d never know it’s happening.

Take the Facebook “Like” button — the main way that information gets spread on Facebook. “Like” isn’t a neutral word — it’s easy to Like “I just finished a marathon,” and hard to Like “cell phones may cause cancer.”

So some kinds of information get through, and others don’t, and when that’s happening in the Facebook News Feed, where an increasing number of folks get their news, it’s a real problem.

Most people aren’t aware that their Google search results, Yahoo News links, or Facebook feed is being tailored in this way.

Filters can provide relevance and combat information overload, but with so much riding on automated decisions to ensure algorithms deal with humans fairly is now more relevant than ever.

I recently read that in five-year your smartphone could be reading your mind.

Brain- computer interface.

Personalization couldn’t exist without the massive dossiers of personal data being collected by big companies online these days. And it’s a problem because consumers don’t have much control over that.

The current laws around personal data just don’t contemplate a world in which a click on one website changes what you see on an entirely different one.

Almost all popular websites, from search engines to social networks to media outlets, are now utilizing filters in some way to personalize content for visitors.

When websites show us only what we like, we get cut off from the diverse points of view that can enrich our understanding of the world.

We get Donald Trumps.

Privacy is about controlling what the world is allowed to know about you. This is about controlling what you’re able to see of the world — what your filters let through and what they don’t.

Its time to wake up.

We can lose sight of our common problems, but they don’t lose sight of us.

It’s only a matter of time before our Fidelity/ Loyalty cards are linked up to our personal data held by banks, e-commerce sites and social media. If not already.

We will then be looking at citizen character score, which will bring credit scores to a whole new level, turning them more into to life scores, by tracking anything and everything we do. The scary bit is what is tracked and by who.  

I hear you saying that this will never be accepted.

It is already on the cards for people living in China and Singapore. Humans and robot algorithms, living in peaceful harmony. Where you go, what you buy, who you know, how many points are on your driving licence, how your friends rate you.

The scores will serve not just to indicate an individual’s credit risk, but could be used in a vast array of applications and organisations such as Governments, Benefits, Hospital Operations, Visa, Education, down to all fields that makes Society including prison sentences, landlords, employers, and even romantic partners to gauge an individual’s character.

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All stored in the Cloud. Which comes in many different models forms.

Ubiquitous access to the network: Self-service and on-demand access to computing capabilities. This service will most often be performed by the service provider automatically without the need for human interaction.

Cloud Computers is not the easiest of terms to define, or explain what it all actually means. Owned by Google, Twitter, Gmail and Facebook the Cloud is elusive as grabbing a cloud itself.

Perhaps we can blame it all on Leonhard Euler one of the most prolific mathematicians in history, and also a prolific inventor of canonical notation.

( An Euler path is a path that uses every edge of a graph exactly once.)

One way or the other to use a Trumpetism:  It’s ain’t going to be great unless we build algorithms that have a sense of civic purpose embedded in them, giving us both entertainment and the information we really need, not profit.

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

O sorry about the line spacing in this post just cannot figure out how to correct it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Here are the three terrorists you will never see. Candidate No 3

17 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by in Uncategorized

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This Candidate is by far the most destructive in so far that it concerns you and I and not just Profit for Profit sake.

We could call it : The resource curse.

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWF) are the most courted investors in the world.

In a way, an SWF can be a fund for future generations, aiming to create a wealth reserve for a future time where commodity revenues dwindle, either because reserves run out, or prices go down.

Owned or controlled by States, albeit separate from central banks, Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) draw their revenue from either natural resources or from trade surpluses.

With the massive accumulation of foreign reserves, these institutions have moved away from a passive approach to asset management to a more long-term proactive investment strategy, embodying a form of State capitalism.

They have become absolutely massive in size in the not-too distant future will have powerful implications for the financial markets.

As I have discussed in the past, I am increasingly concerned about Capitalist financial globalization and the Inequality it is creating in the World.  (See previous posts)

You need look no further to explain the present problems in the World.  The Gap between the Haves and Have not’s. 

My calculations show that the total size of the SWFs will reach US$12 trillion by the end of 2015, and surpass the size of the world’s total official reserves within five years.

With the drop in Oil revenues the SWFs of tomorrow of Oil rich countries are likely to be more interested in strategic companies that possess higher-tech capabilities or techniques.  Higher-tech companies and even foreign banks will be primary targets of these funds.

By privatizing the limited resources that are left in the world they are turning us all in to commodities.

As the world economy slows their investments into emerging markets remain all but unnoticed to the Joe public.

They are now investing a wide range of investment objectives, along with continually evolving time horizons and risk appetites.  Some SWFs have become increasingly active in corporate acquisitions and other strategic transactions. Though many of these funds prefer to invest in debt or non-controlling equity positions, a small but growing number are seeking substantial minority and controlling equity stakes.

ADIA, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign-wealth fund, with assets of $773 billion, now employs 1,500 people. South Korea’s National Pension Service ($430 billion) will boost its investment team by 60 people this year. Canada’s Pension Plan Investment Board recently opened a fourth international office, in São Paulo, to enhance its ability to source and manage complex, sizable investment opportunities.

We should be urging Government policymakers in countries where companies have been targeted for investment to balance the perceived threats of SWFs against their potential benefits, particularly their ability to provide a stabilizing source of global liquidity in the current economic environment.

There rising prominence and lack of transparency of SWFs should be raising concerns among governments and other market participants. For this reason, companies intent on obtaining funding from or investing with SWFs should be scrutinized particularly if a transaction is perceived to involve a country’s strategic or security interests.

Recently they have become major participants in the financial institutions and alternative investment industries, with several high-profile investments in well-known private equity firms and financial services companies.

The next step is to ally with other like-minded investors.

Here are a few examples of what is going on.  

Sovereign wealth funds are flying under the radar again.

Seven of the 10 largest sovereign wealth funds are administered by authoritarian nations (China, Singapore and Saudi Arabia)

Not to mention those controlled by nations that give American strategists pause, including Russia, Kazakhstan, Libya, Iran, Azerbaijan, Venezuela and Turkmenistan.

Or the competing funds within its own very backyard

Alaska ($51.7 billion), Texas ($37.7 billion), New Mexico ($19.8 billion), Texas, again ($17.2 billion), Wyoming ($5.6 billion), Alabama ($2.5 billion), North Dakota ($2.2 billion) and Louisiana ($1.1 billion).

Nearer Home they are barely mentioned by Economic goo-roues or referred to by cash strapped Governments that are selling off their people’s countries assets.

Qatar Gaining Power in UK Through Financial Back Door.

Privatization is an emerging theme in the government’s plans for the public sector. The chancellor’s recent budget speech championed the sale of key public assets and relied heavily on foreign investment as a spur for growth.

David Cameron will clear the way for a multi billion-pound semi-privatisation of trunk roads and motorways as he announces plans to allow sovereign wealth funds from countries such as China to lease roads in England.

A Canadian pension fund, a British one and Kuwait’s sovereign-wealth fund last year bid (unsuccessfully) for Severn Trent, Britain’s second-largest publicly traded water company.

A Singaporean sovereign-wealth fund recently bought a significant share in RAC, a British car-breakdown service, outbidding private-equity firms such as Blackstone, CVC and Charterhouse.

Two of London’s most famous streets are now part-owned by Norway’s sovereign wealth fund after it paid £343m to snap up a share in an estate covering four acres of the capital’s West End.

The gallery-studded Cork Street are part of the Pollen Estate in which Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) has bought a 57.8% stake.

The investment arm of the Qatari armed forces has bought the five-star Renaissance hotel in central Barcelona for €78.5m (£65m) Sovereign wealth funds put an extraordinary Eu 40 billion of investment into Spain between 2009 and 2014.

Britain’s £8.6bn crown estate should be turned into a sovereign wealth fund to rival government-backed investment funds that have sprung up across Europe, the Middle East and Asia in the last 20 years.

Opposition to Europe‘s austerity programmes intensified on Friday as a top official at China’s £300 bn sovereign wealth fund warned that the public are at “breaking point”David Simonds, London property sell off, 1 July, 2012

Heathrow is now part-owned by the Chinese state after the country’s sovereign wealth fund acquired a 10% stake in the UK’s largest airport.The deal means Heathrow will be more than 40% controlled by the Chinese, Qatari and Singaporean governments,

The £2bn Shard, all 1,016 feet of it, will be illuminated to show off the Qataris’ latest trophy in the capital. Already in their shopping basket are Canary Wharf, Harrods and One Hyde Park, the world’s most expensive block of flats.

Gulf state of Qatar has added Shell to its growing roster of western investments by buying a holding in the company.

DUBAI—Qatar has replaced the head of its $300 billion sovereign-wealth fund with a member of the wealthy Gulf State’s royal family. Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohamed bin Saud Al-Thani will take the reins.

There is no reason that we the people should not include them in our United Nations Resolution to place a 0.05% World Aid Commission on all acquisitions they make in the world.

Like Electronic Foreign Exchange Trading and High Frequency Trading, Sovereign Wealth Funds contribute nothing to Society other than providing funds to make more profit.

If we are to have a world which is worth living out our lives in we must use Greed to provide a level playing field.