Do you ever stop to ask yourself why you should trust the information or decisions that algorithms produce?
AI smartphones will soon be standard, using machine learning from the cloud and sooner than later smartphones will have personalized algorithms that will run even when offline.
These algorithms will be own by the companies that both sell and manufacture the phone and will, therefore, carry inbuilt biases depending on which platforms they are attached to.
Imagine a cheap little device that can compute as much data as all the brains in the world. It will have a deep and irreversible affect on everyone and there is no way of predicting what exactly will happen as the developers of such a device will have no idea what it is doing.
How far do we want to go- Robots that obey no matter what with us blind human as their allies.
Today the world faces a number of hugely complex challenges, from global warming to conflicts to nuclear weapons to rampant inequality. But one the real seismic change is how we are going to respond to each other when we all trusting algorithms to make decisions on our behalf.
Now is it the time to put in place world standards and regulations that govern the use of all biological data.
THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT THE WORLD IS GOING TO NEEDS AS MUCH COMPUTER POWER POSSIBLE TO TACKLE ITS PENDING PROBLEMS.
HOWEVER, IT SHOULD BE A HUMAN RIGHT TO INSPECT THE SOURCE CODES OF ANY TECHNOLOGY THAT HAS BIOLOGICAL DATA IN ITS TARGETED SOFTWARE ALGORITHMS.
IT IS OBVIOUS THAT THE COST OF POWER/ENERGY WILL DRIVE THE USE OF TECHNOLOGY AND ITS SYSTEMS IN THE WORKPLACE AND COMMERCIAL WORLD MARKETS NOT TO MENTION SURVEILLANCE EITHER BY GOVERNMENTS OR OTHER ORGANISATIONS.
NOW IS THE TIME TO START DEMANDING STANDARDS.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
If you look at the direction the world is going in life itself is about to break out of organic life into to nonorganic life.
If you were expecting some kind of warning when computers finally get smarter than us, then think again.
In reality, our electronic overlords are already taking control, and they are doing it in a far more subtle way than science fiction would have us believe.
Another word we will have different biological classes of people with new types of gods with new tec religions that produce new bodies, brains, and minds.
There will be no more going to heaven.
It is these invisible computations that increasingly control how we interact with our electronic world. There will be new stories, new thinking to match the new technologies.
Algorithms will be the new form of Communism.
These days we die not because it is in our DNA or Genes but because of Techo problems.
Calico a Google subsidiary is a research and development company whose mission is to harness advanced technologies to increase our understanding of the biology that controls lifespan.
Its ambition is to solve the problem of human health/death.
It’s all being done right before our eyes.
Algorithms can now detect personalities via human language conversation.
What’s next? Will WW3 be launched via algorithm?
Perhaps not but inequality will be the norm with Fundamentalism gone.
The power of algorithms has spread far beyond Wall Street and now touches all of us–starting with today’s young innovators.
Algorithms are doing a lot more than automating stock trades.
Most people don’t know that there are algorithms that decide how customer service calls get routed or how customer service requests will be treated. When people call these big companies like their health insurer or telecom company, they’re actually being categorized, sliced, diced and parsed by a bot.
It’s incredible to think that the words someone chooses on a given morning will forever change how that company treats him or her.
These algorithms don’t just affect people involved in computer science.
No-one would doubt that Google system has made searching a whole lot easier, but at what price? As algorithms spread their influence beyond machines to shape the raw landscape around them, it might be time to work out exactly how much they know and whether we still have time to tame them.
Algorithm change because they know they’re getting gamed.
Algorithms are aimed at optimizing everything.
They can save lives, make things easier and conquer chaos but are they putting too much control in the hands of corporations and governments, perpetuate bias, create filter bubbles, cut choices, creativity, and serendipity, and could result in greater unemployment.
How far Google’s data-crunching algorithm go in harvesting our personal data and shaping the web will be the Story of the Future and because our brains are becoming more and more reliant on the internet for memory
The Google story could well be the god of the future.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
( A twenty-minute read if you want a world worth living in)
Most of us were taught that poverty started with the Industrial Revolution.
For the most part this is true but it did not happen in the isolation of the British Empire.
This story is powerful in its simplicity but if we rewind to about 1500 people living in South America, India, and Asia were much better off than Europeans. In fact Europe was just emerging from the dark ages.
China and India controlled most if not nearly all the world economy.
The Question is how did this change and why?
I put it down to Christopher Columbus and shoddy geographical calculations.
On his second outing in the Caribbean he was looking for gold and as a result the Spanish invasion killed must of the islands inhabitants. Then came a bloke named Cortes who ripped off the Aztec of Mexico,followed by Pizarro yet another Spanish conquistador with an unquenchable thirst for gold.
A total of over 185,000 kilograms of gold and 100 million kilograms of silver were pilfer from Latin America and pumped into Spain and then used to pay for Spanish war and debts.
(A 100 million kilograms of silver invested back then @ 5% would amount to $165 trillion to-day. More than double the world’s total GDP to-day)
This wealth allowed Europe to grow its economic wealth beyond the China or India.
The result was Europeans outsourced its labour into wars and colonization reducing the population of the rest of the world by slavery, epidemic diseases and massacres while enjoying the rich life.
( Free Slavery labour benefited the USA Colonies by over 222.5 million hours) Britain pay compensation of over £20m to slave owners equivalent to £300 million to-day which tell us nothing of the total value they produced.
The Silver was turned into cotton and sugar and spices. Cotton being the key raw material for the European Industrial Revolution.
The Surviving slaves got nothing.
Indeed without the slave colonies of the New world there would have being no market for the Industrial goods.
You could say that the above is rather a simplistic explanation but development in Africa and Latin America was effectively stolen by Europe.
So where are we to-day.
Almost half the world — over 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day.
The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (567 million people) is less than the wealth of the world’s 7 richest people combined.
Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen.
1 billion children live in poverty (1 in 2 children in the world). 640 million live without adequate shelter, 400 million have no access to safe water, 270 million have no access to health services. 10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (or roughly 29,000 children per day).
Poverty is the state for the majority of the world’s people and nations. Why is this?
Behind the increasing interconnectedness promised by globalization and technology are global decisions, policies, and practices.
Formulated by the rich and powerful.
These can be leaders of rich countries or other global actors such as multinational corporations, institutions, and influential people.
As a result, in the global context, a few get wealthy while the majority struggle.
The poorest are also typically marginalized from society and have little representation or voice in public and political debates, making it even harder to escape poverty.
The amount the world spends on military, financial bailouts and other areas that benefit the wealthy, compared to the amount spent to address the daily crisis of poverty and related problems are often staggering.
To attract investment, poor countries enter a spiraling race to the bottom to see who can provide lower standards, reduced wages and cheaper resources.
This has increased poverty and inequality for most people. It also forms a backbone to what we today call globalization. As a result, it maintains the historic unequal rules of trade.
Now we are looking at a new form of Poverty currently being created by a few monopolies. I call it Algorithm Poverty.
Around the world, in rich or poor nations, poverty has always been present. In most nations today, inequality—the gap between the rich and the poor—is quite high and often widening.
The causes are numerous, including a lack of individual responsibility, bad government policy, exploitation by people and businesses with power and influence, or some combination of these and other factors.
Inequality will affect social cohesion and lead to problems such as increasing crime and violence. Almost half the world—over three billion people—live on less than $2.50 a day and at least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day:
And we wonder why the world is in a state of chaos.
Around 21,000 children die every day around the world. World hunger is a terrible symptom of world poverty.
Food aid (when not for emergency relief) can actually be very destructive on the economy of the recipient nation.
Free, subsidized, or cheap food, below market prices undercuts local farmers, who cannot compete and are driven out of jobs and into poverty, further slanting the market share of the larger producers such as those from the US and Europe.
Poverty leads to hunger. There are many inter-related issues causing hunger. They include land rights and ownership, diversion of land use to non-productive use, increasing emphasis on export-oriented agriculture, inefficient agricultural practices, war, famine, drought, over-fishing, poor crop yields, etc.
Solving world hunger in the conventional sense (of providing/growing more food etc) will not tackle poverty that leads to hunger in the first place.
Further, there is a risk of continuing the poverty and dependency without realizing it, because the act of attempting to provide more food etc can appear so altruistic in motive.
To solve world hunger in the long run, poverty alleviation is required.
For the first time in our history Technology offers us a chance to distribute the world’s wealth fairly.
Without Trade agreements, Aid, Repayment, Corruption, Power Brokering by NGOs, United Nations Begging, Bureaucratic interference, or any other hidden agendas.
It could be both implemented and funded by the very Algorithms that are going to spread poverty. ( See previous Posts)
It requires the large capitalist monopoly platforms to supply a free basic mobile phone to every person register as citizen of a country world-wide.
On registration the people would be allocated a pin number.
This pin would allow them to access a monthly Basic non repayable no strings attached Income payment.
There is no other way of ensuring that our world can fight poverty and climate change.
Most of the causes of hunger are found in global politics.
People are hungry not because the population is growing so fast that food is becoming scarce, but because people cannot afford it.
The number of people overweight or obese is now rivaling the number of people suffering from hunger around the world.
Its time to get off our fat asses and share our wealth not push it around to create more wealth.
If you want a world worth something in the future now is the time to start creating it. Solve World Poverty once and
For all.
It can be done with the press of a button.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
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.
It would be fair to say that most of us live in a cloud of our own importance.
However that cloud is disappearing into any other cloud which we are all creating with little or no control.
Our Ideology of normative beliefs, conscious and unconscious ideas, that are individual, group or society are under attack by this cloud. The reality is that temporary outages and slower-speed broadband that are a minor nuisance today can and will become a critical issue.
It represents the consummate disruptor to structure; a pervasive social and economic network that will soon connect and define more of the world than any other political, social, or economic.
It is the first mega trend of the twenty-first century, one that will shape the way we will address virtually every challenge we face for at least the next 100 years.
It is where we will all live, work, and play in the coming decades.
The Cloud is where your kids go to dive into online play. It’s where you meet and make friends in social networks. It’s where companies find the next big idea. It’s where political campaigns are won and lost.
You might think that this is all hog wash.
( But it appears that New Zealand does not have any politicians with brains of their own that they can rely on.
It has just recently appointed the worlds first AI virtual politician with the wonderful name of SAM. “Sam your man ” with a memory of an elephant he never forgets. ” Sam considers everyone’s position when making decisions.”
Well F… me Nick Gerristen ( The creator of Sam) there is a lot of bias in the cloud and AI algorithms are riddled with it.
You say “SAM is an enabler.” I agree. Make sure you feed it as no doubt Google will want to buy it. I see you love BIG ideas, so perhaps you should introduce Sam to Sophia and you might have a bunch of little Samson’s.
Make sure he knows all about NXT Fuels, and by all means give him a bash. I am sure the Maori would be delighted. By the way, being a politician I would have named it, Ākina. ( A Māori word meaning a call for bold action. It also conveys a spirit of watchful and active encouragement, helping others to identify pathways through their challenges.)
Back to the more serious subject:
It is time that we started to recognize some of the risks associated with this cloud technology, so as to avoid the possibility of future issues being decided by Sam and his like, who are servants of the hardware and software resources made available on the Internet as managed third-party services.
The world and us who live on it are becoming highly dependent on our Internet providers, so much so that it wont be long before we will have a fully cloud-based world.
Since no proper standards for cloud computing are set yet, it becomes almost impossible for anyone to ascertain the quality of services they have been provided with. So in the near future we will not be able to make wise decisions while choosing your personal service provider.
This, in turn, enables providers to charge customers fees proportional to their network, storage, and processing utilization.
Most issues start from the fact that the user loses control of his or her data, because it is stored on a computer belonging to someone else.
Many cloud providers can share information with third parties if necessary for purposes of law and order even without a warrant.
Although cloud computing enhances content accessibility, this access is “increasingly grounded in the virtually monopolistic privatization of the cloud which provides this access”.
This access, necessarily mediated through a handful of companies, ensures a progressive privatization of global cyberspace.
So we must ask the question why are we and our governments sustaining the quasi-monopolies that filter what we see depending on commercial and ideological interests they have.
The legal and regulatory landscape around cloud computing is by no means static. There are new laws being proposed that could change the responsibilities of both cloud computing tenants and providers.This creates new challenges in understanding how laws apply to a wide variety of information management scenarios.
As with all things surrounding profit it’s inevitable that some could will burst or simply stop providing the service if they deem it isn’t profitable for them. Often, large companies will enter the market but leave it once the expected profit doesn’t materialize. If this is the core business of the cloud supplier, it might be willing to continue operating for longer with a smaller profit.
Surely if we use a cloud infrastructure sourced from a cloud services provider, we must impose all legal or regulatory requirements that apply to any enterprise.
THIS WITH SELF LEARNING ALGORITHMS IS NOT POSSIBLE.
THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY OF ACHIEVING ANY CONTROL:
All technology must be vetted to ensure it complies to humanity core values.
It should be compulsory for it to carry a ATR World Certificate.
Accountable, Transparent, Reversible.
If we are to have any hope of tackling any of Social, Political, Economic and Environmental Issues That Affect Us we need a beanie Cloud not a cloud for profit.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
The applications for robot technology patents has tripled within a decade. Last year nearly a quarter million robots were sold worldwide, a record according to the International Federation of Robotics.
There is apparently no end in sight for the growth, and worldwide, it could mean as many as 2.3 million in operation by 2018 – twice as many as there were in 2009.
As with many changes driven by technology, there is no question if but when we will see the first applications in our daily lives.
It can be easy to only focus on our material success versus the deeper aspects of what makes us human. The unknown question is just what is the Technological Revolution doing to all of us.
If we don’t know ourselves, how will machines know what we value.
If we don’t find good defenses against exploiting Algorithms there will come a time when machine learning Algorithms will make not just us but the whole world weep.
Yes the world could and should strive to develop technology that take hundred of millions out of poverty, to reduce our reliance of cheap carbon-based fossil fuels, to reverse climate change, to conquer cancer etc.
However the ultimate barriers to achieving a decent life for all, is neither technological nor environmental, it is our unwillingness to share.
As I have posted in many previous posts there is only one way to achieve sharing. We must place a world aid commission of 0.05% on all items that seek profit for profit sake. ( See previous posts)
Unfortunately although this is possible to achieve with technology, it will never happen due to our, ” I am all right jack world.”
One way or the other, it is time we started to ask the questions.
What respective places for public research and private research are there?
What kinds of cooperation exist between the two sectors?
What are the priorities for investment in artificial intelligence
research?
What ethical, legal, and policy principles should guide these new technologies?
And finally, should regulation take place at the national, EU, or international level?
Why should we be asking these questions?
Because: We don’t realize, ( WITH THE WOEFUL STATE OF GEOPOLITICS – LAWMAKERS, POLITICIANS) what damage social media and its profit algorithms are currently inflicting on Society.
Because: AI is the CATALYSIS FOR A MASSIVE PANDORA’S BOX: and we will need to come to terms with it.
Because: Social media platforms allow individuals to reach thousands of people via a single post, making their views readily accessible to a potentially vast audience.
Because: The computer revolution is over.
Because: Now is a good time to start paying attention.
For now, there are many more questions than answers.
For Instance :
WE ARE ONLY BEGINNING TO SKIM THE SURFACE OF WHAT SORT OF PROBLEMS OR OPPORTUNITIES AI IS POSING TO ALL OF US.
So what is the legal definition of “smart autonomous robots”
Is it an industrial robots installed on factory floors, carrying out repetitive tasks.
Is it professional service robots used outside traditional manufacturing like surgical robots in hospitals or milking robots on farms.
Is it consumer robots like vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers etc.
Is it software-based AI to help doctors improve their diagnosis or in recommendation systems on shopping websites.
Is it sophisticated sensors AI-based software, increasingly used to make all kinds of devices and objects around us intelligent.
Non of these vision given the impact on our society and economy, address any of the very profound ethical questions.
FOR INSTANCE:
THE LEGAL CHALLENGES.
The next major way in which social media will change the court system will relate to its impact on court procedure and the law. The impact of the Internet on traditional legal principles, law research and case management.
WHO IS GOING TO MAKE A CONTRACT WITH A MACHINE THAT IS DRIVEN BY A SELF LEARNING ALGORITHM.
WHO IS GOING TO BE RESPONSIBLE WHEN A SELF DRIVE CAR KILLS SOMEONE OR A MERIDIAN OF OTHER LEGAL POSSIBILITIES.
It is clear, however, that the European Parliament is making inroads towards taking an AI-centric future seriously. The European Parliament Legal Affairs Committee recently presented a report on civil law rules on robotics. A mandatory insurance has been suggested by EU MPs, which would say that the manufacturer of the autonomous robot needs to arrange insurance, against any ill effects of their creations.
Last month, in a 17-2 vote, the parliament’s legal affairs committee voted to begin drafting a set of regulations to govern the development and use of artificial intelligence and robotics. To establish an European agency for AI and robotics, a registration system for the most advanced ones, and a mandatory insurance scheme for companies to cover damage and harm caused by robots.
(This report is very timely and points at some crucial issues that need to be addressed. e.g. to enforce ethical standards or establish liability for accidents involving driver less cars.)
They have set up SPARC, the Public-Private Partnership for robotics in Europe, to develop a robotics strategy for Europe. With €700 million EU funding and, adding private investment, an overall investment of €2.8 billion, SPARC is by far the biggest civilian research program in this area in the world.
To my mind the Regulation and Registration of Profit Algorithms is essential, before we find ethical theories turning into decision procedures, even algorithms.
The prospect of reducing ethics to a logically consistent principle or set of laws is suspect, given the complex intuitions people have about right and wrong.
Trust and cooperation cannot be built by the dogmatic imposition of
one framework over another or through the rigid application of one view
of what is ethically “correct.” Rather, they require the capacity to see the
other’s point of view.
Perhaps one might have come to a similar conclusion through just thinking
about the moral decision-making of humans, irrespective of autonomous
machines.
However, reflection on a comprehensive approach toward teaching robots right from wrong has demanded attention to aspects of moral decision – making that people normally take for granted in their daily, frequently less-than-perfect attempts to behave ethically toward each other
Humans have always looked around for company in the universe.
Their long fascination with nonhuman animals derives from the fact that animals are the things most similar to them. The similarities and the differences tell humans much about who and what they are.
As AMAs become more sophisticated, they will come to play a corresponding role as they reflect humans’ values. For humanity’s understanding of ethics, there can be no more important development.
It seems to me that over the past forty years or so that as technology has increased exponentially people in general terms do not seem to feel better about their lives and may even feel worse because they aren’t reaching the levels they had hoped to achieve.
Even if you discount the utopian and dystopian hyperbole, the 21st century will be defined not just by advances in artificial intelligence, robotics, computing and cognitive neuroscience, but how we manage them.
With each new advancement in AI and robotics, we are brought closer to a reckoning not just with ourselves, but over whether our laws, legal concepts, and the historical, cultural, social and economic foundations on which they are premised are truly suited to addressing the world as it will be, not as it once was.
The conclusion is that up to now humans have enjoyed the exclusive claim to biological intelligence and all future intelligence must be judged against that benchmark.
Indeed our religious and philosophical beliefs revolve around that we are special.
It is incumbent upon all of us to engage with what is going on, to understand its implications and to begin to reflect on whether efforts such as the European Parliament’s are nothing more than pouring new wine into old wine skins.
There is no science of futurology, but we can better see the future and understand where we might end up in it by focusing more intently on the present and the decisions we have made as society when it comes to technology.
As a society we have made no real democratic decisions about technology, but have more or less been forced to accept that certain things enter our world and that we must learn to harness their benefits or get left behind, and, of course, that we must deal with their fallout.
Indeed, AI has over promised in the past, and therefore any decision should be based on factual information rather than unrealistic expectations from the technology.
These are only some of the issues that AI Algorithms present.
Prioritizing Human well-being in the Age of Artificial Intelligence is for me what it is all about.
In a world that is heading rapidly to where we can’t think for ourselves that is already plagued by tweets that are both malicious and false, should robotic copies of humans have human rights.
SOME WILL SAY YES, BECAUSE IF THEY ARE INTELLIGENT AS US THEY HAVE A LEGAL RIGHT.
But who, is responsible for robotic devices capable of killing – should the Laws of War change?
WHO should be allowed to vote. If a robot is the property of its “owner” should they have any greater moral claim to a vote than say, your cat?
HOW OR WHO IS GOING TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR ALGORITHMS THAT ARE SOLELY PROFIT SEEKING OR RACIALLY BIAS.
OUR LEGAL SYSTEMS ARE ALREADY STRUGGLING WITH SOCIAL MEDIA.
The use of social media is having an adverse impact on the administration of justice in relation to the fairness of criminal trials, the right to anonymity and the integrity of judicial orders in criminal proceedings.
The principal problem for courts is not the technology of social media, but (i) how the powerful tools it offers are redefining interactive communications between courts and the public, and (ii) how most courts, apart from those few on the cutting edge, are being compelled to respond to this constantly evolving electronic interactive communications platform,
sometimes against their will.
Electronically-based communication will not only affect how proceedings are case managed and run; it also will have an impact on judgment style and publishing, as judgments become available to a global social media audience.
Social media also may foster changes in certain legal principles and causes of action. There will be new crimes and torts, discovery and court
management issues, and new courtroom set-ups – perhaps even “virtual” ones.
Social media’s impact on the court is not simply as a new means for publishing judgments and information, but also on how judges and courts perform their activities in an electronically-connected community where the users of the system can, and will, respond directly to how justice is being administered.
The fundamental right to a fair trial does not change in the face of any new means of communication.
Rules can and must reflect the new reality of same.
Although social media use is commonplace in business and homes, it raised questions about its impact on judicial independence and the desirability of judicial or court use of this informal, public, form of communication.
Contempt of Court laws are designed to prevent trial by media, however, are they able to protect against trials by social media?
We are definitely in a different world when social networks are affecting justice.
We also have to contemplate the possibility that responsible jurors not trying to look for anything about a case might just stumble upon commentary if it’s widespread enough in their normal social media usage, and that’s the world in which we now live and the world we have to deal with.
It is a great tool for the mass dissemination of information but it is also a tool for spreading false information, false claims.
We need to strike a balance between the rights of the individual to express their views via social media and the protection of fairness in criminal proceedings.
‘Who, when, what’ guidelines to be developed for using social media in courtrooms
The justice system must “catch up with the modern world”
In Australia and in New Zealand they have set up social media accounts, allowed social media reports of court proceedings and dealt with the tender of social media evidence in a wide range of civil and criminal proceedings.
Setting up Court Twitter/Facebook account seems straightforward; what sort of organization would refuse to be part of a means of communication used by everyone else? But it leads to the next issue the courts must determine, namely whether managerial techniques appropriate to other parts of the public sector are appropriate for courts.
Are the judgments of courts part of the community’s business and social activities in which the service user has a say, or is the court’s role “part of a broader discourse by which a society and polity affirm its core values, apply them and adapt them to changing circumstances” in a manner which is without parallel to other parts of the public sector?
Mobile computing and wireless technology.
• Interconnectivity, notably ‘the Internet of Things’ and cloud computing.
• “Big data” analysis (e.g. the use of “predictive coding” in discovery).
• Electronic records management systems (“ERMS”) for retention of electronically stored information (“ESI”).
It is unlikely that the search and social media giants are going to change their indexing and ranking procedures anytime soon.
It is easy to see how people may become confused thinking that robots express emotions whereas they are actually machines and do not have any feeling.
If we can’t stop its progress we’d better be involved in it to ensure it is not done on the conditions of others based on their values.
Somebody is paying for the development of robotics, so the system must be something that gives them a legal certainty.
“Is everything that is feasible also desirable and how can we avoid
unintended consequences of robotics and Artificial Intelligence?”
The sooner we require all AI programs to be vetted, and registered the better. By doing this the notion of liability must evolve to best define accountability for a robot, its operator, and software algorithms.
The shady (indeed illegal) nature of the businesses which created social media, (as well as most other 20th century communications developments) the security risks and the interactive nature of social media render its use by courts, and in particular by judges, a two-edged sword.
A search for “global warming,” for example, may reveal different results for different users depending on which websites are bookmarked, which political blogs are visited, or even what groups the users belong to on Facebook.
Robotics and Artificial intelligence are the cornerstone technologies with Google, Amazon, Facebook – everyone is jumping onto artificial intelligence at the moment. The line was between what you could say and what you couldn’t not any more in the full glare of the new social media world.
Google’s enormous legal resources and documenting their scepticism in response to court-imposed judgments and services is a case in kind.
Justice by algorithm.
Robots who can interact with humans in different roles. With their programmed empathy,they say “information is power”. This is why transparency is something that so many seek. The biggest roadblocks will come from those who have created and benefited from their systems
I am not a technologist. Neither a law keeper.
Algorithms for profit are creating an imbalance in the society, where each person begins to seek justice individually, according to their personal understanding, instead of shared values and beliefs. That will be a dangerous society to live in.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE ASKS: ARE WE ALL FOOLING OURSELVES. UNREGULATED PROFIT SEEKING ALGORITHMS WILL BE THE LAST THE LAST STRAW NEEDED IN A WORLD OF INEQUALITY.
The consequences of Profit seeking AI’s that are trying to emulate human intelligence without a conscious mind to give them any moral value, are going to be tragic for a world that is unable to unite to fight inequality, not to mention Climate Change.
As we don’t know our inherent objectives WITH AI we are playing with dynamite.
Even if every one of us was gets a perfect AI Assistance we will not be able to share its benefits, because AI will lie to us to please us.
We are already witnessing this with Facebook and Twitter on social media promoting false images and gossip that is distorting what is true.
If you were expecting some kind of warning when computers finally get smarter than us, then think again. There will be no soothing HAL 9000-type voice informing us that our human services are now surplus to requirements.
In reality, our electronic overlords are already taking control, and they are doing it in a far more subtle way than science fiction would have us believe.
Their weapon of choice – the algorithm and one has just been granted citizenship of Saudi Arabia.
It attracted international headlines — and sparked an outcry against a country with a shoddy human rights record that has been accused of making women second-class citizens.
A robot simulation of a woman not wearing a headscarf enjoys freedoms that flesh-and-blood women in Saudi Arabia do not.
Where was her male guardian, as required by Saudi law for women.
Perhaps Saudi woman should become robots.
Saudi Arabia doesn’t grant citizenship to the foreign workers who make up a third of its population, not even families that have been in the country for generations. Children of Saudi women who are married to foreign men cannot receive citizenship. Sophia the Algorithm was manufactured in Hong Kong.
One thing’s for sure: As AI grows more advanced its invisible Algorithms arms are already taking control of decision-making.
They might well be running gigantic warehouses, matching kidney donors with recipients, running Heathrow traffic control, but this is only the start.
The smart machine era will be liberating in ways we can not imagine to-day, but at what cost.
There is fine line, between “good” and “bad” algorithms.
The point is that we need to start thinking seriously about algorithms.
Right now there are people coming up with new algorithms by applying evolutionary techniques to the vast amounts of big data via genetic programming to find optimizations and improvement in different fields.
They are not just for mathematicians or academics they are all around us and you don’t need to know how to code to use them or understand them, in fact without them most of the modern world would not work.
However we are looking at an area that is total unregulated where all algorithm activities to make profit are outside any of our current laws.
The rise of Big Data and algorithms known as machine learning algorithms are trawling vast collections of data which will allow for vast numbers of decisions to be automated with no recourse. AI for the sake of AI’s.
The market will be more than trillions by 2026.
Big data by itself it is not trans-formative. Data is inherently dumb. It doesn’t do anything unless you know how to use it and act with it.
There are very few of us know how to do so.
One way or the other it is going to be a multi-trillion feast for those how do.
Algorithms or artificial intelligence will be more efficient, less expensive, and – if well-designed – more accurate than humans.
Algorithm is where the real value lies. Algorithms define action. It is these invisible computations that increasingly control how we interact with our electronic world.
Algorithms may be cleverer than humans but they don’t necessarily have our sense of perspective – As algorithms spread their influence beyond machines to shape the raw landscape around them, it might be time to work out exactly how much they know and whether we still have time to tame them.
Wall Street today, is mostly governed by high frequency trading algorithms and Business is following.
Now, researchers are working on the next generation of these learning algorithms, which are heavily used in machine learning and artificial intelligence and may become the foundation that critical technological advances are built on.
Basically, even though most people haven’t even heard of deep-learning algorithms, better ones could mean a future that includes smarter homes, and robots that care for parents and walk our dogs.
Deep-learning algorithms also will be used with our smart appliances, smart cars and wearable technology — stringing it all together in the much championed Internet of Things.
So what? In the digital world anything goes.
Streaming App Algorithms are increasingly wielding an outsize influence on our lives, influencing politics and the economy.
We have all become so complacent that we don’t care what technology (In the form of Algorithms that are driven by machine learning ) is doing to our lives, irrelevant of the consequence we all becoming dumber and dumber with platforms deciding what we see and what we don’t see.
We have become indifferent to the commercial use of our personal data in return for free services.
Every day supplying through our smart phones more and more data it wont be long before the online world will be more important than the real world.
Before the Algorithm the way we live our lives is often not solely determined by us, but by others. Others decided if we will be hired, will receive loans, are admitted to university or have committed a crime. Traditionally, “the others” have been humans: employers, bank managers, university board members or judges – who we expect to make fair decisions.
This no longer applies.
Algorithms are increasingly part of our everyday lives, from recommending our films to filtering our news and finding our partners, deciding our futures.
We need to better understand them and control, our own futures.
Algorithms and AI are the future, but we must not allow them to become a shield for injustice.
The amount of data we have available to us now means that we can no longer think in discrete terms.
This is what big data forces us to do. It forces us to take a step back, an abstract step back to find a way to cope with the tidal wave of data flooding our systems.
But is this any longer possible?
“Learner algorithms” can be used to create new algorithms which in turn can write the code we need, “with machine learning, computers write their own programs, so we don’t have to.”
Here lies the Catch 22 question.
Virtual data centers through cloud providers are analyzing our every move for profit. Selling the data to Hedge funds investment firms driven by vision algorithms that analyzing satellite images, and geolocation, websites.
If we don’t open or eyes they will govern the cost of everything from food to energy.
There have been other periods in human civilization where we have been overwhelmed by data. Like the Phone represented a discrete means to communicate information. A book, on the other hand, is an abstract means of communication in that there is no direct interaction between writer and reader.
So why are Algorithms different?
Because we will have Algorithms for the sake of algorithms.
So what are Algorithms?
They are sequence of steps that describes an idea for solving a problem meeting the criteria of correctness and terminability. An abstract recipe for the calculation independent of implementation. Another words: Algorithms are a finite number of calculations or instructions that, when implemented, will yield a result.
While Code/ Programming is a set of instructions for a computer. A concrete implementation of the calculation on a specific platform in a specific programming language.
Algorithms have been around for much longer than the invention of coding.
Algorithms are already started to show their potential to create a new era of abstraction by going a step further. Not only will they search for a patterns but they will also create the code we need to do this.
Algorithms enable us to find patterns via clustering, classification, machine learning and any other number of new techniques underpinned, not by code, but by algorithms.
Like: With algorithms tracking Tweets or Facebook the Cloud will be Metropolis of 21st century.
If we can feed them a lifetime’s worth of videos. We might see some significant improvements that would get us closer to using predictive-vision in real-world situations.”
To achieve this we need to better understand how these algorithms work and how to tailor them to suit our needs. Otherwise we will be unable to fully unlock the potential of this abstract transition.
And if all of the above is not scary enough there will be war AI neural networks to decide whether a person is deemed expendable or not.
Artificial intelligence does not have to be a horror story of course if we take steps to Registrar all Algorithms. (See previous posts)
It is imperative that all Algorithms are Provable beneficial to all of us, not to one objective profit.
If we lose our autonomy to AI/ Algorithms machines we end up as the three monkeys – see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
We are addicted to Technology. These Algorithms that have profit as their targets will ensure that we remain so.
Retail algorithms don’t scare me, I find it annoying when Amazon tells me what I might like.
Now is the time to make your voice count.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
There is no denying that the benefits of technology are needed but what are the downsides costs.
As the demand for up-to-date technology increases, we need to reevaluate how we measure the hidden cost of the TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION.
It will not be us picking up the tap, but the yet to be born that will have to pay, living in a world that is detached from what makes it all possible The Earth.
Technology is now deeply embedded within society, so not planning for the future of technology is by far one of the most costly mistakes we will ever make, in more ways than one.
At this point it is impossible to say with any authority what exactly the cost will be.
Some technologies are unfolding now; others will take a decade or more to develop, but you should know about all of them right now. In the not-too-distant future, we will be able to print human organs, but not the brain.
According to Stephen Hawking, “Humans are entering a stage of self-designed evolution.”
That may be so, but technology is more than just fusing the physical and digital worlds.
Marked by emerging technology breakthroughs in a number of fields, including robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, biotechnology, the Internet of Things, 3D printing, autonomous vehicles, face and voice recognition and algorithms learning from other algorithms.
With wireless connecting brain-reading technology directly to electrical stimulators on your body it has the potential with more items moving from physical to virtual to decouple us from reality. Wireless communications is already dominating our everyday lives
It is already impacting all disciplines, economies, and industries, our politics, improving medicine, influencing our culture.
Apart from the obvious technology is also in the process of changing democracy, moving capitalism underground, assisting conflicts, packaging natural resources, destabilizing society, disrupt the way governments deliver services to citizens, just to mention the tip of the ice berg.
.It will not be long before we will all have DNA maps from birth.
However with the arrival of Quantum computers the way we use technology will be reshape, along with the societies we live in.
As soon as two to five years from now, such systems or time on such systems are likely to be for sale.
There are probably plenty more uses for quantum computers that nobody has thought up yet.
However you may rest assured that the ordinary citizens (or even governments) won’t be able to own their own quantum computers for a long time, if ever, but I can imagine large companies renting time (measured in fractions of seconds) to whoever needs their services.
With this in mind the race has well started to create monopolies of knowledge Google, of Social Media Society – Facebook, consumerism E Bay, Amazon, Alibaba, of Finance – Pay Pal, of Communication – Apple, of Biotech Thermo Fisher Scientific, of cloud business – Microsoft -IBM, Oracle, of computer microchips to data center-makers-Intel, to name just a few.
Here are a few of their Mission statements:
Facebook: “To give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”
Amazon: “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices.”
Pay Pal: “To build the Web’s most convenient, secure, cost-effective payment solution.”
Alibaba: “To make it easy to do business anywhere.”
Google: “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Microsoft: “To enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential.”
United Nations: “The maintenance of international peace and security.”
Medecins Sans Frontieres: “To help people worldwide where the need is greatest, delivering emergency medical aid to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters or exclusion from health care.”
Non mention the health of the EARTH?
Disruptive technology is, by its very nature, unpredictable but we’ll see more intelligence built into communication. With always-on connectivity, social networking has the power to change cultures, as we saw with the Egyptian Revolution, which led to the Arab Spring.
The results of changing the world are often complicated and unpredictable.
With the technology of smart phones social influences will continue to move rapidly between cultures.
In the broadest sense, technology extends our abilities to change the world: to cut, shape, or put together materials; to move things from one place to another; to reach farther with our hands, voices, and senses. We use technology to try to change the world to suit us better. The changes may relate to survival needs such as food, shelter, or defense, or they may relate to human aspirations such as knowledge, art, or control.
As computational power rises exponentially, not linearly, so does the rate of change — and that means the next 10 years should pack in far more technological change than the last 10.
It is my prediction that all of it will end up in the cloud.
Why?
Because it is the dumb, novelty-seeking portion of our brains (driving the limbic system that induces this feeling of pleasure, not the planning, scheduling, higher-level thought centers in the prefrontal cortex) that is driving technology to tap into our personal sensors.
Make no mistake: emails, Facebook and Twitter-checking constitute a neural addiction.
Already, the cloud is powerful enough to help us communicate through real-time language translation.
When is a profit not a profit? When it turns into a monopoly exploiting all around it.
Just like Capitalism technology it is unable to regulate itself and with the arrival of Quantum computers it will make everything and everybody beholden to technology, endangering much of the openness that we now enjoy online.
So I one again ask the question:
Is it time to regulate Algorithms that have profit as their end targets and is it time that we demanded an open data website that would allow anyone to find information on a host of county government programs, from budget information to welfare data to crime statistics.
This would be linked to two powerful benefits.
First, it makes government more transparent and understandable at a time when trust in the public sector has plummeted.
Second, it has the potential to generate significant economic benefits impacting budget issues, public safety and education, transparency and economic value for tax payers money.
The bottom line is that government data can be extremely valuable for public consumption, but only if the policies behind the data are well thought out and the related costs are affordable. For instance, would a map of society reveal awkward disparities in how rich and poor neighborhoods receive public funding?
Many governments are running on old, outdated systems, making them vulnerable to cyber attacks.
I believe that such an open based data website would benefit from the collective wisdom of the community, simplify how citizens and businesses interact with the state.
However IT WOULD HAVE THE unexpected startup costs if data is kept in a legacy computer system that requires reformatting; quality-related costs to keep open data fresh and up-to-date; legal costs to comply with open data legislation; liability costs in case something goes wrong, such as publication of nonpublic information; and public relations costs that can occur when a jurisdiction generates bad press from open data about poor performance metrics or workforce diversity problems.
That apart present technological advances and information overlays will change how we live in significant ways.
We will have a so-called “smart grid” where all of our appliances are linked directly to energy distribution systems, allowing for real-time pricing based on supply and demand. Such a universal method for identifying someone energy requirements becomes much harder when you no longer have a central authority to figure out how to link together the different systems.
It will not be like self-driving trucks with lidar system guidance run by algorithms or self-driving cars.
Who is responsible when the self drive truck or car kills someone. Try bringing a self thought Algorithm to court.
Try suing an Face-detecting systems for wrong identification or payment.
Then we have: Gene-therapy.
Biology’s next mega-project will find out what we’re really made of.
Three technologies are coming together to make this new type of mapping possible.
The first is known as “cellular microfluidics.” Individual cells are separated, tagged with tiny beads, and manipulated in droplets of oil that are shunted like cars down the narrow, one-way streets of artificial capillaries etched into a tiny chip, so they can be corralled, cracked open, and studied one by one.
The second is the ability to identify the genes active in single cells by decoding them in superfast and efficient sequencing machines at a cost of just a few cents per cell. One scientist can now process 10,000 cells in a single day.
The third technology uses novel labeling and staining techniques that can locate each type of cell—on the basis of its gene activity—at a specific zip code in a human organ or tissue.
Then we have, the relentless push to add connectivity to home gadgets is creating dangerous side effects that figure to get even worse.
Then we have, Botnets are used to commit click fraud.
Google ads pay a site owner according to the number of people who click on them. The attacker instructs all the computers on his botnet to repeatedly visit the Web page and click on the ad. Dot, dot, dot, PROFIT! If the botnet makers figure out more effective ways to siphon revenue from big companies online, we could see the whole advertising model of the Internet crumble.
Then we have, hackers breaking into computers over the Internet and controlling them en masse from centralized systems. The problem is getting worse, thanks to a flood of cheap webcams, digital video recorders, and other gadgets in the “Internet of things.”
Then we have, reinforcement learning. Reinforcement learning may soon inject greater intelligence into much more than games.
SO WHAT NOW?
What are the implications to human development and the diversity of life on earth? What opportunities are there to reduce risks and vulnerabilities, enhance resilience, and create transformations to prosperous and equitable futures?
Science can provide only some answers; it is not a panacea for all problems. We need to also make personal, economic, social, and political changes, whatever the cost will be.
Reinforcement-learning algorithm can learn from collated data and experiment in simulation to suggest, say, how and when to operate the cooling systems.
Algorithms don’t know the Meaning of Environment.
They have however so concept of the “The term ‘environment’ it refers to all external conditions and factors that affect living organisms. Here external factors mean all the things around us such as air, water, light, animals, humans etc.
Algorithms are shadow boxers of yesterday all because technology trends can affect the bottom line of business.
Although big data algorithms hold great promise, they should still be approached with caution and skepticism.
For instance Algorithms should not be relied upon to ration medical care until the technology has substantially matured.
If we ignore what is happening there will be more riots, and increasing divisions along economic, religious and ethnic lines with Robots completely replacing humans in the workforce.
IT IS TIME FOR THE OWNERS ALL PROFIT SEEKING ALGORITHMS TO BE REGISTERED WITH A COPY OF THE WORKING CODE. NO PROFIT EARNING ALGORITHMS SHOULD BE GRANTED A PATIENT.
All human comments appreciated all like clicks chucked in the bin.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ITS ALGORITHMS SHOULD BE REGULATED.
Up to now man has exploited almost every opportunity that has come his way to make profit.
In theory you could lay the blame for all our present day troubles on a plant that exploited man – Wheat – in which man invested, time, labor, energy, power and money.
The next exploitation will not be a plant that we are all biological connected to. It will be an innate object called a micro chip turned into Algorithms.
In recent years we are just beginning to release that there is going to be a fundamental change to the ways we will be living our lives in the future.
Our modern global economy struggles with the challenge of using limited natural resources without exhausting them and we are just beginning to value lower life forms, perhaps because we are going to become one.
If and when computer programs attain super human intelligence with unprecedented power should we begin to value these microchip programs more than we value humans?
Would it be acceptable for artificial intelligence in the form of unsupervised Algorithms to exploit us and the earth?
If it is ethical for humans to exploit so must it be for AI.
This is what is taking place with Capitalist Algorithms that are designed to exploit greed.
Giant Tech like Google and Baidu are spending billions on the race for patents and intellectual property rights, combined with external funds (also in the billions) they are on a mission to privatizing the future.
In 2016, the AI market was worth just $644 million. This year (2017) that amount nearly double. Growing exponentially from there, AI is expanding its reach outside of the technology sector, nature and what it provides us all with is a risk of exploitation.
It is now or never if we are to avoid dismal subjugation to continuing exploitation. There’s no turning back now.
Apple has become an icon of American capitalism, technological innovation, and shareholder wealth creation.
It’s hard to pinpoint the exact path that AI will take, but there is one thing for sure – It’s Time to Take AI Seriously.
A small, lucky handful of early movers will ride it to untold riches in the Cloud with Quantum Computing, which will result in the ultimate decoupling of humanity from individualism and nature, turning existence itself into mathematical patterns.
In the next five years artificial intelligence will exist as a layer of capability atop every business process, from customer service and marketing to product development and sales, across every industry.
This can be seen already with hungry money putting a monetary values on nature, as it commences to aid and abet, (failing to convey “real” ecological value or reasons for conservation) the packaging of fresh water, scarce resources, energy, etc.
Rest assured Google with biochemical algorithms will know you from the day you are born. Google was not born yesterday, nor was Twitter/Facebook, there comments or like algorithms can already predict your opinions and desires and will perhaps make important life decision on your behalf such as electing the next D Trump.
By the time the rest of us find out about the phenomenon, it’s too late.
It’s already hard to design regulations that ensure we don’t over farm the land, don’t over fish the seas, don’t over cut the forests and don’t take too much water from our rivers and aquifers.
It is not hard to subject all emerging AI to examination. To hold a copy of their software, before they degrade our humanity further. (See previous posts)
Technology is arranging the world so that we don’t have to experience it.
While there are numerous natural resources that are being capitalized upon all across the world we are all so preoccupied committing communal suicide on our smart phones, that we are now unintentionally buying into technology that is not going to save the planet but rape it.
Hungry investment money sole purpose is profit.
If you were expecting some kind of warning when computers finally get smarter than us, then think again.
Our electronic overlords are already taking control, and they are doing it in a far more subtle way than science fiction would have us believe.
Invisible computations that increasingly control how we interact with our electronic world are now acquiring the very essence of what makes the world tick. To the extent we’ve lost the sense of what’s actually happening in this world we’ve made.
Online trading algorithms that are increasingly controlling markets, stock exchanges, feeding on data to exploit any weakness, while Google’s data-crunching algorithm harvesting our personal data and shape the web we see accordingly. Changing the way humans think. As its code gets ever more sophisticated it is reaching its tentacles into all aspects of our lives, including our cultural preferences.
We have to challenge investments which are driven by AI algorithms if they are based on Profit.
Why?
Because they are packing nature into investment portfolios, which are going to cause more and more conflict in the world.
Take the Paris Climate Change agreement to limit Co2. Worthless!
Because Hungry Money is undermining true conservation investment, and climate change incentives, turning them into emissions trading, commonly referred to as cap-and-trade, embodies commodification of nature in that it allows for the trade of pollution and emissions within a given limit for a specific environment.
Rather than simply outright prohibiting or allowing pollution and other various negative externalities, cap-and-trade essentially permits members of an industry to buy and sell units of emission with a maximum set for the industry as a whole.
Isn’t there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale?
In recent decades, market values have crowded out non market norms in almost every aspect of life-medicine, education, government, law, art, sports, even family life and personal relations.
Without quite realizing it, we are drifted from having a market economy to being a market society. Technology and AI are undermining current economic systems with profits that do not contributing to any conservation or sustainability.
Tourist paradises have sprung up in places of high biodiversity, offering exclusivity to their owners and clients while violating agrarian rights, creating social conflict, and destroying ecosystems.
Gigantic cruse Ships bring hordes of App driven city slickers to UNESCO Sites destroying them like Venice, to the Antarctic, to African natural protected areas (in zones of predominantly private property), giving them exclusive rights and increasing real estate values and investments in tourism.
While good governance can be an end in itself, the link between good
governance and poverty reduction is much more complex, and can be obscured by the intrusion of political agendas.
Absentee owners rarely have the same sense of stewardship and restraint as local owners.
What we don’t seem to be able to grasp is that we, every one of us is the Universe. It flows through all of us, not through AI, or platforms driven by profit seeking Algorithms.
They will never be connected like us to it, with or without a conscious.
As algorithms spread their influence beyond machines to shape the raw landscape around them, it might be time to work out exactly how much they know and whether we still have time to tame them.
The parameters used to define “money.”
Who believe money refers only to currencies such as bank notes, coins, and money deposited in savings or checking accounts, digital currency bitcoin, above-ground gold supply, and funds invested in various financial products.
The world isn’t that simple anymore, what Money Can’t Buy is now out of control thanks to AI.
If we are to make this new World of technology work we must apply a World Aid commission on all Algorithms that are designed for profit. ( See previous posts)
There will be little use in walking around a world with Smart phones, Ipads, if we cannot unite before we all vanish into the cloud of exploitation.
You be the :
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
Technology is now deeply embedded within society, so not planning for the future of technology is by far one of the most costly mistakes we will ever make, in more ways than one.
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