Tag Archives: The Future of Mankind

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: Humans have extracted/ pumped and moved so much of the earths material, (sand rock, oil/groundwater etc) that it’s actually caused the planet’s axis to shift.

24 Monday Jul 2023

Posted by in #whatif.com, Climate Change.

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( Three minute read)

We’ve long laid a heavy hand on the planet’s ecosystems, and perhaps now it is time to wield that hand more deliberately and creatively.

The influence of human activity on the Earth’s ecosystems has become so extreme that it now seems to be the central driver of environmental change but is there another contributing reason.

Our planet is constantly trying to balance the flow of energy in and out of Earth’s system. But human activities are throwing that off balance, causing our planet to warm in response.

The Earth’s rotational pole normally changes and wanders by about several meters each year.

Without better management, an estimated 42% to 79% of all watersheds that pump groundwater may no longer be able to maintain healthy ecosystems by 2050. This rate of change has frightening implications for the future.

Below the Earth’s surface lies over a thousand times more water than all the rivers and lakes in the world.

We’ve been extracting so much groundwater that it caused the Earth’s rotational pole to drift by 64.16 degrees east at about 4.36 centimetres per year from 1993 to 2010.

On top of this we have extracted trillions and trillions of litres of oil, moved trillions of tons of sand/rocks, put trillions of tons of concrete on the surface, changing the landscape and its weight distribution for several thousands of years. Resulting in the rotation of the earth on its axis changing, not just in speed but in it’s tilth angle, effecting the Jet stream, the direction of ocean currents, the length of day and night.

Perhaps it is one of the reasons that the climate is changing.

Extracting it unsustainably.

Glaciers are disappearing, melting faster than they can be replenished, like this glacier located in Greenland. Melting is happening faster in Greenland and the rest of the Arctic, which is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth.

It is not possible to predict with any certainty what the coming decades might look like for Earth’s energy budget.

Groundwater is used for about 40% of global irrigation and provides almost half of all drinking water.

To put it simply, groundwater depletion contributes to sea level rise because water is being transferred from the continents to the oceans. This is significant because each millimetre rise in sea level is said to make the shoreline retreat an average of 1.5 meters.

If Earth’s rotation does keep accelerating?

The Earth has rotational kinetic energy associated with going spinning around its axis once a day.

Rotational kinetic energy depends on:

  • How fast the object is spinning (faster spinning means more energy).
  • How much mass the spinning object has (more massive means more energy).

How is the planet going to handle that?  No one knows.

Maybe there will be chaos across the tech industry, or maybe we won’t even notice, as time will be flying by.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. WHEN IT COMES TO CLIMATE CHANGE WE NEED TO CUT OUT THE VERBAL BULL SHIT.

23 Sunday Jul 2023

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2023 the year of disconnection., A solution to Climate change., Carbon Emissions., Civilization., Climate Change., Collective stupidity., Cop 29, Enegery, Environment, Green Energy., HUMAN ABILITIES., Humanity., Life., Reality., Renewable Energy., State of the world, Sustaniability, Telling the truth., The common good., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., Truthfulness., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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( Six minute read)

Although we have been raising public awareness on climate change for years, this is not enough.

Despite the effects of climate change becoming more and more obvious, big polluting corporations – the ones responsible for the majority of carbon emissions – continue to carry on drilling for and burning fossil fuels.

Climate change is happening now, and it’s the most serious threat to life on our planet.

The global temperature increases day by day with much of Southern Europe and Northern Africa already in the grips of back-to-back heatwaves, which have caused wildfires and broken temperature records.

We all know that this warming causes harmful impacts such as the melting of Arctic sea ice, more severe weather events like heatwaves, floods and hurricanes, rising sea levels, spread of disease and the acidification of the ocean.

To date we have had around 26 global conferences  resulting in agreements and promises, with insufficient actions to make any material changes to global temperatures rising.

Unless greenhouse gas emissions and global temperature are reduced within years, the world will face demanding consequences.

While every fraction of a degree making climate tipping points more likely the next UN Climate Change Conference will convene from 30 November to 12 December 2023 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE).

With signs that some climate tipping points are already approaching / irreversible we will witness once more the who’s the how’s and where while the melting of polar glaciers and sea ice, die-back of the Amazon rainforest and coral reef extinction are all on the edge of tipping over into a feedback loop of self-destruction, whereby their decline itself becomes a source of warming.

We can’t be sure exactly when tipping becomes inevitable.

Because of war in the Ukrain (which is affecting the world food supply) the climate targets will become looser and looser, higher and higher with world governments doing even less in the future.

We don’t have the policies in place, we don’t have the financing in place to reach any of the goals required.

Seven million people are already being killed by climate change around the world – as many as those killed by Covid. Yet progress by world governments has been achingly slow.  it’s never been more important to demand that our leaders act.

Current policies are “totally inadequate” and you may rest assured that world leaders will once again make a “terrible mistake” in prioritising inflation, the pandemic and the Ukraine war over the climate.

We need concrete solutions to make it less uncomplicated to achieve any goals.

The world cannot be at  “positive tipping point” in the fight against climate change without addressing the lack of financing. ( See previous posts)

There are signs that some climate tipping points are already approaching, according to new research.

Many commitments to reduce carbon emissions have been set, but few are binding and targets are often missed.

Climate change isn’t just a scientific problem or a political challenge its a distribution of wealth problem including technologies such as artificial intelligence.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, and to feel that climate change is too big to solve. It can be challenging to wrap your head around such a complex issue, These impacts are severe and far-reaching – both now and into the future – with no sign of slowing down unless drastic action is taken.

To work, all of these solutions need strong international cooperation between governments and businesses, including the most polluting sectors.

Many of the world’s biggest challenges, from poverty to wildlife extinction, are made more difficult by climate change.

But we already have the answers, now it’s a question of making them happen.

Mitigating greenhouse gas emissions requires changes in many areas, namely buildings, transportation, and the energy industry.

Governments want to be re-elected, and  businesses can’t survive without customers. Demanding action from them is a powerful way to make change happen.

Transitioning to a sustainable future comes with a massive price tag, but it isn’t always clear who should foot the bill – or how the money should be spent.

Developing countries will increasingly be stuck with debts to pay for their climate solutions.In the US, the value placed on the social cost of carbon has fluctuated in recent years, with far-reaching effects (Credit: Getty Images)

We are now facing an important crossroads. Make profit out of climate change or see it as a one-off, last-chance opportunity – to restructure economies at the pace and scale that climate science requires by integrating climate action into the economic recovery.

As the impacts of climate change add up, economists are trying to figure out what the true cost of a tonne of carbon really is. ” The most important figure you’ve never heard of”

It is basically a complete denial of climate science that underpinned the social cost of carbon.

Such as the cost of adapting to sea-level rise, or how increased temperatures affect labour productivity, and how crop yields will be affected. The impacts of climate change will be felt over many hundreds of years, whereas cutting emissions costs money now. A high discount rate suggests those alive today are worth more than future generations, whereas a low one suggests the opposite.

It defines how much society should pay to avert future damages caused by climate change. It also accounts for the impact that today’s emissions will have on future generations.

Instead of making assumptions about issues such as the relationship between temperature and human wellbeing at some abstract point in the future, there is now a lot of real-life data.  If we pass certain climate tipping points, such as thawing permafrost and ice sheet disintegration, the runaway damage caused will increase the social cost of carbon. It will certainly affect the actions that people undertake.

It’s overwhelmingly accepted that climate change is a very significant threat to humanity.

We probably underestimated the consequences but every small step we take as individuals contributes.

So why not demand solar panel’s be put on every roof, free of costs, or that villages build solar farm to supply greed energy to their inhabitants, instead of military spending that will be worthless in the fight against rising tempts.

By financing renewable energy, “smart grid” technologies and other green innovations, of course things do not suddenly stabilise at 2030, but at the very least its a concrete step in the right direction.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: Misaligned or confused and conflated goals of an AI will be a significant concern of the future.

21 Friday Jul 2023

Posted by in 2023 the year of disconnection., Collective stupidity.

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( Fourteen minute read)

The biggest problem of our world today is not artificial intelligence but natural stupidity!

When it comes to climate change – profit seeking algorithms – and the Military race to send atomist drone killers into the battle field –  Welcome to the perplexing world of collective stupidity!

The Trump campaign and Brexit – where we all woke up the next day astounded that “this could happen” are both prime examples of campaigns that leaned heavily on the emotions of anxiety, fear and tribalism. and collective stupidly.

Since then, there has been much unpacking of “what happened” and talk about “it could only have been “stupid” people” who could have voted that way.

But is this true?

Yes, profound lapses in logic can plague even the smartest mind.

There are intelligent people who are stupid. So why the paradox? Stupidity is not a lack of IQ.

Unconscious emotions drive our decisions –  Intuitive feelings gave us an evolutionary advantage in caveman days, a survival way of dealing with information overload; and can still play a useful role as we on the precipice of a critical moment with AI.

All over the world, we are in the midst of a great shift. The data revolution has given way to the analytics movement. Press our emotional buttons and our judgement is derailed. Hence the temptation to choose the first solution that comes to mind, even if obviously flawed.

It seems that nothing encourages stupidity more than group culture.

An uncritical dependence on set rules often leads to absurd decisions, the-way-we-do-things-here, often not being the most intelligent way.

And the more intelligent someone is, the more disastrous the results of their stupidity.

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With generative AI technologies data-driven insights are reshaping outcomes without needing to write code, becoming truly intrusive, enabling decision-makers, analysts, data scientists and developers to collaborate and develop analytical insights in real time.

SO, WHAT CAN WE DO TO PROTECT OURSELVES FROM DOING STUPID THINGS?

Knowledge of our foolish nature, can help us escape its grasp.

We can step outside the group of Google algorithms knowledge to question where we are at and going.

and revert to culture-thinking that relies on that “everyone knows the true”

Stupidity is all around us. As long as there have been humans there has been human stupidity,

. —————

Over the past decade, we’ve seen the volume of data available to decision-makers grow exponentially.

In this intelligence era, it’s no longer about how much data one company can generate, it’s about how they use it. Corporate leaders, academics, policymakers, and countless others are looking for ways to harness generative AI technology, which has the potential to transform the way we learn, work, and more.

Generative AI is evolving quickly, but to truly get the most benefits from this ground breaking technology, you need to manage the wide array of risks.

Why?

Because generative AI is so powerful and easy to use, it’s poised to change what is real and what is not.

Unlike earlier disruptions, the reality of the generative AI race is already looking out of control. 

This could be the first “disruptive” new tech in a long time built and controlled largely by giants in the tech world which could entrench, rather than shake up, the status quo.

Right now, only a handful of companies — including Google, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft (through their $10 billion investment in Open-air) — are responsible for the world’s leading large language models.

So what can policymakers do about AI?

Is there a way to prevent the hottest new technology from simply cementing the power of the tech giants? 

Virtual worlds should not become walled gardens. 

It is abundantly clear that leaving it to the market to decide how these powerful technologies are used, and by whom, is a very risky proposition.

———

For decades, many of the great scientific and philosophical minds had conceived of creating collective intelligence in the form of a globally connected space to pool our knowledge.

Social Media -Smart phones – are digitalizing citizens and their resulting emergent behaviour.

This is a phenomenon that occurs in complex adaptive systems. In such systems, simple components interact in such a way that the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Our collective intelligence has now become what can only be referred to as our collective stupidity.

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The Dark Side — Collective Stupidity.

Collective stupidity can be perplexing and is often harmless.

How is it possible that a group of smart individuals can sometimes make decisions so perplexing, it feels like the intelligence just evaporated?

How does collective stupidity happen?

Are we are better off by not underestimating the effects of this phenomenon?

A system based on generating clicks and interactions has created an environment for the outlandish and bizarre to flourish, with expertise falling by the wayside.

Broad, anonymous social networks breed collective stupidity.

Top Social Media Statistics And Trends Of 2023

In 2023, an estimated 4.9 billion people use social media across the world this number is expected to jump to approximately 5.85 billion users by 2027.

The driving force.  The increasing global adoption of 5G technology.

These staggering numbers aren’t just statistics, either. They highlight the expansive influence and potential of social media platforms. Right now, 1.9 billion daily users access Facebook’s platform, Twitter has gained 319 new users per minute in 2020, while 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube in the same amount of time. Millions of businesses around the world rely on Facebook to connect with people.

The recent new platform Threads Meta’s new social network, had 100 million sign ups in its first five days.

With this much content being generated, how can experts possibly stand out from the crowd?

By emulating the human ability to forget some of the data, psychological AIs will transform algorithmic accuracy.

Machine learning, on the other hand, typically takes a different path: It sees reasoning as a categorization task with a fixed set of predetermined labels. It views the world as a fixed space of possibilities, enumerating and weighing them all.

Social media networks are not very sociable these days. Feeds are algorithmic, which means you see whatever the apps want to show you.

All this has eroded public confidence.

——–

We all have intelligence and expertise to offer, even if the internet leaves us feeling isolated at times.

With so much misguided thought and active disinformation online, it has become difficult for people with insight worth sharing to do so. Behind the anonymity of the web, anyone can claim to be an expert. When everybody is an expert, nobody is.

With online communities, the relationship between experts and their audience becomes a two-way street.

Many of the issues we throw billions of dollars at and attempt to solve with technology could be easily achieved if we were able to better utilize our collective intelligence.

Technology is the means, not the end; its potential is massive, but not as great as our own.

So we wildly overestimate our access to our own mind.

In essence, the same emergent behaviour that typically helps the group survive sometimes leads to collective stupidity and death.

The Internet gave us the ability to connect with people on a global scale.

But its click-baiting algorithms and lack of regulation also brought with them chaos. As social media came to dominate the landscape, it made using the internet for the purpose of collective intelligence increasingly difficult.

You see, with stupidity, or stupid people for that matter, protesting or reasoning doesn’t really work. This is mainly because of their strong prejudice. They simply disbelieve any facts or reasoning we provide. In most cases, they either simply deny the arguments. And if they can’t, then they call them trivial exceptions.

People are often made stupid under certain circumstances. Maybe they allow this to happen to themselves. It is a group phenomenon.

The nature of stupidity has its roots deep in the subconscious. It is largely driven by the fundamental mechanics of our experience. following the herd. It is arguably the most prominent one, and mostly it does make sense. If the information is lacking, doing what others are doing is probably the best bet. But this doesn’t work all the time.

In fact, herd behaviour is among the pre-eminent causes of stupidity.

It is not that intellect suddenly fails. But people are deprived of inner independence, so they give up autonomous positions under the overwhelming impact. We always feel that we are dealing with slogans, signs, buzzwords, and not with the real person. As if they are under the spell of someone or something.

As this happens, we are also creating (unknowingly) various risks to our socio-economic structure, civilization in general, and to some extent, for the human species.

Species-level risks are not evident yet; However, the other two, socio-economic and civilization level risks, are significant enough to be ignored.

So far, several significant building blocks have been developed and are in progress. When we stitch them together, AI’s capability will increase multifold, which should be a more significant concern for us.

It takes the already tiny amount of time we have to change our ways, and save the planet, and practically cuts it in half.

We have less than 27 years to get our collective act together and reshape how our entire civilisation operates. And I’m not sure if we can do that… The more concerning part is about the risks that we have not thought of yet. We may not be able to avoid all of them, but we can understand them to address them.

Our over-enthusiasm for new technologies has somehow colluded our quality expectations. So much so that we have almost stopped demanding the right quality solutions. We are so fond of this newness that we are ignoring flaws in new technologies.

The problem with these low-quality solutions is that subpar techs’ flaws do not surface until it is too late!

In many cases, the damage is already done and maybe be irreversible.

Misalignment between our goals and the machine’s goals could be dangerous. It is easier to correct a team of humans; doing that with a rampant machine could be a very tricky and arduous task.

Achieving a level of alignment with human-level common sense is quite tricky for a computerized system. Without having any balanced approach like a scorecard, this may not be achievable.

Technology is an answer to the “how” of the strategy, but without having the right “why” and “what” in place, it can do more damage than good. When AI systems do not know why, there will always be a lurking risk of discrimination, bias, or an illogical outcome.

Weapon systems equipped with AI are the most vulnerable to the right AI in wrong hand problems and therefore have the greatest risks. The Russian /Ukrain war is now the labourite of drone warfare. The possibility of AI systems being used to overpower others by some group or a country is a significant risk.

Overall, the right AI’s risk in the wrong hands is one of the critical challenges and warrants substantial attention to avoid it.

Extending AI and automation beyond logical limits could potentially alter our perception of what humans can do.

We still value human interaction, communication skills, emotional intelligence, and several other qualities in humans. What happens when an AI app takes over? What happened to AI doing mundane tasks and leaving time for us to do what we like and love?

The most important thing in artificial intelligence isn’t the fancy algorithms.

Let’s assume the worst case and we have a general purpose AI – that can do everything a human can.

What would happen?

Waiting for smartphone app to tell us what to do next and how we might be feeling now!

The enormous power carried by the grey matter in our heads may become blunt and eventually useless if we never exercise it, turning it into just some slush. The old saying, “use it or lose it,” is explicitly applicable in this case. Half knowledge is more dangerous than ignorance!

Trust me, a lot can happen in 24 hours. The lesson here is – in times like this, the first principles-based thinking is your best bet.

Our problem is that on one side, we have intelligent people, who are full of doubts, and on the other, we have stupid people full of confidence. Stupidity is not an intellectual failing, it’s a moral failing. And it happens because we believe only in feelings and not in facts or truthfulness

When we see and hear all this, we wonder if there is any antidote? If there is any way to stop this from happening?

The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.

So the question now is, “How are we going to fight this AI pandemic?”

We will finally recognize that more computing power makes machines faster, not smarter.

If a problem is too difficult for a machine, it is we who will have to adapt to its limited abilities.

There is already a frustrating struggle for humans and machines to understand one another in natural language. Soon, we will live in a world where, regardless of your programming abilities, the main limitations are simply curiosity and imagination.

The Garland Test, inspired by dialog from the movie, is passed when a person feels that a machine has consciousness, even though they know it is a machine.

Will computers pass the Garland Test in 2023? I doubt it. But what I can predict is that claims like this will be made, resulting in yet more cycles of hype, confusion, and distraction from the many problems that even present-day AI is giving rise to.

This will force us to reconsider how our behaviours today might influence digital versions of ourselves set to outlive us.

Faced with this prospect of virtual immortality, 2023 will be the year we broaden our definition of what it means to live forever, a moral question that will fundamentally change how we live our day-to-day lives, but also what it means to be immortal stupid.

We tend to think we are the be all and end all—but we’re not. The sooner we can realize that the natural world goes its way, not our way, the better.”  “I hope as a consequence that the needs and wonder and importance of the natural world are seen. We tend to think we are the be all and end all—but we’re not.

We’re both the victims and benefactors, and the sooner we can realize that the natural world goes its way, not our way, the better.” Sir David Attenborough.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail,com

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: THERE IS NO MORE ROOM FOR OPTIMISM WHEN IT COME TO REVERTING CLIMATE CHANGE.

18 Tuesday Jul 2023

Posted by in Climate Change.

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(Five minute read)

The truth is.

Limiting the damage requires rapid, radical change to the way the world works.

A scientist standing in front of a globe delivers a speech at Cop in Copenhagen, 15 December 2009.

In this post I will lay out the true case for pessimism and the true case for (cautious) optimism.

“Is there hope?” is just a malformed question.

It mistakes the nature of the problem.

The atmosphere is steadily warming. Things are going to get worse for humanity the more it warms.

But there’s nothing magic about 2 degrees. It doesn’t mark a line between not-screwed and screwed.

We have some choice in how screwed we are, and that choice will remain open to us no matter how hot it gets.

Even if temperature rise exceeds 2 degrees, the basic structure of the challenge will remain the same.

It will still be warming. It will still get worse for humanity the more it warms. Two degrees will be bad, but three would be worse, four worse than that, and five worse still.

When temperatures reach 60c photosynthesis stops working and the need for sustainability becomes more urgent, not less. At that point, we will be flirting with non-trivial tail risks of species-threatening — or at least civilization-threatening — effects.

In sum:

Humanity faces the urgent imperative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then eliminate them, and then go “net carbon negative,” i.e., absorb and sequester more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits.

It will face that imperative for several generations to come, no matter what the temperature is.

What are the reasonable odds that the current international regime, the one that will likely be in charge for the next dozen crucial years, will reduce global carbon emissions enough to hit the 2 degree target?

Can we restrain and channel our collective development in a sustainable direction.    NO

For any hope of hitting 2 degrees, global emissions must peak and begin rapidly falling within the next dozen years. And they must continue rapidly falling until humanity goes net carbon negative sometime around mid-century or shortly thereafter.

That means developed countries must go negative earlier, to allow for a slower and more difficult shift in developing countries.

Accomplishing that would require immediate, bold, sustained, coordinated action. And, well … look around. Look at how things are going. Look at who is running things. Look at the established economic regimes of the last half-century.  Is this likely to happen, not on your nelly

As Enno Schröder and Servaas Storm of Delft University write in their blunt and unsettling recent paper, “the required degree and speed with which we have to decarbonize our economies and improve energy efficiency are quite difficult to imagine within the context of our present socioeconomic system.”

The dominant climate-economic models used to generate scenarios showing how to hit the 2 degree target produce a few key common outcomes.

One is that they require an extraordinary amount of energy efficiency. The bulk of the reduction in demand for fossil fuels through 2040 or so, in most successful 2 degree scenarios, is accomplished by reduction in overall energy demand. It is only around 2040 that displacement of fossil fuel energy by zero-carbon energy takes over as the dominant driver of fossil fuel reductions.

For centuries now, the growth of economies has been tightly coupled with rising energy demand and rising greenhouse gas emissions — a one-to-one correlation, more or less.

In recent years, however, several countries have seen their economies grow faster than their emissions.

The world’s current economies are not capable of the emission reductions required to limit temperature rise to 2 degrees. If world leaders insist on maintaining historical rates of economic growth, and there are no step-change advances in technology, hitting that target requires a rate of reduction in carbon intensity for which there is simply no precedent.

Despite all the recent hype about decoupling, there’s no historical evidence that current economies are decoupling at anything close to the rate required.

In fact, it’s worth noting that the vast majority of scenarios used by climate policymakers take continued economic growth as an unquestioned premise. And they also accept that historical technology improvement rates will hold in the future. The question they basically answer: “How much can we reduce emissions while continuing to grow our economies at historical rates, with technology developing at historical rates?”

Put simply, if we are determined to maintain the economic status quo, we cannot possibly mitigate climate change, so we must turn to adapting to it.

We have to come to terms with the impossibility of material, social, and political progress as a universal promise: life is going to be worse for most people in the 21st century in all these dimensions.

The political consequences of this are hard to predict.

The choice is radicalism today or disaster tomorrow, and from all signs, humanity is choosing the latter.

The fight to decarbonize and eventually go carbon negative will last beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this post. That is true no matter how high the temperature rises. The stakes will always be enormous; time will always be short; there will never be an excuse to stop fighting.

All of this needs collective action and a strong directional thrust which ‘markets’ or ‘private agents’ alone are unable to provide.

But rapid change is not just possible in technology. It is also possible in politics.

In both domains, there are “tipping points” after which change accelerates, rendering the once implausible inevitable.

We are rarely able to predict those tipping points.

Relying on them can seem like hoping for miracles. But our history is replete with miraculously rapid changes. They have happened; they can happen again. And the more we envision them, and work toward them, the more likely they become.

What other choice is there?

It will take close to half a million years before a ton of CO2 emitted today from burning fossil fuels is completely removed from the atmosphere naturally.

The world militaries contribution to green house gases ( and I am guessing ) alone is bigger than the economic out put of the whole of the African.

It has been 30 years since the Rio summit, when a global system was set up that would bring countries together on a regular basis to try to solve the climate crises.

The ink was hardly dry on the Glasgow pact when the world began to change in ways potentially disastrous for hopes of tackling the climate crisis. Energy and food price rises mean that governments face a cost of living and energy security crisis, with some threatening to respond by returning to fossil fuels, including coal.

Despite pledges made at climate summit the world is still nowhere near its goals on limiting global temperature rise. The next summit will be on different as no one wants to carry the financial can. 

(In previous post I have suggested the establishment of a Perpetual green fund by placing 0.05% commission on all activities that are not sustainable.) This could spread the cost of tackling the climate crises Fairley.   

We don’t have time to have unquestioned assumptions.  

The real truth is that the earth in its billion of years of existence ( with our without us) has gone through many climate change disasters and survived.

We on the other had only need a further temperature rise to join a log list of extinction.  

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. Ten years from now, we may look back on this moment in history as a colossal mistake or it could be the greatest empowerment moment in human history.

11 Tuesday Jul 2023

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2023 the year of disconnection., Artificial Intelligence.

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( Four minute read)

This year, the world got a rude awakening to the insane power of AI when OpenAI unleashed ChatGPT4 onto the world. This AI text generator/chatbot seemed to be able to replicate human-generated content so well that even AI detection software struggled to tell the difference between the two.

This is not an alien invasion of intelligent machines; it’s the result of our own efforts to make our infrastructure and our way of life more intelligent.

It’s part of human endeavour. We merge with our machines. Ultimately, they will extend who we are.

Our mobile phone, for example, makes us more intelligent and able to communicate with each other. It’s really part of us already. It might not be literally connected to you, but nobody leaves home without one.

It’s like half your brain.

Thinking of AI as a futuristic tool that will lead to immeasurable good or harm is a distraction from the ways we are using it now.

How do we ensure that the AI we build, which might very well be significantly smarter than any person who has ever lived, is aligned with the interests of its creators and of the human race?

What if at some point in the near future, computer scientists build an AI that passes a threshold of superintelligence and can build other super intelligent AI.

An unaligned super intelligent AI could be quite a problem.

For example, we’ve been predicting for decades that AI will replace radiologists, but machine learning for radiology is still a complement for doctors rather than a replacement. Let’s hope this is a sign of AI’s relationship to the rest of humanity—that it will serve willingly as the ship’s first mate rather than play the part of the fateful iceberg.

No laws can prevent China ~ Russia ~ Terrorist network~  Rogue psychopath from developing the most manipulative and dishonest AI you could possibly imagine.

We can’t trust some speculative future technology to rescue us.

Climate change is already killing people, and many more people are going to die even in a best-case scenario, but we get to decide now just how bad it gets.

Action taken decades from now is much less valuable than action taken soon.

The first role AI can play in climate action is distilling raw data into useful information – taking big datasets, which would take too much time for a human to process, and pulling information out in real time to guide policy or private-sector action.

Everyone wants a silver bullet to solve climate change; unfortunately there isn’t one. But there are lots of ways AI can help fight climate change. While there is no single big thing that AI will do, there are many medium-sized things.

An attendee controls an AI-powered prosthetic hand during 2021 World Artificial Intelligence conference in Shanghai.

Most movies about AI have an “us versus them” mentality, but that’s really not the case.

Even if one were to stand on the side of curious skepticism, (which feels natural,) we ought to be fairly terrified by this nonzero chance of humanity inventing itself into extinction.

Whereas AI is, for now, pure software blooming inside computers. Someday soon, however, AI might read everything—like, literally every thing, swallowing everything into a black hole and not even god knows what it will be recycled.

Just shovel ever-larger amounts of human-created text into its maw, and wait for wondrous new skills to manifest. With enough data, this approach could perhaps even yield a more fluid intelligence, or a humanlike artificial mind akin to those that haunt nearly all of our mythologies of the future.

On the syllabus at the moment : Is a decent fraction of all the surviving text that we have ever produced.

To codify the philosophy in a set of wise laws and regulations to ensure the good behaviour of our super intelligent AI,  like laws to make it illegal, for example, to develop AI systems that manipulate domestic or foreign actors. Is pie in the sky –

In the next decade, autocrats and terrorist networks could be able to cheaply build diabolical AI that can accomplish some of the goals outlined in the Yudkowsky story. (The key issue is not “human-competitive” intelligence (as his open letter puts it); It’s what happens after AI gets to smarter-than-human intelligence.

Key thresholds here may not be obvious.

We definitely can’t calculate in advance what happens when, and it currently seems imaginable that a research lab would cross critical lines without noticing.

AT THE MOMENT ALL WE HAVE IS A COPING MECCHANISM.

Like non-proliferation laws for nuclear weaponry that are hard to enforce.

Nuclear weapons require raw material that is scarce and needs expensive refinement. Software is easier, and this technology is improving by the month.

Turing test: robot versus human sitting inside cubes facing each other

We have years to debate how education ought to change in response to these tools, but something interesting and important is undoubtedly happening.

If we figured out how people are going to share in the wealth that AI unlocks, then I think we could end up in a world where people don’t have to work to eat, and are instead taking on projects because they are meaningful to them.

But where do AI companies get this truly astonishing amount of high-quality data from?

Well, to put it bluntly, they steal it.

But as it stands, the AI boom might be approaching a flashpoint where these models can’t avoid consuming their own output, leading to a gradual decline in their effectiveness. This will only be accelerated as AI-generated content perfuses the internet over the coming years, making it harder and harder to source genuine human-made content.

AI is viewed as a strategic technology to lead us into the future.

So what should be done:

  • Many people lack a full understanding of AI and therefore are more likely to view it as a nebulous cloud instead of a powerful driving force that can create a lot of value for society;
  • Instead of writing off AI as too complicated for the average person to understand, we should seek to make AI accessible to everyone in society. It shouldn’t be just the scientists and engineers who understand it; through adequate education, communication and collaboration, people will understand the potential value that AI can create for the community.
  • We should democratize AI, meaning that the technology should belong to and benefit all of society; and we should be realistic about where we are in AI’s development.
  • Most of the achievements we have made are, in fact, based on having a huge amount of (labelled) data, rather than on AI’s ability to be intelligent on its own. Learning in a more natural way, including unsupervised or transfer learning, is still nascent and we are a long way from reaching AI supremacy.

From this point of view, society has only just started its long journey with AI and we are all pretty much starting from the same page. To achieve the next breakthroughs in AI, we need the global community to participate and engage in open collaboration and dialogue.

If this does not happen and happen (sooner than later) it will be AI that will be calling the shots

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

https://time.com/6266923/ai-eliezer-yudkowsky-open-letter-not-enough/

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. NECESSITY WILL BECOME THE MOTHER OF ALL INVENTIONS.

20 Tuesday Jun 2023

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( Twelve minute read) 

We all know that humans are bad for the planet, and for ourselves, but if you were asked to name the achievement of mankind what would be your list be like.

In our short fifty thousand-year history, we’ve had countless skirmishes, two World Wars, and are currently threatening over one million animal species with extinction, lending to our own.  

Against this back ground it would appear that we have not progress an iota, as we are still unable to comprehend fully that the plant we live on is our home and that what lives on it, are all contact to our survival and hence its survival.What if everything created in the built environment was balanced elsewhere? (Credit: Alamy)

Will our species go extinct? The short answer is yes. The fossil record shows everything goes extinct, eventually. Almost all species that ever lived, over 99.9%, are extinct.

Humans are inevitably heading for extinction. The question isn’t whether we go extinct, but when.

When necessity becomes the mother of all inventions our adaptability will make us our own worst enemies, too clever for our own good. (We adapt unlike any other species, through learned behaviours — culture – not DNA.) 

Changing the world sometimes means changing it for the worse, creating new dangers: nuclear weapons, pollution, overpopulation, climate change, pandemics.

Humans do not need to insert themselves into controlling life processes in every corner of the world, down to the very strands of DNA, to force the Earth system to absorb the shocks of our presence.

Up to Now we’ve escaped every trap we set for ourselves. So far.

Homo sapiens have already survived over 250,000 years of ice ages, eruptions, pandemics, and world wars. We could easily survive another 250,000 years or, longer. Survival sets a pretty low bar.

The question isn’t so much whether humans survive the next three or three hundred thousand years, but whether we can do more than just survive.

When the astronauts were on the moon, they were looking back at the Earth, they were not thinking that they were indeed inside the atmosphere of the Earth they were looking their home suspended in the void of the universe.  A planet that has lost 68% of its biodiversity, replaced with human-made material including concrete, plastic and bricks now outweighing the total mass of biological matter on the planet.

All of this challenges the way we see our planet’s borders.

The Earth’s extended atmosphere isn’t much good for supporting life, so to understand any of this we must realise that no human is ever going to leave Earth. ( Other than in the form cyborg. A portmanteau of cybernetic and organism— a being with both organic and biomechatronic body parts.)

——–

The problems, all tied to human consumption and population growth, will almost certainly worsen over coming decades. The damage will be felt for centuries and threatens the survival of all species, including our own. To understand the enormity of the challenges we face, future environmental conditions will be far more dangerous than experts currently believe. The problems are too numerous to cover in full here.

Essentially, humans have created an ecological Ponzi scheme. Consumption, as a percentage of Earth’s capacity to regenerate itself, has grown from 73% in 1960 to more than 170% today.people walking on a crowded street

Because in the face of environmental collapse, humanity may need to turn to artificial replacements for nature.

What if, earth really was in trouble and the planet’s natural systems are fated to collapse and die off?

Will we develop artificial back-ups to take their place.  Perhaps. 

Technology will be needed to liberate the land required for rewilding. But, watching the recent flurry of commercial space flights, I wondered about how much biodiversity had been lost to make that happen, what it cost the Earth system.

If the Earth is not to be irreversibly degraded and unbalanced, we need some equal and opposite pull in the direction of replenishing natural complexity. Surely the best reward of a healthy planet is space exploration, not it being an escape from a dying planet.


In Blade Runner 2049, solar panels and synthetic farming stretch to the distance (Credit: Blade Runner 2049)

The technology we have made has many beneficial direct and side effects which will influence positions on this list.

MY LIST:

Fire.  Without fire we as a species do not start living past the age of 30, we cannot create civilization and we cannot banish the dark starting to take control of our fears of what goes bump.in the night. True. 

Gun power.  Few inventions have had an impact on human affairs as dramatic and decisive as that of gunpowder. True.

The Wheel. Is one of the greatest achievement of mankind.. True

Language. An entire list of words, sentences, phrases and whole lot of grammar made up of strange sounds from our mouth have the power to express ourselves and others. Without language we would have been prisoners in our minds. Without Language creative writing wouldn’t be possible nor would be Internet. What would our thoughts be like if we did not know any language? We even think in a certain language. Landing on the moon is the ultimate result of this. Probably the most difficult thing ever achieved, and practically mythic, even if all we got were photos and rocks. There is no bigger achievement in our species’ history. Every discovery that preceded it lead to it.  It proclaimed in a way that humanity is no longer limited to planet Earth, that we have a future in other places too. True/False.

Music. Is the language of existence. It puts our humanity into perspective, and brings meaning to everyday moments. Without music, it would be very hard to reflect on where we are and what we are doing, because as selfish creatures we are never fully satisfied. True.

Writing.  Without writing, humanity really has no memory. Everything will be forgotten or distorted over time. And there are only so many good teaches and brilliant minds to teach others. With writing, one teacher can teach millions of students. Writing is a way to get thoughts on paper, stories, recipes, instructions, letters, nothing would exist in our modern work without the art of writing. True. 

Mathematics. Was one of the first creations of humans that exists beyond a physical world. True. 

The theory of evolution. Has completely altered our understanding of how organisms co-relate, change and came to be. It asks one of the most provocative questions… what are we? From what did we come from? What will we become. We created something that enables us to grasp truth. This allows us to explore the universe without using our senses. True.

Money. There are many theories about the origin of money, in part because money has many functions: It facilitates exchange as a measure of value; it brings diverse societies together by enabling gift-giving and reciprocity; it perpetuates social hierarchies; and finally, it is a medium of state power. Money soon became an instrument of political control. Taxes could be extracted to support the elite and armies could be raised. However, money could also act as a stabilizing force that fostered nonviolent exchanges of goods, information and services within and between groups. In our time, possession of cash currency differentiates the rich from the poor, the developed from the developing, the global north from the emerging global south. Money is both personal and impersonal and global inequality today is linked to the formalization of money as a measure of societal well-being and sustainability. Even as currency continues to evolve in our digital age, its uses today would still be familiar to our ancient predecessors. True.

Electricity, because without it we would go back to prehistoric times. And above all, nothing would be created. Electronic devices now make up a huge part of the lives for the majority of the world. True. 

Atomic power.  Fashioned it into nuclear weapons which possess the capacity to destroy every living thing in their path. Nothing man has done is more significant to the future of this world and its inhabitants. True. 

The airplane.  Change the world.  True.

The Gun.  Still changing the world. True.

Clothes/ Synthetic Fibres / Plastics.  The fashion industry is responsible for 8-10% of global emissions.

While all these other discoveries are amazing nothing compares to this.

The Microprocessor. Nothing else has changed the structure of human society more than the microprocessor. That tiny chip inside every smartphone, laptop and microcontroller is far and away the most complex object ever made by humans. It has given our species unfathomable powers of computation and processing, a set of tools that we now use in almost every field of human endeavour, from physics to medicine. The manipulation of genes is the future of medicine.  Social media and the Internet, technologies built atop the microprocessor, have permanently altered the way we communicate over long distances. The processor has, in essence, created a unified planet for the first time in history. True/ False.

Technology.  Judged entirely on its own traditional grounds of evaluation—that is, in terms of efficiency—the achievement of modern technology has been admirable with the Internet somewhere in the middle because it can bring both destruction and humanity, and without it we wouldn’t be as far as we are today. The greatest communication tool ever devised! Both true and false. 

The Smartphone.  Now one of the most ubiquitous technology devices of all time with billions of users worldwide –Has become your home We have become human snails carrying our home in our pockets with apps for different purposes, in much the same way that the rooms in a house each meet a different need. In the near future millions of people will across many parts of the world that are conflict-bound or subject to some of the worst effects of the climate crisis, have left their homeland behind completely in search of a new life. Combining artificial intelligence with the extraordinary data-gathering capabilities of smartphones, is creating other opportunities. There are few arenas of human endeavour left untouched by the smartphone. As smartphones continue to evolve, however, so too will the capabilities they unlock. True.

Google’s Android operating system.  Used by one in every three people on the planet is a  technology that is not simply innovative, but must become responsible. True

Inequality. To think about inequality today we need to think about inequality in the past. This is true for economic inequalities – inequalities of income and wealth – and even more true of inequalities in health, in status, in citizenship and political influence. To set current trends in context. We no longer have state-legalised slavery, perhaps the most brutal form of inequality ever devised. Given that health and survival are the most basic of measures of inequality, it can be seen that politics and a cross-class alliance between leading and visionary employers and their workers was a more important driver – than economics and relative incomes – of trends in this “biological” dimension of inequality.

Racism. Race is socially constructed, not biologically natural. True. 

The Bible represents the Word of God or just the greatest fictional work in history, but here’s one fact: Nothing else ever written by humans has shaped the world and the future as much as the Bible has. False.

All the things that we are saying here today are part of the big lie that we are being forced to tell you!

Why ?

Because every thing is made from particles and according to Quantum Physics they can’t both be in the same state. 

Quantum technology.  In the not so distant future we will invent a multi-tasking ‘quantum’ computers, far more powerful than even today’s most advanced supercomputers. This will be the last human invention. 

So-called quantum particles can be in two places at the same time and also strangely connected even though they are millions of miles apart. If we change one, the other instantly changes to compensate.

This happens even if we separate the two particles from each other on opposite sides of the universe. It’s as if information about the change we’ve made has travelled between them faster than the speed of light, something Einstein said was impossible.

They will be capable of solving some of the most important problems, with quantum algorithm.

I say  “People rolled their eyes and said: ‘it’s impossible’.”

Failing to acknowledge the magnitude of problems facing humanity is not just naïve, it’s dangerous. And science has a big role to play here. If the human-biosphere umbilical cord is to be cut, it should leave mother Earth in peak health, and in service to both parties.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. ON THE STATE OF THE WORLD ARE NEW WORDS NOW NEEDED THAT DEFINE THE PRESENT.

06 Tuesday Jun 2023

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At a time when the world is changing more quickly than ever before, we need a new vocabulary to help us grasp what’s happening.

I’m not sure that THE WORDS WE HAVE AT PRESENT TO DESCRIBE OUR WORLD hold anymore in the world-wide ‘web’ of meaning, we now inhabit (or are trapped in), with its exponentially increasing complexities.

Amid the whirlwind of our changing times, in which even the new language gurus cannot tell us where we’re going, there must be some universal value that can define us other than stupidity being digitalized.

Humanity is a blip in geologic history:

With social media words are just kind of disintegrate before your eyes or become a meaningless string of letters.

Like the word need which has become some kind of a fatigue sound, falling prey to semantic satiations, losing meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds.

Need is now repeated so much, that it is now as indistinct as the packages of generic Wal-Mart string cheese.

Take the  language of politics, for example, it is becoming increasingly blurred.

Right and left, conservative and progressive, traditional and modern — these words have become so calcified that we often get lost in the labyrinth of ambiguity.

If words created the world, then words can also enrich or impoverish it, sanctify or demonize it.

Language is rich in words and meaning, but it can also become petrified while reality creatively evolves around it.

The power of words is such that they can spark a war or bring about peace. Everything begins with language.

So then, what does “artificial intelligence” actually mean (to use the latest buzzwords)?

Even the brainy scientists don’t really understand it. If so, what just happened to you is nothing new.

These days we have the capacity to look billions of years into the past but it seems that we can’t see beyond our own very noses, or hear, when it comes to the planet.

It used to be said that to name something is to begin understanding it but the veneer of linguistic facility of AI is not the same as actually comprehending human language.

AI has burst out of its academic bubble into the real world, and its lack of understanding of that world can have real and sometimes devastating consequences.

It might be possible to write down all the unwritten facts, rules and assumptions required for understanding text but not language. We let machines learn to understand language on their own, simply by ingesting vast amounts of written text and learning to predict words.

But has GPT-3 — trained on text from thousands of websites, books and encyclopaedia’s — transcended Watson’s veneer? Does it really understand the language it generates and ostensibly reasons about?

The crux of the problem, in my view, is that understanding language requires understanding the world, and a machine exposed only to language cannot gain such an understanding.

Humans rely on innate, pre-linguistic core knowledge of space, time and many other essential properties of the world in order to learn and understand language. If we want machines to similarly master human language, we will need to first endow them with the primordial principles humans are born with.

Machines that can genuinely comprehend what “it” refers to in a sentence, and everything else that understanding “it” entails.

——–

The world faces four main challenges: climate change, mistrust of leaders, increased geopolitical tension, and the dark side of the technological revolution.  (Which is digitizing not just our imagination of our future’s by plundering the finite resources of the planet for profit.)

1) Climate change is the defining issue of our time,”  It represents an “existential threat” to humankind. “The planet will not be destroyed. What will be destroyed is our capacity to live on the planet.

2) People believe that the fruits of globalization are not being fairly distributed. Seven in 10 people in the world live in countries where inequality is growing.

3) Increased geopolitical tensions are further exacerbated by weaknesses in institutions. For example, the UN Security Council’s “inability to take decisions” or to enforce the ones they do take, such as the arms embargo.

4) Artificial Intelligence that is owned by corporations are unbalancing the values that are common to us all.  Turning Democracy into AI Totalitarianism Democratic Societies with mass surveillance.

Because in the age of the internet and super-connectivity, all of these things, like face recognition have been raised to sophisticated arts ( Clear View ) that, instead of being forced on us, have quietly colonised our lives.

In times past, when frustrating circumstances demanded new ways of expressing what it means to be alive here a few for present day use.

The internet/cyberspace is wonderful, because it gives people the freedom to augment or totally change their identities, and this is a marvellous new dawn for human expression, a new step in human evolution. Nah, it’s a false dawn, because the internet is essentially a libertarian arena, and as such an amoral one (lots of ‘freedoms’ but with no attendant social obligations); it is a new jungle where we must watch our backs and struggle for survival, surely a backward step in evolution.

  1. The term ‘hyperobject’ was coined by the academic Timothy Morton, and it refers to phenomena that are so large and so far beyond the human frame of reference that they are not susceptible to reason but to AI.
  2. Immigration. The realisation that racism never really went away, it just camouflaged its fundamental failure of empathy as tolerance – this is a contention of the Black Lives Matter movement. The term is now making the short jump to other second- (eg LGBT) and third- (eg feminism) phase civil rights movements equally lulled by the illusion of tolerance. The goal is to go beyond feeling tolerated to being fully accepted and welcomed.

3. Deletion. This word is likely to be bandied about much more frequently in the decades ahead, as social media users realise that the websites they are on are not merely neutral ‘platforms’ for ‘social interaction’ but more like a kind of flypaper to which people and all of their personal data stick. Moreover, these websites are specifically designed to be addictive –

4) Global capitalism is, by its unjust and shambolic nature, going to experience crashes of increasing severity throughout the 21st Century, leaving us all to survive with growing desperation amidst its wreckage.

5. Shadow banking. Nobody knows how large this sector is, but current estimates put shadow banking at (£124 trillion) and OTC transactions at (£412 trillion), or roughly twice and six-and-a-half times the GDP of the entire Earth, respectively. Both sectors were of course heavily involved in creating the 2008 crash, and both have remained almost unaltered since then.

6. Attention crisis. The fact that no one can take their eyes off their smartphones – James Williams writes that “the liberation of human attention may be the defining moral and political struggle of our time”. Our minds are being rewired for commercial purposes. His argument that the social contract, the idea of human rights, should be extended to cyberspace is gaining traction.

Was the creation of the internet not supposed to be the dawn of a technological and informational utopia? Even its father, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, is convinced it is failing us.

7. Post-human. It seems that history has caught up with us, for our identities now extend into cyberspace in many ways, we no longer merely rely on our brain cells but now store much of our knowledge in technological clouds that function as extensions of our minds, and we live with the corresponding hardware in such intimacy (in the form of portable devices that are linked to our minds and even metabolisms in many ways) that it sometimes feels like we are only a few steps away from being ‘cyborgs’ in the true sense of the term. Gender, though, is still a problem.

8. Masculinity. There was a time when you’d ask a man what masculinity was and his response would be something like ‘not feminine’ (pejorative) and ‘not queer’ (pejorative). Note all the negativity.

These days it is increasingly a good thing to be a woman (new, broad definition) and to be queer (new, broad definition). Both are eating away at the old territory occupied by masculinity, according to writers such as Hanna Rosin, Cordelia Fine or Grayson Perry. What’s left is something of a void, aka ‘the crisis of masculinity’.

The challenge ahead for men is to formulate what they are, and want to be, rather than what they aren’t. How to open up this frontier?

I have a suggestion. For generations feminists and queer activists have been fighting to draw attention to masculinity’s toxic side-effects. At long last, mainstream men seem on the verge of accepting that there is a problem. It remains for us all to take this a step further, and work to understand how this toxicity has also been poisoning men on the inside.

9. Generation Why? It applies to anyone born in the digital age.

To roughly clarify our terms here: Baby Boomers are the generation born after World War Two and before 1965; Generation X (Douglas Coupland) the cohort born between the mid-1960s and 1980; Generation Y (Millennials) includes people born between 1980-ish and 2000; Generation Z (Post-Millennials) is anyone born after 2000. These categories don’t really have global reach, but they are evocative as metaphors.

The gist of Smith’s argument is that Facebook and its like are reductive: they cut us down to size and reprogrammed us to suit their own ends, which are advertising and selling things – exploitation. “Five-hundred million sentient people entrapped in the recent careless thoughts of a Harvard sophomore,” she calls it.

Smith was writing a few years ago; the number of Facebook users has now passed 2 billion. Generations Y and Z have led lives saturated by the internet, by social media platforms and apps, which have claimed to make life complete and have all of the answers all of the time. Is this paraphernalia worthy of them? Are they content to be trapped in the reveries of Zuckerberg and the like? No. There are detectable tremors of disaffection and radicalisation. I suspect that as more and more post-millennials reach voting age, Generation Why may be giving us some loud answers.

10. The new weird An emerging genre of speculative, ‘post-human’ writing that blurs genre boundaries and conventions, pushes humanity and human-centred reason from the centre to the margins, and generally poses questions that may not be answerable in any terms we can understand (hence the ‘weird’). In the present era, where potent advertising and PR forces are doing everything in their power to make truth irrelevant and directly hack our minds, and where politicians no longer seem to acknowledge the existence of facts, the word has sinister new applications.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a tragic reminder of how deeply connected we are. There is a clear and urgent need for concrete multilateral solutions, based on common action across borders for the good of all humanity, starting with extend beyond national governments, to include more participation from local authorities, civil society, business leaders and others.

How close we are to destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making.

No one country can tackle the problem’s on their own no matter how large their population, how strong their economy or how feared their military.

Everyone sees change everywhere, and I think it’s important to figure out where are we going to be five to 10 years from now.

We’re going to see more automation. We’re going to see, unfortunately, more technological unemployment.

I don’t think they will be able to ignore the issue of inequality. We’re seeing social tensions and all sorts of frictions proliferate. The sooner we start tackling it, the better. We really need to start thinking outside of the box.

In the end it back to that word Need:

We need to be less wasteful. We need to economize our resources. We need to be more pro-environment in our own behaviour as consumers.

Let’s replace it with Yugen.

“We can either save our world or condemn humanity to a hellish future.”

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: ARE WE ALL SO DUMB TO THINK THAT ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE CAN BE REGULATED?

02 Friday Jun 2023

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( Three minute read)

Artificial intelligence is already suffering from three key issues: privacy, bias and discrimination, which if left unchecked can start infringing on – and ultimately take control of – people’s lives.

As digital technology became integral to the capitalist market dystopia of the first decades of the 21st century, it not only refashioned our ways of communicating but of working and consuming, indeed ways of living.

Then along came the the Covid-19 pandemic which revealed not only the lack of investment, planning and preparation that underlay the scandalous slowness of the responses by states around the world, but also grotesque class and racial inequalities as it coursed its way through the population and the owners of high-tech corporations were enriched by tens of billions. AWE 2022, AR, VR

It’s already too late to get ahead of this generative AI freight train.

The growing use of AI has already transformed the way the global economy works.

In this backdrop, AI can be used to profile people like you and me to such a detail which may well become more than uncomfortable! And this is no exaggeration.

This is just a tip of the iceberg!Full moon

So what if anything can be done to ensure responsible and ethical practices in the field.

Concern over AI development has accelerated in recent months following the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT last year, which sparked the release of similar chatbots by other companies, including Google, Snap and TikTok. The growing realization that vast numbers of people can be fooled by the content chatbots gleefully spit out, now the clock is ticking to not just the collapse of values that enshrine human life but the very existence of the human race.

“This is not the future we want.”

Now there is no option but to put in place international laws, not mandatory regulations, before AI is infringing human rights. However as we are witnessing with climate change, to achieve any global cooperation is a bit of a problem.

From the climate crisis to our suicidal war on nature and the collapse of biodiversity, our global response is too little, too late. Technology is moving ahead without guard rails to protect us from its unforeseen consequences.

So we have two contrasting futures one of breakdown and perpetual crisis, and another in which there is a breakthrough, to a greener, safer future. This approach would herald a new era for multilateralism, in which countries work together to solve global problems.

In order to achieve these aims, the Secretary-General of the United nations recommends a Summit of the Future, which would “forge a new global consensus on what our future should look like, and how we can secure it”. The need for international co-operation beyond borders is something that makes a lot of sense, especially these days, because the role of the modern corporation in influencing the impact of AI is in conflict with the common values needed to survive.

The principle of working together, recognizing that we are bound to each other and that no community or country, however powerful, can solve its challenges alone.” Any national government is, of course, guided by its own set of localised values and realities.

But geopolitics, I would argue, always underlies any ambition. The immaturity of the ‘Geopolitics of AI’ field leaves the picture incomplete and unclear so it requires the introduction of agreed international common laws.

Let Ireland hold such a Summit.

This summit could coordinate efforts to bring about inclusive and sustainable policies that enable countries to offer basic services and social protection to their citizens with universal laws that defines the several capabilities of AI i.e. identify the ones that are more susceptible to misuse than the others.

(It is incredibly important for understanding the current environment in which any product is built or research conducted and it will be critical to forging a path forwards and towards safe and beneficial AI.)

The challenges are great, and the lessons of the past cannot be simply superimposed onto the present.

For example.

The designers of AI technologies should satisfy legal requirements for safety, accuracy and efficacy for well-defined use cases or indications. In the context of health care, this means that humans should remain in control of health-care systems and medical decisions; privacy and confidentiality should be protected, and patients must give valid informed consent through appropriate legal frameworks for data protection.

Another For example the collection of Data which is the backbone of AI.

Transparency requires that sufficient information be published or documented before the design or deployment of an AI technology. Such information must be easily accessible and facilitate meaningful public consultation and debate on how the technology is designed and how it should or should not be used.

It is the responsibility of stakeholders to ensure that they are used under appropriate conditions and by appropriately trained people. Effective mechanisms should be available for questioning and for redress for individuals and groups that are adversely affected by decisions based on algorithms.

Laws to ensure that AI systems be designed to minimize their environmental consequences and increase energy efficiency.

If we want the elimination of black-box approach through mandatory explain ability for AI – Agreed or not agree should not be an option.

While AI can be extraordinarily useful it is already out of control with self learning algorithms that no one can understand or to be brought to account.

These profit seeking skewed algorithms owned by corporations are causing racial and gender-based discrimination.Following billions of dollars in investment, a major corporate rebrand and a pivot to focus on the metaverse, Meta and Zuckerberg still have little to show for it.

I firmly believe that the Government must engage in meaningful dialogues with other countries on a common international laws that are now needed to subject developers to a rigorous evaluation process, and to ensure that entities using the technology act responsibly and are held accountable.

Having said that, governments must keep their roles limited and not assume absolute powers.

Multiple actors are jostling to lead the regulation of AI.

The question business leaders should be focused on at this moment, however, is not how or even when AI will be regulated, but by whom.

Governments have historically had trouble attracting the kind of technical expertise required even to define the kinds of new harms LLMs and other AI applications may cause.

Perhaps a licensing framework is needed to strike a balance between unlocking the potential of AI and addressing potential risks.

Or

AI ‘Nutrition Labels’ that would explain exactly what went into training an AI, and which would help us understand what a generative AI produces and why.

Or

Take the Meta’s open source approach which contrasts sharply with the more cautious, secretive inclinations of OpenAI and Google. With Open Source models like this and Stable Diffusion already out there, it may be impossible to get the Genie back into the bottle.

The metaverse is not well understood or appreciated by the media and the public. The metaverse is much, much bigger than one company, and weaving them together only complicates the matter.

Governments should never again face a choice between serving their people or servicing their debt.

Still, the most promising way not to provoke the sorcerer would be to avoid making too big a mess in the first place.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S : ARE OUR LIVES GOING TO BE RULED BY ALGORITHMS.

20 Saturday May 2023

Posted by in 2023 the year of disconnection., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., Communication., Dehumanization., Democracy, Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Digital Friendship., Disconnection., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Human Collective Stupidity., Human values., Humanity., Imagination., IS DATA DESTORYING THE WORLD?, Modern Day Democracy., Our Common Values., Purpose of life., Reality., Social Media Regulation., State of the world, Technology, Technology v Humanity, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Tracking apps., Unanswered Questions., Universal values., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What is shaping our world., What Needs to change in the World

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( Ten minute read) 

I am sure that unless you have being living on another planet it is becoming more and more obvious that the manner you live your life is being manipulate and influence by technologies.

So its worth pausing to ask why the use of AI for algorithm-informed decision is desirable, and hence worth our collective effort to think through and get right.

A huge amount of our lives – from what appears in our social media feeds to what route our sat-nav tells us to take – is influenced by algorithms. Email knows where to go thanks to algorithms. Smartphone apps are nothing but algorithms. Computer and video games are algorithmic storytelling.  Online dating and book-recommendation and travel websites would not function without algorithms.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is naught but algorithms.

The material people see on social media is brought to them by algorithms. In fact, everything people see and do on the web is a product of algorithms. Algorithms are also at play, with most financial transactions today accomplished by algorithms. Algorithms help gadgets respond to voice commands, recognize faces, sort photos and build and drive cars. Hacking, cyberattacks and cryptographic code-breaking exploit algorithms.

Algorithms are aimed at optimizing everything.

Self-learning and self-programming algorithms are now emerging, so it is possible that in the future algorithms will write many if not most algorithms.

Yes they can save lives, make things easier and conquer chaos, but when it comes both the commercial/ social world, there are many good reasons to question the use of Algorithms.

Why? 

They can put too much control in the hands of corporations and governments, perpetuate bias, create filter bubbles, cut choices, creativity and serendipity, while exploiting not just of you, but the very resources of our planet for short-term profits, destroying what left of democracy societies, turning warfare into face recognition, stimulating inequality, invading our private lives, determining our futures without any legal restrictions or transparency, or recourse.

The rapid evolution of AI and AI agents embedded in systems and devices in the Internet of Things will lead to hyper-stalking, influencing and shaping of voters, and hyper-personalized ads, and will create new ways to misrepresent reality and perpetuate falsehoods.

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As they are self learning, the problem is who or what is creating them, who owns these algorithms and what if there should be any controls in their usage.

Lets ask some questions that need to be ask now not later concerning them. 

1) The outcomes the algorithm intended to make possible (and whether they are ethical)

2) The algorithm’s function.

3) The algorithm’s limitations and biases.

4) The actions that will be taken to mitigate the algorithm’s limitations and biases.

5) The layer of accountability and transparency that will be put in place around it.

There is no debate about the need for algorithms in scientific research – such as discovering new drugs to tackle new or old diseases/ pandemics, space travel, etc. 

Out side of these needs the promise of AI is that we could have evidence-based decision making in the field:

Helping frontline workers make more informed decisions in the moments when it matters most, based on an intelligent analysis of what is known to work. If used thoughtfully and with care, algorithms could provide evidence-based policymaking, but they will fail to achieve much if poor decisions are taken at the front.

However, it’s all well and good for politicians and policymakers to use evidence at a macro level when designing a policy but the real effectiveness of each public sector organisation is now the sum total of thousands of little decisions made by algorithms each and every day.

First (to repeat a point made above), with new technologies we may need to set a higher bar initially in order to build confidence and test the real risks and benefits before we adopt a more relaxed approach. Put simply, we need time to see in what ways using AI is, in fact, the same or different to traditional decision making processes.

The second concerns accountability. For reasons that may not be entirely rational, we tend to prefer a human-made decision. The process that a person follows in their head may be flawed and biased, but we feel we have a point of accountability and recourse which does not exist (at least not automatically) with a machine.

The third is that some forms of algorithmic decision making could end up being truly game-changing in terms of the complexity of the decision making process. Just as some financial analysts eventually failed to understand the CDOs they had collectively created before 2008, it might be too hard to trace back how a given decision was reached when unlimited amounts of data contribute to its output.

The fourth is the potential scale at which decisions could be deployed. One of the chief benefits of technology is its ability to roll out solutions at massive scale. By the same trait it can also cause damage at scale.

 In all of this it’s important to remember that while progress isn’t guaranteed transformational progress on a global scale normally takes time, generations even, to achieve but we pulled it off in less than a decade and spent another decade pushing the limits of what was possible with a computer and an Internet connection and, unfortunately, we are beginning running into limits pretty quickly such as.

No one wants to accept that the incredible technological ride we’ve enjoyed for the past half-century is coming to an end, but unless algorithms are found that can provide a shortcut around this rate of growth, we have to look beyond the classical computer if we are to maintain our current pace of technological progress.

A silicon computer chip is a physical material, so it is governed by the laws of physics, chemistry, and engineering.

After miniaturizing the transistor on an integrated circuit to a nanoscopic scale, transistors just can’t keep getting smaller every two years. With billions of electronic components etched into a solid, square wafer of silicon no more than 2 inches wide, you could count the number of atoms that make up the individual transistors.

So the era of classical computing is coming to an end, with scientists anticipating the arrival of quantum computing designing ambitious quantum algorithms that tackle maths greatest challenges an Algorithm for everything.

———–

Algorithms may be deployed without any human oversight leading to actions that could cause harm and which lack any accountability.

The issues the public sector deals with tend to be messy and complicated, requiring ethical judgements as well as quantitative assessments. Those decisions in turn can have significant impacts on individuals’ lives. We should therefore primarily be aiming for intelligent use of algorithm-informed decision making by humans.

If we are to have a ‘human in the loop’, it’s not ok for the public sector to become littered with algorithmic black boxes whose operations are essentially unknowable to those expected to use them.

As with all ‘smart’ new technologies, we need to ensure algorithmic decision making tools are not deployed in dumb processes, or create any expectation that we diminish the professionalism with which they are used.

Algorithms could help remove or reduce the impact of these flaws.

So where are we.

At the moment modern algorithms are some of the most important solutions to problems currently powering the world’s most widely used systems.

Here are a few. They form the foundation on which data structures and more advanced algorithms are built.

Google’s PageRank algorithm is a great place to start, since it helped turn Google into the internet giant it is today.

The PageRank algorithm so thoroughly established Google’s dominance as the only search engine that mattered that the word Google officially became a verb less than eight years after the company was founded. Even though PageRank is now only one of about 200 measures Google uses to rank a web page for a given query, this algorithm is still an essential driving force behind its search engine.

The Key Exchange Encryption algorithm does the seemingly impo

Backpropagation through a neural network is one of the most important algorithms invented in the last 50 years.

Neural networks operate by feeding input data into a network of nodes which have connections to the next layer of nodes, and different weights associated with these connections which determines whether to pass the information it receives through that connection to the next layer of nodes. When the information passed through the various so-called “hidden” layers of the network and comes to the output layer, these are usually different choices about what the neural network believes the input was. If it was fed an image of a dog, it might have the options dog, cat, mouse, and human infant. It will have a probability for each of these and the highest probability is chosen as the answer.

Without backpropagation, deep-learning neural networks wouldn’t work, and without these neural networks, we wouldn’t have the rapid advances in artificial intelligence that we’ve seen in the last decade.

Routing Protocol Algorithm (LSRPA) are the two most essential algorithms we use every day as they efficiently route data.

The two most widely used by the Internet, the Distance-Vector Routing Protocol Algorithm (DVRPA) and the Link-State traffic between the billions of connected networks that make up the Internet.

Compression is everywhere, and it is essential to the efficient transmission and storage of information.

Its made possible by establishing a single, shared mathematical secret between two parties, who don’t even know each other, and is used to encrypt the data as well as decrypt it, all over a public network and without anyone else being able to figure out the secret.

Searches and Sorts are a special form of algorithm in that there are many very different techniques used to sort a data set or to search for a specific value within one, and no single one is better than another all of the time. The quicksort algorithm might be better than the merge sort algorithm if memory is a factor, but if memory is not an issue, merge sort can sometimes be faster;

One of the most widely used algorithms in the world, but in that 20 minutes in 1959, Dijkstra enabled everything from GPS routing on our phones, to signal routing through telecommunication networks, and any number of time-sensitive logistics challenges like shipping a package across country. As a search algorithm, Dijkstra’s Shortest Path stands out more than the others just for the enormity of the technology that relies on it.

——–

At the moment there are relatively few instances where algorithms should be deployed without any human oversight or ability to intervene before the action resulting from the algorithm is initiated.

The assumptions on which an algorithm is based may be broadly correct, but in areas of any complexity (and which public sector contexts aren’t complex?) they will at best be incomplete.

Why?

Because the code of algorithms may be unviewable in systems that are proprietary or outsourced.

Even if viewable, the code may be essentially uncheckable if it’s highly complex; where the code continuously changes based on live data; or where the use of neural networks means that there is no single ‘point of decision making’ to view.

Virtually all algorithms contain some limitations and biases, based on the limitations and biases of the data on which they are trained.

 Though there is currently much debate about the biases and limitations of artificial intelligence, there are well known biases and limitations in human reasoning, too. The entire field of behavioural science exists precisely because humans are not perfectly rational creatures but have predictable biases in their thinking.

Some are calling this the Age of Algorithms and predicting that the future of algorithms is tied to machine learning and deep learning that will get better and better at an ever-faster pace. There is something on the other side of the classical-post-classical divide, it’s likely to be far more massive than it looks from over here, and any prediction about what we’ll find once we pass through it is as good as anyone else’s.

It is entirely possible that before we see any of this, humanity will end up bombing itself into a new dark age that takes thousands of years to recover from.

The entire field of theoretical computer science is all about trying to find the most efficient algorithm for a given problem. The essential job of a theoretical computer scientist is to find efficient algorithms for problems and the most difficult of these problems aren’t just academic; they are at the very core of some of the most challenging real world scenarios that play out every day.

Quantum computing is a subject that a lot of people, myself included, have gotten wrong in the past and there are those who caution against putting too much faith in a quantum computer’s ability to free us from the computational dead end we’re stuck in.

The most critical of these is the problem of optimization:

How do we find the best solution to a problem when we have a seemingly infinite number of possible solutions?

While it can be fun to speculate about specific advances, what will ultimately matter much more than any one advance will be the synergies produced by these different advances working together.

Synergies are famously greater than the sum of their parts, but what does that mean when your parts are blockchain, 5G networks, quantum computers, and advanced artificial intelligence?

DNA computing, however, harnesses these amino acids’ ability to build and assemble itself into long strands of DNA.

It’s why we can say that quantum computing won’t just be transformative, humanity is genuinely approaching nothing short of a technological event horizon.

Quantum computers will only give you a single output, either a value or a resulting quantum state, so their utility solving problems with exponential or factorial time complexity will depend entirely on the algorithm used.

One inefficient algorithm could have kneecapped the Internet before it really got going.

It is now oblivious that there is no going back.

The question now is there anyway of curtailing their power.

This can now only be achieved with the creation of an open source platform where the users control their data rather than it being used and mined.  (The uses can sell their data if the want.)

This platform must be owned by the public, and compete against the existing platforms like face book, twitter, what’s App, etc,   protected by an algorithm that protects the common values of all our lives – the truth. 

Of course it could be designed by using existing algorithms which would defeat its purpose. 

It would be an open net-work of people a kind of planetary mind that has to always be funding biosphere-friendly activities.

A safe harbour perhaps called the New horizon.   A digital United nations where the voices of cooperation could be heard.   

So if by any chance there is a human genius designer out there that could make such a platform he might change the future of all our digitalized lives for the better.   

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com  

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: IS THIS A NIVE QUESTION. IS IT IN NATO INTEREST TO ALLOW THE UK TO SUPPLY CRUISE MISSILES TO THE UKRAIN.

12 Friday May 2023

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2023 the year of disconnection., RUSSIA/ UKRAINE/ US/ NATO/ EU

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( Three minute read) 

My understanding of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is that it is a defence pack, a collective security system with its independent member states agreeing to defend each other against attacks by third parties. An intergovernmental military alliance between 31 member states – 29 European and two North American. Established in the aftermath of World War II, which Finland joined recently, as a result of the Ukraine/ Russian war. 

(An armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all; and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.)

Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty stated that an attack on one signatory would be regarded as an attack on the rest, and this article was first invoked in 2001 in response to the terrorist September 11 attacks against the U.S.

Its member states and their individual sovereignty is unaffected by participation in the alliance.  There is no collective responsibility for a NATO member of any kind when it comes to supply military/ weapons to whatever side of a war it chooses, even if in doing so it could provoke an attack that jeopardies all member getting involvement in a bigger war.

Surely this needs to change 

The US and other countries of NATO have been unwilling to supply long range missiles to the Ukraine in case strikes into Russia lead to escalation.

The United Kingdom has delivered multiple “Storm Shadow” cruise missiles to Ukraine.

This is not the first time Britain has gone further than the US in the weaponry it has been prepared to send to Ukraine.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is understood to have received assurances from President Volodymyr Zelensky that the missiles will not be used for anything other than defensive purposes. It is understood that the UK would allow the missiles to be used to destroy President Vladimir Putin’s supply lines and as part of the counter-offensive to take back Russian occupied territory, including Crimea.

<p>Putin has said that ‘no defense systems’ will be able to defend the Satan-2 </p>

THIS IS A WAR AND IN A WAR ASSURANCES AND CONDITIONS RE USING ANYTHING ARE MEANLESS.

In providing weapons to Ukraine that could help them strike within Russian territory is the UK inviting a missile from Russia with love. One does not need much imagination the results if this were to happen.

There is no dispute that Putin’s penchant for brandishing Russia’s arsenal reflects weakness and insecurity. And that is not a good trait in the leader of a nuclear superpower. (Russia’s 6,000-warhead arsenal is the only thing that makes it a superpower.) The United Kingdom within six minutes, even from a distance of 1,600 miles would be wiped of the map. No defence systems will be able to withstand it.

The challenge for the NATO allies now is maintaining the support Ukraine needs for its survival while making clear Putin has a way out of the crisis, rather than climbing up the escalation ladder to the point where it takes on a logic of its own.

In my view there was “no need or sense in mirroring Putin’s reckless nuclear threats, which should be universally condemned”

However, how Putin views the domestic consequences of his backing down – something over which the west has no control is now becoming paramount as to how this war is going to come to a closure or expand. 

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

Contact; bobdillon33@gmail.com