Sir David Attenborough is the voice of a new “People’s Seat” at the climate change Conference presently taking place in Poland where Governments are meeting to discuss implementing the Paris Agreement on climate change.
He is part of an initiative launched by the UN to bring the voice of people from around the world to the International Conference.
Negotiators at the talks will hear details of a global review on climate change-tackling efforts, and the pressure is on to work towards increasing commitments from countries by 2020.
The Paris Agreement on Climate Change has four main goals with regards to reducing emissions:
1) A long-term goal of keeping the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels.
2) To aim to limit the increase to 1.5°C, since this would significantly reduce risks and the impacts of climate change.
3) Governments agreed on the need for global emissions to peak as soon as possible, recognising that this will take longer for developing countries.
4) To undertake rapid reductions thereafter in accordance with the best available science.
Against this background, Sir David Attenborough has just issued a stark warning that the collapse of civilisations and extinction of much of the natural world is on the verge.
Which on we all agreed, except for Mr Dump
Sir David articulated the following. “If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.”
His words are perhaps the most important empty utterances of this century.
Why empty?
They called for ambitious decisions which are sufficiently detailed and comprehensive to enable the effective operation of the Paris Agreement, secured three years ago in the French capital to curb global warming.
Because without unlimited financial funding they are just that ambitions, blowing in the wind.
The World Bank recently announced it is doubling investments in climate action with 200 billion US dollars (£157 billion) for 2021-2025, including 50 billion US dollars (£39 billion) towards helping countries adapt to the impacts of global warming.
This is just pissing in the wind.
WHAT IS NEEDED IS TRILLIONS. TO TACKLE THE SOURCES OF THE PROBLEMS THAT CAN BE WRAPPED UP IN ONE WORD – INEQUALITY WHERE SOME OF THE WORLD IS SITTING IN EMPTY SEATS.
THERE IS ONLY ONE SOLUTION:
THAT IS AN WORLD AID COMMISSION OF 0.05% TO BE APPLIED WORLDWIDE ON ALL ACTIVITIES THAT ARE PRODUCING PROFIT FOR PROFIT SAKE. ( See previous posts)
All human comments appreciated. All like empty seat clicks chucked in the bin.
Here we all are bombarded by false news, algorithms for profit, advertisements to consume more and more, living in economies that must grow in order to feed the stock exchange that is plundered by algorithms for profit.
And we ask why is it that the world cannot take climate change seriously.
BECAUSE IT IS TURNED INTO A COMMODITY – CARDON CREDITS.
Other than the worthless Paris Climate pledges that are not worth the paper they are written on the world is still in denial with these pledges that will not mobilize nations nor people or make a dent in the mood of complacency.
When we conceal the linkage between global warming and natural disasters, golden opportunities are lost.
Why the disconnect?
Although there are of course many possible reasons, certainly one of them is the shortage of attention given to climate change by the mainstream media.
Many natural disasters such as the wildfires and hurricanes are covered extensively by the national news media but with little or no mention of global warming. Thus, many viewers fail to connect the dots.
In national mainstream news reports about natural disasters, global warming is systematically backgrounded, most often not even mentioned at all.
Headline stories capture the attention of countless citizens and could have educational value re climate change.
The world’s leading climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.
Perhaps if every television channel worldwide were obliged under law to allocate one weather forecast a month sole to the effects of climate change it might create some political will worldwide.
There is no point in one country or one industry reducing carbon emissions to comply with the Paris agreement pledge to keep temperatures between 1.5C and 2C.
There is a growing recognition that 2C is dangerous with 1.5C now becoming just a political concession.
Increasingly visible damage caused by climate change will shift opinion but too late to do anything about it.
The likely rise in climate-driven refugees or the danger of tipping points that could push the world on to an irreversible path of extreme warming is becoming more and more evident year by year.
Climate change is already happening.
Insects, which are vital for pollination of crops, and plants are almost twice as likely to lose half their habitat at 2C compared with 1.5C. Corals would be 99% lost at the higher of the two temperatures, but more than 10% have a chance of surviving if the lower target is reached.
Although unexpectedly good progress has been made in the adoption of renewable energy, deforestation for agriculture was turning a natural carbon sink into a source of emissions.
Carbon capture and storage projects, which are essential for reducing emissions in the concrete and waste disposal industries, have also ground to a halt.
Oceans are already suffering from elevated acidity and lower levels of oxygen as a result of climate change.
Sea ice-free summers in the Arctic is attracting oil exploration. Britain is pushing ahead with gas fracking, Norway with oil exploration in the Arctic, and the German government wants to tear down Hambach forest to dig for coal.
Reforestation is essential to all of them as are shifts to electric transport systems and greater adoption of carbon capture technology.
However, relying on the untried technology of solar radiation modification and other forms of geoengineering could have negative consequences.
The short of it?
Carbon pollution and climate change mean both more floods and droughts – making it harder and harder for farmers to grow good quality, nutritious food.
The short of it?
There are no jobs on a dead planet.
The short of it?
The time to start solving this problem is now.
For years, fossil fuel companies and utilities have been dumping CO2 into our atmosphere, changing our climate while we pay the cost.
The ones causing the climate crisis should be the ones paying for it. This would require carbon prices that are three to four times higher than for a 2C target. But the costs of doing nothing would be far higher.
We can find billions and billions to pay our sportsmen and woman, our politicians, our lotto winners, our arms and space exploration, the list is endless.
No matter how we frame or present the arguments if we want a world worthwhile living on there is only one solution we must tap into greed, (See previous posts on a World Aid Commission)
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
WE SHOULD BE ALL FAMILIAR WITH THE ABOVE QUOTATION.
It is a “Native American saying”.
“Canada, the most affluent of countries, operates on a depletion economy which leaves destruction in its wake. Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.”
When one stands back from one’s self the above sums up the present state of our world.
Present needs and present gains was the rule of action—which seems to be a sort of transmitted quality which we in our now enlightened time have not wholly outgrown, for even now a few men can be found who seem willing to destroy the last tree, the last fish and the last game bird and animal, and leave nothing for posterity, if thereby some money can be made.
We are unable to change as we have turned everything into commodities to make material profit or power.
WHY?
Because most are suffocating in a sea of debt, unable to extricate themselves from the shackles of an abhorrent situation inherently created by the consumptionism and consumerism that grips much of the world’s population.
We are, in effect, products of our own society, now being exploited by AI for profit.
What is needed is a World Conference of every nation to enshrine in law the protection of Clean Air, Freshwater, the protection of the environment and ecosystems that we all rely on for life on the planet.
The richer we are and the more we consume, the more self-centered and careless of the lives of others we appear to become.
Our erroneous belief that we are more concerned about manmade climate change than the people of other nations informs the sentiment, often voiced by the press and politicians, that there’s no point in acting if the rest of the world won’t play its part.
Only when the crisis causes or exacerbates an acute disaster – such as the floods – is there a flicker of anxiety, but that quickly dies away.
Sustaining interest in this great but slow-burning crisis of climate change is a challenge no one seems to have mastered.
For years we’ve been told that people cannot afford to care about the natural world until they become rich; that only economic growth can save the biosphere, that civilisation marches towards enlightenment about our impacts on the living planet.
The results suggest the opposite.
The more we consume, the less we feel. And maybe that doesn’t just apply to guilt.
Perhaps that’s the point of our otherwise-pointless hyperconsumption: it smothers feeling. It might also be the effect of the constant bombardment of advertising and marketing. They seek to replace our attachments to people and place with attachments to objects: attachments which the next round of advertising then breaks in the hope of attaching us to a different set of objects.
Even if you somehow put aside the direct, physical impacts of rising consumption, it’s hard to understand how anyone could imagine that economic growth is a formula for protecting the planet.
So what we seem to see here is the turning of a vicious circle.
The more harm we do, the less concerned about it we become. And the more hyperconsumerism destroys relationships, communities and the physical fabric of the Earth, the more we try to fill the void in our lives by buying more stuff.
This is an almost inevitable result of a society that has become restructured around shopping, fashion, celebrity and an obsession with money.
How we break the circle and wake people out of this dream world is the question that all those who love the living planet should address.
There is only one easy answers.
We must make Greed in all its forms of profit for profit sake pay. ( See previous Posts – A world Aid commission )
Agreement’s like the Paris Climate Change promises are not worth the paper there are written on without the necessary finance to create a change of mind.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
True, science has made some remarkable advances. Nevertheless, in spite of its often sincere attempts to prevent it, hunger gnaws at more bellies than ever.
At the root of many of man’s problems is man himself.
You would think that the well being of us all would be the top priority of the world community. We all know why this is not so.
WHY?
BECAUSE OF THE SAME QROTESQUE SKEWING OF PRIORITIES, WHICH HAVE PERSISTED FOR THE DAWN OF HUMANKIND.
RELIGIOUS BELIEFS, NATIONAL IDENTITY, GREED, INEQUALITY, CORRUPTION, LACK OF TRUST, THE VETO, ALL LEAVING US AND A WORLD FOR THE MOST PART AS COMMODITIES TO BE SOLD IN THE SOUP OF NON COOPERATION.
We now have a world of consumerism, blinkered by self-worth, unable to break free INTO ANY ACTUAL MEANFUL, MUTUAL, ACTION.
I am not talking here about Mr Trump who turns a blind eye to murder for the sake of arms deals or Brexit for the sake of isolation or the Paris climate agreement promises or for that matter any other idiotic thing we can be turned into a commodity.
I am talking about HOW MUCH ARE WE ALL AVOIDING THE REAL WORLD AND ITS PROBLEMS.
( I don’t need to tell you world news is pretty grim right now – if you use social media, it’s nigh on impossible to avoid articles about bubbling permafrost, drug-resistant virus, and deadly obesity treatments.)
Our world is shifting and going through a major transition. In order to do so, many of our “industrial-based systems” need to crumble and be replaced with much more sustainable systems.
IN ORDER TO HAVE A TRULY HUMAN EXISTENCE THERE MUST BE LIMITS.
We can be observers as we watch our old paradigm falling apart or fight back.
THE WORLD UP TO NOW HAS EXISTED ON PARTIALIZATION BUT AN ALL OR NOTHING SCENARIO IS NOW MANFASTING ITS SELF RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR EYES.
It seems as if we are working against our own better interests as if we want to lose our isolation and keep it at the same time.
This feat is impossible because it belies the real tension of the dualism.
Cutting ourselves off from natural dependency, from the duty to a larger creation OF A SUSTAINABLE WORLD.
I am not implying dishonesty here at all, merely that men tend to get caught up in the appropriateness of panoplies they use and need.
We are contributing more and more to the very thing that IS ENDEAVOURING to enslave us Technology for profit to such an extent that we are becoming unable to see the reality of our condition and the condition of the world we live in.
AND SO THE ARRIVAL OF A NEW POSSIBILITY OF DESTRUCTION OF THE SELF IS CURRENTLY PRESENTING ITSELF. NOT JUST IN THE FORM OF CLIMATE CHANGE BUT WITH TECHNOLOGY THAT IS CREATING A VAST GAP BETWEEN THE HAVE AND HAVE NOT WITHOUT US FACING UP TO ANXIETY OF THE TERROR OF OUR VERY EXISTENCE.
HOW MUCH ARE WE DITCHING OUR LIBERTY TO TECHNOLOGY WHILE STILL, TRYING HOLD ON TO OTHERS? – TO ILLUSIONS OR TO CERTAINTIES.
HOW MUCH ARE WE BEING PUSHED IN THE DIRECTION OF GENUINE FREEDOM?
GOD WILL NOT END THE WORLD WE WILL.
As you know we all love scenarios of the Apocalypse, however, such doomsday predictions reflect little understanding other than the sun will in 8 billion years time swallow the planet.
(The word apocalypse has its roots in the Latin word apocalypse, meaning to uncover. That is what we are experiencing right now—the uncovering or revealing of the truth.)
On the climate change front, the danger may seem less immediate, but avoiding catastrophic temperature increases, in the long run, requires urgent attention now … Not because we are seeing large destructive fires, more veracious storms, or sea levels rising, but because of the volumes of fresh water melting from the Antartic and Arctic.
How close the world is to a catastrophic collapse of giant ocean currents is unknown.
The nations of the world will have to significantly decrease their greenhouse gas emissions to keep climate risks manageable, and so far, the global response has fallen far short of meeting this challenge.
We and our leaders are stuck in the trenches of war while old style power policies are leading to a new technological arms race.
A few years ago a Kilometre-wide asteroid 1950 DA had a one-in-300 chance of making contact with our planet. It would hit at 38,000 miles per hour, exerting the same force as around 44,800 megatonnes of TNT.
An impact would cause an enormous explosion and tsunamis, changing the climate of the globe and destroying human life. The bad thing is the Earth as we know it will cease to exist.
The good thing, UNLIKE CLIMATE CHANGE, is it won’t happen in the near future.
Our blood is being posed not just by plastics in the food chain but by unregulated algorithms, SPREADING INEQUALITY AND FALSE NEWS.
ITS TIME TO OPEN YOUR EYES AND LOOK AT THE WORLD WE RELY UPON.
World knowledge is not designed for any specific domain.
Commonsense knowledge IS RAPIDLY BECOMING a key problem since artificial intelligence has been introduced.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
There is one thing we should learn and that is that the long view of history is critical to understanding why today’s world continues to experience unresolvable conflict.
An event that began 100 years ago this August might as well be ancient and irrelevant history for most. Yet World War I changed the world and set off a chain of events that continue to impact your life today. Don’t underestimate what one man and one event can do to alter everything. Kaiser Wilhelm II in August 1914, signed orders mobilizing German armies and setting off events that led to what would become known as “the Great War”—World War I.
Might he have thought about what he had just done?
Could he have considered how far-reaching was the decision he had just made?
Certainly, he did not see how many years into the future that one decision would last—neither did he comprehend the lives that would be changed nor a world reshaped. He was not alone in failing to grasp the far-reaching impact—the long perspective if you will—of the war that would be called “the war to end all wars.”
We are still dealing with the consequences of the decisions made by the Kaiser and other European leaders.
World War I resulted in the breakup of two world empires whose influence had shaped Europe and the Middle East.
We were left with the victors – Britain and France—to carve up the Middle East and redistribute it into a patchwork of new states such as Jordan, Iraq and Syria.
When you read headlines today of genocide in Syria, the launching of rockets into Israel from terrorist encampments in southern Lebanon and Gaza, or the continuing unrest among refugees throughout the region, you are seeing the fruit of decisions made by leaders who had to pick up the pieces from the collapse of empires in 1918.
For a century now historians have examined the cause of the Great War.
The prewar geopolitical map of Europe was a complex web of political alliances overlaying an antiquated system of family monarchal ties that doomed the continent to the cauldron of conflict erupting.
The leaders of that day saw the war coming for years. Germany armed itself to the hilt—in fact, it engaged in the first modern arms race with Great Britain. Plans for a German invasion of France were known to be in place for years prior to 1914. Nationalist urges in the Balkans were continual sparks, like matches repeatedly struck till ignited.
There simply was no prewar leader in Europe with the stature, wisdom and diplomacy to halt the insanity. It’s one of the colossal failures of history that an interconnected Europe and wider world couldn’t prevent the largest, bloodiest war to that time.
A study of a devastating war begun a hundred years ago can be an exercise in nostalgia and academic history. Only a few people alive today can even remember this war in their earliest memories. For we who take a moment to reflect on what happened, let’s be sure to take away a lesson that helps us understand our present world:
History existed before our birth, it marches on now, and decisions made by people long ago and far away continue to impact our lives today.
We must learn to take the long view on life.
The world sorely needs leaders with a view different from leaders of the past. The world needs leadership with the long view, the view of what is best and will benefit all others and avoid the destructive and bloody scourge of conflict and war.
If there is anything we have learned it is that World War One leads to World War Two and it will lead to number three if we don’t have leadership with the long view of the world to come.
The millions of young lives were lost in both wars for a world to know peace.
To achieve this it is necessary to hear all voices, not just populous voices.
All human comment appreciate. All like clicks chuck in the bin.
I have posted many articles concerning Algorithms that are plundering our lives and the world for profit.
Although governments and world organisations are only just waking up to the power of these algorithms giving the changes we are witnessing to society there are little, or no conscientious efforts as to how to introduce regulations to limit the damage they are doing.
With every click, power is shifting to the Google’s, the Microsofts, the Apple, the Amazon, the eBay’s, the Netflix’s, to machine learning recommendations, to Social Media rhetoric, to right-wing politics disguised as populism nationalism.
ALL CREATING A PLANET IN CRISES.
So In this post, I am hoping to create an online pressure group to lobby the relevant powers to effect change.
Life is not only trade, consumption and markets.
THE SUGGESTED NAME FOR THE GROUP IS # WHAT IF.COM
SO IF THERE IS ANYONE READING THIS THAT KNOWS HOW TO GO ABOUT SETTING UP SUCH A WEBSITE I AM ALL EARS.
WHY SET UP SUCH A GROUP.
BECAUSE:
Markets are not faceless forces.
All markets have some sort of morality.
Buyers and sellers need to consider the consequences which their actions and decisions may have on the environment and on society itself.
Today a simple one-dollar-one-vote principle dominates the world economy.
International organizations ought to impose sanctions upon countries which condone immoral practices, such as the use of child labour, environmental destruction, the selling of arms or the persecution of trade unionists.
The detrimental effects of international money markets and the crises caused by speculation can be alleviated by international legislation such as levying taxes on international currency exchange.
Free markets do not guarantee adequate conditions of life to all people. Therefore we need states and organisations that protect the weak and defends social justice.
The eradication of poverty presupposes equalization of income. This means, for example, that the strong and well to do must assume a proportionally greater burden of taxes than the weak and the poor.
We need services which citizens themselves initiate and generate, and the new potential, which they can contribute to the life of our congregations and local communities.
The ultimate responsibility for ensuring that local communities have the resources to guarantee basic security for all their members use to rests with the national governments.
Basic security must, in the future, also include healthcare and adequate, living standards, so that all people are reasonably covered regardless of their wealth and position in society.
All contributions and comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: NOW IS THE TIME TO CONSIDER THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY NOT ON THE JUST BEST-CASE OUTCOME BUT THE WORST-CASE OUTCOME.
If you look at the news, it looks like the entire world will be run by artificial intelligence (AI) in just a decade or two.
Humans need increasingly smarter, machine-assisted ways to navigate the ever-growing mountain of scientific knowledge and to help researchers keep pace and come up with new and better theories and ideas.
However when it comes to A.I. (not to mention blockchain or genetic- engineering) most of us including A.I. itself still have no clue what the repercussions or benefits will be in the future.
In recent years more has been written about artificial intelligence in technology and business publications than ever before: the current wave of artificial intelligence innovations has caught the attention of virtually everyone, not in the least because of artificial intelligence fears.
Knowing the power of sudden shifts in human behaviour, essentially the main cause of what we call digital disruption and the digital transformations that occur as a consequence, people’s trust, values, beliefs and most of all actions are of extreme importance.
None of us is exempt from the impact.
There is one thing for certain we are all noticing how A.I. is changing our lives.With smartphones, I pad’s humans are far more willing than most people realize to form a relationship with AI software. It is going to impact every single industry and everything that we do.
On a bigger level, areas like sustainability, climate change, environmental issues — they are becoming more at the forefront of everybody’s minds as we move more into the 21st century and think about the huge challenges we need to tackle like population increases, urbanization, and energy, climate change, the sustainability of our ecosystems. A. I. will bring along new challenges.
If not managed now it is going to increasing inequality and possibly unemployment as routine.
AI feeds on raw data and we are the willing participants. Even today’s relatively simple programs can exert a significant influence on people—for good or ill.
Data mining companies are wading through the emotional sludge of social media for profit.
As exciting as all this technology might be many questions remains.
Will we all end up in a world of total surveillance. The AI’s Pandora Box.
How is A.I. going to change our laws, our ethics?
Will A.I. improving our lives or not?
Whatever happens, these changes are currently being decided in our absence.
AS SPECIES WE HAVE POSITIONED OURSELVES OUTSIDE THE ENVIRONMENT POLLUTING THE ATMOSPHERE, OUR SEAS, OUR AIR, OUR FRESH WATER, AND WE ARE NOW IN THE PROCESS OF DOING EXACTLY THE SAME WITH A.I.
LOSSING CONTROL OF OUR OWN EVOLUTION.
Unfortunately, the commercial forces driving technology development are not always benevolent. The giant companies at the forefront of AI—across social media, search, and e-commerce—drive the value of their shares by increasing traffic, consumption, and addiction to their technology.
Technology carries the philosophies of those that create it and the nature of capital markets may be pushing us toward AI hell-bent on influencing our behaviour toward these goals. Our tendency to become emotionally attached to chatbots will and could be exploited by companies seeking a profit.
We have seen how technology like social media can be powerful in changing human beliefs and behaviour. By focusing on building a bigger advertising business—entangling politics, trivia, and half-truths—you can bring about massive changes in society.
The big global player Google, Apple, Microsoft etc philosophy is based on profit.
They have systems specifically designed to form relationships with a human and will have much more power than governments, and our out of date world organisations.
AI will influence how we think, and how we treat others.
If you can get users addicted to spending 30 hours a week with a “perfect” AI companion that doesn’t resist abuse, rather than a real, complicated human, A.I. will win.
With face recognition, iris id, blanket video surveillance, GPS tagging, every move will be watched and ultimately our lives.
In a world of surveillance, if there are no impediments applied by technologists, customers, investors or regulators rest assured we can kiss our butts goodbye. So we must begin to build rules into our systems, to make sure user behaviour moved in a positive direction.
We need to deliberately and consciously build AI that will improve the human condition—not just pursue the immediate financial gain of gazillions of addicted users. We need to consciously build systems that work for the benefit of humans and society.
In the future, having these really intelligent ways of surfacing information are going to move from ‘nice-to-haves’ to essentials. We cannot have addiction, clicks, and consumption as their primary goal.
AI is growing up and will be shaping the nature of humanity.
AI needs a mother.
Ultimately, training an AI platform — it is very much like moulding a child.
If you treat it the right way and teach it the right things, train it to know what’s right and wrong, it will inherently grow up to become a productive member of society that cares about people and the future. Just like any one of us.
We must think about AI as a tool for the augmentation of human thought and creation and make every effort not to turn the reigns of creativity or ethics over to the machines.
Why?
Because we humans seem to want to maintain the illusion that the AI truly cares about us.
Finding a way to address these issues on behalf of humanity will soon be one of the defining challenges for the coming decades.
Why?
Because trust barriers are decreasing, and as a result, dependence on AI-powered algorithms and machines is increasing.
There are no algorithms that try and explain what the A.I. ‘Thought’.
Why? Because this would defeat the power of it.
When you live in a world where your computer is not just bound to a specific device but can be anywhere you want to put it, it means computers will have to react to humans much more intelligently than they do now.
As humans we value our being human. And one of the ‘holy grails’, as it has been cherished for ages, is our “intelligence”.
So, the question remains who defines these human values and how you prove alignment with such a human and personal/cultural given.
It might be that human values will forever remain somewhat mysterious. But to the extent that our values are revealed in our behaviour, you would hope to be able to prove that the machine will be able to “get” most of it.
We emphasize it as a way to distinguish ourselves from other beings. We fear superintelligence as we see it as a risk to what we believe sets us apart. We fear it because we don’t know what it will or might be and become.
At the same time, however, while we try to protect what many believe defines our being human for the future, we risk not understanding the benefits and challenges of what is today the fourth industrial revolution.
If we look at the bigger picture of AI for good, then it connects us with more purpose and meaning.
Whether it concerns the use of artificial intelligence, the use of personal data or anything else for that matter A.I. most serve us all equally. Because in today’s world, it’s not a man vs. machine, it’s a man with a machine vs. man without.
THERE IS NO POINT TO TECHNOLOGIES THAT ENRICH THE FEW.
From current A.I. debates, it’s clear that people are acting today, not in the future, debating about values and risks. Let these debates and the rich diversity of human values remain human.
Unfortunately, human values are fickle at the best of times, and usually only become a value after the event.
It appears that the only thing we have in common in the world is our brains, lose them to A.I. and if this happens we might as well go back to the Stone Age.
One final point:
It seems that the developed world politics is shifting to identity politics how comical this is when one considers that we are selling not just our ID to A.I. but the identity of future generations.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
Do you take pride in being a member of the most intelligent, crafty and resilient species dating back 300,000 or maybe even longer on the planet that crawled out of the water to destroy the earth?
Yes!
EVEN IF HUMANS CURBED DESTRUCTIVE ACTIONS WITHIN THE NEXT FIFTY YEARS, IT WOULD TAKE BETWEEN FIVE TO SEVEN MILLION YEARS FOR MAMMAL BIODIVERSITY TO RECOVER.
We have managed to erase a staggering 2.5 billion years of evolutionary development by driving more than 300 mammal species into extinction by the 16th century. Since then the pace of destruction has speeded up and it is projected that if we don’t do something about it we will lose another 1.8 billion years within the next five decades.
There are plenty of other things going on in the world that make me weep for humanity, Greedy, short-sighted parasitic consumers of the planet.
But when we actually look there is a lot of good in this world can we be proud of?
(Pride has perplexed philosophers and theologians for centuries, and it is an especially paradoxical emotion in most culture.)
THE LIST IS VAST FROM FIRE, THE WHEEL, NUCLEAR POWER TO WALKING ON THE MOON not to mention our Artistic and Scientific Achievements.
However, we are unable to shake off tribalism even though we have mapped the complete genome, of the human, which could have us on the cusp of creating genetic discrimination through eugenics.
CRISPR has the distinct ability to alter the course of human evolution—to improve society for the greater good or, in the wrong hands, to diminish the human experience.
On the other hand, disaster looms as humans exceed the earth’s natural carrying capacity. The conditions that sustain humanity are not natural and never have been. Since prehistory, human populations have used technologies and engineered ecosystems to sustain populations well beyond the capabilities of unaltered “natural” ecosystems.
Nature doesn’t need people. People need nature.
Nature will go on, no matter what. It will evolve.
The question is, will it be with us or without us?
Our current technological world is reducing awareness and diminishing our ability to find meaning in the life around us. We need to spend more time unplugged and find ways to let nature balance our lives. The natural world’s benefits to our condition and health will be irrelevant if we continue to destroy the nature around us. That destruction is assured without a human reconnection to nature.
In a world where technologies will soon think, act, and behave
like humans, what can humans learn from machines?
If we build personalized digital coaching solution, a «Habit Installing» Platform, that facilitates the generation of new habits who knows what will be possible with the technologies of the future?
However, we still have a long way to go to understand there are aspects of how our planet evolves that are totally out of our control.
Artificial Intelligence is more than reality. The so-called “Technological Singularity” ― the moment when machines will be equal to and then surpass human brainpower ― is getting closer.
In the meantime, we continue to destroy, hurt, and belittle people for reasons that are mind-boggling.
On the other hand, we also have people with amazing abilities and intelligence using their gifts to better our world rather than try to make a quick buck.
Perhaps Ai greatest achievement will be to get rid of religion.
If there was no religion, then yes, I would be proud.
The terrible crimes which humans have committed on each other, have been driven and are being driven by God is on our side.
Do we have a lot we still need to work on? Yes, definitely. But we can stop giving ourselves such a hard time because every day, we’re trying to become better than we were yesterday.
We are beginning to clear up all the waste we carelessly have thrown away and finds its way into the ocean.
Deforestation is decreasing on a global scale.
Sexual discrimination is been removed.
However, Social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are saturated with posts of political opinions and are matched with comments that express not only disagreement but too often, words of hatred. Many who cannot understand others’ political beliefs rarely even respect them.
It doesn’t matter if you’re an American, a Canadian, or a Papua New Guinean. You don’t even have to be particularly fond of the ocean or have a soft spot for elephants to know that murdering a tiger for ts penis so men can have an imaginary bigger mental sexual drive is personified madness.
Cutting shark fins off to make soup is a matter of taste.
We must align our vision and strategy with our culture, thereby impacting people’s mindset and behaviours.
This is simply about all of us coming together to do what needs to be done.
Because if we don’t, nature will continue to evolve. Without us.
With our thoughts and words, with our ideas and values, with our beliefs and emotions, we with the help of social media must design, and implement a greenfield world that shapes the future of change management through digitalization.
We’re about to send people to another planet! We might not be so bad after all.
Nearly 1/2 of the world’s population — more than 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day. More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty — less than $1.25 a day. 1 billion children worldwide are living in poverty. According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty.
Half of the world’s prison population of about nine million is held in the US, China or Russia. Prison rates in the US are the world’s highest, at 724 people per 100,000. In Russia, the rate is 581. At 145 per 100,000, the imprisonment rate of England and Wales is at about the midpoint worldwide.
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It can be nearly impossible to credibly predict all the positive possibilities and negative implications for how we live, work, govern, and organize arising from the deployment of AI.
The fact that we are deeply uncertain about how technologies will evolve in the years and decades ahead makes human rights due diligence of AI very challenging.
The fact that the rapid development of AI raises challenges for securing access to remedy, which can be especially challenging when humans often can’t cognitively understand how a decision is made by AI systems:
The fact that Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is increasingly being used by businesses, governments, and other institutions to augment many fields of human endeavor.
The fact that Methodologies for implementing respect for human rights may need to integrate strategic tools such as strategic foresight, futures thinking, and scenario planning.
The fact that the global “platformization” of content (i.e., the rise of Video on Demand and online streaming platforms) shows us that guarantees of people’s access to the culture of their selection may now become beholden to digital intermediaries.
Proponents believe that the further development of AI creates new opportunities in health, education, and transportation, will generate wealth and strengthen economies and can be used to solve pressing social issues. However, the rapid growth of AI raises important questions about whether our current policies, legal systems, business due diligence practices, and methods to protect rights are fit for purpose.
The significant expansion of data collected and analyzed may also result in increasing the power of companies with ownership over this data and threaten our right to privacy.
HERE ARE A FEW OF PROBLEMS THAT ARE NOT DISCUSSED.
As the digital paradigm evolves, the pathway for human rights is likely to become more complicated, making appropriate regulation more important than ever. The realization of ESCR and the right to development centers on data democracies that are accountable.
Global policy discourses and frameworks around data have skewed the digital innovation tide in favor of developed countries… the global “platformization” of content… shows us that guarantees of people’s access to the culture of their selection may now become beholden to digital intermediaries.
Data and technological arrangements in the global South and North worryingly point to a wholesale private capture and consolidation of critical data regimes in the developing world: trade, agriculture, health, and education.
Not only does this leave citizens in developing countries vulnerable to acute privacy violations, but it also bears decisively on their economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs). For example, in India, the acquisition of homegrown successes, such as Wal-Mart’s purchase of the domestic e-commerce unicorn, Flipkart, poses very serious outcomes for the livelihoods of small producers and traders.
Algorithm-based decision-making by companies could also perpetuate human bias and result in discriminatory outcomes, as they already have in some cases.
An algorithm is meant to complement and not necessarily displace human discernment, it is not hard to imagine a future where humanitarian assistance to refugees becomes predicated on their (technology proven) ability to viably assimilate and contribute to their host economies.
Could the trade-off for a smoother resettlement process be the exclusion of those that the algorithm will one day write off as “inadmissible” and “unsolvable”?
Technology-based decision-making also raises important questions on how the right to development will be realized.
Artificial intelligence is undermining society by promising unimaginable benefits without any intervention from governments or other world organizations.
As always we humans react to crises when it’s too late.
Governments must create policies for effective data sharing between governments and the private sector for sectors that are of critical social importance.
More importantly, governments must create a data commons with independent oversight.
For example:
The municipality of Curitiba in Brazil, for instance, has taken the lead in passing local legislation that mandates anonymized data sharing between the local government and the ride aggregator Uber. The intention is to tap into Uber’s large and rich data sets towards better city planning and traffic management outcomes.
Governments must invest in the idea of “data as a public good” so it can work to enhance human rights.
Although nascent, experiments with models for managing big data repositories are increasing. Such repositories can encourage domestically led innovation, with local start-ups and public agencies taking the lead in developing appropriate AI-based solutions for social problems.
These are pressing policy challenges, and such prediction models need to be closely and continuously tracked for possible social distortions and subject to institutional audit. The biases in AI is often the bias of humans. People will not rely on technology they do not trust.
Society needs to come together to consider these questions, explore solutions, and deploy AI that puts people first, protects human rights, and deserves the public’s trust.
Breakthroughs in technology—including artificial intelligence—can help fulfill the right to development, but digital technologies are not magic bullets; there is a strong role for governance.
The security of digital bits cannot be left to the cloud nor the internet of things, promoted by Amazon, Facebook, and Google with home hubs that can be hacked.
Civil society groups, governments, and others are rightly asking questions regarding the risks to human rights. In this age of global corporate presence and influence, we need to ensure that ordinary people and communities are able to stand up for their rights.
But the danger with artificial intelligence is greater than just our rights.
Everything that makes who we are comes from our brains. Without brain power, we would not have gone from flint arrowheads to the space station.
DESTROY THE BRAIN WITH AI AND WE DESTROY CREATIVITY.
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≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHEN HUMANS TRANSCEND BIOLOGY, AUGMENTING IT WITH WIRELESS CLOUD AI – WILL INTELLIGENCE BE DEFINED BY US OR BY THE AI?
No system exists in a vacuum; any individual intelligence will always be both defined and limited by the context of its existence, by its environment.
Currently, our environment, not our brain, is acting as the bottleneck to our intelligence.
The expansion of intelligence can only come from a co-evolution of brains (biological or digital), sensorimotor affordances, environment, and culture — not from merely tuning the gears of some brain in a jar, in isolation. Such a co-evolution has already been happening for eons and will continue as intelligence moves to an increasingly digital substrate. No “intelligence explosion” will occur, as this process advances at a roughly linear pace.
According to Prof Yuval Noah Harari a brain is just a piece of biological tissue, there is nothing intrinsically intelligent about it.
In his latest book, he implies that the superhuman AIs of the future, developed collectively over centuries, will have the capability to develop AI greater than themselves?
I say No, no more than any of us can.
Answering “yes” would fly in the face of everything we know — again, remember that no human, nor any intelligent entity that we know of, has ever designed anything smarter than itself.
Prof Harari (in his book Sapiens) describes how wheat with zero intelligence came to con humanity into providing it with its needs, which implies that humans had zero intelligence.
However, I say that you cannot dissociate intelligence from the context in which it expresses itself. The intelligence of an octopus is specialized in the problem of being an octopus. The intelligence of humans is specialized in the problem of being human.
In his latest book and lectures, he explores the possibility of AI combining with data and genome to create the first ultra trained intelligent machine leading to digital dictatorship.
The basic premise is that, in the near future, a first “seed AI” will be created, with general problem-solving abilities slightly surpassing that of humans. This seed AI would start designing better AIs, initiating a recursive self-improvement loop that would immediately leave human intelligence in the dust, overtaking it by orders of magnitude in a short time.
I say it will be the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.
He also states that AI is a major risk, greater than nuclear war or climate change.
I agree.
AI, however, considers “intelligence” in a completely abstract way, disconnected from its context, and ignores available evidence about both intelligent systems and recursively self-improving systems.
This narrative contributes to the dangerously misleading public debate that is ongoing about the risks of AI and the need for AI regulation.
What are we talking about when we talk about intelligence?
Precisely defining intelligence is in itself a challenge.
The intelligence explosion narrative equates intelligence with the general problem-solving ability displayed by individual intelligent agents — by current human brains, or future electronic brains.
Intelligence expansion can only come from a co-evolution of the mind, its sensorimotor modalities, and its environment.
Intelligence is not a superpower; exceptional intelligence does not, on its own, confer you with proportionally exceptional power over your circumstances.
Our environment, which determines how our intelligence manifests itself, puts a hard limit on what we can do with our brains — on how intelligent we can grow up to be, on how effectively we can leverage the intelligence that we develop, on what problems we can solve.
Our biological brains are just a small part of our whole intelligence.
These days cognitive prosthetics surround us, plugging into our brain and extending its problem-solving capabilities. Your smartphone. Your laptop. Google search. The cognitive tools your were gifted in school. Books. Other people. Mathematical notation. Programming.
However the most fundamental of all cognitive prosthetics is of course language itself — essentially an operating system for cognition, without which we couldn’t think very far.
These things are not merely knowledge to be fed to the brain and used by it, they are literally external cognitive processes, non-biological ways to run threads of thought and problem-solving algorithms — across time, space, and importantly, across individuality.
It is civilization as a whole that will create superhuman AI, not you, nor me, nor any individual. A process involving countless humans, over timescales we can barely comprehend. Transcending what we are now, much like it has transcended what we were 10,000 years ago. It’s a gradual process, not a sudden shift.
Civilization will develop AI, and just march on to be ruled by an oligarchy of two or three large, general-purpose cloud-based commercial bits of software.
This is why we need to be sure that the decision logic that we programme into systems is what we perceive to be ethical. If not we will have a world full of schizophrenia.
Of course, the sensors will have to actually detect the world as it is.
Cognitive prosthetics, not our brains, will be where most of our cognitive abilities reside.
However, man cannot get rid of his body even if he throws it away. There can be no absolute transcendence of the species role while man lives.
In this case, you may ask, isn’t civilization itself the runaway self-improving brain?
Is our civilizational intelligence exploding? No.
Unless we are talking here about immortality one is merely talking about an intensification of the character defenses and superstitions of man.
These artificially intelligent systems never perform the same way twice, even under the exact same conditions, so how do we test that? How do we know there are any guarantees of safety? This is going to become a thornier issue as we go forward.
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With smartphones, I pad’s humans are far more willing than most people realize to form a relationship with AI software. It is going to impact every single industry and everything that we do.
