№ 569. Artificial Intelligence & Capitalism

Student News Daily

 

TED CHIANG: I tend to think that most fears about A.I. are best understood as fears about capitalism. And I think that this is actually true of most fears of technology, too. Most of our fears or anxieties about technology are best understood as fears or anxiety about how capitalism will use technology against us. And technology and capitalism have been so closely intertwined that it’s hard to distinguish the two.

Let’s think about it this way. How much would we fear any technology, whether A.I. or some other technology, how much would you fear it if we lived in a world that was a lot like Denmark or if the entire world was run sort of on the principles of one of the Scandinavian countries? There’s universal health care. Everyone has child care, free college maybe. And maybe there’s some version of universal basic income there.

Now if the entire world operates according to — is run on those principles, how much do you worry about a new technology then? I think much, much less than we do now. Most of the things that we worry about under the mode of capitalism that the U.S practices, that is going to put people out of work, that is going to make people’s lives harder, because corporations will see it as a way to increase their profits and reduce their costs. It’s not intrinsic to that technology. It’s not that technology fundamentally is about putting people out of work.

It’s capitalism that wants to reduce costs and reduce costs by laying people off. It’s not that like all technology suddenly becomes benign in this world. But it’s like, in a world where we have really strong social safety nets, then you could maybe actually evaluate sort of the pros and cons of technology as a technology, as opposed to seeing it through how capitalism is going to use it against us. How are giant corporations going to use this to increase their profits at our expense?

And so, I feel like that is kind of the unexamined assumption in a lot of discussions about the inevitability of technological change and technologically-induced unemployment. Those are fundamentally about capitalism and the fact that we are sort of unable to question capitalism. We take it as an assumption that it will always exist and that we will never escape it. And that’s sort of the background radiation that we are all having to live with. But yeah, I’d like us to be able to separate an evaluation of the merits and drawbacks of technology from the framework of capitalism.

№ 545. Waking Up to Binary Dreams 3: AI

Robots v. Immigrants

 

"We are fascinated by machines that can control cars, compose symphonies, or defeat people at chess, Go, or Jeopardy! While more progress is being made all the time in Artificial Intelligence (AI), some scientists and philosophers warn of the dangers of an uncontrollable superintelligent AI. Using theoretical calculations, an international team of researchers, including scientists from the Center for Humans and Machines at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, shows that it would not be possible to control a superintelligent AI."

№ 444. Virtual Tours in the Age of Covid

Max Gustafson

Here's a safer and cheaper way to travel while the world is on quarantine: virtual tours.

Soon, I think, we can reinvent the internet and involve the other senses in the virtual tours. For example, we can walk through the tour and touch the exhibits, if allowed. Or smell and taste them, if the curators want us to sample them.

Fast forward to science fiction reality about a hundred years from now. After this 2020 pandemic becomes an uneventful entry in history, I look forward to teleporting directly to any tourist attraction, museum, restaurant, concert on the planet or off.

Teleporting will dispense with a lot of the necessary inconveniences of travel in the present like check-in, immigration, pre-departure wait and baggage carousels. Viruses and other contaminants, like terrorists, can also be safely isolated in the ether before they reach their destinations. Some thought.

№ 342. Waking Up to Binary Dreams 6

Was Bitcoin created by an AI?

No one knows for sure who invented it, but is it possible? Is this the beginning of the end. Or is this just a blip in a technological event horizon? The first series among the many waves to come?

I was watching a rerun of Animatrix. The dystopian prophecy still strongly argues for a plausible future given a set of many quite valid assumptions, more than ten years after its release.

During the Matrix runs at the turn of the 21st century there were no Social Networks or even smartphones yet. Year 2017, the Watchowski brothers have both chosen transgender identities and Facebook boasts of more than two billion users. Apparently we are still in fluidic space and time.

But I have an alternative future in mind that is far less radical than the ones envisioned by the Matrix. The future in my head will be more accommodating to a creeping hybrid of silicon and flesh. Science fiction will still have to yield to pragmatic concerns such as business, logistics and the law of supply and demand, among many other mundane realities.

№ 341. Waking Up to Binary Dreams 5

Cognitive computing. Creation of a hybrid of human and artificial intelligence to solve BIG, complex problems. Borg.

"The US must also determine a national strategy for how aggressively it will develop new systems, operational concepts and organizational constructs that exploit artificial intelligence advancements in warfare, according to the report.

Kitt the sidekick smart car was an early
pop culture example of benevolent AI. But I think,
in one episode, Kitt turned rogue.

An important part of that strategy relates to 'autonomy' which results 'from delegation of a decision to an authorized entity to take action within specific boundaries,' Work told CNN."

№ 331. Waking Up To Binary Dreams 3

Is it safe to assume that being tongue-tied lost in translation will become obsolete with Google's new technology? 

Yes? No? Maybe? Don't know? Who cares?

№ 158. Special Effects Sunday

Academy Awards: Best Visual Effects Oscar Winners from Nelson Carvajal on Vimeo.

№ 70. Ze Map, X Marks the Spot

"There are a ton of fan-made maps out there depicting the world of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series — not to mention some pretty impressive fan art — but this one is by far the best we’ve ever seen. Created by superfan TheMountainGoat by combining books from the maps as well as other fan-made maps, it is as functional as it is beautiful. There’s a larger, zoomable version at his website, plus some other goodies, like a cool animated timeline map and a view of Westeros in Google Earth view. We’ll never get lost on the Dothraki sea again."

from Flavorwire

№ 61. Future Tenses

Already wrote about the predictions on artificial intelligence and human consciousness. They may/will happen in the proximate future (Waking Up to Binary Dreams). That means, they're expected to break ground during my lifetime, if the tech seers get it right!

The future paints a landscape taken off the pages of our classic science fiction from Dune, Star Trek or Star Wars.  Maybe it's a world even more bizarre than prveiously imagined. Maybe it's just a mix of the familiar and the twilight zone. Maybe.

Barring or despite all the future laughs we'll have about all the misses, here's another broad peering into the beyond. It's the New York Times's projection of the near future: Imagining 2076: Connect Your Brain to the Internet.

Scotty, it's time to do environmental scanning and look for our niches. I wonder if virtual or Lunar---heck, Martian tourism would prove popular. I'll settle for underwater cities, for now.

free