Ambient Intelligence – Page 4 – Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord

Overwhelmed by ‘friendly’ engineers

The rage seems to be with chat bots, lately. Haven’t met any, but that may only be me — not being interesting enough to be overwhelmed by their calls.
Which will happen, in particular to those in society that have less than perfect resistance against the various modes of telesales and other forms of social engineering (for phishing and other nefarious purposes) already. Including all sorts of otherwise-possibly-bright-and-genius-intelligent-but (??)-having-washed-up-in-InfoSec-for-lack-of-genuine-societal-intelligence types like us. But these being the ones of all stripes that ‘we’ need to protect, rather than the ones apparently already so heavily loaded that they can spare the dime for development of such hyper-scaling ultra-travelling foot-in-the-door salesmen. Is this the end stage, where none have a clue as to which precious little interaction is still actually human-to-human, and the rest may be discarded ..?

As for the latter … It raises the question of Why, in communications as a human endeavor… Quite a thought.

But for the time being, you’re hosed, anti-phishing-through-social-engineeringwise.

Just sayin’. Plus:

[Retreat, a.k.a. Run to the hills / Run for your life; but meant positively! Monte Olivieto Maggiore near Siena]

Big Data as a sin

Not just any sin, the Original one. Eating from the ultimate source of Knowledge that Big, Totalitarian, All-Thinkable Data is, in the ideal (quod non).
We WEIRDS (White, Educated, Industrialised, Rich Democratic people), a.k.a. Westeners, know what that leads to. Forever we will toil on spurious correlations…

Short Cross posting

… Not from anyone, not from anywhere. But crossing some book tips, and asking for comments.
Was reading the Good Book, when realizing that it, in conjunction with Bruce, could lead to some form of progress beyond the latter when absolutist totalitarian panopticon control frameworks might seem the only way out. In particular, when including this on the Pikettyan / Elyseym escape or not that serves only some but not the serfs. And then add some Mark Goodman (nomen est omen, qua author, and content?) and you can see where Bruce may have missed exponential crumbling of structures, and said escape might be by others than the current(ly known) 1% … Not all Boy Cried Wolfs will be wrong; on the contrary — Not Yet is very, very different from Never, but rather Soon Baby, Soon.

Not rejoicing, and:

[Nope, not safe here (Haut Koenigsbourg) either.]

Miss Quote: Dice

Well, not really a misquote straight away, but on this Tuesday Miss Quote day (not), did not Einstein say

The Lord doesn’t play dice.

Which is often interpreted to have him say that the indetermination of the endless but not limitless (or was it the other way around?) number and times of quantum changes aren’t feasible and some deterministic model will eventually be found to be able to actually predict, no chance calculus or Schrödinger’s herd of cats probabilities, all of Nature’s developments as All is predetermined. Where E is made out as a … well, on this point simpleton unbeliever, proven wrong by quantum mechanics / dynamics / what-have-we.

Of course, this is the same E of the Time is that not all things happen at once — demonstrated to be at the core of just any religions’ deepest insights, closest as anyone can get to spiritual return/back-integration/solution (in)to one’s Maker. Even at a mundane level, he was brought to doubt his cosmological constant and then this happened. And this.
Hence, we are reminded that E’s dice game denial was, at the core, not fully original. Emerson’s Nature (ch VI, Idealism, line 37; 1904 edition) has:

God never jests with us, and will not compromise the end of nature by permitting any inconsequence in its procession.

Which I consider to be so similar that comparable interpretation is fully allowed, and the differences may be telling or not (insignificance). And with the disownment (yes that’s a word, since I use it) of the relevance to dunces’ quantum blah.

So, I’ll leave you with:

[Poor (understanding) man’s Infinity; Bergen-Noord]

This time will be different

… If only for the following reason(s):

So far, Technology has been developed by humans, willy-nilly mostly as also fitting in the Selfish Memes sort of way (including Blackmore’s Meme Machine), to alleviate and overcome the very humans’ weaknesses that set us below a great many respective animals, and Nature.
Now, I(o)T slash AI (ASI) will soon be overcoming humans’ only few strengths in Thinking. At once leaving us vulnerable to become, at best, prey for <something> but with no place to hide (sic) nor any defenses…

So, this time will be different and the Luddites (actual sense, not the loom-smashing caricatures) will be right. For the one time they ‘need’ to be and then immediately need be no more. No more ‘but past technological innovations bringing temporary unemployment have all been overcome with growth of something new’. Read Martin Ford and you see that this will simply not be true — if only for the failure, this time of the Comparative Advantage mechanism but actually quite something more pervasively.
As a simple hint: What would you advise your 8yo nephew to be good at in school, to find … what kind of job or career later …!?

Don’t be discouraged! The End Is Nigh! Until it is:

[They look cute but will outdo you in an instant….; Het Loo]

Watson’s ID

Does Watson have an identity? Because, when it (sic; why not ‘she’ ..?) is intelligent enough to make its own decisions, it may want to, or know ways to obtain, or be bestowed with, personhood of some sorts. To which it may need an identity, and according ID.
But that all hinges on the construct of a single, identifyable instance of <something>. And all sorts of fancy dancy press announcements — where one might ask ‘Where you’ve been to come to the show only now’ — regarding deploying ‘Watson’ in some confined business context seem to start to fly around; mostly with corporates having a dire need to blow over the news of their atrocious lack of morals — but what is it they use?
Most probably only a time share (think S/36 style) or copied-instance or copied-engine of the concept / most elaborately trained instance available.
Do we have a criminal / misdemeanour system in place already for such non-human persons? No, I don’t mean the sorely failed ‘corporate’ personhood approach as that’s a hoax. People still are in charge of corporates, and are punishable per (Board!) capita for anything that anyone does on behalf of their employer XOR they are fundamentally not allowed to act independently in any society.

Only now do we have new entities coming aboard that behave like individuals but have none behind them to cover for accountability … or they aren’t individual operators. So, no choice. But as yet, no legal system to operate in. Conundrum!

On a somewhat tangential (is it?) node: Yes, AlphaGo has beaten a human a couple of times, and the other way around now, too, but that doesn’t mean the game is lost (its interest); see Chess. And, ‘who’ has beaten the human player? Is it a ‘who’ or is it (not only) an ‘it’ or not even that, is it too abstract to say that a ‘robot’ that is in fact an ‘information system somewhere out there dispersed in place, maybe even in time’ has beaten a human..? AGI has no power plug, people!

Also,

[“The” Church, Ronchamps]

Short on tape

The title being a mere reference to Turing machines. Since I wanted to bring up the subject of short-sightedness of those that do not understand the fundamental nature of the Church-Turing thesis and Halting Problem deeply enough.
Because they, symptomatically, consider that humans can solve the problems associated with it hence any machine that would think similarly enough or better than humans, would have overcome the problems by sheer thinkpower. But that is simply wrong. Humans do not overcome the problem, they work around its applications — another element of what makes us human, maybe. And there is no guarantee whatsoever, or rather to the contrary, that any ASI will be able to do the same, in all situations — because any true ASI will explode to cover all of the universe hence also all of its problem areas, right ..? [Reference to Kurzweil’s books and ideas not really necessary, are they?]
Gödel’s Incompleteness isn’t just something that can be solved! It is!, whether that’s fortunate or not. And a world ‘beyond’ such axiomatic issues, well… Wovon man nicht sprechen kann…

And Good versus Evil: Also not ‘solved’ by humans. And phenomenology — not something that the ultimate abstract of Hegelian Ratio can ‘solve’. And …

In similar vein (not?):

[The eternal fight between Good and Evil, ratio versus original Natural brute force, Yin versus (!)(?) Yang; Sevilla]

Watson’s place to be

Two points re Watson here, one poignant, one solved:

Where is Watson? Because, it must run on some (i.e., enormous number of) core processors that physically are, somewheres (multiple). Would anyone actually know or otherwise, wouldn’t that be scary for all the idol-worshippers of individualised-robotlike AI ..?
The name, the motto. After Thomas J.’s … Think. Name, sole purpose. Nomen est omen. Capice ..?

So there you have it. The question remains Open. Until you provide me with some answer, possibly..?

Also:
000010
[Cogite, citius altius fortius! of the 1928 kind; Amsterdam of course]

Quick Note: Big Data or ..?

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing with pebbles on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me” [I. Newton]

Whence my feeling when reading this, that I was looking into Big Data ..? Maybe Big Data could be made to work when set loose on the world’s major problems. So, no petty process analysis or what have we; onto serious fruition!

But then, it turns out that such problem solving, in particular such problem solving, needs no more data but can be solved, as shown throughout history, to be solvable without it and where data was available (yes, far more commonly available in the heads of otherwise decent much less looking-away kind of people) it wasn’t used properly or even in opposition.
Apart from the applications where it is used fully wherever more comes available and still not bringing us much closer to eternal humanitarian bliss.

For the humanity’s departure:
DSCN0124

Racing humanity against ASI

One thing still amiss in the discussions about the (near?) Future:
Whether Singularity/ASI will come before humanity leaving its biological substrate, or the other way around.

The first, leading to a dystopian future of humans initially being Machine’s pets but later (?) being discarded as inefficient nuisance. Even if only via Lanier‘s route.
The second giving some hope that humans may transform into ASI after which the age-old wars start all over again. Or, the first past the post takes all…

Yes, still ploughing through [and finding much want for evidence or less of it, and addition of great many ethics aspects] Kurzweil as here, here and here.
The first, in a great many previous posts on this blog. The second, too. I’m unsure how the future will play out. Now that Ray’s predictions, time-wise, seem to have fallen before (fallen non-behind) actuality maybe due to something with a financial crisis but Ray had demonstrated (?) that to not hurt the ‘real’ economy too much — from which either we will bounce back with a sprint to return to the (smooth..?) expo growth path, or we will prove not all that starts exponentially, will indefinitely continue that way. So we have lost already by not waking up fast enough or still have some time if only we’d wake up to join the discussion — not necessarily the Luddite revolt …

Your thoughts, please ..?

Oh and just wanted to add, for the relatively (very) short term: “If every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, if the shuttle could weave, and the pick touch the lyre, without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not need servants, nor masters slaves.” (Aristoteles) — taken to be positive. But just extend that; one could consider it short-sightedness by Ari to not have asked why there would be any chief workmen with the possibility that there would need not be any work at all leading to no income for all hence devastating poverty and starvation but for the few if any (sic) who ‘own’ the machines. Also:

[The interesting about ‘life’ in Chalons-en-Champagne is just a tucked-away corner, nothing more — same for humanity in the near future ..?]