Tag: singularity

Waves of IoT

Tinkering with the great many (unknown) unknowns of the IoTsphere, it occurred to me that there are various intermediate phases to deal with before we can consider ourselves comprehensively outdone after the Singularity (dystopian with P(X)=1).

By which I mean the following ‘growth’ model:

  • Current-day operations: Factory ‘robots’ or process plants being (factory-)centrally controlled from e.g., typical classical (?) control rooms. And ATMs, the robots without arms!
  • IoT in its four distinct forms. With ‘robots’ moving out of their prothesis confines, as e.g., here. Possibly with some ANI.

    Both these levels can be regarded to have operational level problems; ethical, security/privacy, industry-disruptions and comprehensively new business and labour models, etc.etc. but relatively definitely operational, to be solved.

  • At a tactical level, there’s AGI stuff to be figured out.
    Ethics, ‘robots’ like self-driving/autonomous cars [yes, yes, I know those two are very much not the same!] as proxies for humans, with all the rights and duties including how to enforce those, and Privacy on a much larger, impactful scale. Including also, all problems you thought to have solved in the previous rounds, now coming back to haunt you and be very much harder to solve.
  • The Strategic level, with ASI all around. To repeat, including also, all problems you thought to have solved in the previous rounds, now coming back to haunt you and be very much harder to solve.

This, as just a briefest of summaries of all sorts of dilemmas to be figured out. Sonner rather than later, or bingo (points of nu return) will have been passed sooner than you realise. I’ll try to help out with a post here and there, or course ;-]

For now:
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[At what stage will AI understand the genius of this design ..?]

Today’s-Tech-Yesterday-Craving

As a question: What is the melancholic (sic) feeling one gets when realising how great it would have been to have had (some of) today’s technology / hype little tools, already yesterday or rather, a couple of decades back ..?

As logically flawed as the feeling is (you’d change the world of yesterday in a way that would make today’s world impossible to exist exactly like it turned out today… No-impact visits to the past even, are impossible since you’d return with the info of having been there), it still creeps up every now and then. Oddly, it concerns specific technology items, not Technology as a philosophical construct altogether. Is that where the error of thought creeps in; can’t have your tool and not eat the whole thing ..?

Please add your musings… And
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[Quiz: Prato or Pistoia ..?]

Singularity / M-jumps

Musing with the ideas, suddenly (?) resurfacing the last couple of weeks, of memes being the abstract ideas that spread over human brains like viruses do in the physical world.
Where ‘virus’ taken in a wide sense may include the mitochondria et al., would reflect into the abstract like algorithms and/or Turing engines / data streams.

But that’s just some analogy to just track back. My concern was (is?) with what would happen at the point where ‘machines’ would become so intelligent, or the physical substrate that information (and/or algorithms, analogy from the other side?) rides on, would no longer need human brains, human flesh and bones, to function, procreate and spread. Is that at, or past, or before the Singularity ..? I see [wanted to write ‘envision’ but one should eschew obfuscation!] various scenarios following from there various scenarios. Not all, too happy. Let alone for us humans.
And how would we call such points? Ladies and gentlemen, I coin ‘M-jumps’.

Your comments are welcomed. Even if you expected “you’re”.
Oh well, …:
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[Just an off the cuff phone snapshot; Baltimore by night]

3+ bodies found in business

… just about everywhere. Of course I refer to the n-body problem set with n > 3 as here.
Because it is so dismally known, and applied. Most starkly (#loveofwords) in ‘business’ ‘strategy’, where the lack of wisdom is clearly demonstrated in the lack of inclusion of all (sic) potential (sic; including chance function estimations) competitors’ moves. Name any market where the latter s doesn’t apply, and report it to (anti-?)cartel authorities.

I.e., the Problem applied to strategy means: Strategising is futile, all your course belong to us. On a side note:
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[Alignment; Vienna]

Not even bread

Juvenalis was correct. But isn’t anymore.

People do still care for bread, and circuses, but the latter-day economy slowly degrades to only provide the latter. As in: The 0,1% (yes indeed, the next-0,9% is under threat as well) that consists of a handful of behind-the-scene creeps (as defined by Jaron Lanier) and a less than handful of Universe-scale lucky start-ups, run the economy, ‘jobs’, of the 5% petty work-slaves that are the ‘new’ generations of app developers and ‘disruptors’ (quod non) – let to play and claim some fame, until play time (circus) is over and the 0,1% reels in the money buckets. Never mind that income of the petty, was dismally low (“you shouldn’t want to earn, but grow..!”, right?). Never mind that this structure leads to no money buckets remaining anymore in the end. Never mind that the circuses lead to just about everyone believing they have a shot at fame – with enough ackonwledgement of history and historical facts, they would see that a. chances are so slim to none, very, very close to none; b. levelling would benefit hugely many more, and quicker, and would make all things more robust leaving time for actually gratifying societal actions.

As there’s a huge middle class of just-slightly-less-überhip to not-hip-at-all people that would want to work for bread – but either can’t find anything other than stale ever simpler jobs in stale ever more brittle companies (no circus shows at all) as long as the latter last (ever shorter) for ever less bread, or are pushed into Etsy Arcadia where barter and trade will not suffice to pay your mortgage for a long time if ever. Yes the latter is more fulfilling than comfortable (?? not.) numbness, but when (not if) leading to starvation of lower Maslow levels, will achieve much less accomplishment of higher M levels by default. And that’s still how we all roll… [In the Western world]

So… is there a middle ground, for the 94,9% in the middle when the middle ground they held, vanished and not much appeared yet ..? The ‘hope’is of course that the 0,1% will either tumble long before the Singularity, or the Singularity will overtake them…

OK, will lighten up…:
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[Ávila, to keep the hordes out of the lush gardens ..?]

Musk / Vicarious / ASI

Haven’t heard in a while of anything fruitful coming forward from Elon Musk’s investments in Vicarious despite his concerns. (Now that DeepMind has gone over to the Dark Side.)

Reasons ..? Double secrets?
I’d just like to know.

For the weekend:
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[Algorithmic justice prevails ..? Amsterdam]

Oh, whatev’ – will succeed

Yes, critique hasn’t been overly enthousiastic for the HoloLens developments. Like in this here story.
Question is, though: Did the first iPod have Shuffle? Was the first iPhone even a serious phone ..? [Or was that the first iPad that had no comms; I forget due to irrelevance. But do notice how there’s now a continuum of screen sizes from smartphone via note and tablet to desktop screenlets and mega-TVs]

My take: It’ll be somewhere on the Glass–to–iPad scale: As prototype that stays (sic! Glass’s still around for very, very effective deployment in some sectors) and/or as lauch of a steep improvement curve.

Which is good. But may bring about some unforeseen consequences: What when Youth gets hooked, and unlearns what Reality is ..? Will we all follow ..?
Yes, if e.g., walls can be presented hologrammatically to a degree that hologrammar-Ns (you read that here, first!) are satisfied with reality resemblence, could an ASI take over and confine us in virtual (now for realz) boxes ..?

Dysto here, dysto there, dysto everywhere… Hence:
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[Mockery … Barça]

The Divide(s)

Surely I’m not the only one running up against total resistance (i.e., no discernable millimeter move) when one would want to even discuss disruption in industries hitherto untouched.
Like the financial industry. Really, the mindsets haven’t opened up to the 21st century at all. Despite in-roads by trading algorithms, something some even called a ‘financial crisis’ or so, and Bitcoin i.e. block chain trust.
But hey, at some point you just want some everyone to have their Kodak moment, right ..?

Maybe there’s three kinds of people:

  • The kind that embraces the New for what it is and brings; the innovators of course and the early adoptors. Ballpark: 10%
  • The early and late majority that tag along because everybody is doing it. About 60-70%.
  • The Laggerds, the retards (qua brain openness and movement…), the reactionary. The remainder 30-20%.

That’s not new. But the percentages may be different for various kinds of innovations and disruptions. The point being: How do you know where you are, if you’re in the third category and/or before the disruption strikes ..?
Yes, I do understand the flip at the other extreme, where Morozov–like second thoughs about what We as a global society would want. But that’s way beyond the frightened closure of mind that shrinks and shrinks consciousness (both meanings) ever further. Where you’d want to, metaphorically hey keep it real, bang someone’s head against the proverbial beamer display to make ’em see – with the contrary effect of disliking anything New even further in turn…

But OK. This was just an extensive RT of the LinkedIn link above… So, herewith:
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[Still standing (? as ‘t Schip), but gloom!]

P( Danger(You) > 0.5 ) ⇒ Shutdown( You )

For the Fellow Travelers among you, that still believe that AI (AGI or ASI) will bring us joy and an arcadic peaceful creative work-free life forever after, please do consider this here piece. And see that we’re only at the beginning.
[Oh for AGI/ASI reference, see here.]

Luckily, hopefully, the tide will turn. But there simply is no guarantee it will.

And on this most pleasant note, I’ll leave you with:
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[Málaga – but when the struggle is forbidden and ‘ratio’ quod non might seem to prevail, the Dark may roar and explode out of its confines in utterly destructive ways. As in this previous post…]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord