Algorithmic Madness and Artificial Insanity.

[shamangineer]

With the rise of AI and algorithmic automation comes the risks of damage being inflicted on a wide scale based on: speed of operations, unknown conditions, MBA management, and unintended consequences. Management in the software industry will tend to push software out based on the idea of being first to market and the ability to patch it later, turning customers into beta testers. As the use becomes more prevalent and increasingly having real-world consequences the flaws and difficulty with predicting and fixing the effects of this kind of software will become more pronounced.

AI researchers allege machine learning is alchemy: (Alchemy not being used in the enlightened sense of the word)
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/ai-researchers-allege-machine-learning-alchemy

How Peppa Pig became a video nightmare for children:
https://www.theguardian.com/technol...ig-youtube-weird-algorithms-automated-content

Here's how the tablet at your favorite restaurant is hurting your waiter:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineod...rating-servers?utm_term=.dp5zz1R8j#.iegwwA70n

Everyone is panicking about a dreadful new law that might kill off the meme and change the internet forever:
http://www.businessinsider.com/euro...-kill-the-meme-and-change-the-internet-2018-6

 

[artemusgordon]

My concern with AI comes from some of the basic, underlying themes in our culture. The first and most dangerous being the sense for a need to punish people. The AI proponents will tell us all about its time savings and speed and how it'll make our life easier, help us with our spending preferences, for marketing of course. However, I am certain it's main purpose will be to keep us in line. Keep us on the treadmill. To track our patriotism. Eventually to track our thoughts and to dole out punishment, or track the need for someone to do so physically. If it isn't already doing so already.

We currently live in a culture that prefers punishment over making life better for people. Look at Trump's popularity among his followers. Sure, many believe he is gonna make 'Murka a'right a'geen. But a lot of why they love him is how he just spits in the face of our former allies and sticks it to people they don't like. Meanwhile, the Trump haters have little sympathy for Trump supporters either. What kind of AI do people think is going to come out of this environment? I'd bet heavily on one that makes our life a lot worse instead of one that makes our life a lot better.

Thus far many of the technologies predicted to make our lives better have not met expectations, let alone exceeded them. Sure, we have new medical tech and all kinds of information, so much you can't even sort through the shit anymore and all kinds of gadgets and gizmos. We also have rampant suicide, increasing opiate use, depression, crap jobs with no hope for something better, etc... There's a disconnect somewhere and rather than look into that disconnect, we just keep going for the "technology will save us" religion. That doesn't mean all technology is bad, but maybe some studies or research into its effect on us or society is in order. Yeah, yeah, I know, who gets to do the study? Who funds it? Will anyone trust the results, even if verified by multiple independent researcher? They've screwed us over so much with all of this shit we can't trust anything anymore, so just buy more, chase those dollars more and never look anywhere but the dollar on the stick in front of us. There's a new techno-buffoonery device coming out and you don't want to get left behind.......

 

[shamangineer]

My concern with AI comes from some of the basic, underlying themes in our culture. The first and most dangerous being the sense for a need to punish people. The AI proponents will tell us all about its time savings and speed and how it'll make our life easier, help us with our spending preferences, for marketing of course. However, I am certain it's main purpose will be to keep us in line. Keep us on the treadmill. To track our patriotism. Eventually to track our thoughts and to dole out punishment, or track the need for someone to do so physically. If it isn't already doing so already.

We currently live in a culture that prefers punishment over making life better for people. Look at Trump's popularity among his followers. Sure, many believe he is gonna make 'Murka a'right a'geen. But a lot of why they love him is how he just spits in the face of our former allies and sticks it to people they don't like. Meanwhile, the Trump haters have little sympathy for Trump supporters either. What kind of AI do people think is going to come out of this environment? I'd bet heavily on one that makes our life a lot worse instead of one that makes our life a lot better.

Thus far many of the technologies predicted to make our lives better have not met expectations, let alone exceeded them. Sure, we have new medical tech and all kinds of information, so much you can't even sort through the shit anymore and all kinds of gadgets and gizmos. We also have rampant suicide, increasing opiate use, depression, crap jobs with no hope for something better, etc... There's a disconnect somewhere and rather than look into that disconnect, we just keep going for the "technology will save us" religion. That doesn't mean all technology is bad, but maybe some studies or research into its effect on us or society is in order. Yeah, yeah, I know, who gets to do the study? Who funds it? Will anyone trust the results, even if verified by multiple independent researcher? They've screwed us over so much with all of this shit we can't trust anything anymore, so just buy more, chase those dollars more and never look anywhere but the dollar on the stick in front of us. There's a new techno-buffoonery device coming out and you don't want to get left behind.......

That is a big part of why they want it and it definitley has it's role to play there to our detriment. But even when you look at the surface level - how it's being sold - things don't stack up to the claims for why we would want it to be as widespread as they are claiming it should be.

 

[naphtha]

Yeah, the whole tech will save us is a load of rubbish. Not only on the software side, using the consumer as beta testers, but on the hardware side. The whole 5G thing has me concerned most of all. Not exactly where your thread was going, but all this goes hand in hand.

 

[artemusgordon]

Yeah, the whole tech will save us is a load of rubbish. Not only on the software side, using the consumer as beta testers, but on the hardware side. The whole 5G thing has me concerned most of all. Not exactly where your thread was going, but all this goes hand in hand.

Sure that's part of the conversation. Nobody gets to vote on whether or not we want 5G. Have there been any independent studies about what it does to people, animals, plants, water, etc..? Any effort, besides guests here and a few other podcasts talking about the potential problem it may cause? Not that I've seen. But they're just going to go ahead and do it anyway. Anyone who questions is a Chicken Little and ridiculed. All part of the game.

 

[naphtha]

Sure that's part of the conversation. Nobody gets to vote on whether or not we want 5G. Have there been any independent studies about what it does to people, animals, plants, water, etc..? Any effort, besides guests here and a few other podcasts talking about the potential problem it may cause? Not that I've seen. But they're just going to go ahead and do it anyway. Anyone who questions is a Chicken Little and ridiculed. All part of the game.

Agreed. I have hardly seen any 5G topics of discussion, except here. I seen one or two videos on YouTube, but that's about it. They were sticking the antennas on apartment buildings, and a mother and son both got cancer... maybe that's stage three and a caviat of Dr. Mary's monkeys. Hit it with waves and activate the dormant cancer cells. I don't know, but before things are well understood, i consider it playing with fire.

 

[enjoypolo]

https://www.rt.com/news/452006-china-female-ai-anchor/
China's Xinhua News company just announced their first new AI newscasters, one male, and female, using voices from actual journalists.
It's strangely realistic, and downright creepy. Oh Brave New World..

https://twitter.com/XHNews/status/1...ww.rt.com/news/452006-china-female-ai-anchor/

 

[shamangineer]

https://www.rt.com/news/452006-china-female-ai-anchor/
China's Xinhua News company just announced their first new AI newscasters, one male, and female, using voices from actual journalists.
It's strangely realistic, and downright creepy. Oh Brave New World..

https://twitter.com/XHNews/status/1098221286491271168?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1098221286491271168&ref_url=https://www.rt.com/news/452006-china-female-ai-anchor/

You can tell that the mouth shifts a bit relative to the body, but it is darn close. I'm not sure if I would pick up on it if I weren't trying to find something wrong with the video.

 

[shamangineer]

Aw, c'mon guys, they're just killer robots, no biggie.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47524768

 

[enjoypolo]

This reminds me of a passage by Nikola Tesla who was foreseeing a moment in our timeline that would see robots fighting each other (for our idiocy's sake) before we see the futility in it, and come to more harmonious relationships with each other.

Let us go back to the early beginning, when the law of the stronger was the only law. The light of reason was not yet kindled, and the weak was entirely at the mercy of the strong. The weak individual then began to learn how to defend himself. He made use of a club, stone, spear, sling, or bow and arrow, and in the course of time, instead of physical strength, intelligence became the chief deciding factor in the battle.
The wild character was gradually softened by the awakening of noble sentiments, and so, imperceptibly, after ages of continued progress, we have come from the brutal fight of the unreasoning animal to what we call the "civilized warfare" of to-day, in which the combatants shake hands, talk in a friendly way, and smoke cigars in the entr'actes, ready to engage again in deadly conflict at a signal. Let pessimists say what they like, here is an absolute evidence of great and gratifying advance.

But now, what is the next phase in this evolution? Not peace as yet, by any means. The next change which should naturally follow from modern developments should be the continuous diminution of the number of individuals engaged in battle.
The apparatus will be one of specifically great power, but only a few individuals will be required to operate it.
This evolution will bring more and more into prominence a machine or mechanism with the fewest individuals as an element of warfare, and the absolutely unavoidable consequence of this will be the abandonment of large, clumsy, slowly moving, and unmanageable units.
Greatest possible speed and maximum rate of energy-delivery by the war apparatus will be the main object. The loss of life will become smaller and smaller, and finally, the number of the individuals continuously diminishing, merely machines will meet in a contest without blood-shed, the nations being simply interested, ambitious spectators.

When this happy condition is realized, peace will be assured. But, no matter to what degree of perfection rapid-fire guns, high-power cannon, explosive projectiles, torpedo-boats, or other implements of war may be brought, no matter how destructive they may be made, that condition can never be reached through any such development. All such implements require men for their operation; men are indispensable parts of the machinery. Their object is to kill and to destroy. Their power resides in their capacity for doing evil.

So long as men meet in battle, there will be bloodshed. Bloodshed will ever keep up barbarous passion.
To break this fierce spirit, a radical departure must be made, an entirely new principle must be introduced, something that never existed before in warfare's principle which will forcibly, unavoidably, turn the battle into a mere spectacle, a play, a contest without loss of blood. To bring on this result men must be dispensed with: machine must fight machine. But how accomplish that which seems impossible? The answer is simple enough: produce a machine capable of acting as though it were part of a human being no mere mechanical contrivance, comprising levers, screws, wheels, clutches, and nothing more, but a machine embodying a higher principle, which will enable it to per form its duties as though it had intelligence, experience, judgment, a mind!

This conclusion is the result of my thoughts and observations which have extended through virtually my whole life, and I shall now briefly describe how I came to accomplish that which at first seemed an unrealizable dream.

Exerpt from "The Problem of Increasing Human Energy", 1900 (Century Illustrated Mag)

 

[enjoypolo]

https://www.gaia.com/give/video?token=cjt64dxe4001h01s4pgn0hco8
Link from his twitter

Unfortunately, the link expires soon.
Emery Smith is discussing with one of his colleague and mentor, Randy Veitenheimer, about many things: from imported technologies, like lasers, but also getting access to the source field's database. Great stuff.
PS: some other notes:
AI Gods; getting access to the field's database to get blueprints for exo-technologies; alchemy and consciousness-field dynamics (i.e. rain dance).