Active Thinking Topic 84  - Tech Won. Now What?


2 & 4 June 2024

Any replies to the organizer - thormay@yahoo.com 

Venue: 1. In person: City Cross Food Court, Adelaide. 2. Zoom online. The Zoom link will become visible automatically once you press RSVP (enter) for the meetup.

Recommended Viewing : Shelle Rose Charvet (2023) "The Next Revolution Won’t be in Technology." @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPS80U7XycI  [3 minutes. Funny]

Quote: IJ Good: “The first ultra-intelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.”


Discussion Questions

1. Is the combined power of technology + humans, for example in a corporation or government, smarter than you are? What are the weaknesses of such forces against you? How can you fight back?

2. Is there really a power struggle going on between technology (e.g. AI) and humans, or is it just our paranoia? What is the evidence? Note Sal Khan's argument that "technology is an amplification of human intent" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHvEQ2quhiY )

3. Many generations ago our ancestors, perhaps with nice furry bodies, discovered a technology called clothing. Now if sent naked into the world without clothing we might struggle to survive. What other technologies might leave us vulnerable over time? How would that work?

4. Penicillin was discovered, while motor lawn mowers and WiFi were invented by Australians. However Australia as a nation has rarely enjoyed any special benefit from such inventions or discoveries by its citizens. Why is that? What are some other Australian inventions like this? Should inventions and discoveries be the common property of all humanity?

5. Past, present (and probably future) countries have mostly been led by individuals with very limited technical understanding. For example, most law making bodies worldwide are dominated by lawyers. What dangers result from leaders with little aptitude for technology misusing & misunderstanding technology? [e.g. In the present world scene, I have been told that both Putin (Russia) and Xi Jinping (PRC) are unable to use even desktop computers and certainly have no personal technical understanding of the weapons systems they announce. ... ]

6. Will the training sources of advanced technology such as Chat GPT gradually homogenize world values and cultures in a "world culture", or skew everything into American values? Would this be a long term, or only temporary issue? Note : "Chatbots from American companies such as Google, "Open"AI, Microsoft and Meta are typically trained on 100 times more American data than they are on Australian data ... and using them will tend to homogenise Australian culture around American values." ( https://www.afr.com/technology/american-chatbots-oversexed-overhyped-and-over-here-20240524-p5jg9 ).

7. In days of old, soldier had to hack at the enemy with swords; (maybe not so different in Ukraine or Myanmar now). Fighters often went into battle drunk or on other drugs to dull fear. In near-future conflicts, wars will be fought by drone weapons and robots, with humans manipulating the situation from a distance. How will this change the psychology of starting wars and fighting them?

8. Tech has won before. For example, check "Luddite" in Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite. These were textile workers, 1811-1816, who secretly destroyed factory machinery they saw as destroying their livelihoods. There are echoes of this in flyover America amongst Trump's MAGA followers. If robots and AI displace vast numbers of middle class workers, will this be a trigger for violent uprisings?

9. The RATE of technological change is increasing exponentially. Social systems take decades (or even millennia ) to adapt. Large parts of populations may never adapt. What kind of ideologies or belief systems might try to reconcile this tech-social mess for ordinary people?

10. The distance between so called AI (artificial intelligence) and AGI (artificial general intelligence, comparable to human intelligence) is very great. However, that distance may be closing rapidly. Characters like Elon Musk think so. How will humans adapt, economically and emotionally, to sharing a small planet with creatures which are possibly smarter than they are?

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Extra Reading

Shira Ovide (December 26, 2021) "Tech won. Now what?" The Age @ https://www.theage.com.au/business/companies/tech-won-now-what-20211224-p59k1j.html 

John Naughton (26 December 2021) "Worried about super-intelligent machines? They are already here". The Guardian @ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/25/worried-about-super-intelligent-machines-they-are-already-here  [Quote:" ...for anyone who thinks that living in a world dominated by super-intelligent machines is a “not in my lifetime” prospect, here’s a salutary thought: we already live in such a world! The AIs in question are called corporations. They are definitely super-intelligent, in that the collective IQ of the humans they employ dwarfs that of ordinary people and, indeed, often of governments. They have immense wealth and resources. Their lifespans greatly exceed that of mere humans. And they exist to achieve one overriding objective: to increase and thereby maximise shareholder value. In order to achieve that they will relentlessly do whatever it takes, regardless of ethical considerations, collateral damage to society, democracy or the planet.
.”]

Stuart Russell "Reith Lectures 2021 - Living With Artificial Intelligence" [select Episodes & Transcripts from the menu] BBC @ https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1N0w5NcK27Tt041LPVLZ51k/reith-lectures-2021-living-with-artificial-intelligence 

Kevin Slavin (22 July 2011) "How algorithms shape our world". TED talk @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDaFwnOiKVE  [15 minutes] [Promo: "Kevin Slavin argues that we're living in a world designed for -- and increasingly controlled by -- algorithms. In this riveting talk from TEDGlobal, he shows how these complex computer programs determine: espionage tactics, stock prices, movie scripts, and architecture. And he warns that we are writing code we can't understand, with implications we can't control".] [Thor, comment: I really recommend this video. A lot to think about]

John Davidson (May 24, 2024) "American chatbots: oversexed, overhyped and over here. 
In just two weeks, Microsoft, "Open"AI and Google have each previewed AI chatbots that critics say are as dangerous as they are impressive." Australian Financial Review @ https://www.afr.com/technology/american-chatbots-oversexed-overhyped-and-over-here-20240524-p5jg9  [Quote: "Chatbots from American companies such as Google, "Open"AI, Microsoft and Meta are typically trained on 100 times more American data than they are on Australian data ... and using them will tend to homogenise Australian culture around American values."]

Thor May (Lae, Papua New Guinea, 1987) "Super-Culture And The Ghost In The Machine". The Passionate Skeptic website @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/skeptic/philos7.html 

Thor May, (University of Newcastle, NSW @10 June 1986) "A Collision of Technology and Politics Star Wars Revisited". The Passionate Skeptic website @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/Star-Wars-Revisited.htm  [Quote: "We kidded ourselves for a while that Star Wars had gone away. We pretended that flower power was winning. But in our heart of hearts, in our 3 a.m. nightmares, we knew that no toy of destruction, once conceived of, has ever been left to rest."] [Thor, comment: In the 1980s the technically incompetent political leaders of both USA and the USSR had persuaded themselves and each other that America was about to deploy an amada of killer satellites linked with each other by an instant communications network. This fear played a big part in the collapse of the USSR. Professor David Lorge Parnas who pioneered the foundational principles of software engineering, was hired to work on the Strategic Defence Initiative ('Star Wars'). This article records one of his lectures where he explains why the whole concept (in the 1980s) was a pure impossible fantasy. More recently other technically incompetent politicians like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have been prone to making similar fantasy defence announcements].

Shelle Rose Charvet (2023) "The Next Revolution Won’t be in Technology." @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPS80U7XycI  [3 minutes. Funny]

Wikipedia (2024) "Luddite" @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite  [Quote: "The Luddites were members of a 19th-century movement of English textile workers who opposed the use of certain types of cost-saving machinery, and often destroyed the machines in clandestine raids... The Luddite movement began in Nottingham, England, and spread to the North West and Yorkshire between 1811 and 1816.[4] Mill and factory owners took to shooting protesters and eventually the movement was suppressed by legal and military force, which included execution and penal transportation .."]

Sal Khan (25 May 2024) "How AI Will Revolutionize Education". Commonwealth Club of California @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHvEQ2quhiY  [Thor, comment: this is a really excellent video. 1 hour.]

Vivian Wang and Siyi Zhao (May 28, 2024) "This ‘Russian’ woman loves China. Too bad she’s a deepfake of an unrelated Australian". The Age @ https://www.theage.com.au/world/asia/this-russian-woman-loves-china-too-bad-she-s-a-deepfake-of-an-unrelated-australian-20240522-p5jfkm.html  [Quote: "Beijing: The woman declares, in Mandarin inflected with a slight accent, that Chinese men should marry “us Russian women”. In other videos on the Chinese short video platform Douyin, she describes how much she loves Chinese food, and spruiks salt and soap from her country. “Russian people don’t trick Chinese people,” she promises."]

New Mind (25 May 2024) "The Next Generation Of Brain Mimicking AI" Computing Technology @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ythnIwpQCgQ  [Thor, comment: This is a fascinating glimpse into the near future. Current LLMs have enormous power consumption which is unsustainable. A recent alternative is neuromorphic processing using asynchronous "spike" computing which yields analogic output. The neurologic design mimics natural brain design and has very low power consumption. It is not compatible, currently, with the learned data of digital LLMs. (Note: this presentation is fast and won't be easy for viewers who lack any background knowledge of natural & artificial language systems)].

Matthew Sinclair (29 May 2024) "Imagine This... | When AI Comes for Knowledge Workers." Boston Consulting Group @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXUlpViwqpw  [Quote: "Will a coming generation of AI bots be able to generate and iterate ideas as well as or better than people? Will knowledge workers be replaced by machines? BCG’s Matthew Sinclair imagines a future where technology could replace writers, software engineers, and, yes, consultants – although he’s not convinced that businesses should lose the human touch. There are inherent risks in handing over the most creative elements of your business to bots – including perpetuating what Sinclair calls “the tyranny of the banal.”"]

Logan Bartlett (15 May 2024) "Sam Altman talks GPT-4o and Predicts the Future of AI" @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMtbrKhXMWc

Andrew Yang (May, 2024) "Andrew Yang on the path to UBI (Universal Basic Income), the explosion of AI, and optimism for the future". Forward with Andrew Yang @
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-XUAQ7k_Bw
 [1 hour] [Thor, comment: Yang is constantly bubbling with new ideas. He was a centrist Democrat affiliated candidate for President in the last US election. His new party, Forward, aims at moderate voters from both major parties. He is one of America's more impressive politicians (my view). He grew up in New York, with parents who emigrated from Taiwan. His father is a research physicist, his mother a statistician ]

Internet of Bugs (10 Jun 2024) "AI Hype is completely out of control - especially since ChatGPT-4o" @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VctsqOo8wsc

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Tech Won. Now What? (c) Thor May 2024

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