Facebook’s artificial intelligence (AI) experiment, resulted in two computers communicating. The “unnatural language” of the two machines sparked a lively discussion in the ICP office recently.
The conversations circling around our office ranged from positive to the foreboding of a Skynet future horizon.
1. Are you an optimist like Thomas L Friedman?
Thank you for being late is one of Thomas L Friedman’s latest books: “An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the age of Accelerations”.
He shares his visits to ATT Labs and interactions with driverless cars. Friedman describes his impression of future technologies and how they impact the planet and its warm-blooded inhabitants like us.
What a life Thomas Friedman has for the Artificial Intelligence Alpha Geek. He seems to have the ultimate VIP Back Stage Pass to everywhere that is anything in technology.
Friedman interestingly renames the Cloud as the “Supernova”. He describes the power of computing today and what it offers for the future of humans.
He shares how Moore’s Law (the doubling of computational power) has led to the best times to milk dairy cows, when and where to plant crops, and a plethora of other optimistic examples, with some caution thrown in.
The Audio edition is 20 hours long, so if you like a good read and have some time, this book could open your eyes to what he has seen through those who are making it happen today.
http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/thank-you-for-being-late/
2. AI Fight Club; Zuckerberg v Musk
Many of our leading IT and Business innovators have chimed in with different viewpoints on the safety and value of cognitive learning for machines. Elon Musk has voiced and expressed his caution and concern for Artificial Intelligence “without borders”. Mark Zuckerberg’s less cautious artificial intelligence approach (in spite of the hasty shut-down of the Facebook’s chattering machines) clashed with Elon Musk’s warning:
Elon Musk air his AI Worries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NTb10Au-Ic
3. ‘Industries of the Future’ by Alec Ross
It’s exciting to think about the obvious ways that Big Data and Artificial Intelligence can begin to improve the lives of those on the planet.
Alec Ross’s book Industries of the Future has a very positive and captivating view on the progress of Genomics – a branch of molecular biology concerned with the structure, function, evolution, and mapping of genomes.
AI technology produces medicines for specific illnesses. Read Ross’s riveting book and listen to his Ted Talk about his experience in the White House, Silicon Valley and throughout the world. He acclaims M Pesa, a money transfer by mobile phone service in Africa.
Watch his Ted Talk Industries of the Future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuE6J5Y4Yek
4. Watson from IBM – Google Deep Mind – and could it soon to be Skynet?
Last year having just recently watched the film Spotlight, it was said that if the unstructured data that took investigators years to compile and cross-reference for patterns was fed in to IBM’s Watson, it would have taken less time than your lunch-break to establish the patterns of movements than it took the Boston Globe et al and endless man hours to painstakingly research and cross-referenced.
Have you seen the Carrie Fischer commercial on Watson Coping with Humans, A Support Group for Bots? Check it out – it’s very funny and walks the narrow pathway of highlighting how Cognitive Learning, in the right way, is serving humanity vs working with Bots who don’t like Humans!
Do you know much about Deep Mind? Read more: https://deepmind.com
Watch Coping with humans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuHqhR9VpNc
5. Facebook’s AI shuts down after “chatter” in a strange language
Oops…. Is it all part of progress and trial and error with AI for Facebook, or are there clouds we see on the horizon?
Children of the 1980’s will recall that Skynet was the main antagonist in the Terminator film franchise. Skynet is a fictional neural net-based conscious group mind and artificial general intelligence system. The theme features centrally in the film and serves as the franchise’s dark overlord. Is this a reality that is on the doorstep now? Do we need our leaders and innovators to consider Artificial Intelligence opportunities for humanity alongside potential tradeoffs?
Watch Robots Shut down after creating their own language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=21&v=QaoDXYYtgK0
Technology occurs before ethics and consequences. It seems that technological ethics are debated and, in particular, regulated as opposed to, say, Medical Ethics in the case of cloning, or matters that connect directly with our humanity.
We came across this interesting “situation wanted” (sourced from the BBC): “Career of the Future: Ethical Technology Advocate. It’s estimated there will be an extra 55,790 new jobs in the field of robotic engineering by next year. Technology is advancing far faster than a code of ethics can keep up with. This means we’re going to need people to be in charge of sussing that out. Their job will be to act as go-betweens for humans, robots, and AI. They will need to set out moral guidelines for ethical issues like baby designers, or robots that can cause harm.”
How do you feel about Big Data, Machine Cognitive Learning, and AI? What are the most optimistic things we can look forward to?