Tag Archives: artificial intelligence

The internet is telling you what you want to hear

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That’s right, the internet is telling you what you want to hear. In some cases, it really is government and corporate propaganda, known as “astroturfing“. This is the practice of creating a fake media buzz to give you the impression that there is grassroots support for something when there really isn’t:

Astroturfing is the attempt to create an impression of widespread grassroots support for a policy, individual, or product, where little such support exists. Multiple online identities and fake pressure groups are used to mislead the public into believing that the position of the astroturfer is the commonly held view.

Although usually associated with the internet, the practice has been widespread ever since newspaper editors first invented the letters page. Pick up any local paper around the time of an election and you will find multiple letters from “concerned residents of X” objecting to the disastrous policies of Y…

As reported by the Guardian, some big companies now use sophisticated “persona management software” to create armies of virtual astroturfers, complete with fake IP addresses, non-political interests and online histories. Authentic-looking profiles are generated automatically and developed for months or years before being brought into use for a political or corporate campaign. As the software improves, these astroturf armies will become increasingly difficult to spot, and the future of open debate online could become increasingly perilous.

The other thing going on is the “online filter bubble”, which is simply the idea that search and marketing algorithms are increasingly telling you what you want to hear. This makes sense in the logic of marketing, but is dangerous when you are trying to figure out what is going on in the world. From TED:

 

 

 

Watson vs. Shalmaneser

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A class at Georgia Tech did an experiment where artificial intelligence (“Watson”) was used to “enhance human creativity”. It sounds like a cool class:

Following research on computational creativity in our Design & Intelligence Laboratory (http://dilab.gatech.edu), most readings and discussions in the class focused on six themes: (1) Design Thinking is thinking about illstructured, open-ended problems with ill-defined goals and evaluation criteria; (2) Analogical Thinking is thinking about novel situations in terms of similar, familiar situations; (3) Meta-Thinking is thinking about one’s own knowledge and thinking; (4) Abductive Thinking is thinking about potential explanations for a set of data; (5) Visual Thinking is thinking about images and in images; and (6) Systems Thinking is thinking about complex phenomena consisting of multiple interacting components and causal processes. Further, following the research in the Design & Intelligence Laboratory, the two major creative domains of discussion in the class were (i) Engineering design and invention, and (ii) Scientific modeling and discovery. The class website provides details about the course (http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/AY2015/cs8803_spring)

Here’s how they actually went about using the computer:

The general design process followed by the 6 design teams for using Watson to support biologically inspired design may be decomposed into two phases: an initial learning phase and a latter open-ended research phase. The initial learning phase proceeded roughly as follows. (1) The 6 teams selected a case study of biologically inspired design of their choice from a digital library called DSL (Goel et al. 2015). For each team, the selected case study became the use case. (2) The teams started seeding Watson with articles selected from a collection of around 200 biology articles derived from Biologue. Biologue is an interactive system for retrieving biology articles relevant to a design query (Vattam & Goel 2013). (3) The teams generated about 600 questions relevant to their use cases. (4) The teams identified the best answers in their 200 biology articles for the 600 questions. (5) The teams trained Watson on the 600 question-answer pairs. (6) The 6 teams evaluated Watson for answering design questions related to their respective use cases.

The value of the computer seems to be in helping the humans sort through and screen and enormous amount of literature in a short time that otherwise could take years to go through. This theoretically could accelerate progress by allowing us to make connections that otherwise could not be made. There are going to be some brilliant ideas out there that are stuck in a dead end where they never got to the people who can use them. And there are going to be many more brilliant ideas that emerge only when older ideas are connected.

These students seem to have restricted themselves to a research database in one field (biology). But I think it could be very valuable to cross disciplinary boundaries and look for analogous ideas – let’s say, in thermodynamics, ecology, and economics. Or sociology and animal behavior. These are boundaries that have been crossed by just a few visionary people, but are often ignored by everyone else. If making connections was more of a standard practice, many more brilliant ideas would escape the information cul-de-sacs.

This reminded me of the novel Stand on Zanzibar, where “synthesist” is a job. The world is not doing so well, and governments are seeking out unconventional thinkers to try to synthesize knowledge across multiple fields and try to come up with new problems. There is also an artificial intelligence in the book as I recall, but I don’t remember it being involved in the synthesis. I don’t have a copy of the book, and this particular piece of human knowledge and creativity is walled off from me by “intellectual property” law, so I can’t benefit from it or connect it to anything else right now.

work sharing

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Work sharing – it’s an idea to look into before the robots take over most of the work.

Work-sharing for a sustainable economy

Achieving low unemployment in an environment of weak growth is a major policy challenge; a more egalitarian distribution of hours worked could be the key to solving it. Whether work-sharing actually increases employment, however, has been debated controversially. In this article we present stylized facts on the distribution of hours worked and discuss the role of work-sharing for a sustainable economy. Building on recent developments in labor market theory we review the determinants of working long hours and its effect on well-being. Finally, we survey work-sharing reforms in the past. While there seems to be a consensus that work-sharing in the Great Depression in the U.S. and in the Great Recession in Europe was successful in reducing employment losses, perceptions of the work-sharing reforms implemented between the 1980s and early 2000s are more ambivalent. However, even the most critical evaluations of these reforms provide no credible evidence of negative employment effects; instead, the overall success of the policy seems to depend on the economic and institutional setting, as well as the specific details of its implementation.

Norbert Wiener

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Cybernetics, Second Edition: or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

According to The Atlantic,

Wiener is best known as the inventor of “cybernetics,” a fertile combination of mathematics and engineering that paved the way for modern automation and inspired innovation in a host of other fields. He was also one of the first theorists to identify information as the lingua franca of organisms as well as machines, a shared language capable of crossing the boundaries between them…

Wiener refused, for ethical reasons, to accept research contracts from the military or from corporations seeking to exploit his ideas. Since the military and corporations were the main sources of research support, Wiener’s defiance hindered his progress during a period of unprecedented technological advance. Besides nuclear weapons, Wiener was perhaps most worried about the technology he was most directly responsible for developing: automation. Sooner than most, he recognized how businesses could use it at the expense of labor, and how eager they were to do so. “Those who suffer from a power complex,” he wrote in 1950, “find the mechanization of man a simple way to realize their ambitions…”

The complete synthesis of humans and machines predicted by the transhumanists could represent the vindication of cybernetics—as well as Wiener’s ultimate nightmare. His fears for the future stemmed from two fundamental convictions: We humans can’t resist selfishly misusing the powers our machines give us, to the detriment of our fellow humans and the planet; and there’s a good chance we couldn’t control our machines even if we wanted to, because they already move too fast and because increasingly we’re building them to make decisions on their own. To believe otherwise, Wiener repeatedly warned, represents a dangerous, potentially fatal, lack of humility.

August 2015 in Review

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Negative stories (-12):

  • About 7-19% of cancers are caused by chemicals in the environment. (-1)
  • Steven Hawking is worried about an artificial intelligence arms race starting “within years, not decades”. (-2)
  • The anti-urban attack continues, based on the false idea that crowded, stressful living conditions are the only type of urban living conditions available, and people are being forced into them against their will. This is naked, obvious propaganda that must be rejected. (-1)
  • The more ignorant our species is, the more confident we tend to feel. (-3)
  • According to Naomi Klein, “Our economic system and our planetary system are now at war.”  In related news, July was the warmest month ever recorded by humans, and carbon dioxide concentrations are the highest seen for millions of years. (-3)
  • The media buzz about a worldwide recession seems to be increasing. (-2)

Positive stories (+12):

  • The suburban vs. urban culture wars continue. Suburban office parks are tanking as young people prefer more urban job settings. Entrepreneurs are working on the problems of being car-less with children. (+1)
  • Steven Hawking has a plan to figure out if there is any intelligent life out there. (+1)
  • There are straightforward, practical ideas for dealing with the issues of loading, deliveries, and temporary contractor parking in dense urban areas. (+1)
  • Economists have concluded that preventing human extinction may be economical after all, because “reducing an infinite loss is infinitely profitable”. Is this kind of thinking really useful? (+0)
  • “gene drive” technology helps make sure that genetically engineered traits are passed along to offspring. (+0)
  • Technology marches on – quantum computing is in early emergence, the “internet of things” is arriving at the “peak of inflated expectations”, big data is crashing into the “trough of disillusionment”, virtual reality is beginning its assent to the “plateau of productivity”, and speech recognition is arriving on the plateau. And super-intelligent rodents may be on the way. (+1)
  • Honeybees may be in trouble, but they are not the only bees. (+0)
  • Robotics may be on the verge of a Cambrian explosion, which will almost certainly be bad for some types of jobs, but will also bring us things like cars that avoid pedestrians and computer chips powered by sweat. I for one am excited to be alive at this moment in history. (+2)
  • Dogs can be trained to smell cancer. (+1)
  •  There’s promise of a vaccine for MERS. (+1)
  • It may be possible to capture atmospheric carbon and turn it into high-strength, valuable carbon fiber. This sounds like a potential game-changer to me, because if carbon fiber were cheap it could be substituted for a lot of heavy, toxic and energy-intensive materials we use now, and open up possibilities for entirely new types of structures and vehicles. (+3)
  • Robot deliveries and reusable containers could be a match. (+1)

You might think I rigged that to come out even, but I didn’t.

machines of loving grace

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Fresh Air has an interview with John Markoff, author of Machines of Loving Grace.

Markoff, the author of the new book Machines of Loving Grace, points out that artificial intelligence plays a role in many of our lives — sometimes without our even realizing it. “I have a car that I bought this year … that is able to recognize both pedestrians and bicyclists, and if I don’t stop, it will,” he says. “That’s a very inexpensive add-on that you can get for almost any car on the market now.”

Looking ahead, Markoff predicts further advances in driverless-car technology. He also foresees a generation of computer chips that don’t require batteries; instead, they would run on sunlight or vibration or sweat.

“In the next five years … this [computer chip] technology will fan out all around us and create applications we can’t even think about today,” he says. “They’ll be used for robotic sensors. They’ll be made to make robots more mobile. And they’ll be used to do a million other things we can’t even conceive of, and it will continue to transform our society.”

more on automation

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The Economist has an article reviewing three recent papers on automation (i.e. robots, artificial intelligence) and employment. For two of the three papers, the bottom line is that automation has led to inequality in the past, because it means unemployment for some groups of people, but has led to overall economic growth and society-wide benefits in the longer term. The third paper, however, talks about the current exponential “explosion” of technological progress as a revolutionary development that cannot be compared to anything in the recent past. The last time anything like this happened was about 500 million years ago.

These are all open access, so I’ll put links to the papers below along with abstracts.

Autor, David H. 2015. “Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 29(3): 3-30.

In this essay, I begin by identifying the reasons that automation has not wiped out a majority of jobs over the decades and centuries. Automation does indeed substitute for labor—as it is typically intended to do. However, automation also complements labor, raises output in ways that leads to higher demand for labor, and interacts with adjustments in labor supply. Journalists and even expert commentators tend to overstate the extent of machine substitution for human labor and ignore the strong complementarities between automation and labor that increase productivity, raise earnings, and augment demand for labor. Changes in technology do alter the types of jobs available and what those jobs pay. In the last few decades, one noticeable change has been a “polarization” of the labor market, in which wage gains went disproportionately to those at the top and at the bottom of the income and skill distribution, not to those in the middle; however, I also argue, this polarization is unlikely to continue very far into future. The final section of this paper reflects on how recent and future advances in artificial intelligence and robotics should shape our thinking about the likely trajectory of occupational change and employment growth. I argue that the interplay between machine and human comparative advantage allows computers to substitute for workers in performing routine, codifiable tasks while amplifying the comparative advantage of workers in supplying problem-solving skills, adaptability, and creativity.

Mokyr, Joel, Chris Vickers, and Nicolas L. Ziebarth. 2015. “The History of Technological Anxiety and the Future of Economic Growth: Is This Time Different?” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 29(3): 31-50.

Technology is widely considered the main source of economic progress, but it has also generated cultural anxiety throughout history. The developed world is now suffering from another bout of such angst. Anxieties over technology can take on several forms, and we focus on three of the most prominent concerns. First, there is the concern that technological progress will cause widespread substitution of machines for labor, which in turn could lead to technological unemployment and a further increase in inequality in the short run, even if the long-run effects are beneficial. Second, there has been anxiety over the moral implications of technological process for human welfare, broadly defined. While, during the Industrial Revolution, the worry was about the dehumanizing effects of work, in modern times, perhaps the greater fear is a world where the elimination of work itself is the source of dehumanization. A third concern cuts in the opposite direction, suggesting that the epoch of major technological progress is behind us. Understanding the history of technological anxiety provides perspective on whether this time is truly different. We consider the role of these three anxieties among economists, primarily focusing on the historical period from the late 18th to the early 20th century, and then compare the historical and current manifestations of these three concerns.

Pratt, Gill A. 2015. “Is a Cambrian Explosion Coming for Robotics?” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 29(3): 51-60.

About half a billion years ago, life on earth experienced a short period of very rapid diversification called the “Cambrian Explosion.” Many theories have been proposed for the cause of the Cambrian Explosion, one of the most provocative being the evolution of vision, allowing animals to dramatically increase their ability to hunt and find mates. Today, technological developments on several fronts are fomenting a similar explosion in the diversification and applicability of robotics. Many of the base hardware technologies on which robots depend—particularly computing, data storage, and communications—have been improving at exponential growth rates. Two newly blossoming technologies—”Cloud Robotics” and “Deep Learning”—could leverage these base technologies in a virtuous cycle of explosive growth. I examine some key technologies contributing to the present excitement in the robotics field. As with other technological developments, there has been a significant uptick in concerns about the societal implication of robotics and artificial intelligence. Thus, I offer some thoughts about how robotics may affect the economy and some ways to address potential difficulties.

July 2015 in Review

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I’m experimenting with my +3/-3 rating system again this month, just to convey the idea that not all stories are equal in importance. The result is that July was a pretty negative month! Whether that reflects more the state of the world or the state of my mind, or some combination, you can decide.

Negative stories (-21):

  • In The Dead Hand, I learned that the risk of nuclear annihilation in the 1980s was greater than I thought, and the true story of Soviet biological weapons production was much worse than I thought. (-3)
  • Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, among others, are concerned about a real-life Terminator scenario. (-2)
  • I playfully pointed out that the Pope’s encyclical contains some themes that sound like the more lucid paragraphs in the Unabomber Manifesto, namely that the amoral pursuit of technology has improved our level of material comfort and physical health while devastating the natural world, creating new risks, and leaving us feeling empty somehow. (-1)
  • Bumblebees are getting squeezed by climate change. (-1)
  • The Cold War seems to be rearing its ugly head. (-2)
  • There may be a “global renaissance of coal”. (-3)
  • Joel Kotkin and other anti-urban voices like him want to make sure you don’t have the choice of living in a walkable community. (-2)
  • I think Obama may be remembered as an effective, conservative president, in the dictionary sense of playing it safe and avoiding major mistakes. Navigating the financial crisis, achieving some financial and health care reforms, and defusing several wars and conflicts are probably his greatest achievements. However, if a major war or financial crisis erupts in the near future that can be traced back to decisions he made, his legacy will suffer whether it is fair or not. (-0)
  • We can think of natural capital as a battery that took a long time to charge and has now been discharged almost instantly. (-3)
  • James Hansen is warning of much faster and greater sea level rise than current mainstream expectations. (-3)
  • Lloyd’s of London has spun a scenario of how a food crisis could play out. (-1)

Positive stories (+7):

AI Weapons

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Stephen Hawking and others have signed a letter urging the world not to start a new artificial intelligence arms race, arguing that these weapons will be…

…feasible within years, not decades, and the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms.

Many arguments have been made for and against autonomous weapons, for example that replacing human soldiers by machines is good by reducing casualties for the owner but bad by thereby lowering the threshold for going to battle. The key question for humanity today is whether to start a global AI arms race or to prevent it from starting. If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow. Unlike nuclear weapons, they require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials, so they will become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce. It will only be a matter of time until they appear on the black market and in the hands of terrorists, dictators wishing to better control their populace, warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing, etc. Autonomous weapons are ideal for tasks such as assassinations, destabilizing nations, subduing populations and selectively killing a particular ethnic group. We therefore believe that a military AI arms race would not be beneficial for humanity. There are many ways in which AI can make battlefields safer for humans, especially civilians, without creating new tools for killing people.