I read almost every week another naively optimistic article about Artificial Intelligence, AI, and the promise of a better world through the use of robots.
After all the science fiction films warning us about building our own man-maid slaves, people with big budgets invest in excessively expensive projects to produce more complex computers and devices... while more than half of the population still live in poverty, under appallingly low circonstances, in Africa, Asia and Latin America mainly.
And the vast majority of the other half of the world population are just slaves to jobs they have not chosen and are only getting them to pay bills for housing, food and other products they don't even know they don't need.
And where are the firms investing in AI? In the richest countries obviously. With which materials are they building their robots and computers? Rare earth elements, gold, cobalt, copper... Most of them stolen in poor countries.
This situation is depressing beyond reason.
While Apple has become a bigger monster that the Microsoft they decried decades ago, not paying their taxing, enslaving Chinese labour and overpricing their devices, other firms are getting ready to do worse and the powerful and educated people of the West encourage them to do so.
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In order to find hope in this sea of blindness, here is an article about a recent initiative to call to bring consciousness in this deregulated, uncontrolled and powerful network of researchers, eating billions of dollars for a technology not promising to cure diseases or feed the hungry but to bring more distraction to the distracted taxpayers...
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UN artificial intelligence summit aims to tackle poverty, humanity's 'grand challenges'
(UN Centre News)
7 June 2017 – Artificial intelligence (AI) is responsible for self-driving cars and voice-recognition smart phones, but the United Nations this week is refocusing AI on sustainable development and assisting global efforts to eliminate poverty and hunger, and to protect the environment.
Starting today in Geneva, the AI for Good Global Summit, which is co-organized by the UN International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the XPRIZE Foundation, with support for some 20 UN agencies, brings together key innovators in the field with humanitarian actors and academics.
“Artificial Intelligence has the potential to accelerate progress towards a dignified life, in peace and prosperity, for all people,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “The time has arrived for all of us – governments, industry and civil society – to consider how AI will affect our future.”
In a video message to the summit, Mr. Guterres called AI “a new frontier” with “advances moving at warp speed.”
He noted that that while AI is “already transforming our world socially, economically and politically,” there are also serious challenges and ethical issues which must be taken into account – including cybersecurity, human rights and privacy.
Mr. Guterres noted that developing countries can gain from the benefits of artificial intelligence, but are also at the highest risk of being left behind.
“This Summit can help ensure that artificial intelligence charts a course that benefits humanity and bolsters our shared values,” he underscored.
The opening session of the summit is expected to give voice to the leading minds in AI, with breakout sessions focusing on issues such as sustainable living and poverty reduction.
ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao, said the event “will assist us in determining how the UN, ITU and other UN agencies can work together with industry and the academic community to promote AI innovation and create a good environment for the development of artificial intelligence.”
He called the summit a “neutral platform for international dialogue” which can build a common understanding of emerging technologies and how they can apply to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adding that the divers array of thought leaders gathered for the event will weigh in on such topics as “how far AI can go, how much it will improve our lives, and how we can all work together to make it a force for good.”
The summit will run through Friday, with a closing session on “applying AI for good.”
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Will these promises vanish in the air like most United-Nations calls since the creation of the diplomatic body since the end of WWII? I hope not. But I'm afraid these researchers are delusional when they trust big business is going to do any better than it has been doing the past four centuries.
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Here is one argument:
'Artificial intelligence is not our friend:' Hillary Clinton is worried about the future of technology
In a recent interview, Hillary Clinton expresses worries about the future of artificial intelligence and the role big tech plays in our daily lives. Clinton says that big tech companies are acquiring a trove of personal data that could possibly be manipulated and that Silicon Valley needs to be less opaque about the role their platforms played in the 2016 election.
Artificial intelligence may be one of the most exciting avenues in technology today, but its advances are causing alarm not only among science and technology elites like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Stephen Hawking, but politicians as well.
On Wednesday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton revealed her anxieties about the future of artificial intelligence in an interview with Hugh Hewitt about her recently published memoir, What Happened.
"Artificial intelligence is not our friend," said Clinton. "It can assist us in many ways if it is properly understood and contained. But we are racing headfirst into a new era of artificial intelligence that is going to have dramatic effects on how we live, how we think, how we relate to each other."
Clinton's says her worries stem, in part, from the effect the driverless car industry will have on the economy and the potential for millions of people — like cab drivers and delivery drivers — to lose their jobs in the era of autonomous cars.
"We are totally unprepared for that," Clinton said. "What do we do when we are connected to the internet of things and everything we know and everything we say and everything we write is, you know, recorded somewhere? And it can be manipulated against us."
Clinton said that part of her plan in running for office in 2016 was to create a blue ribbon commission of people with varying expertise who could determine American policy on artificial intelligence. And despite Clinton's admission that the tech industry is among the country's most admirable developing industries, she expressed concern at the trove of personal data being collected by leading tech companies and the role that sophisticated algorithms play in our day to day lives.
"That information can be used to sell products ... but it can also be used to stalk children, to purvey pornography, or in the case of our elections, to provide the channels for weaponizing information for political purposes," she said.
Clinton said she also had her doubts about tech companies owning up to the role they played in the 2016 election. Her worries are expressed just weeks after Facebook, Google, and Twitter were called upon to testify before Congress regarding the role their platforms played in Russia's interference with the 2016 election.
"I think we’re kidding ourselves if we don’t know more about the role that the tech companies played," said Clinton.
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Stephen Hawking's views:
AI-NIHLATION
Hawking often speaks about the development of artificial intelligence (AI) as the true perpetrator of the eventual demise of human beings. In an interview with WIRED Hawking said, “The genie is out of the bottle. I fear that AI may replace humans altogether.”
Stephen Hawking Warns A.I. Could End Mankind:
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Interesting summary:
Interesting summary:
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Please, think about it.
The main issues is not about the technology itself, it is about how it is produced, where the money comes from, and how it could be use to satisfy the needs of a handful of powerful people who will be able to increase their power through it.
Then there is the issue of the environment. AI is everything but environment-friendly or even -oriented.
Finally, there is the human dimension of creating super-expensive tools for the extremely rare super-rich... What about common people?
Technology is a tool; by essence, the machine is neutral. Einstein invented the atomic bomb and was the first man to regret it...
Technology is what humans make of it. And if you look at who is ruling our world nowadays, politically and financially - not forgetting the major issue of tax evasion, which is the real core weakness of this capitalistic system (which could produce less poverty if the evasion was stopped) - are you really willing to give these men such new tools?
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