While true logically, it is not true in the real world.
For example, a single dam may not considerably hinder the ability of certain fish fish to swim from the sea to a lake where they mate. They might still be able to take a detour. But multiple dam building projects could suddenly seriously hinder that ability, as every river leading to the lake now has a dam in it.
I think he's right. Increasingly our society is becoming a reputation society where the digitital mediation of behaviour and social interaction allows our social capital to be quantified.
A similar example would be the "snapstreaks" on Snapchat. This is basically quantifying how good friendships are, and it's causing a lot of stress in teenagers.
Digital technology allows social pressure to be designed on a hitherto unknown scale. The Stasi was a beta-test. China embraces this with its social credit system. We should not let our culture slide in the same direction.
Back in 1998 Janet Murray already hinted at what the issue would be.
It's not just technology that decides if VR is mass adopted.
It's that just as with film it takes 20 years..
- for a medium's language to (a) be developed. Film has the jump-cut, the Shot-reverse-shot, etc. To go from Vertov's experiments (Man with a movie camera, for example), to the Hollywood style a few decades later.
- to educate a wider audience to read and enjoy that language.
The issue with this round of VR mania was that venture capitalists all wanted to invest in the hardware. But the storytelling? I've been at VR conferences where hyped up VR proponents pointed to government subsidies to make that part happen..
As long as Silicon Valley remains deaf to the lessons from the humanities these exaggerated boom-bust cycles will continue.
Hong Kong will revert back to full Chinese control in a few decades, and this bridge is them literally extending their reach to the island, and making their presence and influence felt as early as possible.
Vox Borders has a great video about the larger political tensions and strategies that this bridge is a part of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
When I taught at a digital design school I was always surprised that the students were not into the open source mindset at all.
There is a large community of open source theme designers, like for Wordpress. But a website and, for example, a UX for smart home interface are two different things.
That said, I've also noticed how a lot of developers have an "I understand HTML so I can design well enough" mentality, which drives designers away. An example is the Domoticz project, an open source smart home home controller. It works great, but the interface is holding it back. Often the developers like designing the interface too much to let it go, even though they're not good at it.
All of these depend on how you define the enemy. If a state defines a protester as the enemy, then all these positive examples are just as easily turned into negative examples.
For example:
"The tracking of all illegal migrants all over the USA who thought some state granted ID card would ensure access to state and federal gov services."
becomes:
"The tracking of all protesters all over the USA who thought some state granted ID card would ensure access to state and federal gov services."
The rule in my home is that I don't allow smart devices that
- Use wifi to communicate
- Connect to the same network as my laptop
- Connect to the 'cloud' (especially if this is the only way)
It's just too big of a security and privacy risk.
In fact, I'm currently working on a smart home system that is completely air-gapped. All the 'smart' devices form a separate network which is not connected to the internet. Wifi is used, but only to set it up and to connect a dedicated tablet to the controller in order to change settings or look at datavisualisations. The rest of the connections between devices use other standards.
Outside control is done via SMS, where only pre-defined phonenumbers can send commands (and the same modem provides the time).
A sociological analysis of the concept of 'risk'. Since big data and algorithms are often sold as a risk management tools, this helps to critically dissect those narratives. The book explores how society is structured in ways that distribute risk, with all of us trying to externalise it. For example, a consultant doesn't just bring in knowledge, but he/she also allows whomever hired the consultant to say "the consultant said it would be a good idea, it's not my fault", thus lowering the risk of being accountable/fired..
I noticed you're not doing so well lately. Staying in bed long, and your breathing is erratic. So.. will your apartment become available soon?
Hey neighbour, I noticed you have guests over, spend time in bed with them, with elevated heart rate. So.. does your wife know about that?
This is a surveillance nightmare, and researchers should account for that in their work. This 'fundamental science is neutral' stuff often hinders having a good debate. Every single time the positive things get a lot fanfare, while obvious angles of abuse don't.
The robot in the video has to be manually shown where to hold the shoe (by the lip). It then understands that it should grab all shoes by the lip.
While it's impressive that image recognition is moving into 3D here, the actual 'figuring it our' step seems to be a matter of definition.
I suspect the robot didn't figure out that a cup should be kept upright by itself either. After all, that would mean that the robot somehow concludes that liquids should not be spilled. That would require a much higher level of cognition.
It's the use of vague words that facilitates the rampant spreading of hype. This inflation of what words mean will harm the AI sector in the long run. Just like most mainstream people are now difficult to get excited about any actual innovation in 3D printing field - out collective excitement reservoir has been depleted.
The notion that self driving cars can be classified into 5 levels of self driving prowess has reached quite a large mainstream audience. Perhaps that concept can be extended to all 'AI'.
1. Handy things. Software that automates things, with a well designed internal ruleset.
2. Smart things. Automation via machine learning, can have a level of unpredictability, but only because common sense cannot predict patterns in big data. Should have been called 'machine learning', and algorithms instead of AI.
3. The next level. I have no idea how we will get here, or what to call it. Understanding Algorithms? Might create really complex classifications of the world around it, and infer things form that. Robots actually figuring out the laws of physics, and copying our value system ("don't spill coffee").
4. The level after that. What to call this now that 'smart' is already taken? 'artificial intelligence' would actually be a good name for this level. Perhaps we will see emergent phenomena cognitive phenomena develop out of sheer complexity. I doubt it though.
5. Artificial Consciousness. Systems that have a sense of identity, ethics and 'real' empathy. Perhaps "Sci-Fi AI" is another fun name for this stage.
While doing a project on urban air quality sensors I learnt that in 90% of cases indoor air is actually dirtier than outdoor air.
Since then I bought a dust sensor and airfilter, and it helped me a lot during hayfever season. You can build a filter on the cheap by adding a filter to a normal fan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Another tip is to get a CO2 sensor. Most bedrooms have surprisingly high CO2 levels at night, which severely impacts how well you sleep. I always sleep with the bedroom door open now.
China's reputation system will allow them to do this. By 2030 China will be the biggest economy in the world, and they will probably start exporting their scoring system to the rest of the world. Want to do business with Chinese people? Make sure you have a 'clean and righteous' social credit score in their system.
The bigger picture is that we are slowly moving from an information society towards a reputation society. Where the information society was about access to data and information, the reputation society is about the flow of social capital. Our social capital is measured now, both in China, but also in the west. Just this week we saw how Facebook is measuring trustworthiness. Behind the scenes databrokers have been deriving and selling data like this for a long time.
The 60's were all about breaking free from crippling social pressure to conform. Now the data driven panopticon might undo that.
Q.
"A student has an Echo and adds the Canvas Skill to their Alexa account. Anyone (roommates, friends, colleagues) who is in proximity of that Echo can then ask Canvas about that students' grades."
All this is just the stuff on the surface, where advertisers are abusing Facebook's targeting system. One abstraction layer further you get the Cambridge Analytica stuff. Databrokers taking your Facebook data, and then selling all kinds of derived scores to employers, insurers politicians.
As Cathy o Neill pointed out in her book "Weapons of Math Destruction", all this tech doesn't remove discrimination, it just hides it behind the facade of 'neutral math'.
Free speech is not linear ( the more the better), it follows a bell curve. You can have too little (chilling effects, censorship), but you can also have too much (hate). Tolerating unconstructive hate speech limits how inclusive your public sphere can be.
What you describe sounds like impopular opinion, which sits in between those extremes, and should indeed be protected.
C.P. Snow saw this divide as a fundamental problem for society. If we are unable to analyse our problems from all angles, he explained, and bring all those views together, then our solutions would be one sided and fail.
Over the past 50 years this is exactly what happened, especially inside Silicon Valley:
- The "technological determinist" mindset is rampant, claiming that technology is neutral (it's not, see Facebook), that it is inevitable and can't be stopped (it can, see nuclear energy). Even the author is unable to avoid the 'technology develops exponentially' trap.
- We've seen the spread of this mindset to other areas in society, such as politics, where "technological solutionism" is rampant. Complex issues in a neighbourhood? Just build an app!
The author mentions the fields literature and history, which for a lot of techy people are the first things that come to mind when they think of the humanities. Sure, get those people in. But there is more obvious humanities knowledge we need:
- a lot of ethics experts (hello Facebook)
- ethnographers and sociologists (in theory the field of design already incorporates this for things like user research. But in practice students focus more on the tech..)
- psychologists (so far only the marketing world has embraced this knowledge, to incredible effect. See Cambridge Analytica for example.)
- some philosophers. ("What does it mean to be human? What is good communication?" I'm always glad to see these questions discussed on Slashdot, but the discussions often lack the knowledge and depth that can be found... in the humanities)
It matters because we want to know if he truly believes this, or is just saying what he thinks he needs to say.
That's important, because we got into this mess because Zuckerberg is a classic technological determinist. He thinks that slapping technologie onto society will automatically make it better in the long run. And he thinks this course is inevitable.
We need to know if he has really learned anything about the Social Constructivist point of view:
- new technology does not automatically make the world a better place, but needs critical thinking and policymaking to steer it in a humane direction.
- Technological developments are not inevitable, we as a society decide what we accept (see nuclear energy for example or our changing attitude towards oil).
Slashdot Mirror
Social Cooling is a word we can use to describe these large scale chilling effects: https://www.socialcooling.com
While true logically, it is not true in the real world.
For example, a single dam may not considerably hinder the ability of certain fish fish to swim from the sea to a lake where they mate. They might still be able to take a detour. But multiple dam building projects could suddenly seriously hinder that ability, as every river leading to the lake now has a dam in it.
To whomever wrote this: thank you for calling this Deep Learning instead of going "OMG AI".
I think he's right. Increasingly our society is becoming a reputation society where the digitital mediation of behaviour and social interaction allows our social capital to be quantified.
A similar example would be the "snapstreaks" on Snapchat. This is basically quantifying how good friendships are, and it's causing a lot of stress in teenagers.
Digital technology allows social pressure to be designed on a hitherto unknown scale. The Stasi was a beta-test. China embraces this with its social credit system. We should not let our culture slide in the same direction.
Back in 1998 Janet Murray already hinted at what the issue would be.
It's not just technology that decides if VR is mass adopted.
It's that just as with film it takes 20 years..
- for a medium's language to (a) be developed. Film has the jump-cut, the Shot-reverse-shot, etc. To go from Vertov's experiments (Man with a movie camera, for example), to the Hollywood style a few decades later.
- to educate a wider audience to read and enjoy that language.
The issue with this round of VR mania was that venture capitalists all wanted to invest in the hardware. But the storytelling? I've been at VR conferences where hyped up VR proponents pointed to government subsidies to make that part happen..
As long as Silicon Valley remains deaf to the lessons from the humanities these exaggerated boom-bust cycles will continue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books...
Computer generated art has been sold at large auction houses for quite some time.
http://www.dazeddigital.com/ar...
What is new is that we are calling algorithms AI now. Apparently that new label erases the past.
Hong Kong will revert back to full Chinese control in a few decades, and this bridge is them literally extending their reach to the island, and making their presence and influence felt as early as possible.
Vox Borders has a great video about the larger political tensions and strategies that this bridge is a part of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
When I taught at a digital design school I was always surprised that the students were not into the open source mindset at all.
There is a large community of open source theme designers, like for Wordpress. But a website and, for example, a UX for smart home interface are two different things.
That said, I've also noticed how a lot of developers have an "I understand HTML so I can design well enough" mentality, which drives designers away. An example is the Domoticz project, an open source smart home home controller. It works great, but the interface is holding it back. Often the developers like designing the interface too much to let it go, even though they're not good at it.
All of these depend on how you define the enemy. If a state defines a protester as the enemy, then all these positive examples are just as easily turned into negative examples.
For example:
"The tracking of all illegal migrants all over the USA who thought some state granted ID card would ensure access to state and federal gov services."
becomes:
"The tracking of all protesters all over the USA who thought some state granted ID card would ensure access to state and federal gov services."
All we need now is a law that actually makes it do something.
Having the button already there makes that easier to sell.
Go Europe!
The rule in my home is that I don't allow smart devices that
- Use wifi to communicate
- Connect to the same network as my laptop
- Connect to the 'cloud' (especially if this is the only way)
It's just too big of a security and privacy risk.
In fact, I'm currently working on a smart home system that is completely air-gapped. All the 'smart' devices form a separate network which is not connected to the internet. Wifi is used, but only to set it up and to connect a dedicated tablet to the controller in order to change settings or look at datavisualisations. The rest of the connections between devices use other standards.
Outside control is done via SMS, where only pre-defined phonenumbers can send commands (and the same modem provides the time).
so.. slightly delayed then?
The Risk Society by Ulrich Beck.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A sociological analysis of the concept of 'risk'. Since big data and algorithms are often sold as a risk management tools, this helps to critically dissect those narratives. The book explores how society is structured in ways that distribute risk, with all of us trying to externalise it. For example, a consultant doesn't just bring in knowledge, but he/she also allows whomever hired the consultant to say "the consultant said it would be a good idea, it's not my fault", thus lowering the risk of being accountable/fired..
I noticed you're not doing so well lately. Staying in bed long, and your breathing is erratic. So.. will your apartment become available soon?
Hey neighbour, I noticed you have guests over, spend time in bed with them, with elevated heart rate. So.. does your wife know about that?
This is a surveillance nightmare, and researchers should account for that in their work. This 'fundamental science is neutral' stuff often hinders having a good debate. Every single time the positive things get a lot fanfare, while obvious angles of abuse don't.
The robot in the video has to be manually shown where to hold the shoe (by the lip). It then understands that it should grab all shoes by the lip.
While it's impressive that image recognition is moving into 3D here, the actual 'figuring it our' step seems to be a matter of definition.
I suspect the robot didn't figure out that a cup should be kept upright by itself either. After all, that would mean that the robot somehow concludes that liquids should not be spilled. That would require a much higher level of cognition.
It's the use of vague words that facilitates the rampant spreading of hype. This inflation of what words mean will harm the AI sector in the long run. Just like most mainstream people are now difficult to get excited about any actual innovation in 3D printing field - out collective excitement reservoir has been depleted.
The notion that self driving cars can be classified into 5 levels of self driving prowess has reached quite a large mainstream audience. Perhaps that concept can be extended to all 'AI'.
1. Handy things. Software that automates things, with a well designed internal ruleset.
2. Smart things. Automation via machine learning, can have a level of unpredictability, but only because common sense cannot predict patterns in big data. Should have been called 'machine learning', and algorithms instead of AI.
3. The next level. I have no idea how we will get here, or what to call it. Understanding Algorithms? Might create really complex classifications of the world around it, and infer things form that. Robots actually figuring out the laws of physics, and copying our value system ("don't spill coffee").
4. The level after that. What to call this now that 'smart' is already taken? 'artificial intelligence' would actually be a good name for this level. Perhaps we will see emergent phenomena cognitive phenomena develop out of sheer complexity. I doubt it though.
5. Artificial Consciousness. Systems that have a sense of identity, ethics and 'real' empathy. Perhaps "Sci-Fi AI" is another fun name for this stage.
While doing a project on urban air quality sensors I learnt that in 90% of cases indoor air is actually dirtier than outdoor air.
Since then I bought a dust sensor and airfilter, and it helped me a lot during hayfever season. You can build a filter on the cheap by adding a filter to a normal fan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Another tip is to get a CO2 sensor. Most bedrooms have surprisingly high CO2 levels at night, which severely impacts how well you sleep. I always sleep with the bedroom door open now.
China's reputation system will allow them to do this. By 2030 China will be the biggest economy in the world, and they will probably start exporting their scoring system to the rest of the world. Want to do business with Chinese people? Make sure you have a 'clean and righteous' social credit score in their system.
The bigger picture is that we are slowly moving from an information society towards a reputation society. Where the information society was about access to data and information, the reputation society is about the flow of social capital. Our social capital is measured now, both in China, but also in the west. Just this week we saw how Facebook is measuring trustworthiness. Behind the scenes databrokers have been deriving and selling data like this for a long time.
The 60's were all about breaking free from crippling social pressure to conform. Now the data driven panopticon might undo that.
The reputation society: https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...
Facebook's reputation score: https://www.dailydot.com/debug...
Databrokers: http://crackedlabs.org/en
Q.
"A student has an Echo and adds the Canvas Skill to their Alexa account. Anyone (roommates, friends, colleagues) who is in proximity of that Echo can then ask Canvas about that students' grades."
A.
Yeah, this could happen.
From a developer of a Alexa Skill that tells you your grades:
https://community.canvaslms.co...
Form what I can tell there's some debate about whether FERPA laws would allow this.
FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act):
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen...
This school admin even asks how he can remove Alexa form the network:
https://community.spiceworks.c...
First of all, this housing thing has been going on for quite a while now:
https://www.engadget.com/2017/...
Secondly, there are quite a few examples, such as:
https://consequenceofsound.net...
All this is just the stuff on the surface, where advertisers are abusing Facebook's targeting system. One abstraction layer further you get the Cambridge Analytica stuff. Databrokers taking your Facebook data, and then selling all kinds of derived scores to employers, insurers politicians.
Women don't see high paying job adds:
https://www.theguardian.com/te...
Getting red-lighted at job interviews:
https://www.theguardian.com/sc...
Easier to get a loan if you have 'good' friends:
https://trustingsocial.com/
IRS looking at social media posts to determine who gets an audit:
https://news.slashdot.org/stor...
Health insurers figuring out who they want to insure:
https://www.propublica.org/art...
As Cathy o Neill pointed out in her book "Weapons of Math Destruction", all this tech doesn't remove discrimination, it just hides it behind the facade of 'neutral math'.
I believe you conflate unpopular opinion and hate speech.
Have a look at the Paradox of Tolerance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Free speech is not linear ( the more the better), it follows a bell curve. You can have too little (chilling effects, censorship), but you can also have too much (hate). Tolerating unconstructive hate speech limits how inclusive your public sphere can be.
What you describe sounds like impopular opinion, which sits in between those extremes, and should indeed be protected.
So people walking around with always on microphones is normal now?
People were disgusted with Google Glass. But this is heading in that same direction again.
C.P. Snow saw this divide as a fundamental problem for society. If we are unable to analyse our problems from all angles, he explained, and bring all those views together, then our solutions would be one sided and fail.
Over the past 50 years this is exactly what happened, especially inside Silicon Valley:
- The "technological determinist" mindset is rampant, claiming that technology is neutral (it's not, see Facebook), that it is inevitable and can't be stopped (it can, see nuclear energy). Even the author is unable to avoid the 'technology develops exponentially' trap.
- We've seen the spread of this mindset to other areas in society, such as politics, where "technological solutionism" is rampant. Complex issues in a neighbourhood? Just build an app!
The author mentions the fields literature and history, which for a lot of techy people are the first things that come to mind when they think of the humanities. Sure, get those people in. But there is more obvious humanities knowledge we need:
- a lot of ethics experts (hello Facebook)
- ethnographers and sociologists (in theory the field of design already incorporates this for things like user research. But in practice students focus more on the tech..)
- psychologists (so far only the marketing world has embraced this knowledge, to incredible effect. See Cambridge Analytica for example.)
- some philosophers. ("What does it mean to be human? What is good communication?" I'm always glad to see these questions discussed on Slashdot, but the discussions often lack the knowledge and depth that can be found... in the humanities)
She wants to know if he really believes what he says, or is just saying it to avoid the storm.
It matters because we want to know if he truly believes this, or is just saying what he thinks he needs to say.
That's important, because we got into this mess because Zuckerberg is a classic technological determinist. He thinks that slapping technologie onto society will automatically make it better in the long run. And he thinks this course is inevitable.
We need to know if he has really learned anything about the Social Constructivist point of view:
- new technology does not automatically make the world a better place, but needs critical thinking and policymaking to steer it in a humane direction.
- Technological developments are not inevitable, we as a society decide what we accept (see nuclear energy for example or our changing attitude towards oil).