From 23ac9f57b9b4c761cb8edc5bfa0c0de77ec89326 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Silvio Rhatto Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2017 14:06:22 -0300 Subject: Change extension to .md --- books/sociedade/who-owns-the-future.md | 673 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 673 insertions(+) create mode 100644 books/sociedade/who-owns-the-future.md (limited to 'books/sociedade/who-owns-the-future.md') diff --git a/books/sociedade/who-owns-the-future.md b/books/sociedade/who-owns-the-future.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e53d275 --- /dev/null +++ b/books/sociedade/who-owns-the-future.md @@ -0,0 +1,673 @@ +[[!meta title="Who owns the future?"]] + +* Author: Jaron Lanier +* Year: 2013 +* Publisher: Simon & Schuster + +## Index + +* Star system versus the bell curve as network designs. +* Siren Servers: narcissism, hyperamplified risk aversion, and extreme information asymmetry. +* Siren Servers and Maxwell’s Demon. +* Disruptive innovation as the tedious scheme to shrink markets. +* Science isn't automatic. +* Nine dismal humors of futurism, and a hopeful one. +* Marx as one of the first technology writers (when discussing Luddites). +* Human obsolescence is avoidable. +* Keynes Considered as a Big Data Pioneer. +* Amazon's Mechanical Turk. +* Humanistic information economics. +* What is experience? If personal experience were missing from the universe, how would things be different? +* Gurus and New Age at the Sillicon Valley: Gurdjieff, Steve Jobs. + +## Prelude + + Instagram isn’t worth a billion dollars just because those thirteen employees + are extraordinary. Instead, its value comes from the millions of users who + contribute to the network without being paid for it. Networks need a great + number of people to participate in them to generate significant value. But when + they have them, only a small number of people get paid. That has the net effect + of centralizing wealth and limiting overall economic growth. + + [...] + + By “digital networking” I mean not only the Internet and the Web, but also + other networks operated by outfits like financial institutions and intelligence + agencies. In all these cases, we see the phenomenon of power and money becoming + concentrated around the people who operate the most central computers in a + network, undervaluing everyone else. That is the pattern we have come to + expect, but it is not the only way things can go. + +## The Price of Heaven + + Utopians presume the advent of abundance not because it will be affordable, but + because it will be free, provided we accept surveillance. + + Starting back in the early 1980s, an initially tiny stratum of gifted + technologists conceived new interpretations of concepts like privacy, liberty, + and power. I was an early participant in the process and helped to formulate + many of the ideas I am criticizing in this book. What was once a tiny + subculture has blossomed into the dominant interpretation of computation and + software-mediated society. + + One strain of what might be called “hacker culture” held that liberty means + absolute privacy through the use of cryptography. I remember the thrill of + using military-grade stealth just to argue about who should pay for a pizza at + MIT in 1983 or so. + + On the other hand, some of my friends from that era, who consumed that pizza, + eventually became very rich building giant cross-referenced dossiers on masses + of people, which were put to use by financiers, advertisers, insurers, or other + concerns nurturing fantasies of operating the world by remote control. + + It is typical of human nature to ignore hypocrisy. The greater a hypocrisy, the + more invisible it typically becomes, but we technical folk are inclined to seek + an airtight whole of ideas. Here is one such synthesis—of cryptography for + techies and massive spying on others—which I continue to hear fairly often: + Privacy for ordinary people can be forfeited in the near term because it will + become moot anyway. + + Surveillance by the technical few on the less technical many can be tolerated + for now because of hopes for an endgame in which everything will become + transparent to everyone. Network entrepreneurs and cyber-activists alike seem + to imagine that today’s elite network servers in positions of information + supremacy will eventually become eternally benign, or just dissolve. + + Bizarrely, the endgame utopias of even the most ardent high-tech libertarians + always seem to take socialist turns. The joys of life will be too cheap to + meter, we imagine. So abundance will go ambient. + + This is what diverse cyber-enlightened business concerns and political groups + all share in common, from Facebook to WikiLeaks. Eventually, they imagine, + there will be no more secrets, no more barriers to access; all the world will + be opened up as if the planet were transformed into a crystal ball. In the + meantime, those true believers encrypt their servers even as they seek to + gather the rest of the world’s information and find the best way to leverage + it. + + It is all too easy to forget that “free” inevitably means that someone else + will be deciding how you live. + +## Just Blurt the Idea Out + + So we begin with the simple question of how to design digital networks to + deliver more help than harm in aligning human intention to meet great + challenges. A starting point for an answer can be summarized: “Digital + information is really just people in disguise.” + +### Aristotle frets + + Aristotle directly addressed the role of people in a hypothetical high-tech + world: If every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or + anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods + of Hephaestus, which, says the poet, of their own accord entered the assembly + of the Gods; if, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch + the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, + nor masters slaves.1 + + At this ancient date, a number of possibilities were at least slightly visible + to Aristotle’s imagination. One was that the human condition was in part a + function of what machines could not do. Another was that it was possible to + imagine, at least hypothetically, that machines could do more. The synthesis + was also conceived: Better machines could free and elevate people, even slaves. + + If we could show Aristotle the technology of our times, I wonder what he would + make of the problem of unemployment. Would he take Marx’s position that better + machines create an obligation (to be carried out by political bodies) to + provide care and dignity to people who no longer need to work? Or would + Aristotle say, “Kick the unneeded ones out of town. The polis is only for the + people who own the machines, or do what machines still cannot do.” Would he + stand by idly as Athens was eventually depopulated? + + I’d like to think the best of Aristotle, and assume he would realize that both + choices are bogus; machine autonomy is nothing but theater. Information needn’t + be thought of as a freestanding thing, but rather as a human product. It is + entirely legitimate to understand that people are still needed and valuable + even when the loom can run without human muscle power. It is still running on + human thought. + + [...] + + Note: How prescient that Aristotle chose musical instruments and looms as his + examples for machines that might one day operate automatically! These two types + of machines did indeed turn out to be central to the prehistory of computation. + The Jacquard programmable loom helped inspire calculating engines, while music + theory and notation helped further the concept of abstract computation, as when + Mozart wrote algorithmic, nondeterministic music incorporating dice throws. + Both developments occurred around the turn of the 19th century. + + [...] + + Aristotle seems to want to escape the burden of accommodating lesser people. + His quote about self-operating lutes and looms could be interpreted as a + daydream that better technology will free us to some degree from having to deal + with one another. + + It’s not as if everyone wanted to be closer to all of humanity when cities + first formed. Athens was a necessity first, and a luxury second. No one wants + to accommodate the diversity of strangers. People deal with each other + politically because the material advantages are compelling. We find relative + safety and sustenance in numbers. Agriculture and armies happened to work + better as those enterprises got bigger, and cities built walls. + + But in Aristotle’s words you get a taste of what a nuisance it can be to + accommodate others. Something was lost with the advent of the polis, and we + still dream of getting it back. + + [...] + + The reward for a Roman general, upon retiring after years of combat, was a plot + of land he could farm for himself. To be left alone, to be able to live off the + land with the illusion of no polis to bug you, that was the dream. The American + West offered that dream again, and still loathes giving it up. Justice Louis + Brandeis famously defined privacy as the “right to be left alone.” + + In every case, however, abundance without politics was an illusion that could + only be sustained in temporary bubbles, supported by armies. The ghosts of the + losers haunt every acre of easy abundance. The greatest beneficiaries of + civilization use all their power to create a temporary illusion of freedom from + politics. The rich live behind gates, not just to protect themselves, but to + pretend to not need anyone else, if only for a moment. In Aristotle’s quote, we + find the earliest glimmer of the hope that technological advancement could + replace territorial conquest as a way of implementing an insulating bubble + around a person. + + [...] + + People naturally seek the benefits of society, meaning the accommodation of + strangers, while avoiding direct vulnerabilities to specific others as much as + possible. This is a clichéd criticism of the online culture of the moment. + People have thousands of “friends” and yet stare at a little screen when in the + proximity of other people. As it was in Athens, so it is online. + +## Money + + Money might have begun as a mnemonic counter for assets you couldn’t keep under + direct observation, like wandering sheep. A stone per sheep, so the shepherd + would be confident all had been reunited after a day at pasture. In other + words, artifacts took on information storage duties. + + [...] + + Ancient money was information storage that represented events in the past. To + the ears of many a financier, at this early stage “money” had not been born + yet, only accounting. That kind of money can be called “past-oriented money.” + +## Noise and luck + + Consider the problem of noise, or what is known as luck in human affairs. + + [...] + + And yet the rewards of winning and losing are vastly different. While some + critics might have aesthetic or ethical objections to winner-take-all outcomes, + a mathematical problem with them is that noise is amplified. Therefore, if a + societal system depends too much on winner-take-all contests, then the acuity + of that system will suffer. It will become less reality-based. + + When a bell curve distribution is appreciated as a bell curve instead of as a + winner-take-all distribution, then noise, luck, and conceptual ambiguity aren’t + amplified. It makes statistical sense to talk about average intelligence or + high intelligence, but not to identify the single most intelligent person. + +## Letting Bell Curves Be Bell Curves + + In a star system, the top players are rewarded tremendously, while almost + everyone else—facing in our era an ever-larger, more global body of competitive + peers—is driven toward poverty (because of competition or perhaps automation). + +## Absolutism + + Being an absolutist is a certain way to become a failed technologist. + + Markets are an information technology. A technology is useless if it can’t be + tweaked. If market technology can’t be fully automatic and needs some + “buttons,” then there’s no use in trying to pretend otherwise. You don’t stay + attached to poorly performing quests for perfection. You fix bugs. + +## The Taste of Politics + + Despite my favorable regard for organized labor, for the purposes of this book + I have to focus somewhat on certain failings. The problems of interest to me + are not really with the labor movement, but with the nature of levees. What + might be called “upper-class levees,” like exclusive investment funds, have + been known to blur into Ponzi schemes or other criminal enterprises, and the + same pattern exists for levees at all levels. + + Levees are more human than algorithmic, and that is not an entirely good thing. + Whether for the rich or the middle class, levees are inevitably a little + conspiratorial, and conspiracy naturally attracts corruption. Criminals easily + exploited certain classic middle-class levees; the mob famously infiltrated + unions and repurposed music royalties as a money-laundering scheme. + + Levees are a rejection of unbridled algorithm and an insertion of human will + into the flow of capital. Inevitably, human oversight brings with it all the + flaws of humans. And yet despite their rough and troubled nature, antenimbosian + levees worked well enough to preserve middle classes despite the floods, + storms, twisters, and droughts of a world contoured by finance. Without our + system of levees, rising like a glimmering bell-curved mountain of rice + paddies, capitalism would probably have decayed into Marx’s “attractor + nightmare” in which markets decay into plutocracy. + +## A First Pass at a Definition + + A Siren Server, as I will refer to such a thing, is an elite computer, + or coordinated collection of computers, on a network. It is + characterized by narcissism, hyperamplified risk aversion, and extreme + information asymmetry. It is the winner of an all-or-nothing contest, + and it inflicts smaller all-or-nothing contests on those who interact + with it. + + Siren Servers gather data from the network, often without having to pay + for it. The data is analyzed using the most powerful available + computers, run by the very best available technical people. The results + of the analysis are kept secret, but are used to manipulate the rest of + the world to advantage. + + That plan will always eventually backfire, because the rest of the world + cannot indefinitely absorb the increased risk, cost, and waste dispersed + by a Siren Server. Homer sternly warned sailors to not succumb to the + call of the sirens, and yet was entirely complacent about Hephaestus’s + golden female robots. But Sirens might be even more dangerous in + inorganic form, because it is then that we are really most looking at + ourselves in disguise. It is not the siren who harms the sailor, but the + sailor’s inability to think straight. So it is with us and our machines. + + Siren Servers are fated by their nature to sow illusions. They are + cousins to another seductive literary creature, star of the famous + thought experiment known as Maxwell’s Demon, after the great 19th + century physicist James Clerk Maxwell. The demon is an imaginary + creature that, if it could only exist, would be able to implement a + perpetual motion machine and perform other supernatural tricks. + + Maxwell’s Demon might be stationed at a tiny door separating two + chambers filled with water or air. It would only allow hot molecules to + pass one way, and cold molecules to pass in the opposite direction. + After a while, one side would be hot and the other cold, and you could + let them mix again, rushing together so quickly that the stream could + run a generator. In that way, the tiny act of discriminating between hot + and cold would produce infinite energy, because you could repeat the + process forever. + + The reason Maxwell’s Demon cannot exist is that it does take resources + to perform an act of discrimination. We imagine computation is free, but + it never is. The very act of choosing which particle is cold or hot + itself becomes an energy drain and a source of waste heat. The principle + is also known as “no free lunch.” + + We do our best to implement Maxwell’s Demon whenever we manipulate + reality with our technologies, but we can never do so perfectly; we + certainly can’t get ahead of the game, which is known as entropy. All + the air conditioners in a city emit heat that makes the city hotter + overall. While you can implement what seems to be a Maxwell’s Demon if + you don’t look too far or too closely, in the big picture you always + lose more than you gain. + + Every bit in a computer is a wannabe Maxwell’s Demon, separating the + state of “one” from the state of “zero” for a while, at a cost. A + computer on a network can also act like a wannabe demon if it tries to + sort data from networked people into one or the other side of some + imaginary door, while pretending there is no cost or risk involved. For + instance, a Siren Server might allow only those who would be cheap to + insure through a doorway (to become insured) in order to make a + supernaturally ideal, low-risk insurance company. Such a scheme would + let high-risk people pass one way, and low-risk ones pass the other way, + in order to implement a phony perpetual motion machine out of a human + society. However, the uninsured would not cease to exist; rather, they + would instead add to the cost of the whole system, which includes the + people who run the Siren Server. A short-term illusion of risk reduction + would actually lead to increased risk in the longer term. + +## Candy + + The primary business of digital networking has come to be the creation of + ultrasecret mega-dossiers about what others are doing, and using this + information to concentrate money and power. It doesn’t matter whether the + concentration is called a social network, an insurance company, a derivatives + fund, a search engine, or an online store. It’s all fundamentally the same. + Whatever the intent might have been, the result is a wielding of digital + technology against the future of the middle class. + + [...] + + We loved the crazy cheap easy mortgages, motivated by crazed overleveraging. We + love the free music, enabled by crazed copying. We love cheap online prices, + offered by what would have once seemed like national intelligence agencies. + These newer spy services do not struggle on behalf of our security, but instead + figure out just how little payment everyone in the chain can be made to accept. + We are not benefiting from the benevolence of some artificial intelligence + superbeing. We are exploiting each other off the books while those + concentrating our information remain on the books. We love our treats but will + eventually discover we are depleting our own value. + + That’s how we can have economic troubles despite there being so much wealth in + the system, and during a period of increasing efficiencies. Great fortunes are + being made on shrinking the economy instead of growing it. It’s not a result of + some evil scheme, but a side effect of an idiotic elevation of the fantasy that + technology is getting smart and standing on its own, without people. + +## From Autocollate to Autocollude + + It seems as though online services are bringing bargains to everyone, and yet + wealth disparity is increasing while social mobility is decreasing. If everyone + were getting better options, wouldn’t everyone be doing better as well? + +## From the Customer’s Point of View + + Wal-Mart confronted the ordinary shopper with two interesting pieces of news. + One was that stuff they wanted to buy got cheaper, which of course was great. + This news was delivered first, and caused cheering. + + But there was another piece of news that emerged more gradually. It has often + been claimed that Wal-Mart plays a role in the reduction of employment + prospects for the very people who tend to be its customers.1 Wal-Mart has + certainly made the world more efficient in a certain sense. It moved + manufacturing to any spot in the world that could accomplish it at the very + lowest cost; it rewarded vendors willing to cut corners to the maximum degree. + + [...] + + All Siren Servers deliver dual messages similar to the pair pioneered by + Wal-Mart. On the one hand, “Good news! Treats await! Information systems have + made the world more efficient for you.” + + On the other hand, a little later: “It turns out you, your needs, and your + expectations are not maximally efficient from the lofty point of view of our + server. Therefore, we are reshaping the world so that in the long term, your + prospects are being reduced.” + + The initial benefits don’t remotely balance the long-term degradations. + Initially you made some money day trading or getting an insanely easy loan, or + saved some money couch-surfing or by using coupons from an Internet site, but + then came the pink slip, the eviction notice, and the halving of your savings + when the market drooped. Or you loved getting music for free, but then realized + that you couldn’t pursue a music career yourself because there were hardly any + middle-class, secure jobs left in what was once the music industry. Maybe you + loved the supercheap prices at your favorite store, but then noticed that the + factory you might have worked for closed up for good. + +## Financial Siren Servers + + The schemes were remarkably similar to Silicon Valley designs. A few of them + took as input everything they possibly could scrape from the Internet as well + as other, proprietary networks. As in Google’s data centers, stupendous + correlative algorithms would crunch on the whole ’net’s data overnight, looking + for correlations. Maybe a sudden increase in comments about mosquito bites + would cause an automatic, instant investment in a company that sold lotions. + Actually, that’s an artificially sensible example. The real examples made no + sense to humans. But money was made, and fairly reliably. + + Note: It should be pointed out that if only one Siren Server is milking a + particular fluctuation in this way, a reasonable argument could be made that a + service is being performed, in that the fluctuation reveals inefficiency, and + the Siren is canceling it out. However, when many Sirens milk the same + fluctuation, they lock into a feedback system with each other and inadvertently + conspire to milk the rest of the world to no purpose. + + [...] + + What is absolutely essential to a financial Siren Server, however, is a + superior information position. If everyone else knew what you were doing, they + could securitize you. If anyone could buy stock in a mathematical “sure thing” + scheme, then the benefits of it would be copied like a shared music file, and + spread out until it was nullified. So, in today’s world your mortgage can be + securitized in someone else’s secretive bunker, but you can’t know about the + bunker and securitize it. If it weren’t for that differential, the new kind of + sure thing wouldn’t exist. + +## If Life Gives You EULAs, Make Lemonade + + The information economy that we are currently building doesn’t really embrace + capitalism, but rather a new form of feudalism. + +## Your Lack of Privacy Is Someone Else’s Wealth + + Occasionally the rich embrace a new token and drive up its value. The fine art + market is a great example. Expensive art is essentially a private form of + currency traded among the very rich. The better an artist is at making art that + can function this way, the more valuable the art will become. Andy Warhol is + often associated with this trick, though Pablo Picasso and others were + certainly playing the same game earlier. The art has to be stylistically + distinct and available in suitable small runs. It becomes a private form of + money, as instantly recognizable as a hundred-dollar bill. + + A related trend of our times is that troves of dossiers on the private lives + and inner beings of ordinary people, collected over digital networks, are + packaged into a new private form of elite money. The actual data in these + troves need not be valid. In fact, it might be better that it is not valid, for + actual knowledge brings liabilities. + +## The Nature of Our Confusion + + Our core illusion is that we imagine big data as a substance, like a natural + resource waiting to be mined. We use terms like data-mining routinely to + reinforce that illusion. Indeed some data is like that. Scientific big data, + like data about galaxy formation, weather, or flu outbreaks, can be gathered + and mined, just like gold, provided you put in the hard work. + + But big data about people is different. It doesn’t sit there; it plays against + you. It isn’t like a view through a microscope, but more like a view of a + chessboard. + +## The Most Elite Naïveté + + As technology advances, Siren Servers will be ever more the objects of the + struggle for wealth and power, because they are the only links in the chain + that will not be commoditized. If present trends continue, you’ll always be + able to seek information supremacy, just as old-fashioned barons could struggle + for supremacy over land or natural resources. A new energy cycle will someday + make oil much less central to geopolitics, but the information system that + manages that new kind of energy could easily become an impregnable castle. The + illusory golden vase becomes more and more valuable. + +### Mapping out where the conversation can go + + An endgame for civilization has been foreseen since Aristotle. As technology + reaches heights of efficiency, civilization will have to find a way to resolve + a peculiar puzzle: What should the role of “extra” humans be if not everyone is + still strictly needed? Do the extra people—the ones whose roles have + withered—starve? Or get easy lives? Who decides? How? + + The same core questions, stated in a multitude of ways, have elicited only a + small number of answers, because only a few are possible. + + What will people be when technology becomes much more advanced? With each + passing year our abilities to act on our ideas are increased by technological + progress. Ideas matter more and more. The ancient conversations about where + human purpose is headed continue today, with rising implications. + + Suppose that machines eventually gain sufficient functionality that one will be + able to say that a lot of people have become extraneous. This might take place + in nursing, pharmaceuticals, transportation, manufacturing, or in any other + imaginable field of employment. + + The right question to then ask isn’t really about what should be done with the + people who used to perform the tasks now colonized by machines. By the time one + gets to that question, a conceptual mistake has already been made. + + Instead, it has to be pointed out that outside of the spell of bad philosophy + human obsolescence wouldn’t in fact happen. The data that drives “automation” + has to ultimately come from people, in the form of “big data.” Automation can + always be understood as elaborate puppetry. + + The most crucial quality of our response to very high-functioning machines, + artificial intelligences and the like, is how we conceive of the things that + the machines can’t do, and whether those tasks are considered real jobs for + people or not. We used to imagine that elite engineers would be automation’s + only puppeteers. It turns out instead that big data coming from vast numbers of + people is needed to make machines appear to be “automated.” Do the puppeteers + still get paid once the whole audience has joined their ranks? + +## The Technology of Ambient Cheating + + Siren Servers do what comes naturally due to the very idea of computation. + Computation is the demarcation of a little part of the universe, called a + computer, which is engineered to be very well understood and controllable, so + that it closely approximates a deterministic, non-entropic process. But in + order for a computer to run, the surrounding parts of the universe must take on + the waste heat, the randomness. You can create a local shield against entropy, + but your neighbors will always pay for it. + + Note: A rare experimental machine called a “reversible” computer never forgets, + so that any computation can be run backward as well as forward. Such devices + run cool! This is an example of how thermodynamics and computation interact. + Reversible computers don’t radiate as much heat; forgetting radiates + randomness, which is the same thing as heating up the neighborhood. + +## The Insanity of the Local/Global Flip + + A Siren Server can become so successful—sometimes in the blink of an eye—that + it optimizes its environment—changes it—instead of changing in order to adapt + to the environment. A successful Siren Server no longer acts only as a player + within a larger system. Instead it becomes a central planner. This makes it + stupid, like a central planner in a communist regime. + +## The Conservation of Free Will + + A story must have actors, not automatons. Different people become more or less + like automatons in our Sirenic era. + + Sirenic entrepreneurs intuitively cast free will—so long as it is their own—as + an ever more magical, elite, and “meta” quality of personhood. The entrepreneur + hopes to “dent the universe”* or achieve some other heroic, Nietzschean + validation. Ordinary people, however, who will be attached to the nodes of the + network created by the hero, will become more effectively mechanical. + + [...] + + We’re setting up barriers between cases where we choose to give over some + judgment to cloud software, as if we were predictable machines, and those where + we elevate our judgments to pious, absolute standards. + + Making choices of where to place the barrier between ego and algorithm is + unavoidable in the age of cloud software. Drawing the line between what we + forfeit to calculation and what we reserve for the heroics of free will is the + story of our time. + +## Rewarding and Punishing Network Effects + + To understand how Siren Servers work, it’s useful to divide network effects + into those that are “rewarding” and those that are “punishing.” Siren Servers + gain dominance through rewarding network effects, but keep dominance through + punishing network effects. + +## The Closing Act + + Competition becomes mostly about who can out-meta who, and only secondarily + about specialization. + + [...] + + Individual Siren Servers can die and yet the Siren Server pattern perseveres, + and it is that pattern that is the real problem. The systematic decoupling of + risk from reward in the rising information economy is the problem, not any + particular server. + +## The limits of emergence as an explanation + + But the problem with freestanding concentrations of power is that you never + know who will inherit them. If social networking has the power to synchronize + great crowds to dethrone a pharaoh, why might it not also coordinate lynchings + or pogroms? + + [...] + + The core ideal of the Internet is that one trusts people, and that given an + opportunity, people will find their way to be reasonably decent. I happily + restate my loyalty to that ideal. It’s all we have. + + But the demonstrated capability of Facebook to effortlessly engage in mass + social engineering proves that the Internet as it exists today is not a + purists’ emergent system, as is so often claimed, but largely a top-down, + directed one. + + [...] + + We pretend that an emergent meta-human being is appearing in the computing + clouds—an artificial intelligence—but actually it is humans, the operators of + Siren Servers, pulling the levers. + + [...] + + The nuts and bolts of artificial-intelligence research can often be more + usefully interpreted without the concept of AI at all. For example, in 2011, + IBM scientists unveiled a “question answering” machine that is designed to play + the TV quiz show Jeopardy. Suppose IBM had dispensed with the theatrics, and + declared it had done Google one better and come up with a new phrase-based + search engine. This framing of exactly the same technology would have gained + IBM’s team as much (deserved) recognition as the claim of an artificial + intelligence, but it would also have educated the public about how such a + technology might actually be used most effectively. + + AI technologies typically operate on a variation of the process described + earlier that accomplishes translations between languages. While innovation in + algorithms is vital, it is just as vital to feed algorithms with “big data” + gathered from ordinary people. The supposedly artificially intelligent result + can be understood as a mash-up of what real people did before. People have + answered a lot of questions before, and a multitude of these answers are + gathered up by the algorithms and regurgitated by the program. This in no way + denigrates it or proposes it isn’t useful. It is not, however, supernatural. + The real people from whom the initial answers were gathered deserve to be paid + for each new answer given by the machine. + + [...] + + What all this comes down to is that the very idea of artificial intelligence + gives us the cover to avoid accountability by pretending that machines can take + on more and more human responsibility. This holds for things that we don’t even + think of as artificial intelligence, like the recommendations made by Netflix + and Pandora. Seeing movies and listening to music suggested to us by algorithms + is relatively harmless, I suppose. But I hope that once in a while the users of + those services resist the recommendations; our exposure to art shouldn’t be + hemmed in by an algorithm that we merely want to believe predicts our tastes + accurately. These algorithms do not represent emotion or meaning, only + statistics and correlations. + + What makes this doubly confounding is that while Silicon Valley might sell + artificial intelligence to consumers, our industry certainly wouldn’t apply the + same automated techniques to some of its own work. Choosing design features in + a new smartphone, say, is considered too consequential a game. Engineers don’t + seem quite ready to believe in their smart algorithms enough to put them up + against Apple’s late chief executive, Steve Jobs, or some other person with a + real design sensibility. + + But the rest of us, lulled by the concept of ever-more intelligent AIs, are + expected to trust algorithms to assess our aesthetic choices, the progress of a + student, the credit risk of a homeowner or an institution. In doing so, we only + end up misreading the capability of our machines and distorting our own + capabilities as human beings. We must instead take responsibility for every + task undertaken by a machine and double-check every conclusion offered by an + algorithm, just as we always look both ways when crossing an intersection, even + though the signal has been given to walk. + + When we think of computers as inert, passive tools instead of people, we are + rewarded with a clearer, less ideological view of what is going on—with the + machines and with ourselves. So, why, aside from the theatrical appeal to + consumers and reporters, must engineering results so often be presented in + Frankensteinian light? + + The answer is simply that computer scientists are human, and are as terrified + by the human condition as anyone else. We, the technical elite, seek some way + of thinking that gives us an answer to death, for instance. This helps explain + the allure of a place like the Singularity University. The influential Silicon + Valley institution preaches a story that goes like this: One day in the + not-so-distant future, the Internet will suddenly coalesce into a + superintelligent AI, infinitely smarter than any of us individually and all of + us combined; it will become alive in the blink of an eye, and take over the + world before humans even realize what’s happening. + + Some think the newly sentient Internet would then choose to kill us; others + think it would be generous and digitize us the way Google is digitizing old + books, so that we can live forever as algorithms inside the global brain. Yes, + this sounds like many different science fiction movies. Yes, it sounds nutty + when stated so bluntly. But these are ideas with tremendous currency in Silicon + Valley; these are guiding principles, not just amusements, for many of the most + influential technologists. + + It should go without saying that we can’t count on the appearance of a + soul-detecting sensor that will verify that a person’s consciousness has been + virtualized and immortalized. There is certainly no such sensor with us today + to confirm metaphysical ideas about people. All thoughts about consciousness, + souls, and the like are bound up equally in faith, which suggests something + remarkable: What we are seeing is a new religion, expressed through an + engineering culture. -- cgit v1.2.3