TrustNoRobot

Category: good tech

  • Building Angels

    I get it. The world is overwhelming, language is broken technology that doesn’t even try to meander toward the truth anymore, and as Yeats said, “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

    But. If.

    If instead of building bots to influence public opinion, what if the bots were built to protect us, to nurture us, to provide us with maximum agency and happiness? What if the deamons of AI became our better angels?

    Nothing is written in stone for how the twenty-first is going to go. Sure, it could be a downward spiral, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was instead the century we righted the ship, when we built the new communication and organization tools for the next ten thousand years?

    I think the dilemma we face is that not everyone is going to come along for the ride. But that’s ok too; it has to be. At many points in human history we were forced to migrate to survive, and when we did people were left behind. Most of us now are the decendants of those who chose to move on.

    Move we must. Move away from belief that exposure to information somehow moves the needle on truth, move away from a faith that the Internet and social networks have not been compromised, that empathy can scale.

    We need to migrate toward a world where AI serves as our shields and protectors, and we must criminalize the manipulation of other humans using bots. We must accept that the only way we can protect ourselves from AI is to build AI defense systems.

    The only logical way to create these is for a marketplace of protector bots to exist, since depending on the government to provide you with a defense system simply puts too much power in it’s hands (especially if it is compromised). Here, capitalism can shine, and the same system that allowed the creation of bot armies to influence elections can innovate defensive systems against them.

    The battleground is all around you, every second of your attention, and the prize is the future.

    Painting by Simon Stålenhag

  • Democracy and Science Are Failing: Upward

    Democracy and Science Are Failing: Upward

    The news looks grim. Democracy will fail. Science is in a Replication Crisis as the planet cooks. Language is broken.

    None of this is news. The viability of Representative Democracy has been in question since Plato, and probably for thousands of years before that. Science has always been a “look at me and my big brain” contest that led to shoddy methodologies and conclusions. And language has always just been a magic trick to convince yourself and others that truth can be wrung from the filthy dish cloth of reality by barking sounds and pointing.

    But let me explain why I am excited to be living right now: it’s a time when the general public is starting to suspect that Democracy, Science, Language and yes even Money are not ground truths. They are skeins laid over the true power of the human brain and society, and we can remake them, craft them into anything we wish. That doubt of ground truth makes the public open to change, change we sorely need.

    We are all connected, not by some mystical noosphere, but rather in reality, with computers in our pockets connected by an extremely reliable global network. At our disposal, finally, a way to extend our mental processing powers using AI.

    It is time for the great flowering, the age of Computer Assisted Pragmatism.We don’t need to align on the exact methods and applications that will be built to further the next step in our personal and social evolutionary tale. In fact, using language to try to align everyone is not going to work. We just need to build the next phase and be willing to adapt to further the ultimate aim. It is that aim that we do need to align on.

    For me, this alignment entails that we must agree that individual humans are Singletons, worthy of empathy, respect, and fair treatment. Technology (and yes, Money and Language and Government are technologies) built to further the Singleton Pattern is worthy. Other tech should be discarded as evil.

    Which is why I do not reject the ultimate value of AI out of hand. Because it is very possible that the new world we will build cannot be negotiated without the extension of our consciousness, cognitive powers and Language (HAiL) using AI. AI that looks out for us, and protects us from folks who just don’t care about others, and will do their best to steal our shared futures.

    So do not dispair sisters and brothers and non-binary friends. It took Representative Democracy over two thousand years to spread, Science a few hundred, and electronic intelligence almost a few dozen. It will still take time for us to thread new social structures around the bones of the old ones. But it is happening today, and right now there is a college undergraduate realizing what I realized in University: that all of the structures of thought and control that people take for granted are grand illusions.

    The difference is, today that student is a comp sci major, and they have the power to build a platform to change the world.

    Build. Build like the wind.

    Image from The Guardian

  • C-Beams Glittering in The Dark, Protecting Your Face

    We are seeing public calls for banning all face Recognition use by police. Cambridge MA joins the cities considering a ban. I understand why…take a look at the gif above of protestors in Hong Kong using lasers to block face detection. The original Blade Runner was set in 2019, I think this fully horrifyingly cyberpunk moment puts us there. Video on twitter here.

    However, those asking for bans are laboring under the illusion that we can go back to a world of anonymity, of obscurity. But there is no obscurity of identity as long as even one person in the long line of government agencies decides to use face detection on a video frame. Pandora has left the big box store and is having her feet scraped at a resort in Cancun.

    You think a ban will stop the NSA? The FBI? The agencies without initials? And what are you doing with such a ban? You are removing from public access the ability to use this tech to identify bad actors in the policing space.

    You see, they have access to cameras and ML, but we all have cameras in our pockets and ML as a service. We can film them, and identify them, and track them also. The blade swings both ways here.

    The problem here isn’t the tech, it’s that people are being horrible to each other. The problem with China isn’t that it’s using this tech to oppress protests, it’s that it is trying to do terrible things like displace populations and crush Hong Kong. They would do it without the tech, and if we want to stop the real abuses protecting Cambridge as a safe identity space isn’t going to go very far.

    It may seem like we are “doing something” with these bans, but it’s meaningless busy work when compared with the real issues of Inequality, identity, institutional racism, etc.

    To be clear, I am not making the argument of “well if you don’t want to get in trouble just don’t do anything wrong.” I am instead saying that if that doing wrong is actually the right thing, and goes against the grain of society, then exposing your identity is crucial in the change.

    If you want to protect your identity from cameras in public, your best bet is to go for some counter surveillance tech. I am all for it, especially if it is really cyberpunk.

    Check out this shirt for instance.

    What I like the most about this approach it is a true middle finger to the guy in the three letter agency who thinks he can control the world with technology. And it’s my protected “right” to wear it. Try to ban it, punk.

    And the title of this post is of course in reference to the recent loss of Rutger Hauer. Thanks Rutger, you were a candle burning at both ends, twice as bright.

  • Quit Blaming Video Games; Social Media is Killing Kids

    Social media, but not video games, linked to depression in teens, according to Montreal study| CBC News

    Screen time — and social media in particular — is linked to an increase in depressive symptoms in teenagers, according to a new study by researchers at Montreal’s Sainte-Justine Hospital.

    The most surprising finding for Boers was that time spent playing video games was not contributing to depressive symptoms.

    The study suggests the average gamer is not socially isolated, with more than 70 per cent of gamers playing with other people either online or in person.

    Depression is a clear error state of being human, to be avoided at all costs if you care about your uptime as a being, and avoiding the risk of self-termination.

    We need to stop talking about “screen time” with kids, and start talking about the quality of what they are doing on screens.

    It turns out, scrolling through pictures of your high school friend’s jet-skis isn’t a worthwhile activity.

    The study found that of all the forms of screen time, consuming social media can be the most harmful.

    Conrod and her colleague, Elroy Boers, found that the increased symptoms of depression are linked to being active on platforms such as Instagram, where teens are more likely to compare their lives to glitzy images in their feeds.

    “It exposes young people to images that promote upward social comparison and makes them feel bad about themselves,” said Conrod.

    Playing video games isn’t a waste of time by default, since many games are social in nature and keep the mind active. Other games are black holes of grinding out clicks for limited dopamine, like crappy slot machines. So, avoid those, for your kids and yourself.

    Something being on a screen, or in a book, doesn’t make it good or bad. It’s only in the experience of the technology that we are able to determine worth.

    We are social animals, and when my kid plays Fortnite I often hear him, well, playing. Like kids are supposed to. Laughing, joking around, talking about friends at school. The same kind of thing he does when he shoots baskets at the park, or swims in the pool.

    “Social networks” like Facebook, Instagram, etc., in contrast, are not social at all. They are isolating, cynical plays for your attention for ad dollars. They are like crappy magazines where we have to create the content.

    Twenty years ago Google came along and rebuilt the way search worked on the net. All the old search engines adapted or disappeared. We can do that with social networks too:

    Just use SMS. Text people, create groups, share your photos that way. Send postcards in the mail. Take a trip. Grab a beer with old friends. Play a video game with your kid!

    If you are going to let your kids on social networks, be aware you are doing something more dangerous than letting them smoke cigarettes. Might as well toss them some Juul cartridges and call it a day.

    Render by Mike Winkelmann

  • The Smart Cow Theory of History

    Perhaps you have heard of the Great Man Theory of History,

    The great man theory is a 19th-century idea according to which history can be largely explained by the impact of great men, or heroes; highly influential and unique individuals who, due to their natural attributes, such as superior intellect, heroic courage, or divine inspiration, have a decisive historical effect.

    I’m not really on board with that one to be honest. Mostly because I think the real changes in history happen due to technology, and not ideology, warfare, or singular heroism or leadership. The invention of firearms, antibiotics, and alternating current have changed average lives much more than most of the Herculean achievements supposedly attributed to the Heroes of History.

    But, how did those technological and scientific advancements occur? This brings me to my proposal: the Smart Cow Theory of History.

    The Smart Cow idea is derived from the Smart Cow Problem:

    The smart cow problem is the concept that, when a group of individuals is faced with a technically difficult task, only one of their members has to solve it. When the problem has been solved once, an easily repeatable method may be developed, allowing the less technically proficient members of the group to accomplish the task.

    The term smart cow problem is thought to be derived from the expression: “It only takes one smart cow to open the latch of the gate, and then all the other cows follow.”[1]

    Imagine that each advancement we make in technology brings us, a metaphorical herd of cows, to a new, greener pasture. For instance, the development of the internal combustion engine by a Smart Cow, or small group of smart cows, suddenly gives us massive power and abilities. Tesla figures out Alternating Current to unlock the gate of power transmission, and then the regular cows can build the power grid.

    But then we inevitably come to another locked gate: not enough fuel, dangerous vehicles, carbon emissions. We bang against these gates until the smart cows, the technologists and scientists and yes, the capitalists who fund them, figure out a way to unlock these gates. Then we all blunder through, blindly, into the supposedly greener pastures of our future.

    Smart cows would be folks like: Tesla, Edison, Curie, Einstein, Ada Lovelace, Ford, Taiichi Ohno, Oppenheimer, Herbert Boyer, Tim Berners-Lee and so on. Every woman and man working in a lab coat somewhere or pounding on a keyboard is likely a Smart Cow in some way. Because really smart and effective cows don’t do it alone; it usually takes a cowteam to unlatch those gates.

    And what are those gates? Those are the problems we face. Energy, food, travel, health, understanding, control.

    The Smart Cow Theory of History implies a few things. One, is that us cows that blunder through the unlocked gates have no idea what lies on the other side of the fence, and most of us don’t even know that gate was there in the first place.

    Second, and more importantly, the Smart Cows don’t know what lies on the other side either.

    Sure they can theorize and discuss, but Smart Cows are just individuals who can apply their focus to a single issue and solve it. They are just looking for a solution to the unhappy mooing around them

    Oppenheimer didn’t know how nations would negotiate power through nuclear weapons. He was more worried that the initial atom bomb tests would ignite the oxygen on the planet and kill us all.

    The Smart Cows building AI, putting computers in our pockets, and editing our genes have No Idea what the outcome of these actions will be. They can’t, the universe and humans are just far too complex to know what the next pasture and gate will look like. But we do know that these gates are getting more and more complicated, the pastures more dangerous, and the Smart Cows are going to keep unlatching.

    Telling Smart Cows to stop fiddling with the locks isn’t going to slow them down. But if we all just spend a few moments asking the right questions, and enshrining the right values, maybe, just maybe, we can set our boundaries in time to prevent disaster.

    Perhaps some gates need to remain locked to keep the herd from wandering onto the highway, or into the slaughterhouse.

    Moo.

    To hear a couple of very Smart Cows discuss some upcoming gates around biotechnology and CRISPR, I highly recommend episode 50 of the After On podcast with Kevin Rose.

  • Humans Above Technology

    Humans Above Technology

    Humans-Above-Technology-Logo-B1

    Super excited to announce that the organization behind TrustNoRobot is now a non-profit that has been created to help promote humans above technology.   Our simple belief is that technology should work for humans and better their condition and never have a negative impact on humanity.

    Please stand by for our projects and activities that grow past this blog.  Our mission is clear and there are difficult waters ahead to navigate in this time of massive change for humanity.  We need to make sure every technology is examined and hold it up to a standard of what is in the best interest of humanity, not just the bottom line of a company, government or simple convenience.    We are all interconnected, we live on the same rock floating through the universe.  We need to be thoughtful of our decisions and what we will accept and what we need to stand against.   We can no longer tolerate ‘progress’ at the cost of human rights and condition without inspection and accountability.

    I thank you for reading this blog and hope you stay to collaborate on where we go from here.  Exit the matrix and join us.. more to come from Humans Above Technology..  

  • From HAL to HAiL

    Arguably one of the most iconic evil robots in cinematic history was HAL 9000, the murderous brain of a doomed spaceship in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, I don’t think this trope of an red-eyed AI gaining sentience and killing us is an actual real threat we face from robotics or AI. Worrying about that is akin to worrying nuclear weapons will start robbing banks. But killer AI makes a better movie than people losing their jobs to automation or getting relentlessly spammed by bots via social media.

    But I’ve been thinking a lot about the term I coined in this blog post for the Human-AI Leviathan, or HAL. Obviously I was making an ironic reference to the original HAL here, and for that reason I would like to withdraw my coinage, or alter it at least. I don’t want people to think I am suggesting that the metalanguage that will evolve between AI and humans is going to be conscious and/or evil.

    Plus, most folks won’t get the Leviathan Hobbes reference, and I also think that particular work of philosophy is claptrap. Or people may think I am being literal in suggesting it is a creature or being. It will not be, nor should be talk about it as a being.

    In fact, I think this evolving AI feedback loop will be a positive movement in our species evolution. And while it is not a creature or really a language in the traditional symbolic way of thinking about language, I do think Language suggests more of what I intend, that its raison d’être will be human communication and facilitation, than “Leviathan” does.

    So, here is my re-coinage:

    HAiL, the Human-AI Language.

    To break it down, Human comes before the AI because that is what the Singleton Pattern is all about. There is a lower case “i” for AI to remind us that artificial intelligence should never be considered a being. And because it looks cool.

    And finally, Language. Because even though this will not be a spoken or coding language solely, this will be a medium of exchange between human beings. We will just be using models of self and society to communicate that only machine intelligence will be able to query effectively.

    A concrete example of HAiL is a spam filter. Or a social media news feed. Or a reminder from your calendar app. Or an ad served based on your preferences.

    And wonders yet unrealized, like thought mail.

    This blog is not about instilling fear of AI. This is about setting a new course. Because naming things is important. If we call the thing evolving and growing around us a language, we can understand that. Spoken languages change and grow around us all day long, and besides the folks who are still upset that nobody uses semicolons properly, generally language evolution is seen as a good or natural process. And nobody tries to marry a language. We break through the confusion that AI is a being in its own right.

    HAiL will be a manifestation of technology as an order of life, in the way Kevin Kelly talks about in What Technology Wants, a wonderful book that for some reason I seem to be the only person who made it through. Worth a read. Basically he makes a case that Technology itself has purpose, and is a new type of life. A big idea, maybe a little too big.

    AI should be incorporated into our species as HAiL, which suggests both signaling and dangerous ice falling from the skies. Both threat and greeting. A future not of threatening red eyes, but of raising our hands and being heard.

    And no, I am not making a Hail Hitler reference. Man, the Internet has ruined us.

  • The Coming Microservice of You

    I was reading up on Erisology this morning, which sounds like a nascent idea around a science of disagreement, especially online. I like the thought, but as I have previously mentioned, I don’t have a lot of hope for language as a tool for finding truth.

    Ultimately, we will build AI that learns what our thoughts mean in terms of our actions as Singleton entities, and this AI will spend most of its time in communication with other AI, negotiating reality via bytes and models.

    Out of that meta AI language, that humans may be able to interpret but not speak in, the truth will coalesce like a crystal around our species. We will certainly spill a lot of ink trying to describe the new Human-AI partnership world, that already stirs around us like a great beast, but those words will not ultimately decide the fate of our species.

    It will be determined by the way we decide we want to interface with the Human-AI Leviathan. Which I will call HAL from now on, because “society” just doesn’t cut it when describing what is growing and evolving around us.

    This is why it is important that we enter this new phase as Singleton entities, recognizing our unique status in the universe as creatures with a theory of mind, the ability to model other entities inside of us.

    Because if we do not place ourselves at the center, other humans are going to use us like chits. We should trust no robot because we should trust no human behind the robot who has not modelled us in their own heads and tied our own well being into their own emotional states.

    These AIs will be, and soon. A distribution of mind that models us inside it.

    And what we need to flourish in this world is not just a new way of thinking, though I do think programming metaphors like Singletons and decoupling and data structures are more useful ways to analyze ourselves in the modern world than Freudian models of the mind as plumbing, or religious models based on fantastic personal revelation/hallucination.

    In fact, the model of thought we need ultimately is also one from modern programming. It’s the microservice. A microservice is a program with a simple job, that does one thing completely independent from other services. It is decoupled, and modular, and secure.

    In the Singleton Pattern, your identity itself is governed by a microservice that says who and where you are, and that is all it does. But you can imagine other services that would spring up. Let’s say I want to know how happy Chas is? My AI could query my biochemical state service, that would share my levels of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, etc.

    See, this is the kind of tech that extends and transforms us. And we don’t need to map every crack in the pavement on the road ahead of us, we just need to know the direction we are going. And that direction is clear: we must drive together toward honor of each other, and all life.

  • The Greatest Flag in the Universe

    A break from AI and ethics for a quick haiku for my favorite flag.

    The Triumph of man,

    The Laurel wreath, wraped around

    A Gear; claiming Space

    The Laurel wreath is a symbol of triumph. On the white field it proclaims boldly the victory of humanity. But what is this victory?

    Look closer. The Gear, the symbol of technology and industry, envelops space and stars and planets. The totality of the universe.

    There is only one flag that claims boldly, humans can use technology to contain the Universe.

    That is the flag of the United Federation of Planets.

    And you don’t even need to be a Trekkie to fly it. Well, you don’t need to watch Deep Space 9, anyhow.

    The thing I like most about this flag is how absurd it is. If you know how I feel about space, you’ll understand. Surrounding space with tech is the greatest hubris there is. Space is going to kill us all, and its vastness and danger should be the one thing that binds us together as a species.

    By the way, did you know that studies have shown when Astronauts from all cultures visit space, it changes their value systems? Makes them more accepting and inclusive?

    After returning, the astronauts showed increased concern with Universalism, Spirituality, and Power (social recognition), a broadened set of references to values oriented toward the collective good.

    Huh.

    The United Federation of Planets Flag also clearly expresses how I feel about current terrestrial politics. I would rather fly the flag of a fictional future government from an overacted television mythology than the flag of any current national affiliation, on most days anyhow.

    But I do love the stars and stripes on the holidays and lazy summer days, and while I think it is ridiculous to take pride in the location on the planet you were accidentally born, there are worse things than being an American. And the US flag does honor those who have given everything for our freedom of thought and speech. Say what you will about Americans, but we are loud as hell and not going to change anytime soon. I sort of like that.

    And considering the amount of taxes I pay to New York State, the NY State flag is another one I have earned the right to fly:

    Plus, it says Excelsior, which means roughly “ever upward”. It’s the Stan Lee flag! And also a Star Trek ship name. How great is that!?

    But seriously, I’m not a real Trekkie. No cosplay, I promise.

  • Stopping the Enders by Solving Disease

    What if we are not doomed?

    So, I recommend listening to After On, a really amazing podcast that covers some of the topics most relevant to our species, and this blog lingers on: AI, ethics, technology and change. The most recent podcast was an interview with Naval Ravikant, and it’s a great exploration of existential risk that will hopefully instill listeners with a sense of the challenges facing our species.

    Episode 44: Naval Ravikant | End Games (part one) | Click to Listen

    Episode 45: Naval Ravikant | End Games (part two) | Click to Listen

    And in it, they both agree that we are pretty much doomed.

    The reason is: we have Enders. Enders are members of our species who are suicidal and homicidal and who, if given a button to push that would end all human life, would push that button. Without hesitation.

    This problem isn’t just solved by limiting access to machine guns. This threat makes school shootings appear quaint. Because synthetic biology is going to let people craft diseases that can wipe out, well, everyone. CRISPR editing techniques will make it possible for an undergraduate level human to craft death for the species in a bottle.

    Except, what if…we evolved.

    What if this threat, from the unseen world of microbiology, is what propelled us to take disease seriously. What if we had a Manhattan Project approach to artificially augment our immune systems to protect us from anything. And then used synthetic biology gene editing to ensure this approach became part of the DNA of our entire species.

    Big thought, especially since we barely understand our immune system now. But if I told you that an asteroid was heading to wipe out the planet in five years, I am pretty sure we would get pretty good at launching rockets pretty fast.

    The asteroid is on its way, but it is too small to see and comes with a cough. Then people just start dropping dead. No zombies, no dramatic music, no planes into buildings, just dead people and complete social breakdown.

    We are an amazing species and I refuse to give up because of some broken Enders. There are only two paths to avoid catastrophic action from a biological pathogen. Either we identify and stop all the Enders from obtaining the necessary technology and know-how, which seems unlikely since even intelligent and stable people can become suicidal, or we cure disease for all time.

    At a certain point our species needed to travel across the sea, so we built boats. Now we need to extend our immune systems to become vessels to help us navigate these dangerous waters. Machine learning and synthetic biology can protect us, just as it can kill us.

    What will not protect us is more fear. We are filled with fear and dread, at least you will be after listening to that podcast and considering the reality of our situation. We need a serious multinational approach toward building real defenses against the horror to come.

    Maybe someday we will be able to detect Enders using AI. But when all it takes is one miss to result in apocalypse, we can’t risk a misidentification. But if nothing could make us sick, we not only have mitigated the risk, we have made the world a better place.

    Image from Vox article on CRISPR