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WHY WATSON, IBM’S NEW C-3PO IS VERY VERY DANGEROUS

In DANGEROUS DICIPLE, REFERENCE LIBRARY, Uncategorized, WARNING on July 28, 2011 at 4:53 pm
IBM Watson (Jeopardy at Carnegie Mellon) - How...

IBM Watson (Jeopardy at Carnegie Mellon)

GIST OF IT: IBM‘s Computer, Watson, now have enough language skills to beat humans in a game of which the questions involve “subtle meanings, irony, riddles,” and other linguistic complications.

WHY SCYNET CARES:  Read carefully. Watson was built for a mere $ 3 000 000.00. And it was tremendously successful in “being human” in the Jeopardy Show.  This is happening now, here, in real-time – not on some futuristic horror movie. And think about it. How will this artificial humanity be utilized and for whom will it work? It will be in the service of various corporations, designed to outsmart you in situations where you have to make choices. And the corporations have a different aim than you do. Think about it. Imagine a machine interviewing your son, and by using vast intelligence and all the records from your son’s life, it can succeed in getting your son, for example, to join the Marines; even though you know he would never have wanted that for himself? How do you protect yourself from superior intelligence aimed at getting you to do things that might not be good for you?

C-3PO is a protocol droid designed to serve humans, and boasts that he is fluent “in over six million forms of communication.”

This year’s FOSE conference had an unexpected theme: artificial intelligence.

The subject came up in Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak’s keynote speech on the first day of the conference. It took center stage, though, on day 2 of the conference, when IBM Research Vice President of Software David McQueeney presented the Beyond Jeopardy! – The Implications of IBM Watson keynote.McQueeney heads the division responsible for Watson, the $3 million natural language computer IBM made famous on the television quiz show Jeopardy!, where it bested two humans in a two-day trivia contest. At first, McQueeney seemed to be an odd choice of speaker for a gathering of government acquisitions professionals and the people who want to sell them goods and services – until he started to draw connections for the crowd.

The Challenge

IBM, McQueeney said, had left little doubt that computers, with sufficient processing power, could best humans at quantitative tasks – even those that involve some forethought and creativity. The company’s previous artificial intelligence experiment, known as Deep Blue, had defeated world champion Gary Kasparov in a series of chess matches in 1997. But a challenge remained: language. Computers, in the past, hadn’t been able to understand language the way humans use it. McQueeney explained, “When humans communicate with computers, they have to use a discrete, exact programming language.” But when humans communicate with one another, they are more creative and fluid. “Unstructured sentences are very hard for machines to process,” he said. Human speech involves shades of meaning and intent, even puns and word games, that flummox traditional computers. “It took us much more scientific effort and computational work to tackle human language than to win chess games,” he said.  Jeopardy, McQueeney said, was the ultimate challenge because the game’s questions involve “subtle meanings, irony, riddles,” and other linguistic complications. To succeed, the system couldn’t simply search through structured information (something that, McQueeney said, Watson did for just 15 percent of the questions asked in the contest). Instead, it had to parse meaning from sentences, much like a human does. “We consider it a long-standing challenge in artificial intelligence to emulate a slice of human behavior,” said McQueeney. Ultimately, the effort succeeded – Watson won the contest – but breakdowns in the company’s solutions were obvious. The computer struggled, McQueeney noted, with the shortest questions.

The Applications

So, IBM pulled off quite a parlor trick with, by McQueeney’s estimate, $3 million worth of off-the-shelf parts used to build Watson. But what does the technology mean for government?  McQueeney rattled off a series of possible applications for the system’s natural language abilities. For instance, he noted, Watson’s technology could be used to “support doctors’ differential diagnosis, using data in the form of cited medical papers and giving quick, real-time responses to questions.”  The technology could be used, he said, to assist technical support and help desk services, improve knowledge management at large companies, and improve information sharing among national security workers. “Computers can now support human interaction in new ways,” he said.

What’s Next

IBM expects to see the first application of the technology in the healthcare field, McQueeney said. The company is currently working with several medical schools to develop knowledge systems that will assist doctors with rapid medical decisions. The company has announced hopes to develop a commercial offering by the end of 2012.

FOSE 2011: IBM’s Artificial Intelligence Coming – Learn More at GovWin.

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Florida Driver’s Information Sold

In ARTICLES AND NEWS STORIES, RELATED ARTICLES, Uncategorized, WARNING on July 27, 2011 at 11:35 pm
Topographic map of the State of Florida, USA (...

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When you go for your driver’s license at the DMV the last thing you think about is your personal information being sold.

According to a report released by the State of Florida, the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles made about $62-million dollars.

They made that money by selling personal information of Florida drivers to companies like Lexis-Nexis and Choice Point, which conducts background checks. Information gathered include your full name, address and driving history.

We went out to speak with people in the Panama City area to see what they thought about their personal information being sold. Many didn’t even know their personal information was at the mercy of the state.

Christina Van-Dyk, “I didn’t know that and didn’t like the idea because I really don’t want other people knowing my information.”

Robin Hicks, “I don’t think it’s right, I think they should disclose if that’s the situation. You have to fill out forms and sign everything to get your driver’s license and that should be something that should be disclosed at that time.”

Although selling personal information is legal, the law says companies are not allowed to use that information to create new business. State officials insist they do not sell social security numbers to these companies.

via Florida Driver’s Information Sold.

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Your Future Co-Worker

In ARTICLES AND NEWS STORIES, RELATED ARTICLES, Uncategorized on July 27, 2011 at 9:38 pm
"JSC2009-E-155300 (28 July 2009) --- Robo...

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THE GIST:

  • NASA and GM have unveiled robots that work alongside humans — on Earth and in space.
  • Engineers are trying to mimic human form and have the Robonaut work at human speeds.
  • NASA may employ the robots as spacewalkers’ assistants.



Robot twins, intended to lend a hand to spacewalking astronauts, as well as make the factory floor a safe and efficient meeting ground for humans and droids, has been unveiled by NASA and General Motors.

“A giant robot swinging around that doesn’t know whether a person is there or not is a bad thing. You can end up with all kinds of accidents. Robots can be very dangerous pieces of equipment,” Marty Linn, GM’s principal engineer of robotics, told Discovery News.

Large robots currently used in GM’s factories are caged to protect workers.

For the past three years, engineers from NASA and GM have been working on the prototypes, called Robonauts, at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. GM’s droid likely will end up at the firm’s technology development center in Michigan, where engineers will use it as a test bed for sensors, software and other products that could be incorporated into future cars. It could also improve manufacturing processes.

“We envision this kind of technology to be able to be used right around humans. Both NASA and GM share this vision of humans and robots working together,” said Linn.

“This is a human-scale robot. It works at human speeds. We’re working closer and closer to the human form, and that’s a difficult challenge,” added Ron Diftler, who oversees the Robonaut project for NASA.

NASA would like to see a robot in space, with enough dexterity to handle pliable insulation and other materials too tricky for the cranes and robotic arms available on the space station today.

“We are foreseeing this as an EVA (extravehicular activity, or spacewalk) assistant,” Diftler said.

For example, the droid could save time and reduce risks to spacewalking astronauts by going outside first to prepare work sites.

The Robonauts, which were unveiled Thursday, are based on work NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency did a decade ago.

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CONVERSATIONS # 6

In Uncategorized on July 16, 2011 at 1:05 am
Seal of the United States Library of Congress....

22 195 000 BOOKS AND COUNTING

The dangers of a data driven world:

What are we talking about here? We are seeing the dawn of a new age, an age where huge, gigantic datasets are analyzed seeking hidden correlations between seemingly unrelated things. This analysis is then voiced by the mathematicians in the form of some kind of prediction. The statistical analysis are churned from datasets that are so big, so stupendously  large, that one cannot contemplate them in real terms. The data store of Wall Mart for example, contains almost 600 terabytes of data.

How much is that?

The entire Library of Congress houses roughly 22 195 000 books. To store this digitally, will need roughly 20 terabytes. In contrast, Wall Mart’s data stores contain 600 terabytes, enough to store the equivalent of 665 850 000 books, or 30 Libraries of Congress. (Ayres, 11).

These vast stores of data, coupled with the growing ability to store it easily, cheaply and with great data integrity, and the huge strides, the giant leaps in technology that transformed the world the last 5 years, enabling almost every individual to possess computing power undreamed of just a decade ago, has opened this door which we are just about to enter.

It was Adolf Hitler who said that war was very much like opening a door into a dark room. You had no idea what waited for you on the inside once you enter. That’s where we are today. We are standing in front of this door, without any real inclination of what might be waiting inside for us.

The first thing one must understand when contemplating this development, is that we are indeed discussing the death, the funeral of human intuition. No longer will there be a flicker of understanding in the eyes of the people when they are confronted with decisions from government and corporate “machines”. Gone are the days when humans could intuitively predict the outcome of things. The new world order will differ. Decisions will be coming from “black box” functions, from these datasets mined for invisible and hidden correlations creating completely unexpected and new outcomes.

As such, we will enter a world that will be less comfortable, and on an interpersonal level, ironically, less predictable. In other words, a world filled with more stressors, where we will be in much less control of our lives and environment.

Even though it may look and sound trivial, we as human beings have developed a fine tuned social machine that consist of millions and millions of small interpersonal and relational nuances that makes the world go round. Small mannerisms make life cognitively clear and present, and create a safe environment for us. We call this culture,

With this dawn of quantitive analysis, the expected is thrown out unexpectedly to introduce the unexpected to the expectant crowd. No longer will social graces be the saving grace at the bus stop or station. No longer will the tried and tested rules of engagement be a safe haven for the parties when you want to rent a car of fly on an airline. Things have changed.

If for example your flight is cancelled, the airline will no longer reward their loyal clients by making the very first seats available to them. On the contrary. Now, by using data mining methods, the airline will identify their most disloyal clients, those they are most at risk of losing as future clients, and the will get preferential service over and above the loyal clients.

No matter how strong the arguments are for this approach; no matter how strong the arguments for the autonomy of the business and the freedom to contract as they please or where they find their best advantage, I abhor this. I abhor the hidden, the conceited way in which decisions are now made, I abhor the lack of decorum, the lack of protocol, and the replacement thereof by cash hungry money chasing little neurons hell-bent on maximizing todays income irrespective of the lack of culture and grace of it.

I also abhor that which I cannot trust, that which lack the basic integrity expected of the humans around us. In a world where corporations are free and actually rewarded for being dishonest and conceited with their clients, we enter relationships based on false premises, based on hidden premises built upon hidden correlations worked out by hidden little spiders that churn away our secrets while we sleep. The basis of this new order, is that it’s built on complete dishonesty, on utter non-disclosure, and on a much more predatory relationship between humans. This does not bode good for mankind.

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CONVERSATIONS # 4

In CONVERSATIONS, Uncategorized on July 8, 2011 at 8:59 am
Reaction to Irish banking and financial crises...

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As a matter of course, as the Great Banking Corporations continue to grow larger and larger, both as a result of endless acquisitions and mergers and as a result of the phenomenal rise in computing power and the complete collapse of the costs of data storage, their appetite for revenue becomes more and more frenzied, their management, especially the bean counters become more and more alienated from the real world environment of banking & clients towards an abstract world hitherto only imagined in fiction, a world where the only means of viewing the vast banking operation is through the matrix: through vast networks of income streams and cost analysis, a world where customers do not exist and are never mentioned. In fact, it’s a world where the memory, the understanding that money is brought to the matrix by people called clients, is almost completely forgotten. Income is no longer seen as payment by people for services rather than as something spinned of from revenue streams divided by newer platforms realising anticipatory needs from affluent adopters. In such an abstract world, it’s quite understandable that world banking has had several very weird almost Harry Pottersized  disasters in the recent past.

And its all because of the rise of the machine. Unrivalled computing power makes it possible for inter-continental investment banks to run many variations of their day-to-day operation in a black cloud, testing and experimenting to see which one yields the best results at the day’s end. And the one that supply the most milk by end of day, is the cow of the day – and the fools we as the public are, we are easily parted from our money.
The second factor, is the predictive abilities, and the cybernetic systems, which is not as much predictors of the client’s needs and wants, as espionage facilities that can use systemic discrimination against certain behavioural and statistical tendencies amongst individuals, and that can use number crunching to outline (and yes, red line under black box conditions) groups of people who are treated vastly different from one another, as to maximise the per capita income derived from clients in the “neural system”.
Hence, as the record shows, women paid much more for cars as men, and several finance companies made huge fortunes on the back of the fact that their neural networks predicted that most females has no natural sense of automotive value and were mostly dependant on the advice offered by the sales representative. Due to the control gained by the standardised platform dashboard, the salesmen were dependent on the “system” to draw quotes for these women after their personal details were fed into the system. The sales representatives did not even have to participate in this game of control system deceit and had no knowledge that their wives and girlfriends were paying vastly more than their male counterparts, because the neural network predicted it.
To get back to careful analyses of what Brett King is saying in this context, one has to pursue the following:

“High-net-worth investors are amongst the earliest adopters of technology; they are the most demanding in respect to service; and they are responsible for the highest profit of any customer group within the retail bank.” (BANKING ON THE FUTURE, P.19)
In “Old-speak” this means that the bank will maximise its profits if it engages something like the 80-20 principle. First, they need methods to seek out the rich – HNWI in Newspeak, and this has to be done quickly, immediately and on site, seeing that no personal relationships are any longer tolerated by the bank between employees and the customers, and hence, no one that walks into a bank knows or is known on any personal level, by anyone there. Banking has become the unknown engaging the rotation. This helps the bank because it prevents their personnel becoming bogged down by the unethical and downright immorality of a great many standard banking practises.Hence, they need to identify the HNWI as they enter the branch, because this is no longer a service centre. It has now become the palace of hard sales. Identify the wealthy, and sell, sell, sell.
Increasingly HNWI’s are highly mobile, are time-poor, and require their bank to be able to respond in real-time to their needs. It sounds very much like they need a much more integrated, connected banking experience today where the bank really is about anticipating their needs before they happen. (BANKING ON THE FUTURE, P19)
If we cut to the chase, the bankers are actually saying the following: we need to land this sucker within 10 minutes after he walks into the bank. We need to figure out who the hell he is, what he’s got, and what he wants, or at least, what we want him to want, and then we need to manipulate the environment to such an extent that he is forced through the lines of have-nots, such as not to infuriate him to the degree that he no longer wants to buy all the products we can create because he had to wait so long or was so uncomfortable.

If you imagine a McDonald’s outlet with the capability to measure your weight as you enter, then calculate the statistical probability – – what someone with that bodyweight dressed in the manner you are, will eat, and then peeping into your wallet to see what denomination notes and change is available, before you get to the counter to order. And then based on this information, the menus are quickly changed, digitally, to cater specifically for the sale they plan to make with you: and they offer you a meal, in line with your statistics, that cost exactly as much as the largest banknote in your purse. Sorry, no change is available for a smaller meal. This if you start getting hot under the collar, is an indication of the banking ideal.
The challenge for banks these days is to know which customers are the most important as they walk in the branch. Today we don’t know who you are until you identify yourself — and if you’ve been standing in a line for 20 minutes waiting to speak to someone, you may not be in the mood to engage in a conversation that is about deepening your relationship with the bank.
(Banking on the future, P 21)

And this is of course, why they are now employing these intrusive mental robotics, the neural networks, that follow you, wherever you go, making small notes, writing it all down, and adding it all to the identity they are building you, and which identity will become your prison later on.

To be continued in Conversations 5

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