Excerpts

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“If Trump Had Just Put His Father’s Money In A Mutual Fund That Tracked The S&P 500…He’d Have $8 Billion”

October 15, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Donald Trump, a nest of rats wearing a power tie, is a self-made man, if you don’t count a huge inheritance, massive bank bailouts and government-sponsored land grabs. From Deborah Friedell’s London Review of Books piece about Michael D’Antonio’s Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success:

“I have made myself very rich,” Trump says (over and over again). “I would make this country very rich.” That’s why he should be president. He insists that he’s the ‘most successful man ever to run’, never mind the drafters of the constitution or the supreme commander of the allied forces. Bloomberg puts Trump’s current net worth at $2.9 billion, Forbes at $4.1 billion. The National Journal has worked out that if Trump had just put his father’s money in a mutual fund that tracked the S&P 500 and spent his career finger-painting, he’d have $8 billion. Wisely, D’Antonio refrains from offering an estimate of Trump’s net worth. When Timothy O’Brien, a New York Times journalist, suggested in Trump Nation (2005) that Trump probably wasn’t a billionaire at all, he was sued for libel. The case was eventually thrown out, as Trump must have known it would be, but O’Brien’s publisher is thought to have spent much more money defending the book than it could have made.

It’s not just vanity that requires Trump to claim that all his deals make gazillions: his current business requires it. Even when his projects fail – his golf course in Aberdeenshire, to take one example, has lost £3.5 million over the last two years – he makes money through letting other people put his name on their projects: no risk, little work, just a licensing fee upfront or a share of the profits. He doesn’t actually own the Trump Taj Mahal or Trump Palace or Trump Place or Trump Plaza or Trump Park Avenue or Trump Soho, or the many Trump buildings throughout South America, Turkey, South Korea and the Caucasus. Developers buy the use of his name because enough customers believe in it: “It’s not even a question of ego. It’s just that my name makes everything more successful,” he says. And so there have been Trump board games and phone contracts, credit cards, mattresses, deodorants, chocolate bars that look like gold bars, cologne sold only by Macy’s (“Success by Trump“). He made $200 million over 14 seasons by being the star of The Apprentice, playing “Donald Trump.” the richest, tycooniest man in the world. Between 2005 and 2010, Trump made more than $40 million from thousands of students who enrolled in entrepreneurship classes at “Trump University.” Some say it was a scam, and many of them have joined class action lawsuits to get their money back (one says that “for my $35,000+ all I got was books that I could have gotten from the library”). The attorney general of New York has filed a lawsuit against Trump for fraud.•

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“Too Bad This Bipartisan Agreement Is Contradicted By The Evidence”

October 15, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

American drug laws are dumb beyond belief, and apart from selling these substances to children, no one should go to prison for their sale or use. There are more effective (and less-expensive) ways of managing the situation. 

While our perplexing “war on drugs” might be silly, it may not be the reason for mass incarceration, a belief echoed resoundingly this political season, even by politicians who were calling for mandatory minimums not too long ago. In a Washington Post editorial, Charles Lane writes of a new study that seems to dispel the myth that our cells are bulging because of nonviolent drug offenders. An excerpt:

At the last Republican debate, on Sept. 16, former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina charged that “two-thirds of the people in our prisons are there for nonviolent offenses, mostly drug-related.” …

Too bad this bipartisan agreement is contradicted by the evidence. Fiorina’s numbers, for example, are exaggerated: In 2014, 46 percent of all state and federal inmates were in for violent offenses (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault), according to the latest Justice Department data. And this is a conservative estimate, since the definition of violent offense excludes roughly 30,000 federal prisoners, about 16 percent of the total, who are doing time for weapons violations.

Drug offenders account for only 19.5 percent of the total state-federal prison population, most of whom, especially in the federal system, were convicted of dealing drugs such as cocaine, heroin and meth, not “smoking marijuana.”

Undeniably, the population of state prisons (which house the vast majority of offenders) grew from 294,000 in 1980 to 1,362,000 in 2009 — a stunning 363 percent increase — though it has been on a downward trajectory since the latter date.

But only 21 percent of that growth was due to the imprisonment of drug offenders, most of which occurred between 1980 and 1989, not more recently, according to a review of government data reported by Fordham law professor John Pfaff in the Harvard Journal of Legislation. More than half of the overall increase was due to punishment of violent offenses, not drugs, Pfaff reports.•

 

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“The Field Of Anti-Aging Research Is Known For Attracting A Mix Of Serious Scientists, Vitamin Entrepreneurs, Futurists, And Cranks”

October 14, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

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A recent post concerned Liz Parrish, the BioViva CEO, who surprisingly announced herself as patient zero for the company’s experimental youth-restoring gene therapies, a move whose specifics are shrouded in secrecy. This treatment will not be cheap and widely available in three years, despite what the firm says, but many other questions are left unanswered. Antonio Regalado of Technology Review looks into the turbulent aftermath of the shocking proclamation. An excerpt:

Elizabeth Parrish, the 44-year-old CEO of a biotechnology startup called BioViva, says she underwent a gene therapy at an undisclosed location overseas last month, a first step in what she says is a plan to develop treatments for ravages of old age like Alzheimer’s and muscle loss. “I am patient zero,” she declared during a Q&A on the website Reddit on Sunday. “I have aging as a disease.”

Since last week, MIT Technology Review has attempted to independently verify the accuracy of Parrish’s claims, particularly how she obtained the genetic therapy. While many key details could not be confirmed, people involved with her company said the medical procedure took place September 15 in Colombia.

The experiment seems likely to be remembered as either a new low in medical quackery or, perhaps, the unlikely start of an era in which people receive genetic modifications not just to treat disease, but to reverse aging. It also raises ethical questions about how quickly such treatments should be tested in people and whether they ought to be developed outside the scrutiny of regulators. The field of anti-aging research is known for attracting a mix of serious scientists, vitamin entrepreneurs, futurists, and cranks peddling various paths to immortality, including brain freezing.

Parrish’s assertions set off a scramble among members of her company’s scientific advisory board to understand what had occurred. •

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“I Thought The Strange Marionette…Would Come Onto My Balcony And Then Kill Me The Same Way”

October 14, 2015 in Excerpts | Permalink

I’ve always thought Karl Lagerfeld a nightmarish character from a silent German Expressionist horror film, but, unfortunately, one with sound. After reading Andrew O’Hagan’s new portrait of the designer in T Magazine, it all makes sense. An excerpt:

He hates it when people talk to him about their illnesses. (‘‘I’m not a doctor!’’) And he thinks psychoanalysis is the enemy of creativity. ‘‘Analysis?’’ he said. ‘‘What for? To get back to normality? I don’t want to be normal.’’

‘‘Maybe that’s why you like silent movies,’’ I said. ‘‘Because you don’t like the talking cure.’’

‘‘Yes, the discovery of silent movies,’’ he said, ‘‘was much more important to me than discovering the talkies. To me they are images. Like illustrations. I remember when I was at school I saw the The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. I could not sleep for three weeks because I thought the strange marionette played by Conrad Veidt would come onto my balcony and then kill me the same way. I have stills from the making of the movie and the only surviving German poster of the opening. I bought it for a fortune.’’•

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“I Have No Idea How To Get American ‘Back’ To The ‘Pre-Gun’ Condition”

October 14, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Malcolm Gladwell has written a powerful New Yorker piece about the new abnormal in America of mass violence perpetrated by teenage boys and young men, often at schools. While these acts are a small fraction of U.S. gun violence, they leave deep scars. Gladwell looks for answers at the intersection of developmental disorders, the easy access to weapons and a fatal type of “fan fiction” that has gone viral in the past two decades, with Columbine in 1999 being the shot heard ’round the world.

The article’s most important point, I think, is that there’s no pattern of history among the killers, who come from backgrounds good or bad. What they seem to share is a seemingly inexplicable attraction to spectacles of public violence that have preceded them and provided a modus operandi.

As a dedicated reader of newspapers from the 19th and early-20th century, I can assure you there were always very deeply troubled people in America, probably way more than there are now (per capita, anyhow). They just didn’t have such easy access to guns or at least the type of automatic weapons that exist today, nor were they easily connected to the violent delusions of others.

I don’t see much of a realistic answer for arms control in the long term. The laws should certainly be rewritten to address gun proliferation, but the country is already awash in weapons and with 3D printers coming our way, it will be a tricky battle to win, even without discussing the thorny politics. Similar frustrations are likely in trying to prevent copycat violence among teenage boys, perhaps ones on the autism spectrum, in the Internet Age. For all the good the democratization of media has encouraged, we’re also prone to its dark mirror.

Gladwell conducted a really good Reddit AMA about the subject. A few exchanges follow.

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Question:

That was the toughest article I had to get through in a while but that is a testament to your writing style. What do you think are the ways we can fix this culture of violence? Do you think pop culture is to blame?

As a member of the media, what are the steps you can take to stop this kind of problem?

Malcolm Gladwell:

Pop culture is to blame, absolutely. But the issue is that pop culture today is not what it was thirty years ago. The internet has created a rabbit warren for the all sorts of twisted fantasies: the paradox of the internet is that the group who seem to use it the most (teenagers) are those least well-equipped to deal with its pathologies.

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Question:

Mass shootings (and even more so school shootings seem to be the very definition of outliers (1% or less). Why are we focusing on those instead of the 60% of gun deaths that are suicides or 30% that are non-mass homicides? It seems we have it all backwards.

Malcolm Gladwell:

Another very good question. Yes, you are quite right. The magnitude of gun violence in the U.S. is such that school shootings represent a very minor part of the problem. In a logical world, we would be talking way more about the other 99 percent. That said, I think the issue with this particular genre of violence is that it has the potential to spread: that was the point of my article. What began as a problem specific to teens were serious troubles and disorders has now engulfed teenagers who are, for all intents and purposes, normal. That’s scary, because we don’t know where the epidemic will lead.

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Question:

Are you concerned that your article’s focus on autism spectrum disorders as a correlate for schooling shooting behavior plays into the typical distraction of “mental health” we hear about after most mass shootings? America doesn’t have a monopoly on mental illness, but we seem to have one on school shootings.

Relatedly, do you worry that a story like this stigmatizes the mentally ill even further?

Malcolm Gladwell:

Very important question. First of all I was writing about a case in which the subject’s ASD was at the center of his entire legal experience. It was his diagnosis with mild ASD that led to him being put on probation–instead of behind bars. So I had to deal with it. The second half of the piece, which I gather you’ve read, is explicitly about trying to explain how we should NOT confuse John LaDue’s attitudes and condition for those of the classic school shooters, like Eric Harris. That’s why I have the long discussion of “counterfeit deviance”–the notion that we need to be very careful in assessing the criminality of people with ASD when it comes to certain kinds of behaviors: someone like John LaDue might be very innocently drawn into a troubling pattern of behavior. I was trying to fight the tendency to stigmatize those with ASD. I hope that came across.

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Question:

Do you believe that curbing this school attack trend is more a matter of understanding/addressing the psychological condition you describe in the article, or equally or more to do with gun control?

Malcolm Gladwell: 

I think that gun control is crucial for lowering the overall homicide rate: there’s no question in my mind that the easy availability of guns in the U.S. is a huge contributor to the fact that we have a homicide rate several times higher than other industrialized nations. But school schooters are a far more complicated issue: they are a subgenre of homicide that is about a specific fantasy that has taken hold of some teenaged boys. We could crack down on guns and still have a Columbine.

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Question:

A lot of people will put these shootings down to sheer ‘craziness’ and they consider them isolated incidents, but here in Ireland we too have ‘crazy’ people and people who aren’t stable, but they don’t have guns so they don’t end up killing people. So surely guns are the problem? Because if you don’t have a gun then you aren’t mobilised to shoot, so this idea of ‘copycats’ you have is really interesting to think about, I couldn’t agree with you more. Excellent article and I look forward to a response!

Malcolm Gladwell:

I couldn’t agree more. Except that I have no idea how to get American “back” to the “pre-gun” condition like Ireland or England or any other Western nation is in. Remember its not just guns that are the issue here. It is the existence of an accompanying powerful fantasy about how they ought to be used.•

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“There’s No Fortune To Be Made”

October 13, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

During the 2012 Presidential election, Mitt Romney took the Obama Administration to task for wasting taxpayer money with stimulus funds loaned to Solyndra and Tesla, two failed companies. The former had indeed gone belly up, while Elon Musk’s auto company paid back the money ahead of scheduled and has since become a substantial firm, one whose batteries may be repurposed to help cultivate a wider green revolution.

Anyone who’s spent time around venture capital folks knows they have more misses than hits, but they can end up far ahead in the aggregate if they continually take wise risks. In trying to combat climate change with research-and-development monies, governments should be held to this same standard and not an impossible one. The free market isn’t incentivized to change to alternative energies, and change is dearly needed.

In an Atlantic interview by James Bennet, Bill Gates names gov’t R&D and carbon taxes as desperately needed tools, stressing that “by 2050, wealthy nations like China and the United States…must be adding no more carbon to the skies.” An excerpt:

On why the free market won’t develop new forms of energy fast enough:

Well, there’s no fortune to be made. Even if you have a new energy source that costs the same as today’s and emits no CO2, it will be uncertain compared with what’s tried-and-true and already operating at unbelievable scale and has gotten through all the regulatory problems, like “Okay, what do you do with coal ash?” and “How do you guarantee something is safe?” Without a substantial carbon tax, there’s no incentive for innovators or plant buyers to switch.

And for energy as a whole, the incentive to invest is quite limited, because unlike digital products—where you get very rapid adoption and so, within the period that your trade secret stays secret or your patent gives you a 20-year exclusive, you can reap incredible returns—almost everything that’s been invented in energy was invented more than 20 years before it got scaled usage. So if you go back to various energy innovators, actually, they didn’t do that well financially. The rewards to society of these energy advances—not much of that is captured by the individual innovator, because it’s a very conservative market. So the R&D amount in energy is surprisingly low compared with medicine or digital stuff, where both the government spending and the private-sector spending is huge.

On why the free market won’t develop new forms of energy fast enough:

Well, there’s no fortune to be made. Even if you have a new energy source that costs the same as today’s and emits no CO2, it will be uncertain compared with what’s tried-and-true and already operating at unbelievable scale and has gotten through all the regulatory problems, like “Okay, what do you do with coal ash?” and “How do you guarantee something is safe?” Without a substantial carbon tax, there’s no incentive for innovators or plant buyers to switch.•

 

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“The Republican Rhetorical Tone Has Grown Ever More Bombastic, Hyperbolic And Imbalanced”

October 13, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

When you continually appeal to the margins, that’s where you end up. The GOP found the radicals and paranoiacs in their midst useful for a good while. The Reagan, Gingrich and Limbaugh surges were built on pandering to those with rigid feelings about race, religion and rights. In the early days of coded language and manipulation, the Republicans were still about winning governance and trying to do something with it. But the ante was gradually upped, the most fervent of the loyalists they’d cultivated demanded it, the discourse grew vicious, and disdain for government born in the public consciousness during the Reagan years became a full-grown monster. Now the party is a Frankenstein supported by a torch-carrying mob.

David Brooks’ opinions in the NYT often appall me, but in his latest column he sums up the party’s slow passage into insanity, how the sideshow moved to the center ring, better and more succinctly than anyone on the Left or Right has. An excerpt:

By traditional definitions, conservatism stands for intellectual humility, a belief in steady, incremental change, a preference for reform rather than revolution, a respect for hierarchy, precedence, balance and order, and a tone of voice that is prudent, measured and responsible. Conservatives of this disposition can be dull, but they know how to nurture and run institutions. They also see the nation as one organic whole. Citizens may fall into different classes and political factions, but they are still joined by chains of affection that command ultimate loyalty and love.

All of this has been overturned in dangerous parts of the Republican Party. Over the past 30 years, or at least since Rush Limbaugh came on the scene, the Republican rhetorical tone has grown ever more bombastic, hyperbolic and imbalanced. Public figures are prisoners of their own prose styles, and Republicans from Newt Gingrich through Ben Carson have become addicted to a crisis mentality. Civilization was always on the brink of collapse. Every setback, like the passage of Obamacare, became the ruination of the republic. Comparisons to Nazi Germany became a staple.•

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“They Have Also Taught A Robot Named Rosie To Make Sandwiches And Popcorn”

October 13, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

It’s pretty needless to have a robot maître d’ take orders in an autonomous restaurant–beyond novelty, of course–but a Robohow project that’s used Wikihow instructions to train machines in this function demonstrates how customizable and flexible AI may become: One machine that can be taught different tasks depending on need.

From Michelle Starr at Cnet:

The team has been using the website WikiHow as a robotic learning tool. It turns out that WikiHow’s step-by-step instructions are perfect for breaking down an activity into its component tasks, and teaching robots to understand verbal, rather than programmed, commands.

To date, they have trained the Willow Garage PR2 robot to make pancakes and pizza using WikiHow. They have also taught a robot named Rosie to make sandwiches and popcorn. This is part of a broader mission to advance machine learning, as well as teach robots how to perform human-scale manipulation activities that can be spoken by an operator, an interface anyone can use.

The latest step in this research involves the humanoid robot Romeo from Aldebaran robotics. Romeo has been trained to act as a waiter, greeting and taking a food order from a human “customer” in a restaurant simulation.•

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“Intelligence Amplification Is An Old Concept”

October 13, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

My guess, and we’re all only guessing, is that the superintelligence so many philosophers and technologists fear will ultimately be a tool for the next iteration of humans, who’ll be just as human as we are, even though they’ll differ from us even more radically than we do from, say, Homo floresiensis. Is there a chance that we can be subsumed by intelligent machines? Sure, but I think a merger more likely.

In a Conversation essay, Alvin DMello writes of Intelligence Augmentation aids, from papyrus to HoloLens. An excerpt:

Lately there has been some major speculation about the threat posed by superintelligent AI. Philosophers such as Nick Bostrom have explored many issues in this realm.

AI today is far behind the intelligence possessed by any individual human. However, that might change. Yet the fear of superintelligent AI is predicated on there being a clear distinction between the AI and us. With IA, that distinction is blurred, and so too is the possibility of there being a conflict between us and AI.

Intelligence amplification is an old concept, but is coming to the fore with the development of new augmented reality devices. It may not be long before your own thinking might be enhanced to superhuman levels thanks to a seamless interface with technology.•

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“The Implications Of A Connected Neocortex Are Quite Literally Unfathomable”

October 13, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Ray Kurzweil, who will never die, is a brilliant and amusing inventor and thinker, but I believe he’s wrong in predicting that in 20 years or so we’re going to have nanobots introduced into our systems that allow us to directly plug our brains into the Internet. In what appears to be a Singularitarian circle jerk, some other futurists, including his associate Peter Diamandis, are very excited by his pronouncement, though let’s remember that Kurzweil has sometimes been wildly off in his prognostications. Remember when computers disappeared in 2009 because information was written directly onto our retinae by eyeglasses and contact lenses? Neither do I.

Such developments aren’t theoretically impossible, but such an aggressive timeline and so little attention to the downsides is puzzling. From Diamandis at Singularity Hub:

The implications of a connected neocortex are quite literally unfathomable. As such, any list I can come up with will pale in comparison to reality…but here are a few thoughts to get the ball rolling.

Brain-to-Brain Communication

This will deliver a new level of human intimacy, where you can truly know what your lover, friend or child is feeling. Intimacy far beyond what we experience today by mere human conversation. Forget email, texting, phone calls, and so on — you’ll be able to send your thoughts to someone simply by thinking them.

Google on the Brain

You’ll have the ability to “know” anything you desire, at the moment you want to know it. You’ll have access to the world’s information at the tip of your neurons. You’ll be able to calculate complex math equations in seconds. You’ll be able to navigate the streets of any cities, intuitively. You’ll be able to hop into a fighter jet and fly it perfectly. You’ll be able to speak and translate any language effortlessly.

Scalable Intelligence

Just imagine that you’re in a bind and you need to solve a problem (quickly). In this future world, you’ll be able to scale up the computational power of your brain on demand, 10x or 1,000x…in much the same way that algorithms today can spool up 1,000 processor cores on Amazon Web Service servers.•

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“[They Will] Measure Emotions In Real Time To Make Actionable Business Decisions”

October 12, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

When I wrote a brief piece a few years back about Coma, the 1978 Michael Crichton film about corporatized organ theft in a world of wealth disparity, I suggested that no business of tomorrow would want our organs, but they would desire the content of one organ in particular, our brains. It started with search engines and software tracking preferences, locations, etc. The Internet of Things will make the process ubiquitous, yet it’ll seem mundane.

From Brooks Barnes’ NYT article about Disney providing seed money to start-ups:

Roughly half of the companies selected this time involve using data – in one case collected directly from people’s brains – to make products more appealing.

Emotiv, for instance, relies on neuroscience and futuristic headgear to “measure emotions in real time to make actionable business decisions,” Tan Le, the company’s chief executive, said during her presentation. Emotiv technology also allows users to move objects – Jedi-like – with only their thoughts.

Decisive collects information from social media (shares, emojis, comments) to provide a real-time score for how consumers respond to products. (Red images apparently generate less interest than purple images.) Using artificial intelligence software, Imperson allows fans to chat seamlessly online with people who don’t exist, namely cartoon characters. Some details can be “remembered” by the character from chat to chat to enhance the depth of the interaction.•

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“There’s Been That Strain In Our Democracy And In American Politics For A Long Time. And It Pops Up Every So Often.”

October 12, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

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Marilynne Robinson (the writer) and Barack Obama (the President) are the type of people I’m happy if surprised America still turns out. They seem of this time but of another as well, with a sense of history that feels as if it’s being rapidly churned out of the collective memory. 

In a conversation that took place recently in Iowa, and is now being published in two parts in the New York Review of Books (read part one), the pair have a wide-ranging talk, touching on many topics, including how fear–and the exploitation of it–is a large part of the contemporary political discourse. Obama, despite having his Administration and supporters mentioned in the same breath as slavery and Nazism by Ben Carson alone, is confident the madness will pass. An excerpt:

President Obama:

Why did you decide to write this book of essays? And why was fear an important topic, and how does it connect to some of the other work that you’ve been doing?

Marilynne Robinson:

Well, the essays are actually lectures. I give lectures at a fair rate, and then when I’ve given enough of them to make a book, I make a book.

President Obama:

So you just kind of mash them all together?

Marilynne Robinson:

I do. That’s what I do. But it rationalizes my lecturing, too. But fear was very much—is on my mind, because I think that the basis of democracy is the willingness to assume well about other people.

You have to assume that basically people want to do the right thing. I think that you can look around society and see that basically people do the right thing. But when people begin to make these conspiracy theories and so on, that make it seem as if what is apparently good is in fact sinister, they never accept the argument that is made for a position that they don’t agree with—you know?

President Obama:

Yes.

Marilynne Robinson:

Because [of] the idea of the “sinister other.” And I mean, that’s bad under all circumstances. But when it’s brought home, when it becomes part of our own political conversation about ourselves, I think that that really is about as dangerous a development as there could be in terms of whether we continue to be a democracy.

President Obama:

Well, now there’s been that strain in our democracy and in American politics for a long time. And it pops up every so often. I think the argument right now would be that because people are feeling the stresses of globalization and rapid change, and we went through one of the worst financial crises since the Great Depression, and the political system seems gridlocked, that people may be particularly receptive to that brand of politics.•

 

 

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“Sorkin Has Moved Jobs’s Story Into His Own Comfort Zone”

October 12, 2015 in Excerpts, Film | Permalink

Say what you will about Bill Simmons, but the guy knows talent, as he abundantly proved when staffing up Grantland, his ESPN pop-culture-and-sports combo, which has gone far deeper in analysis of screen and sound and society than anyone had a right to expect. It’s been feared that an exodus of gifted people would follow his ugly divorce from the company, and that now seems to be the case. Sad, but even before the industry itself became fragile, the dynamic of the masthead always was. Erase the wrong name and others magically disappear.

Alex Pappademas, one the really perceptive critics there, has written about Aaron Sorkin’s new Steve Jobs dreamscape. An excerpt:

In Steve Jobs, Sorkin takes interactions and confrontations that occurred at different points in Jobs’s life, or not at all, and reimagines them as having taken place backstage in the minutes immediately before Jobs unveiled one of three new products — Apple’s Macintosh in 1984, the NeXT Computer in 1988, and the original Bondi blue iMac G3 in 1998. (Each sequence gets its own distinct look: grainy/nostalgic 16-millimeter for the Mac, sumptuous 35 for the NeXT, warts-and-all digital for the iMac.) The film’s more-than-a-little-bit cockamamy sub-premise is that on each of these crucially important days, Jobs also found himself scheduled for back-to-back come-to-Jesus meetings with people he’d wronged on his way to the top, including Lisa and her mother, Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston); Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen, putting deepening wrinkles of hurt in his Fozzie Bear rumble); and the company’s third CEO, John Sculley (Jeff Daniels, perfectly wry and wounded).

Sculley shows up as a slayable father figure/level boss in all three chapters, even though in real life he and Jobs rarely spoke after spring 1985, when Jobs fought Sculley for control of Apple’s board and lost. And while Mac marketing guru Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet) did follow Jobs from Apple to NeXT and was famously one of the few people who could stand up to him and live to tell the tale, she’d moved on to a position at General Magic and then to retirement by the time the iMac hit. I’m also going to assume Hoffman was more than the sassy-but-supportive Sorkin work-wife figure this movie makes her out to be. Of course, Sorkin has freely admitted that if any of these scenes actually happened the way he’s written them, it’d be news to him — but when you see the movie, chances are you’ll understand exactly why he played so fast and loose with history. By tossing out the biopic beat sheet and zeroing in on the parts of Jobs’s business that most resembled show business, Sorkin has moved Jobs’s story into his own comfort zone. It’s now a three-act backstage-panic comedy/melodrama about a brilliant, work-fixated white guy whose genius far exceeds his emotional intelligence and the people who can’t help but love him anyway.•

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“I Don’t Want To See My Kids Disassembled So Their Molecules Can Be Used To Make More Hard-Drive Space For Machines”

October 11, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

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Ben Goertzel, the Brazilian-born, U.S.-trained mathematician, is an academic and entrepreneur focused on the big thoughts of our age: intelligent machines, life extension, uploading brain content, etc. He guesses the Singularity will happen this century (I would bet the over), but in general speaks of amazing things that are theoretically possible without stamping an overly aggressive ETA on them. He’s certainly right in saying that AI is going to be developed no matter what, so it’s best as many conscientious people as possible are involved in that process.

Goertzel lives part of the time in Hong Kong, and here’s a piece of a South China Morning Post Magazine article by Sarah Lazarus in which he discusses his ideas:

MANUFACTURING EVIL All new technologies come with potential risks and rewards. Since the beginning of humanity, we have pushed forwards regardless. When we switched from hunter-gathering to agriculture, when we created the industrial revolution, we had no idea whether these transformations would bring danger. It’s the same with AI. The worst possible outcomes are extremely dark. This does worry me – I don’t want to see my kids disassembled so their molecules can be used to make more hard-drive space for machines. The best possible outcomes are utopic and amazing. I have a research team called iCog Labs, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. When I visit, it seems like half the people live on the street, suffering from hunger and disease. If we can resolve these problems with AI, by making it so cheap to create material wealth that, even with our perverted economic system, everyone has enough to get by and be happy, that’s a big plus. AI will be created whether I’m involved or not. I hope to have a positive impact on how it’s used – to my mind it’s better that the work’s done by people who want to benefit the planet, than by people in a top-secret military project.

ACHIEVING IMMORTALITY I work on AI for various companies. The range of applications is huge. I’m collaborating with Hanson Robotics to create robots that look and think like humans, and with investment management firm Aidyia Holdings, which uses AI to outperform human traders on the stock market. I’m also interested in life extension. I remember realising, at a very young age, that everyone was going to die one day. I couldn’t understand why others just accepted this. It seemed like a really bad idea to me. I’ve signed up to have my body transported to a facility in Arizona and frozen, if I die. When the technology’s ready, I will be brought back to life. Ideally, though, we’ll find a cure for ageing before I die. The best way would be to build a superhuman thinking machine and let it solve all the hard science problems.

I can’t resist seeing what the current technology can do. I’m working with a team to compare the DNA of supercentenarians – people who have lived to 110 years or more – with the DNA of people who lived to 80. We’ve found specific genes we think are responsible for their longevity and we’re applying for patents. The question is, can you edit the DNA of an adult human to give them that capability?•

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“I Am Supporting Clarence Thomas’ Nomination”

October 11, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

A footnote now to the last quarter century of polarized American politics is the fact that Maya Angelou supported Clarence Thomas during his bruising, controversial Supreme Court nomination process. She believed he could be “saved” or “won over” or something, would become a generous soul. How’d that turn out? Did this sense of unity, as she termed it, really help African-American children? Did Citizens United or the near-dismantling of the Affordable Care Act help them? As always, there’s a real danger in having a big-picture view when interpreting individual people.

An excerpt from her 1991 New York Times op-ed:

In these bloody days and frightful nights when an urban warrior can find no face more despicable than his own, no ammunition more deadly than self-hate and no target more deserving of his true aim than his brother, we must wonder how we came so late and lonely to this place.

In this terrifying and murderous season, when young women achieve adulthood before puberty, and become mothers before learning how to be daughters, we must stop the rhetoric and high-sounding phrases, stop the posing and preening and look to our own welfare.

We need to haunt the halls of history and listen anew to the ancestors’ wisdom. We must ask questions and find answers that will help us to avoid falling into the merciless maw of history. How were our forefathers able to support their weakest when they themselves were at their weakest? How were they able to surround the errant leader and prevent him from being co-opted by forces that would destroy him and them? How were they, lonely, bought separately, sold apart, able to conceive of the deep, ponderous wisdom found in “Walk together, children . . . don’t you get weary.”

The black youngsters of today must ask black leaders: If you can’t make an effort to reach, reconstruct and save a black man who has been to and graduated from Yale, how can you reach down here in this drug-filled, hate-filled cesspool where I live and save me?

I am supporting Clarence Thomas’s nomination, and I am neither naive enough nor hopeful enough to imagine that in publicly supporting him I will give the younger generation a pretty picture of unity, but rather I can show them that I and they come from a people who had the courage to be when being was dangerous, who had the courage to dare when daring was dangerous — and most important, had the courage to hope.

Because Clarence Thomas has been poor, has been nearly suffocated by the acrid odor of racial discrimination, is intelligent, well trained, black and young enough to be won over again, I support him.

The prophet in “Lamentations” cried, “Although he put his mouth in the dust . . . there is still hope.”•

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“I Have Aging As A Disease”

October 11, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Remember Sy Sperling, who wasn’t only the President of Hair Club for Men, the rug company, but also a client? Elizabeth Parrish is reportedly the Sy Sperling of gene therapy, a significantly bolder endeavor.

The CEO of BioViva says she’s volunteered herself as Patient Zero, the first to receive the company’s experimental, regenerative daily injections to reverse aging. Parrish is a completely healthy 44-year-old person, apart from gradually dying like the rest of us. I’m highly skeptical, of course, that such therapies will be successful, widely available and affordable in a handful of years–or at any point in the foreseeable future–though if our species survives long enough, I think they’ll become reality and make our current state of medicine seem as barbaric to future people as surgery sans anesthesia is to us.

In a Reddit AMA, Parrish was unsurprisingly asked many questions about the cosmetic aspect of the research (regrowing hair lost to baldness, looking younger, etc.), but the paramount goal is clearly longer and healthier lives. A few exchanges follow.

_____________________________

Question:

  1. What criteria did you use in picking patient zero? How old were they? Did they have any medical conditions which would be fixed by age reversal?
  2. Suppose you’ve proven to have cured aging with this first patient. How soon before I’m cured also?
  3. How soon will you be confident enough that your treatment is working? At the one year mark? The full 8 years?
  4. In the talk that you gave in May, you said that it is your wish to distribute this cure for free. How will you and your team accomplish that?

Elizabeth Parrish:

  1. I am patient zero. I will be 45 in January. I have aging as a disease.
  2. We are working as hard as we can to bring it to the world as quickly and safely as possible.
  3. We will will evaluate monthly and within 12 months we will have more data.
  4. We will work with governments and insurance providers.

Question:

Are you patient zero because it would be unethical to ask someone else to be patient zero? Because it seems to me that the researcher shouldn’t be the patient unless there’s no other option.

Elizabeth Parrish:

It was the only ethical choice. I am happy to step up. I do feel we can use these therapies in compassionate care scenarios now but we will have to work them back into healthier people as we see they work as preventive medicine.

Question:

How do you feel about being patient zero? Are you apprehensive at all?

Elizabeth Parrish:

I am happy to be patient zero. It is for the world, for the sick children and sick old people. My life has been good. I understand the risks but I research how people die and I am happy to say that today I do not know how I will die now. Tomorrow or in the long future I was up for a change.

_____________________________

Question:

Can you control the aging reversal to determine a prefered age?

Elizabeth Parrish:

We cannot control the aging reversal to a specific year today, that will come in the future. It is hypothesized that you will not reverse in physical appearance to less than a young adult. We see this in mice as well.

_____________________________

Question:

I have only read titles about anti-aging therapy and don’t really know what it’s all about. What are the actual expected results in layman terms? Does a 50 year old individual start looking younger, regaining muscle growth potential, higher testosterone levels, etc or does it just influence a subset of factors?

Elizabeth Parrish:

If you don’t look younger we have failed. Aging is one of the most visual diseases on the planet and includes things that we all know like wrinkles and grey hair, but also brain atrophy, muscle wasting and organ damage.

_____________________________

Question:

How did you administer the treatment? Injection? Where? How many?

Elizabeth Parrish:

Doctors do it by injections in various parts of the body.

_____________________________

Question:

What are your thoughts on accessibility to anti-aging therapy and what is BioViva doing to ensure ethical and fair access to it’s tech?

Elizabeth Parrish:

Our goal is to build laboratories that will have the mission of a cGMP product at a reduced cost. Gene therapy technology is much like computing technology. We had to build the super computer which cost $8 million in 1960. Now everyone has technologies that work predictably and at a cost the average person can afford. We need to do the same with these therapies. What you will get in 3-5 years will be vastly more predictable and effective that what we are doing today and at a cost you or your insurance can cover.

_____________________________

Question:

When do you think an ageing treatment will be available to the general public?

Elizabeth Parrish:

If the results are good we hope to have something to the general public, that is cost acceptable, in 3-5 years.•

 

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“The Only Threat From Biotech Is That Humans Will Not Adequately And Quickly Use It”

October 10, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

In an h+ opinion piece, futurist Harry J. Bentham says many true things about synthetic biology, a sector of science that could go a long way toward creating resource abundance and medical miracles.

That said, I have two disagreements with him: 

  1. Bentham’s contention that businesspeople are hampering synthbio’s development due to greed, instead focusing on manufacturing trifling products to make a quick buck, seems off the mark. Let’s face it: Plenty of people have no affinity or talent for this type of work. But more than at any time in history, many major American technological companies aren’t driven mainly by profits but also by impact. In fact, “changing the world” is the new coin of the realm. I doubt in a different age that Google would be trying to create a purely private Bell Labs (which was essentially a government-sponsored monopoly) as it is with Google X, with many projects aimed at helping health and environment. Other such companies are sponsoring R&D in similar ventures, also hoping for breakthroughs. Whether they’ll be successful in landing these moonshots is another matter, but they are trying.
  2. While synthetic bio holds great promise and will likely be necessary at some point for the survival of humans, saying it has “no adequate risk” if it’s utilized isn’t accurate.

From Bentham:

Although discovery and invention continue to stun us all on an almost daily basis, such things do not happen as quickly or in as utilitarian a way as they should. And this lack of progress is deliberate. As the agenda is driven by businessmen who adhere to the times they live in, driven more by the desire for wealth and status than helping mankind, the goal of endless profit directly blocks the path to abolish scarcity, illness and death.

Today, J. Craig Venter’s great discoveries of how to sequence or synthesize entire genomes of living biological specimens in the field of synthetic biology (synthbio) represent a greater power than the hydrogen bomb. It is a power we must embrace. In my opinion, these discoveries are certainly more capable of transforming civilization and the globe for the better. In Life at the Speed of Light (2013), that is essentially Venter’s own thesis.

And contrary to science fiction films, the only threat from biotech is that humans will not adequately and quickly use it. Business leaders are far more interested in profiting from people’s desire for petty products, entertainment and glamour than curing cancer or creating unlimited resources to feed civilization. But who can blame them? It is far too risky for someone in their position to commit to philanthropy than to stay a step ahead of their competitors.•

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“It Seemed To Me There Would Be A Moment When Reality Sets In”

October 9, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

As I wrote recently, Donald Trump is an adult baby with no interest in actually being President.

He entered the race impetuously, seeking attention to satisfy his deep and unexamined psychological scars, enjoyed an abundance of cameras over the summer when cable stations needed inexpensive content and focusing on the fascist combover was even cheaper than renting a Kardashian. Now with the new fall TV shows debuting, he’s growing restless, hoping his political program will get cancelled, reliably mentioning an exit strategy in every interview. Even the one-man brand himself is probably in disbelief that his prejudiced bullshit and faux populism have catapulted him for this long over his fellow candidates, weak though they are, a one-eyed racist in the land of the blind.

His continuing campaign is comeuppance richly earned by the GOP, with its bottomless supply of shamelessness, the party’s statistical leader going rogue not so much in policy but in language, stripping away the Gingrich-ish coding from the mean-spirited message meant to appeal to the worst among us and within us. He’s muddied the waters and now wants to swim ashore.

From Maggie Haberman at the New York Times:

In interviews this week, Mr. Trump insisted he was in the race to win, and took aim at “troublemakers” in the news media who, he said, were misrepresenting his remarks. “I’m never getting out,” he insisted Friday on MSNBC.

Mr. Trump keeps noting that he still leads in every major Republican poll and is in a political position that others would envy, and he says he will spend the money to keep his candidacy alive. But he conceded in another interview: “To me, it’s all about winning. I want to win — whereas a politician doesn’t have to win because they’ll just keep running for office all their life.”

He said he had not contemplated a threshold for what would cause him to get out of the race. And he noted that his crowds were even larger than those of Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who is drawing thousands to rallies in seeking the Democratic nomination.

While Mr. Trump still leads major national polls and surveys in early voting states, that lead has recently shrunk nationally, and the most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed his support eroding in New Hampshire, the first primary state. His recent comments have lent credence to the views of political observers who had long believed the perennially self-promoting real estate mogul would ultimately not allow himself to face the risk of losing.

“Even back in the summer, when he was somewhat defying gravity, somewhat defying conventional wisdom, it seemed to me there would be a moment when reality sets in,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican political strategist who is based in California. “He would not leave himself to have his destiny settled by actual voters going to the polls or the caucuses.”

Mr. Stutzman was skeptical that Mr. Trump would be willing to endure the grind of a campaign needed to amass enough delegates to make him a factor at the Republican convention in July.•

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“His Idea Of Himself As A Truth-Teller Is Only Partly Why People Find Him So Aggravating”

October 9, 2015 in Books, Excerpts | Permalink

Jonathan Franzen, beloved man of the people, is the latest subject of the Financial Times “Lunch with the FT” feature, dining with Lucy Kellaway as his latest novel, Purity, is released.

I haven’t read the new one yet, though I certainly enjoyed The Corrections and Freedom. With Franzen, of course, the work may ultimately be the whole story, but not while he’s alive. His identification as a bothersome man who irks people is always part of every profile, and he doesn’t seem to run from the characterization. A person who found fault with Oprah’s meshuganah galaxy of faux doctors, victim-porn and automobile giveaways isn’t exactly incorrect, but a more political person probably would have taken the gobs of money he made from the association and absconded quietly into the night. Other skirmishes since then seemed similarly avoidable, but Franzen wouldn’t be Franzen if he didn’t visibly recoil from the democratic, unchallenging standards of much of American culture, letting us know exactly what he thinks of us. Again: I wouldn’t say he’s really wrong.

An excerpt:

While he has been talking we have each been given a large white bowl with a pair of tiny, shrivelled pastries in them and a jug of tepid, cloudy liquid on the side. Franzen eats his without comment, and I ask: does he understand why he makes people quite so cross? “Well, I have to acknowledge the possibility that I’m simply a horrible person.”

He recites the line with a practised irony. Evidently he acknowledges no such possibility at all.

“My other answers would all be sort of self-flattering, right? Because I tell the truth; people don’t like the truth.”

He tells me about a piece he wrote in the New Yorker in March about climate change and bird conservation in which he managed to alienate everyone, including bird watchers. “I pointed out that 25 years after humanity collectively tried to reduce its carbon emissions, they reached an all-time high last year; further pointed out that the people who say we still have 10 years to keep the average temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius are, charitably, deluded or, uncharitably, simply lying. And, therefore, maybe we should rethink whether we want to be putting such a large percentage of our energies into what is essentially a hopeless battle.”

His idea of himself as a truth-teller is only partly why people find him so aggravating. There is something about the man himself, and his variety of superior maleness, that also annoys.•

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“It May Be Fortuitous That The Trolley Problem Has Trickled Into The World Of Driverless Cars”

October 9, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Now five decades old, the thought experiment known as the Trolley Problem is experiencing new relevance due to the emergence of driverless cars and other robotized functions requiring aforethought about potential moral complications. Despite criticisms about the value of such exercises, I’ve always found them useful and including them in the conversation about autonomous designs surely can’t hurt.

Lauren Cassani Davis of the Atlantic looks at the merging of a stately philosophical scenario and cutting-edge technology. An excerpt about Stanford mechanical engineer Chris Gerdes:

Gerdes has been working with a philosophy professor, Patrick Lin, to make ethical thinking a key part of his team’s design process. Lin, who teaches at Cal Poly, spent a year working in Gerdes’s lab and has given talks to Google, Tesla, and others about the ethics of automating cars. The trolley problem is usually one of the first examples he uses to show that not all questions can be solved simply through developing more sophisticated engineering. “Not a lot of engineers appreciate or grasp the problem of programming a car ethically, as opposed to programming it to strictly obey the law,” Lin said.

But the trolley problem can be a double-edged sword, Lin says. On the one hand, it’s a great entry point and teaching tool for engineers with no background in ethics. On the other hand, its prevalence, whimsical tone, and iconic status can shield you from considering a wider range of dilemmas and ethical considerations. Lin has found that delivering the trolley problem in its original form—streetcar hurtling towards workers in a strangely bare landscape—can be counterproductive, so he often re-formulates it in terms of autonomous cars:

You’re driving an autonomous car in manual mode—you’re inattentive and suddenly are heading towards five people at a farmer’s market. Your car senses this incoming collision, and has to decide how to react. If the only option is to jerk to the right, and hit one person instead of remaining on its course towards the five, what should it do?

It may be fortuitous that the trolley problem has trickled into the world of driverless cars: It illuminates some of the profound ethical—and legal—challenges we will face ahead with robots. As human agents are replaced by robotic ones, many of our decisions will cease to be in-the-moment, knee-jerk reactions. Instead, we will have the ability to premeditate different options as we program how our machines will act.•

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“It Describes The Rise Of What It Calls ‘Digital Amnesia'”

October 9, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

The cloud being an extension of our brains and our devices portals into that cloud definitely means we have access to dramatically more information than ever before. No disputes there. Until we develop some way, organic or not, to increase elasticity of human memory without compromising other faculties, we have to prioritize what we remember ourselves and what we “outsource” to machines.

Except that isn’t usually a conscious process, so we may not be deciding as much now what’s stored in us and what’s placed elsewhere. To me, that’s still preferable to life before the deluge of data, with whatever being lost more than made up for by the windfall of knowledge, even if the prioritization of it is transformed.

One caveat: It’s a more complicated situation if the actual process of memorization is deteriorating, not just being altered, by reliance on our external “memory banks.” Is the type of muscle memory an elite athlete learns not being built up in our ability to remember because of the new normal?

I don’t notice it in myself yet. Sure, I’ll reach for something that’s surprisingly no longer there, but my warehouse of facts seems the same in quantity. The inventory is just different, more fitfully filed, though the contents still seem valuable. But I find myself continuing to check, never quite trusting the system.

From Sean Coughlan at BBC:

The survey suggests relying on a computer in this way has a long-term impact on the development of memories, because such push-button information can often be immediately forgotten.

“Our brain appears to strengthen a memory each time we recall it, and at the same time forget irrelevant memories that are distracting us,” said Dr. [Maria] Wimber.

She says that the process of recalling information is a “very efficient way to create a permanent memory.”

“In contrast, passively repeating information, such as repeatedly looking it up on the internet, does not create a solid, lasting memory trace in the same way.” …

The study from Kaspersky Lab, a cybersecurity firm, says that people have become accustomed to using computer devices as an “extension” of their own brain.

It describes the rise of what it calls “digital amnesia,” in which people are ready to forget important information in the belief that it can be immediately retrieved from a digital device.•

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“The Real Risk With AI Isn’t Malice But Competence”

October 8, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Stephen Hawking’s answered some of the Reddit Ask Me Anything questions that were submitted a few weeks back. Some highlights: The physicist hopes for a world in which wealth redistribution becomes the norm when and if machines do the bulk of the labor, though he realizes that thus far that hasn’t been the inclination. He believes machines might subjugate us not because of mayhem or malevolence but because of their sheer proficiency. Hawking also thinks that superintelligence might be wonderful or terrible depending on how carefully we “direct” its development. I doubt that human psychology and individual and geopolitical competition will allow for an orderly policy of AI progress. It seems antithetical to our nature. And we actually have no place setting standards governing people of the distant future. They’ll have to make their own wise decisions based on the challenges they know and information they have. Below are a few exchanges from the AMA.

________________________

Question:

Whenever I teach AI, Machine Learning, or Intelligent Robotics, my class and I end up having what I call “The Terminator Conversation.” My point in this conversation is that the dangers from AI are overblown by media and non-understanding news, and the real danger is the same danger in any complex, less-than-fully-understood code: edge case unpredictability. In my opinion, this is different from “dangerous AI” as most people perceive it, in that the software has no motives, no sentience, and no evil morality, and is merely (ruthlessly) trying to optimize a function that we ourselves wrote and designed. Your viewpoints (and Elon Musk’s) are often presented by the media as a belief in “evil AI,” though of course that’s not what your signed letter says. Students that are aware of these reports challenge my view, and we always end up having a pretty enjoyable conversation. How would you represent your own beliefs to my class? Are our viewpoints reconcilable? Do you think my habit of discounting the layperson Terminator-style “evil AI” is naive? And finally, what morals do you think I should be reinforcing to my students interested in AI?

Stephen Hawking:

You’re right: media often misrepresent what is actually said. The real risk with AI isn’t malice but competence. A superintelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren’t aligned with ours, we’re in trouble. You’re probably not an evil ant-hater who steps on ants out of malice, but if you’re in charge of a hydroelectric green energy project and there’s an anthill in the region to be flooded, too bad for the ants. Let’s not place humanity in the position of those ants. Please encourage your students to think not only about how to create AI, but also about how to ensure its beneficial use.

________________________

Question:

Have you thought about the possibility of technological unemployment, where we develop automated processes that ultimately cause large unemployment by performing jobs faster and/or cheaper than people can perform them? Some compare this thought to the thoughts of the Luddites, whose revolt was caused in part by perceived technological unemployment over 100 years ago. In particular, do you foresee a world where people work less because so much work is automated? Do you think people will always either find work or manufacture more work to be done? 

Stephen Hawking:

If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.

________________________

Question:

I am a student who has recently graduated with a degree in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science. Having studied A.I., I have seen first hand the ethical issues we are having to deal with today concerning how quickly machines can learn the personal features and behaviours of people, as well as being able to identify them at frightening speeds. However, the idea of a “conscious” or actual intelligent system which could pose an existential threat to humans still seems very foreign to me, and does not seem to be something we are even close to cracking from a neurological and computational standpoint. What I wanted to ask was, in your message aimed at warning us about the threat of intelligent machines, are you talking about current developments and breakthroughs (in areas such as machine learning), or are you trying to say we should be preparing early for what will inevitably come in the distant future?

Stephen Hawking:

The latter. There’s no consensus among AI researchers about how long it will take to build human-level AI and beyond, so please don’t trust anyone who claims to know for sure that it will happen in your lifetime or that it won’t happen in your lifetime. When it eventually does occur, it’s likely to be either the best or worst thing ever to happen to humanity, so there’s huge value in getting it right. We should shift the goal of AI from creating pure undirected artificial intelligence to creating beneficial intelligence. It might take decades to figure out how to do this, so let’s start researching this today rather than the night before the first strong AI is switched on.

_____________________

 Question:

I am a biologist. Your fear of AI appears to stem from the assumption that AI will act like a new biological species competing for the same resources or otherwise transforming the planet in ways incompatible with human (or other) life. But the reason that biological species compete like this is because they have undergone billions of years of selection for high reproduction. Essentially, biological organisms are optimized to ‘take over’ as much as they can. It’s basically their ‘purpose’. But I don’t think this is necessarily true of an AI. There is no reason to surmise that AI creatures would be ‘interested’ in reproducing at all. I don’t know what they’d be ‘interested’ in doing. I am interested in what you think an AI would be ‘interested’ in doing, and why that is necessarily a threat to humankind that outweighs the benefits of creating a sort of benevolent God.

Stephen Hawking:

You’re right that we need to avoid the temptation to anthropomorphize and assume that AI’s will have the sort of goals that evolved creatures to. An AI that has been designed rather than evolved can in principle have any drives or goals. However, as emphasized by Steve Omohundro, an extremely intelligent future AI will probably develop a drive to survive and acquire more resources as a step toward accomplishing whatever goal it has, because surviving and having more resources will increase its chances of accomplishing that other goal. This can cause problems for humans whose resources get taken away.•

 

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“Our Droneport Holds To Buckminster Fuller’s Maxim Of Doing More With Less”

October 8, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In the Backchannel piece, “Our Robot Sky,” journalist/novelist J.M. Ledgard and architect Lord Norman Foster combine efforts to propose a series of inexpensive cargo droneports around the world, especially in fraught places in desperate need of life-saving supplies. Cheap, pilotless robot planes could handle the deliveries. The first such droneport is proposed for Rwanda and would cost roughly what a new gas station would. 

From Foster’s section:

The droneport, where the sky touches the ground, is the critical element for a cargo drone route. No one has created rules for this new type of building. The opportunity to do just that is why I chose to support Redline as the very first project of the Norman Foster Foundation. Jonathan approached me and said, “Look, Norman, you’ve built the biggest airport in the world, now could you build the smallest.” The strange thing is that in ten years time the sum total of all these droneports in Africa will be bigger than the biggest airport in the world.

Our droneport holds to Buckminster Fuller’s maxim of doing more with less. It is grounded in detailed and first-hand study of isolated communities in Africa by Narinder Sagoo, a partner at the firm who has taken the lead on the project. It is very much informed by two previous projects: our 2012 Lunar Habitation for ESA, which binds lunar regolith by use of robots, and Narinder’s Sierra Leone school project, which introduces kit forms in combination with labour and intensive use of locally available materials.

Redline droneports should be affordable, clean energy civic buildings, with a strong visual presence.•

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“Evil Is Something That Only Humans Are Capable Of”

October 8, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Because of the knowledge they’ve acquired and the many unique experiences they’ve known, some people are a loss to the culture that can’t be replaced when they die. It just becomes a hole where something useful was. Pete Seeger was like that, someone who knew the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement, HUAC, etc. He was steadfastly on hand for all the major American movements until he wasn’t anymore. 

Jane Goodall is that kind of person, too, though thankfully she’s still alive. What a sensational, uncommon life. The primatologist sat for an interview with Philip Bethge and Johann Grolle of Spiegel discussing her conservation efforts, the refugee crisis in Europe and the sometimes atrocious behavior of chimps (and humans). An excerpt about the latter topic:

Spiegel:

Chimps can have a very dark side as well. Did it come as a shock to you when you first became aware of it?

Jane Goodall:

Absolutely! It was horrifying. First, we observed this brutal attack on a female which ended in the killing of her baby. Chimps are brutal, and it is so deliberate. The males go out and get near the boundary of their territory. And they walk very silently trying hard not to make any noise. They will climb into a tree and stare out over hostile territory for hours. They are waiting for the right opportunity. And then they attack.

Spiegel:

Is this comparable to warfare?

Jane Goodall:

It can be. We observed what I call the four-year war. It all started when a big chimp community split into two because there were too many males. About seven males left with some females and babies. However, they didn’t go beyond the range which previously they shared but took up the southern part of it. When relations got completely cold between the two groups, the original group began systematically moving back into the territory they had lost.

Spiegel:

Killing the others?

Jane Goodall:

Yes, every single one. We observed six murders ourselves, and circumstantial evidence showed that the same thing happened to the seventh male. It was horrible.

Spiegel:

Are they intentionally cruel? Do they want to inflict pain?

Jane Goodall:

I thought about this a lot. But I came to the conclusion that being evil is something that only humans are capable of. A chimp would never plan to pull another’s nails out. The chimps’ way of aggression is quick and brutal. I compare them to gang attacks.

Spiegel:

Do you think the chimpanzees’ emotional world is comparable to ours?

Jane Goodall:

In many ways, yes.•

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“All Of This May One Day Be Possible”

October 7, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

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Two thoughts about the intersection of human and artificial intelligence:

  1. If we survive other existential risks long enough, we’ll eventually face the one posed by superintelligence. Or perhaps not. That development isn’t happening today or tomorrow, and by the time it does machine learning might be embedded within us. Maybe a newly engineered version of ourselves is the next step. We won’t be the same, no, but we’re not meant to be. Once evolution stops, so do we.
  2. The problem of understanding the human brain will someday be solved. That will be a boon in many ways medically, but there’s some question as to whether this giant leap for humankind is necessary to create intelligent, conscious machines. The Wright brothers didn’t need to simulate the flapping wings of birds in creating the Flyer. Maybe we can put the “ghost” in the machine before we even fully understand it? I would think the brain work will be done first because of the earnest way it’s being pursued by governments and private entities, but I wonder if that’s necessary.

From Ariana Eunjung Cha’s Washington Post piece about Paul Allen’s dual brain projects:

Although today’s computers are great at storing knowledge, retrieving it and finding patterns, they are often still stumped by a simple question: “Why?”

So while Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana — despite their maddening quirks — do a pretty good job of reminding you what’s on your calendar, you’d probably fire them in short of a week if you put them up against a real person.

That will almost certainly change in the coming years as billions of dollars in Silicon Valley investments lead to the development of more sophisticated algorithms and upgrades in memory storage and processing power.

The most exciting — and disconcerting — developments in the field may be in predictive analytics, which aims to make an informed guess about the future. Although it’s currently mostly being used in retail to figure out who is more likely to buy, say, a certain sweater, there are also test programs that attempt to figure out who might be more likely to get a certain disease or even commit a crime.

Google, which acquired AI company DeepMind in 2014 for an estimated $400 million, has been secretive about its plans in the field, but the company has said its goal is to “solve intelligence.” One of its first real-world applications could be to help self-driving cars become better aware of their environments. Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg says his social network, which has opened three different AI labs, plans to build machines “that are better than humans at our primary senses: vision, listening, etc.”

All of this may one day be possible. But is it a good idea?•

 

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