kevin kelly – what tech wants
Great insight into what matters.
What Tech Wants, it really is up to us.
About Kevin.. this tweet says it well:
and is in regard to the post – how we will read – where he says:
I don’t know. I go around saying we have to believe in the impossible. That’s what I’ve learned from this time on the Internet — believe the impossible. Wikipedia is impossible. Everything we know about human nature says that Wikipedia cannot happen, but there it is. That should help us learn to believe in the impossible. It’s economically impossible to have Google Earth, Google Street Maps, stock quotes for free, weather all around the world — it’s economically impossible to have all these things. But we have them all for free. We have to learn to expect the impossible.
Perhaps tech can help hasten the time between – you finding out what matters – and you finding your people.
Every minute a new impossible thing is uploaded to the internet and that improbable event becomes just one of hundreds of extraordinary events that we’ll see or hear about today. The internet is like a lens which focuses the extraordinary into a beam, and that beam has become our illumination. It compresses the unlikely into a small viewable band of everyday-ness. As long as we are online – which is almost all day many days — we are illuminated by this compressed extraordinariness. It is the new normal.
Intimacy with the improbable cultivates an expanded sense of what is possible.
2 min – seems what technology wants – is to track – so how to work with that
7 min – primarily what tech is – and why we keep making it – it gives us choice
52 min – there’s this pressure to be the same if we’re connected… but the power of being connected is by remaining different. can you remain different while connected..
p. 236 – what tech brings is expanding choices… which allow us to be us.
writing in 1950, sociologist David Riesman: ” the more advance the technology, on the whole, the more possible it is for a considerable number of human beings to imagine being somebody else.”
we expand technology to findout who we are and who we can be.
upon studying amish, hippies, wendell berry and eric brende – who believe they don’t need exploding tech to expand themselves. they are all minimalists. but – have they traded contentment for revelation. have they discovered, can they even, who they can become.
by constraining the wuite of acceptable occupations and narrowing education, the amish are holding back possiblilites not just for their children but indeirctly for all.
unlike the amish and minimites, the tens of millions of migrants headed into cities each year may invent a tool that will unleash choices for someone else. if they don’t, then their children will.
our mission as humans is not only to discover our fullest selves in the technium, and to find full contentment, but to expand the possiblilites fo rothers
i do want to be choosy about what i spend time mastering. i want to be able to back out of things that don’t work out. i do want the minimum because i’ve learned that i have limited time and attentions
ownership of choices
to maximize our own contentment, we see the
minimum amount of technology in our lives.
yet to maximixe the contentment of others, we must
maximize the amount of technology in the world.
we can only find out own minimal tools if others have created a sufficient maximum pool of options we can choose from. the dilemma remains in how we can personally minimize stuff close to us while trying to expand it globally.
p. 244 – we can learn much from disruptive technologies
switching occupations is the norm for tech.. and invention requires many encounters with early adopters and collisions with other inventions to refine its role in the technium.
we make prediction more difficult because our immediate tendency is to imagine the new thing doing and old job better. (school, no?0
we are stuck in the same blindness.
ie: the advertisers pitched the telephone as if it were a more convenient telegraph. none of them suggested having a conversation.
technologies shift as they thrives. they are remade as they are used…
the greater the promise of a new tech, the greater the potential for harm as well
so comes precautionary principle (first crafted in 1992) most recent version states: activities that present an uncertain potential for significant harm should be prohibited unless the proponent of the activity shows that it presents no appreciable risk of harm. [aup’s, cipa, etc]
so – a tech must be shown to do no harm before it is embraced.
so – precautionary principle is very very good for one thing – stopping technological progress,
via cass r sunstein, we must challenge the precautionary principle not because it leads in bad directions, but because read for all it is worht, it leads in no direction at all.
every good produces harm soemwhere.
ie: malaria infects 300-500 mill, casing 2 mill deaths per year, it’s debilitating to those who don’t die and leads to cyclic poverty. but in the 1950’s the level of malaria was reduced by 70% via ddt. it was so successful however, farmers eagerly sprayed it by the tons on cotton fields, so got into water cycles and into fa cells in animals, drop in reproduction rates for some predatory birds and die-offs in some fish and aquatic life species. so banned in 1972. and malaria cases in asia and africa rose again to deadly pre-50’s levels.
plans to reintroduce ddt for households were blockded by the world bank, etc 1991 treaty by 91 countries – phase out ddt altogheter. ddt was probably bad, better safe than sorry. in fact ddt had never been shown to hurt humans, and the environmental farm from the miniscule amoutns of ddt applied in homes had not been measured. but nobody could prove it did not cause harm,despite its proven ability to do good.
we now know that people will accept a thousand times as much risk for tech or situations that are voluntary rather than madatory.
ie: you don’t have a choice where you get your tap water, so you are less tolerant in regard to its safety than you might be from using a cell phone of your choice.
also – the acceptability of risk is directly influence by how easy it is to imagine both the worst case and the best benefits, and that these are determiend by ed, advertising, rumor and imagination.
generally – safety trumps innovation
(will add more soon – or not)
perhaps what tech wants – are things like this..
up to us..
19 min – any job that can be specified in terms of productivity will go to robots… productivity is for robots… i believe a lot of jobs we’re doing now we’ll be ashamed that humans did
22 min – creativity is not productive, science is not very efficient, innovation is highly inefficient process… so let efficiency go to the robots.. and we’ll take everything based around experiences/relationships…
24 min –
2\ vr – hasn’t gotten a thousand times better.. but it did get a million times cheaper.. because of phone tech (screens, tracking, processors)
40 min –
3\ tracking – for things to happen in real time and to be personal.. we have to track
phone we buy and put in pocket. tracked.
vr is something we get into. tracked.
45 min – on intro – ing a co veillance…
46 min – vanity trumps privacy…
47 min – believe in the impossible more often
things not invented yet.. means you have to invent them.. that means you are not late..
51 min – if i’m worried about anything – it’s the weapon ization of ai…
we don’t have consensus on what should be allowed as a country…
or.. perhaps we create a seemingly impossible – other way to live – where we disengage from the need for consensus et al
be at a scale.. planetary.. that we can only call a birth.. not just extension.. but the birth of something new.. this planetary super organism… where we’re weaving together 8 bill humans and 8 trill devices and the entire technium and … nature.. and… converging over time..
let’s start now.. hosting-life-bits..
48 min – beyond a metaphor.. a real thing we’ll be able to measure.. quantify.. we’ll understand that it’s a real thing
? – real .. is more from experience .. than from measuring/quantifying.. no?
49 min – way for it to happen – if moore’s law stopped… all along.. it’s been changing it’s defn.. formally.. we’ll start to measure something else.. and we’ll go back and redraw line.. and it will be same line.. but if it is to truly stop…ie: increasing every year.. that will have a huge impact… because this is all based on an assumption of continual process.. if that stopped.. that will cabash everything..
50 min – i think we’ll redefine moore’s law.. ie: go to 3-d.. something else we’ll start to measure.. if what we’re talking about really stopped.. would be so huge.. it would mean.. every year.. nothing would improve.. it would be really really tough if that were true.. i think they way we measure moore’s law is ending.. ie: no longer size is that critical .. but if the power is increasing…
52 min – that one data point is not enough.. other ways to show growth..
53 min – a trillion times anything is qualitatively diff… (size of elephant).. so if trill times more power.. it would be quantitatively diff
55 min – in book: my intent.. uncover roots of digital change so we can embrace them.. get ongoing process right and will keep generating ongoing benefits.. processes trump products… (the 12)
the one i think is by far the most profound/altering of the 12 – cognifying.. ai.. touching every aspect of our lives..
56 min – analogy – 1st industrial revolution – artificial power/energy.. enabled us to build everything we’re surrounded in ..
57 min – now about to do something more powerful.. ai.. added to artificial power.. mult that by 1 mill… that’s the vision.. we have this infrastructure of applied artificial smartness/learning.. cognify.. and everything we electrify we’re going to cognify… not anything to do about smarter than humans.. erroneous view of world… the view of intelligence as single dimension.. iq.. that’ fundamentally wrong.. because our own intelligence are these suites… maybe hundreds of diff types.. and animals have a suite of them as well… louder or quieter than in humans.. when we make ai.. going to be same thing… ie: calculator smarter than you are in arithmetic.. but only in certain dimensions… when add more dimensions.. hard to say one thing is smarter than other…
1:01 – one thing about ai.. going to think differently than us.. try to populate/engineer/invent as many diff types of thinking.. smarter than humans in some directions but not all… be able to think about things in thinking ways that we as humans could not… things we couldn’t do before.. working in partner with them.. no sense they’re against us.. they are niches that are going to be.. not in our niche..
1:02 – people say human intelligence is a gen purpose intelligence.. and that’s wrong.. we’ll discover there are intelligences way off to the corner.. there’s not a gen purpose intelligence
i’m thinking.. interpretive labor ness… a not needing words ness…
1:04 – no such thing as a gen purpose.. you can have a combo.. there’s no universal intelligence… most people think it’s just that ai thinks faster.. as soon as mapping as.. thinking diff.. this whole mapping as smarter than human in not right..
1:05 – even though the concept of smarter than human is not valid.. it doesn’t mean there aren’t worries/concerns (concern not worry).. we have to imagine..
1:06 – ie: as we make ai more complex.. less able to understand them.. like have 1 mill steps.. so no human can deconstruct.. so we have to take that proof at face value.. even if we can’t understand.. then we have to accept we don’t have access to that.. issue.. they may at times be prejudice.. and we couldn’t determine that.. how to deal with that is going to be a huge challenge.. i think there may be tech tools for that…
if we have things in our lives making decisions that we don’t have access to.. that is a potential societal issue..
so we just let ai do math/documentation w no bias.. (because tech can and humans can’t – have no bias) .. and let humans make decisions.. everyday..
we are beginning to see that such important elements as the neurons, the atoms of the nervous complex of our body, do their work under much the same conditions as vacuum tubes,
are we sure..? how sure.?
w their relatively small power supplied from outside by the circulation, and that the bookkeeping which is most essential to describe their function is not one of energy.
so.. let’s outsource the bookkeeping and the math.. [kevin kelly’s recent interview with Nikola)
mech to facil that..
1:09 – i’m a pro topian.. because i believe solutions to problems is more/better tech.. which will generate more problems and solutions to those.. more/better tech.. ongoing.. never stopping.. if we can create even more than 1% than we destroy every year..
1:11 – that utopia of increasing toward betterment
1:12 – we ave 1 species per year loss.. for past 2000 yrs.. if you just look at data.. isn’t a anthropocene loss.. it’s actually getting better than 50 yrs again.. the climate thing is an issue.. we should be alarmed .. we don’t have data to show that..
1:14 – the statistical analysis shows we could be getting better..
1:15 – we’re getting very good at tech answering questions.. 1 bill a day.. most of those questions .. 30 yrs ago.. would have never been asked.. questions no one even knew wanted to be asked.. now if you want an answer.. you ask a machine.. therefore as these become abundant.. we see our role in not answering questions.. but asking more and more difficult questions..
1:16 – automation is good for doing things that are efficient…so that goes to the robots.. what we’re left are things that are very inefficient.. ie: exploration, innovation – a type of questioning.. what if..
so what i was saying above.. decisions are inefficient.. or could say.. efficient if able to be always changing.. (so inefficient to machine)
human relationships… inefficient.. so we are moving into this area which will be our strength.. asking good questions.. that’s where our strength is compared to the machines…
1:19 – art is a question that’s not answerable..
things don’t have to always be pragmatic/useful..
how do you know if a question is unanswerable.. question become the essential thing..
1:23 – i believe that .. very optimistic.. at precipice of whole new continent of benefits.. outweigh problems.. we’re increasing number of choices/possibilities.. number of ways we can collab/coop/make stuff together.. at scale/speed never before possible.. ai as a probe/scope.. we’re at beginning of this.. each one of these opps open up new worlds.. that extension into the cosmos.. make another mind to think with us to next step..
making more and more possible for every human on this planet.. to have a chance to express their genius and to share it..
a nother way..
fundamental first: clean water, ed, … but in addition that every person born.. allowed to express genius.. that’s what we get out of making more tech.. not just to speed up movement of money.. not just to have more stuff.. to participate…
tedsummit jun 2016 – How AI can bring on a second Industrial Revolution
tech of all systems have leanings/urgencies/tendencies.. via making recurring patterns
i would say.. telephone was inevitable but iphone was not… internet was inevitable but twitter was not
right now.. i think one of our chief tendencies.. is to make things smarter and smarter.. i call it cognifying.. cognification…also known as ai.. most influential trend in society in next 20 yrs..
we have it now.. often works in ie: back rooms in hospitals.. lawyer offices.. flying planes.. netflix/amazon making req’s… one in forefront.. alpha go..
but it’s more than that.. teaching video games was already done.. but learning to play is another step.. taking artificial smartness and making it smarter and smarter..
3 trends underappreciated.. will help us embrace/steer ai
1\ our own intelligence has a poor understanding of what intelligence is… ie: think it gets louder and louder.. ie: single iq getting greater and greater.. that’s wrong.. more like a symphony.. many types of cognition.. ie: deduction/spatial/emotional.. maybe 100 of them.. so.. we’ll take these clusters.. and add more variety ais.. and make them very specific.. ie: calculator smarter than you are in calculation.. the whole feature of the self driving car is it’s not like us.. not distracted… make as many diff types of thinking..
2\ use ai to make 2nd industrial revolution 1st – based on artificial power.. take industrial pump and ad ai pump.. so now smart pump… everything we had electrified we’re not going to cognify… formula.. take x and add ai
3\ we get robots.. doing many tasks we have already done.. a job is just a bunch of tasks.. so will redefine our jobs.. but will also create a whole slew of new jobs we never had done before.. just as automation did for us.. ai will create more jobs than they will take away… efficiency/productivity goes for the bots… wasting-time/inefficiency/science for us.. (art/relationships.. et al)… will be working with these bots.. i think you’ll be paid in future by how well you work with these bots..
25 yrs from now.. will look back and say.. you didn’t have ai.. you didn’t have internet.. lot of expertise and money going to ai.. but none really compared to 20 yrs from now.. we’re in the first hour… the most popular ai product 20 yrs from now.. not invented yet.. that means.. you’re not late
Yet buried in this scenario of a takeover of superhuman artificial intelligence are five assumptions which, when examined closely, are not based on any evidence. These claims might be true in the future, but there is no evidence to date to support them. The assumptions behind a superhuman intelligence arising soon are:
- Artificial intelligence is already getting smarter than us, at an exponential rate.
- We’ll make AIs into a general purpose intelligence, like our own.
- We can make human intelligence in silicon.
- Intelligence can be expanded without limit.
- Once we have exploding superintelligence it can solve most of our problems.
In contradistinction to this orthodoxy, I find the following five heresies to have more evidence to support them.
- Intelligence is not a single dimension, so “smarter than humans” is a meaningless concept.
- Humans do not have general purpose minds, and neither will AIs.
- Emulation of human thinking in other media will be constrained by cost.
- Dimensions of intelligence are not infinite.
- Intelligences are only one factor in progress.
In the following paragraphs I expand my evidence for each of these five counter-assumptions, and make the case that, indeed, a superhuman AI is a kind of myth.
sounds like – what computers can’t do – dreyfus
Because we are solving problems we could not solve before, we want to call this cognition “smarter” than us, but really it is different than us.
The starting point of the theory is: “Given infinite tape [memory] and time, all computation is equivalent.” The problem is that in reality, no computer has infinite memory or time. When you are operating in the real world, real time makes a huge difference, often a life-or-death difference. Yes, all thinking is equivalent if you ignore time. Yes, you can emulate human-type thinking in any matrix you want, as long as you ignore time or the real-life constraints of storage and memory.
more than a time/space issue.. embodiment et al
Furthermore, as mentioned above, we think with our whole bodies, not just with our minds. We have plenty of data showing how our gut’s nervous system guides our “rational” decision-making processes, and can predict and learn. The more we model the entire human body system, the closer we get to replicating it. An intelligence running on a very different body (in dry silicon instead of wet carbon) would think differently.
i don’t know.. maybe i didn’t read slow enough or enough.. seems still to much thinking that people can be calculated..
Large scale collaboration in realtime with connection
(starts at 5 min)
10 min – (on why it’s so hard for most to see into future) ..experts most often blinded by the changes .. people who knew the most about things.. often most wrong.. we know too much and find it hard to release/believe things that seem impossible..
11 min – things most surprising.. things done in collab at a scale we have not seen before.. ie: wikipedia.. we are org ing work/collab at a scale that was unthinkable before.. our ability to collab in real time in scales that were unthinkable before so seem impossible.. most of these surprises have had that connection..
the math gets us coming and going – it binds/blinds us if we seek to control it – ie: measuring us ness – keeping us from us.. and its seeming impossibility (ginorm small ness) blinds us from letting go enough to swim in it – ie: exponentiality ness of our interconnectedness – can get us back to us
14 min – free albums was less about no cost.. and more about remix ing ability
shift from owning to having access
shift from static/monumental to incomplete/in-progress
shift from centralized to decentralized..
24 min – only skill .. you should graduate with ..learning how to learn.. esp your own power of learning.. if you can get to that state.. how you personally learn best..
so why school?
25 min – what schools should be aiming for.. how to learn how to learn and how you learn best
get back to age 5.. and just facil curiosity
31 min – machines will lack common sense.. we’re misled by concept of intelligence.. i think it’s more like effectiveness.. ie: an ability to meet goals.. – sam
40 min – can’t max everything.. so have to make trade offs
? – isn’t that a not letting go and letting math ness again..?
41 min – super intelligence that excels us in every dimension.. i don’t accept that
don’t agree with last bit – sam
me either – though i don’t know if i’d call it super intelligence.. and i’m sure we’re off on what excel means – ie: flavors of success
54 min – almost all problems of today are generated by tech of past.. solution not to rachet back.. it’s actually to have more/better tech.. would generate whole/new problems.. gets at more choices/possibility.. increased freedom/options.. progress is propelled by problems..
55 min – we’ll have ai tools to help us understand ai
and/or – we’ll use ai as augmented interconnectedness.. so that we are still the ones running things.. no need to worry about ai running things
57 min – sam: to me the singularity is the point at which ai/super intelligence runs away from us.. our grasp of understanding
58 min – evolution has aligned us with utility function – to get genes to next generation.. on basis of that that every other goal/value has come into existence.. yet many of them have nothing to do with getting genes to next gen – sam
1:00 – we could build super intell machines aligned with code we think is important.. but.. new world could emerge.. that are fundamentally surprising to us.. subverting original goals – sam
1:03 – wanting them to align with current values
what if our current values are way off
real challenge for us .. is deepening our own values/ethics
a nother way – that emerges us as we go.. ongoingly
1:05 – we need to build machines who’s goal is to learn what we want – sam
rather.. who’s goal is to connect us.. not to think for us
1:06 – if we could find the master heuristic of more fully conforming to what we want.. – sam
instead of telling us our values.. relying on us to determine what values actually are
story about people grokking what matters
1:08 – want it to be a perfectly content slave – sam
rather.. tech .. that listens w/o agenda/judgment..
1:09 – intelligent systems becoming ultimate mirror of minds.. monitoring what you’re doing w your attention.. allowing you to live a better life.. – sam
hlb – but not used to measure our life with.. rather.. used to better connect us.. to better see the interconnectedness that is already there..
1:16 – finding out who we are as we are changing who we are.. defining and redefining.. these techs are going to allow us to do this.. to examine ourselves..
this is equity.. everyone getting a go everyday.. but again.. not so much to examine/define us.. but mech to facil our connections.. coupled with bravery to change our mind everyday.. and still be ourselves..
1:19 – on not knowing what it would be like after language..
*connecting 7 bn people all the time.. this global connection.. planetary system of some sort.. that is beyond our ability to imagine/perceive for a while.. that to me is a much more probable singularity.. at a scale outside of our experience.. i don’t see evidence of expo growth in intelligence.. but of **growth of this organism.. this is another level of this complexity to ai..
**growth.. and/or .. uncovering.. ie: of our interconnectedness..
1:31 – i don’t think this is going to happen overnight.. good.. so that we can do this in a deliberate/conscious way..
but it could.. and perhaps should.. for (blank)’s sake… so build it to emerge as we go..
1:33 – it should be evidence based.. let’s not be too guided by what we imagine happening.. i can’t think of a single tech we have rehearsed so much before it has come.. which i think is a real improvement in civilization
1:35 – i have no doubt that there’s a massive shift in occupation/employment.. not so certain it’s going to happen as rapidly as people think/imagine.. that being said.. i see most jobs as bundles of tasks.. anything where efficiency counts.. goes to robots.. bots..
1:36 – humans very good at inventing things we want/desire.. not so efficient at first.. so forever process.. humans inventing jobs to give to robots.. and then inventing more jobs.. we are very good at identifying inefficiencies humans like..
1:37 – think different is really the engine of this new economy..t
1:38 – truck drivers losing jobs.. military.. learning to train .. educate.. not a problem in training truck drivers to be auto car repair people.. etc.. i don’t think we’re unable to do that.. we lack the political will to do that..
how is that different..?
1:40 – ubi is an experiment worth trying..we don’t know haw effective it will be until we try
we already have for years..
we can’t know until we try.. i’m in favor with experimenting with it..t
me too.. but not with stuff we’ve already tried.. ie: bi