April 2, 2023
If Pharaoh Had AI
In short, the message for Passover isn’t just the tremendous potential of AI for the good or even the threat it poses of becoming too powerful to control, but what happens when the bad guys (dictators, despots, and megalomaniacs), like the Pharaoh of yesteryear, are dangerously using AI to enslave the world to their vision of hate and contempt for democracy, human rights, and freedom for us all?
(Credit Photo: Ilnur Dulyanov via https://pixabay.com/illustrations/square-soldier-green-red-angry-7871431/)
March 3, 2018
QC + AI = S
Quantum Computing (QC) + Artificial Intelligence (AI) = Singularity (S)
Artificial Intelligence - Computers simulate intelligence, using language, perceiving their environment, reasoning to draw conclusions, solving problems usually done by humans, being creative, and where they can actually learn and self-improve!
Singularity - A state of runaway hypergrowth from the attainment of computing superintelligence, where computers are able to autonomously build ever smarter and more powerful machines that surpass human understanding and control leading to unfathomable changes to human civilization.
The Information Age is giving way to the Intelligence Age, and it is all ready to explode.
We are getting to the point of no return...
(Source Photo: Screenshot from YouTube with attribution to the move, Lucy")
QC + AI = S
September 24, 2014
Dexterous Drones
Ok, after the da Vinci System that uses robotics to conduct surgeries this many not seem like such a feat, but think again.
While da Vinci is fully controlled by the surgeon, this Drone from Drexel University that can turn valves, or door knobs and other controls, is on the road to doing this autonomously.
Think of robots that can manipulate the environment around them not on a stationary assembly line or doing repetitive tasks, but actually interacting real-time to open/close, turn things on/off, adjust control settings, pick things up/move them, eventually even sit at a computer or with other people--like you or I--and interface with them.
Drones and robots will be doing a lot more than surveillance and assembly line work--with artifical intelligence and machine learning, they will be doing what we do--or close enough. ;-)
Dexterous Drones
August 9, 2014
Robots, Who's Telling Whom What To Do
"In the future, there's potentially two types of jobs: where you tell a machine what to do, programming a computer, or a machine is going to tell you what to do. You're either the one that creates the automation or you're going to get automated."
Already, we've seen manufacturing get outsourced by the millions of job to cheaper labor oversees or automated in factories by machines and robotics.
Similarly, agriculture has seen a large decrease in small family-owned farms, in lieu of mega farms run by multinationals and run by automated farm equipment with GPS and drones.
The military is moving quickly to warfare by drones, robotics, and people geared-up in high-tech exoskeletons.
Now in the sacrosanct service sector, where it has been said that it could never be done by anyone by local people within their communities, services are moving in the direction of robots.
Perhaps we can ask if even in government, can there be a future where robots can govern better than we can--and get things done speedily and efficiently!
In one Sci fi hit after another, from Star Trek to Battlestar Galactica to Terminator, a future of humanity embattled by cyborgs predominates.
Like in the show, Lost in Space, where the robot in wont to say, "Crush, Kill, Destroy," perhaps we can understand this as not jsut a physical threat as people's lives, but also to their ability to earn a living in a world where automation challenges us with the children reframe:
"Everything you can do, I can do better. I can do everything better than you. Yes you can, no you can't..."
At this point, I am not sure it is really a debate anymore, and that Preston-Werner is predominantly right...technology is the future--whether we are end up being eaten alive by it or are its earthly masters. ;-)
Robots, Who's Telling Whom What To Do
July 12, 2014
Robots Reach The Clouds
Bloomberg Businessweek reports how robotic activities are being stored in the cloud and are then accessible to other robots to learn from and repeat as necessary.
The "cloud servers essentially [are] a shared brain" where memories and experiences are uploaded and accessed by other robots with a need to know the same thing.
The cloud is the means of transfer learning from one robot to the other.
It serves like a master neural network where the Internet provides the how-to for everything from serving juice to patients in a hospital to functioning as autonomous warbots in battle.
Like the Borg on Star Trek with a collective brain, the cloud may become the mastermind for everything from day-to-day functioning to taking over the species of the universe.
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Robots Reach The Clouds
June 22, 2014
Why We Expect Nothing
"Expect The Unexpected" is the warning.
Don't be complacent--anything can happen--be vigilant--is the message.
It reminds me of a Seinfeld episode where Jerry jokes about people going to the beach and hiding their wallets in their shoes.
Like, a criminal would never think to check your shoe!
Oh, push the wallet all the way down to the toes, under the tongue, that way the bad guys will never be able to get to it.
Here, it's more a case of of why don't we expect the darn expected.
Everybody knows that people "hide" their valuables at the beach in their shoes!
In modern times, we seem blind though to any expectations at all.
- Arab Spring and civil war spreading into Syria and Iraq--after Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Egypt, and more--who would've thought?
- Russia taking over Crimea and agitating in Eastern Ukraine--after their little excursions into Georgia and Chechnya--who would expect that?
- Financial meltdowns and major recession after the dot com and housing bubbles--even my barber was talking about retiring and buying a mansion in the Caribbean--where are these coming from?
The question then is are we really unable to see past our noses or do we just hold steadfast to principle that ignorance is bliss?
Well let's just test the "expect nothing doctrine" that we seem to all be living by these days and see how you feel about these:
- North Korea--they would never invade the South again.
- Iran--sure, they are going to give up their nuclear weapons and their greater Middle Eastern Caliphate ambitions.
- China--Yeah, we'll just pin them in the South China Sea and they'll never get out.
- The national deficit--it's not and will never be too big for us to handle because we're rich.
- Terrorism in a major American city--not after 9/11 and all that Homeland Security.
- Environmental catastrophe--we will build a big bubble over ourselves, so no problem.
- Economic inequity--the top 1% deserves to control 43% of the Nation's wealth and everyone else just sit down and shut up.
- The Singularity--how could a machine ever be smarter than us; we've got all the technology fully under our control.
Well, if you are blind or dumb enough to believe these, just keep putting your money in your shoes at the beach, because there is no reason to expect that anyone would ever think to look for it there. ;-)
Why We Expect Nothing
November 16, 2013
Web 1-2-3
Utilizing infrastructure and apps on demand is only the beginning.
What IBM has emerging that is above the other cloud providers is the real deal, Watson, cognitive computing system.
In 2011, Watson beat the human champions of Jeopardy, today according to the CNBC, it is being put online with twice the power.
Using computational linguistics and machine learning, Watson is becoming a virtual encyclopedia of human knowledge and that knowledge-base is growing by the day.
But moreover, that knowledge can be leveraged by cloud systems such as Watson to link troves of information together, process it to find hidden meanings and insights, make diagnoses, provide recommendations, and generally interact with humans.
Watson can read all medical research, up-to-date breakthroughs in science, or all financial reports and so on and process this to come up with information intelligence.
In terms of computational computing, think of Apple's Siri, but with Watson, it doesn't just tell you where the local pizza parlors are, it can tell you how to make a better pizza.
In short, we are entering the 3rd generation of the Internet:
Web 1.0 was as a read-only, Web-based Information Source. This includes all sorts of online information available anytime and anywhere. Typically, organizational Webmasters publishing online content to the masses.
Web 2.0 is the read-write, Participatory Web. This is all forms of social computing and very basic information analytics. Examples include: email, messaging, texting, blogs, twitter, wikis, crowdsourcing, online reviews, memes, and infographics.
Web 3.0 will be think-talk, Cognitive Computing. This incorporates artificial intelligence and natural language processing and interaction. Examples: Watson, or a good-natured HAL 9000.
In short, it's one thing to move data and processing to the cloud, but when we get to genuine artificial intelligence and natural interaction, we are at all whole new computing level.
Soon we can usher in Kurzweil's Singularity with Watson leading the technology parade. ;-)
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Web 1-2-3
May 25, 2013
Kurzweil, Right and Wrong
When it comes to the Singularity--Kurzweil had a very good day.
With the accelerating speed of technology change, the advent of super intelligence and superhuman powers is already here (and continuing to advance) with:
- Smartphones all-in-one devices give us the power of the old mainframe along with the communication capabilities to inform and share by phone, text, photo, video, and everything social media.
- Google Glass is bringing us wearable IT and augmented reality right in front of our very eyes.
- Exoskeletons and bioengineering is giving us superhuman strength and ability to lift more, run faster and further, see and hear better, and more.
- Embedded chips right into our brains are going to give us "access to all the world's information" at the tip of our neural synapses whenever we need it (Wall Street Journal).
In a sense, we are headed toward the melding of man and machine, as opposed to theme of the Terminator movie vision of man versus machine--where man is feared to lose in a big way.
In man melded with machine--we will have augmentations in body and brain--and will have strength, endurance, and intelligence beyond our wildest dreams.
However, Kurzweil has a bad day is when it comes to his prediction of our immortality.
Indeed, Kurzweil himself, according to the Journal "takes more than 150 pills and supplements a day" believing that we can "outrun our own deaths."
Kurzweil mistakenly believes that the speed of medical evolution will soon be "adding a year of life expectancy every year," so if only we can live until then, we can "Live long enough to live forever."
But, just as our super intelligence will not make us omniscient, and our superhuman powers will not make us omnipotent or omnipresent, our super advances in medicine will not make us, as we are, immortal.
Actually, I cannot even imagine why Kurzweil would want to live forever given his fear-inspiring Singularity, where advances in machine and artificial intelligence outpaces man's own evolutionary journey.
Kurzweil should knock off some of the pills and get back to humankind's learning and growth and stop his false professing that humans will become like G-d, instead of like a better humans. ;-)
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Kurzweil, Right and Wrong
September 11, 2011
Cleverbot Proposes Marriage
Cleverbot Proposes Marriage
August 6, 2011
The World Peaceularity
The World Peaceularity
February 13, 2011
Singular Future Or Nightmare Scenario
Time Magazine (10 February 2011) has an interesting article called “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal.”
No, this is not about the typical quest of man for immortality, but rather it is a deep dive on The Singularity—Ray Kurzweil and Vernor Vinge’s concept of technological change becoming so rapid (through exponential growth) that there will be a “rupture in the fabric of human history.”
In astrophysics, the term Singularity refers to the point in the space-time continuum (such as in a black hole) where the normal rules of nature (i.e. physics) do not apply.
In terms of technology, the notion of The Singularity is that computing gets faster and faster (related to Moore’s Law) until finally the radical change brought about by the development of “superintelligent” computers make it incredibly difficult for us to even predict the future.
Yet predictions are exactly what these futurists attempt to provide us for the post-Singularity era, and while science fiction for now, these are viewed as serious contenders for human-kinds’ future.
Here are some possibilities posited:
- Human-Machine Blending—“maybe we’ll merge with them [the computers] to become super-intelligent cyborgs.”
- Physical Life Extension (or Even Immortality!)—“maybe the artificial intelligences will help us treat the effects of old-age and prolong our life span indefinitely.”
- Living In Virtual Reality—“maybe we’ll scan our consciousnesses into computers and live inside them as software, forever.”
- Man-Machine At War—“maybe the computers will turn on humanity and annihilate us.”
Whether you can believe these specific predictions or not, Kurzweilians all seem to adhere to a common belief “in the power of technology to shape history.”
Certainly technology enables us to do amazing things, which we would never have seriously dreamed of not so very long ago—I am still trying to get my mind around a computer, smartphones, the Internet, and more.
Yet, I worry too about the overreliance on technology and the overlooking of the hand of G-d guiding our journey towards a purpose with technology being the means and not the ends.
Often I marvel at both the pace of technological change and the capabilities that these advancements bring us. But at the same time, I think of these great technological leaps for mankind the same way as I do a Beethoven symphony or Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece—that it is inspired by a higher source, it is a gift from above.
So in this light, as I think about the four Kurzweilian predictions, I must essentially discount them all, since I do not believe that in G-d’s love for us that his intent is to turn us into either cyborgs, aimless immortals, virtual human beings, or to be utterly annihilated by a race of machines.
Nevertheless, these predictions are still valuable, because they do provide a “north-star” for us to guide us to constructive improvements in the human condition through robotics, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, virtual reality as well as warnings of the potential destructive power of technology unconstrained.
One thing is certain about Kurzweil and the other futurists, they have my admiration for taking a strategic, big picture view on where we’re headed and making us think in new and unconventional ways.
Singular Future Or Nightmare Scenario
February 11, 2011
Machine, Checkmate.
It’s the eternal battle of Man vs. Machine—our biggest fear and greatest hope—which is ultimately superior?
On one hand, we are afraid of being overtaken by the very technology we build, and simultaneously, we are hopeful at what ailments technology can cure and what it can help us achieve.
In spite of our hopes and fears, the overarching question is can we construct computers that will in fact surpass our own distinct human capabilities?
This week IBM’s Supercomputer Watson will face off against two of the all-time-greatest players, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in a game of Jeopardy—at stake is $1.5 million in prize money.
Will we see a repeat of technology defeating humankind as happened in 1997, when IBM’s Supercomputer at the time, Deep Blue, beat Garry Kasparov, world-champion, in chess?
While losing some games—whether chess or Jeopardy—is perhaps disheartening to people and their mental acuity; does it really take away from who we are as human beings and what makes us “special” and not mere machines?
For decades, a machine’s ability to act “more human” than a person has been testing the ever-thinning divide between man and machine.
An article in The Atlantic (March 2011) called Mind vs. Machine exposes the race to build computers that can think and communicate like people.
The goal is to use artificial intelligence in machines to rival real intelligence in humans and to fool a panel of judges at the annual meeting for the Loebner Prize and pass the Turing test.
Alan Turing in his 1950’s paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” asked whether machines can think? He posited that if a judge could not tell machine from human in text-only communication (to mask the difference in sounds being machines and humans), then the machine was said to win!
“Turing predicted that by the year 2000, computers would be able to fool 30% of human judges after five minutes of conversations.” While this has not happened, it has come close (missing by only one deception) in 2008 with an AI program called Elbot.
Frankly, it is hard for me to really imagine computers that can talk with feelings and expressiveness—based on memories, tragedies, victories, hopes, and fears—the way people do.
Nevertheless, computer programs going back to the Eliza program in 1964 have proven very sophisticated and adept as passing for human, so much so that “The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease" in 1966 said of Eliza that: “several hundred patients an hour could be handled by a computer system designed for this purpose.” Imagine that a computer was proposed functioning as a psychotherapist already 45 years ago!
I understand that Ray Kurzweil has put his money on IBM’s Watson for the Jeopardy match this week, and that certainly is in alignment with his vision of “The Singularity” where machines overtake humans in an exponentially accelerating advancement of technology toward “massive ultra-intelligence.”
Regardless of who wins Jeopardy this week—man or machine—and when computers finally achieve the breakthrough Turing test, I still see humans as distinct from machines, not in their intellectual or physical capabilities, but ultimately in the moral (or some would call it religious) conscience that we carry in each one of us. This is our ability to choose right from wrong—and sometimes to choose poorly.
I remember learning in Jewish Day School (“Yeshiva”) that humans are a combination—half “animal” and half “soul”. The animal part of us lusts after all the is pleasurable, at virtually any cost, but the soul part of us is the spark of the divine that enables us to choose to be more—to do what’s right, despite our animal cravings.
I don’t know of any computer, super or not, that can struggle between pleasure and pain and right and wrong, and seek to grow beyond it’s own mere mortality through conscious acts of selflessness and self-sacrifice.
Even though in our “daily grind,” people may tend to act as automatons, going through the day-to-day motions virtually by rote, it is important to rise above the machine aspect of our lives, take the “bigger picture” view and move our lives towards some goals and objectives that we can ultimately be proud of.
When we look back on our lives, it’s not how successful we became, how much money and material “things” we accumulated—these are the computerized aspects of our lives that we sport. Rather, it’s the good we do for our others that will stay behind long after we are gone. So whether the computer has a bigger database, faster processor, and better analytics—good for it—in the end, it has nothing on us humans.
Man or machine—I say machine, checkmate!
Machine, Checkmate.
December 4, 2007
Exascale Computing and Enterprise Architecture
Faster computers mean more capability for problem solving some of our most difficult and challenging business, technical, and scientific quandaries.
The Washington Post, 3 December 2007, reports that by next year, the next generation of supercomputers will come online at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
The computers will be petascale, capable of processing 1,000 trillion calculations per second! (note: that is almost double the current capability of 596 trillion cps.)
Imagine that we don’t even readily have a term to describe a 1,000 trillion, yet we’ll be able to do it!
That much processing power is the equivalent of 100,000 desktop computers combined.
Another area that supercomputers help with is in assessing “the reliability, safety, and performance of weapons in the
One big advantage to these powerful supercomputers is that rather than doing experiments, we can simply simulate them. So, computational science (generated by supercomputer power) supplants to some extent observational or theoretical science.
What’s more amazing yet? Scientists are anticipating the exascale machine, yet another thousand times more powerful, by 2018. Now we’re talking a million trillion calculations per second. And that’s not “baby talk,” either.
From a User-centric enterprise architecture perspective, the importance of petascale and exascale supercomputing is that we need to think beyond the existing models of distributed computing and recognize the vast potential that supercomputers can provide. As architects, we need to envision the potential of future low-cost supercomputing power and what impact this can have on our organization’s ability to better perform its mission and achieve improved results. One day, supercomputing will not only be for scientists, but it will be employed by those savvy organizations that can harness its processing power to deliver better, faster, and cheaper products and services to its users. Some day, when we apply supercomputing power to everyday problems, we’ll be approaching the vision of Ray Kurzweil’s, the singularity, where machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence. But to me that point really isn’t who is smarter, man or machine, but rather can we—in organizations of various sizes, in every industry, and around the globe—harness the power of the supercomputer to make the world a truly better place.
Exascale Computing and Enterprise Architecture
August 1, 2007
EA and the Singularity
However, for those of you familiar with Kurzweil’s Singularity, EA planning looks increasingly challenging.
According to Ray Kurzweil, the famous IT futurist, technology changes at an exponential growth rate. In The Law of Accelerating Returns (2001), Kurzweil states, “There’s even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth.” Kurzweil predicts that within the 21st century, technological change will have hit such a rapid pace that we will reach “the singularity”, where machine intelligence will in fact, surpass human intelligence and all sorts of unbelievable technological achievements will ensue.
While we haven’t reached the singularity yet, the rapid pace of technological change is a reality we are all familiar with. In this environment of rapid change (and as Kurzweil would argue, ever increasing rapid change), it will be increasingly difficult to keep up and effectively perform EA.
As EA practitioners, we need to think about what it means to “get our arms around” the target, if we cannot effectively anticipate what the target will even look like given the rapid pace of change.
Of course, from a user-centric EA perspective, we must continuously imagine and envision our future state — for the sake of our end users — so that we are the masters over our future (and not just slaves to it).EA and the Singularity