Artificial intelligence: the rise of the machines - and of humans?

"The creation of robots has influenced a large number of industries, including the automation of journalism, of which some fundamental writing can be accomplished with certain algorithms." - John Ward

Machines recognise faces, and play pinball 25 times better than humans.

But they can write financial reports, too: "Before this program was implemented, the AP estimates it was doing quarterly earnings coverage for about 300 companies. Now it automates 3,000 such reports each quarter."

And research and compile technical guidebooks, and more "creative" works: "He has extended his technique to crossword puzzles, rudimentary poetry and even to scripts for animated game shows.
And he is laying the groundwork for romance novels generated by new algorithms. “I’ve already set it up,” he said. “There are only so many body parts.”

When I was at college in the early '70s and computing was far less developed, a graduate medical researcher amused himself by compiling a program to write porn using phrases randomly selected from a series of lists - "Painfully they peeled a grape for twenty minutes," etc.

George Orwell foretold this in "1984": "Julia was twenty-six years old... and she worked, as he had guessed, on the novel-writing machines in the Fiction Department. She enjoyed her work, which consisted chiefly in running and servicing a powerful but tricky electric motor... She could describe the whole process of composing a novel, from the general directive issued by the Planning Committee down to the final touching-up by the Rewrite Squad. But she was not interested in the final product. She "didn't much care for reading," she said. Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces."
 
The link just given above refers us to an even earlier prognostication in the third part (Voyage to Laputa) of Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" (1726): "Every one knew how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas, by his contrivance, the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study..." Following successive links leads us to the 13th century Franciscan philosopher Raymond Llull, himself possibly inspired by mediaeval automated Arab astrology.

Now it's entering the mainstream - I couldn't have written the above without the Internet, Wikipedia etc - and just as automation has undermined the labouring class, it is storming the gates of the middle class who until recently thought they were safe and superior in their cerebral citadels. Accountancy uses software, but so does the legal profession - we went last weekend to the 60th birthday party of a friend who retired early on the back of programming for lawyers.

As our work by hand and brain is increasingly performed by Illich's "energy slaves" (pdf), it may become harder to defend material inequality.

And we will have to return to philosophical questions relating to the purpose of our existence. Perhaps we will rediscover what it is to be human.

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O80678/eve-tempted-by-the-serpent-tempera-painting-blake-william/

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The VW debacle

Most people are probably already aware of what Volkswagen has done with respect to nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions from a large number of their diesel cars.  The EPA Notice of Violation can be found here. A timeline of events is here.

Briefly, VW appears to have admitted that engine management software used various clues such as wheel alignment to detect when emissions tests were being run as opposed to normal road driving.

The EPA has discovered that if a test situation was detected, the software would turn on an "auxiliary emissions control device" designed to remove oxides of nitrogen from exhaust gases. Once normal driving was detected again, the software would turn off the emissions control. The reason seems to be related to vehicle performance, but there may be other factors.

The health issues are complex. Millions of UK citizens subject themselves and their children to atmospheric NOx pollution by living in cities, but for a number of reasons concentrations in the UK are declining. No thanks to VW apparently.

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#piggate - a taxi driver reminisces:

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A new global crisis

source

New research from Dr Baz Broxtowe of Fradley University suggests the world is rapidly running out of crises. For professional journalists, charities, pundits and the global news media it would be a catastrophe, but Dr Baz claims the phenomenon is real and already observable in the field.

“We have been mining crises for decades and now it is payback time,” Dr Baz explained at his recent press conference. “For years we academics have been predicting Peak Crisis and now we have to face up to the reality of it.”

“What are the impacts?” I managed to ask amid a barrage of frantic questions from the floor.

“It’s simple enough,” Dr Baz shouted above the panicky hubbub. “We are about to enter a global crisis crisis. If we run out of crises we run out of motivation and if we run out of motivation we run out of reasons for doing anything, even reasons for living. Here at Fradley we’ve been monitoring the effect – it’s already noticeable and getting worse at an unprecedented rate.”

“Won’t the crisis crisis tide us over?” asked a young chap with spots.

“You think one crisis is enough for the whole world?” Dr Baz asked, visibly curbing his impatience. “In the recent past we had dozens of crises on the go all the time. The crisis community was huge, vibrant and massively caring on an industrial scale. Everyone was charged with enthusiasm, ready and willing to confront the challenges. Now...”

“What about the Middle East?” a BBC chap butted in. “Don’t you call that a crisis? What about global hunger, malaria, wars, drugs and climate change – what about all those crises?”

“Where is the angst?” Dr Baz asked quietly. “We have been consuming angst at an unprecedented rate, faster than any time since the Black Death. Actually many researchers think that was not genuine angst as we understand it today, but a medieval variety based on ignorance. So where has all the genuine angst gone?”

“I don’t accept that as a valid elucidation of the issue, conceding for the moment that it is an issue which I doubt,” said a Guardian journalist who probably subscribed to the female gender. “I see plenty of angst, more than enough to go round. Are you measuring it correctly?”

“The scientific consensus on this is rock solid,” Dr Baz explained. “Angst decline is real, there is no room for dispute on the issue. The reason is equally certain; we are becoming immune to crises. That’s the real tragedy of it all. The crisis community has become middle-aged, less angry and frankly less caring. That’s the real cause of the crisis crisis.”

“We care 24/7,” said the Guardian journalist with a touch of asperity.

“I’m sure you do,” said Dr Baz, “but who reads the Guardian these days.”

“Checkmate,” came an anonymous voice from the back.

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Corbyn - Bill Brand and 1976?

40 years on - nearly... itself coming 30 years after the first UK production of "An Inspector Calls" (which was first performed in the Soviet Union in 1945).

Is it truly a choice between foolish hope and despair?

Maybe not: Douglas Carswell sees an opportunity:

""Labour is ... running off to the Left" suggests Fraser Nelson in today's Telegraph, and "the Tories must now run towards them."

"Anyone else spot the gap in the political market?" ...


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Corbyn the Nemesis?

Interesting that BBC is now showing "An Inspector Calls" -

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/11841142/An-Inspector-Calls-the-message-behind-the-new-BBC-thriller.html

- is this another example of programme scheduling as disguised political commentary?

 

Tim Martin in the Telegraph:

 

"Priestley seems to have recognised the wisdom of complicating, if not concealing, his messages. Although the Inspector’s final speech acquires a certain dramatic irony from the play’s setting in 1912, its tone of Old Testament prophecy leaves little doubt that its author meant it for the ages. “We don’t live alone,” booms Goole before stalking from the stage. “We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when, if men will not learn that lesson, they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish.”

 

"This reads equally well as apocalyptic socialism, pacifist prophecy or imitation of Christ, and it is the cryptic motor that has powered An Inspector Calls through 70 years of changing culture. Long may it run."

 

Funny that the play should screen just as the Labour Party's election of a socialist, pacifist and decent-hearted (though possibly mistaken in his policies) chap has both Blairites and Tory media gibbering.

 

For some decades, the two main parties in Parliament seem to have had leaders facing each other who somehow matched like bookends. Could this suggest that a replacement may be found, not for Corbyn, but for Cameron?

 

Peter Hitchens hopes so:

"Millions are weary of being smarmed and lied to by people who actually are not that competent or impressive, and who have been picked because they look good on TV rather than because they have ideas or character...

"My hope, most unlikely to be realised, is that a patriotic, conservative and Christian equivalent of Mr Corbyn will emerge to take him on, and will demonstrate, by his or her strength of conviction, that there is an even greater demand for that cause than there is for old-fashioned leftism."

 

 

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Broad-minded is no escape

Modern broad-mindedness benefits the rich; and benefits nobody else. It was meant to benefit the rich; and meant to benefit nobody else. And if you think this unwarranted, I will put before you one plain question. There are some pleasures of the poor that may also mean profits for the rich: there are other pleasures of the poor which cannot mean profits for the rich. Watch this one contrast, and you will watch the whole creation of a careful slavery.

G K Chesterton – What’s Wrong With the World (1910)

In his social and political criticism old Gilbert was essentially a pundit with a love of paradox and a pundit’s weakness for hyperbole. He wrote much that leaves one wishing he’d been less sweeping in his judgement, more analytical, less fond of shaky analogies.

Nevertheless he had many penetrating insights if we take the trouble to examine matters from his idiosyncratic perspective. The above quote is a case in point. These days it is somewhat dated in that it refers to the poor who in Chesterton’s day were more numerous, closer to destitution and possessed of fewer resources than today.

His attack on the pursuit of money also seems dated from our opulent perspective because Chesterton’s poor are no longer with us and much of that is down to the pursuit of riches he so eloquently despised. From that perspective it is easy to dismiss his view as an irrelevant cry from another age.

Yet Chesterton still commands respect. He saw what we have almost lost the ability to see because modern life is so enfolding, so clamorous and demanding, so adept at diverting all but the most detached attention. He was both anti-capitalist and anti-socialist. He saw both as social evils bent on crushing us all between the grindstones of big business and big government.

What did he mean by pleasures of the poor which cannot mean profits for the rich? Those which were so unprofitable that they were doomed to be rooted out by the rich and powerful?

Family life perhaps, the traditional work, comforts and pleasures of building a home. Pubs, clubs, a quiet smoke and a game of skittles. A Sunday walk in the park. A stroll by rivers unpolluted by factories. A traditional glass of lemonade rather than some fizzy, concoction made in a rich man’s vats, forced on the unwary by another of Chesterton’s bêtes noires - advertising.

Escape in other words, in a world where escape had become a necessary part of life even for the middle classes.

..to escape foul air, noise, hard hats, black uniforms, multitudes, confusion, incompleteness, elaborate means without clear ends.

Edward Thomas - The Country (pre-1945)

What about that intriguing comment on broad-mindedness? It’s obvious enough once we see it from Chesterton’s perspective. To be broad-minded is to be ripe for profitable exploitation. It offers no escape from the daily grind, nothing but the insipid palliatives of assent.

Chesterton may have been a reactionary, even a professional reactionary but one is left with a strong temptation to raise a glass in his memory. Before all the good pubs close down.

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