#algorithmsociety

The discussions about AI and ethics is picking up speed which is good and this article in the New Yorker shed some light on what is happening within the AI community of researchers and engineers. But it is a widespread discussion and we cannot yet assess it's effectiveness on what is important.

A.I. hasn’t yet had its Hiroshima moment; it’s also unclear how such a decentralized and multipurpose field would or could respond to one. It may be impossible to align the behavior of tens of thousands of researchers with diverse motives, backgrounds, funders, and contexts, operating in a quickly evolving area. And yet, all the same, we’re now seeing rules, norms, and principles bubble up.

And these discussions tend to divide the challenges of AI into four categories:

“there are the kinds of A.I. that could easily be weaponized against populations”—facial recognition, location tracking, surveillance, and so on. Second, there are technologies, such as Speech2Face, that may “harden people into categories that don’t fit well,” such as gender or sexual orientation. Third, there is automated-weapons research. And fourth, there are tools “to create alternate sets of reality”—fake news, voices, or images.

Important issues all of them. And there are definitely dangers lurking there.

But in which future society/societies are these technologies threatening? Or are there future societies in which the same threatening applications actually are necessary in order to maintain a society?

A term that is often thrown around as a frame or goal of the discussiuon is "The Common Good". This is a very unspecific and consequently dangerous backdrop for all of the discussions about the future.

Because this is in fact what this discussion is about - the future.

One important reason this discussion is so unorganized is that we don't have a very good understanding of which future, or which futures, we are seeing. If we read about the advantages or threats of a certain technology the context in which it is applied and assessed is almost always an unreflected extrapolated future very similar to the present. If the future context is explicitly described at all.

I think we need to develop a much better model of the future society we are heading for in order to have an effective discussion about the ethical consequences of AI. Or at least base the discussion on the insight that we in fact have a very poor understanding of how our futures society will unfold.

This morning, Google is announcing the next steps in its plan to disrupt the world of education, including the launch of new certificate programs that are designed to help people bridge any skills gap and get qualifications in high-paying, high-growth job fields--with one noteworthy feature:

No college degree necessary.

In the past, cybercriminals needed to know how to code before they could launch an attack. They needed to set up their infrastructure, including setting up a botnet, to distribute as many spam and phishing emails as possible. That, of course, requires breaking into tons of computers using a piece of malware and turning them into bots or zombies. Only after that can they proceed to the attack itself.

These days, aspiring cybercriminals no longer need coding know-how nor experience. They can just go to the Dark Web and purchase the tools they need. Cybercrime experts even offer tutorials on using the tools they sell.

China jumps further ahead in retail E-commerce - passing 50% of total - emarketer reports

Ten years ago, ecommerce’s share of total retail in the US and China were nearly identical (4.9% and 5.0%, respectively)

[...]

The foundations of China’s ecommerce story can be traced to handful of storylines from the 2000s and early 2010s:

The emergence of Alibaba, the revolutionary, ubiquitous, easy-to-use Chinese ecommerce platform, gave consumers affordable and reliable access to almost everything imaginable, and swift delivery for just about anything. Not long after, JD.com emulated Alibaba’s successful formula, providing another massive and easy option for new shoppers.

Innovative digital payments systems, like Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay, were years ahead of their Western competitors in terms of accessibility, ease of use, and the speed in which they became embedded into online (and brick-and-mortar) checkout options. An inconvenient, non-customer-centric, and often confrontational in-person shopping culture helped motivate shoppers to embrace the straightforward reliability of ecommerce, particularly the ease it offered for making returns and securing refunds.

A nearly limitless supply of low-cost delivery services, provided by China’s millions of migrant laborers, enabled companies like Alibaba and JD.com to provide same-day delivery anywhere in the country for just pennies—a very attractive benefit for uncertain first-time buyers.

A smartphone-driven mcommerce culture existed right from the start, thanks to China’s stage of economic development, and the fact that most shoppers skipped the PC era and joined the internet age directly via mobile devices.

Which long term strategic effects will this have on the future? On Global trade? On the possibility for China to be more or less adapative to future uncertainties? Are we here witnessing the real divide in thinking and structures between China and the Western world?