Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Daily Mail has claimed that the super intelligence of a new race of cybernetic enhanced humans will be able to solve wicked problems such as Climate Change.
‘Superintellingence’ of AI and humans working together could solve climate change and end wars, researchers claim
‘Wicked’ problems are difficult to solve due to many interacting systems
These types of problems include climate change and geopolitical conflict
Human computation merges human intelligence and AI to solve problems
In the fight against ‘wicked’ problems, computers may be humans’ best allies. Researchers from the Human Computation Institute and Cornell University say that the combination would create a superintelligence, and it could take on growing issues like climate change and geopolitical conflict.
New technologies use crowd-sourced input and interactive tools to produce collaborative results that go beyond traditional problem-solving, they claim.
Wicked problems are those which are difficult to solve because of the complexity of the underlying issues.
They involve many interacting systems which are always changing, and the solutions have unforeseen consequences, according to the Human Computation Institute.
By joining with computer intelligence, humans could expand upon their own abilities to create ‘multidimensional collaborative networks,’ the researchers say.
This could more effectively produce solutions.
In general I’m a fan of human augmentation; Cochlear implants to restore hearing to the profoundly deaf, and soon retinal implants to restore sight to the blind, what’s not to like. Even brain implants, say to give the recipient perfect recall of people’s names, or instant mastery of physical skills or a foreign language, or health implants which maintain balance and warn of problems – well we’ve already got heart pacemakers.
But the science has its dark side. Some of the early experiments into neural implants were ethically dubious, for example there were attempts to change the sexual orientation of homosexuals, and rather dodgy experiments to help people with severe depression, by giving them the ability to ping their own pleasure centres.
As society’s traumatic experience with addictive drugs has shown, it only takes a small push to tip a normal person into insanity. The people who had the pleasure implants mostly had to be physically restrained, when doctors took the buzz button away from them. A woman who had an experimental libido implant demanded it be removed.
As an IT expert who has taken a keen interest in artificial intelligence, I have no doubt artificial enhancements to intelligence will become possible, maybe even routine, within my lifetime. But lets just say I would be nervous about the consequences of abruptly giving a normal human volunteer superhuman intellectual abilities, without a lot of preliminary research, to establish what effect such brain modifications have on someone’s emotional stability.
Politics has trumped logic wherever it has been challenged. The Global Warming Cult is a classic example. “The Pause” has proven the models to be wrong, yet nearly 200 nations just signed a political agreement based solely on the models. Another, communism has failed wherever it has been tried, yet we have an admitted communist sympathizer with a distinct chance of being nominated for president. My opinion is that precise logic can never predict human behavior, be it AI, or human-machine interfaces.
Robert A. Wilson wrote, “If A > B, and B > C, then A > C, except where prohibited by law.”
No matter how intelligent a computer gets, it will never be able to bring order to chaotic system…..
I’m afraid it can and eventually would… by being programmed with or stumbling upon effective techniques of human persuasion — then once command and control is given to it, it would begin to overwrite the chaotic system, rewrite its own patterns, finding ways to reward complimentary patterns (of behavior) and suppressing others.
I do human society by thirds, and figure that at any one time there must be at least a third of the human race who are versed in history well enough to recognize the signs of the re-emergence of a ‘Hitler’, even if he or she is an A.I.
Adam Curtis has covered some of this ground, chronicling the (spiritual) belief that the things described as ‘ecosystems’ could be described by things called ‘models’. To an extent this is true, for small values of x. What the models cannot tell us however, is the point at which the use of models to make decisions leads to erratic, then irrational, then outright absurd results.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2eagvn_all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving-grace-2-3-the-use-and-abuse-of-vegetational-concepts-2011_auto
I recommend the whole 4 part series, Adam Curtis’ Machines of Loving Grace.
Super grant-getting machine, right up there with VW diesel emission controls. And, remember that casino slot machines undergo much more rigorous testing than voting machines. If only the people who crave and attain power really did have “our” best interests at heart. 2016 is here, now we await the Easter Bunny….
With great fanfare they plug in the new cybernetic globally multidimensional networked hybrid human/superintelligence, and ask it, “How can we solve global warming?”
It/he/she hums for a moment while accessing the sum total of all human knowledge, then replies “Humans have no measurable impact on global climate. There is no problem to solve.”
“Unplug it! Stop it! It will kill us all!”
And so ended experimentation with artificial intelligence.
Hilarious, thank you, but I am a little pissed about the coffee all over my flat screen TV !! LOL
‘cybernetic enhanced humans will be able to solve wicked problems such as Climate Change.’
Not real difficult. Just kill off the rest of us. When they announce everyone else must die, who could argue with them?
Sounds just like what the liberal elites want, less of us ” other ” people… !!
It might solve the problem by realizing it is just normal weather and its variations, that humans can not infuence to some wanted output.
How go the glaciers at your place Svend; or are you a different Svend ??
g
The article is NOT about merging humans and AI. it is NOT about merging humans and machines.
it is NOT about implanting AI or making cyborgs.
One task humans are good at is reading. Eric is a bad reader. Had he taken the time to CHECK the source
he would see that the article is about COLLABORATION between humans and machines, parcelling out the problem to both humans and machines.
The article in question draws from the ‘wicked problems” post at HCI
http://humancomputation.org/?p=105
“Human computation (HC), which encompasses methods such as crowdsourcing, citizen science, and distributed knowledge collection offers new promise for addressing wicked problems, by enabling participatory sensing, group intelligence, and collective action at unprecedented scales. Ironically, many of the wicked problems we face today have resulted from unintended manifestations of collective behavior (e.g,. car pollution). Thus, we now seek to harness and improve this crowd-powered capability as a fitting remedy.”
THIS is the post that the article references. The solution to a wicked problem, they argue, lies in
combining (not implanting) the skills of 4 different groups
1. Computational experts
2. Domain experts
3. The institute
4. Crowds of citizens scientists.
In a strange way this is sorta how Anthony’s and Evan latest work was created.
“Steven Mosher
January 1, 2016 at 8:11 am
One task humans are good at is reading.”
A skill seriously lacking in the climate science community.
weirdly, I got it right and the skeptic got it wrong.
go FIGURE. If we are seriously lacking the skill and we get this article right, and Eric gets it wrong,
then that should tell you something.
“A skill seriously lacking in the climate science community.”
A skill totally absent in the climate skeptic community.
Some people, I’ll call them climate scientists, can’t read a thermometer and have to rely on a computer simulation for “data”, “projection” and “prediction” 100 years from now (LOL). So, climate scientists get it wrong with their models all the time whether they can read or not. That’s my point and you missed it, at BEST, by miles!
BTW, humans are NOT good at reading by default. Much of the world is illiterate. It is a skill taught from an early age. Even so, some still can’t read nor comprehend, even today after years of education. Humans are good at creating a “state” in the mind, be it rational or irrational. The Welles radio broadcast in 1938 is a great example of how the human mind can create something out of nothing, even when told it is fake.
Other big mistake
The claim by the author “‘Superintellingence’ of AI and humans working together could solve climate change and end wars, researchers claim”
The claim Eric makes.
“The Daily Mail has claimed that the super intelligence of a new race of cybernetic enhanced humans will be able to solve wicked problems such as Climate Change.”
NOTE: I could win the lottery, is not claiming I WILL win the lottery.
Bad strawman by Eric
Eric claims to be an IT expert.
he should work on basic reading skills.
I could go on. This does not mean I will go on.
collabrative efforts between man and machine COULD solve the climate change problem.
This does NOT mean the authors claim it WILL.
will and could. two great english words. every IT professional should know the difference.
Hmmm, great job on the punctuation. Maybe YOU should pay attention !
Sorry phone posted.
Do you have an intelligent comment about Ericsson mistakes or do you want 12.50 an hour to copy edit my posts?
Damn auto correct. Eric’s mistakes.
There Marcus I saved your awesome brain power. Go copy edit someone else.
You could but will you.
collabrative efforts between man and machine COULD solve the climate change problem.
This does NOT mean the authors claim it WILL.
Yep, they claim it could, not will. The only way to find out of course is to fund them….
Fund them/?
they are a non profit organizing citizen science.
Example
http://humancomputation.org/?page_id=25
You dont want to help. dont give them time or money
Totally I do agree with you in this one,,Mosher…..
Very very poor work from Eric…….Completely missing the point….and kinda of misleading the reader.
Got to thank you Mosh…..
Thank you …..
cheers
Whether Eric is right or wrong, cybernetic human/robot AI is being pushed as on the way.
https://stream.org/will-2016-year-approach-great-terrible-singularity/
Artificial super-intelligence, will necessarily have be made in the image of stupid people. Thus just propagating the inherent ability to fail when it matters the most.
As we have already established, the ability to deny reality, is dominant. Super-intelligence will at best, just be a very smart way to deny the same realities and thus fail monumentally, but in a smart way.
We don’t need that, because we already have stupid people doing this! 😉
As long as we do not ask the right ‘smart’ questions, we’ll just repeat the same errors in a ‘smarter’ way.
Stupid people make stupid errors, that’s most often easy to fix. Smart people make smart errors, that may be impossible to fix! Don’t fiddle with things you do not understand.
The main problem, is not the lack of intelligence, it’s the amount og power given to small groups of politicians ans/or interest groups. Stupidity needs to be distributed evenly, so not to make too big an inpact in a small area. Just like high pressure distributed over a large enough area, so not to punch a hole in the bottom of the boat. If we can not deal with stupidity, we certainly can not deal with super-intelligence.
Defining a voodoo-based problem in moralistic terms… What could go wrong?
As an engineer who develops and builds new things, and who is aware of the state of current technology, we need quite a few new ways of interfacing with the brain – such as visual imaging directly to the visual cortex as a basic prerequisite to the direct machine / human interface. The interface would also have to be capable of changing over time as the brain changes or otherwise accommodating such change. The computing power needed for this prospective interface is much greater than in a modern cell phone or laptop. Much more is needed.
For some types of developments, many may think that they are just a few years or decades away – as some physicists have believed we were for commercial fusion generators. The reason that the actual timeline for this could not be determined with any precision is that there were hard problems with no known solution to be solved before the commercial fusion generator was built. The speed that such hard problems will be solved at can’t be predicted. Therefore, no one knows when we will be able to make a direct human / machine interface that would do some of what was mentioned such as enhance the ability of the brain to solve problems, add machine memory and etc.
The solution to wicked problems such as climate change – observe but do not manipulate the data and respond by developing adaptation measures. For war – education of all people that people with different ideas, attributes, etc. are human also and are to be celebrated and not destroyed. Unlikely, I know, especially when so many of us have an it’s them or us attitude.
sanaerchi,
“For war – education of all people that people with different ideas, attributes, etc. are human also and are to be celebrated …..”
Including pathological liars? Including sadistic people who derive pleasure from tormenting others? Including megalomaniacs who seek to rule the world?
They’ve all been “educated” otherwise, I’m rather sure.
Eric Worrall said:
Eric,
“Artificial enhancements” that aid, assist and/or improve the nurturing of human intelligence are already commonplace throughout society (PCs, I-phones, I-pads, Internets, digital libraries, etc.) …… and it matters not a twit how much further advanced those “artificial enhancements” become they will have little to no direct effect on the early childhood nurturing (learning) of the brain/mind of the individual.
Technically, the extent of a person’s “intelligence” has nothing to do with the quantity, quality or variety of “sensed environmental data” that their brain/mind has been nurtured with …… but has everything to do with the person’s nurtured abilities to “recall, associate and/or manipulate” the aforesaid “sensed environmental data” that is stored in the DNA of their brain’s neurons.
Until or unless someone figures out what the “data code” is that the brain/mind uses for the per se “processing” of sensed environmental data …… then you might as well forget about the possibility of “implantable AI”. And the “directed” growth of synaptic “links” from/to said “AI” is out of the question.
“You are what your environment nurtured you to be.”
Eric, I think you’ve misinterpreted this story by a wide margin. It has to do with building collaborative networks, not really “enhancing” any individual’s intelligence. I may be wrong (I’m open to input from others), but I think either you or the Daily Mail misunderstood or are sensationalizing the original study.
How to resolve Planet Errrth simulated problems? Well, by developing another program to produce the solutions.
Now a) the science has been settled, b) the debate is over, c) the FCCC convention has been adopted and d) the war has been won. Hence 1) the task will be ridiculously simple and 2) no public money will be necessary.
Artificial Intelligence?
Evidence of human intelligence is scarce in this society.
I wonder what the wisdom of committees, could create.
Imagine an artificial “intelligence” of government bureaucrat quality.
Oh wait, we are already living it.
Facebook is probably a good indicator of how the most useful technology will be used for purposes of vanity.
Profiling multitudes of legends in their own minds.
Course trouble shooting the interface of human brain and the AI hardware/software will be fascinating…
where is the glitch, in the humans programming, in the machine or in an incompatible logic?
Philosophy and theology will expand.
Human nature will remain.
“aye, there’s the rub” – Shakespeare
As much as it would be nice to have a positronic brain adapter to convert me into a cybernetically enhanced man-bot I doubt that even with the help of NASA, the physics departments of all the universities in the country and a team of likewise cybernetically enhanced man-bots we could solve the ‘climate-change’ problem. It’s one of those complex-chaotic systems that doesn’t submit to predicting let alone fixing. Well that is, unless you consider destroying it to be fixing it. It’s not going to stop changing in unpredictable ways no matter what you do as long as earth continues on its path around the sun and through the galaxy with sun and atmosphere and oceans and tectonic plates changing as it moves along. Better to put all those man-machine brains working on how to best live in such a system . . . cheaper too.
I’m beginning to think that artificial intelligence will be a major, perhaps necessary step forward for the human race. It’s quite obvious that the all natural, organic intelligence we’re working with now just ain’t up to snuff. Driving in traffic, dealing with most aspects of ‘officialdom’, viewing current media offerings in information and entertainment, tracking fads and trends, all these things and many more provide overwhelming anecdotal evidence that all organic, unenhanced, 100% natural human intelligence is well past the point where it was useful and beneficial for most individuals and society as a whole.
Of course, this needs lots of research to find out if it will actually work.
I wonder how much money Cornell will be hoping for in that regards??
FOLLOW THE MUNEE!!!!!!!!!
Trump is already there, says Dilbert: http://donsurber.blogspot.com.au/2015/12/pundit-of-year-dilbert-creator-scott.html?spref=tw
We could certainly benefit from replacing our politicians with a new race of cybernetic enhanced humans. However we could probably achieve as good a result by replacing our politicians with a speech-trained race of Orangutans.
Really? We need that sort of qualified politician? I reckon we’d be much better off with cardboard cutouts and speach bubbles.
The solution?: “Don’t hurt people and don’t take their stuff.”
I believe there’s a book with the same title. How simple!
Algorithms are already being used to process massive amounts of data in banking and healthcare among others, identifying trends that no human can detect. For example, fraudulent credit card transactions, illness diagnosis.
So just imagine if a machine was fed the temperature data and came to the conclusion that there is no correlation between CO2 and temperature? Can we ask IBM’s Watson?
Just watched Asimov’s Childhood’s End 2/3. It was God-like aliens that stopped war and climate change. Now scientists claim they can create God-like super-intelligence. Both are science fiction and magical thinking.
I don’t think this route is anything we want to pursue. Why? Computerized intelligence is programmed in by humans and their wont to make statistics say what they want statistics to say. Computers don’t think anymore than toasters do. Bottom line code is not sentient. Sentience has the capacity to understand that what is fact is not always right, and to choose accordingly.