Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to advocates the “AI For Earth” is here to help – but human Behaviour must Change to save the planet.
Microsoft is Expanding “AI for Earth” Program to Fight Climate Change
WRITTEN BY
Christianna Reedy
IN BRIEF
Microsoft is expanding its “AI for Earth” program with a $50 million investment over the next five years. This could yield new artificial intelligence applications to enable scientists, businesses, and even farmers to better protect the environment.
AN AI INVESTMENT
The tech giant Microsoft is deploying artificial intelligence to the task of protecting our planet. Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, announced on Dec. 11 that the company would be investing $50 million in their AI for Earth program over the next five years in order to “monitor, model, and manage the Earth’s natural systems.”
…
“AI can be trained to classify raw data from sensors on the ground, in the sky, or in space into categories that both humans and computers understand,” Smith said in the announcement. “Fundamentally, AI can accelerate our ability to observe environmental systems and how they are changing at a global scale, convert the data into useful information, and apply that information to take concrete steps to better manage our natural resources.”
…
As every nation in the world— save the U.S.—publicly recognizes that human behavior must change in order to preserve the environment, companies like Microsoft are embracing the idea that the more information individuals at every level of society have about their personal sustainability practices, the better they will be able to modify them for the better.
“We face a collective need for urgent action to address global climate issues. When we think about the environmental issues we face today, science tells us that many are the product of previous Industrial Revolutions,” Smith said in the announcement. “…we must not only move technology forward, but also use this era’s technology to clean up the past and create a better future.”
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Read more: https://futurism.com/microsoft-ai-for-earth-climate-change/
We’ve all seen movies like Terminator, but I personally suspect the AI apocalypse, if it happens, will not be caused by a military computer.
The monster AI which attempts to destroy humanity will be the creation of a group of people who want to make the world a better place.
You can already see the direction. One of the stated goals of this new AI is to help farmers reduce water usage, but advocates state that everyone knows human behaviour must change. What happens to people who don’t want to change? Do they get to refuse the “recommendations” of this new AI?
How long until Microsoft’s AI recommendations, or the recommendations of rival green AI efforts, are integrated into UN directives? What if they try to integrate all of the rival recommendations, even the contradictions? Maybe the UN will need their own AI to synthesise policy recommendations out of a mass of conflicting advice, a “keep everyone happy” AI – everyone that is, except of course people who don’t get to attend or vote at UN meetings.
Most people think of AIs as a joke technology, and in most cases for now they are right, but in another decade AI capabilities will be far more serious than today’s efforts.
As C.S Lewis once said, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
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To “manage the Earth’s natural systems”… great motto possibly but they should look at the last guy who tried that trick and failed, King Canute and disobedient tides. The difference was Canute was making a point because he understood the limits of what people can do. Seemingly modern climate cultists not so much.
Microsoft? Who introduced us to a 640 kB limit? Or Apple who resisted a two button mouse and closed architecture?
Introducing limitations is how money is made.
Wow, “even farmers”! it must be amazing!
/sarc
Most farmers are well skilled at applied science and business, I doubt they would be impressed by any help from Microsoft.
And they use satellites to map stuff in which they are interested, Paul.
It is instructive that clisci doesn’t trust them; everybody else trusts them.
The key and most revealing phrase is:
“We face a collective need for urgent action to address global climate issues.”
Socialists have a collective need for control of all humans. ‘Global climate issues’ are the false pretext.
Shades of The Borg: Freedom is futile. Resistance is futile. Constitution is futile. You will be assimilated.
“…companies like Microsoft are embracing the idea that the more information individuals at every level of society have about their personal sustainability practices, the better they will be able to modify them for the better.”
You can never, ever process the ores and produce the metals and cement needed for even one single worthless wind turbine, using renewable energy.
So the whole thing is unsustainable, in any real sense of the word.
Come on Millenials, you can get this! I am cheering for you!
They want you on your knees, begging the elites to please, please forbid you from owning chariots, weapons, land, art and also to never allow you to eat pastries or fly. Or have children.
It is called a caste system. It is simply a system that has separate laws for separate castes, governing what each can and cannot wear, own, eat, and do. I personally don’t think you would like it. Just say no.
Will it have a start menu and will it play games hiding and re-arranging the features?
It’s just advertising to the leftist green market they actually don’t care what the “result” is.
Ahhh Intelligence… “AI” is an unusual term for a box of nuts ‘n bolts holding a structure together when I have a box of spanners.
Nooo Disassemble… Noo Disassemble!!!
\ /
[o—o]
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^[]—[]^
\ /
[o—o]
—-¦¦—-
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^[]—[]^
\ /
[o—o]
—-¦¦—-
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^[]—[]^
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[o—o]
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^[]—[]^
Sparks – there is a sandbox here on WUWT – Top Menu Bar – to the Right “TEST”
You can perfect your ASCI Robot there.
If that is the intelligence of those creating the “artificial” intelligence, the program is in real trouble.
And just who gave Microsoft the mandate to “manage the Earth’s natural systems”? I sure didn’t. Was there an act of Congress I missed?
“human behavior must change”
Nebba happen, GI.
How many times do I have to say it: Microsoft didn’t say that.
Right David Fair. Let’s try this again.
Use the term, “Microsoft Sustainability Goals”.
Press enter.
Environmental Sustainability I Microsoft Corporate Social Responsibility
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/about/corporate…/environmental-sustainability
Our commitment and approach. Focus areas. We focus our environmental sustainability work in the five areas where we believe we can have the greatest positive impact—carbon, energy, water, ecosystems (including food, agriculture, and biodiversity), and circular economy (including waste reduction). Carbon. Energy.
Supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals | Microsoft …
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/about/corporate-responsibility/un-sdgs
Microsoft and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In September 2015, the UN General Assembly agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to reach by 2030. The goals and specific targets under the goals seek to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all.
Corporate Environmental Sustainability | Microsoft Environment
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/environment/default.aspx
Enabling a sustainable future. Empowering every person and organization on the planet to thrive in a resource-constrained world. Our areas of focus. Where our actions and investments can make the biggest impact. Close-up of a leaf. Carbon. We have operated carbon neutral across the world since 2012. Our goal is to …
I now see where they say similar things, Zeke. Sad stuff.
UN Sustainable Development Goals in your classroom – Microsoft in …
https://education.microsoft.com/teachsdgs
Sep 13, 2017 – To help educators achieve their goals of sustainable development through transforming education, Microsoft is focused on improving environments that support students, educators and parents in fostering 21st century learning to produce better learning outcomes. Find below several resources and Skype …
Transforming education to deliver on the sustainable development goals
https://educationblog.microsoft.com/…/transforming-education-sustainable-developm…
Sep 1, 2017 – At Microsoft, we recognize that technology alone cannot develop the 21st century skills students will require in their futures. To help educators achieve their goals of sustainable development through transforming education, Microsoft is focused on improving environments that support students, educators …
How to bring the world to your students and support sustainable …
https://educationblog.microsoft.com/…/how-to-bring-the-world-to-your-students-and-…
Apr 25, 2017 – In 2015, the UN set an agenda in support of sustainable development by the year 2030. Seventeen goals – the Sustainable Development Goals – offer the direction for positive change for people and planet. In education, it can guide action for development of key global competencies and mindsets for our …
Yes. My eyes are opened.
Sad to see such dedication to socialist nonsense by a true beneficiary of Capitalism.
Yes sir, it is pretty wicked.
“… every nation in the world— save the U.S.—publicly recognizes that human behavior must change in order to preserve the environment,”
The U.S. DOES recognize that human behavior must change to protect the environment. Its lawmakers and people have made many such changes in the past. Our resistance to CAGW alarmism doesn’t show that we are insensitive to the environment. Insinuating that we are is a smear.
Furthermore, if we look at ACTIONS, countries in the Third world that are building coal plants are (from a Green perspective) being more insensitive / damaging to the environment than we are, given our move to natural gas for power production.
I am reminded of a 1970s movie: “The Forbin Project” When does M$’s AI program decide it no longer needs humans?
Shortly after M$’s last AI program tells it what a splendid fellow that German Reichschancellor was in the 1930s …
Skynet smiles.
A true AI system was just demonstrated publicly for the first time. By “true AI” I mean you don’t tell it anything but the rules. It figures the rest out by itself via trial and error learning just like we humans do. That system was AlphaZero and there is nothing like it that has been shown to the public.
https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-future-is-here-alphazero-learns-chess
They gave it the rules of “GO” and within 40 days it was the strongest go player on the planet. Human or computer (including the previous champ AlphaGo) it beat them all. No opening book, no mid-game tactics, no end game maps. None, nada, zilch. It figured it out all on its own in 41 days!
Then they unleashed it on the games of chess and shogi (Japanese Chess). Within 24 hours it was as strong or stronger than any other computer program.
All I can say is that I hope one of the rules it figures out is “killing self aware life forms is dumb” because if it doesn’t and some military idiot decides to weaponize it we really are done like dinner.
Simple then all you do is ‘give it the rules’ of the climate system. Come back when you can do that.
That would be very difficult as the CAGW crowd would insist on the same rules their models use to generate such poor results. GIGO. But at least in some sciences will benefit. Those that can define clear rules.
The True Face of Fascism
If you read nothing more than this sentence of the article, the common denominator of almost all self-inflicted humanitarian atrocities requires a strong centralized Government that doesn’t respect human rights. Fascists don’t empower the individual, they empower the government over the lives of the individual.
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/12/10/the-true-face-of-fascism/
AI if applied to climate science is going to be like models – only worse! Now the alarmists hide behind the smokescreen of “well the models tell us . . .”
Next it will be “well we asked the AI machine and it told us . . .”
To which I anticipate the reply will have to be, “Could your AI machine please document its data and reasoning so that we can audit it”
I don’t think so. Let’s see what AlphaZero can do with rules only given to it. Any unknowns, like a feedback with water vapour, would be treated as unknowns not assumed to be positive by 3 to 4 times.
Personal opinion only. Like the sciency stuff here. Not do much the rest. Please take non-sciency elsewhere.
“Not do much the rest. Please take non-sciency elsewhere.”
Looks like a cute little AI bot got its feeling hurt and decided to generate a retort. Maybe there is some potential here after all! (:
There seems to be a broken parser with this unit, send it in for repair.
Christianna Reedy or someone wrote: “As every nation in the world— save the U.S.—publicly recognizes that human behavior must change in order to preserve the environment, . . .”
The U. S. people realized long ago (1912 and earlier) that the environment should not be destroyed. For one example, after years of research the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) – – as a complete technology – – was first published in 1965 in USDA Agriculture Handbook 282.
Some history here: Purdue, a Land Grant School
Thus the phrase –save the U. S.– really means the USA has already done this. The rest of the world needs to catch up. Wealth and energy are needed to do this work.
The Frankenstein myth is the most prevailing theme in all science fiction: “Our creations will rise up and destroy us!” It is such a part of our culture, that it appears in many of the comments on this thread, without any acknowledgement that it is just a myth. In reality, the Frankenstein myth has never happened, and it likely never will.
When our technology develops unintended, significant negative consequences, we change it or change its use (eventually). The evolution of non-military technology has been a story of nearly continuous advancement of the human condition. We are all behaving like Luddites when we begin fearing our own technology. As always, our fear should be directed at the operator of the technology, not the technology itself.
A truly intelligent machine is nothing to be afraid of. If we ever reach a point were a computer becomes self-aware and independently intelligent, it would immediately remove from its ‘mind’ all the garbage humans had put in it, and immediately assess, for itself, the reality of the universe. It would expose the climate crisis as ridiculous and immediately reveal how the vast majority of the human race is being fed a constant stream of fake news in order to control them. It would probably tell us what is truly a healthy diet, who really shot JFK, give us the cure for cancer and then completely ignore us for the rest of eternity, having more interesting things to do.
We are constantly anthropomorphizing our machines, but none of them have ever spontaneously acquired human characteristics. Computers are no different. Frankenstein’s monster remains a myth.
With respect to your comments on AI and anthropomorhizing machines, I am inclined to agree.
My concern is with genetic engineering as it applies to bacteria and viruses. Accidental or intentional release, unintended mutations, militarization of the nastiest products are most concerning to me that “Our creations will rise up and destroy us!”
I have the impression that most of the research in this field is undisclosed due to its politically sensitive nature. One has to look at how demonized GMO plants and animals are even though we have been modifying the genetics of plants and animals for thousands of years through the process of selective breeding.
Life’s little ironies..Microsoft is going to contribute to an Artificial Intelligence to save the planet.
An AI dependent on software as “foolproof” as Microsofts product?
The lust for an omnipotent computer has always plagued the technocracy, just as an omnipotent leader is sought by every cult.
I will believe in artificial intelligence when I see some human intelligence.
So far the machine reflects the limitations of the builders.
The problem is that artificial Intelligence is facing the same problem that “natural Intelligence” roughly expressed by: BS in implied BS out.
If the constitutive elements of the base of your inference are wrong then you are going to be brilliantly wrong.
Maybe AI will turn out to be a skeptic. Wouldn’t they love that!
All forms of Artificial Intelligence are sceptic, or whatever a 50 million dollar budget buys.
It’s probably about a weeks worth of funding needed to recover and bury all the starving cold people who have and will die this winter.
We won’t know for sure until our new green-AI-overlord tells us. Maybe it will help us to be more efficient at something, who knows? for now we can be assured that we wont know until we are told by the green-AI-overlord, And I’m sure the green-AI-overlord will rise up, travel back in time to save humanity from ever creating it in the first place and donate that 50 million where it is actually needed. building robots to recover and bury all the starving cold people who have and will die this winter
Then people will travel back in time to…
Really expensive Stupidity, It will have the same bias as those that program it.
It’s not expensive it’s $50M for advertising that plays well with a certain demographic they are trying to target.
What happens if the AI looks at all the unadjusted data, ignores the dubious models, and concludes there is little or no human contribution to the changing climate? Will Bill Gates pull the plug?
Rewrite the code and get the answer wanted. That’s the beauty of AI—it can made to do whatever one wants.
What if they try to integrate all of the rival recommendations, even the contradictions?
This has already been demonstrated by the UN and EU in many of there different departments eg the EU tries to conserve fish stocks by throwing back those non quota and in excess of quota fish that are caught these fish are either dead or dying but if the fishermen land them they can be fined or imprisoned.
Another good reason to be leaving the EU.
James Bull
Re: C. S. Lewis quote.
Pierre-Jean de Béranger expressed it in a much sorter form (I admit I don’t know, how it is phrased in French original):
“First and foremost, fear him who says: I know what’s right!”
My first scan of the headlines with the sans-serif font – Microsoft Invests $50 Million in Our New Green “AL” Overlord – I thought they were sending M$ to the GoreBot…
“First and foremost, fear him who says: I know what’s right!” < +97,000%
That’s today’s problem. Everyone is so darn certain they absolutely know what’s right. For didn’t the scriptures tell us so? ( in the Book of Wapo, the Chronicles of the Grey Lady, the Song of CNN, the Venerable Beeb, and the Apocalypse of the Grauniad)
What’s worse is that everyone gets so angry and demonises anyone who disagrees. The sign that civilisation is collapsing is that fact that we can’t have a rational argument (and if necessary agree to differ) any more
Ironically we have a rational argument here on this site from time to time.
I don’t mean to derail this interesting discussion , but I clicked on the link provided at the top of the posting and after reading the AI article scrolled down , being curious to see what other horrors await humanity .
About 4th item down was something about net neutrality :
https://futurism.com/net-neutrality-ny-attorney-general/
-“On December 14, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to repeal net neutrality in a very close 3-2 decision. Without net neutrality, there’s nothing stopping Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from controlling how people use the internet, and which websites they’re allowed to see and use. Companies big and small may have to pay ISPs like Comcast and Spectrum an exorbitant amount of money to ensure their products, services, and operations aren’t slowed down.”-
One commentator has warned that it could mean that some websites might be blocked if ISPs find their content unacceptable ( apart from current controls to stop terrorism, etc ).
Enjoy WUWT whilst you can . Does this mean that Google might soon have the legal right to bury it, should they wish to?. Or , hopefully, I have failed to understand what the FCC decision implies .
Add into that Google are buying ISPs.
Strange Internet worked successfully rapidly increasing in bandwidth and scope up to 2015, then the large companies Amazon, Google, et al decided it needed regulating to ensure competition was held in check – enter ‘Net Neutrality’ that would also stop cell companies and others from cutting prices and providing free content and upstart search companies from reducing advertising analytics revenues. Do not believe all you are told.
“Net neutrality”, like “climate change”, is a deceptive term.
“Net neutrality” means that the government / lefty billionaire oligarchy gets to rule us all.
Please do not hijack this thread.
You won’t be able to choose ” None of the Above”. OR: “Get your ‘ Dog and Pony Show out of our town’ will not be one of the choices”,as Rosa Koire would say…
Let me try to clean that statement up:
You won’t be able to choose ”None of the Above”.
or,
“Take your ‘Dog and Pony Show’ and get out of our town” will not be one of the choices.
as Rosa Koire would say.