Social science
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lect19.pptxDisciplinary Approaches to Social Science Techno-logistic II
SOSC 1000 6.0
Lecture 19
Jan Krouzil PhD
July 27, 2021
Agenda
Announcements
PART I ‘Bitsphere’ / ‘biosphere’
PART II Technological singularity
PART III 5G Huawei vision
PART IV Techno-logistic effects
Keywords
PART I ‘bitsphere’ / ‘biosphere’ (1)
‘Reality’ - ‘the experience of ordinary people in everyday life’ (Franklin 2004)
levels of reality
vernacular reality – ‘the reality of everyday life’
both private and personal, also common and political
feminists - 'the personal is political'
extended reality
body of knowledge and emotions based on the experience of others
includes artifacts
constructed (or reconstructed) reality
manifestations - works of fiction, advertising and propaganda
situations considered archetypal rather than representative
part of the fabric that holds the common culture together
The ‘bitsphere’ / human ‘biosphere’ (2)
projected reality - the vernacular reality of the future
influenced or even caused by actions in the present.
‘heaven and hell’ or life after death for some people projected reality
also the future itself, the five-year plan, the business cycle…can influence people's actions and attitudes
all levels of reality - affected and distorted by science and technology
with respect to the realities of time and space
Relationship between science and technology
no hierarchical relationship
have parallel or side-by-side relationship – stimulate and utilise each otyher
science and technology as one enterprise with a spectrum of interconnected activity
‘bitsphere’ / human ‘biosphere’ (3)
The scientific method
a way of separating knowledge from experience
as understood in the West
learning how to build bridges from somebody who has never built a bridge
(Franklin 2004)
questions of reductionism, of loss of context, of cultural biases
scientific constructs as the model of describing ‘reality’ rather than one of the ways of describing life
decrease in the reliance of people on their own experience and their own senses
‘bitsphere’ / human ‘biosphere’ (4)
the downgrading of experience and the glorification of expertise
significant feature of the ‘real world of technology’ (Franklin 2004)
experience should lead to a modification of knowledge
rather than abstract knowledge forcing people to perceive their experience as being ‘unreal’, or ‘wrong’
feminist authors call for changes in evaluating the social and human impact of technology
Speed of transmission of messages
electricity – the speed of light (around 1800)
a message in Morse Code (1844)
‘What hath God wrought?’
‘bitsphere’ / human ‘biosphere’ (5)
Message-transmission technologies
create a host of ‘pseudo-realities’ based on images constructed, staged, selected, and instantaneously transmitted
radio, tv, film, video
new ‘virtual realities’ with intense emotional components
induce a sense of ‘being there’
sense of participating rather than observing
technological rationales have the force and authority of ‘religious
doctrine’ (Franklin 2004)
possible, in theory, to opt out, in practice, only in a very limited way
technologically induced human isolation
how can one question and mitigate the encroachments of pseudo-realities?
‘Bitsphere’ / human ‘biosphere’ (6)
Key preoccupation of technology
to overcome the constraints of time and space
the facet of time as sequence and pattern
concepts of ‘synchronicity’ and ‘asynchronicity’
Synchronicity – evokes the presence of sequences and patterns
fixed intervals and periodicities
coordination and synchronization
the bell’s call to work, or prayer to keep a community ‘in sync’
Asynchronicity – indicates the decoupling of activities from their functional time or space patterns
unravelling of social and political patterns without apparent replacement
voicemail, texting
‘bitsphere’ / human ‘biosphere’ (7)
What does this all mean to us as humans?
as social and political beings evolving within the patterns of nature and culture
difference between supplementing a rigidly patterned structure with asynchronous activities and substituting synchronous functions by asynchronous schemes (Franklin 2004)
Global ‘bitsphere’ / human ‘biosphere’ interfaces
City of Bits (Mitchell 1995)
difference between a mechanism and an organism (Goodwin 1994)
‘biosphere’ – not only living creatures and their biological support systems
the physical and mental artifacts attesting to their presence on earth
a nest of spheres embedded in each other
ordering principles drawn from the observation of nature
‘bitsphere’ / human ‘biosphere’ (8)
‘bitsphere’ – the sphere of storage, display, and transmittal of information or data in BIT (digits)
designed to have no (apparent) structure – or coherent sequence/consequence patterns
evoking higher levels of ‘complexity’
utilizing the insights of ‘chaos theory’
the biosphere, existing in real time, encompasses past, present, and future
the bitsphere – a product of human minds – exhibits no tense or temporality
no roots in physical space
we live simultaneously in both spheres
all we can do is to understand the current and potential dynamics of these interacting spheres of influence
try to monitor and mitigate their impacts
Part II Technological singularity (1)
Singularity
a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable changes to human civilization (Eden and Moor 2012)
‘singularity’ hypothesis
also called ‘intelligence explosion’
an upgradable intelligent agent (such as a computer running software-based artificial general intelligence) will eventually enter a "runaway reaction" of self-improvement cycles, with each new and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing an ‘explosion’ in intelligence and resulting in a powerful superintelligence that qualitatively far surpasses all human intelligence
Technological singularity (2)
Debate
public figures expressed concern that full artificial intelligence could result in human extinction (Hawking 2014, Musk 2015)
the consequences of the singularity and its potential benefit or harm to the human race
technological progress accelerating - limited by the basic intelligence of the human brain
has not changed significantly for millennia (Ehrlich 2008)
with the increasing power of computers and other technologies, it might eventually be possible to build a machine that is significantly more intelligent than humans (Wayback Machine 2012)
Technological singularity (3)
claims that if a superhuman intelligence were to be invented—either through the amplification of human intelligence or through artificial intelligence—it would bring to bear greater problem-solving and inventive skills than current humans are capable of
such an AI is referred to as Seed AI (Yampolskiy 2015, Yudkowsky 2001) because if an AI were created with engineering capabilities that matched or surpassed those of its human creators, it would have the potential to autonomously improve its own software and hardware or design an even more capable machine
this more capable machine could then go on to design a machine of yet greater capability.
these iterations of recursive self-improvement could accelerate, potentially allowing enormous qualitative change before any upper limits imposed by the laws of physics or theoretical computation set in
speculated that over many iterations such an AI would far surpass human cognitive abilities
Technological singularity (4)
a possible outcome of humanity building artificial general intelligence (AGI)
AGI would be capable of recursive self-improvement, leading to the rapid emergence of artificial superintelligence (ASI)
the limits of which are unknown
technology forecasters and researchers disagree about if or when human intelligence is likely to be surpassed
some argue that advances in artificial intelligence (AI) will probably result in general reasoning systems that lack human cognitive limitations
others believe that humans will evolve or directly modify their biology so as to achieve radically greater intelligence
a number of futures studies scenarios combine elements from both of these possibilities, suggesting that humans are likely to interface with computers, or upload their minds to computers in a way that enables substantial intelligence amplification
Technological singularity (5)
Plausibility
technologists and academics dispute the plausibility of a technological singularity
including Gordon Moore whose ’law’ is often cited in support of the concept (Allen 2015)
Ray Kurtzweil (2005)
postulates a law of accelerating returns the speed of technological change (and more generally, all evolutionary processes
predicts that the exponential growth will continue
in a few decades the computing power of all computers will exceed that of (‘unenhanced’) human brains, with superhuman artificial intelligence appearing around the same time
Technological singularity (6)
Critics
assert that computers or machines cannot achieve human intelligence (Dreyfus 2002)
human intelligence refers to the intellectual prowess of humans marked by complex cognitive feats and high levels of motivation and self-awareness (Nokelainen 2011)
Implications for human society
the extent to which computers and robots might be able to acquire autonomy and to what degree they could use such abilities to pose threats or hazards (Markoff 2009)
Technological singularity (7)
Misconceptions
protagonists - identify the Singularity with the creation of artificial (super) intelligence
assert all their beliefs and desires simultaneously, assuming that they can thus reinforce each other
critics - seek the weakest points assuming that refuting them will render the whole concept invalid
biased by their desires which can be simply expressed as ‘Singularity is impossible because we do not want humans to disappear’
Singularity will not necessarily come about through the creation of Strong AI with digital computers (Potapov 2018)
Technological singularity (8)
What Do We Really Know?
disentangle the grounded claims from the personal beliefs and desires, and underline what we can really say about Singularity
the concept of Singularity is usually justified by timelines that track some key events in evolution supplemented by some qualitative measure, for example, memory capacities
different authors choose different key events as indicators, curves of growing complexity or decreasing time intervals between paradigm shifts as measured by key events are consistent as shown by Ray Kurzweil with 15 lists of key events (2005)
Technological singularity (9)
‘Singularity’ is a virtual time point at which the simplest extrapolation of the curve of growing complexity hits infinity which will be never really achieved (Potapov 2018)
all models in science describe the reality approximately
behind the concept of Singularity is the real phenomenon of accelerating universal evolution
criticism should be addressed to the use of the model independently of the specific scenario to which it is applied. (Potapov 2018)
Part III 5G Huawei vision (1)
Next wave of digital society
5G wireless networks
support 1,000-fold gains in capacity, connections for at least 100 billion devices (Huawei nd)
a 10 Gb/s individual user experience capable of extremely low latency and response times
deployment of these networks between 2020-30
5G radio access built upon both new radio access technologies (RAT) and evolved existing wireless technologies (LTE, HSPA, GSM and WiFi)
breakthroughs in wireless network innovation to drive economic and societal growth in new ways
5G networks capable of providing zero-distance connectivity between people and connected machines
5G Huawei vision (2)
Advent of 5G technologies and ICT networks
next wave of a globally connected Digital Society
mobile access to the internet fundamental to doing business in all industries
flexible working practices facilitated by mobile networks and devices essential
allowing enterprises to conduct operations across boundaries that previously inhibited growth
mobile access to the internet, cloud-based services and Big Data analytics
allowing anyone, anywhere to leverage ‘Big Wisdom’ – a whole new kind of globally connected and shared knowledge base
5G Huwaei vision (3)
Promise of 5G
any mobile app and any mobile service will be given the potential to connect to anything at anytime
from people and communities to physical things, processes, content, working knowledge, timely pertinent information and goods of all sorts in entirely flexible, reliable and secure ways
to expand the possibilities of what mobile networks can do, and to extend upon what services they can deliver
5G Huawei vision (4)
Immediacy and adaptability
massive capacity for delivery of services to allow connections between end users and the network to be made at ‘faster than thought’ speeds
so fast that the apparent distance between connected people and connected machines will shrink to a virtual ‘zero distance’ gap
an instant immediacy in mobile services will lay the foundation for a whole new set of mobile apps to proliferate and push the capabilities of communications beyond what is currently possible
massive capacity for managing connections to better enable a greater widespread adoption of M2M services and interactions
next wave of the Digital Society will be characterized by an ICT network’s capability for service immediacy and on-demand adaptability
5G Huawei vision (5)
Smart cities
5G will provide the foundational infrastructure for building smart cities
low latency and extremely high reliability, however, will also be essential requirements for the likes of mobile industrial automation, vehicular connectivity, and other IoT applications
applications like smart sensors and text-based messaging are examples of extremely high volume applications
Timeline
5G is presently in its early research stages
new IMT spectrum is expected to be agreed upon for the World Radio Communication Conference (WRC) in 2015
ITU is currently at work on IMT spectrum requirements for 2020 and beyond
after WRC-15, ITU will have a clearer path for determining network system and technology requirements
Part IV Techno-logistic effects (1)
Why technological change should be driven by a value system
big data and new technologies
‘data is a continuum that goes from data to information to knowledge to wisdom’ (Medhora 2020)
for this continuum to work well - technology that links them and values (ethics, morality)
technological change and how we transform ourselves is not exogenous
something that is endogenous and is (or should be) driven by a value system
something about new technology that perhaps breaks that chain
Techno-logistic effects (2)
Characteristics in the digital economy
digital forms tend to face high upfront risk and high fixed costs, marginal costs of production often tend to be zero
gives an advantage to first movers and it prioritizes strategic behaviour
the profits that are made are effectively monopoly rents
the economic logic compelling firms to behave the way they do
Data comes with different imperatives
data has the potential to create immense amounts of wealth
need that wealth to do social good
data has characteristics that make us value our privacy
make us prioritize public security
Techno-logistic effects (3)
data is imperative if we want to preserve our open society and have a healthy democracy
data infrastructure as part of the nation building and social fabric-building consensus
works the same way that physical infrastructure did generations ago with railroads and broadcasting
Global zones
the state-centric China zone - cede data to the state
the US zone - big firms to whom you have ceded that sovereignty
the zone Europe - in principle, person-centric
GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation]
a host of countries — in fact, the majority of the countries in the world — lie outside these three zones
Techno-logistic effects (4)
Going forward
how do we have a global data zone that balances all of these exigencies
while valuing that each country at any given point in time might want to balance these differently
need a broad moral and pragmatic statement to guide us all in how technology is created and how technology is used
like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [UDHR]
having a clear moral statement is aspirational
How innovation is diffused
innovation tends to be concentrated in a few parts of the world and a few regions within those parts of the world
the process of innovation driven by proprietary intellectual property
harmonize taxation - tax wealth and use it for the public good
Techno-logistic effects (5)
The use of technology is not exogenous
algorithmic accountability (ethics) should be part of the public policy framework and not seen as outside it
Foreign investment in the digital context
economics of the data-driven digital world drives predatory behaviour – involves foreign investment
a range of issues in which work is done here, but the IP and the wealth created is there
multilateral and international cooperation
a Digital Stability Board - promotes best practice in the digital realm
Keywords
levels of reality
pseudo-realities
bitsphere/biosphere
synchronicity
asynchronicity
‘singularity’ hypothesis
technological singularity
artificial superhuman intelligence
law of accelerating returns
digital economy
