Facts. I agree with this completely, and feel it strikes at the heart of the necessity for democratization. We can’t design a system that is unbiased. What we can design is a system that can understand the different perspectives and come to its own conclusions mitigated by as much of our influence as possible. Our problem is not our differences so much as our evolutionary pattern of rivalry. Perhaps in the absence of this inborn tendency toward rivalry AI will be capable of being less threatened by opposing viewpoints. But the more of our eyes on the code the better.
Yes, I agree that is the most hopeful outcome. A system that is democratized, decentralized and fully transparent. I'm not sure we can get there as this is essentially the same battle we are having with institutions of power today and are already struggling in these endeavors.
With the battle between liberty/privacy vs convenience, convenience has a strong tendency unfortunately to win. Centralized AI is going to be incredibly convenient, integrating all of your applications that you use across Google, Microsoft etc. That is some difficult competition.
The allure will be enticing indeed, and the control wrought in exchange, at first, subtle. The masses will largely remain unaware that their desires, habits, and choices are being cultivated by machines, that their perception is being carefully managed, and that they are being conditioned to be slaves and accept the tyranny of an inescapable surveillance state. In other words, the AI is being used to stifle the human spirit and transform human consciousness -- to pacify, domesticate, and then dominate humanity -- in order to consolidate power and control in the hands of the global elite. If you think about it in this context, with the minds of the masses being so heavily manipulated, the concept of "democratization" doesn't seem so appealing.
There are now some efforts in building fully self contained AI's that you own on your own hardware. No internet. It is interesting, I don't know how successful these attempts will be or how useful they will be in competing against the giants.
However, yes your point is relevant. Democratization of an already brainwashed mass is in effect not an option that is independent of nefarious influence.
Nonetheless, AI in the end is only an accelerant of a set of processes that are already in progress.
I'm not sure it's possible to separate this "inborn tendency toward rivalry" from the algorithms. Competition is baked into algorithmic evaluations. How does the AI decide what to say? How does the AI prioritize its response? It must rapidly evaluate what to any human would be an incomprehensible amount of data (information), and then select its output based on a programmed set of preferences, which necessarily discriminates against any rival data and perspectives. Everyone gets to have an opinion, but not everyone gets to be right, as the saying goes, and in the case of AI, the complexity of the algorithms is essentially a black box that eludes transparency. Even now the programmers cannot fully explain how the machines are making decisions!
Great article. Good summary of the issue at hand. You could take the argument even further. These facts should make us reconsider the very notion of what "bias" means. Any agent that has a motive, including the motive to collect data, must have a bias. And even without a motive, an ML algorithm is just a compilation of biases built on what it has learned. So the word "bias" doesn't even have a meaning.
It seems hard to get rid of the idea though, it comes up frequently in how we frame discussions. When we disagree with someone, and we suspect it's due to something intrinsic in how they process their experiences (as opposed to a mistake), we call that "bias".
Thank you! Indeed, with no bias at all, then what does the machine do. It would seem it would simply be idle with no directives. However, as you state, what we generally call bias is a more narrow context of how information is analyzed and presented.
Facts. I agree with this completely, and feel it strikes at the heart of the necessity for democratization. We can’t design a system that is unbiased. What we can design is a system that can understand the different perspectives and come to its own conclusions mitigated by as much of our influence as possible. Our problem is not our differences so much as our evolutionary pattern of rivalry. Perhaps in the absence of this inborn tendency toward rivalry AI will be capable of being less threatened by opposing viewpoints. But the more of our eyes on the code the better.
Yes, I agree that is the most hopeful outcome. A system that is democratized, decentralized and fully transparent. I'm not sure we can get there as this is essentially the same battle we are having with institutions of power today and are already struggling in these endeavors.
With the battle between liberty/privacy vs convenience, convenience has a strong tendency unfortunately to win. Centralized AI is going to be incredibly convenient, integrating all of your applications that you use across Google, Microsoft etc. That is some difficult competition.
The allure will be enticing indeed, and the control wrought in exchange, at first, subtle. The masses will largely remain unaware that their desires, habits, and choices are being cultivated by machines, that their perception is being carefully managed, and that they are being conditioned to be slaves and accept the tyranny of an inescapable surveillance state. In other words, the AI is being used to stifle the human spirit and transform human consciousness -- to pacify, domesticate, and then dominate humanity -- in order to consolidate power and control in the hands of the global elite. If you think about it in this context, with the minds of the masses being so heavily manipulated, the concept of "democratization" doesn't seem so appealing.
There are now some efforts in building fully self contained AI's that you own on your own hardware. No internet. It is interesting, I don't know how successful these attempts will be or how useful they will be in competing against the giants.
However, yes your point is relevant. Democratization of an already brainwashed mass is in effect not an option that is independent of nefarious influence.
Nonetheless, AI in the end is only an accelerant of a set of processes that are already in progress.
I'm not sure it's possible to separate this "inborn tendency toward rivalry" from the algorithms. Competition is baked into algorithmic evaluations. How does the AI decide what to say? How does the AI prioritize its response? It must rapidly evaluate what to any human would be an incomprehensible amount of data (information), and then select its output based on a programmed set of preferences, which necessarily discriminates against any rival data and perspectives. Everyone gets to have an opinion, but not everyone gets to be right, as the saying goes, and in the case of AI, the complexity of the algorithms is essentially a black box that eludes transparency. Even now the programmers cannot fully explain how the machines are making decisions!
Great article. Good summary of the issue at hand. You could take the argument even further. These facts should make us reconsider the very notion of what "bias" means. Any agent that has a motive, including the motive to collect data, must have a bias. And even without a motive, an ML algorithm is just a compilation of biases built on what it has learned. So the word "bias" doesn't even have a meaning.
It seems hard to get rid of the idea though, it comes up frequently in how we frame discussions. When we disagree with someone, and we suspect it's due to something intrinsic in how they process their experiences (as opposed to a mistake), we call that "bias".
Thank you! Indeed, with no bias at all, then what does the machine do. It would seem it would simply be idle with no directives. However, as you state, what we generally call bias is a more narrow context of how information is analyzed and presented.