Thought-provoking article on AI
The New York times (who else? – they really seem to be all over this machine intelligence stuff lately) has published an Op-Ed by Jaron Lanier, a research scientist at Microsoft. The article twists the typical conversation about AI on its head, saying that one of the effects of AI is that people are turning more machine-like rather than machines turning more human-like, and in the process we are essentially losing our soul.
Pretty heavy stuff, for sure.
I’ll focus on one interesting snippet in the article:
We must instead take responsibility for every task undertaken by a machine and double check every conclusion offered by an algorithm, just as we always look both ways when crossing an intersection, even though the light has turned green.
This passage kind of struck a personal chord for me. In my former job, we worked on a system called TCAS, which is a collision avoidance system mandated by law to be installed on all aircraft around the world of a certain size. Certainly, all the commercial passenger jets in the United States have this system installed.
This system could easily be called artificial intelligence – it uses sensors to detect approaching aircraft and issues commands, based on decisions made by algorithms, to the human pilot who would nominally be expected to execute the commands faithfully. The system was developed because of an act of Congress after a series of tragic mid-air collisions in the 50′s, 60′s and 70′s. The system “went live” in 1992, I believe, and there are international bodies containing very dedicated and smart people continuing to work on upgrading it since then.
Where it gets interesting, and related to the author’s quote above, is where the human fits in with this system. For example, pilots are supposed to always follow TCAS’ commands, unless they have overriding visual evidence to support a different decision. The reason is that multiple TCAS systems will actually coordinate actions between the two planes if necessary to separate them.
Now, where it gets really interesting (and tragic) is when despite the rules, one or both pilots choose to take actions opposite to what TCAS tells them to do, as they did in Uberlingen Germany in 2002. In this case, one of the pilots obeyed the commands of the controller, and as a result, there was a mid-air collision and 71 people died.
While there are indeed technical solutions (CP112E) in this case – which I personally worked on verifying – it brings up a case where human judgement was faulty and the algorithm was correct, and the result of the human “double check” caused harm.
In general, I am actually in the author’s camp that handing over your free will to a machine should at least give you pause, and I don’t dispute that we are slowly becoming more machine-like. I support all the creative/independent thinkers out there, because I think it’s getting tougher for people to trust your judgement in the presence of the Social Network.
But I also believe that in some situations, like in Uberlingen, it’s not always a bad thing to accept a machine’s advice. Unquestionably, the human element introduces “noise” which waters down the effectiveness of algorithms such as TCAS. I predict it will be the great ethical and legal struggle of my generation to find out where to draw the line. While it would be great if it were always an individual choice (such as shutting down your Facebook account), I can see examples similar to Uberlingen coming down the line in other life or death situations like in medicine and for safety systems in other contexts where something will have to give.
I seem to be more optimistic than the author, however, on the macro level. I think the slow revolution of society being caused by the AI all around us is causing us to think about our lives and society more logically which will ultimately lead to more social justice.
Either that or you’ll get the computer from Wargames, not sure.
Tic-tac-toe anyone? The only winning move is not to play...
Love it…
New York Times article about how more and more cities are releasing data they have been collecting for years about all kinds of stuff. They’ve taken the cue from the federal government, where more and more data is being released on data.gov under the new administration.
I know in Boston they have released real-time bus location info on some selected bus routes (finally!) for developers. Hopefully Boston starts releasing a bunch of other relevant and cool data.
Unfortunately, it doesn't include the 71 bus...oh well
I think government can be held a lot more accountable when all the data is out there for the public to use – and maybe ordinary people can help out our city (for free) by developing useful applications and ideas that our busy public servants haven’t thought of before!
Where Have You Gone, Bell Labs?
Really interesting article in Business Week that I just caught wind of by Adrian Slywotzky talking about how the importance of public/private research labs for America’s economic recovery.
He estimates that due to the Recession and outsourcing, we need to create 6.7 million jobs, and then to spark demand to truly “recover”, we need to create another 10 million. He says this isn’t impossible, because in the 1990′s the U.S. economy generated 22 million jobs (2.2 million a year), but between 2000-2007 (before the Recession), the economy only generated 900,000 a year.
In addition, as he says,
Of the roughly 130 million jobs in the U.S., only 20% (26 million) pay more than $60,000 a year. The other 80% pay an average of $33,000. That ratio is not a good foundation for a strong middle class and a prosperous society. Rather than a demand engine, it’s a decay curve.
His argument is that basic scientific research by both government and private labs has fueled the various “blockbuster” economies over the past hundred something years:
Cars and petroleum in the 1920s, movies and radio in the 1930s, defense in the 1940s, appliances and television in the 1950s, pharmaceuticals in the 1960s, aerospace in the 1970s, PCs in the 1980s, the Internet and cellular telephony in the 1990s.
He observes that all of these industries grew out of basic research conducted either at private research labs like Bell Labs or government labs like DARPA.
What he sees as a problem is that unlike in previous recessions, the funding for basic research has dwindled over the past decade. He cites Bell Labs as an example where as recently as 2001, there were 30,000 scientists employed and now there are only 1,000.
Underlying much of this, of course, is the oft-observed truth that I can certainly confirm personally, that most of the smart technical people (especially the ones I graduated with at Harvard) have been going into finance over the 10 years. As he says,
Science has lost its allure as the domain for our best and brightest. Much of the best technical talent has been drawn to the promise of riches from Wall Street and financial engineering. We need to reestablish a culture that rewards and celebrates the scientist who is willing to work on tough problems even if the commercial return is less certain.
He fundamentally calls for greater investment in labs and R&D in the United States. His three recommendations for how to get back on track are:
• Clear national goals in two or three key areas, such as carbon-free energy and preventive medicine.
• Government commitment of $10 billion a year above and beyond spending for national agencies to jump-start new industrial research labs
• Government tax credits for corporations that commit to spending 5% to 10% (or more) of R&D on basic research
Incidentally, I saw a while ago, that the third point sounds like something President Obama is proposing as part of his general tax reforms – namely a $74.5 billion tax cut over 10 years for R&D.
Having worked at a government research lab over the past 3 years, I can’t comment much on what it used to be like pre-2000. But I know that the people working there are brilliant. And I also know that the finance sector is not going to create 17 million jobs over the next 10 years. What’s wrong with giving scientists some love, for the good of the country?
