12 ms·

The AI Threat to Open Societies

201 points by malloryerik 8y ago

microdrum 8y ago
When Trump and Soros sound the same, they're probably right.
m3nu 8y ago
Any non-paywalled version?
- est31 8y ago
  https://www.wired.com/story/mortal-danger-chinas-push-into-ai/ https://www.wired.com/story/mortal-danger-chinas-push-into-a...
  - crishoj 8y ago
    Mods, please consider changing the link to this. [edit] From the speaker himself: https://www.georgesoros.com/2019/01/24/remarks-delivered-at-the-world-economic-forum-2/ https://www.georgesoros.com/2019/01/24/remarks-delivered-at-...
- malloryerik 8y ago
  It's still an inconvenience but you can read the article for free by registering.
Animats 8y ago
AI is only in a supporting role here. It's massive data collection and storage at low cost that's the problem. Machine learning just helps to digest the data. Tech has solved the problem of previous attempts at Big Brother - you just couldn't afford enough watchers to watch everybody all the time. Now, you can. It's even profitable.
- est31 8y ago
  And tech will also solve the power problem of autocratic regimes. Right now, a dictator can't control every single individual in the country on their own. They need police that can search your apt at 5am because you made a blog post critical of the government. They need lawyers to convict you, prison guards, etc. In such regimes, the dictator still has to put people into places of power so that the will of the dictator is executed. But people can refuse orders, and they can declare someone else to be president. Coups are one of the biggest dangers for dictators, and many rebellions are semi-coups where people in power just step aside, letting the rebels do their thing. Now, enter AI. Now the dictator could give all that power to an AI instead of intermediaries. An entire government run by two entities: the Dictator, with direct control over the AI that runs the remainder. All the bomb-equipped drones, all the self-driving tanks, all the bipedal robots with their machine guns. All the robot prison-guards and the robot judges to put critical people into prison. If this AI would answer only to the head of government, then any kind of upheaval would become unrealistic and impossible.
  - speedplane 8y ago
    The technology isn't a fundamental change, it's just a more deadly weapon.
    - mrob 8y ago
      It's not more deadly. Weapons of mass destruction already exist. The difference isn't increased ability to do harm, it's increased ability to target harm. It's no fun being dictator when all your subjects are dead, so old-fashioned WMDs are of limited use. Sufficiently advanced AI lets you selectively kill the troublemakers without harming the compliant subjects, and without having to rely on potential competitors for your dictator position. This is a fundamental change.
      - speedplane 8y ago
        Not a fundamental change. There are plenty of tools for selectively targeting individuals (e.g., guided munitions, watch lists, teams of agents that monitor your every move). It could potentially reduce the resources required for such selective targeting, but if past dictatorships are any indication, these resources are not the limiting factor.
raz32dust 8y ago
This reminds me of the "Do artifacts have politics" paper by Langdon Winner [1]. He argues that technologies have inherent political traits. Nuclear power is considered to be supportive of autocratic political systems since nuclear power plants need centralized planning and networks to be effective. Solar power is considered democratic since anyone can harness it. It's an interesting paper and definitely worth a read. On similar lines, I feel internet is a democratizing force, since it allowed anyone to publish data and anyone to consume it, and is (somewhat) difficult to control centrally. AI, on the other hand, is a centralizing force, since the most powerful AI can be managed and powered by the most powerful institutions. [1] https://www.cc.gatech.edu/~beki/cs4001/Winner.pdf https://www.cc.gatech.edu/~beki/cs4001/Winner.pdf
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  Indeed, one could consider machine learning an authoritarian technology if given power over individuals. AI's fundamental problem is it winds-up being a "results oriented" approach where individuals characteristics are weighed by black-box systems and the individual is judged without any recourse or even any exact idea what the criteria is.
  - trevyn 8y ago
    Well, we’re judged by human brains every day, which are even more opaque.
    - sgt101 8y ago
      This is a sorta standard rejoiner.. but other humans should have to account/take responsibility for their decisions, and part of that process is that other humans should judge individuals as individuals which almost by definition machine learned classifiers cannot. ML is great for dealing with massproduced artefacts, or standardised processes, but it's just not the right tool for reasoning over domains that are not full of approximately similar things. That the Chinese government (and Google, and Facebook) think that humans are in that category speaks volumes about them.
    - 8y ago
raverbashing 8y ago
Even though the reason why the author has these positions is perfectly understandable, I don't subscribe to his views, and there is an issue in complete liberalization of movements across borders. Fundamentally, AI is not a threat or a blessing, it is a technology.
buboard 8y ago
here is an idea: instead of sacrificing AI maybe we should sacrifice organized governments.
- beefield 8y ago
  It has been tried in the world history many times and is currently being tried in some parts of Somalia. Most of people do not prefer that, so if you do, maybe you should move there? My guess is that we are about to see "No True Scotsman" very soon after I post this.
noahmbarr 8y ago
Full video of his speech. His delivery adds to the message: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZGoXP-BWoc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZGoXP-BWoc
- nabla9 8y ago
  The transcript of the speech. https://www.georgesoros.com/2019/01/24/remarks-delivered-at-the-world-economic-forum-2/ https://www.georgesoros.com/2019/01/24/remarks-delivered-at-...
Proven 8y ago
All large scale human rights violations and crimes in modern history were committed by governments, mostly large and "democratic". AI is not a threat. Big government is.
baruchthescribe 8y ago
There's a special place picked out for George Soros. Really special.
- dictum 8y ago
  Without a clear explanation of your statement (why does he deserve this euphemized special place?) this is just a personal attack, which seems to be the common response to any assertion or action coming from him.
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
    It’s not a personal attack, it’s a thinly veiled death thread.
- leducw 8y ago
  I've never gotten this hate for Mr. Soros. Could you take some time and perhaps expound on why you dislike him? It'd be of great interest to me if I had an individual perspective on why he's disliked rather than the odd mishmash of reasons I find online about him.
  - charlesism 8y ago
    I've never gotten this hate for Mr. Soros Das Magazin published a German article about that a couple weeks back https://www.dasmagazin.ch/2019/01/12/die-finkelstein-formel https://www.dasmagazin.ch/2019/01/12/die-finkelstein-formel Buzzfeed published an English translation: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hnsgrassegger/george-soros-conspiracy-finkelstein-birnbaum-orban-netanyahu https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hnsgrassegger/george-so...
    - AnonymousPlanet 8y ago
      If this article is correct, could hate for Soros be seen as a sign for a mind tainted by right wing propaganda?
austincheney 8y ago
History has already answered this numerous times. AI is a tool much like a semi-automatic rifle or the printing press. The people who understand it well have an accelerated advantage over those who do not. It is both a good and bad thing depending upon who wields the tool. Like any force multiplier it will be misunderstood (magic) and improperly regulated by both open and closed societies alike. Like with any tool the real victors will be those who adapt it to solve basic immediate problems: a utility.
- intended 8y ago
  The question people need to address, is whether AI is a tool like the evolution from the Gun to the automatic rifle. OR whether AI is the kind of tool like flight, which made fortresses redundant. We have many areas of thought and society, which have been protected by walls of 'difficulty' making them intractable to large scale, automated and effective manipulation. This may no longer be the case, and AI may well represent the more fundamental change of the second kind.
  - austincheney 8y ago
    Why must people know those things? As with any new technology the second and third order consequences are unclear and will likely be entirely surprising beyond any intended (or not) consequences. Here is what my own experience in programming and my understanding of history have taught me. A sufficiently advanced understanding of a useful technology (doesn't even have to be new) allows a small group dominance over spaces traditionally controlled by large organizations or heavy investments in large technology. This causes fear and panic when it becomes clear. The common current solution is to attempt to purchase the competition, but what if the competition is not available for purchase? Perhaps the most common fallacy regarding new technology is that you can destroy the competition with a sufficiently large force. History has proven this false numerous times and it remains false with modern technology. Consider the battle of Argincout, battle of Crecy, or the establishment of the Yuan dynasty. Consider how much current corporations are investing in AI research with thousands of dedicated developers. A superior technology can easily compete with Amazon's AI unit, for example, even though you may have a team of 5 developers competing against their 5000. The reason why is because it takes time to learn and develop a superior understanding of technology necessary to create the superior technology while the army of competing developers will find friction abandoning their perceptions of reality even when confronted with critical evidence. An army of 5000 developers is an establishment of culture, practices, identify, and perceptions resulting in a large stagnant wall.
elvecinodeabajo 8y ago
Screw Soros.
bryanrasmussen 8y ago
Some thoughts I just had, and haven't really developed yet beyond the initial moment of having them: It used to be you would see theories about the internet threat to Closed societies, and I suppose those threats are real too. But perhaps the threats to closed societies are the obvious threats, and the threats to the open societies were not immediately obvious, and thinking on this is somewhat murky but if there are a bunch of obvious threats and a bunch of hidden threats then I guess people guard against the obvious threats. Finally maybe anything that threatens one type of human society must also threaten all types, only the threats are changed around for each type.
- jpalomaki 8y ago
  Maybe one such example is the effect of "democratization of information distribution". Combine this with standard analytics (and in future AI) and you have machinery that can deliver highly targeted messages, each crafted to have maximum effect on the opinions of a specific recipient. In the centralized Internet (think Facebook, Twitter, Google) this is something that we can to some extent understand and maybe control. In a proper decentralized world, this won't be possible. Privacy features will also protect the identities of trolls. In the past, the content distributed was limited by the imagination of people. In future, no such limitation exists. You will have AI (think generative adversarial networks) learning to create fake content tailored for specific persons.
- pjc50 8y ago
  Open societies are threats to closed societies, and vice versa. An open world is stable; a world of closed societies is also fairly stable internally, although much more likely to go to war with each other. The idea of "the end of history" was that Open had won, and it was just a question of mopping up the remaining closed societies. It turns out that maybe the open societies weren't as open as they thought.
  - luckylion 8y ago
    > It turns out that maybe the open societies weren't as open as they thought. Or that an "open world" isn't as stable as predicted. Would we even have the same "open" societies without China's repressive society and their willingness to finance western consumption?
Aeolun 8y ago
I think the biggest threat to open societies is that nobody will be able to read the warnings against dangers if they don’t have money to subscribe to a thousand publications :/
ngcc_hk 8y ago
It is not AI. It is the chinese communist party. Otherwise might as well have a paper called “The Internet Threat ...” or “The pen and paper threat ...” The America fought Soviet Union. But ok with a communist party in china, with their all in and everywhere in the society (and copy things on top of contributions) ... it might be too interwoven and too big to ... Good luck.
- raverbashing 8y ago
  Also the US antagonized the Soviet Union but ultimately it fell by itself. Remains to be seen what will happen in the Chinese case.
  - luckylion 8y ago
    Yeah. The SU was much smaller than the US-led side (~300m vs ~700m), it's very different with China, so that will be interesting.
  - scottlocklin 8y ago
    The Soviets dumped all their resources into war economy output. The Chinese, consumer goods for the world pay for their war machine, which is basically the strategy the US used to have.
- intended 8y ago
  But the Chinese party is effective. It may be abhorrent to the societal values of most of the people reading this comment, but its great to MANY people in China. But even that, is a red herring. Strongly controlled and moderated communication networks are currently less brittle than open societal systems. Even on a micro scale, on forums, you can see the ideas the Chinese apply being put to use out of sheer necessity. When you Add in state level actors, with the ability to crunch the numbers, then its entirely possible to create the impression of a consensus in human minds with the use of sock puppets/pseudo-human accounts. The holy grail of such research is discovering intent of speakers or groups of speakers. This will be used to stop hate speech as much as it will to kill dissidents. This is a right mess and any tool created to clean it up (other than human effort), is liable to create more problems.
hoaw 8y ago
I disagree with the premise. The threat from AI, while serious, isn't immediate compared to the threat of using thing like AI to justify inequality. You want to tell me that suddenly the global elite became concerned about relatively esoteric technology to the point where common politicians talk about it like it is the tax rate? And that just happens go with with the effects of globalization, crony capitalism and extreme rent seeking? If the excuse wasn't AI it would be something else.
VvR-Ox 8y ago
You post an article about open societies and then I can't access it without subscribing - LOL Just my opinion then without reading it: - in China we already see what a government can do with technologies including AI to control the behaviour of people - the West always seems to think it's not going to be that evil around here because people are moral superior (I don't believe that - with Hitler in Germany we saw how quickly things can change and with refugees and poor citizens in all those countries we see how badly people can treat others and still think this is correct - even without an AI they'd believe blindly) - too many techies have no moral & ethics. While studying and also in business I saw most of the people just being interested in personal welfare and earning the most money they can TLDR; This (whatever 'this' will be) is definitely going to happen if not enough people find back to humanity - with or without support of IT/AI/... (just tools)
- malloryerik 8y ago
  Btw you can read the article for free by registering, though it's a hassle. Might be easier to read from some of the alternative links with the same speech posted by others here: https://www.wired.com/story/mortal-danger-chinas-push-into-ai/ https://www.wired.com/story/mortal-danger-chinas-push-into-a... https://www.georgesoros.com/2019/01/24/remarks-delivered-at-the-world-economic-forum-2/ https://www.georgesoros.com/2019/01/24/remarks-delivered-at-...
  - VvR-Ox 8y ago
    Thank you very much :) But that's exactly what I dislike: for everything you wanna do on the net you're forced to register. I just can't see it anymore and instantly close stuff that behaves that way.
- gnomewascool 8y ago
  > You post an article about open societies and then I can't access it without subscribing - LOL While I also dislike being forced to subscribe to read something, free access to publications and open society are completely different things. After all, you had open societies before the digital age, when the vast majority of newspapers were paid. Obviously, the two are linked, but I'm not even sure whether gratis access to all journalism encourages an open society or discourages it. (You can imagine just-so stories for either case: 1. free access to articles → everyone can read them → better informed society → open society 2. free access to articles → high quality journalism goes out of business as they have to compete against zero-cost alternatives → misinformed (or even deliberately disinformed) society → people less likely to fight for openness. )
quantum_state 8y ago
It is self evident that labeling any knowledge, technology, or artifacts to be against open society is completely nonsense and contradicts the very concept of open society itself.
- paganel 8y ago
  It’s not nonsense, as you cannot carry on mass-killing events like the Holocaust or the Goulag without a modern-ish technology like the railway system. Or, to go directly to the source, let’s use Goebbels [1], as he was explaining that without modern technologies like the radio or the airplane the nazis’ ascent to power wouldn’t have been possible: > It would not have been possible for us to take power or to use it in the ways we have without the radio and the airplane. It is no exaggeration to say that the German revolution, at least in the form it took, would have been impossible without the airplane and the radio. [1] https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb56.htm https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb56...
  - acqq 8y ago
    Also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust IBM and the Holocaust
  - lucio 8y ago
    So? let's make any modern-ish technology illegal?
    - julienreszka 8y ago
      Why not?
    - kazagistar 8y ago
      Let's make leveraging technology to harm or control those who cannot effectively wield it illegal, or at least compensate for such power imbalances.
  - 8y ago
xolorg 8y ago
Are we really listening to what this Nazi collaborator has to say?
- bambax 8y ago
  https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/george-soros-ss-nazi-germany/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/george-soros-ss-nazi-germa... > Claim: During World War II, George Soros was a member of the SS (a Nazi paramilitary organization) or a Nazi collaborator who helped confiscate property from Jews. > Rating: False.
  - 0x445442 8y ago
    Not sure I'd hang my hat on Snopes as the arbiter of truth. Soros himself admits in the 60 minutes interview in having a role in the property confiscation. However, IMO his actions at that time are morally justifiable given he was a 14 year old boy attempting to survive in a historically unique context. However, WRT this speech at Davos, I suspect his problem isn't with mass surveillance as much as it is with China performing the mass surveillance. Soros is an ideologue and I'm sure he'd be just fine with the technology being used to support his political agendas.
  - xolorg 8y ago
    That article is debunking that he was in the SS. Noone ever claimed he was.
    - bambax 8y ago
      No. It debunks that he was either a member of the SS or a Nazi collaborator. He was neither. Your initial comment, though, asserted that he had been a Nazi collaborator and that therefore we shouldn't listen to him. You can listen to him or not, but your decision shouldn't be based on the fact that he had been a Nazi collaborator, because he never was.
- sctb 8y ago
  This account has been posting mostly unsubstantive or off-topic comments. In order for this site to gratify our intellectual curiosity, we all have to actually bring some thought to the discussion. Would you please? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
StreamBright 8y ago
This is kind of funny how this article focuses on China and totally leaves our surveillance capitalism (Google, Facebook) out of the picture. If this article was unbiased than we would see example how the AI threat impacted the last election in the USA as well.
- VvR-Ox 8y ago
  Very good point indeed! That's the western filter bubble and since this trade war it's even more obvious. Typical double standards. The news tell you who the bad guys are and everyone knows that the news never lie...
- IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
  It’s probably presented in such a way to b convincing to the maximum amount of people. Being addressed to an English-speaking audience that tends to already be suspicious of a Chinese grab for economic power, that serves as common ground to establish rapport with the audience. This being Soros, any connection to the US election would already doom his message to be disgeraded, or even taken as evidence for its opposite.
6d6b73 8y ago
That's funny coming from from George Soros especially that it was delivered at Davos.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
Jacques Ellul makes very similar points in his work La Technique (The Technological Society). He traces how technology and power interplay from the invention of the pocket watch and steam engine, all the way to computers. It's one of the best works I've come across in this space and a must read for Technology critics and advocates alike. I wish it would be (even) more widely read here[1] than it is but finding it in languages others than English or French might prove a challenge. His follow up work "Propaganda The Formation of Mens Attitudes" is also phenomenal. These 2 books are among the best books I discovered in 2018 (if not in the last decade). [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Jacques%20Ellul&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Jacques%20Ellul&sort=byPopular...
renholder 8y ago
Perhaps this is my pessimistic view but wouldn't any government that monitors it's civilians for a potential of being "against" the government (thus, threatening that government's power) be authoritarian? Let's take the second amendment in the states for an example. The right to bear arms is meant to stop oppressive government but you cannot purchase anti-aircraft or anti-tank or anti-anything-really weapons. So, the might of the government's force is disproportionately in favour of the very government that the amendment is proposed to prevent oppression from, yeah? (Not that I'm in favour of overthrowing the government of the states, whatsoever; this is just an observation.) When the Snowden revelations came about, this was the equivalent of China's list of people to send for "re-education". Granted, in the states, there's been no re-education (that we're aware of), it's only a small step from taking that information gleamed from those "lists" and doing just that. At what point do we draw the line between authoritarian and not? Shouldn't the very notion of putting people on a list count? After all, it was a list of people that suffered the consequences of the Night of the Long Knives, was it not? I fail to see how an open society would be considered "open", if it includes secretive programs like that. Isn't the principle of secret programs against a government's citizenry the antithesis of an open society? Maybe I'm missing something here but to say that there are any open societies left (while probably dystopian in nature and bereft of any hope of the future) is beguiling the very fact that there doesn't seem to be very many (if any at all) open societies left. (I'm probably talking bullshit circular logic, so feel free to ignore this tirade of discontent.)
- DougN7 8y ago
  I think maybe you’re comparing “open society” to utopia. There will always be bad actors that have to be accounted for and handled in some way. What is bad and how bad is always up for debate, but their existence will always be with us. In my opinion that requires lists. I do agree that most countries including the US have gone too far from what I’ve read.
  - a1369209993 8y ago
    Or you could use these things called "juries" and "trials" and "laws", but that's inconvenient and sometimes results in having to admit that the alleged bad people weren't actually doing anything wrong, so people in power don't like those.
hilbert42 8y ago
I've been interested in science and engineering since my youngest days and I've always considered myself a hacker from way back. At school, my fellow schoolmates nicknamed me 'The Boffin' as back then the terms 'hacker' and 'nerd' hadn't yet been coined. My profession is electronics engineering and IT and for my entire career I've followed and worked with the latest developments in the field. Right: I'm an insatiable technophile! My other studies were in philosophy (ethics, etc.) and government and over the years I've found my formal training in them truly invaluable, they've broadened my perception and worldview about the ways science and engineering dovetail into society and make the world a better place by improving the lives of its citizens. I have to agree with the tenet of George Soros' message for many reasons but from my perspective perhaps the most significant one is that we are moving at a frenetic pace headlong from an industrial age into a post industrial one that's driven by advanced technologies (and primarily through the use of information). We're entering a new era whose paradigms will have morphed into ones so very different from anything humankind has ever before witnessed and the changes are coming so very fast that they'll almost certainly cause fear and social disruption on an unprecedented scale unless we act now to adapt technology to our human needs and not those of governments and large multinational corporations—after all, they ought to be our servants, not vice versa as it is at present. At present, society is both ill prepared and ill equipped to handle monumental changes of such a magnitude without considerable preparation, and we've hardly even begun to discuss the matter let alone draw up viable plans for society to adapt to them. Leaving ML and AI aside for a moment, let's just look at the metaphysical† aspects of the Google/Facebook revolution. Both behemoths, but especially Facebook, are floundering in the mire over very important issues such as those concerning privacy, fake news, damaging effects on democracy and politics in general, and there's precious little light on the horizon to shine upon any potential solution let alone any commonly-agreed methodologies or viable options. Let's look at what has effectively happened here: internet technologies evolved to a stage where worldwide networks such as Facebook became feasible and thus they were built without any real thought of the wider social consequences other than the paramount need to make money. Zuckerberg et al would like us all to believe that they had actually executed both their financial and social objectives as they'd planned but as we now know this is far from being the full truth. Not only did Big Tech companies have secret plans all of their own with the deliberate intention of exploiting users but they kept these intentions hidden from both governments and users alike thus no independent scrutiny was possible until the inevitable leaks occurred. The lesson from this is that with no oversight, undesirable metaphysical effects arose from their complex systems the consequences of which have come back to bite them. Inevitably, this will happen again and again with ML and AI unless careful and sophisticated (and mandatory) regulation is introduced. To think otherwise would be foolhardy in the extreme. It's clear to many that these 'geniuses' of Big Tech would have been fully cognizant of and understood how new physical properties often emerge from complex systems that are not foreseen from just examining their less complex building blocks. Moreover, similar but metaphysical processes evolve in human minds when they encounter complex systems. For instance, examining fine architecture brings an aesthetic experience to humans that no examination of a brick to the nth degree reveals. Therefore, there can be little if any excuse for Zuckerberg and his cronies for not anticipating in advance emergent human problems (such as those that have arisen from the Cambridge Analytica fiasco). When in 1847 Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero* invented nitroglycerine and immediately perceived its extreme dangers he became so scared and concerned about what he'd actually done that he kept the fact secret for over a year. However, unlike Sobrero who clearly had ethics on his side, the likes of Zuckerberg et al never gave any serious consideration of the consequences of their 'inventions'. As day follows night, they were expecting human problems but they simply ignored them until it was too late. Their lack of concern for humans—the hands that actually feed them—is palpable in the extreme; ethically and morally they're bankrupt. As history illustrates yet again, we're now well past the point where it's safe to leave extremely powerful technologies in the hands of political novices who possess so precious few ethics—or whose few ethics are easily trumped on by their zealotry for certain technological fixes and or financial objectives. The fact that they may be the inventors or owners of newer technologies such as Facebook is irrelevant; what matters first and paramount is what is best for the citizenry and society at large. The Google, Facebook et al cases ought to have been a non sequitur from the very beginning as the general will of the populus should have nailed them dead from the outset but it never happened for many reasons, including the highly addictive properties that Big Tech deliberately designed into their pernicious technologies. Tragically, over the past 40-50 years or so, many traditional ethical values which would have put the kibosh on these Tech Giants long before they'd gotten started have largely evaporated as our societies have become more homogeneous and international—nowadays, the lowest common ethical denominator is just that—pretty low. Given that societies are still struggling with very basic ethical issues such as withering of our hard-fought democratic processes, rise of totalitarian power from both governments and Tech Giants then we're not even at ground level when it comes to solving the ethics of ML and AI. For starters, there are serious cultural differences (hence little or no agreement) over how to resolve the infamous trolley car/moral dilemma problem‡. At present, it is abundantly clear the various societies of an international world are not able reach a common worldview or consensus on this conceptual problem let alone a specific ML/AI incarnation thereof, consequentially we have precious little hope for solving even greater moral and ethical dilemmas that undoubtedly will be created by these fast-advancing technologies. It seems to me very first steps must be taken to forge a common moral and ethical consensus for humankind. We need to first begin with the easiest problems to agree upon such as the inviolability of human life and then work upwards. Expect this to take a long time and it will. Of course, the huge dilemma is how to hold technologists and technocrats sans ethics (and common sense) at bay whilst various consensuses are being reached. I am strongly of the opinion that (as I was fortunate enough to experience), we should begin by ensuring that core training for all engineers, scientists, technologists and technocrats—and for that matter, politicians—also include compulsory training in key philosophical subjects, especially ethics, moral philosophy and formal logic as well as basic/essential political science (the study of government). I'm realistic enough to realise that despite such ethical studies being both core and compulsory, there is every that they will only have a minor impact in changing human nature if anything at all (at least in the beginning). Nevertheless their compulsory nature will achieve one major objective which is that every engineer, scientist and technologist and technocrat will be forced to learn the essentials of morals and ethics as they should be practiced in our increasingly technological societies. Thus when their technologies go belly-up and damage both societies and people lives, with compulsory training in ethics under their belts, the Zuckerbergs of this world will no longer be able to claim ignorance as an excuse for their negligence, they will not be able to say that they 'did not know' or that 'we never considered that outcome'. The only likely excuse that they'll have left to argue is that of 'force majeure'—and it'd had better be a pretty good instance thereof or they'll be toast. …And good riddance. Good effort George, keep the pressure up. _____________ † As many will be aware, the uncomplicated definition of 'metaphysics' is 'above and beyond physics', that's to say ontological a priori deductive concepts of existence, of being, of becoming, reality etc. As far as Physics is concerned, metaphysics deals with ethereal, intangible concepts that are inconsequential to its Laws but nevertheless they're key to human existence as we know it, what it is to be human, our values, beliefs and ethics are metaphysical. ‡ The Moral Machine experiment , Nature, vol. 563, pp59-64, 2018-10-24 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0637-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0637-6 Especially note graphs in Fig. 3: 'Country-level clusters'. * Incidentally, Alfred Nobel was a student of chemist Ascanio Sobrero. ___

201 points by malloryerik 8y ago

microdrum 8y ago

When Trump and Soros sound the same, they're probably right.

m3nu 8y ago

Any non-paywalled version?

est31 8y ago
https://www.wired.com/story/mortal-danger-chinas-push-into-ai/ https://www.wired.com/story/mortal-danger-chinas-push-into-a...
- crishoj 8y ago
  Mods, please consider changing the link to this. [edit] From the speaker himself: https://www.georgesoros.com/2019/01/24/remarks-delivered-at-the-world-economic-forum-2/ https://www.georgesoros.com/2019/01/24/remarks-delivered-at-...
malloryerik 8y ago
It's still an inconvenience but you can read the article for free by registering.

Animats 8y ago

AI is only in a supporting role here. It's massive data collection and storage at low cost that's the problem. Machine learning just helps to digest the data. Tech has solved the problem of previous attempts at Big Brother - you just couldn't afford enough watchers to watch everybody all the time. Now, you can. It's even profitable.

est31 8y ago
And tech will also solve the power problem of autocratic regimes. Right now, a dictator can't control every single individual in the country on their own. They need police that can search your apt at 5am because you made a blog post critical of the government. They need lawyers to convict you, prison guards, etc. In such regimes, the dictator still has to put people into places of power so that the will of the dictator is executed. But people can refuse orders, and they can declare someone else to be president. Coups are one of the biggest dangers for dictators, and many rebellions are semi-coups where people in power just step aside, letting the rebels do their thing. Now, enter AI. Now the dictator could give all that power to an AI instead of intermediaries. An entire government run by two entities: the Dictator, with direct control over the AI that runs the remainder. All the bomb-equipped drones, all the self-driving tanks, all the bipedal robots with their machine guns. All the robot prison-guards and the robot judges to put critical people into prison. If this AI would answer only to the head of government, then any kind of upheaval would become unrealistic and impossible.
- speedplane 8y ago
  The technology isn't a fundamental change, it's just a more deadly weapon.
  - mrob 8y ago
    It's not more deadly. Weapons of mass destruction already exist. The difference isn't increased ability to do harm, it's increased ability to target harm. It's no fun being dictator when all your subjects are dead, so old-fashioned WMDs are of limited use. Sufficiently advanced AI lets you selectively kill the troublemakers without harming the compliant subjects, and without having to rely on potential competitors for your dictator position. This is a fundamental change.
    - speedplane 8y ago
      Not a fundamental change. There are plenty of tools for selectively targeting individuals (e.g., guided munitions, watch lists, teams of agents that monitor your every move). It could potentially reduce the resources required for such selective targeting, but if past dictatorships are any indication, these resources are not the limiting factor.

raz32dust 8y ago

This reminds me of the "Do artifacts have politics" paper by Langdon Winner [1]. He argues that technologies have inherent political traits. Nuclear power is considered to be supportive of autocratic political systems since nuclear power plants need centralized planning and networks to be effective. Solar power is considered democratic since anyone can harness it. It's an interesting paper and definitely worth a read. On similar lines, I feel internet is a democratizing force, since it allowed anyone to publish data and anyone to consume it, and is (somewhat) difficult to control centrally. AI, on the other hand, is a centralizing force, since the most powerful AI can be managed and powered by the most powerful institutions. [1] https://www.cc.gatech.edu/~beki/cs4001/Winner.pdf https://www.cc.gatech.edu/~beki/cs4001/Winner.pdf

joe_the_user 8y ago
Indeed, one could consider machine learning an authoritarian technology if given power over individuals. AI's fundamental problem is it winds-up being a "results oriented" approach where individuals characteristics are weighed by black-box systems and the individual is judged without any recourse or even any exact idea what the criteria is.
- trevyn 8y ago
  Well, we’re judged by human brains every day, which are even more opaque.
  - sgt101 8y ago
    This is a sorta standard rejoiner.. but other humans should have to account/take responsibility for their decisions, and part of that process is that other humans should judge individuals as individuals which almost by definition machine learned classifiers cannot. ML is great for dealing with massproduced artefacts, or standardised processes, but it's just not the right tool for reasoning over domains that are not full of approximately similar things. That the Chinese government (and Google, and Facebook) think that humans are in that category speaks volumes about them.
  - 8y ago

raverbashing 8y ago

Even though the reason why the author has these positions is perfectly understandable, I don't subscribe to his views, and there is an issue in complete liberalization of movements across borders. Fundamentally, AI is not a threat or a blessing, it is a technology.

buboard 8y ago

here is an idea: instead of sacrificing AI maybe we should sacrifice organized governments.

beefield 8y ago
It has been tried in the world history many times and is currently being tried in some parts of Somalia. Most of people do not prefer that, so if you do, maybe you should move there? My guess is that we are about to see "No True Scotsman" very soon after I post this.

noahmbarr 8y ago

Full video of his speech. His delivery adds to the message: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZGoXP-BWoc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZGoXP-BWoc

nabla9 8y ago
The transcript of the speech. https://www.georgesoros.com/2019/01/24/remarks-delivered-at-the-world-economic-forum-2/ https://www.georgesoros.com/2019/01/24/remarks-delivered-at-...

Proven 8y ago

All large scale human rights violations and crimes in modern history were committed by governments, mostly large and "democratic". AI is not a threat. Big government is.

baruchthescribe 8y ago

There's a special place picked out for George Soros. Really special.

dictum 8y ago
Without a clear explanation of your statement (why does he deserve this euphemized special place?) this is just a personal attack, which seems to be the common response to any assertion or action coming from him.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
  It’s not a personal attack, it’s a thinly veiled death thread.
leducw 8y ago
I've never gotten this hate for Mr. Soros. Could you take some time and perhaps expound on why you dislike him? It'd be of great interest to me if I had an individual perspective on why he's disliked rather than the odd mishmash of reasons I find online about him.
- charlesism 8y ago
  I've never gotten this hate for Mr. Soros Das Magazin published a German article about that a couple weeks back https://www.dasmagazin.ch/2019/01/12/die-finkelstein-formel https://www.dasmagazin.ch/2019/01/12/die-finkelstein-formel Buzzfeed published an English translation: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hnsgrassegger/george-soros-conspiracy-finkelstein-birnbaum-orban-netanyahu https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hnsgrassegger/george-so...
  - AnonymousPlanet 8y ago
    If this article is correct, could hate for Soros be seen as a sign for a mind tainted by right wing propaganda?

austincheney 8y ago

History has already answered this numerous times. AI is a tool much like a semi-automatic rifle or the printing press. The people who understand it well have an accelerated advantage over those who do not. It is both a good and bad thing depending upon who wields the tool. Like any force multiplier it will be misunderstood (magic) and improperly regulated by both open and closed societies alike. Like with any tool the real victors will be those who adapt it to solve basic immediate problems: a utility.

intended 8y ago
The question people need to address, is whether AI is a tool like the evolution from the Gun to the automatic rifle. OR whether AI is the kind of tool like flight, which made fortresses redundant. We have many areas of thought and society, which have been protected by walls of 'difficulty' making them intractable to large scale, automated and effective manipulation. This may no longer be the case, and AI may well represent the more fundamental change of the second kind.
- austincheney 8y ago
  Why must people know those things? As with any new technology the second and third order consequences are unclear and will likely be entirely surprising beyond any intended (or not) consequences. Here is what my own experience in programming and my understanding of history have taught me. A sufficiently advanced understanding of a useful technology (doesn't even have to be new) allows a small group dominance over spaces traditionally controlled by large organizations or heavy investments in large technology. This causes fear and panic when it becomes clear. The common current solution is to attempt to purchase the competition, but what if the competition is not available for purchase? Perhaps the most common fallacy regarding new technology is that you can destroy the competition with a sufficiently large force. History has proven this false numerous times and it remains false with modern technology. Consider the battle of Argincout, battle of Crecy, or the establishment of the Yuan dynasty. Consider how much current corporations are investing in AI research with thousands of dedicated developers. A superior technology can easily compete with Amazon's AI unit, for example, even though you may have a team of 5 developers competing against their 5000. The reason why is because it takes time to learn and develop a superior understanding of technology necessary to create the superior technology while the army of competing developers will find friction abandoning their perceptions of reality even when confronted with critical evidence. An army of 5000 developers is an establishment of culture, practices, identify, and perceptions resulting in a large stagnant wall.

elvecinodeabajo 8y ago

Screw Soros.

bryanrasmussen 8y ago

Some thoughts I just had, and haven't really developed yet beyond the initial moment of having them: It used to be you would see theories about the internet threat to Closed societies, and I suppose those threats are real too. But perhaps the threats to closed societies are the obvious threats, and the threats to the open societies were not immediately obvious, and thinking on this is somewhat murky but if there are a bunch of obvious threats and a bunch of hidden threats then I guess people guard against the obvious threats. Finally maybe anything that threatens one type of human society must also threaten all types, only the threats are changed around for each type.

jpalomaki 8y ago
Maybe one such example is the effect of "democratization of information distribution". Combine this with standard analytics (and in future AI) and you have machinery that can deliver highly targeted messages, each crafted to have maximum effect on the opinions of a specific recipient. In the centralized Internet (think Facebook, Twitter, Google) this is something that we can to some extent understand and maybe control. In a proper decentralized world, this won't be possible. Privacy features will also protect the identities of trolls. In the past, the content distributed was limited by the imagination of people. In future, no such limitation exists. You will have AI (think generative adversarial networks) learning to create fake content tailored for specific persons.
pjc50 8y ago
Open societies are threats to closed societies, and vice versa. An open world is stable; a world of closed societies is also fairly stable internally, although much more likely to go to war with each other. The idea of "the end of history" was that Open had won, and it was just a question of mopping up the remaining closed societies. It turns out that maybe the open societies weren't as open as they thought.
- luckylion 8y ago
  > It turns out that maybe the open societies weren't as open as they thought. Or that an "open world" isn't as stable as predicted. Would we even have the same "open" societies without China's repressive society and their willingness to finance western consumption?

Aeolun 8y ago

I think the biggest threat to open societies is that nobody will be able to read the warnings against dangers if they don’t have money to subscribe to a thousand publications :/

ngcc_hk 8y ago

It is not AI. It is the chinese communist party. Otherwise might as well have a paper called “The Internet Threat ...” or “The pen and paper threat ...” The America fought Soviet Union. But ok with a communist party in china, with their all in and everywhere in the society (and copy things on top of contributions) ... it might be too interwoven and too big to ... Good luck.

raverbashing 8y ago
Also the US antagonized the Soviet Union but ultimately it fell by itself. Remains to be seen what will happen in the Chinese case.
- luckylion 8y ago
  Yeah. The SU was much smaller than the US-led side (~300m vs ~700m), it's very different with China, so that will be interesting.
- scottlocklin 8y ago
  The Soviets dumped all their resources into war economy output. The Chinese, consumer goods for the world pay for their war machine, which is basically the strategy the US used to have.
intended 8y ago
But the Chinese party is effective. It may be abhorrent to the societal values of most of the people reading this comment, but its great to MANY people in China. But even that, is a red herring. Strongly controlled and moderated communication networks are currently less brittle than open societal systems. Even on a micro scale, on forums, you can see the ideas the Chinese apply being put to use out of sheer necessity. When you Add in state level actors, with the ability to crunch the numbers, then its entirely possible to create the impression of a consensus in human minds with the use of sock puppets/pseudo-human accounts. The holy grail of such research is discovering intent of speakers or groups of speakers. This will be used to stop hate speech as much as it will to kill dissidents. This is a right mess and any tool created to clean it up (other than human effort), is liable to create more problems.

hoaw 8y ago

I disagree with the premise. The threat from AI, while serious, isn't immediate compared to the threat of using thing like AI to justify inequality. You want to tell me that suddenly the global elite became concerned about relatively esoteric technology to the point where common politicians talk about it like it is the tax rate? And that just happens go with with the effects of globalization, crony capitalism and extreme rent seeking? If the excuse wasn't AI it would be something else.

VvR-Ox 8y ago

You post an article about open societies and then I can't access it without subscribing - LOL Just my opinion then without reading it: - in China we already see what a government can do with technologies including AI to control the behaviour of people - the West always seems to think it's not going to be that evil around here because people are moral superior (I don't believe that - with Hitler in Germany we saw how quickly things can change and with refugees and poor citizens in all those countries we see how badly people can treat others and still think this is correct - even without an AI they'd believe blindly) - too many techies have no moral & ethics. While studying and also in business I saw most of the people just being interested in personal welfare and earning the most money they can TLDR; This (whatever 'this' will be) is definitely going to happen if not enough people find back to humanity - with or without support of IT/AI/... (just tools)

malloryerik 8y ago
Btw you can read the article for free by registering, though it's a hassle. Might be easier to read from some of the alternative links with the same speech posted by others here: https://www.wired.com/story/mortal-danger-chinas-push-into-ai/ https://www.wired.com/story/mortal-danger-chinas-push-into-a... https://www.georgesoros.com/2019/01/24/remarks-delivered-at-the-world-economic-forum-2/ https://www.georgesoros.com/2019/01/24/remarks-delivered-at-...
- VvR-Ox 8y ago
  Thank you very much :) But that's exactly what I dislike: for everything you wanna do on the net you're forced to register. I just can't see it anymore and instantly close stuff that behaves that way.
gnomewascool 8y ago
> You post an article about open societies and then I can't access it without subscribing - LOL While I also dislike being forced to subscribe to read something, free access to publications and open society are completely different things. After all, you had open societies before the digital age, when the vast majority of newspapers were paid. Obviously, the two are linked, but I'm not even sure whether gratis access to all journalism encourages an open society or discourages it. (You can imagine just-so stories for either case: 1. free access to articles → everyone can read them → better informed society → open society 2. free access to articles → high quality journalism goes out of business as they have to compete against zero-cost alternatives → misinformed (or even deliberately disinformed) society → people less likely to fight for openness. )

quantum_state 8y ago

It is self evident that labeling any knowledge, technology, or artifacts to be against open society is completely nonsense and contradicts the very concept of open society itself.

paganel 8y ago
It’s not nonsense, as you cannot carry on mass-killing events like the Holocaust or the Goulag without a modern-ish technology like the railway system. Or, to go directly to the source, let’s use Goebbels [1], as he was explaining that without modern technologies like the radio or the airplane the nazis’ ascent to power wouldn’t have been possible: > It would not have been possible for us to take power or to use it in the ways we have without the radio and the airplane. It is no exaggeration to say that the German revolution, at least in the form it took, would have been impossible without the airplane and the radio. [1] https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb56.htm https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb56...
- acqq 8y ago
  Also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust IBM and the Holocaust
- lucio 8y ago
  So? let's make any modern-ish technology illegal?
  - julienreszka 8y ago
    Why not?
  - kazagistar 8y ago
    Let's make leveraging technology to harm or control those who cannot effectively wield it illegal, or at least compensate for such power imbalances.
- 8y ago

xolorg 8y ago

Are we really listening to what this Nazi collaborator has to say?

bambax 8y ago
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/george-soros-ss-nazi-germany/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/george-soros-ss-nazi-germa... > Claim: During World War II, George Soros was a member of the SS (a Nazi paramilitary organization) or a Nazi collaborator who helped confiscate property from Jews. > Rating: False.
- 0x445442 8y ago
  Not sure I'd hang my hat on Snopes as the arbiter of truth. Soros himself admits in the 60 minutes interview in having a role in the property confiscation. However, IMO his actions at that time are morally justifiable given he was a 14 year old boy attempting to survive in a historically unique context. However, WRT this speech at Davos, I suspect his problem isn't with mass surveillance as much as it is with China performing the mass surveillance. Soros is an ideologue and I'm sure he'd be just fine with the technology being used to support his political agendas.
- xolorg 8y ago
  That article is debunking that he was in the SS. Noone ever claimed he was.
  - bambax 8y ago
    No. It debunks that he was either a member of the SS or a Nazi collaborator. He was neither. Your initial comment, though, asserted that he had been a Nazi collaborator and that therefore we shouldn't listen to him. You can listen to him or not, but your decision shouldn't be based on the fact that he had been a Nazi collaborator, because he never was.
sctb 8y ago
This account has been posting mostly unsubstantive or off-topic comments. In order for this site to gratify our intellectual curiosity, we all have to actually bring some thought to the discussion. Would you please? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

StreamBright 8y ago

This is kind of funny how this article focuses on China and totally leaves our surveillance capitalism (Google, Facebook) out of the picture. If this article was unbiased than we would see example how the AI threat impacted the last election in the USA as well.

VvR-Ox 8y ago
Very good point indeed! That's the western filter bubble and since this trade war it's even more obvious. Typical double standards. The news tell you who the bad guys are and everyone knows that the news never lie...
IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
It’s probably presented in such a way to b convincing to the maximum amount of people. Being addressed to an English-speaking audience that tends to already be suspicious of a Chinese grab for economic power, that serves as common ground to establish rapport with the audience. This being Soros, any connection to the US election would already doom his message to be disgeraded, or even taken as evidence for its opposite.

6d6b73 8y ago

That's funny coming from from George Soros especially that it was delivered at Davos.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

DyslexicAtheist 8y ago

Jacques Ellul makes very similar points in his work La Technique (The Technological Society). He traces how technology and power interplay from the invention of the pocket watch and steam engine, all the way to computers. It's one of the best works I've come across in this space and a must read for Technology critics and advocates alike. I wish it would be (even) more widely read here[1] than it is but finding it in languages others than English or French might prove a challenge. His follow up work "Propaganda The Formation of Mens Attitudes" is also phenomenal. These 2 books are among the best books I discovered in 2018 (if not in the last decade). [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Jacques%20Ellul&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Jacques%20Ellul&sort=byPopular...

renholder 8y ago

Perhaps this is my pessimistic view but wouldn't any government that monitors it's civilians for a potential of being "against" the government (thus, threatening that government's power) be authoritarian? Let's take the second amendment in the states for an example. The right to bear arms is meant to stop oppressive government but you cannot purchase anti-aircraft or anti-tank or anti-anything-really weapons. So, the might of the government's force is disproportionately in favour of the very government that the amendment is proposed to prevent oppression from, yeah? (Not that I'm in favour of overthrowing the government of the states, whatsoever; this is just an observation.) When the Snowden revelations came about, this was the equivalent of China's list of people to send for "re-education". Granted, in the states, there's been no re-education (that we're aware of), it's only a small step from taking that information gleamed from those "lists" and doing just that. At what point do we draw the line between authoritarian and not? Shouldn't the very notion of putting people on a list count? After all, it was a list of people that suffered the consequences of the Night of the Long Knives, was it not? I fail to see how an open society would be considered "open", if it includes secretive programs like that. Isn't the principle of secret programs against a government's citizenry the antithesis of an open society? Maybe I'm missing something here but to say that there are any open societies left (while probably dystopian in nature and bereft of any hope of the future) is beguiling the very fact that there doesn't seem to be very many (if any at all) open societies left. (I'm probably talking bullshit circular logic, so feel free to ignore this tirade of discontent.)

DougN7 8y ago
I think maybe you’re comparing “open society” to utopia. There will always be bad actors that have to be accounted for and handled in some way. What is bad and how bad is always up for debate, but their existence will always be with us. In my opinion that requires lists. I do agree that most countries including the US have gone too far from what I’ve read.
- a1369209993 8y ago
  Or you could use these things called "juries" and "trials" and "laws", but that's inconvenient and sometimes results in having to admit that the alleged bad people weren't actually doing anything wrong, so people in power don't like those.

hilbert42 8y ago

I've been interested in science and engineering since my youngest days and I've always considered myself a hacker from way back. At school, my fellow schoolmates nicknamed me 'The Boffin' as back then the terms 'hacker' and 'nerd' hadn't yet been coined. My profession is electronics engineering and IT and for my entire career I've followed and worked with the latest developments in the field. Right: I'm an insatiable technophile! My other studies were in philosophy (ethics, etc.) and government and over the years I've found my formal training in them truly invaluable, they've broadened my perception and worldview about the ways science and engineering dovetail into society and make the world a better place by improving the lives of its citizens. I have to agree with the tenet of George Soros' message for many reasons but from my perspective perhaps the most significant one is that we are moving at a frenetic pace headlong from an industrial age into a post industrial one that's driven by advanced technologies (and primarily through the use of information). We're entering a new era whose paradigms will have morphed into ones so very different from anything humankind has ever before witnessed and the changes are coming so very fast that they'll almost certainly cause fear and social disruption on an unprecedented scale unless we act now to adapt technology to our human needs and not those of governments and large multinational corporations—after all, they ought to be our servants, not vice versa as it is at present. At present, society is both ill prepared and ill equipped to handle monumental changes of such a magnitude without considerable preparation, and we've hardly even begun to discuss the matter let alone draw up viable plans for society to adapt to them. Leaving ML and AI aside for a moment, let's just look at the metaphysical† aspects of the Google/Facebook revolution. Both behemoths, but especially Facebook, are floundering in the mire over very important issues such as those concerning privacy, fake news, damaging effects on democracy and politics in general, and there's precious little light on the horizon to shine upon any potential solution let alone any commonly-agreed methodologies or viable options. Let's look at what has effectively happened here: internet technologies evolved to a stage where worldwide networks such as Facebook became feasible and thus they were built without any real thought of the wider social consequences other than the paramount need to make money. Zuckerberg et al would like us all to believe that they had actually executed both their financial and social objectives as they'd planned but as we now know this is far from being the full truth. Not only did Big Tech companies have secret plans all of their own with the deliberate intention of exploiting users but they kept these intentions hidden from both governments and users alike thus no independent scrutiny was possible until the inevitable leaks occurred. The lesson from this is that with no oversight, undesirable metaphysical effects arose from their complex systems the consequences of which have come back to bite them. Inevitably, this will happen again and again with ML and AI unless careful and sophisticated (and mandatory) regulation is introduced. To think otherwise would be foolhardy in the extreme. It's clear to many that these 'geniuses' of Big Tech would have been fully cognizant of and understood how new physical properties often emerge from complex systems that are not foreseen from just examining their less complex building blocks. Moreover, similar but metaphysical processes evolve in human minds when they encounter complex systems. For instance, examining fine architecture brings an aesthetic experience to humans that no examination of a brick to the nth degree reveals. Therefore, there can be little if any excuse for Zuckerberg and his cronies for not anticipating in advance emergent human problems (such as those that have arisen from the Cambridge Analytica fiasco). When in 1847 Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero* invented nitroglycerine and immediately perceived its extreme dangers he became so scared and concerned about what he'd actually done that he kept the fact secret for over a year. However, unlike Sobrero who clearly had ethics on his side, the likes of Zuckerberg et al never gave any serious consideration of the consequences of their 'inventions'. As day follows night, they were expecting human problems but they simply ignored them until it was too late. Their lack of concern for humans—the hands that actually feed them—is palpable in the extreme; ethically and morally they're bankrupt. As history illustrates yet again, we're now well past the point where it's safe to leave extremely powerful technologies in the hands of political novices who possess so precious few ethics—or whose few ethics are easily trumped on by their zealotry for certain technological fixes and or financial objectives. The fact that they may be the inventors or owners of newer technologies such as Facebook is irrelevant; what matters first and paramount is what is best for the citizenry and society at large. The Google, Facebook et al cases ought to have been a non sequitur from the very beginning as the general will of the populus should have nailed them dead from the outset but it never happened for many reasons, including the highly addictive properties that Big Tech deliberately designed into their pernicious technologies. Tragically, over the past 40-50 years or so, many traditional ethical values which would have put the kibosh on these Tech Giants long before they'd gotten started have largely evaporated as our societies have become more homogeneous and international—nowadays, the lowest common ethical denominator is just that—pretty low. Given that societies are still struggling with very basic ethical issues such as withering of our hard-fought democratic processes, rise of totalitarian power from both governments and Tech Giants then we're not even at ground level when it comes to solving the ethics of ML and AI. For starters, there are serious cultural differences (hence little or no agreement) over how to resolve the infamous trolley car/moral dilemma problem‡. At present, it is abundantly clear the various societies of an international world are not able reach a common worldview or consensus on this conceptual problem let alone a specific ML/AI incarnation thereof, consequentially we have precious little hope for solving even greater moral and ethical dilemmas that undoubtedly will be created by these fast-advancing technologies. It seems to me very first steps must be taken to forge a common moral and ethical consensus for humankind. We need to first begin with the easiest problems to agree upon such as the inviolability of human life and then work upwards. Expect this to take a long time and it will. Of course, the huge dilemma is how to hold technologists and technocrats sans ethics (and common sense) at bay whilst various consensuses are being reached. I am strongly of the opinion that (as I was fortunate enough to experience), we should begin by ensuring that core training for all engineers, scientists, technologists and technocrats—and for that matter, politicians—also include compulsory training in key philosophical subjects, especially ethics, moral philosophy and formal logic as well as basic/essential political science (the study of government). I'm realistic enough to realise that despite such ethical studies being both core and compulsory, there is every that they will only have a minor impact in changing human nature if anything at all (at least in the beginning). Nevertheless their compulsory nature will achieve one major objective which is that every engineer, scientist and technologist and technocrat will be forced to learn the essentials of morals and ethics as they should be practiced in our increasingly technological societies. Thus when their technologies go belly-up and damage both societies and people lives, with compulsory training in ethics under their belts, the Zuckerbergs of this world will no longer be able to claim ignorance as an excuse for their negligence, they will not be able to say that they 'did not know' or that 'we never considered that outcome'. The only likely excuse that they'll have left to argue is that of 'force majeure'—and it'd had better be a pretty good instance thereof or they'll be toast. …And good riddance. Good effort George, keep the pressure up. _____________ † As many will be aware, the uncomplicated definition of 'metaphysics' is 'above and beyond physics', that's to say ontological a priori deductive concepts of existence, of being, of becoming, reality etc. As far as Physics is concerned, metaphysics deals with ethereal, intangible concepts that are inconsequential to its Laws but nevertheless they're key to human existence as we know it, what it is to be human, our values, beliefs and ethics are metaphysical. ‡ The Moral Machine experiment , Nature, vol. 563, pp59-64, 2018-10-24 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0637-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0637-6 Especially note graphs in Fig. 3: 'Country-level clusters'. * Incidentally, Alfred Nobel was a student of chemist Ascanio Sobrero. ___