ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: I think, therefore I find humans just seem to be an annoying waste of space.

 

(Cartoon credit: timoelliot.com)

I love the fact that no one has yet figured out what makes humans self-aware.  We have it, we're terrified of losing it, but we haven't a clue what, in the brain, causes us to have this capacity.

Now, of course, the media is full of talk about Artificial Intelligence, or AI.  Well intelligence is different to self-awareness.  Intelligence is defined as 'the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills', whereas the definition of self-awareness is, 'conscious knowledge of one's own character and feelings'.

A computer acquires knowledge in the form of data in a stream of binary input.  In fact, you can't really call it knowledge because the very word implies knowing or knowingness, which to my way of thinking is allied to consciousness.  The computer's memory, or registers, hold banks of data and a program held in other registers tells it what to do with the data.  Now this explanation is pretty simple but then so are computers, no matter how large or complex their programming becomes.  What computers are, however, is really, really fast; speed of light fast.

With a sufficiently complex program, i.e. set of instructions, created by a human, computers can 'solve' problems, mathematical and logical.  But remember, it's the program that tells it how to do that.  The computer has as much awareness of what it's doing as your average toaster, or toothpick, for that matter, so don't get the idea that AI is anywhere near self-conscious or aware.  However, one day, just maybe, given that we don't know how self-awareness comes about, perhaps a computer program and an enormous data bank might create some kind of fusion, fission or whatever, and come into a state of awareness.

I seriously doubt it because I feel that somehow biology and chemistry come into it, but I, like everybody else, don't know.  I asked a friend the other day, "What happens when they can upload my self-awareness and memory into a computer?"  To be able to do so is called 'singularity'.  I then added, "Will I be able to see, touch, feel emotion and all the important aspects of being human?"

His reply was that it would be a 'virtual' existence, but that would be a program, not real.  In order to be real, biology and chemistry must be involved, not just metals, electricity, printed circuits and silicon chips.  Anyway, we've got a long way to go before that happens, but it will happen eventually, I believe.  You're not going to be able to stop scientists doing it either because, once those who can are on a roll, they'll all be trying to make it happen first.  It seems to be human nature to invent something before worrying about the consequences, which does make you wonder about our level of intelligence, in the sense of real intelligence, which is wisdom, and our ability to create it in our own likeness.

In the Bible it states that, "God created mankind in his own image".  Well that's a worry in itself, isn't it?  That leaves this highly imperfect species at the point in its evolution where it's about to try to play God, so if a self-aware, artificial being pops out of this innovation, we'd better watch out.

Think about it.  Humans are very high maintenance.  We eat and that requires agriculture and slaughter.  We need a lot of space, in the form of residences.  We move around continually, creating air pollution.  Oh yes, and we need air.  We are perishable and rot once dead.  We reproduce with gay abandon without thinking of all of the above.  We require medicines, surgery, prosthetics and psychological counselling.  Some are prone to killing others willy-nilly, even at the international level of war.  We covet and we create inequalities amongst ourselves by gender, race and religion and then we deify such unworthy types as film and rock stars.  Many people are corrupt.

How is this going to improve if we create beings similar to ourselves?  Or are we going to create beings without emotion and only logic?  I doubt that too.  Once the powers that be start, they're not going to stop at emotionless, self-aware beings, because these beings would find us totally illogical and therefore a pest and therefore, according to the logic programmed into them, something to be eradicated.  Of course, you could put stop gaps in their programming to avoid this, but your logic circuit boards would have to be pretty bug free or your AI being may put two and two together, or in their case, 10 and 10.

Another problem is that if these beings can physically function with limbs and a know how of how to build themselves, they can do their own self-improvements.  Eventually the food consuming, air absorbing beings that age, become decrepit and need care will become a roadblock in the path of progress.  Perhaps the AI could be programmed with a sense of beauty or with lust for the physical, because they'd have to appreciate what is physical to tolerate us, but I honestly don't think that those things can be programmed.

Frankly I think it's going to be pretty boring world without humans and I also don't imagine the AI beings are going to appreciate our varied fauna and flora, care for them or wonder at creation, but if humans do make the AI beings anything like us, eventually they'll get bored and start doing all the illogical things we do to stave off madness.

END

THE EFFECT OF TECHNOLOGY ON HOW WE DRESS.

 

I will first state that this post flits about like a demented mosquito but it comes together in the end if you follow the threads and are patient.  Just enjoy the journey.

They say that clothes make the man.  I'm not sure where that leaves women but it seems that the more technologically advanced we become, the less well dressed we are.  I have often wondered upon this discrepancy and have decided to address it, forgive the pun.

Clothing throughout history has indicated the status of the person wearing it because of the fineness or richness of the fabric or even the rareness of the fur or skin of which it was made.  Dyes and decorations also indicated status and only some classes were allowed to wear certain dyes in certain cultures.  Metals and precious stones were also used as embellishments and the wealthier you were, the rarer of these you were able to obtain and wear while the poorer or lower classes often used cheaper metals and glass to emulate those worn by their wealthier counterparts.

It is interesting to note that mankind is the only creature to clothe itself.  Animals, however, have evolved to display colors used for camouflage or to catch the attention of mates.  My favorite animal to provide an example of this is, in fact, a bird; the extraordinary Peacock.  The female is a dull grey but the male's plumage is fabulous and what a performance he puts on to win a female.

How, I often wonder, does a creature evolve and adapt to its environment in order to ensure the success of future generations when the animal cannot see itself?  How does it compare its appearance to that of its environment?  One of life's mysteries is to understand how the brain stores the details of the animal's surroundings in its data bank and passes that information to its genes so its progeny can gradually adapt to fit the environment.

I don't for one moment believe it is accidental but that the mind is, even at the level of a non self aware animal, the most extraordinarily clever organ.  We have not yet begun to really comprehend its complexity although we have begun to understand what parts of the brain are responsible for managing particular parts of our body.

Another interesting thought is that, perhaps, because homo sapiens did become sapient, or was on his way to becoming sapient, that the brain worked towards this aspect of his evolution rather than camouflage as the brain would become the means by which he could protect himself.  The subconscious, or perhaps the Limbic system of the brain, allied with its more evolved lobes, is intelligent at a level we cannot understand, in that it has come up with a way to direct the body to protect itself by evolving to disguise its exterior and also making itself attractive to a potential mate.

Now some people and, no doubt, many scientists would argue that this is nonsense and it's all an accident of nature.  To them I say bah, humbug.  We don't even know why or how we came to be, self conscious or otherwise.  What our brains are capable of is, frankly, impressive, but at the same time, not much.  We cannot possibly think our brains have evolved to their full extent.  If we do we are being like the smart alec in the schoolyard or the teenager who is quite sure his parents are idiots.  He or she thinks they have discovered thought and their parents are imbeciles.  They are wrong.  We are all imbeciles.

But back to clothes.  Since the Middle Ages, men's and women's standards of dress have been rigid and dictated by the fashion of the times.  Women's curvaceous forms have been held in by corsets that defy the ability of their lungs to expand and, for men, it wasn't until Beau Brummel first wore long pants instead of knee breeches that were accompanied by stockings that the current fashion of trousers was born.  His influence on fashion has remained legend or, to this day, women might be fighting their male partners for their pantyhose.

The modern couturiers of today favour stick thin woman and this brings me back to why the saying is that clothes make the man.  Men carry their fat deposits on their stomachs and under their chins.  This provides a certain uniformity for designers to work with.  Men look great in uniform too thanks to their inverted triangular shapes while women rarely do.  It is the skeleton that gives fashion structure.  Women, however, put on fat in all manner of places.  How can a couturier possibly create fashion for female curves without knowing where those curves will appear?  Hence they choose tall, rectangular, fat free women to inspire their designs and on whom they look good because they do not possess a stray mound of fat to ruin the line of the garment.

Recently the curvaceous rear of Kim Kardashian has become vogue.  She has a tiny waist and no overhanging saddles protruding from her rear.  I still, however, don't regret the liposuction I had on my saddle thighs at forty.  They and my rear were the only part of me that weren't thin.  It made buying slacks hell but that was pre-elastane, which became my best friend.  I used to have to choose slacks and skirts a size too large to accommodate my hips but that swam around my waist.  Thanks to the liposuction I fit clothes better now.  Women have so many different types of attire to choose from because there are so many varied shapes of the female body and they have to find one that fits theirs.  This is why, I believe, clothes do not make the woman.  We are not the bespoke gender and just have to choose what works for us.   

This brings me to the question, why are our clothes less formal now, more deshabillé?

I have a number of theories.  One is that fabrics became more comfortable thanks to manufacturers creating stretch fabrics but that doesn't really explain it.  The other is that, over time, our technological achievements have become many.  In past times, pre technology, it was the ability to construct complex edifices, for example the pyramids, that showed how clever an animal man is.  Using natural fibres such as cotton and silk, spinning and then weaving them into fabrics also showed intelligence that set us apart from the animals.  Until the industrial revolution, apart from the discovery of dynamite, the refining of metals and creating tools with them, language and mathematics, only these accomplishments set us apart from the non self aware beasts.

These things, however, began to pale into insignificance when mankind hit the twentieth century.  Of course the next advances wouldn't have been possible without the former, but mankind was beginning to take the old ones for granted.  We harnessed electricity and what a rocket boost that gave to so many types of manufacture, not to mention opening up the opportunity for all kinds of new inventions that could be powered by it.  It was like a superhighway of potential and reached its zenith in the computer and, following that, the Internet.

It was only fifty years before I was born that man invented a machine that could fly.  Women wore long dresses and didn't have the vote.  There were no domestic refrigerators, televisions or cars.  The car had been invented but hardly a soul owned one, nor was the means of mass production yet invented.  By the time I was thirty all these inventions had been part of our lives for years.  Baby boomers were truly the first to live in the modern age and not much seemed to change in a big way, except culturally and in regard to women's rights, until the eighties.  All this time, however, computers had been evolving as well as shrinking and satellites were being launched into space and being used for communication.  That nifty gadget, long imagined by science fiction and secretly lusted for by all humans, the mobile phone came into being.  At first they were the size of large house bricks but no one cared.  The Jetsons had come to life.  Oddly this one invention made man and womankind feel they had truly arrived in the imagined future.  But we hadn't seen anything yet.  By the nineties the time was ripe and the Internet was born and this changed everything.

After this things may have looked the same but everything was different.  Mail became electronic, telephone conversations became text, mobile phones and the Internet mated and created a superbeing: the Smart phone.  We took photos and videos with it and instantly sent them to someone anywhere in the world.  Towers were built to ensure global coverage for all who wanted a phone, the Internet or both.  The world became truly global and people suddenly felt it was harder to become important in a world where everyone counted and could have their say about anything.

It became very hard for governments, institutions, criminals and just ordinary people to hide anything but they still tried.  The one detriment to this overwhelming connectedness is the inability to be covert, but naturally it has, like any cloud, a silver lining.  How you see this is a bit like how you see a half full/empty glass.  It depends on your point of view.  It is wonderful to talk to someone you are not with who is half way around the globe.  It is wonderful to bank instantly, pay instantly, shop online, stream movies and music.  You can even become an Instagram sensation if that's your thing and you've Botoxed yourself, plumped up your lips and are willing to display your assets to the entire planet.  You can write 140 character statements (now 280) on Twitter, if you can be profound enough in few enough words, to say something world shaking, but presidents have tried and ended up with their feet in their mouth.

Watching all this from my Baby Boomer point of view, I'm amused.  I personally feel that what we had by the eighties was enough.  I am accused now, when I don't upgrade my technology, of not keeping up, to which I say, "I've watched it from the beginning and, frankly, I'm tired of it.  Tired of seeing planned obsolescence so that I have to upgrade to the latest version of Word, or whatever, as it won't fit on my old computer.  I'm tired of greed and I was happy before all this."

I'm not against all this innovation of course, I just no longer care.  Yes I love my Smartphone but the other day one of my Apps disappeared because they had upgraded it for newer phones.  I'm not going to buy a newer phone until the present one dies of old age.

But what has this to do with clothes?  Well, obviously, everything.  We are way past trying to show how far we are above other animals and so what we wear is no longer a means of showing how far we have progressed from our cave dwellings.  We can now be as shabby as a caveman because our technology has kicked clothing way down the ranking scale.

Just remember, however, that disasters can occur and we still require all the knowledge we've picked up over the millennia and may one day need it again to survive.  That's why school children should learn handwriting, food growing, fire making and all the basic arts of survival.  We must not take technology for granted.  Only a few people have actually contributed to the inventions that have taken us this far and we just learn the skills to survive in our present world.  I think that's dangerous.  I think we all need survival courses and books.  Yes, we definitely need printed books because they endure and are not beamed to our computers by a satellite that may, one day, not be there.

And you thought this article was just about clothing.  I hope you enjoyed it anyway.

END. 

DAMNED DINGS AND THOUGHT POLICE.

 

Altogether too many things in this world ding at you.  My phone, microwave, iron, fire alarm and watch all ding at me.  A lot of the time I have to figure out which of them it is.  All dings have significance but the sound's immediate effect is just to irritate me.

It means I should do something, or have failed to do something.  Car's dings are the worst. The one I drive for work, not mine or I would have silenced it somehow, has more dings than I've had hot dinners.

It dings continuously if I haven't put on my seat belt, if my passenger hasn't put on theirs, if a door is open, if the trunk is open, if the handbrake is on and even if I get out of the car and the key is still inside.  It dings if my passenger takes off their seat belt as we arrive at our destination.  If I fail to put on my belt for too long it dings with absolute hysteria.  I would much prefer a ding that tells me my lipstick has faded and needs reapplying or my hair needs combing because I never forget my seat belt.

I don't need a car to harass me.  I don't mind it being occasionally informative, but its concern for my well being is completely over the top.  I wouldn't buy a car that is such a nag. Unfortunately deactivating the ding device would probably result in it refusing to drive. Worse, all new cars seem to be fitted with this annoyance.

At the very least a ding, which is an alert, should be informative.  It should say: 'door', 'trunk', 'seat belt', 'handbrake' or 'don't forget your key you idiot'.

I blame the insurance companies.  They will do anything to avoid paying out and therefore have stipulated that all these safety devices should be installed.  This means if one is found not to be working at the time of an accident, aha, I bet it's one more reason for them not to pay up.

The same goes for fluorescent work clothes.  They are everywhere and global to boot.  I shudder at the thought of individualism being replaced by uniformity because we are being dictated to by business interests.  Imagine if your employee falls off a roof without his fluorescent vest on and the insurance company won't pay up because the ground didn't see him coming.

These outfits don't suddenly make the wearer more safety conscious in the way that Superman's suit allows him to fly.  I personally don't believe in protecting idiots.  I wouldn't go out of my way to hurt one but I confess to being sick and tired of avoiding pedestrians who attempt to incorporate themselves into my tyre treads.

I am a great believer in Darwin's survival of the fittest.  Modern society is just not practising it anymore.  Instead it is protecting idiots and thus allowing them to breed more of their own kind. The world's population has jumped from 3 billion in the 1960's to 7 billion today. Modern medicine, better nutrition and lack of world wars are responsible.  Oddly that great boon to women's emancipation, the contraceptive pill, appears to have had little impact on the blowout of the global population.

Why then are we protecting idiots?  Don't we want more intelligent, responsible humans? Strangely idiots come in all varieties.  They can be university professors, successful entrepreneurs and even charitable types.  Yet, they may still not take responsibility for their own safety and frankly this galls me.  I like a well rounded intellect that covers all the bases.

I admit that some safety wear, of the fluorescent kind, is helpful; such as on road workers and builders where they need to be highly visible.  However, there are plenty of jobs in which they are useless.

I had a job at a company with rigid safety rules.  When I needed to walk between any of the buildings, I had to wear a fluorescent jacket and walk on striped markings leading to the next building. I was so busy following the lines that I had to glance up to make sure trucks that were meant to avoid me on this special pathway, weren't going to hit me anyway. I trust no one.  I don't need to wear a stupid jacket to cross a road because I take responsibility for myself.

The second day I was there, one of the trucks had just exited the driveway going no more than 10kph and managed to spill a large portion of its load of plaster powder all over the road.  Safety regulations do not a brain make.  

When I applied for an office job at a recruitment agency I was forced to watch a safety video .  It was about how not to cause or have accidents in an office; you know, not to put boxes in front of the fire exit; not to throw hot things into the waste bin.  It was so mind bogglingly banal, so insulting that when I came out to Reception I asked when they were going to make the adult version.

You can inform people about activities that may prove dangerous but it won't stop fools from doing them.  Such people don't believe that bad things will happen to them.  They are the kind who stand outside in lightening storms and think the other guy will get struck.  What a shock they get when it's them.

As for dings, this is just the beginning of machines telling us what to do.  I think it's time to tell car manufacturers exactly how much and about what they allow a car to ding us. Gradually our wonderful technological devices are being used to annoy us.  I really don't think this was the idea when it all began.

Why must these infringements into our personal space be part and parcel of technology? We're only just at the start of the technological revolution and now is the best time to make rules about what we allow it to do.  Don't leave it too late or it will become too complex to achieve and the old excuse of "We can't do anything about it, it's how it's programmed" will always be the comeback.

We are not only being annoyed but also losing our freedom to these advancements by the minute.  Do your bit and say something to the manufacturers of technologies while they are still human beings.

END.

COMPUTERSAURUS.

Image courtesy of Alamy.com

I bought my first personal computer in 1992.  It was an Amstrad and had a whole 256K of memory.  I had trotted along to a specialised computer sales shop to make this purchase so that I could be properly advised on what I needed.

The sales guy assured me I should not even consider the 356K model.  This was top of the range and only a business would need its memory capacity.  As the years and computers advanced relentlessly forward, I clung obstinately to my little Amstrad.

It saw me through my study for a Communications degree using it's very natty word-processing program Locoscript to write essays.  After completing the degree, at thirty-eight years of age, and finding no suitable employment, I lowered my expectations and looked for secretarial work.   While I hadn't been looking, the job title had become redundant (after centuries of perfectly good use) and become Administration Assistant.

Once upon a time a secretary remained trained for life.  But things had changed, and will continue to change eternally, due to that clever initiative of the computer manufacturers - planned obsolescence.  Armed with my superlative Locoscript skills I headed for the recruitment agents who, very shortly, would decide they ran the universe after they changed their job description to Human Resources.

Again, while I hadn't been looking, secretaries ...ah... administration assistants, had to suddenly know more, much more, than their employers who only had to contend with learning how to operate their new brick-sized mobiles.  Their AA's had to know Wordperfect 4 then 4.1 and MS Word 365 then 4.  This was still the 1990's.  Then someone added insult to injury and invented Excel.

Every year or so a new version of these would come out.  Some offices had old versions. some new ones and you needed to know them all.  It wasn't like walking into an office in the 1970s, before my employment era, when all you had to contend with was a typewriter, a photocopier, a phone and a filing system.  An Administration Assistant had to be multi-skilled because their employer didn't have the time to learn how to operate a computer.  The AA was there for that.

And so began my intensive efforts to train myself up, at some cost, so I could become viable as an employee.  It didn't matter what I did, however, I couldn't keep up with the technology train. Every recruitment agent put me through tests.  I became good enough at these to fudge my way through Excel, Word and Wordperfect at reasonable levels of proficiency. Tragically my typing speed never could creep above 50wpm.  Who cared with all this technology?  Word processors made the job of typing faster than with a typewriter so only a Hansard reporter really needed to be a speed whiz.

The bane of my existence was when a knowledge of MYOB became de rigeur to get a job. I'm no accountant and avoid dealing with books and statements like the plague.  I'm a creative person.  What I can do to numbers isn't worth thinking about.  While I struggled, computers, programs and operating systems continued to change at light speed.

Then along came the Internet and email.  These were wonderful additions but work became more intensive with their introduction.  Mobiles got smaller and then along came laptops and Smartphones.  Managers and employers had to become completely computer savvy, but the result was that they could work faster and harder wherever they were.  They can remote print documents on a printer in their office from their laptop on a plane.  The result of this is that many of them no longer need AA's.  Well I didn't like office work anyway.

It's been a roller coaster ride but it has involved a huge amount of constant learning by the humans who have to absorb the information as it comes along.  In fact we are all, everyone of us, in business or not, suffering from information overload.

Youth get excited at every new development.  My partner says we're getting old because we don't want anymore change.  I disagree.  I was a computer programmer in my youth. That was before everyone involved with computers started describing themselves as in 'I.T.'  They don't differentiate between whether they sell the things, program or install them.  They're just in 'I.T'.

The day I knew computers were going to be a source of irritation to me was the day I took my Labrador to the Vet.  It's not easy holding on to a forty kilo ball of muscle at a reception counter while waiting to pay the fee.  The waiting room isn't big enough for a number of dogs on leashes at a suitable distance from one other.  A dog on a leash near another dog becomes defensive/aggressive because, being restrained, it doesn't feel able to defend itself.  I know this because I had to take said Labrador to special training lessons due to a slight personality disorder he had.  I learned a lot, he didn't.

The Vet's receptionist took my money and attempted to give me a receipt.  The cash register had been hooked up to the computer and couldn't be opened until she found the command to do so embedded deep in the menu.  Another person was called to help.  They "Ummed" and "Aahed" and tried different things.

I suggested they could just open the register, give me my change and a hand written receipt.

"Sorry, no can do.  Only the computer can open it.  The payment option is about six levels down in the menu," they informed me as my arm was being wrenched off.  "New system," they explained.  What wasn't in the 90's?  The whole process took ten minutes. 

Every advance in computer technology has, like Newton's law, been met with an equal and opposite regression.  For example, my dear Amstrad, with its tiny but adequate memory, did not make it into the Millenium.  Word had taken over and I bought a Dell with all the latest Windows stuff.

I like things that last.  My vacuum belonged to my mother and lasted thirty years.  My fridge lasted twenty, my washing machine is still going and is so old it has no lid surround.  To me that is technology at its best.  Ah, but not so the Dell.  After eight years the Internet got a tad sluggish, if not to say, bad tempered.  My stepson told me it was a dinosaur.  I said it suited me fine.  But it couldn't load Windows XE and the Internet finally slowed so much it gave up.

The real problem is not that the computer's memory is too small, it is that the new Word, Excel etc. come with stuffing like the air that fills potato chip packets.  I wouldn't be surprised if there were polystyrene registers labelled as memory.

We've gone from Kilobytes to Megabytes to Gigabytes to, heaven forbid, Terabytes. Somehow the programs worked with mere Kilobytes.  Somehow man got to the moon with the help of a really basic computer.

I want you to think about this.  Apparently a human only uses ten percent of its brain capacity.  What in the hell are we going to do with terabytes?  The home computer just doesn't need that much memory.  Oh, some say it's about speed.  Yes, sure it is.  Just how fast do you want to go?

Most people use the Internet for social drivel.  A little time lag can add some depth and thinking time.  Newspapers on-line have become magazines and their major sections are devoted to which man Kim Kardishan has recently married/divorced or had a baby with.

I've just bought a new laptop as my old computer threw up its mouse and surrendered.  I told it I still loved it but it told me it had become impotent and I should look for a younger one.  I gave in and went for a laptop, my first, which came with Windows 8.  I'm used to Windows but not this version.  This has to be the least user-friendly beast ever invented.  I swear they do it on purpose so they can fix it next time.  But then you have to buy the upgrade.

Give me Computersaurus Rex, please.  Stop all this progression.  Just stop for a while and smell the roses before someone digitizes them. Please.

END