Monthly Archives: August 2017

Facebook has announced that it has shut down an artificial intelligence experiment after the AI forms involved began speaking in their own language. This comes not long after Elon Musk, founder and CEO of aerospace company SpaceX, drew criticism for cautions against AI in a speech to American governors July 15. Musk has maintained the position that AI is civilizations greatest risk, and that laws must be put into place to regulate it. He has been criticized for his approach by many, but Musks concerns should be welcomed amid a seemingly unquestioning, relentlessly popular push to advance technology and shatter boundaries. In light of this progress, humanity and human rights must be fundamentally significant.

That Musk should appeal to American governors is no surprise. Musk, a South African by birth, has described himself as nauseatingly pro-American and has displayed tremendous love and respect for the United States. Musk knows it is a place of opportunity and possibility especially for technology.

History bears this out. Elbert Smith, in his book The Presidencies of Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore, touches upon the historic centrality of technological advancement to the American makeup as the country began to function in earnest: In the development of new technology the brash young nation was unsurpassed. Between 1840 and 1850, budding American inventors applied for 13,297 patents and received 6,033.

These innovations included new ways of cultivating and harvesting grain; steel plows designed to cut through prairie earth; newer and faster trains with greater carrying capacity both for passengers and goods; and Yankee clippers, designed for trade by water. Today as then, men like Elon Musk, American by birth or by immigration, manifest the future.

Musk also knows many Americans carefully consider these innovations. We know innovation can come at a price. New devices, systems, machines, software and other creations can be used for harm as well as for good; and can bear negative consequences as well as positive outcomes. Americans are by no means Luddites seeking to tear up train tracks, but Americans are careful in their approach to particular forms of new technology. We rightfully worry about those who would sooner pay attention to their smartphones than the human being sitting across the restaurant table, to cite one common example.

When the focus is on the machine and not the man, we know there is cause for concern. Interactivity with the machine instead of interaction with our fellow human beings creates a kind of selfish isolation: We are dulled to human connection, and distanced from love of the other. A machine, for the moment, is subject to our control; and a human being other than ourselves is a free agent who cannot be controlled in the same fashion. And so we turn away from the other to ourselves.

In so doing, we lose the respect of recognition of the other, and the other becomes unimportant. We lose what philosopher Roger Scruton refers to as the you-I relationship. Philosopher Gilbert Ryles contention that there is no ghost in the machine (read: human body) that there is no mind or soul that exists within the human body that distinguishes it is artificially upheld by our own choosing of technology. That ghost our God-breathed souls is rendered irrelevant. The human becomes merely a body, or a machine. Our humanity is therefore lost, and those whom we disagree with and cannot control become second to technology. Machines can therein become a means to control those whom with which we disagree, by indoctrination, systematic enforcement or violence. And in the case of Facebooks AI, the machines can take on a life of their own.

Musks precautions have been criticized by many as being grounded more in science fiction films than in reality but it is clear Musks concerns have merit. Typically, we consider movies like those of the Terminator series against a backdrop of dystopian novels and films to attempt to gain a broader understanding of the limits of our progress, and the ramifications of unchecked innovation. History and current events tell us the same. They tell us that free societies and totalitarian regimes tend toward different ends, will use the technology available to them, and will set out to innovate from the present. (Consider the level of technologically-based censorship of information in North Korea.) We know that a free society can descend into tyranny, even predicated on good intentions. Fiction often reflects reality, and fiction can explore the theoretical. Combined, these things prove to be an omen.

We come away from this with a simple philosophical precept that has existed for thousands of years: Just because it can be done, does not mean it should be done. Before we commit to any course, we have to ask fundamental questions regarding our humanity, our culture and our laws. For example, do we allow private ownership of AI forms that have the ability to wield or act as weapons? Do we limit or regulate the kinds of activities and functions these AI forms can engage in, such as work, parenting, sex and inventing their own languages? Do we limit the level and range of intelligence and adaptability an AI form may possess? Do we consider the AI form to have any rights, or a different kind of rights and would this affect our own human rights and humanity as whole? What do we do when a company fails to self-regulate, and a situation like Facebooks is not succinctly concluded? Do we have a right to do anything at all?

This is not alarmism, but proactivism. We must be optimistic, but cautious; and we must be hopeful yet realistic. Technological innovation and progress are beautiful things but these things can also impose dangers. That two of Facebooks AI forms could begin communicating in a language known only to them is immensely disturbing, and removes a barrier between science fiction and reality. Before we act, we have to have answers to fundamental questions else, innovation will be our undoing.

Joe Vigliotti is a writer and a Taneytown city councilman. He can be reached through his website at http://www.jvigliotti.com.

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Vigliotti: Human Rights and Technology - Carroll County Times

The decision of a company to offer its employs the option to hack their bodies to function better in the workplace has raised eyebrows and, no doubt, generated publicity.

But it also gives us a chance to turn a light on hidden attitudes about the nature of the self.

Imagine that you could pay for your morning coffee with the swipe of your hand, or that you didn't need to have a key on your person to start up your car. Pretty convenient, huh?

And not really that futuristic at all. In principle, you could wear a chip-enabled ring or bracelet that would let you seamlessly navigate the walls and marketplaces of the electronic world.

Well, if that would work, then why not enjoy the extra added convenience of having the chip inserted into your body the way we put finder chips into dogs and cats?

A company in Wisconsin made news last week by offering its employees the option of getting a chip surgically implanted so that they would be able to navigate electronic pathways at the company's headquarters more easily. The company's move has gotten tons of attention (including here and here at NPR).

Many concerns have been raised. Health is a big one: Do we know the long-term effects of having something inside of you emit a signal to an external receiver? And then there's privacy: Assurances to the contrary notwithstanding, how do you know a device like this won't be used to track you? It says on my Social Security card that it isn't meant to be a means of identification. But that's exactly how it is used in our daily life.

And then there are concerns about whether an employee is free to say "no" to a company initiative of this sort.

If we put all that aside, though, I find myself wondering: What's the big deal? Does it make a difference, beyond shear convenience, that the transmitter is in your hand (like a splinter, say) rather than on your hand, like a ring?

If you think it does, this may be because you take for granted that to put something in you is to bring about a more basic alteration in who or what you are.

But is that really true? Just because something is inside you, that doesn't make it a part of you. My dental work isn't part of me, is it? The fact that it is cemented in place and, so, that it is difficult to remove doesn't make it me. Ditto, I would say, for the grain-of-rice-sized-chip-in-the-hand. It might as well be the stud of an earring as something inserted beneath the skin for all that it forces us to rethink our natural limits.

In fact, it is easier, I think, to find conditions on the outside that more truly get under our skin and change what we are. A blind person and her cane, or even the guitarist and her instrument, these seem to be examples where the true boundaries of a person defined not by the limits of the skin, but by the limits of what a person can do are altered. Consider the way learning a new language, or the way learning to read, can alter a person by, in effect, altering their reality.

The body and the person are different things. Just because something is in me doesn't mean, really, that it is in me; and just because something is outside me, doesn't mean that it isn't, really, part of what I am.

There may be interesting borderline cases. Drugs (e.g. medicines) are technologies that we consume to alter ourselves. This may be why we feel that athletes who use drugs as part of their training are only partially responsible for what they accomplish. What they have done, we some how feel, wasn't really done by them. We don't, in the same way, begrudge an athlete the benefits of good coaching, healthy diet, the best equipment and sports science. But is this rational?

Plastic surgery is another borderline case. Although some celebrities have proudly declared that they have had plastic surgery, there remains a lingering idea, I think, that surgically enhanced good looks is somehow inauthentic. Curiously, surgically enhanced achievements in sports is almost normal and is not associated with the stigmas of performance enhancing drugs.

Body hacking is "cool" these days. Despite the widespread practice of piercing and tattooing, the willingness to mark-up and alter one's body still somehow carries the air of individual freedom and daring. I suspect that one reason the Wisconsin story gets so much airplay is that it is tied to this kind of buzz.

But it is harder by far, and maybe more transformative, to build shared structures tools, technologies, ideas, memes on which we can rely, and thanks to which we can do new things and reach new heights.

Alva No is a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, where he writes and teaches about perception, consciousness and art. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). You can keep up with more of what Alva is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @alvanoe

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Technology Gets Under The Skin - NPR

Black Bess; or The Knight of the Road, aromanticized tale of Dick Turpin.

Edward Viles, Wikipedia.

In the history of information technologies, Gutenberg and his printing press are (understandably) treated with the kind of reverence even the most celebrated of modern tech tycoons could only imagine. So perhaps it will come as a surprise that Europes literacy rates remained fairly stagnant for centuries after printing presses, originally invented in about 1440, started popping up in major cities across the continent. Progress was inconsistent and unreliable, with literacy rates booming through the 16th century and then stagnating, even declining, across most of Western Europe. Great Britain, France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy all produced more printed books per capita in 16511700 than in 17011750.

Then came the early 19th century, which saw enormous changes in the manufacture of paper and improvements on the printing press. These changes both contributed to and resulted from major societal changes, such as the worldwide growth increase in formal education. There were more books than ever and more people who could read them. For some, this looked less like progress and more like a dangerous and destabilizing trend that could threaten not just literature, but the solvency of civilization itself.

The real price of books plummeted by more than 60 percent between 1460 and 1500: A book composed of 500 folio pages could sell for as much as 30 florins in 1422 in Austriaa huge amount of money at the timebut by the 1470s, a 500-folio book would fetch something in the neighborhood of 10 florins. There were even books on the market that sold for as little as 2 or 3 florins. In 1498, a Bible composed of over 2,000 folio pages sold for 6 florins. Costs continued to decline, albeit at a much slower rate, over the next three centuries. As a result, books were no longer reserved only for the clergy or for kings: Owning a printed Bible or book of hours became a coveted status symbol for the emerging class of moderately wealthy merchants and magnates.

Books remained, however, far outside the range of the common man or woman, until the price plummeted once again in the 19th century. No longer was literacy necessarily a signifier of wealth, class, and status. This abrupt change created a moral panic as members of the traditional reading classes argued over who had the right to informationand what kind of information ought to be available at all.

The shift happened thanks to major developments in both printing and paper technology. The printing press had not changed much between 1455, when Gutenberg printed his famous Bible, and 1800: The letters had to be hand-placed in a matrix, coated with a special ink that transferred more cleanly from tile to pageanother of Gutenbergs inventionsand pressed one-by-one onto the pages. The first major change to this tried-and-tested design came with Friedrich Koenigs mechanized press in 1812, which could make 400 impressions per hour, compared to the 200 impressions per hour allegedly accomplished by printers in Frankfurt, Germany, in the second half of the 16th century. In 1844, American inventor Richard March Hoe first deployed his rotary press, which could print 8,000 pages in a single hour.

Naturally, faster prints drove up demand for paper, and soon traditional methods of paper production couldnt keep up. The paper machine, invented in France in 1799 at the Didot familys paper mill, could make 40 times as much paper per day as the traditional method, which involved pounding rags into pulp by hand using a mortar and pestle. By 1825, 50 percent of Englands paper supply was produced by machines. As the stock of rags for papermaking grew smaller and smaller, papermakers began experimenting with other materials such as grass, silk, asparagus, manure, stone, and even hornets nests. In 1800, the Marquess of Salisbury gifted to King George III a book printed on the first useful Paper manufactured solely from Straw to demonstrate the viability of the material as an alternative for rags, which were already in extraordinary scarcity in Europe. In 1831, a member of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India tried to convince the East India Company that Nepalese ash-based paper ought to be generally substituted for the flimsy friable English paper to which we commit all our records.

One newspaper was so unsatisfied with the quality of its straw paper that it apologized to readers.

By the 1860s, there was a decent alternative: wood-pulp paper. Today, wood-pulp paper accounts for 37 percent of all paper produced in the world (with an additional 55 percent from recycled wood pulp), but when it was introduced, the prospect of a respectable publication using wood-pulp paper was practically unthinkablehence pulp fiction, the early 19th-century literary snobs preferred way to insult a work as simultaneously nondescript and sensational.

The problem with wood-pulp paper was its acidity and short cellulose chains, which made it liable to slow dissolution over decades. It couldnt be used for a fine-looking book that could be passed through a family as an heirloom: It neither looked the part, nor could it survive the generations.

Traditional rag paper, on the other hand, was smooth, easy to write on, foldable, and could be preserved for centuries. Paper made from nontraditional materials, especially wood pulp, was acidic and rough. (Paper from straw, which enjoyed brief popularity in 1829 thanks to the chance invention of a Pennsylvania farmer, is durable, but brittle and yellowed. One newspaper was so unsatisfied with the quality of its straw paper that it apologized to readers.)

Wood pulp or straw, the cheap paper used in mass-market books sold at extremely low prices. There were a few different kinds of these books, all with descriptive (and usually pejorative) names: the penny dreadfuls (gothic-inspired tales sold for a penny each), pulp magazines (named after the wood-pulp paper of which they were composed), yellowbacks (cheap books bound using yellow strawboard, which is then covered with a paper slip in yellow glaze), and others. The cheapness that had made them so unsuitable for fine books and government records made them excellent fodder for experimental, unusual, and controversial literary developments.

Detractors delighted in linking the volatile matter of wood-pulp paper with the volatile minds of pulp readers. Londoner W. Coldwell wrote a three-part diatribe, On Reading, lamenting that the noble art of printing should be pressed into this ignoble service. Samuel Taylor Coleridge mourned how books, once revered as religious oracles degaded into culprits as they became more widely available.

By the end of the century there was growing concernespecially among middle class parentsthat these cheap, plentiful books were seducing children into a life of crime and violence. The books were even blamed for a handful of murders and suicides committed by young boys. Perpetrators of crimes whose misdoings were linked to their fondness for penny dreadfuls were often referred to in the newspapers as victims of the books. In the United States, dime novels (which usually cost a nickel) were given the same treatment. Newspapers reported that Jesse Pomeroy, a teenage serial killer who targeted other children, was a close reader of dime novels and yellow covered literature [yellowbacks], until, as was argued in his trial, his brain was turned, and his highest ambition was to emulate the violent dime novel character Texas Jack. Moralizers painted the books as no better than printed poison, with headlines warning readers that Pomeroys brutality was what came of reading dime novels. Others hoped that by providing alternativespenny delightfuls or penny popularsthey could curb the demand for the sensational literature. A letter to the editor to the Worcester Talisman from the late 1820s tells young people to stop reading novels and read books of substance: [F]ar better were it for a person to confine himself to the plain sober facts recorded in history and the lives of eminent individuals, than to wander through the flowery pages of fiction.

These books represent the beginnings of modern mass media. At the confluence of increasing literacy rates and ever-growing urban populations looking for recreation, cheap imprints flourished. But it wasnt just social change driving the book boom: It was technological change as well. In 1884, Simon Newton Dexter North, who would later become superintendent of the Census Bureau, wrote in his intensive study of the 10th census that the chief cause for the reduction in the price of paper is the successful useof wood pulp.

For a material meant to be transient, wood-pulp paper has left its mark and the world. Forests have shrunk while literacy rates have soared, and today the hunt is on for wood pulps replacement. We are living in the ironic epilogue to a triumph of a hard-won Victorian-era innovation. Wood pulp paper took on a life of its own as soon as it hit the presses, and it demonstrates to a modern audience the crucial lesson that the impact of a technology goes beyond what it does: what it is made of, who uses it, who doesnt use it, and what it represents to the people who buy it.

This article is part of Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

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The 19th Century Moral Panic Over Paper Technology - Slate Magazine

August 4, 2017 SFU Mechatronics Systems Engineering graduate student Oldooz Poyanfar and her bee monitoring system PRO. Credit: Simon Fraser University

Biologists are working to better understand Colony Collapse Disorder given the value of honey bees to the economy and the environment. Monitoring bee activity and improving monitoring systems may help to address the issue.

Simon Fraser University graduate student Oldooz Pooyanfar is monitoring what more than 20,000 honeybees housed in hives in a Cloverdale field are "saying" to each otherlooking for clues about their health.

Pooyanfar's technology is gleaning communication details from sound within the hives with her beehive monitoring systemtechnology she developed at SFU. She says improving knowledge about honey bee activity is critical, given a 30 per cent decline in the honeybee population over the past decade in North America. Research into the causes of what is referred to as Colony Collapse Disorder continues. The presence of fewer bees affects both crop pollination and the environment.

Pooyanfar's monitoring platform is placed along the wall of the hive and fitted with tiny sensors containing microphones (and eventually, accelometers) that monitor sound and vibration. Temperature and humidity are also recorded. Her system enables data collection on sound within the hives and also tracks any abnormalities to which beekeepers can immediately respond.

The high-tech smart system is being used to gather data over the summer.

Pooyanfar, who has been working with Chilliwack-based Worker Bee Honey Company, believes that better understanding the daily patterns and conditions, using an artificial neural network in the hive, will help to improve bee colony management. Current methods of monitoring provide less detailed information and can disrupt bee activity for up to 24 hours every time the hive is opened.

"To learn about what bees are communicating, we can either look at pheromonesthe chemical they produceor sound," says Pooyanfar, who initially received funding through the MITACS Accelerate program. The City of Surrey is providing the field space for her research.

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"With this monitoring system, we are collecting data in real time on what the bees are 'saying' about foraging, or if they're swarming, or if the queen bee is present right now we are collecting as much data as possible that will pinpoint what they are actually doing."

Pooyanfar, a graduate student in SFU's School of Mechatronics Systems Engineering, plans to eventually manufacture a sensor package for this application to help lower the costs of monitoring and allow more beekeepers to monitor their hives in real-time. Her initial-stage research was featured at the Greater Vancouver Clean Technology Expo last fall.

Explore further: Vibrating bees tell the state of the hive

Before eating your next meal, pause for a moment to thank the humble honeybee. Farmers of almonds, broccoli, cantaloupe and many other nuts, vegetables and fruits rely heavily on managed honeybees to pollinate their crops ...

It was a sticky situation.

Honey bees are responsible for pollinating crops worth more than US$19 billion and for producing about US$385 million in honey a year in the United States. In Australia, honey bee production is a A$92-million industry.

Thousands of honey bees in Australia are being fitted with tiny sensors as part of a world-first research program to monitor the insects and their environment using a technique known as 'swarm sensing'.

Molly Keck, a Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service entomologist and integrated pest management specialist in Bexar County, has been receiving a number of phone calls from area residents bewildered by recent bee activity.

Despite having few taste genes, honey bees are fine-tuned to know what minerals the colony may lack and proactively seek out nutrients in conjunction with the season when their floral diet varies.

(Phys.org)An international team of researchers has found evidence showing that maize evolved to survive in the U.S. southwest highlands thousands of years ago. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group ...

A chance discovery has opened up a new method of finding unknown viruses.

When trouble looms, the fish-scale geckos of Madagascar resort to what might seem like an extreme form of self-defensetearing out of their own skin.

Scientists have developed a computational method to detect chemical changes in DNA that highlight cell diversity and may lead to a better understanding of cancer.

A new study led by the Australian National University (ANU) has found that plants are able to forget stressful weather events to rapidly recover.

In the last 20 years, the field of animal coloration research has experienced explosive growth thanks to numerous technological advances, and it now stands on the threshold of a new era.

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Technology tracks 'bee talk' to help improve honey bee health - Phys.Org

President Donald Trump announced new efforts Thursday to use technology to improve veterans' health care, saying the programs will greatly expand access, especially for mental health care and suicide prevention. Veterans living in rural areas will also benefit, he said.

Initiatives include using video technology and diagnostic tools to conduct medical exams. Veterans also will be able to use mobile devices to make and manage appointments with Veterans Administration doctors.

"We call it 'anywhere to anywhere' VA health care," VA Secretary David Shulkin said. Shulkin said the goal is better health care for veterans wherever they are. He said existing "telehealth" programs provided care to more than 700,000 veterans last year.

A medical doctor, Shulkin wore his white coat to the White House announcement, during which he demonstrated the technologies for Trump.

Trump said, "This will significantly expand access to care for our veterans, especially for those who need help in the area of mental health, which is a bigger and bigger request, and also in suicide prevention. It will make a tremendous difference for the veterans in rural locations in particular."

A regulation will need to be issued for these services to be provided anywhere in the country.

Shulkin was the VA's undersecretary for health in the final years of the Obama administration.

Associated Press writer Ken Thomas contributed to this report.

Follow Darlene Superville on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap

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Trump promotes technology to improve veterans' health care - ABC News

After lagging behind other courts for years, the Supreme Court is finally catching up on a key technological feature that will be a boon to researchers, lawyers and analysts of all kinds. It's moving to adopt electronic filing.

The change will allow the public to access legal filings for all future cases free of charge. Beginning Nov. 13, the court will require parties who are represented by counsel to upload digital copies of their paper submissions. Parties representing themselves will have their filings uploaded by thecourt's staff.

All those submissions will then be entered into an online docket for each case, and they will be accessible from the court's homepage.

The move brings the Supreme Court fully into the Internet age, and it fulfills a promise outlined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. in 2014.

While courts routinely consider evidence and issue decisions concerning the latest technological advances, they have proceededcautiously when it comes to adopting new technologies in certain aspects of their own operations, he said at the time.

By as soon as 2016, Roberts said, the court would offer an online system that can handle all types of filings, including petitions, motions and briefs.

Roberts's timing, it turns out, was not far off.

Virtually all federal courts are already on board with electronic submissions. As early as 2001, some federal court documents were available over the Internet through a system known as PACER, or the Public Access to Court Electronic Records. Even before the Internet, the public could get to filings electronically by using special terminals at libraries and other institutions.

PACER has its shortcomings. It charges users a fee of $0.10 per page, which can add up if you're going through hundreds or thousands of documents. Because federal court recordsare considered public domain, those charges can also be a waste of money for researchers unaware that documents for a case have already been downloaded by somebody else and made available for sharing. To circumvent this problem, independent researchers have built their own tool, RECAP, to save people money.

But the Supreme Court tool goes further, making all its filings free. For some, that's not just a step forward it's a leapfrog ahead.

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The Supreme Court is about to become more transparent, thanks to technology - Washington Post