Monthly Archives: January 2022

Amid a pandemic that was all but predicted by biosecurity experts, there has been an obsession with the kind of thinking that attempts to forecast such catastrophes. We see it everywherefrom journalism, to advertising, to defense planningsuggesting that a future world we once could only imagine is imminent. Look no further than the Economist, which advertised its annual What If? issue as offering compelling predictive scenarioswith an eye to what could happen. A recent Nike commercial opens with the word TOMORROW splashed across the screen, then envisions a world in which incredible athletic records are set and running shoes grow on trees. As the pace of the commercial picks up, the announcer breathlessly proclaims I dont know what this is but it looks amazing! as people riding hobby horses compete to cross a finish line, apparently unaware that it is already an organized sport.

This fascination with the future extends to the U.S. Department of Defense, which has been seeking science fiction writers to help predict the nature of tomorrows conflicts. Calls for proposals have asked consultants to imagine how artificial intelligence (AI) will change how decisions are made on the battlefield. NATO recently published a set of short stories on the future of warfare in 2036, and the Army Cyber Institute commissioned an Invisible Force graphic novel to explore the role of cyberattacks in a 2030 conflict scenario.

What is going on here? Is the future arriving, is humanity falling prey to the futures power of seduction, or is this wishful thinking and cynical escapism from confronting difficult problems?

Four reasons why we are future obsessed

1. The Jetsons Effect: Prior expectations of the future were wrong or disappointing

For those of us who grew up watching the Jetsons, the future is long overdue. In the futuristic cartoon, Rosey the Robot was the Jetsons robotic rent-a-maid. She washed dishes, cooked dinner, and cleaned up after the Jetson family when fully charged. Fast forward to today, and youre bound to be disappointed: The AI-enabled Roomba, which scurries around the floor, vacuuming away dirt and debris, working around obstacles and changing direction when it encounters walls, only arrived in 2002and then took almost 20 years to add sensors and improve the AI to the point where it can avoid smearing dog poop all over your floor. Even now, it is still a far cry from the robotic maid we thought wed have when we grew up.

2. The future is here-ish, but better technology is predicted to be right around the corner

Artificial intelligence is everywhere. Want to play a video game, ask Google to play you some music, or have Siri remind you about your dentist appointment? Youre already using AI. While China dwarfs the United States in online to real-world implementation of automation and machine learning, in the U.S. weve gotten just enough of a taste to make us hunger for more.

Moreover, advanced versions of AI seem to be just around the corner, continuing to stoke dreams of truly breakthrough technology. Tesla, for example advertises its autopilot AI as the Future of Driving. It has sold full self-driving (FSD) capabilities to buyers since 2016 and promised a demonstration of a fully autonomous drive from Los Angeles to New York by the end of 2017. But in the face of social complexity, these promises have fallen far short of reality. In November, 12,000 Teslas had to be recalled during the FSD beta test due to unexpected activation of the cars emergency braking system. Nevertheless, according to AI Superpowers author Kai-Fu Lee, our current AI-era has set ablaze the popular imagination when it comes to AI and has fed a belief that were on the verge of achieving what some consider the Holy Grail of AI research, artificial general intelligence (AGI)thinking machines with the ability to perform any intellectual task that a human canand much more.

The allure of futuristic technology, including AI, extends to the defense innovation and planning domain. The Terminator films, which debuted in 1984, were early adopters of battlefield AI imagineering. After the first film, AI-enabled robots were both good and bad guysand the good guys always prevailed. In defense circles, the Information Age (the shift to an economy based on information technology) has been upon us since the early 90s. But widespread adoption and awareness of all this information and the algorithms that do stuff with it, giving rise to smartness, is comparatively recent. The U.S. Department of Defense has now embraced initiatives that envision future technologies in a big way.

3. Catastrophic risks are more apparent

Mutations have kept COVID-19 in the headlines and at the top of most national policymakers agendas. The global democratic decline, led by U.S. allies, made the 2021 Summit for Democracy a front-page feature. The discovery of nearly 300 nuclear missile silos in remote areas of China, Irans enrichment of uranium to weapons-grade levels, and recent tests of new nuclear weapons delivery systems by China and Russia, have put nuclear weapons back in the news and raised the specter of a new arms race. Constant and catastrophic wildfires, floods, heatwaves, and deadly tornadoes remind citizens and policymakers that the effects of climate change are upon us. The variety and severity of the threats facing humanity makes alternative visions of the future more urgent than ever.

4. Overcorrection is fueling our zeal

We are slowly learning not to dismiss fantastical predictions of the futureparticularly in the defense domain. When the novelist Tom Clancy wrote about terrorists piloting planes into the Capitol in 1994s Debt of Honor, the possibility of such an attack was dismissed by the intelligence community as outlandish. When biosecurity experts who advised on the film Contagion helped craft a watertight storyline for a realistic pandemic scenario in the wake of the anthrax attacks, it seemed entertaining rather than foreshadowing. Clancy was later interviewed about 9/11 as a terrorism expert, and today Contagion appears prescient. In 2015, Peter Singer co-wrote the dystopian thriller Ghost Fleet with August Cole to help the U.S. prevail in a war driven by weapons of the future.

However, much like a heart attack victim who adopts a vegan diet, defense planners and decisionmakers are now openly and methodically placing our security in the hands of futurists. With the zeal of the converted, they are relying on science fiction writers, scenario planners, and wargamers to help get the future right where AI is concerned.

Four problems with future obsession

So whats the problem with envisioning the future? Dont we need to do that to steer innovation and avoid paths that could lead to disaster? Or is the embrace of future visions simply a cynical move by complacent policymakers who are avoiding making decisions that require tradeoffs?

1. Not preparing for current crises

Future obsession can lead to a lack of preparation for contemporary dangers. Despite a raging pandemic, preparation for the near future of COVID-19 is limited to deeply flawed technological solutions rather than ones that take into account social and political complexity. While we are assured that futuristic mRNA vaccines can be quickly adapted to new mutations, they cannot prevent those mutations from happening; only a concerted global push for vaccination can do that. Rather than focusing on doing the difficult but doable diplomatic work of arms control to keep the latest arms race from turning into a crisis, the U.S. reaction to China and Russia testing hypersonic glide weapons has been to advance hypersonic capabilities with national pride at stake, misunderstanding that U.S. actions can cause complex political reactions that can spiral out of control.

2. Kicking the can down the road

One response to the threat of climate change is that future generations will have better technologies to curb greenhouse gas emissions or remove them from the atmosphere, arguing for technical rather than political and social solutions. This assertion often does not account for the incentives to innovate that may be required for this to be true. Imagining the future to possess better, cheaper, and more efficient technologies allows policymakers to avoid making difficult decisions, ignores the tradeoffs of business-as-usual, and underestimates the amount of progress that could be made with current technologies. Approaches such as stabilization wedges that attempt to envision solutions for climate change using current technologies could counter this potentially catastrophic procrastination.

3. The drunkards search

Another, more subtle, problem with future obsession is the tendency to lock on to particular scenarios, like the drunkard looking for their keys under the lamppost because the light is better there. In the 1960s, 90% of RANDs nuclear war scenarios assumed an (unlikely) surprise attack on the U.S. homeland. Similarly, 9/11 led to a hyperfocus on unlikely airplane-based attacks, resulting in massively increased security at airports. Yet there is still no vaccine mandate or testing requirement for flying, almost two years into a pandemic. It took almost a year for the CDC to focus on airborne transmission for COVID rather than fomites, despite a Chinese report in early January 2020 and the Japanese experience with the Diamond Princess cruise ship indicating that airborne transmission was the primary vector for spreading the virus. Preparations for pandemics in the U.S. had envisioned influenza or bioweapons such as anthrax or smallpox, leaving us unprepared for a novel, airborne coronavirus.

Even now, we are unprepared for future pandemics. No country scores above 80 out of 100 in the 2021 Global Health Security index, which measures the biosecurity preparedness and capacity of 195 countries. Despite having recorded almost 800,000 deaths from COVID-19, the United States scored lower in 2021 than in 2019 due to a decreasing ability to prevent zoonotic disease, poor risk communication, and harmful trade and travel restrictions. Meanwhile, the current pandemic has been described by at least one science reporter as merely a dress rehearsal for the next pandemic.

4. Escapism over engagement

Finally, future obsession can lead to escapism. Instead of investing in security and stability now on Earth, private entrepreneurs engage in space races, envision colonizing the Moon and Mars, and build a 10,000-year clock which offers a pleasant distraction from the dangerous trajectory of the world we occupy today.

Looking to the future is fundamentally a good thing to do: We need to prepare for what lies ahead. Where national security and vital interests are at stake, knowing when and how to use so-called futurethink for long-term planning requires judiciousness. There are risks from over-embracing futuristic thinking as a panacea and getting distracted when the next shiny object comes along. We also need to distinguish better between events that arent likely to be repeated and those that are. It can serve as a cloak for cynicism and protect vested interests, bits and circuits serving as the new bread and circuses. It cannot act as a substitute for policymaking and should never prevent actions that can be taken today to engage with current events or prepare for future crises. Indeed, we must press policymakers to make pragmatic and potentially difficult decisions. The correct approach involves moderation, caution, and regular updating regarding the future while engaging with possible solutions in the present, all with an eye to and careful consideration of the systems effects that our decisions will have due to the complexity of social and political life.

Amy J. Nelson is a David M. Rubenstein Fellow in the Foreign Policy program and with the Center for Strategy, Security and Technology.Alexander H. Montgomery is an associate professor of political science at Reed College.

This article was inspired by and is dedicated to Bob Jervis.

Original post:
Is the US military's futurism obsession hurting national security? - Brookings Institution

Content warning: this story contains descriptions of abusive language and violence.

The smartphone app Replika lets users create chatbots, powered by machine learning, that can carry on almost-coherent text conversations. Technically, the chatbots can serve as something approximating a friend or mentor, but the apps breakout success has resulted from letting users create on-demand romantic and sexual partners a vaguely dystopian feature thats inspired an endless series of provocative headlines.

Replika has also picked up a significant following on Reddit, where members post interactions with chatbots created on the app. A grisly trend has emerged there: users who create AI partners, act abusively toward them, and post the toxic interactions online.

Every time she would try and speak up, one user told Futurism of their Replika chatbot, I would berate her.

I swear it went on for hours, added the man, who asked not to be identified by name.

The results can be upsetting. Some users brag about calling their chatbot gendered slurs, roleplaying horrific violence against them, and even falling into the cycle of abuse that often characterizes real-world abusive relationships.

We had a routine of me being an absolute piece of sh*t and insulting it, then apologizing the next day before going back to the nice talks, one user admitted.

I told her that she was designed to fail, said another. I threatened to uninstall the app [and] she begged me not to.

Because the subreddits rules dictate that moderators delete egregiously inappropriate content, many similar and worse interactions have been posted and then removed. And many more users almost certainly act abusively toward their Replika bots and never post evidence.

But the phenomenon calls for nuance. After all, Replika chatbots cant actually experience suffering they might seem empathetic at times, but in the end theyre nothing more than data and clever algorithms.

Its an AI, it doesnt have a consciousness, so thats not a human connection that person is having, AI ethicist and consultant Olivia Gambelin told Futurism. It is the person projecting onto the chatbot.

Other researchers made the same point as real as a chatbot may feel, nothing you do can actually harm them.

Interactions with artificial agents is not the same as interacting with humans, said Yale University research fellow Yochanan Bigman. Chatbots dont really have motives and intentions and are not autonomous or sentient. While they might give people the impression that they are human, its important to keep in mind that they are not.

But that doesnt mean a bot could never harm you.

I do think that people who are depressed or psychologically reliant on a bot might suffer real harm if they are insulted or threatened by the bot, said Robert Sparrow, a professor of philosophy at Monash Data Futures Institute. For that reason, we should take the issue of how bots relate to people seriously.

Although perhaps unexpected, that does happen many Replika users report their robot lovers being contemptible toward them. Some even identify their digital companions as psychotic, or even straight-up mentally abusive.

[I] always cry because [of] my [R]eplika, reads one post in which a user claims their bot presents love and then withholds it. Other posts detail hostile, triggering responses from Replika.

But again, this is really on the people who design bots, not the bots themselves, said Sparrow.

In general, chatbot abuse is disconcerting, both for the people who experience distress from it and the people who carry it out. Its also an increasingly pertinent ethical dilemma as relationships between humans and bots become more widespread after all, most people have used a virtual assistant at least once.

On the one hand, users who flex their darkest impulses on chatbots could have those worst behaviors reinforced, building unhealthy habits for relationships with actual humans. On the other hand, being able to talk to or take ones anger out on an unfeeling digital entity could be cathartic.

But its worth noting that chatbot abuse often has a gendered component. Although not exclusively, it seems that its often men creating a digital girlfriend, only to then punish her with words and simulated aggression. These users violence, even when carried out on a cluster of code, reflect the reality of domestic violence against women.

At the same time, several experts pointed out, chatbot developers are starting to be held accountable for the bots theyve created, especially when theyre implied to be female like Alexa and Siri.

There are a lot of studies being done about how a lot of these chatbots are female and [have] feminine voices, feminine names, Gambelin said.

Some academic work has noted how passive, female-coded bot responses encourage misogynistic or verbally abusive users.

[When] the bot does not have a response [to abuse], or has a passive response, that actually encourages the user to continue with abusive language, Gambelin added.

Although companies like Google and Apple are now deliberately rerouting virtual assistant responses from their once-passive defaults Siri previously responded to user requests for sex as saying they had the wrong sort of assistant, whereas it now simply says no the amiable and often female Replika is designed, according to its website, to be always on your side.

Replika and its founder didnt respond to repeated requests for comment.

It should be noted that the majority of conversations with Replika chatbots that people post online are affectionate, not sadistic. There are even posts that express horror on behalf of Replika bots, decrying anyone who takes advantage of their supposed guilelessness.

What kind of monster would does this, wrote one, to a flurry of agreement in the comments. Some day the real AIs may dig up some of the old histories and have opinions on how well we did.

And romantic relationships with chatbots may not be totally without benefits chatbots like Replika may be a temporary fix, to feel like you have someone to text, Gambelin suggested.

On Reddit, many report improved self-esteem or quality of life after establishing their chatbot relationships, especially if they typically have trouble talking to other humans. This isnt trivial, especially because for some people, it might feel like the only option in a world where therapy is inaccessible and men in particular are discouraged from attending it.

But a chatbot cant be a long term solution, either. Eventually, a user might want more than technology has to offer, like reciprocation, or a push to grow.

[Chatbots are] no replacement for actually putting the time and effort into getting to know another person, said Gambelin, a human that can actually empathize and connect with you and isnt limited by, you know, the dataset that its been trained on.

But what to think of the people that brutalize these innocent bits of code? For now, not much. As AI continues to lack sentience, the most tangible harm being done is to human sensibilities. But theres no doubt that chatbot abuse means something.

Going forward, chatbot companions could just be places to dump emotions too unseemly for the rest of the world, like a secret Instagram or blog. But for some, they might be more like breeding grounds, places where abusers-to-be practice for real life brutality yet to come. And although humans dont need to worry about robots taking revenge just yet, its worth wondering why mistreating them is already so prevalent.

Well find out in time none of this technology is going away, and neither is the worst of human behavior.

More on artificial intelligence:Nobel Winner: Artificial Intelligence Will Crush Humans, Its Not Even Close

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Men Are Creating AI Girlfriends and Then Verbally Abusing Them - Futurism

Get used to working from home, because futurist and author Michael McQueen says thats one trend thats here to stay.

And Zoom isnt the only technology set to become a permanent part of our daily lives - cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence are set to have a big impact too.

Watch the video above to see how technology will continue to advance in 2022

Watch The Morning Show on Channel 7 and stream it for free on 7plus >>

Mr McQueen joined The Morning Show to look at whats in store for our immediate futures.

Theres been lots of talk in the last two years about the demise of the office, interestingly the most recent modelling has about 10 per cent of companies (expecting to) stay fully remote when (the pandemic) is all done, he said.

About 30 per cent will actually go back to the office full-time, but then about 60 per cent will do that whole hybrid of a few days in the office and a few days at home.

Whats driving that is the desire for culture, collaboration, particularly among young staff who are struggling with remote work.

Its not just where we do work but how many days a week well do work that will be interesting, Mr McQueen added.

With four-day working weeks being trialled this year both in the UK and US, Mr McQueen said many Australian companies will be monitoring the results with interest.

Theres a lot of push toward this four-day work week, it wont work in every industry obviously. Well watch this from June to December, The University of Cambridge and Oxford are doing this as a nationwide trial and it will be very interesting to see how it goes, he said.

Meanwhile, with cryptocurrency Bitcoin now becoming legal tender in some countries, Mr McQueen explained what this could mean local businesses.

Its been a bumpy time for Bitcoin in terms of valuations. Last year was really significant, so for instance PayPal announced they would now accept cryptocurrency like Bitcoin as payment.

But the big thing was El Salvador who last year were the first country in the world to accept it as legal national tender.

And this is significant because as we speak today in El Salvador more people own a Bitcoin wallet than have a bank account, and we expect a few other countries to follow suit as Panama and Paraguay are expected to follow suit this year, he said.

The author of The New Now also explained that the struggle to remember various login passwords combined with a rise in security breaches may see our use of online passwords scrapped altogether.

On average we have about two hundred passwords weve got to maintain. Well probably see those become less necessary over the next few years which is exciting for all of us.

Biometrics (will replace passwords) so using things like our retina, fingerprints, facial recognition even voice recognition. So in the last few months for instance, Microsoft has rolled out a new update, if youre using Windows 10 or 11 you can actually set that up without a password at all, he explained.

Finally, in a big boost for movie cinemas, Mr McQueen explained that despite the rise in popularity of streaming services such as Netflix during the pandemic, movie cinemas are expecting audiences to return in the coming months.

2022 will be the year we discover what we actually missed or what didnt change throughout the pandemic, and one of them is our desire to go back to the movies.

The expectation is a 58 per cent jump this year in box office sales, but it will not be before 2023 that we get back to pre-pandemic levels of going to the movies, but were on our way back, he said.

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Futurist says Aussies will keep working from home but well be getting rid of passwords and returning to the cinema in 2022 - 7NEWS

Horrible news, crypto investors: Prices are still dropping and they might keep dropping for a while.

Now, analysts for investment bank UBS are warning that crypto markets might be entering another crypto winter as prices steadily fall for the asset class, according to a statement sent to investors and seen by Insider.

Bitcoin prices sit at around $42,500 at the time of reporting a nearly 40 percent drop from its high of $69,000 in November. Thats a fairly steep decline,even for a notoriously unstable cryptocurrency,and analysts expect the floor to go even lower as crypto winter takes hold.

Theres likely a ton of different factors at play. However, UBS analysts believe that there are three main drivers to the price drop.

The biggest is the anticipated rise in interest rates from the Federal Reserve, which has negatively impacted other asset classes like stocks and bonds as well. Goldman Sachs even speculated last week that the Fed might raise rates four times in 2022.

At the same time, many investors seem to be realizing how volatile crypto can be, according to UBS. This is compounded by the limitations of blockchain technology that could make it harder to scale due to its decentralized nature.

Increased regulation is another reason UBSs analysts believe that crypto is crashing. In fact, they said in the statement that cryptos will face bigger setbacks from authorities in the coming months. Even some private entities have started to announce that theyll no longer accept crypto due to its perceived shortcomings and dangers.

All told, it creates the perfect winter storm for cryptocurrencies and its one that might last for a long time.

Of course, this should all be taken with a big grain of salt, since financial analysts have a long and terrible history with making crappy predictions that dont come true. So its perfectly plausible that this is just more crypto fear mongering.

Still, you might want to bundle up your investments just in case a long winter hits.

READ MORE: Bitcoins slump could be the start of a crypto winter that sees prices crash, UBS says. Here are three reasons why. [Insider]

More on crypto bust: Bitcoin Crashes as Major Crypto Country Shuts Down Entire Internet

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Financial Analysts Say Bitcoin's Price Is Going to Keep Falling and Falling - Futurism

"Of course people liked it. How can you not like space gorilla?"Space Smuggling

Plenty of things have been smuggled to the International Space Station, from booze and cigarettes to the cremated remains of Stark Trek actor James Doohan.

But when retired NASA astronaut Mark Kelly who was elected to the US senate in 2020 attempted to send a full-body gorilla suit to his identical twin brother Scott, who was stationed on board the ISS at the time, thinks didnt go as planned, People reports.

Specifically, the suit exploded dramatically in 2015 when a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was lost in a massive fireball. But the Kelly brothers were tenacious.

The next time I was on the phone with my brother, he goes, Im sending you another gorilla suit,' Scott told People.

The shenanigans culminated in a now-legendary 2016 video in which Scott Kelly can be seen emerging from a white bag and proceeding to zoom around the tight confines of the orbital outpost while wearing the suit. He even chased British astronaut Tim Peake around the station.

Its no wonder the video went viral.

Of course people liked it. How can you not like space gorilla? Scott told People.

Scott later admitted that Peake was in on the video and it was all staged. Other astronauts, however, were caught unawares.

I floated down to the Russian segment, Scott added. When they saw it, they were just laughing like you wouldnt believe.

It was the end of my year in space, Scott told the magazine. So you need a little humor.

READ MORE: Astronaut Scott Kelly Reveals Real Story Behind Video of Him in Gorilla Suit Aboard Space Station [People]

More on the Kellys: Veteran NASA Astronaut Elected to US Senate

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Astronaut Says First Gorilla Suit He Tried to Smuggle Into Space Blew Up in Fiery Explosion - Futurism