book – Page 138 – The Living Library

Smarter Than Us: The Rise of Machine Intelligence

Curated on November 24, 2014August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Stuart Armstrong at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute: “What happens when machines become smarter than humans? Forget lumbering Terminators. The power of an artificial intelligence (AI) comes from its intelligence, not physical strength and laser guns. Humans steer the future not because we’re the strongest or the fastest but because we’re the smartest. When machines become smarter than humans, we’ll be handing them the steering wheel. What promises—and perils—will these powerful machines present? Stuart Armstrong’s new book navigates these questions with clarity and wit.
Can we instruct AIs to steer the future as we desire? What goals should we program into them? It turns out this question is difficult to answer! Philosophers have tried for thousands of years to define an ideal world, but there remains no consensus. The prospect of goal-driven, smarter-than-human AI gives moral philosophy a new urgency. The future could be filled with joy, art, compassion, and beings living worthwhile and wonderful lives—but only if we’re able to precisely define what a “good” world is, and skilled enough to describe it perfectly to a computer program.
AIs, like computers, will do what we say—which is not necessarily what we mean. Such precision requires encoding the entire system of human values for an AI: explaining them to a mind that is alien to us, defining every ambiguous term, clarifying every edge case. Moreover, our values are fragile: in some cases, if we mis-define a single piece of the puzzle—say, consciousness—we end up with roughly 0% of the value we intended to reap, instead of 99% of the value.
Though an understanding of the problem is only beginning to spread, researchers from fields ranging from philosophy to computer science to economics are working together to conceive and test solutions. Are we up to the challenge?
A mathematician by training, Armstrong is a Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) at Oxford University. His research focuses on formal decision theory, the risks and possibilities of AI, the long term potential for intelligent life (and the difficulties of predicting this), and anthropic (self-locating) probability. Armstrong wrote Smarter Than Us at the request of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, a non-profit organization studying the theoretical underpinnings of artificial superintelligence.”

Activists Wield Search Data to Challenge and Change Police Policy

Curated on November 24, 2014May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Richard A. Oppel Jr. at the New York Times: “One month after a Latino youth died from a gunshot as he sat handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser here last year, 150 demonstrators converged on Police Headquarters, some shouting “murderers” as baton-wielding officers in riot gear fired tear gas.

The police say the youth shot himself with a hidden gun. But to many residents of this city, which is 40 percent black, the incident fit a pattern of abuse and bias against minorities that includes frequent searches of cars and use of excessive force. In one case, a black female Navy veteran said she was beaten by an officer after telling a friend she was visiting that the friend did not have to let the police search her home.

Yet if it sounds as if Durham might have become a harbinger of Ferguson, Mo. — where the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer led to weeks of protests this summer — things took a very different turn. Rather than relying on demonstrations to force change, a coalition of ministers, lawyers and community and political activists turned instead to numbers. They used an analysis of state data from 2002 to 2013 that showed that the Durham police searched black male motorists at more than twice the rate of white males during stops. Drugs and other illicit materials were found no more often on blacks….

The use of statistics is gaining traction not only in North Carolina, where data on police stops is collected under a 15-year-old law, but in other cities around the country.

Austin, Tex., began requiring written consent for searches without probable cause two years ago, after its independent police monitor reported that whites stopped by the police were searched one in every 28 times, while blacks were searched one in eight times.

In Kalamazoo, Mich., a city-funded study last year found that black drivers were nearly twice as likely to be stopped, and then “much more likely to be asked to exit their vehicle, to be handcuffed, searched and arrested.”

As a result, Jeff Hadley, the public safety chief of Kalamazoo, imposed new rules requiring officers to explain to supervisors what “reasonable suspicion” they had each time they sought a driver’s consent to a search. Traffic stops have declined 42 percent amid a drop of more than 7 percent in the crime rate, he said.

“It really stops the fishing expeditions,” Chief Hadley said of the new rules. Though the findings demoralized his officers, he said, the reaction from the African-American community stunned him. “I thought they would be up in arms, but they said: ‘You’re not telling us anything we didn’t already know. How can we help?’ ”

The School of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has a new manual for defense lawyers, prosecutors and judges, with a chapter that shows how stop and search data can be used by the defense to raise challenges in cases where race may have played a role…”

The Onlife Manifesto: Being Human in a Hyperconnected Era

Curated on November 23, 2014October 10, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Open access book edited by Luciano Floridi: “What is the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the human condition? In order to address this question, in 2012 the European Commission organized a research project entitled The Onlife Initiative: concept reengineering for rethinking societal concerns in the digital transition. This volume collects the work of the Onlife Initiative. It explores how the development and widespread use of ICTs have a radical impact on the human condition.

ICTs are not mere tools but rather social forces that are increasingly affecting our self-conception (who we are), our mutual interactions (how we socialise); our conception of reality (our metaphysics); and our interactions with reality (our agency). In each case, ICTs have a huge ethical, legal, and political significance, yet one with which we have begun to come to terms only recently.
The impact exercised by ICTs is due to at least four major transformations: the blurring of the distinction between reality and virtuality; the blurring of the distinction between human, machine and nature; the reversal from information scarcity to information abundance; and the shift from the primacy of stand-alone things, properties, and binary relations, to the primacy of interactions, processes and networks.
Such transformations are testing the foundations of our conceptual frameworks. Our current conceptual toolbox is no longer fitted to address new ICT-related challenges. This is not only a problem in itself. It is also a risk, because the lack of a clear understanding of our present time may easily lead to negative projections about the future. The goal of The Manifesto, and of the whole book that contextualises, is therefore that of contributing to the update of our philosophy. It is a constructive goal. The book is meant to be a positive contribution to rethinking the philosophy on which policies are built in a hyperconnected world, so that we may have a better chance of understanding our ICT-related problems and solving them satisfactorily.
The Manifesto launches an open debate on the impacts of ICTs on public spaces, politics and societal expectations toward policymaking in the Digital Agenda for Europe’s remit. More broadly, it helps start a reflection on the way in which a hyperconnected world calls for rethinking the referential frameworks on which policies are built.”

Co-operation

Curated on November 22, 2014August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Patrick Bateson at Kings Review: “I wrote this piece nearly 30 years ago and delivered it as a secular address in King’s College Chapel. I unearthed it and brought it up to date because the issues are as relevant today as they were then.

I am disturbed by the way we have created a social environment in which so much emphasis is laid on competition – on forging ahead while trampling on others. The ideal of social cooperation has come to be treated as high-sounding flabbiness, while individual selfishness is regarded as the natural and sole basis for a realistic approach to life. The image of the struggle for existence lies at the back of it, seriously distorting the view we have of ourselves and wrecking mutual trust.
The fashionable philosophy of individualism draws its respectability in part from an appeal to biology and specifically to the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection. Now, Darwin’s theory remains the most powerful explanation for the way that each plant and animal evolved so that it is exquisitely adapted to its environment. The theory works just as well for behaviour as it does for anatomy. Individual animals differ in the way they behave. Those that behave in a manner that is better suited to the conditions in which they live are more likely to survive. Finally, if their descendants resemble them in terms of behaviour, then in the course of evolution, the better adapted forms of behaviour will replace those that are not so effective in keeping the individual alive.
It is the Darwinian concept of differential survival that has been picked up and used so insistently in political rhetoric. Biology is thought to be all about competition – and that supposedly means constant struggle. This emphasis has had an insidious effect on the public mind and has encouraged the belief in individual selfishness and in confrontation. Competition is now widely seen as the mainspring of human activity, at least in Western countries. Excellence in the universities and in the arts is thought to be driven by the same ruthless process that supposedly works so well on the sportsfield or the market place, and they all have a lot in common with what supposedly happens in the jungle. The image of selfish genes, competing with each other in the course of evolution has fused imperceptibly with the notion of selfish individuals competing with each other in the course of their life-times. Individuals only thrive by winning. The argument has become so much a part of conventional belief that it is hard at first to see what is wrong with it.
To put it bluntly, thought has been led seriously astray by the rhetoric. Beginning where the argument starts in biology, genes do not operate in a vacuum. The survival of each gene obviously depends on the characteristics of the whole gene “team” that makes up the total genetic complement of an individual. A similar point can be made above the level of the individual when symbiosis occurs between different species.
Take, for instance, lichens which are found from the Arctic to the tropics – and on virtually every surface from rocks and old roofs to tree trunks. They look like single organisms. However, they represent the fusing of algae and fungi working together in symbiotic partnership. The partners depend utterly on each other and the characteristics of the whole entity provide the adaptations to the environment.
Similarly, cooperation among social animals belies the myth of constant struggle. Many birds and mammals huddle to conserve warmth or reduce the surface exposed to biting insects. Males in a pride of lions help each other to defend the females from other males. Mutual assistance is frequently offered in hunting; for instance, cooperating members of a wolf pack will often split into those that drive the deer and those that lie in ambush. Each wolf gets more to eat as a result. In highly complex animals aid may be reciprocated on a subsequent occasion. So, if one male baboon helps another to fend off competition for a female today, the favour will be returned at a later date. What is obvious about such cases is that each of the participating individuals benefits by working together with the others. Moreover, some things can be done by a group that cannot be done by the individual. It takes two to put up a tent.
The joint action of cooperating individuals can also be a well-adapted character in its own right. The pattern generated by cooperative behaviour could distinguish one social group from another and could make the difference between group survival and communal death. Clearly, a cheat could sometimes obtain the benefits of the others’ cooperation without joining in itself. However, such actions would not be retained if individuals were unable to survive outside their own social group and the groups containing cheats were less likely to survive than those without. This logic does have some bearing on the way we think about ourselves.
At the turn of the 20^th century an exiled Russian aristocrat and anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, wrote a classic book called Mutual Aid. He complained that, in the widespread acceptance of Darwin’s ideas, heavy emphasis had been laid on the cleansing role of social conflict and far too little attention given to the remarkable examples of cooperation. Even now, biological knowledge of symbiosis, reciprocity and mutualism has not yet percolated extensively into public discussions of human social behaviour.
As things stand, the appeal to biology is not to the coherent body of scientific thought that does exist but to a confused myth. It is a travesty of Darwinism to suggest that all that matters in social life is conflict. One individual may be more likely to survive because it is better suited to making its way about its environment and not because it is fiercer than others. Individuals may survive better when they join forces with others. By their joint actions they can frequently do things that one individual cannot do. Consequently, those that team up are more likely to survive than those that do not. Above all, social cohesion may become a critical condition for the survival of the society.
A straightforward message is, then, that each of us may live happier and, in the main, more successful lives, if we treat our fellow human beings as individuals with whom we can readily work. This is a rational rather than a moral argument. It should appeal to all those pragmatists who want to look after themselves. Cooperation is good business practice. However, another matter impinges on rampant individualism, which cannot be treated in a way that so readily generates agreement….”

How Paperbacks Helped the U.S. Win World War II

Curated on November 22, 2014October 30, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Jennifer Maloney at the Wall Street Journal: “A decade after the Nazis’ 1933 book burnings, the U.S. War Department and the publishing industry did the opposite, printing 120 million miniature, lightweight paperbacks for U.S. troops to carry in their pockets across Europe, North Africa and the Pacific.

The books were Armed Services Editions, printed by a coalition of publishers with funding from the government and shipped by the Army and Navy. The largest of them were only three-quarters of an inch thick—thin enough to fit in the pocket of a soldier’s pants. Soldiers read them on transport ships, in camps and in foxholes. Wounded and waiting for medics, men turned to them on Omaha Beach, propped against the base of the cliffs. Others were buried with a book tucked in a pocket.
“When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II” by Molly Guptill Manning tells the story of the Armed Services Editions. To be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on Dec. 2, the book reveals how the special editions sparked correspondence between soldiers and authors, lifted “The Great Gatsby” from obscurity, and created a new audience of readers back home.
The program was conceived by a group of publishers, including Doubleday, Random House and W. W. Norton. In 1942 they formed the Council on Books in Wartime to explore how books could serve the nation during the war. Ultimately, the program transformed the publishing industry. “It basically provided the foundation for the mass-market paperback,” said Michael Hackenberg, a bookseller and historian. It also turned a generation of young men into lifelong readers….”

Design for Policy

Curated on November 19, 2014July 18, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

New book edited by Christian Bason: “Design for Policy is the first publication to chart the emergence of collaborative design approaches to innovation in public policy. Drawing on contributions from a range of the world’s leading academics, design practitioners and public managers, it provides a rich, detailed analysis of design as a tool for addressing public problems and capturing opportunities for achieving better and more efficient societal outcomes.
In his introduction, Christian Bason suggests that design may offer a fundamental reinvention of the art and craft of policy making for the twenty-first century. From challenging current problem spaces to driving the creative quest for new solutions and shaping the physical and virtual artefacts of policy implementation, design holds a significant yet largely unexplored potential.
The book is structured in three main sections, covering the global context of the rise of design for policy, in-depth case studies of the application of design to policy making, and a guide to concrete design tools for policy intent, insight, ideation and implementation. The summary chapter lays out a future agenda for design in government, suggesting how to position design more firmly on the public policy stage.
Design for Policy is intended as a resource for leaders and scholars in government departments, public service organizations and institutions, schools of design and public management, think tanks and consultancies that wish to understand and use design as a tool for public sector reform and innovation….More: Full contents list; Introduction – The Design for Policy Nexus.”

We’re All Pirates Now

Curated on November 19, 2014August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book Review by Edward Kosner of “Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free”in the Wall Street Journal: “Do you feel like a thief when you click on a website link and find yourself reading an article or listening to a song you haven’t paid for? Should you? Are you annoyed when you can’t copy a movie you’ve paid for onto your computer’s hard drive? Should you be? Should copyright, conceived in England three centuries ago to protect writers from unscrupulous printers, apply the same way to creators and consumers in the digital age?
The sci-fi writer, blogger and general man-about-the-Web Cory Doctorow tries to answer some of these questions—and introduces others—in “Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free.” Billed as a guide for perplexed creators about how to make a living in the Internet Era, the book is actually a populist manifesto for the information revolution.
Mr. Doctorow is a confident and aphoristic writer—his book is like one long TED talk—and his basic advice to creators is easy to grasp: Aspiring novelists, journalists, musicians and other artists and would-be artists should recognize the Web as an unprecedented promotional medium rather than a revenue source. Creators, writes Mr. Doctorow, need to get known before they can expect to profit from their work. So they should welcome having their words, music or images reproduced online without permission to pave the way for a later payoff.
Even if they manage to make a name, he warns, they’re likely to be ripped off by the entertainment-industrial complex—big book publishers, record companies, movie studios, Google , Apple and Microsoft. But they can monetize their creativity by, among other things, selling tickets to public shows, peddling “swag”—T-shirts, ball caps, posters and recordings—and taking commissions for new work.

He cites the example of a painter named Molly Crabapple, who, inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement, raised $55,000 on the crowdsourcing site Kickstarter, rented a storefront and created nine huge canvases, seven of which she sold for $8,000 each. Not the easiest way to become the next Jeff Koons, Taylor Swift or Gillian Flynn.
But Mr. Doctorow turns out to be less interested in mentoring unrealized talent than in promulgating a new regime for copyright regulation on the Internet. Copyright has been enshrined in American law since 1790, but computer technology, he argues, has rendered the concept obsolete: “We can’t stop copying on the Internet because the Internet is a copying machine.” And the whole debate, he complains, “is filled with lies, damn lies and piracy statistics.”
There’s lots of technical stuff here about digital locks—he calls devices like the Kindle “roach motels” that allow content to be loaded but never offloaded elsewhere—as well as algorithms, embedded keys and such. And the book is clotted with acronyms: A diligent reader who finishes this slim volume should be able to pass a test on the meaning of ACTA, WIPO, WPPT, WCT, DMCA, DNS, SOPA and PIPA, not to mention NaTD (techspeak for “Notice and Take Down”).
The gist of Mr. Doctorow’s argument is that the bad guys of the content game use copyright protection and antipiracy protocols not to help creators but to enrich themselves at the expense of the talent and the consumers of content. Similarly, he contends that the crusade against “net neutrality”—the principle that Internet carriers must treat all data and users the same way—is actually a ploy to elevate big players in the digital world by turning the rest of us into second-class Netizens.
“The future of the Internet,” he writes, “should not be a fight about whether Google (or Apple or Microsoft) gets to be in charge or whether Hollywood gets to be in charge. Left to their own devices, Big Tech and Big Content are perfectly capable of coming up with a position that keeps both ‘sides’ happy at the expense of everyone else.”…”

Digital Sociology

Curated on November 18, 2014November 27, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

New book by Debor ah Lupton: “We now live in a digital society. New digital technologies have had a profound influence on everyday life, social relations, government, commerce, the economy and the production and dissemination of knowledge. People’s movements in space, their purchasing habits and their online communication with others are now monitored in detail by digital technologies. We are increasingly becoming digital data subjects, whether we like it or not, and whether we choose this or not.
The sub-discipline of digital sociology provides a means by which the impact, development and use of these technologies and their incorporation into social worlds, social institutions and concepts of selfhood and embodiment may be investigated, analysed and understood. This book introduces a range of interesting social, cultural and political dimensions of digital society and discusses some of the important debates occurring in research and scholarship on these aspects. It covers the new knowledge economy and big data, reconceptualising research in the digital era, the digitisation of higher education, the diversity of digital use, digital politics and citizen digital engagement, the politics of surveillance, privacy issues, the contribution of digital devices to embodiment and concepts of selfhood and many other topics.”

The Governance Of Socio-Technical Systems

Curated on November 13, 2014November 27, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

New book edited by Susana Borrás and Jakob Edler: “Why are so few electric cars in our streets today? Why is it difficult to introduce electronic patient records in our hospitals? To answer these questions we need to understand how state and non-state actors interact with the purpose of transforming socio-technical systems.
Examining the “who” (agents), “how” (policy instruments) and “why” (societal legitimacy) of the governance process, this book presents a conceptual framework for the governance of change in socio-technical systems. Bridging the gap between disciplinary fields, expert contributions provide innovative empirical cases of different modes of governing change. The Governance of Socio-Technical Systems offers a stepping-stone towards building a theory of governance of change and presents a new research agenda on the interaction between science, technology and society.”