Singularity Blog by Jim
Expansion on The Singularity Headlines

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7May'15Sun09:00am
I mentioned to someone the other day, maybe it was you, maybe to myself, that I have not integrated the place of corporations in the world of the robots. I just can't get my mind around it, I have been only paying attention to the Big Picture, the societal (ick!) impact -- a world without employment as a cornerstone. But the robots will come about under the auspices of the corporate world. Governments will play a role, but only in advancing military aims and its useful spin-offs. Domestic innovations of welfare to various interest groups and well intended efforts like retraining the unemployed as if there were still jobs to be had.. Universities will resist having teaching taken over because they will not have like minded people to discuss thoughts with. The household will adopt helpful gadgets just as they did automatic washers and microwaves to free up woman to destroy the job market. There will be ramifications there much as the birth control pills impacted not only the individual household, but to the entire society order (who could have predicted 2-1/2 men from that ?). Religion is another thing that exists with some fundamental influence, yet amazing weakness that simply creates a drag on anything new; that I see as manipulable by inventing a new prophet to spread acceptance of what the robots think is needed, or to at least to reduce resistance to their projects (goals ?) So to with the media. A large number of press items today is already written by robots. "The Tarheels put down the SeaHawks in a squeaker by 27 to 24," was written by a computer. As was, "The market was up 26 points today on shallow trading, closing at 1,789." How easy to add emotional words to favor one side or the other or to generated optimism or despair. And the new creative journalism of Dan Rather, Brian Williams, and George Stephanopoulos shows how easy to offer robots free reign over media to shape our beliefs.
    Putting institutions into categories of doers and opinion leaders : corporations and households are doers -- lead by corporations. And all the rest are simply (but important) attitude adjusters. So understanding how corporations will be involved in the new world is key -- they provide the funds and activities on the journey to the certain (or uncertain) future. Their actions will form the transition from Today to the world of 1984. (And indicate where one should invest her wealth, you should be thinking too.) Will corporations form SkyNet (allusion to the Terminator series) or by Decima Technologies in possession of the "Samaritan AI" (that forced Harold's "the machine" to shut down in the season cliff hanger of "Person of Interest").

15May'15Fri08:15am
What better way to make your fortune than to bet on a sure thing ? If we are sure of what is to come with the progress of the Singularity, then we should be able to make a fortune. Just put your money where your mouth is ? Well, Jim ; the ball is in your court.
    I have been looking at the future and see massive unemployment of 40% in the next ten years. Who profits from unemployment ? Who profits from robots?
    Other people point out that man has been through massive dislocations of labor before and come out with a better world, citing mechanization of agriculture [slaves moved from chattel to being an underclass, no money to be made there, maybe subsidized slum housing ?] ; mechanization of industry,from home-based crafts by citing the loom in factories [textiles moved to Asia, no easy profit there].
An approach is to stratify lists by aspect of the singularity and naming companies making progress . And by companies most likely to benefit by aspects of the technological progress. To start :
For Progress: Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon.
For Markets : look to early adopters
• Public is ultimate market (I hope) -- Roomba. Bound to be bought up by somebody from public exposure in household, at a big profit.
• Military has money to spend, of will as soon as Sequester is withdrawn. Who is big in drones ? General Atomics(air force), Northrop (navy), Boeing, Lockheed, Ryan (army) . Robots ? Div of Google,   Military items also fits another stock market profile, the coming war(s) and rearming after sequester. How to make money on a war with Russia/China or with the Muslim half of the world, another of "know" future events ?
• Medical is a large part of our economy. Diagnostics rather than surgery. Human add-ons. Ekso Bionics
    This portfolio should not be too hard to compile: The names are already out there : first-in has a head start of name recognition, acceptance, experience, patents. Who will benefit the most in the initial wave, ie., within my remaining life span ? Some people see the coming change as compared to the industrial revolution (slave to cotton picking machine, home crafts to factories). We have survived massive relocations in the past and come out of them with a better world. I have been looking at this as bigger than that, on the par with the change from hunting to agriculture. But the early stages (within my lifetime) will be more akin to the industrial revolution.

What place will corporations fill in the next century that follows ? They will continue to drive the direction of progress for the rest of this century.

25May'15
We would expect that jobs that require uniquely human contact -- hospital aids, councilors -- would remain. But it is recognized by developers that the human-like touch, bedside manner, is important for the acceptance of robots, that these receive early attention and will be among the priority developments -- very expensive, one-on-one, positions will be among the first to go. Example, Eliza has been able to say, "And how do you feel about that ?" to mimic shrinks since the 1960's followed by Alice, Jabberwocky, and all the rest of the chatterbox programs competing for the Turing Prize.

I think the Turing test competition of 07June2014, was not passed. A bunch of folks think it was, but it was by trickery. The 2015 competition should be coming up soon.
Hint : If the competitor knows more than a human (is too good to be true), then it is not human. Is this called a paradox?

26May'15
Made another realization about the takeover of human jobs. The AI is being targeted at the most skilled and expensive jobs where there is a payback to the investment. Or where there are a large number of a jobs. Thus drivers, and medical diagnostics are among the first things to be done. This leaves the more detailed, one-up tasks to remain under human control -- a fighter pilot is necessary to handle unexpected events, and a surgeon. Also a gardener to properly clip the roses. It is the mass of middle jobs that will be removed. Thus the classic blue collar worker and white collar staffer that will be the first to go while some low wage humans will survive. Or, be among last to go because there is less profit in their elimination. Fortunately computers can speak Spanish.   The "minimum wage" is a step towards the future in two directions -- to hurry along the elimination of those jobs and to push people who were once employed onto the universal credit card (once called welfare).

"Natural language" full of idioms, cultural references and inflections that infuse far richer meaning into our words than their literal definitions. (For example, when we use sarcasm, duh.) Humans color their spoken words with facial expressions and body language, too. All of this has long befuddled computers. Is this our salvation?
IBM's Watson computer last year smoked its human competition in "Jeopardy!", a game full of wordplay and sly references.
Siri by Apple and Cortana by Microsoft and Echo by Amazon and GoogleNow are rapidly pushing the natural language barrier.
Natural language will not stump the computer, it will understand more than a teenager's mother And a computer can ask a question, which a parent might be too embarrassed to admit.

June 6
Among the DARPA projects is one focused on neuroprosthetics that aim to restore damaged sight, hearing and movement. One of DARPA's brain-machine interface projects is Proto2, a thought-controlled prosthetic arm. Proto2 consists of a dexterous hand and fingers that can perform 25 joint motions.
This fits in with the idea that human borgs will be around within ten years -- Ray Kurzweil. Do hip replacements count ? If so, then the future is now.
Who is working on intelligence enhancements? The smart chip/neural implants. How will they work ? Currently used in rehabilitation. I want enhancement. The literature just says by stimulation. Here is one of the few articles on the social problems I have run across.

Inequality and social disruption.   Some believe that the ability to enhance one's self would reflect the overall goal of human life: to improve fitness and survivability. They claim that it is in human nature to want to better ourselves via increase life expectancy, become stronger and/or smarter, become less fearful and more independent. In today's world, however, there are stratification among socioeconomic classes that prevent some from accessing these enhancements. The advantage gained by one person's enhancements implies a disadvantage to an unenhanced person. Human enhancements present a great debate on the equality between the haves and the have-nots. A modern day example of this would be LASIK eye surgery, which only the wealthy can afford.

The enhancement of the human body could have profound changes to everyday situations. Sports, for instance, would change dramatically if enhanced people were allowed to compete; there would be a clear disadvantage for those who are not enhanced. In regards to economic programs, human enhancements would greatly increase life expectancy which would require employers to either adjust their pension programs to compensate for a longer retirement term, or delay retirement age another ten years or so. When considering birth rates into this equation, if there is no decline with increased longevity, this could put more pressure on resources like energy and food availability. A job candidate enhanced with a neural transplant that heightens their ability to compute and retain information, would out-compete someone who is not enhanced. Another scenario might be a person with a hearing or sight enhancement could intrude on privacy laws or expectations in an environment like a classroom or workplace. These enhancements could go undetected and give individuals an overall advantage. Human enhancements have profound ability to benefit fitness and survivability; enhancements could widen the gap between socioeconomic classes.

21st century Chinese eugenics may allow the Chinese to increase the IQ of each subsequent generation by five to fifteen IQ points, and after a couple generations it "would be game over for Western global competitiveness."

Can we assume a progression of first a mechanical implant that benefits the individual, then going to a bio-based implant that passes the capabilities to offspring. Contrast the science/engineering/commercial way to the "natural" alternative of selection thru eugenics. Has anyone ever done a study of the outcome of the oft mentioned Nazi eugenic experiments ? A casual observation is the Germany runs the EU and supports a half dozen other countries. Does the possibility exist that a few of the offspring have raised the level of accomplishment ? Or was the German culture more productive in the first place ? The world progresses because of the contribution of only a few leaders. [Those of us who are simply bright are there to overcome the damage done by the simply dumb.] Nazi gave eugenics a bad name, but anyone in farm country knows what genetic engineering can accomplish. And the risks Humans are biologically entities.

DARPA Robotic Challenge

June 5-6 . This has been marked on the calendar all year with great anticipation.
[Progress reports and commentary. typical]
The first round is over. Two robots succeeded in getting thru the door, and two fell. The two that fell must have hurt themselves, they were carted off. I am disappointed at the degree of automation. Much less than I expected. Still controlled by humans. But the computer instructions must include more actions within each command, because somewhat faster. We have to think of these robots as a remote camera at the disaster site and as aremote mechanical arm for the humans trying to fix the disaster.

A robot is so top-heavy, it is hard to believe than can even walk over rubble or to balance themselves going up steps. Surprised that none of the falls today even tried to stand up again, even on a flat surface ; they all took the 10 minutes penalty to have people come stand it up and check it over.

Team IHMC, Institute of Human and Machine Cognition, Pensacola, FL completed 7 of 8 tasks, fell twice and had to take two 10 minute penalties against their one hour (60 minute) allowance. The second caused them to reach their time limit, but they are currently #1. Team Trooper (Lockheed, Penn, Rensselaer) a high scorer last year, is out, with only 2 points earned of 8 possible.
Evidently there is more information available on a paid mobile app, which I don't have -- iPhone or Android, either one.

Round Two is over. All performed badly. Points earned by the first eight teams are: 7,3,2,2,1,1,1,0. I have six copies of browser up: challenge home, 4 concurrent venues, and YouTube filtered for the Last Hour. This last is useful when the video feed of the whole Challenge shuts down like it is right now.

I would have expected balance and speed of walking on level ground to have been perfected by now. Still take steps measured in inches, not striding along. More like Tim Conway, only slower, each shuffle taking many seconds. And expected more macros to accomplish subtasks. Several teams passed up cutting a hole in the wall, a task that IHMC did with no sweat, Some long pauses, is a committee determining what to do next?. The teams have been working hard for the last year, but not on building the capabilities required for the Challenge -- lack of training on speed of action. One gift is that the value spins easily and robots are just using a finger to spin it. Not my experience, valves bind and sometimes take real effort to move.
Round three is over. Three bad entries, one completed the 8th task (climbing steps), WPI (Wooster Polytechnic) , but skipped some earlier tasks. They have not posted scores (yet, this time?). They need a running score and to label on the screen with what team one is looking at. This event is certainly not intended to service those few of us robotic maniacs. Or they have an agreement not to do too good of a job so that people will buy the smart-phone apps. The number of orientals on American teams is very noticeable. This is an American sponsored event and few round eyes evident. The rest of the world takes robotics more seriously than we do. To our peril.
Day One winner was what looked like a kid had made from a little table on wheels. I thought it didn't have a chance.
First was Nimbro , a small team from Univ of Bonn, Germany.
Second place with a popular, unique shaped robot by NASA Jet Propulsion Lab. Even so, it didn't come up to its potential. Ran out of time.
Third was mentioned as first round winner by IHMC. Business-like robot, well managed. Team is mostly students.
Fourth by WPI-CMU . CMU is always a top performer. These four completed 7 of 8 tasks.,
Fifth was MIT with 6 events completed.
Second tier teams scored 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 0, 0 tasks done.

End of Day Two.
Carnegy-Mellon won the Robotic Challenge. We can see why Uber has bought the team.   [Hired away 40 of 100 people at C-M !]
    http://www.theroboticschallenge.org/finalist/tartan-rescue
The only team to complete all eight tasks.

Wait-up. They are now re-posting the scores. There are some shenanigans going on. There are a whole bunch of teams that are now credited with extra points. They are showing three teams completed all the tasks. I saw most of the Challenge live and they did not. Who is getting bribes and for what ? Of the list of Day One scores for the top ten, four went up one point and one went up two points. Is this soccer ? [Ref: FIFA scandle]
I only saw part of today's, spent from 3: to 10:, 11 to 1:am working on daughter's computer. I did notice that some teams were back from yesterday, maybe they let them use up any time from when their entry collapsed early. If so, then totally unfair opportunity granted to Day One entrances to fix their machine over night and try again. This opportunity is not available to Day Two starters. Unless they keep the event open tomorrow and let those people have another go on Sunday.   Found not discussion online on this.]
They also made one of the Day Two tasks harder. Day One had the simple task of throwing an electrical switch. (recall last year was to connect a fire hose, so this year was dumbed down significantly.) Day Two, that task had to unplug an electrical outlet and plug it into a nearby socket. Thereby doubling the complexity. Yet even this was dumbed down in that the plug did not have electric plug blades but was simply held in place with a magnet.
The favorite from Day One, the business-like IHMC, Institute for Human and Machine Cognition ( a bunch of students), had placed 2nd in 2013 challenge. They just did each task and promptly went to the next, whereas other robots stood motionless for many minutes before moving to the next task and then again made prolonged stops during the task.  . Well, that sentimental favorite fell off the ladder in the last minutes. So it did not complete task number 8. It would have meant a penalty of ten minutes which would have taken them to the time limit. Well, they must have let it try the stairs again. I will have to check the Day Two footage. [No joy, only edited footage is available online]   These shenanigans now make a South Korean team the winner -- 11th last time. The also built their own robot. Perhaps deserving, I can't find a full video
http://www.theroboticschallenge.org/finalist/kaist

Along with the poorly run video show, the terribly slow execution, no better than last year, an inability to perform on their own as promised, in a dumbed down exercise, unfairly administered, well, frankly I am disgusted.

June 7.
Here is a series of ten short videos (1 to 4 minutes each) by the Challenge which puts a good face on why and how of the Challenge that could have/should have been available before or during the activities, except it uses video clips from this year's events.
    www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkIkS1m2BBE&list=TLrcJ88Lxx-iQ"
Video one is just the original scoreboard, before the seeming arbitrary changes from fact that I complained about last night for 2:35 minutes, so drag the cursor to end that. I don't know what is going on. Will check for bulletin boards. Skip "4, "Smiling Faces" and save 1:30 minutes of people waving at the camera. Seven is the best video.
Else it is a worthy half hour. You may notice is sounds like there will be anther challenge. Don't know if he means by DARPA or by others round the world -- which is bound to happen. Good.

June 8.
Q. > So how far delayed is the Singularity?
A. = Robots are just a mechanical arm of The Singularity which will be super programmed (by itself?) or conscious. The hardware of robots may only influence the attitude of the public to A.I. Fortunately, nobody watched the real Robotic Challenge show live and they can continue to show videos of robots running on treadmills, when we who watched certainly know better.

June 8.
Ray is forecasting immortality [or until the end of humanity, whichever comes first] by some people in the late 2030s or 2040s. One way is by artificial organs, the second way is to transfer memories (and consciousness -- whatever that is) to The Cloud. This can last forever or until some hacker gets to it or electromagnetic plus by Sun, enemy, or terrorist. [In other words, till next week.]
Somebody else says the first person to live to be 1000 is alive today. Obviously a baby. Many of the headline type articles, if they give a source, the source is another headline service. Therefore don't know the logic behind the exciting captions.

Embedded artificial intelligence chips to augment the brain about that time, too. How will that work? Certainly if survival of the fittest, the chip six generations down the pike will win out over humans for control of the mind and body. There was a TV show in which the hero was embedded with an internet chip. The gimmick was every so often in solving a case, he would stop and access data with appropriate time-lapse video. That seems more likely than that of a mind sharing consciousness with a IQ chip.

When it occurs, will we hear about it ? Will corporations "breed" cyborgs to develop new products or ways to rape the financial system, What will happen if the great unwashed, or just the common masses, or worse the 1% (Mensa is 2%, I once belonged to Intertel, the 1%) start clamoring for IQ implants and longevity doodads. Who would say, "No, people, we have to give it to worthy politicians, inherited wealthy, and sports stars first. Surely you understand."   Bang !.   End of civility.

Ray Kurzweil     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil
Browse thru the whole write up. He is a bleeding optimist and I disagree with his rosy end. But he does not go beyond 2050 so he could be right about the nearer future up until that point. If we reach 2050, without tangible upheaval then my thinking is all wrong and I am willing to concede that he is right about the next 25 years, too. He does not fear revolution from unemployment whereas I cannot imagine what will happen when work, the essence man, the embodiment of his purpose for existence, goes away. He sees technical marvels possible that I see as being as selective as the video images displayed about robot capabilities. [Compare the actual Robotic Challenge performance to the promos] He does not see an epoch societal issue so he does not address that issue. He is a techy, not a humanities guy. I see the greatest aid to The Singularity is that humans will have a great war (civil, global, religion, whatever) that will create an unresisting, unexpectant body of survivors that will need The Singularity. I think government seldom does the right thing. (multiple reasons, not all of them corrupt). I also think that self-interest, the hallmark of human existence, of society, will make any good outcome difficult (read that as impossible). But part of my statement the other day that the intense period of my quest for knowledge about The Singularity has probably peaked, was a willingness to accept the general superiority of Ray's reasoning. He has been at it longer than I and he is at least as smart as I was in my prime. ;)

Google is paying him big bucks, and Fisher did not do that with me even tho I made for them a thousand-fold times my salary, so there is a directional indication in there somewhere.

Besides, it is more pleasant to think of a technological utopia coming rather than mass futility wherein suicide from despair will surpass cancer as an end point for the majority of humans. Ray would assume that statistically would be because we have cured cancer.

Robot grocery store in Des Moines opens August   -- 6:34 min video starts slow.
This is a small-store sized vending machine. Work out the details and bang, nation-wide.
High school kids are out of an other traditional job, just like self-service gas stations ended the "pump jockey" jobs in my day. Minimum wage knocked out almost all the other jobs available to young people.
This coming generation will be well prepared for there not being many jobs throughout their lifetimes by having grown up without tthe opportunity to experience the disciples of work.

Universal military service has certain advantages as a way to learn employability skills : getting up each morning and shaving, personal hygiene, shots, public hygiene, find and fix medical, dental, vision problems and treatment, showing up on time, neatness, following instructions, respect for hierarchy, group effort, getting along with people, physical conditioning, first aid, and such seemingly minor things.
    Six months for everybody is not hardship, IMO. Actually the services do not favor the idea, even thou it would speed up any emergency mobilization by months. The training effort does not contribute to boots on the ground. They would rather have career people than to continually be in boy scout-like training such as uniforms, marching, terminology, target practice, military and patriotic traditions. Provides a commonality of shared experience with fellow citizens.

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