Alpha Control

If this paragraph doesn't make the hair on the back of back of your neck stand at attention, then your ass needs to download an imagination:

DeepMind created five versions of their AI, AlphaStar, and trained them. Their training included footage of human games. A deep neural network trained directly from raw game data by supervised learning and reinforcement learning, said the DeepMind bloggers. AlphaStar, added Coldewey, learned from watching humans play at first, "but soon honed its skills by playing against facets of itself."
-source

Facets of itself.

***
Next up, another item related to botnets and brain-nets, like who wants to be a millionaire but for everything; I'll call it "crowding", but I'm waiting for a better word, which will come in 5 or 6 years, because this will be happening everywhere. It's the wisdom of the crowd, plus artificial intelligence.

Instantaneous crowdsourcing is the way the article refers to it. Real-time remote backup (made of real people) for an otherwise automated system. In this case, that system is air traffic control, and it is built on top of what we've learned so far with automotive traffic control, via the ridesharing explosion happening right now.

The problem is obvious. A car can now drive on its own pretty darn well. But there will always be an extenuating circumstance, an exception to the algorithm, the trolleyology of a real world, high risk situation. And that's where humans have to come in.

Software in the vehicle would analyze real-time vehicle data and electronically guesses 10-30 seconds into the future to estimate the likelihood of a "disengagement"—a situation where the car's automated systems could need human help.

If the likelihood exceeds a pre-set threshold, the system contacts a remotely located control center and sends data from the car.

The control center's system analyzes the car's data, generates several possible scenarios and shows them to several human supervisors, who are situated in driving simulators.

The humans respond to the simulations and their responses are sent back to the vehicle.

The vehicle now has a library of human-generated responses that it can choose from instantaneously, based on information from on-board sensors.
-source

***
This stuff freaks me the out, because there is only one thing on this Earth more powerful than the human brain, and that's more than one human brain, connected together, and operating in real time. That's scarier than AI; it's the combination of humans and artificial intelligence. Semibots is a decent word for it, because it's a little bit of both.

And what's more, we lack the framework for predicting what happens when these hybrid neural networks mature. It's called the science of sync, and it should describe and predict the nature of emergent, synchronized complex networks, except that it doesn't, either because we don't understand it enough, or because such things are impossible to predict.

***
I'm not sure how this will pan out in the near term, but keep in mind there are aspirations for an internet in outerspace; the One-Web satellite constellation was just deployed.

Combine that with the emergent synchronization of the human-robot union described above, and we're getting just beyond the point in our future where we can still grasp what the heck is going on.


Notes:
AlphaStar hungry for world domination in StarCraft II fights
Jan 2019, phys.org

Air traffic control for driverless cars could speed up deployment
Feb 2019, phys.org

OneWeb satellite internet mega-constellation set to fly
Feb 2019, BBC

Physicists discover surprisingly complex states emerging out of simple synchronized networks
Mar 2019, phys.org

Citizen Science

This jacket is so hi-tech even the manufacturers don't know what it does.

From what I can gather, this is the first instance of a graphene product on the consumer market.

There may be components of things we already use that incorporate it, or other materials used that are similar. But there haven't been any graphene watches or graphene duct tape yet. (I see something about a graphene light bulb from 2015?)

If you're not sure what graphene is, I should let someone with more authority impress upon you the hyperboles it bestows.

Sure stainless steel was a big deal. And synthetic plastics a triumph of man over nature (and may end up marking our place in the geological record). But graphene is all of those, and more.

It's everything-proof, anti-everything, and superconductive, whatever that means. It weighs less and holds more than anything else there is. It has made a new class of materials by subtracting a dimension from the entire arc of both human and nature's history, for it is, for all intents and purposes, a two-dimensional material.

And the greatest part is that it's not some crazy-long molecule with an unspellcheckable name, it's a bunch of carbon atoms. The same carbon atoms that have been floating around for eternity. By themselves, they usually make either graphene or diamonds, both just clumps of carbon atoms. But now, scientists have managed to trick them into planar arrangements only one atom thick.

Because we do not have experience with two-dimensional materials (because they do not exist anywhere else in the universe), we don't know what they can do, and we're pretty surprised by everything they've done so far.

After many years of development, the first thing we see is not a graphene/carbon nanotube powered-car by Tesla, or a graphene water filter by Brita, but a jacket by a high-end sports apparel manufacturer.

They don't even know why they did it*; the point is for consumers to wear it and discover what it does for them, for all of us. More of this to come, surely.

*I think we all know why they did it (publicity).


Notes:
Graphene Jacket. Part jacket. Part science experiment. Made with the only material in the world with a Nobel Prize
Aug 2018, Vollebak

Collective Decision Making Fail

Field study shows group decision making not always the best
Aug 1, 2013, phys.org

team studies ants looking for a new nest:

The team noted that when one of the nests was obviously far superior to the other, both the colony as a whole, and individual ants more often chose the better option. What was surprising, however, was that individuals had a slightly better hit rate then the colony as a whole.

When a colony "decides" it needs a new nest, scout ants are sent out to find a new site. When one of the scout ants finds one it likes, it releases a chemical that attracts another of the colony members. If that member also likes the site it too will release a chemical attracting another ant and so on. The site that gets the most "votes" is the one eventually chosen by the colony. But, when a single ant is forced (by the researchers) to make a decision about which site to pick, it has to look at all the options and make a decision on its own—that takes more time than the multiple ant approach because in that scenario, individual ants only ever review one site—its more efficient. It's also more likely to lead to errors of course and that's why the colony as a whole tended to choose the wrong best site more often than the single ants—when the choice was obvious—who could make the decision without having to waste time thinking it over.

Ant colonies outperform individuals when a sensory discrimination task is difficult but not when it is easy, PNAS, Published online before print July 29, 2013, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1304917110
source

Anthropogenic Metadata on Climate Science

aka The Low-Hanging Fruit of Neuro-Pop in the Age of Big Datty

Notice below, just a sample of the kinds of reports that use climate science as a substrate upon which to study human behavior and cognition..

Some may find it interesting to see how the science of climate change has ripened into a metadata-rich fruit hanging low on the tree of human-knowledge; that's knowledge -of- humans, not knowledge acquired by humans.

Granted we are entering the age of the New Humanities, and granted climate science is probably the most contentious scientific issue to be argued publicly since the advent of digital social media, but, 10 years ago, had you asked anyone what would be the most significant by-product of climate science, this would have never made it to the list.

Just goes to show that the world is full of surprises, and no matter how much you try, predicting the value of scientific endeavour is never part of the justification of doing it.

[note: I've recently been watching panels discussing the value of space exploration, and exploration in general]

Changing minds about climate change policy can be done—sometimes
phys.org Jun 24, 2013
Provided by The Ohio State University

Anthropologists argue field must play a vital role in climate change studies
phys.org Jun 20, 2013
Provided by University of California - Santa Cruz

Some Americans are cooling off on global warming
phys.org Jun 28, 2013
Provided by University of Michigan

Emotional response to climate change influences whether we seek or avoid further information
phys.org May 15, 2013
Provided by University at Buffalo

Americans care deeply about 'global warming' – but not 'climate change'
The Guardian, 27 May 2014

Crowdsourcing

Meet the Genius Behind the Trillion-Dollar Coin and the Plot to Breach the Debt Ceiling

RYAN TATE 01.10.13

modified:

“It was really a pointless conversation” 

...underlines how ad-hoc online communities, like an anonymous international band of commenters, are increasingly able to move their ideas from the fringes into the middle of political debate.

Goliard Figures, in Umberto Eco, The Infinity of Lists, 2008. p. 263.

in Crowdsourcing Reform, 2010

It may have started as a game, but Beowulf and his pals are poised to inject an important new tactic into oversight of the government’s monetary institutions.

The coin hack even surprised and impressed former U.S. Mint director Philip Diehl, who co-authored the law that enabled the platinum loophole in the first place.

“When I first heard about the idea to mint a trillion-dollar coin, I was very surprised,” says Diehl. “But because I know that law backwards and forwards, I knew immediately that the guy who came up with the idea was right."

http://www.wired.com/business/2013/01/trillion-dollar-coin-inventor

But it wasn't 'a guy' who 'came up with' the idea, it was many.

On Snobbery

"like a sir"

“Are we justified in attributing so much importance to verifying “originals” and distinguishing them from duplicates that are much like them and for many practical purposes fulfill the same functions? I believe we are. Just as it is in the interest of the human potential to extend the knowledge of the truth beyond the limits already attained, there is merit in pursuing aesthetic achievement to its peaks. We know from much evidence that art comes at all levels, from the poorest to the highest, and that therefore we need to distinguish all these levels from one another by their objective characteristics. Precisely because all works of art are basically duplicates of one another in that they are all engaged in the same task, it is possible and necessary to compare their levels of excellence. Those distinctions, however, are not readily apparent to everybody. A cheap popular song, novel, or picture may provide a full aesthetic experience within the narrow horizon of poorly prepared recipients, and it takes the persistent best efforts of the best experts to come ever closer to the recognition of the highest achievements.

To this end, we are in need of uncontaminated facts. It is difficult enough to prove the secrets of things when the evidence is authentic. We cannot afford to be misled by falsification.”

Rudolph Arnheim, “On Duplication”, pp232-245.
in The Forger’s Art: Forgery and the Philosophy of Art
Denis Dutton, ed.
Berkeley, 1983


Random: what we call the ‘artworld’ is just ‘good things worthy of duplication’.


On Snobbery/the remix

When young generations have admired this not-then-known forgery, if the aesthetic value has not changed, we say – “What harm has it done?” But, what is the purpose of art? Simply to entertain the senses?

Surely this cannot be what compels the artist, beyond conscious understanding or control, to create.

No, art does more than this. It is a pairing of the hemispheres, a mapping of non-observable ideas and emotions onto a consensually “recognizable” (cognitively recognizable) structure. That structure, however, is not Music, or Art, or even the subsets, such as Modern or Expressionist. The structure is the entirety of the artworld, which itself is an interpretation of the world-in-total, as that which one person or a select group is immersed in.

Ultimately, art, in any form, is both instruction and expression. The performer of the ritual (be it music or art or dance) is expressing both himself (or itself in the case of collective such as an orchestra) and the instruction of the work. And who is held accountable for the instruction, then? Even today, many artists will deflect credit for the authorship of their work. The art creates itself through the artist.

The unconscious action of the artist, as their ephormations iterate within a population, are held in-check by some other force.

For art to be of service, and thus of value, and for the population to receive proper instruction in the face of continually changing and complexifying environment, there must be some criteria by which the bad examples fall out, or are filtered out. Without this filter, society would fail to adapt, and art would find itself useless and consequently extinct from the human experience.

It is really no wonder, by this explanation heretofore, why we must remove the forgery from the museum wall. In a painting, the instructions are embedded into the expression – inextricably. For a piece of written music, the instruction is removed, or disembodied from the expression, so it is not the same. By “appreciating” an aesthetically powerful work of art that is known to have been whittled down by the algorithm of artificial selection, artists and critics and institutions and patrons, etc., there is something about the forged painting that is giving corrupt instructions (via the mismatched expression). And a pure expression it isn’t, for it is more an interpretation of a painting or a painter – someone else’s recursion, not yours – it is already once more removed. So young generations may enjoy and be moved by the aesthetic beauty, but as a whole, the interaction (between art and person) is not taking place as intended.

And note, it is not the artist who intends the interaction to be one way or another, but art itself, or the society, or the artworld that selects it. The youth, then, in this case, is being corrupted. It is the job of snobbery to police the proper transmission of artistic instruction. For those who do it well, snobs are only doing their duty.

All Your Brain Are Belong To Us

EPOCH neuroheadset

In light of a slew of articles all mashed up together, I can't help but think about our future of crowdsourcing and citizen science...

Here is a glimpse of some of the work being done, the goal in this instance is to make more visually-intelligent the automaton robots that will soon-enough be taking over many of the jobs that we currently do:

Scanning Your Home With Kinect Could Improve 3-D Robot Vision
By Dave Mosher - August 28, 2012

Seeking a way to crowdsource better computer vision, roboticists have launched a website that allows users to record pieces of their environments in 3-D with a Kinect camera.

Helper robots must be able to distinguish a refrigerator from an oven, for example, and open these labyrinthine 3-D objects to cook a casserole or deliver a cold beer to beckoning human owners.

“If you can get real-world 3-D data for 5,000 refrigerators, you can develop an algorithm to generalize a refrigerator and then test a robot’s ability to generalize them,” said Alper Aydemir of the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/kinect-home-computer-vision/

Here is an article that (panic aside, please) reminds us that brain-controlled computing has actually been available at the consumer level for a couple of years now:

Researchers Hack Brainwaves to Reveal PINs, Other Personal Data
BY GEETA DAYAL 08.29.12
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/08/brainwave-hacking/

Directly to the manufacturer:

Emotiv
"You think, therefore you can"
Based on the latest developments in neuro-technology, Emotiv has developed a revolutionary new personal interface for human computer interaction. The Emotiv EPOC is a high resolution, neuro-signal acquisition and processing wireless neuroheadset.
http://emotiv.com/

And so finally - Emotiv sells an EEG neuroheadset for $500. Soon it will be less expensive. Having recently watched a video about the socio-political and legal barriers to psychedelic-based neurological research, I wonder:
How long before citizens bypass the laws that (for good reason) hinder psychedelic science?
In about five years, a lot of people are going to be taking drugs, slapping this brain-reader on their head, and uploading their data. For better or for worse...

Post Script:
Open Your Mind to the New Psychedelic Science
GREG MILLER 04.26.13
tl;dr
Scientists are, somewhat successfully, trying to do psychedelic science again.