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July 15, 2014 (LocalOrg) – In the movie “Transcendence,” the lead character, an artificial intelligence researcher, is uploaded to a super-computer before his body dies. His consciousness survives and his mind, unencumbered by the weakness of his physical body, begins expanding exponentially. While science fiction, the movie’s premise is not entirely impossible. While the human brain is highly complex, accessing it, decoding it, and interfacing with it has long-ago already begun.
The US Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, has announced its “Restoring Active Memory (RAM)” project – which intends to develop a prosthetic for the brain to record and store memories for those with degenerative neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease or victims of traumatic brain injuries (TBIs).
The research builds on the understanding that memory is a process in which neurons in certain regions of the brain encode information, store it and retrieve it. Certain types of illnesses and injuries, including Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Alzheimer’s disease and epilepsy, disrupt this process and cause memory loss. TBI, in particular, has affected 270,000 military service members since 2000.
The goal of LLNL’s work — driven by LLNL’s Neural Technology group and undertaken in collaboration with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Medtronic — is to develop a device that uses real-time recording and closed-loop stimulation of neural tissues to bridge gaps in the injured brain and restore individuals’ ability to form new memories and access previously formed ones.
The research is funded by DARPA’s Restoring Active Memory (RAM) program.
In essence, RAM would also allow humans to expand their brains into non-organic systems. While the project states it intends to restore memory function to those with deficiencies, the same prosthetic could also be used to expand the memory capacity of people with normal brain functions. While the device currently is intended to be an implant, future reiterations may include external devices either linked physically or perhaps even wirelessly. The implications may lead to devices and systems that allow our “minds” to expand beyond the physical confines of our biological brains, opening the doors to both great opportunities and equally frightful threats.
Threats and Opportunities
For starters, the digitization of our neurology opens the doors to all the threats and opportunities that befall or benefit existing digital devices, including those connected to the Internet. Collaboration, control, viruses, hacking, surveillance, exponential intellectual progress, personal empowerment, and even human-drones are all in the cards.
And while a climatic and apocalyptic “war with the machines” lingers menacingly in the back of our collective minds, what if devices like that which DARPA is developing led to man merging with machines instead? There would be no war with machines, we would be the machines.
In this context, we face two possible futures: one like that portrayed in science fiction films like Terminator or the Matrix where humans hide amid the ruins of their once proud civilization fighting a desperate resistance against far superior machines that turned on them, or a future like that portrayed in the Japanese anime films and series, Ghost in the Shell. In the latter, the lines are blurred between man and machine and a tenuous balance of power is maintained throughout human civilization, between extremes of both organic and cybernetic natures.
With advances like that announced by DARPA, the latter scenario is the most likely one. A merge between man and machine is the most likely scenario – whomever controls cybernetic technology however, will determine how utopian or dystopian our future will be. Currently, DARPA and other corporate-financier monopolies control this research and technology, while they monopolize other realms of scientific progress including molecular biology, genetic engineering, and information technology. This power in such few hands is surely a recipe for disaster – at least for those without access or say in how the technology is used – or in other words – for the vast majority of us.
A consumerist paradigm that has neurological implants tied to our information technology infrastructure would lead to abuses that would make the NSA’s current overreaching authority look placid in comparison. It could also transform our military’s abilities into the most effective and most horrifying of both human and drone combat.
Instead, this technology must be democratized, ofpened up, and disseminated across society. People to be fully free and in charge of their destiny must not focus on “democracy” and “civil literacy,” but rather on technological literacy, as it is technology that forms the foundation upon which modern society is built and controlled. If we want a say in this modern, technological society, we must understand how it works – currently such an understanding lies in so few hands.
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk (Reuters / Stephen Lam)
Billionaire entrepreneur and inventor Elon Musk took to Twitter over the weekend to sound the alarm about the dangers of artificial intelligence, which he says could be more of a threat to humans than the nuclear era.
Worth reading Superintelligence by Bostrom. We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes.
Musk was referring to the book ‘Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies,’ by Nick Bostrom, which poses questions about how humans will be able to handle computers containing advanced intelligence. Musk followed that tweet with another, speculating that humans are willingly ushering in what could be their own demise at the hands of robot domination.
Hope we’re not just the biological boot loader for digital superintelligence. Unfortunately, that is increasingly probable
Tesla-founder Musk, 42, has invested in artificial intelligence ventures in order to push for positive results from AI, he has said.
“I think there is potentially a dangerous outcome there,” he told CNBC of artificial intelligence.
“There have been movies about this, you know, like Terminator,” he added. “There are some scary outcomes. And we should try to make sure the outcomes are good, not bad.”
In March, Musk joined Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and actor Ashton Kutcher to invest in AI group Vicarious.
The aim of Vicarious is to build a “computer that thinks like a person…except it doesn’t have to eat or sleep,” said the company’s co-founder Scott Phoenix.
Vicarious is in the process of building a program that replicates the brain’s neocortex.
“Vicarious is developing machine learning software based on the computational principles of the human brain,” the company’s website says. “Our first technology is a visual perception system that interprets the contents of photographs and videos in a manner similar to humans. Powering this technology is a new computational paradigm we call the Recursive Cortical Network.”
While Musk is concerned of AI’s nefarious potential, others disagree.
“In my view, biological humans will not be outpaced by the AIs because they (we) will enhance themselves (ourselves) with AI,” said artificial intelligence expert Ray Kurzweil earlier this year. “It will not be us versus the machines … but rather, we will enhance our own capacity by merging with our intelligent creations.”
Mozilla announced yesterday that its co-founder Brendan Eich (photo, left) is stepping down as CEO following LGBT lobby protests over his support for California’s Proposition 8 ballot measure that outlawed same-sex, or ‘gay’ marriages in that state (the measure was later deemed unconstitutional following a federal court appeal).
Most mainstream media outlets are attributing his resignation to a boycott announcement by popular online dating site, OkCupid.com, who urged its users not to access their dating site through Mozilla’s Firefox browser, but to use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Google’s Chrome instead. But there’s a bit more to the story than this…
This appears to have snowballed into a full-blown feud within Mozilla over Eich’s personal views – which appear to have run contrary to those of Mozilla Chairwoman Mitchell Baker, who then fired what looks to be the deadly PR round on March 29, when she first blogged that “Mozilla supports equality for all, explicitly including LGBT equality and marriage equality.”
Prior to resigning, CEO Eich clearly stated his position to the Guardian on Wednesday this week, “There’s a difference here between the company, the foundation, as an employer and an entity, versus the project and community at large, which is not under any constraints to agree on LGBT equality or any other thing that is not central to the mission or the Mozilla manifesto.”
Baker responded on Thursday stating, “We have employees with a wide diversity of views. Our culture of openness extends to encouraging staff and community to share their beliefs and opinions in public.”
The only problem here is that Ms. Baker doesn’t seem to want to include Brendan Eich in her culture of ‘sharing beliefs and opinions’.
Baker then goes on the explain why Mozilla Corp forced Eich out, and how it is ultimately accountable to its ‘communitarians‘. She explains, “This is meant to distinguish Mozilla from most organizations and hold us to a higher standard. But this time we failed to listen, to engage, and to be guided by our community.”
She then added, “Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn’t live up to it”. “We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it’s because we haven’t stayed true to ourselves.”
“We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act. We didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry. We must do better.”
At little over dramatic maybe, but it’s indicative of a US online tech industry seemingly dominated by a liberal herd. The polarity seems subtle at first glance, but the rifts are there: driving a Toyota Prius is considered virtuous, while Tweeting a conservative quip can trigger a firestorm.
Clearly, Eich and Baker’s differences could not be resolved, making for a very toxic working environment. What’s irrefutable here is that Baker chose to undermine her executive colleague in a very public manner, as Baker used her position to push her feud with Eich into the public domain, enabling her to then leverage additional support from the LGBT lobby as a result.
In a corporate setting, this precedent certainly opens the door to abuse. This scenario could be used by any employee of any company who feels they have unaddressed grievances – not just ideological ones, but personal ones – against a senior colleague, and then draw in a third party, like an LGBT lobby, in order to settle a personal score and assist in removing someone from an organisation. This creates a false “consensus”, followed by a tidal wave of online “campaigns” (see image, left) and petitions – where an innocent person can quickly be convicted in a Kangaroos Court of minority public opinion, underpinned by the highly spurious, if not dubious justification of “protecting the “ethos of the company”.
Eich is also one of the creators of the computer language known as Javascript, and has been widely recognised as one of the single most important contributors to the modern free internet.
What exactly Eich’s personal views on Prop 8 have to do with the ‘ethos’ of Mozilla is not clear. Mozilla’s Firefox browser was created by the Mozilla Foundation in 2003, a non-profit organization who supports the open source project run by Mozilla Corp. The mission of the non-profit is “putting individuals in control online.” The CEO’s personal opinions on hot social issues do not come into play at all with the functionality of Firefox, nor should they.
Ruling in Divided America
America has never been more divided along radical political lines as it is today. In many ways, a divided society suits the establishment in its will to rule with no emerging opposition to it. Radical activist groups play a key role in maintaining this vacuum of social solidarity. The age of social media means that, with a snap of the finger, special interest mobs can swarm corporations and individuals. Mobs rule by fear. It’s time to coin a new term: social racketeering.
It’s worth pointing out the obvious problem here – that in 2008, the Proposition 8 Gay Marriage Ban actually passed in 2008 in California with the majority of voters backing the measure, and in a state with a population of 35 million.
So are the millions of Californians – like Brendan Eich, who voted for, or supported the gay marriage ban also “guilty” of this same thought crime, or crime of opinion? Should each voter, and person who wrote out a cheque to campaign for Proposition 8 be identified and perhaps hunted down, and forced to resign from their jobs? If all men and women are created equal, then why not exact the mob’s punishment on everyone classified as guilty by the LGBT lobby? Wouldn’t that be more fair?
The LGBT lobby’s answer to that question would of course be something along the lines of: “We are not targeting everyone who supported Prop 8, only the high profile people (in order to make an example out of them).” This kind of reply is a nicely spun version of, “We hope by publicly toppling Eich, this will serve to intimidate others from opposing the lobby’s will in future.”
This kind of ‘razor blade’ politiking has the following objectives: ruin the man, his career and his future – because he opposed your own social views. In this toxic social environment, ‘activism’ (as some still like to refer to it) has been weaponised.
In a country which purports to champion its citizens’ rights of freedom of speech, expression and more importantly – freedom of opinion, this disturbing trend of minority activist lobbies bullying individuals into submission because of their personal views (clearly the case with Brendan Eich) is simply a mob prosecution of ‘thought crime’, which any radical pragmatist, given the chance, would easily upgrade to ‘hate crime’. Is this Social racketeering, or cultural Marxism? Take your pick. Both are a step backwards, and are highly undesirable conditions in a truly egalitarian and free society.
The Slippery Slope of Tyranny
Uncomfortable to some as it might be, in the United States of America, it is not illegal, nor should it viewed as ‘undesirable’, for an individual to voice one’s opposition – for or against – any state or federal law. The dangers of enabling such a mob tyranny to single out individuals who are not guilty of any real crime are obvious – by crushing support or dissent for any one law, the mob is greasing a slippery slope towards the elimination of not only freedom of speech and beliefs, but dissent for any unconstitutional law. In the long run, this might empower the state over the individual. This might be a hard concept for some to grapple with who only see this issue a small victory nudging forward, but not to anyone with any foresight. Viewed in isolation, gang tackling a person out of his job today may not seem like much, but think about what the next step will look like – a digressive ‘Lord of the Flies’ society where the mobs determine who is innocent and who is guilty – and whether or not any actual crime is committed does not even factor in. Some will argue that we are already there.
Most certainly, gay rights, along with other minority rights of race minorities, disabled minorities, homeless persons, and religious minorities – should be defended. However, there exists a fine line between defending one’s rights and attacking one’s perceived political opponents. The latter is wrong, especially when conducted at the hands of an aggressive, politicized mob.
The fundamental concept which the LGBT ‘collective’ (lobby) do not understand, or are unable to grasp, is basic game theory, where an offensive strategy has consequences. Although it may seem politically vogue today, by exerting radical ‘communitarianism‘ influence through the deployment of fear, intimidation and harassment – any radical minority may in fact be sowing the seeds of their own demise, and society’s too, in the long run. History shows us that such counter-revolutionary movements, especially ultra-conservative ones – are swift and brutal. The only protection against this, is by guarding the inherent rights which we all share, even if that means defending the rights of those whom you may ideologically disagree with.
Targeting individuals and depriving them of their fundamental right to work, expression of a personal opinion, or even disagreement with the lobby, is merely aiding the acceleration of the erosion of universal rights for all citizens, including LGBT ones. Once those rights are gone, they are gone for everyone, and no one will have universal protection under the law, or a ‘Bill of Rights’.
After the LGBT lobby has finished its social cull of its alleged ideological opponents, then a new mob – whether it’s the establishment, or another radical conservative, or religious mob – will set its sights on the LGBT community.
In a free and fair America, LGBT activists should defend Brendan Eich’s right to have an opinion. That would be real tolerance. Anything else is cheap knockoff – phony freedom.
If you needed another reason to avoid taking your children down the cereal aisle at the grocery store, here it is: insidious cereal box characters seem to be trying to make eye contact with your kiddos.
While it’s no surprise that marketing techniques like product package design and placement in stores are used to attract buyers, some methods are more exploitative than others. Directing advertising to adults who understand marketing tactics and have the ability to make informed decisions is quite different than employing psychology-based tricks designed to lure innocent kids into brand loyalty.
Most children under age 6 cannot distinguish between programming and advertising and children under age 8 do not understand the persuasive intent of advertising. Advertising directed at children this young is by its very nature exploitative. Children have a remarkable ability to recall content from the ads to which they have been exposed. Product preference has been shown to occur with as little as a single commercial exposure and to strengthen with repeated exposures. Product preferences affect children’s product purchase requests and these requests influence parents’ purchasing decisions.
Cereal companies know this, and they have long exploited that vulnerability through the use of charming and engaging cartoon characters in their commercials and on their packaging. They are the third biggest food marketer to children – and they spend millions trying to entice children to buy their products, according to a 2012 report by The Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity:
Companies spent $264 million in measured media on kid-targeted cereals last year, up 34% from 2008, according to the report, which analyzes the nutritional content and advertising habits of 16 brands the center determined to be aimed directly at children. General Mills, which accounted for eight brands in the report such as Lucky Charms and Trix, spent the most at $142 million, a 27% increase from 2008, according to the report. Kellogg Co. hiked spending by 47%, shoveling $108 million into five kid-targeted brands, including Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops. Post Holdings increased spending by 17% to $13.8 million on its two child-targeted brands, Pebbles and Honeycomb.
Researchers at the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab conducted a study to examine the influence of cereal box spokes-characters. The results of that study were published earlier this week, and the findings were interesting.
Muslim women who wear veils are sexier, kiss better, and are less inclined to bestiality, say these clerics. Western women—well, forget it.
By Shima ShahrabiBack in the 1990s when I was in my early teens, I was sent to the school office at Hoda Girls Middle School for being found in possession of a Michael Jackson videotape.The school counselor forced to deal with me pulled her headscarf forward and glanced warily at the videotape on her desk. “Do you know this singer? Does anybody know whether he is a man or a woman?” she asked, not waiting for an answer before continuing, “They live like animals. They only want to satisfy their sexual urges. It makes no difference whether they sleep next to a man or a woman. They don’t care if they have babies from dogs or…”
She lowered her voice and asked me: “Did you know that this very same singer or dancer or whatever you want to call him has relations with animals?” She pronounced the sentence as though she knew every detail of Michael Jackson’s relations with animals.
It was the first time that I had ever heard about bestiality, something that according to my counselor was very common in the West.
I thought back to that moment in the school office when I read statements this week by Mehdi Bayati, the cleric who directs Iran’s Strategic Center for Chastity and Modesty. Back when I was in middle school, both my religion teacher and that school counselor dedicated long hours to how Western men and women have lost their taste for one another, how they are emotionally broken and have turned to animals to satisfy their desires. All this was meant to encourage young students to observe the Islamic hejab, instilling fears in them about what would become of a society in which women were not sufficiently chaste.
Mehdi Bayati has been putting forward the same argument. “The growth of feminism in the West and the fact that 60 percent of Western women prefer to sleep with dogs rather than men is the result of the absence of hejab [the veil] and the diminished threshold of women’s sexual arousal,” he told the Resa News Agency, run by the Qom seminary.
He did not specify the source of this figure, but referred to the provocative nature of women’s hair. “It is said that the Prophet Mohammad stated that women’s hair sexually arouses men,” he said, conceding that “perhaps modern science has not proven this” but “it was said by somebody who only speaks the truth.”
Invoking one of the less frequently discussed rationales for imposed dress codes, Bayati also said that “the absence of hejab lowers the libido of men and this would not benefit women.”
Iranian clerics have long promoted Islamic hejab by arguing about sexual corruption or deviance in the West, but one of the strangest comments came earlier this year from the cleric Mohammad-Mehdi Mandegary, a member of the ultra-conservative Endurance Front and the head of an organization called Foundation for Promoting the Way of the Martyrs.
Mandegary declared Western women are sexually promiscuous in a manner not even found in the natural world. “In the West when one woman has relations with several men, they take pride in it,” he said. “But animals are different and a female of the species does not have relations with several males at the same time.”
Mandegary, like many hardliners, believes Iranian culture has become too Westernized and distant from true Islamic culture. In a speech he asked Iranian men and women to abstain from sex after watching satellite TV so that the embryo would not be polluted. “Unfortunately some people are not careful about the moment of conception,” he said in warning. “They do it after watching satellite TV and listening to inappropriate music. But all this affects the embryo.”
Even leggings have been pulled into the fray. Recently tight leg apparel has become the focus of controversy among Islamic Republic officials, and the issue was brought to the floor of parliament by the Tehran MP Ali Motahari. In an open session he displayed pictures of women in leggings and argued in remarks broadcast on television that “sexual deviations, homosexuality and bestiality are results of unbridled behavior and the trampling of morality, which hejab would prevent,” and legging, it would seem, incites.
Another bizarre comment comes from Mohsen Gharaati, a cleric who is the representative of the Supreme Leader at the Literacy Campaign and a frequent TV personality. In a speech he declared that, “Westerners have been cheated when it comes to sex.” He then compared a kiss between an American boy and girl with the kisses that he used to get from his grandmother.
“When I was in America, I saw boys and girls who were kissing each other but it was as though they were kissing a brick wall,” he said. “The kisses were not solid because perhaps this was the 96th person they were kissing that day. But when our grandmother kissed us it felt like she was sucking us in.” When the audience laughed he added that “they think freedom would benefit them but they were cheated.”
I turned to Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari, a reformist cleric who spent three years in prison for his political positions, to help me understand the religious or social context for such views. “These words astonish me as much as they amaze you,” he said. “I ask myself whether these gentleman are delusional or have been given wrong information. But I cannot find a clear answer for such nonsense.”
Eshkevari noted that such views have a long history, and cited Abolhassan Banisadr, the first president of the Islamic Republic, who returned from Paris and justified imposed hejab by saying that ‘women’s hair radiates a spark that arouses men.”
Banisadr, according to Eshkevari, also interpreted a verse from the Qur’an to mean that some women were aroused when beaten. Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi interpreted the same verse in the same way about seven years ago, Eshkevari says, concluding that physical harm arouses some women.
“If an Islamic thinker and a Western-educated man such as Banisadr resorts to [such things] to justify himself, what do you expect from Ayatollah Shirazi?” Eshkevari said.
But it is not only clerics and Islamic ideologues who use offensive words and images to describe the sexual life of Westerners. Last winter the commander of the Basij paramilitary force, General Mohammad-Reza Naghdi, used this theme to criticize nuclear negotiations with the Americans. “Thirty-five percent of babies who are born in America are bastards,” he said, without citing a source for his statistics.
A few months later, Hassan Rahimpour Azghadi, a member of Iran’s Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, went even further in a speech about human rights. “In Western societies 75 percent of children do not know their fathers and are raised by their mothers,” he told his audience. Defending the death penalty by stoning for adultery, he asked, “Why do Western countries consider this punishment against human rights?” He answered his own question by saying that “there are no sexual complexes in Islam because in Islam marriage makes faith complete whereas in Christianity marriage is not a Godly affair.”
Last month Hassan Abbasi, the head of the Center for Doctrinal Strategic Studies in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a theoretician in the office of the Supreme Leader, claimed that the “Western human rights approves of incest. Incest is very rare in animals but the Western man has debased himself so much that he supports incest as a human right.”
“In America 100 percent of men have free sexual relations after marriage,” Abbasi said in another speech, which was aired on TV. “While in Iran perhaps two men out of ten thousand might marry a second wife. Listen to them shout about equality between men and women.”
Abbasi then referred to Anousheh Ansari, an Iranian-American astronaut and the first Iranian woman in space. “The basis of the Shi’a thought is chastity and the West uses women to destroy Shi’ism. Why did they send this woman Anousheh Ansari into space with a few men? They want to kill chastity. This is the main plank of feminism and feminism is the foundation of American lifestyle.”
Reading and researching such statements, I wonder how widely held such attitudes still are today among mainstream Iranians. On a whim I went on Facebook and searched for my old school counselor, who in her profile picture still wears hejab, but not as strictly as in those days.
I noticed a picture of her daughter, who was our classmate, and out of curiosity visited her page. She was not wearing hejab, but more surprising that that, is married to an Englishman. I was reminded of what her mother, the school counselor, told us so many years ago: “Ninety percent of Westerners have sexual problems. They are not aroused and most of them have relations with animals.”
Mozilla announced yesterday that its co-founder Brendan Eich (photo, left) is stepping down as CEO following LGBT lobby protests over his support for California’s Proposition 8 ballot measure that outlawed same-sex, or ‘gay’ marriages in that state (the measure was later deemed unconstitutional following a federal court appeal).
In a corporate setting, this precedent certainly opens the door to abuse. This scenario could be used by any employee of any company who feels they have unaddressed grievances – not just ideological ones, but personal ones – against a senior colleague, and then draw in a third party, like an LGBT lobby, in order to settle a personal score and assist in removing someone from an organisation. This creates a false “consensus”, followed by a tidal wave of online “campaigns” (see image, left) and petitions – where an innocent person can quickly be convicted in a Kangaroos Court of minority public opinion, underpinned by the highly spurious, if not dubious justification of “protecting the “ethos of the company”.
PN 