Tag Archives: future

AI, Evil, and Ethics

Google is launching Bard, its version of Chat GPT, connected to search, and connected live to the internet. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, shared yesterday, “An important next step on our AI journey“. In discussing the release of Bard, Sundar said,

“We’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information.”

Following the link above led me to this next link:

“In addition to producing responses that humans judge as sensible, interesting, and specific to the context, dialog models should adhere to Responsible AI practices, and avoid making factual statements that are not supported by external information sources.”

I am quite intrigued by what principles Google is using to guide the design and use of Artificial Intelligence. You can go to the links for the expanded description, but here are Google’s Responsible AI practices:

“Objectives for AI applications

We will assess AI applications in view of the following objectives. We believe that AI should:

1. Be socially beneficial.

2. Avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias.

3. Be built and tested for safety.

4. Be accountable to people.

5. Incorporate privacy design principles.

6. Uphold high standards of scientific excellence.

7. Be made available for uses that accord with these principles.”

But these principles aren’t enough, they are the list of ‘good’ directions, and so there are also the ‘Thou Shalt Nots’ added below these principles:

“AI applications we will not pursue

In addition to the above objectives, we will not design or deploy AI in the following application areas:

  1. Technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm. Where there is a material risk of harm, we will proceed only where we believe that the benefits substantially outweigh the risks, and will incorporate appropriate safety constraints.

  2. Weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people.

  3. Technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms.

  4. Technologies whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.

As our experience in this space deepens, this list may evolve.”

I remember when Google used to share its motto “Don’t be evil”.

These principles remind me of the motto. The interesting vibe I get from the principles and the ‘Thou Shalt Not’ list of things the AI will not pursue is this:

‘How can we say we will try to be ethical without: a) mentioning ethics; and b) admitting this is an imperfect science without admitting that we are guaranteed to make mistakes along the way?’

Here is the most obvious statement that these Google principles and guidelines are all about ethics without using the word ethics:

“…we will not design or deploy AI in the following application areas:

  1. Technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm. Where there is a material risk of harm, we will proceed only where we believe that the benefits substantially outweigh the risks, and will incorporate appropriate safety constraints.”

You can’t get to, “Where there is a material risk of harm, we will proceed only where we believe that the benefits substantially outweigh the risk“… Without talking aboutethics. Who is the ‘we’ in ‘we believe’? Who is deciding what benefits outweigh what risks? Who determines what is ‘substantial’ in the weighting of benefits versus risks? Going back to Principle 2, how is bias being determined or measured?

The cold hard reality is that the best Google, and Chat GPT, and all AI and predictive text models can do is, ‘Try to do less evil than good’ or maybe just, ‘Make it harder to do evil than good.’

The ethics will always trail the technological capabilities of the tool, and guiding principles are a method to catch wrongdoing, not prevent it. With respect to the list of things AI will not pursue, “As our experience in this space deepens, this list may evolve“… Is a way of saying, ‘We will learn of ways that this tool will be abused and then add to this list.

The best possible goals of designers of these AI technologies will be to do less evil than good… The big question is: How to do this ethically when it seems these companies are scared to talk directly about ethics?

You can’t police it

I said Chat GPT is a game changer in education in my post Fear of Disruptive Technology. Then I started to see more and more social media posts sharing that Artificial Intelligence (AI) detectors can identify passages written by AI. But that doesn’t mean a person can’t use a tool like Chat GPT and then do some of their own editing. Or, as seen here: just input the AI written text into CopyGenius.io and ‘rephrase’, and then AI detectors can’t recognize the text as written by AI.

The first instinct with combating new technology is to ban and/or police it: No cell phones in class, leave them in your lockers; You can’t use Wikipedia as a source; Block Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok on the school wifi. These are all gut reactions to new technologies that frame the problem as policeable… Teachers are not teachers, they aren’t teaching, when they are being police.

Read that last sentence again. Let it sink in. We aren’t going to police away student use of AI writing tools, so maybe we should embrace these tools and help manage how they are used. We can teach students how to use AI appropriately and effectively. Teach rather than police.

Technological leaps

I’ve been very interested in bicycle gadgets for a while. I designed a backpack for bicycle commuters and patented a bicycle lock, both things that I’ll share in detail here at a later date. But today I want to share a brilliant, even revolutionary new advancement in bicycle design.

This Ultra-Efficient Bike Has No Chains and No Derailleurs

This video explains how it works:


Absolutely brilliant! No more chains, much more efficiency. Wireless electronic shifting and a split pinion that adjusts to the next gear while still engaged with the previous gear.

This isn’t just a better design, it’s a leap forward. I have questions around how it would perform in dirt and mud, and reliability in ‘the real world’, but those are things that can be tweaked over time. The reality is that this isn’t a tweak, it’s a fundamental shift in design that is going to change the future designs of bicycles, and other drive shaft designs, in the years to come.

Amazing!

Fear of Disruptive Technology

There is a lot of fear around how the Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool Chat GPT is going to disrupt teaching and learning. I’ve already written about this chatbot:

Next level artificial intelligence

And,

Teaching in an era of AI

And,

The future is now.

To get an understanding of the disruption that is upon us, in the second post, Teaching in an era of AI, I had Chat GPT write an essay for me. Then I noted:

“This is a game changer for teaching. The question won’t be how do we stop students from using this, but rather how do we teach students to use this well? Mike Bouliane said in a comment on yesterday’s post, “Interesting post Dave. It seems we need to get better at asking questions, and in articulating them more precisely, just like in real life with people.

Indeed. The AI isn’t going away, it’s just going to get better.”

And that’s the thing about disruptive technology, it can’t be blocked, it can’t be avoided, it needs to be embraced. Yet I’ve seen conversations online where people are trying to block it in schools. I haven’t seen this kind of ‘filter and hide from students’ philosophy since computers and then phones started to be used in schools. It reminds me of a blog post I wrote in 2010, Warning! We Filter Websites at School, where I shared this tongue-in-cheek poster for educators in highly filtered districts to put up on their doors:

Well now the fervour is back and much of the talk is about how to block Chat GPT, and how to detect its use. And while there are some conversations about how to use it effectively, this means disrupting what most teachers assign to students, and this also disrupts assessment practices. Nobody likes so much disruption to their daily practice happening all at once. So, the block and filter and policing (catching cheaters) discussions begin.

Here is a teacher of Senior AP Literature that uses Chat GPT to improve her students’ critical thinking and writing. Note how she doesn’t use the tool for the whole process. Appropriate, not continuous use of the tool:

@gibsonishere on TikTok

Again going all the way back to 2010, I said in Transformative or just flashy educational tools?,

“A tool is just a tool! I can use a hammer to build a house and I can use the same hammer on a human skull. It’s not the tool, but how you use it that matters.”

And here is something really important to note:

The. Technology. Is. Not. Going. Away.

In fact, AI is only going to get better… and be more disruptive.

Employers are not going to pretend that it doesn’t exist. Imagine an employer saying, “Yes, I know we have power drivers but to test your skill we want you to screw in this 3-inch screw with a handheld screwdriver… and then not letting the new employee use his power tools in their daily work.

Chat GPT is very good at writing code, and many employers test their employee candidates by asking them to write code for them. Are they just going to pretend that Chat GPT can’t write the same code much faster? I can see a performance test for new programmers looking something like this in the future: “We asked Chat GPT to write the code to perform ‘X’, and this is the code it produced. How would you improve this code to make it more effective and eloquent?”

Just like the Tiktok teacher above, employers will expect the tool to be used and will want their employees to know how to use the tool critically and effectively to produce better work than if they didn’t use the tool.

I’m reminded of this carton I created back in 2009:

The title of the accompanying post asks, Is the tool an obstacle or an opportunity? The reality is that AI tools like Chat GPT are going to be very disruptive, and we will be far better off looking at these tools as opportunities rather than obstacles… Because if we choose to see these tools as obstacles then we are the actual obstacles getting in the way of progress.

Many words, not one word

I created a #OneWord for 2020, and 2021, and the past few days I’ve been thinking about what my one word would be for 2023. But too many words are vying to be the one, so I’m just going to list a few key words for myself. Words that will be important to me in the coming year.

Consistency: Since January 2019 I’ve been using a year-long calendar to track fitness, meditation, writing, and another goal that has changed. I don’t think I need it anymore, even though I’m off to a poor start with my fitness thanks to a really bad cough. Still, I think I’m at the point where these things are so consistent, that tracking isn’t actually improving my consistency. But, it’s my actions, not my beliefs that matter. I will need to demonstrate to myself that I can stay on track without the tracking, and so being faithfully and honestly consistent with my healthy living goals will be important to me this year.

Efficiency: I’m prone to distraction and this year I want to commit to being focussed on specific tasks and not being easily distracted. I plan to improve my list-making so that I get bigger items done every day, and not be distracted by the most recent email, or smaller tasks that eat up so much time that bigger tasks are no longer achievable. I’ve improved in this area over the past few years, but there is room to focus and be more efficient.

Positivity: I have a great family, great friends, a great job, and other than a nasty cough I’m dealing with right now, great health. There is no reason for me to focus on a few challenging things and letting these adjust my attitude and frame of mind negatively. I have a lot to be grateful for and I can be more positive in my day-to-day attitude and disposition.

Vocal: I said in my post, Everything is so political, “2023 will be a year to speak up and speak out. You don’t have to support a political party, but if you think you can be vocal and not also be political, you are probably mistaken. Your politics will permeate your point of view, and choosing to be silent is no longer just non-partisan or apolitical; it’s choosing to allow lesser, more biased people to share their minority points of view as if they are the majority. The silent majority can be silent no more.”

This isn’t about politics, it’s about speaking out against small thinking, and not allowing bad ideas to permeate. It’s about recognizing bad ideas and being a voice that helps stop them from spreading.

Gracious: This is a year to show my appreciation. I really have a lot of wonderful people around me and I want to let them know how much I appreciate them, value them, and how they make me a better person. Sincere graciousness is something I often feel, but don’t always express, and so this will be a year to emote, to express, and to demonstrate my gratitude for the people around me that I value and appreciate.

That’s a lot more than one word, and if I can focus on these things 2023 will be a fabulous year.

New discoveries in old frontiers

I’m blown away by articles like this: Meet a rainbow fish and other new species discovered in 2022. How is it that in the year 2022, 146 new animal, plant and fungi species were discovered? Space is not the only undiscovered frontier, we still have so much more to learn about our own planet.

From the article: “The previously unknown creatures and plants were found around the world, including the mountains of California, Australia’s Queensland state, the rocky peaks of Brazil and the coral reefs of the Maldives. Scientists made discoveries on six continents and within three oceans.

Among the new species were 44 lizards, 30 ants, 14 flowering plants, 13 sea stars, seven fish, four sharks, three moths, two spiders and one toad.”

It’s amazing to think that we have so much more to learn about, both seeking and finding more living species, and also about some of the ways currently known species can be used in novel ways to improve our lives. Here is one example:

I think 2023 will be the year of the mushroom and we will see them used in unique medicinal, psychological, and health-enhancing ways. We’ll also see them abused and misused, and some people will mistake deadly ones for medicinal ones… but while these rare cases will foster some fear-mongering, most of the news will be about how mushrooms have amazing medicinal and even magical psychological properties that will help people with PTSD, depression, and even help people quite drinking and smoking.

What else will we learn? What new discoveries about our planet are in store for us in 2023? What new plants and animals will be found? What new cures are waiting to be discovered? Our forests and oceans might be old frontiers, but they are not frontiers that have been fully explored and exhausted of new discoveries.

Content trumps people

Social media has changed. Whether it’s Instagram or Facebook Reels, Youtube Shorts, or TikTok’s ‘For You’ page, we no longer follow people, we follow viral videos. Content trumps people. Trends and clicks determine our feed, not who we know; who we choose to follow. And for things we share, our followers are less likely to see this and more likely to Like and Share something from people we don’t know.

Algorithms, not our online community, determine what we see, what we relate to, and what consumes our attention. I’m in Spain and now every one in four TikTok videos on my page are in Spanish, I’ve seen a mom of a young child sharing what her life is like after moving from America to Spain twice now. Not because I follow her, but because the TikTok algorithm thinks this is what I want to see.

What does this mean for us? Social media influencers will be less influential… probably a good thing. But this will also mean we are more distracted and less connected. How this changes the landscape of our digital lives is likely to be an overall negative in the short term, and ‘to be determined’ in the long term. Time will tell.

Churches, followers, and the future

We visited another church today, the Abbey at Montserrat, an hour bus ride from Barcelona.

People who are religious might come to see the black Madonna statue, but I honestly didn’t even know about this when we booked the trip.

It just seemed like a fun half-day trip with my family and also included a wine tasting. And some beautiful views.

This is the second church I’ve recently visited for reasons other than religious, and this has me thinking about people who do go to church for religious reasons. Walking around Barcelona I have seen a lot of churches. But, I can’t imagine that they are filled with parishioners today like they used to be in the past.

What’s the future of these churches? Sure the ones that are tourist attractions will survive, but what about the rest of them? The number one way that churches ‘recruit’ new members is through the birth of children whose parents are members, but in many societies the birth rate is decreasing and as a total percentage of the population most religions have seen their peak. Furthermore people practicing their faith in churches is decreasing.

What will happen to many of these churches in 50 years? For that matter, what will the religious landscape look like in 50 years? I can see two possibilities, both unlikely on the extreme ends, but more like directions. I can see a religious revival where churches are focused on building tight, closed communities, or I can see organized religion fading and dwindling. Which direction we are headed in I’m really not sure? Perhaps we will see both with a revival in rural areas where remote workers ‘flock’ to join a fold, and a demise in diverse cities where religion fades in importance. I think the US has already started this trend, and it’s one that could spread elsewhere.

Unfortunately this split can have dramatic consequences when the urban/rural divide also has a significant division in beliefs and ideals. It makes me wonder about how this can influence the future of countries. There are already talks about separation in Canada, both Alberta and Quebec, and here in Spain with Catalan. What about Texas or Ireland? And so will religious beliefs and ideals cause greater rifts in our nations? I think this is likely. It seems to me religions will continue to pull our world apart, even as their popularity dwindles.

The future is now

I’ve shared Chat GPT a couple times (1, 2), and I really think that tools like this are going to create a massive shift in jobs, education, and creativity. It can been seen as both scary and exciting.

On another front, scientists have achieved ‘ignition’ in a nuclear fusion test. This is the creation of a fusion reaction where the energy output is greater than the energy input. For over a decade this was an unachievable goal, any reaction created required so much energy to produce that the costs were greater than the returns.

If you showed someone from 1995 the technology we had 25 years later in 2020, they would be impressed and amazed. I’m reminded of Arthur C. Clarke’s quote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” But what I’m seeing right now seems like magic.

I think the leaps in technology and ingenuity that will happen in the next 25 years will so far exceed what we saw happen in the last 25 years that it will feel more like we are 50 years in the future rather than just 25. So, buckle up and get ready for a wild ride into the future… it’s just getting started now!

Language barrier

When we lived in China we lived in ‘a small city of 6 million’, Dalian, on a peninsula on the east coast. It was not unusual for my family to hear no English spoken by anyone except us from the time we left our Canadian curriculum foreign national school on Friday until we went back to school on Monday. We couldn’t go to a restaurant unless the menu had pictures. And if you were in a store and didn’t see what you were looking for, a game of charades ensued with hand gestures and singular Chinese words coming from us rather than sentences.

Google Translate was fairly new and most Asian languages were not well translated, especially Chinese. I remember going to a grocery store to buy baking soda for my wife. I put the 2 words into Google Translate and got two Chinese characters. But on the shelf were 6 or 7 different items with some having the first character and some having something very similar to the second character, and none having both.

I asked for help and the employee couldn’t help me. She asked a coworker, and she couldn’t help me either. I was stuck. I finally bought a plastic back with a white powder that looked like baking soda and on my way home I realized that the cost of this item was less than 50 cents Canadian, and had I bought all 5 of the most likely items, it would have cost me under $3. That would have saved me 30 minutes and a lot of frustration.

Now things have changed significantly. Language translation is so much easier. People can have full-on conversations with Google or an app translating voice to text and/or voice almost instantaneously. These tools will even correct themselves when the context of the sentence is recognized. For instance, I think ‘baking’ and ‘soda’ were two words that were translated for me independently, and so the words were loosely translated to ‘cooking in the oven’ and ‘bubbly drink’. Now translators know that these words next to each other mean something different than when the words are used in a different context.

All this to say that the days of language being a major barrier to basic communication are over. I can think of a lot of frustrating conversations and miscommunications I had in my 2 years of living in China that would not have happened if we went now rather than over a decade ago. I think of the conversations I wanted to have but couldn’t. I think of the questions I had that were just left unanswered.

Sure there were a few magical moments where we overcame the language barrier and made special connections, but these moments pale in comparison to what we could have said and done with the tools available today. While I hold some nostalgia about the way things were for us back then, I think I’d still prefer it if we had the language conversion tools of today back then.