Ethics in AI and Human Relations
Posted on | August 21, 2010 | No Comments
A Foundation for Ethics in AI and Human Relations
The relationship between humans and ‘intelligent’ machines is becoming increasingly complex as we move forward together into the new age of synthetic organisms, intelligent systems, and personal use of enhanced bio-synthetic replacement parts for our bodies. We will more regularly come face to face with intelligent systems that will make decisions impacting our everyday life without input from us. From the already widely accepted collection of data assembled by thousands of cameras photographing you as you walk and drive in your town to the seeming science fiction of armed robotic border guards.
There are many ethical issues that need to be addressed now as we rapidly put into place human guided and unguided intelligent equipment. ‘AI’ systems are now being used to complement human decisions in a wide variety of situations, from searching for data online to medical equipment used in the operating room to data management tools used by Generals in war rooms. More autonomous devices such as vehicles able to find their own way through the world are also becoming more widespread. One label for an important part of this field is called “Cognitive Computing”.
There is some discussion taking place in philosophical and technological circles about Cognitive Computing but very little awareness in the general public outside opinions created by movies like “Terminator” and “AI” – and just as importantly there is little discussion of ethical considerations on a governmental level.
One of the first questions that has to be examined is “Should devices with advanced artificial intelligence be thought of (treated) like any other tool that we have built?” Should they be treated more like farm animals, or dogs or will we need to treat them as intelligent beings? “At what point do we need to consider artificially intelligent machines or synthetic organisms our legal equals?”
That is just one of many questions that will require careful exploration. The interaction between intelligent equipment and humanity will give rise to situations we have never been confronted with before. Many of these events will fall well outside the boundaries of our current legal and ethical environments and it is wise for us to begin laying the ground work that will enable the people of the world and their leaders to make well reasoned and careful decisions. Not decisions that are based on irrational fear, bigotry or just lack of knowledge, but rather decisions based on long running rational discussions not just among scientists but philosophers, spiritual leaders, psychologists and people from all walks of life.
It is important to include a wide range of people rather than focusing on one narrower field of study largely because it is the convergence of technologies from many divergent fields, such as biology, nano-tech, structural engineering, computer science, neurobiology, etc., that is enabling the rapid advances in ‘Cognitive Computing’.
To address these many difficult questions rapidly coming our direction we need to gather together knowledgeable individuals from diverse fields of work and study to help develop a balanced perspective from outside the tech culture. These knowledgeable individuals must include Defense Department personnel, guiding members of corporations that currently build robots, ethicists, philosophers, biologists, roboticists, religious leaders, psychologists, and the doctors utilizing bio-synthetic parts for starters. The collected information must be presented to the ‘the rest of us’ in a way that will attempt to actively involve everyone in the process of reaching these history changing ethical decisions and guide the future of humanity.
This goal of information dissemination can be accomplished on several fronts.
- Writing articles in newspapers, magazines, wikipedia. Electronic Newsletters.
- Speaking engagements at schools, business organizations, government bodies, etc.
- Web site with information, new content, blog, links.
- New Social Networking tools (twitter, facebook, etc.)
- Video – youtube, Television.
- Photography books.
- Art exhibits
- Lobbying efforts
- Software apps that would help raise awareness for mobile devices and desktop systems.
- Toys that help define the relationships between humans and intelligent machines as well as ‘enhanced’ humans.
- Children’s books.
http://www.komonews.com/news/tech/44713162.html – “New surveillance cameras don’t even need anyone watching” – Mathematical algorithms embedded in the stores’ new security system pick out sweethearting on their own. There’s no need for a security guard watching banks of video monitors or reviewing hours of grainy footage.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2504508&page=1 – “Robo-Soldier to Patrol South Korean Border” – “Until now, technology allowed these robots to conduct monitoring function[s] only. But [now] our robots can detect suspicious moving objects, literally go after them, and can even fire at them,” said Sang-Il Han, principal research engineer at Samsung Techwin.
http://www.isd.mel.nist.gov/whatsnew.htm – National Institute of Standards and Technology Intelligent Systems Division – (James Albus – Senior Fellow at NIST) Albus, who predicts that autonomous vehicles could equal human levels of performance in most areas within 20 years, is the co-inventor of the Real-time Control Systems (RCS) architecture and methodology.
http://www.darpa.mil/darpatech2002/presentations/dso_pdf/speeches/EISENSTADT.pdf – Dr. Eric Eisenstadt – Defense Sciences Office (DSO) – Brain Machine Interface : “Picture a time when humans see in the UV and IR portions of the electromagnetic spectrum, or hear speech on the noisy flight deck of an aircraft carrier; or when soldiers communicate by thought alone. Imagine a time when the human brain has its own wireless modem so that instead of acting on thoughts, warfighters have thoughts that act. Later during DARPATech, you will hear from IPTO about efforts to create intelligent machines.”
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7740484.stm?ad=1 – IBM has announced it will lead a US government-funded collaboration to make electronic circuits that mimic brains. – Part of a field called “cognitive computing”, the research will bring together neurobiologists, computer and materials scientists and psychologists. – As a first step in its research the project has been granted $4.9m (£3.27m) from US defence agency Darpa.
http://www.physorg.com/news161598692.html – Artificial Tissue – A team of Australian and Korean researchers led by Geoffrey M. Spinks and Seon Jeong Kim has now developed a novel, highly porous, sponge-like material whose mechanical properties closely resemble those of biological soft tissues. As reported in the journal Angewandte Chemie, it consists of a robust network of DNA strands and carbon nanotubes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6200005.stm – From BBC News a headline in 2006. “Robots could one day demand the same citizen’s rights as humans, according to a study by the British government.”
Domain Names – Who’s the boss?
Posted on | March 18, 2010 | No Comments
Understanding the the terms used in registering a Domain name will help insure that you maintain control of your own domain.
ICANN – this is the non profit organization that currently manages the assignment of names and numbers on the internet in order to insure that every node (spot) on the network is unique.
To quote from the ICANN web site :
ICANN was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers.
To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer – a name or a number. That address has to be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination we wouldn’t have one global Internet.
Registrars
ICANN has created the system of Registrars, organizations that register/issue unique domain names. All Registrars must be accredited by ICANN, whicn maintains a list of these Registrars at http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.html
The gTLDs (Generic Top Level Domains) include .aero, .biz, .com, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, .net, .org, and .pro. These are the domains that we obtain a name in, for instance, mycoolname.com or mycoolname.biz, etc. Each of these domain names must be unique.
When you are issued the registration to a domain name people/entities will be assigned to different domain management ‘roles’. The initial Registrant (the person/entity obtaining the domain name) and the administrative, technical and billing contacts are the people or entities listed on the original Domain Name Registration Agreement that is filed with the Registrar when you actually obtain the domain name.
Who is assigned to perform the duties of these management ‘roles’ is important in terms of who ultimately controls and can change your domain information. When you register your domain name using a third party such as an ISP or Web development company (as opposed to you going directly to a Registrar’s website and filling out the application yourself) you need to be sure that when that organization assigns people/groups to the different management roles, they are being filled by people that you want. Incorrectly handling of these roles can be a very painful and/or costly error that you won’t notice until later when you want to move your website to a new hosting company, move your email services, change your domain DNS information, etc. You want to be sure that your interests are protected by the people assigned to each role.
Registrant
You are the Registrant – even if you use some other business to fill out the registration form for you. You or your company/organization needs to be listed as the Registrant. The Registrant is the party that ultimately controls the domain name (at least as long as the renewal fees are paid to the Registrar…)
The administrative, technical and billing contacts are people, groups or a ‘role contact’ that represent the Registrant (you) when issues/questions about your domain name arise either with the Registrar or other entity that might need to gather information about your domain name.
A ‘role contact’ is really just a job title by another name. The person or group holding that title can change but the contact information for that ‘role contact’ will not. An example of a ‘role contact’ would be ‘hostmaster’, ‘webmaster’, ‘domainmaster’ or what ever title you like. You can assign this role contact to the admin, tech or billing fields when filling out your domain name application. It is an excellent method of insuring that contact continuity is maintained when people move on to a new position in your company.
Administrative Contact
This is the person, group, or ‘role contact’ that will act on behalf of the Registrant in communications with the Registrar. This again should be ‘you’ or someone who can be trusted to represent your interests at all times. They do not need to be technically proficient but must be able to deal with the basic questions that might arise in dealing with the Registrant, stuff like “What is the mailing address, phone number, fax, etc…”
Insure that this is exactly who you want it to be in the application for registration. You can create a special position in your organization and use that as the Admin contact or you can assign it to an individual – just be sure that if the individual leaves your employ the domain information gets updated to reflect the new person with this duty.
Technical Contact
Pretty much what it says. The technical contact manages the name servers of a domain name. In many cases, the technical contact will be a representative of the internet service provider, hosting company, or web development firm that helps you manage your website, email services, etc.
Billing Contact
I think we all know what this is about. The Registrar needs to know who is going to pay for you domain name when renewal time comes up. It is also important that this contact information remains current so that billing information gets to someone that will actually pay for the renewal in a timely manner.
Name Servers (from wikipedia)
Name servers. Most registrars provide two or more name servers as part of the registration service. However, a registrant may specify its own authoritative name servers to host a domain’s resource records. The registrar’s policies govern the number of servers and the type of server information required.
The most important thing to take from this is that you want to be sure that these domain management roles are filled appropriately to insure that you can continue to control and user your domain name.
If the data stored in these positions are not accurate, you should immediately contact the people you used to register this domain name and begin the process of setting things right. This can sometimes take quite a bit of time and might involve faxes, letters, etc. to the domain registrar. Plan ahead. Use the Whois command/service to check out what information is currently in place for your domain.
ICANN requires accredited Registrars to provide free public access to the name of the registered domain name and its nameservers and registrar, the date the domain was created and when its registration expires, and the contact information for the Registered Name Holder, the technical contact, and the administrative contact you will generally find a whois service link on your Registrar’s website – or you can use services like whois.net
I am happy to help with these services if you are not comfortable with doing this in house.
ken
Social Media and Non Profits
Posted on | December 22, 2009 | No Comments
You hear a lot of buzz about NonProfits and social media these days.
Some commentators believe that NCOs are the perfect fit for these emerging technologies where other experts believe just the opposite, that social media applications will allow advocates to more easily organize independently of non-profits.
(67%) (of study respondents – execs at US non profits) believe that traditional media – including coverage in newspapers, magazines, television and radio – are more effective at supporting fundraising efforts than social media (22%). Further, executives in the nonprofit world are more skeptical about social media’s ability to help them connect with hard-to-reach audiences such as donors (45%), media (39%) and policy makers (31%).
Go to Non-Profits Struggle to Prove Social Media’s Value at marketingvox.com to read more of this article.
A Dartmouth report shows that
a remarkable 89% of charitable organizations are using some form of social media including blogs, podcasts, message boards, social networking, video blogging and wikis.
and Alexandra Samuel, Ph.D., Harvard, and CEO of Social Signal offers some sound advice on using social media.
1. Engage your audience by speaking to their core concerns.
2. Put your audience in the driver’s seat.
3. Offer a mix of tangible and social benefits.
4. Embrace emergent value propositions.
5. Innovate within the bounds of your core mission.
More of her blog on this subject is available at blogs.harvardbusiness.org
Though there is evidence that a large portion of the Not-for-Profit community is embracing social media as a way to both expand and deepen their connection to their communities, still, according to executives surveyed by Weber Shandwick and KRC Research, there are many roadblocks to overcome.
More than half (52%) of respondents say they do not have enough staff to manage their current social media outreach and almost two-thirds (64%) report that their organizations do not have social media policies and guidelines in place for employees and board members to engage appropriately online.
Taking these facts into account and accepting that these applications are just tools, in order to be most effective with our time and money we should listen closely to what Mr. Natural says “Use the right tool for the job.”
You should not expect that social media tools will replace talking with constituents face to face, immediately displace your current marketing approaches, or that creating a presence on twitter will generate new donors by the truck load. These are not reasonable expectations. Particularly since these tools are still in their infancy and will evolve over the coming years – as will our use of them.
What you should expect to do, whether an old hand or ‘newbie’, is to take some time to study individual social media applications, identify, and organize the tools you want to use by how they fit into your organization’s style of communicating with your current community. Decide which of these applications will lend themselves to being used in campaigns to generate new contacts. Determine whether you have in-house staff or need to reach outside to find assistance with implementation. Define how you will manage the use of these tools by staff, both personally and organizationally. And very importantly, plan carefully how you can best apply these tools within the framework of your very individual vision and social goals while maintaining your identity and integrity.
Luckily you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to accomplish all of this. There are many available Policy and Strategy Handbooks online to read and use in order to craft your very own.
Social Media Governance – Policy Database
Social Media Tips from 10 Corporations UCLA Extension
South Sound Technology Conference
Posted on | November 22, 2009 | No Comments
November 20, 2009
South Sound Technology Conference
Great conference. Cool venue at University of Washington Tacoma, William W. Philip Hall.
Lots of interesting folks there with some nice panel discussions – if you are in the industry or just interested in finding out more about the local tech scene you should plan on attending next year.
One of the most important messages I took from this conference was that the Technology industry in the Tacoma area (and there is plenty of it with some world class businesses right downtown) needs to get a bit more organized and let the world know that we are here.
For that matter we need to let each other know that we are here! I vote that we pick a restaurant downtown and, a la Green Drinks, get together regularly for a bite and a beer.
Lists – for everything
Posted on | November 16, 2009 | No Comments
Some people love to make lists. Some people love to read them. Some people are just plain afraid of them. They probably know something I don’t. Personally I make lists everyday because it is the only way that I remember anything. Really.
When I was a kid I liked to spend rainy days wandering around the library, nibbling at one book and then another, always finding something interesting.
Now there are sites on the net that are great at organizing lists of things that can save you a lot of time compared to what you might spend searching for the same quality of sites yourself. Conversely you may find that browsing through these lists and wandering through the internet tubes from one ‘best of’ to another can shoot quite a bit of time right in the… you know what, more time than you save. But finding that one jewel can make it all worth it.
I am just going to mention one wonderful place this time around, mashable.com’s megalist pages, my current Fire Swamp. I have never made it all the way through any of these lists without running way out of time.
Have fun and don’t forget to watch out for the ROUSes.
ken
Huh? No Really. When Tweets aren’t just tweets.
Posted on | November 5, 2009 | No Comments
I get so busy that sometimes I miss some really fun(ny) things that are happening on some of the Social Media sites. In this case I am thinking of Twitter which has a very open attitude about sharing it’s innards, known in the industry as an API – application programming interface. Basically this allows other folks to develop ways of connecting their software ideas to twitter. It is great.
Share files with one or many fellow tweeters.
http://www.twitdoc.com/
http://www.filetwt.com/
http://filesocial.com/
Play Games
http://playspymaster.com/
http://snods.com/
http://www.tweefight.com/
http://140mafia.com/account/register?msg=
http://ajaxorized.com/twitbrain/
http://www.140blood.com/
Share Videos/Pictures
http://www.tweetube.com/
http://twitpic.com/
http://www.twitxr.com/
http://blog.flickr.net/2009/06/30/twitter-your-flickr/
http://posterous.com/
http://12seconds.tv/12mail (for your iphone)
http://vidly.com/?twitvid
Training? Support? Funny?
http://screenr.com/
Walk a mile in someone else’s tweets
http://ctwittlike.appspot.com/
Job Hunting
http://www.twitterjobsearch.com/
Find the twitter job feeds that are relevant for your search – you could start here
http://jobmob.co.il/blog/twitter-job-openings-postings-leads/#axzz0W2yA7DXc
Some Local Puget Sound job tweeters
@NewTacomaJobs
@SeattleJobTech
@WriterJobsSea
…
So the list goes on and on. I will work up some new ideas for another blog. Send me any ideas you have…
Thanks,
ken
Jungian Archetypes and social media
Posted on | November 2, 2009 | No Comments
People involved in online social media are certainly not that different from people involved in any other group activity. We are each a unique individual but we still tend to statistically fall into a few loosely defined categories. Understanding some of these categories can benefit us in effectively designing our approach to integrating social media into our lives or businesses.
I am going to describe what I consider to be (and I am supported by various surveys) these loosely defined groups. I say loosely because most of us will exhibit traits from more than one of the groups but our activity will gravitate more towards one particular group. We do tend to be a pretty complicated species so generalizing about our behavior runs the risk of being too simplistic, but you have to start somewhere.
1. People that create content. Blog, articles, podcasts, videos, etc. The percentage of folks in this category is not real high but I would insist that their influence greatly outweighs their numbers. Producers – in the US about 18%
2. People that respond to, comment on, media being produced online. Commenters – In US about 25%
3. People that collect, organize, and rank all the diverse media that is available. These folks are important even though there are few of them. THere is this huge amount of data that for most of us is way to daunting to sift through to find what we want or need. These folks, the Gatherers, are the librarians of our online media. About 12% of users in the US.
4. People that join the social networks and sites like Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, etc. These folks are active but tend not to produce or organize content. I think of them as folks that just like to come to the party and actually they add an important element, dynamic energy. Joiners – 25% in the US
5. People that come by to watch the show. Some folks call them lurkers but I don’t like the connotations of that word and I prefer observer or watcher. These folks comprise the largest number of Social Media users. It is fun to watch and watchers are important because they read the posts, watch the videos, etc. Observers – in the US 48%
6. People that are not really doing anything with their account(s) on social media networks or sites. Sadly the second largest number in our groupings. Inactives/Sleepers – In the US 46%.
Of course these numbers are different in different parts of the world and are also subject to the changing landscape of this very young and vibrant neighborhood of the internet.
ken
Shift Happens
Posted on | October 19, 2009 | No Comments
Just reading about the the 3rd annual Media Convergance Conference in New York in beginning tomorrow and running through the 21st of Oct, 2009. This is being hosted by The Economist Magazine. This would be wonderful to attend, there are going to be some very exciting speakers and I can imagine that there will be some very interesting discussions taking place.
The surge of new technologies and social media innovations in today’s environment is significantly altering the future media landscape for marketers. Consumer behaviour is changing and the way marketers reach their audience must also change. Marketers are searching for new ways to not only reach their customers, but to understand them, to peer inside their minds. As the level of consumer understanding increases, so can the knowledge of how best to reach them. However the plethora of tools at a marketers disposal is not easy to navigate and real learning comes from a real understanding of the future of media convergence.
What led me to The Economist was reading The Fischbowl, which is a development blog for Arapahoe High School.
Karl Fisch has produced some amazing videos over the years, and along with Scott McLeod, Laura Bestler, and XPLANE, is well known for the ‘Did You Know?/Shift Happens’ series. If I remember correctly these videos as a group (there are several differnet versions) have been viewed well over 20 million times.
I am including one of them here…Definately worth watching. One of my favorite bits of information is the fact that Dell Computers directly attributes selling over $3,000,000 (3 million) dollars worth of computers from their Twitter.com/dellOutlet presence.
Make sure you check out the Fischbowl blog, info on the latest version of “Did You Know/Shift Happens” (the 4.0 version I have here as of Oct 2009), Scott McLeod, XPLANE, and Laura Bestler.
Tipping Point
Posted on | October 19, 2009 | No Comments
Just read an interesting post on the digital version of “Federal Computer Week”. The title is ‘Social media in government: Welcome to the tipping point’.
What I took away from this was not just the fact that three of the ten most accessed stories were about social media but more importantly the very appropriate (in my opinion) conclusion on the part of the author, Steve Kelman.
the question is not whether government should embrace social networking technologies, but how most productively to use them — inside agencies (to build social capital, as tools for communities of practice, and so forth) and between agencies and the public — to promote higher-quality government. “How,” of course, includes dealing with cybersecurity, loafing on the job, and other issues that worry many in government. But that dialogue has to be in the context of how, not whether. The time for debating whether to embrace social media should be past.
I feel that this conclusion is germane to any disscussion of Social Media in business as well. Comments?
Do you think Social media is a fad?
Posted on | October 15, 2009 | No Comments
I stumbled (literally in a digital sense anyways) across this video and have to share it.
Some of the numbers you will see are either frightening or enlightening – it all depends on how you feel about the question and your relationship with social media.
In the near future I think that companies will come to enjoy social media as an extension of their interface with their potential and current customers, no different than we now see telephones or offices. As you see the trends outlined in the video you may remember back to when this same question was being asked about computers (are they just toys) and then a little later about the importance of the internet.
My Dad used to tell me that ‘Word of Mouth’ was the best form of advertising. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube – these are the places where digital word of mouth lives. One of the important differences between analog word of mouth and digital word of mouth that needs to be carefully addressed by us all is longevity of what is said. We are used to our (for most of us) spoken words fading quickly. That is not true of the digital spoken word. It is going to hang around and have impact for a much longer period of time.
But enough of me, watch this video – grab a pencil and paper – jot down some of the numbers. There are some important trends to note.
Let me know what you think.
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- Driven by strong sales in U.S. and 300% increase in digital sales, revenue at Random House rose 7.7% first 1/2 2010 http://bit.ly/czMp74
- Here's an interesting tie-in - DHS Funds Biometric Surveillance Checkpoint Technology http://bit.ly/dxNRp3 from 2009
- "Every person, place, and thing on this planet will be connected [to the iris system] within the next 10 years." http://bit.ly/atExL2
- Unmanned copter to deliver supplies to troops in forward positions- (ATUAS) contract awarded to Lockheed Martin. http://bit.ly/c91KSj
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- looking forward to a ride tomorrow with @sevin8nin and @peterlombardi - no @seniorblastico (sick sick sick)...gods of weather be kind!
- NSA has developed and distributed configuration guidance for operating systems. These guides are currently being used …http://lnkd.in/XHpXXZ
- Here is link to Mac OS X 10.5 - Security Configuration from Apple. pdf book http://bit.ly/bHDu9f