"Attack of the Algorithms: Serious Play with Netbots" Machine Algorithms in the form of automation are slowly and steadily inserting themselves everywhere. They are trading stocks, reading the news for us, educating our children, and are beginning to drive cars. If we are to avoid the dark side of the Singularity, and instead evolve towards a symbiotic, platonic relationship with machines; what Hans Moravec calls "Ourselves in more potent form", we need to learn to play nice with them. In this talk, Singularity Capital Partner Richard Boyd will reveal just how far down the rabbit hole we have gone, and give some hopeful direction for how we can evolve towards a more peaceful coexistence with the machines. Since the demise of Google Reader a whole host of automated bots have emerged to inform and entertain us. This session will describe the emerging bot landscape and what it means for the evolving human and machine relationship.

1. Attack of the
Algorithms
serious play with bots
Richard Boyd
Managing Partner
Singularity Capital
Serious Play
August 21, 2013
Redmond, WA
Me@RichardBoyd.is
Twitter: Metaversial

2. Perspective
Digital Natives Rise
Stereoscopic 3D
New Interfaces
My gaming street cred
Simulation
Mobility
Augmented Reality

3. Flow State
Achieving Super-Proprioception
Flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990)
My talk last year at Serious Play about Flow State
and Digital Fluency

4. The Simulation Century
The 20th century was about recorded moving images,
This century is about Simulation

5. Core Concepts in this
talk
• This is the Simulation Century
• The central problem in an accelerating information
age is how to achieve the right balance between
humans and automation to optimize outcomes
• Those who attain fluency with automation and
digital tools will out-perform those who do not, and
will begin to appear Super Human.
• How do we teach digital fluency by allowing humans
and machines to play together?
Boyd, Richard. "SuperHuman Education", Getting Smart, (March, 2013)
http://gettingsmart.com/2013/03/superhuman-education/
Boyd, Richard and Rob Szczerba. "SuperHuman Healthcare", Intelligent Hospital Today,
(September, 2012) http://intelligenthospitaltoday.com/?p=721#comment-299
Boyd, Richard. "Nearer the Holodeck", Armed Forces Journal, (May, 2010)
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2010/05/4578938/

6. Algorithm
Humble Origins
An algorithm is a specific set of instructions for carrying
out a procedure or solving a problem, usually with the
requirement that the procedure terminate at some
point. Specific algorithms sometimes also go by the
name method, procedure or technique. The word
"algorithm" is a distortion of al-Khwārizmī, a
Persian mathematician who wrote an influential treatise
about algebraic methods. The process of applying an
algorithm to an input to obtain an output is called
a computation.
Euclid's algorithm for calculating the
greatest common divisor (g.c.d.) of two
numbers a and b in locations named A
and B.
al-Khwārizmī

7. The $264 Billion algorithm company

8. On September 15, 2011, beginning at 12:48:54.600, there was a time warp in the trading of Yahoo! (YHOO) stock. HFT has reached speeds
faster than the speed-of-light, allowing time travel into the future. Up to 190 milliseconds into the future, or 0.19 fantaseconds is the record
so far. It all happened in just over one second of trading, the evidence buried under an avalanche of about 19,000 quotes and 3,000
individual trade executions. The facts of the matter are indisputable.
The Rise of the Machines

9. When Machines Read
Over $200 billion in market value
lost in less than 5 minutes
Fear Index Spikes!

10. “Your call may be monitored or
recorded”

11. The Machines Take Over

12. Time Permitting…
Robot Talk
Foxconn building a robot army
Of one million by 2013
Autonomy
(algorithms that drive)
In 2020 the U.S. will have 123
million high skill high pay jobs, but
only 50 million Americans qualified
to do them

13. The Hunt Library at NCSU
January 2013
Anything that can be
automated… will be.
If your job can be done by
automation, the most you
can ever expect to be paid is
the cost of renting the
machine.
Don’t compete against the
machines. Learn to compete
with them.

14. Accelerating Technology
Disappearing Jobs
Prepare for Double Digit Unemployment
Prepare for Double Digit Dow Returns
Keep in Mind…
1800: 90% of US worked in Agriculture
1900: 41% of US worked in Agriculture
2000: 2%

15. Algorithms
that Mimic NatureScheduling problem
Job-shop scheduling problem (JSP)[11]
Open-shop scheduling problem (OSP)[12][13]
Permutation flow shop problem (PFSP)[14]
Single machine total tardiness problem (SMTTP)[15]
Single machine total weighted tardiness problem (SMTWTP)[16][17][18]
Resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP)[19]
Group-shop scheduling problem (GSP)[20]
Single-machine total tardiness problem with sequence dependent setup times (SMTTPDST)[21]
Multistage Flowshop Scheduling Problem (MFSP) with sequence dependent setup/changeover times[22]
Vehicle routing problem
Capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP)[23][24][25]
Multi-depot vehicle routing problem (MDVRP)[26]
Period vehicle routing problem (PVRP)[27]
Split delivery vehicle routing problem (SDVRP)[28]
Stochastic vehicle routing problem (SVRP)[29]
Vehicle routing problem with pick-up and delivery (VRPPD)[30][31]
Vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW)[32][33][34]
Time Dependent Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (TDVRPTW)[35]
Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows and Multiple Service Workers (VRPTWMS)
Assignment problem
Quadratic assignment problem (QAP)[36]
Generalized assignment problem (GAP)[37][38]
Frequency assignment problem (FAP)[39]
Redundancy allocation problem (RAP)[40]
[edit]Set problem
Set covering problem(SCP)[41][42]
Set partition problem (SPP)[43]
Weight constrained graph tree partition problem (WCGTPP)[44]
Arc-weighted l-cardinality tree problem (AWlCTP)[45]
Multiple knapsack problem (MKP)[46]
Maximum independent set problem (MIS)[47]
Others
Classification[48]
Connection-oriented network routing[49]
Connectionless network routing[50][51]
Data mining [48][52][53][54]
Discounted cash flows in project scheduling[55]
Distributed Information Retrieval[56][57]
Grid Workflow Scheduling Problem[58]
Image processing[59][60]
Intelligent testing system[61]
System identification[62][63]
Protein Folding[64][65]
Power Electronic Circuit Design[66]
Ant Colony Optimization

16. Energy
“In the information-based economy, creative
ideas are the ultimate resource”
"...the first industrial revolution was the revolution
of coal and steam, the second was oil. This Third
Industrial Revolution is the internet of energy and
is not only about energy. It involves many key
sectors, from raw materials, to manufacturing,
services, construction, transport, Information
Technologies and even chemistry."
Smart Grid

17. Evolutionary Algorithms
•Polymorphism
•Self-Modification
•Genetic Algorithms
•Neural nets

18. Target Pal
“TargetPal on”
“Yes, Sergeant?”
“Target all potential enemy
actions within 100 meters”
“Targeted”
“Fire on all”
“Firing on 137 potential enemy
actions”

19. PKM: Personal Knowledge
Management
(Google Reader died July 1!)
PRISMATIC

20. Algorithms for Education
Young Lady’s Illustrated
Primer

21. Suggested Reading
Before it’s too late

22. Digital Natives at home with
Automation
One digital native playing 36
characters at once. Talk about
multi-tasking! Does this teach
management of task saturation?
How do we train people to do this
better? Should we?.

23. Multi-boxing
Where is the Serious Play Research?

24. Is it cheating?
What is the policy?
Do we ban it? (The way we
once banned calculators
and now ban smart
devices from some
schools?)
How do we design Serious
Games that teach
human/machine
cooperation?
Where is the research?
Where could this lead?

25. “Achieve the Perfect Balance
Between Humans and Automation
To Optimize Outcomes”
-Boyd
The 21st Century Imperative

27. “The future is already here, it is
just unevenly distributed”
-William Gibson
Me@RichardBoyd.is
Twitter: Metaversial
www.DearDylan.com

28. 2020 Vision
Factory of the Future