How technology rules our lives... and our destinies

Copyright © by ian fenwick. All rights reserved
Copyright © ian fenwick. All rights reserved
How Technology Rules Our Lives
Dr Ian Fenwick
For Rotary Club of Bangkok
December 15, 2016
digiAindra
…and our destinies
My story for you today is about
two men, a chessboard, and the
end of life as we know it
(but, please, feel fine)

©Copyright Ian Fenwick 2013
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Homo_neanderthalensis_adult_male_-_head_model_-_Smithsonian_Museum_of_Natural_History_-_2012-05-17.jpg from
http://www.flickr.com/photos/23165290@N00/7283199754/ http://speaklolcat.com http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160412-what-really-happened-when-we-met-
Our closest ancestor,
Neanderthal man.
Driven extinct by us.
At school I was taught that
the superior intelligence
of home sapiens put paid
to Neanderthals, but it
now seems that we
interbred with them for
thousands of years.

They gave us the ability to survive in the chilly climes of
N Europe… we gave them unmentionable diseases which
killed them.
I am sad. All my
friends are dead

http://imamsonline.com/blog/al-khwarizmi-the-islamic-scholar-known-as-the-father-of-algebra/ http://memeshappen.com/meme/donald-trump/we-need-to-build-a-wall-
and-ban-all-algebra-53290
This man was at the heart
of intellectual life 1,200
years ago. Do you recognize
him?

He wrote this book. When it
was translated into Latin, its
title became Liber algebrae et
almucabala. Sound at all
familiar?

He wrote the Arabic word “shay”
thing for the unknown quantity
transcribed in Spain, as xay
abbreviated as x.
We still use x for the unknown
quantity, 1,200 years later!
Yes, he brought
algebra to the
attention of the
West.

…perhaps this is what
will happen next?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sputnik_asm.jpg a replica of Sputnik, PUBLIC DOMAIN, NASA
Now the chessboard.
It is said that the inventor of chess presented the game to his ruler,
who was so happy with it that he granted the inventor whatever he
desired.
“I am but a humble man who needs to feed his family”, said the
chess-inventor, “Just give me 1 grain of rice on the 1st square, 2 grains
on the 2nd square, 4 on the 3rd, 8 on the 4th and so on. Doubling the
amount of rice at each square (an exponential progression).
The Ruler thought this sounded a good deal and told his rice people
to start counting out the rice

All went well in the first half of the chessboard, but the 32nd square
needed about 4 billion grains of rice. It sounds a lot, but I’m told it’s
about 1 large field.
But then the 33rd square needed 2 large fields, the 34th square 4 large
fields. At this point the rice counters became concerned.
They started to do the math. They figured that the 64th square would
need a pile of rice bigger than the Himalayan mountains: more than
all the rice grown in the world since time began!
Supposedly the Ruler sent for the chess-
inventor and chopped off his head for
impertinence
Exponential progressions have the habit of getting very
very big! In the second half of the chessboard, things get
weird!

The digital world has many exponential progressions.
Many of you know “Moore’s Law” which basically suggests that
computing power kinda doubles every couple of years.
Supposedly the Ruler sent for the chess-
inventor and chopped off his head for
impertinence
If we start the digital era from about the launch of Sputnik,
in 1957, we are now at about the 40th square. Well into the
2nd half of the chessboard

Things are getting seriously weird

And who made Deepface? An intelligence agency?
No Facebook… and we all helped them by tagging photos!

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/computers-can-read-emotions-better-than-you-can
We don’t know why he’s happily
disgusted, but the computer can
recognize it! And tell real from fake
emotions better than humans can

https://visual-recognition-demo.mybluemix.net/
Now it’s not perfect… Watson is
63% certain that I’m Kickboxing

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mysterybee/1659336160/in/photostream/ CC BY-SA 2.0
But computing power’s not the only thing that’s doubling
every year or so…

Crunching all that data gets us back
Al-Kharizmi, whose name gives us
the word ALGORITHM
…algorithms increasingly drive our
lives

http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/01/how-google-searches-30-trillion-web-pages-100-billion-times-a-month/
90%+ never leave page 1,
70% of those click top 4 results
For Search as as a whole:
…studies show that people are more
likely to vote for politicians who are
on the 1st page of search results
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/05/12/research-in-india-suggests-google-search-results-can-influence-an-election/

t
…almost every thing you see on
Facebook, from the posts to the ads,
are the results of algorithms at work

http://www.theshovel.com.au/2016/11/17/mark-zuckerburg-dead-at-32-denies-facebook-has-problem-with-fake-news/
…algorithms that are better tuned to
showing you content you will want
to share, rather than content that is
true…
[HINT Zuckerberg’s not really dead]

http://gizmodo.com/why-people-keep-trying-to-erase-the-hollywood-sign-from-1658084644 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Sign "Aerial Hollywood Sign" by Jelson25 -
Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons -
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aerial_Hollywood_Sign.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Aerial_Hollywood_Sign.jpg
http://la.curbed.com/archives/2011/06/big_tourists_go_away_message_shows_up_below_hollywood_sign.php?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter#touristsgoaway
-4
…when residents near the Hollywood sign wanted
to keep tourists away… reportedly they tweaked
the algorithms

http://gizmodo.com/why-people-keep-trying-to-erase-the-hollywood-sign-from-1658084644 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Sign "Aerial Hollywood Sign" by Jelson25 -
Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons -
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aerial_Hollywood_Sign.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Aerial_Hollywood_Sign.jpg
http://la.curbed.com/archives/2011/06/big_tourists_go_away_message_shows_up_below_hollywood_sign.php?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter#touristsgoaway
-4
you are
here
sign is
here
Google
suggests
walk
this
way… …Google maps,
reportedly, takes you a
circuitous route to a
viewing platform…not
to the sign itself

…people follow GPS
algorithms…into the sea

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russias-new-spies-blow-cover-with-counter-intelligent-internet-photos-dxl2xwbh0?shareToken=0af493b11a6601ff924f37f7776d6e3d

http://www.contagious.com/blogs/news-and-views/cannes-lions-innovation-winnersGo http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-19/google-cuts-its-giant-
electricity-bill-with-deepmind-powered-ai

http://rs265.pbsrc.com/albums/ii204/xSuicideOfLove666/Icons/Eff/Icon_014.jpg~c200http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2016/03/24/microsoft-created-artificial-intelligence-but-
shes-a-racist-homophobic-trump-supporter/ https://gingermermaid.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/it-looks-like-you-are-stupid.jpg
https://gingermermaid.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/it-looks-like-you-are-stupid.jpg
…Microsoft created an AI
to chat with teenage girls…
within 48 hours it was
radicalized and switched
off

http://rs265.pbsrc.com/albums/ii204/xSuicideOfLove666/Icons/Eff/Icon_014.jpg~c200http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2016/03/24/microsoft-created-artificial-intelligence-but-
shes-a-racist-homophobic-trump-supporter/ https://gingermermaid.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/it-looks-like-you-are-stupid.jpg
https://gingermermaid.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/it-looks-like-you-are-stupid.jpg

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/singularity

http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2015/11/111915blog-donald-trump-100629006-primary.idge.jpg http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/we-cant-deny-robots-their-humanoid-rights-
sxwtlgzgwhttp://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/we-cant-deny-robots-their-humanoid-rights-sxwtlgzgw
By ²°¹°° - Photo created by ²°¹°°, as documented at Wikipedia fr, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=802513

http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2015/11/111915blog-donald-trump-100629006-primary.idge.jpg http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/we-cant-deny-robots-their-humanoid-rights-
sxwtlgzgwhttp://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/we-cant-deny-robots-their-humanoid-rights-sxwtlgzgw

…but I don’t want to
leave you depressed.
Remember that just as
Neanderthal DNA, and
looks, live on in homo
sapiens, so we will live
on in the AI that will
replace us
Don’t be sad.
Every computer
will be your friend

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