Garry Kasparov's Blog, page 34

Progress is as Simple as a Bowl of Cereal: Joining Forces with Noodle.ai to Create Perfect Flow | Noodle.ai | July 8, 2021

Read the original article at Noodle.ai’s Blog

My connection to the artificial intelligence revolution is rooted in my chess career. When I learned about Noodle.ai and its intention to propagate FlowOperations to create a world without waste, I immediately wanted to work with them to evangelize “good AI.” In this inaugural blog, I’ll share some earlier experiences that connect me to Noodle.ai’s mission of creating a frictionless flow of goods to consumers.

The First Knowledge Worker Threatened by Automation

In 1985, in Hamburg, I played against thirty-two different chess computers at the same time in what is known as a simultaneous exhibition. I walked from one machine to the next, making my moves over a period of more than five hours. The four leading chess computer manufacturers had sent their top models, including eight named after me from the electronics firm Saitek.

It illustrates the state of computer chess at the time that it didn’t come as much of a surprise when I achieved a perfect 32–0 score, winning every game, although there was an uncomfortable moment. At one point, I realized that I was drifting into trouble in a game against one of the “Kasparov” brand models. If this machine scored a win or even a draw, people would be quick to say that I had thrown the game to get PR for the company, so I had to intensify my efforts. Eventually, I found a way to trick the machine with a sacrifice it should have refused. From the human perspective, or at least from my perspective, those were the good old days of man vs. machine chess!

Eleven years later, I narrowly defeated the supercomputer Deep Blue in a match. Then, in 1997, IBM redoubled its efforts—and doubled Deep Blue’s processing power—and I lost the rematch in an event that made headlines around the world. The result was met with astonishment and grief by those who took it as a symbol of mankind’s submission before the almighty computer. (“The Brain’s Last Stand” read the Newsweek headline.) Others shrugged their shoulders, surprised that humans could still compete at all against the enormous calculating power that, by 1997, sat on just about every desk in the first world.

In just one decade, I had gone from being the youngest world chess champion in history, at 22 years old, to becoming the first knowledge worker whose job was threatened by automation. Across the chessboard from Deep Blue, facing the machine’s 200 million moves per second calculating power, did I wish that IBM had made a slightly slower and weaker system? Perhaps, in a weak moment, but of course, that isn’t what any competitor should want, or anyone who benefits from technology progress—that is, everyone.

I could either bury my head in the sand and get swept into the past, or I could embrace the AI revolution and help harness the strength of machine intelligence to augment my human creativity and improve my performance. I chose the latter, and over the last 25 years, I have been studying the rise of AI, reporting from the front lines, and widely sharing what I’ve learned in articles and books like my 2017 publication, Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins (PublicAffairs), and from collaboration with partners like Noodle.ai.

Augmented Intelligence

We often think of AI as stronger, better, more ruthless humanoids: terrifying AI like Hal from Arthur Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey or Skynet from Terminator haunt our collective consciousness. But, as my lessons from Deep Blue taught me, humans and machines are good at different things.

Machines excel at imitating human decision-making processes. And, because they never get hungry, or grouchy after fights with a partner, or need to run out to get more coffee, like us humans, machines can continue to perform high-quality decision-making in perpetuity. Thus, artificial intelligence (which I’ll call AI1) is perfect at efficiently performing low-intelligence tasks within closed systems.

Meanwhile, humans excel at adapting to new environments, responding to unfamiliar constraints, and operating within open systems. For the sake of alliteration, we can call this authentic intelligence (AI2).

When we combine the brute strength of machine artificial intelligence and the creative power of human authentic intelligence, we get augmented intelligence (AI3): AI1 + AI2 = AI3. And, as that 2005 “freestyle” chess tournament demonstrated, the sum is greater than the whole of its parts. Augmented intelligence can harmonize the strengths of both components without diminishing the need for either of its constituent parts.

Progress Can be as Simple as a Bowl of Cereal

In addition to providing exciting new job opportunities, augmented intelligence will increase productivity, which is how we produce the gains that make our lives better, generation after generation. That sounds abstract, but we all saw just last year, during the pandemic, how important the small, everyday steps toward progress are.  In the past, a pandemic like COVID could have brought widespread starvation as distribution systems collapsed. Researchers at the environmental nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance even used statistical models to map out such a scenario for COVID-19.

But, by using all the intellectual horsepower of augmented intelligence, Noodle.ai’s partners kept churning out reliable, dependable products despite all the challenges COVID brought. It was through the operating resilience of machine intelligence, guided by human management, that Noodle.ai’s partners kept cornflakes in our pantries and milk in our refrigerators throughout the pandemic. Progress can be as simple and as significant as making sure we all have breakfast in the morning.

And over the last year, while augmented intelligence saved breakfast in the kitchen, it also saved lives in the hospital. From the very start of the pandemic, nonprofits and scientific researchers alike published literature on how AI helped frontline workers combat COVID-19 at every step of the process by more rapidly diagnosing patients, contact tracing their relations for potential spread, and assisting doctors and nurses triage patients.

Supply chains are boring until you realize you can’t live without them, a lesson we shouldn’t forget as the pandemic wanes. The benefits of “boring” AI are clear and present, and we shouldn’t forget that to chase after every hyperbolic story about robots’ dystopian visions of automated dystopias.

The question facing business leaders and government officials is how we can best combine the strengths of machine intelligence and human creativity to create a better tomorrow for all of us. Noodle.ai is helping to find a solution by doing well while doing good for the world. And we can measure the progress of integrating machine labor with human intuition in something as simple as the bowl of cereal that still made it to your kitchen in the middle of a global pandemic.

Yuri Dokhoian, Dear Friend and Peerless Coach

I’ve often said that chess was designed for me, a perfect match. Such luck is rare, but when Yuri Dokhoian became my coach in late 1994, it was lightning striking the second time. His death in Moscow on July 1 was the loss of a dear friend of mine and of chess.

Yuri elevated not only my chess and my results, but the entire field of chess preparation at the highest level. My opponents didn’t only have to contend with me at the board, but with the fabled “Kasparov-Dokhoian Laboratory,” well before elite players relied almost entirely on computer analysis. (Chessbase’s Frederic Friedel even nicknamed Yuri, “5.32,” after the latest version of the Fritz computer engine.)

By 1994, with the Karpov marathon in the past and the world championship match with Short over, I was in need of a new coach. Sergey Makarichev had put in three years, and only Alexander Shakarov remained from the early days. I honestly don’t recall who recommended Yuri to me, but I am in their debt. We had a few sessions at the 1994 Olympiad in Moscow, and I knew he was the one. His character, the quality of his work, his worth ethic, it was all complementary.

Yuri was not only a student of the game itself and a skilled analyst and writer. He was also an astute analyst of the psychology and habits of other players, a skill that often opened fruitful lines of preparation on the board. People often joked that my database of preparation would be worth a fortune to any other elite player when I retired. But it would have been worth more to most of them to sit down with Yuri for a few hours to talk about their strengths and weaknesses, because he knew them all.

I could relate a hundred anecdotes about Yuri’s acumen, but I’ll share an unusual one that comes to mind from 2003, when I played against the Fritz program on an “X3D” video board in New York City. I committed one of the worst blunders of my life to lose game two instantly. It was a simple tactic in a fine position, unimaginable for me to miss. I was shaken, and after the game Yuri put the position on the wooden board in our room and told me to look at it. Suddenly it was clear: it had been a visual blunder, a symptom of playing on a virtual board wearing 3D glasses and not “seeing” the lines of the board the same way.

Being a great coach and second isn’t only a matter of chess, it’s everything from a good sense of humor to enduring long walks in harsh weather. Yuri never complained, despite the tremendous mental and physical demands of his new position. We established routines, patterns I craved from a disciplined life under the guidance of my mother and Botvinnik. Working, walking, eating, talking, it was a true relationship. I spent more time with him than anyone else before my retirement in 2005. Yuri knew when and how to speak to me—and when not to—to put me in the necessary frame of mind depending on the situation. He gave me more than chess preparation; he gave me stability and confidence.

The rest of Yuri’s career further demonstrated the range of his coaching talent. He worked with both Russian national teams and with world championship challenger Sergey Karjakin, showing he could both keep a veteran champion on top and bring a young star to new heights.

Yuri’s death is a tragedy all the more for being so premature, so unwarranted. You may call it inappropriate to say so in an in memoriam, but my grief is clouded by fury at the circumstances of my friend’s death at just 56. When could it be more appropriate to rage at the cruelty of a dictatorship responsible for the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands? The Putin regime isn’t only killing Ukrainians and Syrians, but is currently massacring countless Russians through its mendacity and incompetence.

Each death is an opportunity to consider the promise of the years lost, what might have been achieved, what joys could have been and will never be. Such awareness should move us to learn and to act. As Yuri often told me, even preparation that is never used serves a purpose. Our knowledge shapes us, shapes who we are in every circumstance.

Yuri kept me on the cutting edge until the very last minute of my chess career. It is the quandary of the second that his contributions to theory and analysis will never be fully appreciated, but suffice to say they are immense. I have no insight into what comes after death, but I know that it will find Yuri Dokhoian well prepared.

Le portrait Garry Kasparov, pas mat(é) | Libération | July 5, 2021

Read the full article at Libération

By Luc Mathieu

Le combattant pugnace, parfois brutal, n’est jamais loin. Garry Kasparov, 58 ans, n’a pas surplombé le monde des échecs durant une décennie et demie, et n’en est pas resté l’une des figures, peut-être la figure la plus marquante de son histoire, en étant gentil. De passage à Paris pour promouvoir une nouvelle application d’échecs, le vernis d’affabilité et de bonne volonté pour répondre à des questions qu’il comprend avant qu’on les ait finies se craquelle facilement. Il suffit de dire un mot : «Karpov.» Garry Kasparov se raidit, serre les poings – qu’il a larges – et s’agace. «Bien évidemment que je n’ai aucun contact avec lui ! Il a toujours été un homme de système, et il l’est encore. Il est député au Parlement russe, je vis en exil. Nous n’avons rien en commun, hormis d’avoir été tous les deux champions du monde.»

Garry Kasparov déteste donc toujours Anatoli Karpov. Les deux génies, l’attaquant flamboyant et le défenseur effacé, le rebelle et l’apparatchik, se sont af…

At Yale, Democracy Stops at Phelps Gate | National Review Online | June 30, 2021

The Yale trustees should hold free and fair elections, instead of offering alumni a choice between Handpicked Candidate A and Handpicked Candidate B. | Opinion by @Kasparov63 & @UrielEpshtein https://t.co/tnBS3oWivL

— National Review (@NRO) June 30, 2021

By Garry Kasparov and Uriel Epshtein

Read the original article at the National Review Online

The trustees of Yale University have made it clear that they love democracy — as long as they don’t have to abide by it themselves. Democracy for thee; unaccountable governance for me. In the last couple weeks, the Yale Corporation has purged even the slightest hints of accountability from their “election system.”

One of us, Garry, is a lifelong dissident from the USSR and Russia. The other, Uriel, is a proud alumnus of Yale University — admittedly less proud today than he was a month ago. Uriel attended Yale, loved Yale, and even founded an organization there — the Peace and Dialogue Leadership Initiative — to help contribute to campus life and learning. But we all have an obligation to speak out against anti-democratic actions, especially when they happen at home. Now as the chairman and the executive director, respectively, of the Renew Democracy Initiative, we must respond to threats to democratic norms regardless of where they originate.

Elections to the Yale Corporation are a byzantine, opaque process. Most candidates apply through the Alumni Fellow Nominating Committee. These applicants are not allowed to campaign, reveal their policy positions, or even talk about what they would do if elected. The committee then reveals its endorsed candidates just 24 to 48 hours before voting begins — an election in name only.

However, in order to lay claim to some element of democracy, Yale allowed outside candidates to run by petition if they received at least 4,500 alumni signatures (3 percent of all living alumni). This past year, two petition candidates managed to clear that hurdle: Maggie Thomas, a progressive Democrat, and Victor Ashe, a conservative Republican. Both ran on increasing accountability for the Yale Corporation. Thomas, a climate-policy expert, campaigned to divest from fossil fuels. Meanwhile, Ashe questioned the Yale Corporation’s current policy of sealing all minutes for at least 50 years and called for a repeal to Yale’s “gag rule.” Thomas later dropped out and Ashe lost.

But it seems that, despite his electoral loss, Ashe’s calls for a minimal amount of transparency spooked the trustees of Yale. So, on May 24, 2021, they announced that new rules would prohibit any candidates in future elections from running on petitions not approved by the university. The three petition campaigns already announced for next year are now a moot point. Sorry, kids, no glasnost or perestroika for you!

In a statement explaining their decision, the trustees attacked the very concept of democracy. In particular, they criticized “issues-based candidacies,” an interesting argument for a group purporting to support the democratic process. If we don’t vote on “issues,” what criteria should we use — best hairdo? The letter described, in horror, “a new normal in which every election saw vying groups with organized support competing to focus Yale on their chosen goals.” Please insert your own gasps. This sentence would not feel out of place if it had been uttered by Viktor Orbán or Andrzej Duda.

The Yale Corporation’s hypocrisy in this statement is particularly galling. The Ivy League scions who make up this committee regularly lecture the rest of America about the importance of democracy from the comfort of their C-suite offices.

Yet for all their ostensible outrage, when thousands of alumni exercised the democratic rights enshrined in Yale’s regulations, the trustees were so worried about the outcome that they decided to quietly kill the democratic process itself. Either Yale’s trustees stand for democracy or they don’t. If they do, then they should hold genuinely free and fair elections, instead of offering a choice between Handpicked Candidate A and Handpicked Candidate B. They should repeal the “gag rule” and publish their minutes in a timely fashion, instead of 50 years later, once everyone at that meeting is dead and safely buried. And they need to prioritize democratic processes rather than a specific preferred outcome.

Democracy is a muscle. Without exercise, it will atrophy and die. Yale trustee elections might seem irrelevant to most Americans (and most Yale alumni), but we all know the importance of defending democracy. We cannot criticize authoritarian leaders abroad while forgoing democratic processes at home, and we cannot expect our national leaders to prioritize democracy if the educational institutions where they studied don’t offer them a chance to practice what they preach.

Garry Kasparov is a former chess world champion, best-selling author, and the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative. Uriel Epshtein is a Yale alumnus, business strategist, and the executive director of the Renew Democracy Initiative.

 

Culture Geek: Entretien exclusif de Garry Kasparov, par Anthony Morel | BFM TV | June 25, 2021

Watch the original clip at Culture Geek

“Putin’s regime represents the West’s greatest existential threat” | Desk Russie | June 25, 2021

By Galia Ackerman

Read the original article at Desk Russie

The Biden-Putin summit, the core nature of Russia’s current regime, corruption among western elites, the fate of Ukraine and Navalny… In his own incisive way, world chess champion Gary Kasparov passes a not very reassuring judgment on the western world and its ability to stand up to Putin.

Interview by Galia Ackerman.

How do you assess the Biden-Putin summit?

The holding of the summit was a very serious mistake made by Biden. The only positive thing is that there were no tangible results. One question remains: what was Biden’s interest? I guess he’s feeling nostalgic. Old Joe ran for the White House in 1988, a significant part of his political career happened during the Cold War. There were all those meetings, Nixon-Brezhnev, Carter-Brezhnev, Reagan-Gorbachev. My impression is that he wanted to match up to those and come across as a leader of the free world again, by meeting with a Russian dictator. But at the time of Reagan-Gorbachev, the situation was different because the Soviet regime was in decline. There were no illusions, the USSR was fighting a war in Afghanistan and imprisoning dissidents, but nevertheless the regime was losing its traction, undergoing erosion, while today’s Russian regime has become more and more aggressive. Today, the Putin regime ideology is based on confrontation with the West. There is no hope that by looking Biden in the eye, Putin will behave otherwise.

However, this summit did allow for some de-escalation. A decision was at least made to allow US and Russian ambassadors to return…

Hold on! What de-escalation are you talking about when, since this summit was announced, two cyber attacks took place on American infrastructures? Such attacks could hardly have happened without Putin’s approval, could they? We’re also witnessing an unprecedented frontal attack on the opposition in Russia. NGOs and citizens are being labelled terrorists and extremists and are facing prison sentences. Where is the slightest sign of a decrease in tension? On the contrary, I think Putin will act in accordance with his new image. In 2014, after the annexation of Crimea, he turned into a kind of political pariah, and now he’s acquired the status of a great leader, equal to Biden, even though Biden had called him a “killer”. Biden first attended the G7 and the NATO summits, but the last meeting on this tour was reserved for Putin. Symbolically, this made the summit look like the most important one. In terms of image, Putin has won, and this is what he demonstrated to his oligarchic entourage, his secret services, his army, his clientele across the world, such as Maduro and Assad, and even the Chinese. The fact that Biden felt compelled to meet with Putin despite all the criticism targeted at him, is Putin’s greatest achievement and America’s defeat.

We do not know the content of their conversations. Biden nevertheless indicated that “red lines” should not be crossed.

Indeed, Biden indicated to Putin some areas of cyber security that should not come under attack. But what is this conversation between an American president and the head of a mafia that attacks America? Biden told him: you can’t touch this. And the rest is permitted? And then, how long are we going to hand out warning signals? This is no longer in the era of George W. Bush and his agreement with Putin. In the meantime, Litvinenko and Politkovskaya have been killed, Georgia has been attacked, Nemtsov has been assassinated, Crimea has been annexed, Syria has been devastated, Assad has used chemical weapons, Navalny has been poisoned and could well die in prison, and America has been attacked several times. It is useless to talk about “red lines” if you’re not ready to fire back when those lines are crossed. Of course, it would be interesting to know the details of the meeting, but the reason Biden decided to go to Geneva remains an open question. Basically, other than nostalgia and ego satisfaction, I can’t think of any reason. After the Trump disaster, people expected Biden to take concrete action. So far, those expectations have not been met.

In particular, Biden had been expected to resolutely oppose Nord Stream 2.

I guess it was too late to stop that project, but Biden has ostensibly lifted sanctions. This alternative route for delivering Russian gas to Europe will soon be operational. Putin is pragmatic. Despite sanctions and objections, Russian gas deliveries to Europe have doubled since the 2014 occupation of Crimea. And that’s the only thing Putin cares about: he’s become richer. There is no threat to the well-being of his clique. The existing sanctions are sensible in several areas, but that doesn’t change the name of the game. The Russian ruling elite enjoys an astronomical amount of money: it is estimated that the total resources this small circle of people possess and control amount to one trillion dollars. This is the amount of money Putin has at his disposal, so for him, giving a few billion dollars for this or that project is no big deal.

Or to bribe Western politicians and businessmen?

I think that’s more difficult in the United States, but in Europe it is very common. Name me a single European country where no politicians have been corrupted by the Putin regime. It’s no big secret, everything is done openly. 20 or 30 years ago, if the press discovered such behavior, these politicians’ careers would have been over. Big scandals would have broken out, resignations, court cases. But today, morals have evolved. For Fillon [a former French prime minister now in the process of joining the board of Zarubezhneft], Russian money is not a problem, neither for Schroeder [former German chancellor]. For Marine Le Pen, getting Russian funding for her party is no problem. Nobody gets outraged by it. And this is a victory for Putin.

What sanctions could be effective against the Kremlin?

Sanctions aren’t a goal in themselves, they are a means towards a well-defined end. For them to be well targeted, one has to understand the essence of the Putin regime and its weak points. This is a mafia regime: as long as it gets comfortable income pumping natural resources, it doesn’t care about what’s happening in the country. Putin will be sensitive to this only when his income comes under threat. That means sanctions must be put in place against the Russian oil and gas sector. And the Russian ruling elite’s money has to be targeted here in the West. Theoretically, this is entirely possible. But the West has waited too long, and most of these sanctions have become unrealistic. That’s because Putin’s oligarchs don’t keep their money in a bank. They invest it in soccer or basketball clubs, in charities, in real estate. This money is spread all over the place, and it cannot be frozen nor confiscated. This has been a consistent policy for the last 20 years: investing in people and political parties, etc. Who is the biggest benefactor in the UK today? Alisher Usmanov! He has given more than four billion pounds! And where is this money? It has been given to different NGOs and other structures including politicians, journalists, public figures. The whole western bloodstream is irrigated with Russian money! It is not too late to stop this, but it will be very painful for western economies. At the same time, if we don’t do it, the consequences will sooner or later be dramatic.

We live in consumerist societies. How can we explain to people that some sacrifices have to be made? Let’s say a big hotel belongs to a Russian oligarch: how do you convince a region, a city hall, the staff of this hotel that those assets have to be seized?

To do this, you have to understand that Putin’s regime represents the West’s greatest existential threat. I use the word “existential” deliberately. Putin’s objective is the destruction of the western world model that emerged from World War II. Like the HIV virus, Putin is destroying the West’s immune system. The key idea behind the idea of progress is a decrease in the level of violence in society. Putin, knowingly or unknowingly, is making the world regress. He asserts loudly and clearly that strong power has an absolute value. That is why the two key figures in Putin’s mythology are Stalin and Ivan the Terrible. Even for the Russian tsars, the figure of Ivan the Terrible was embarrassing: he was too bloodthirsty. Nowadays, Stalin and Ivan the Terrible are models of absolute power without any checks and balances, at home and abroad. The example of Syria is instructive. Putin unconditionally supports Assad because he recognizes his right to commit the worst possible crimes. This is his idea of power. And it is Putin who sets an example for the Islamists and China, to the great displeasure of the West, which does not know how to react. The recipes of the Cold War era no longer work, we live in a different world. America is no longer the guarantor of the free world, which is certainly Putin’s “accomplishment”, in part.. At the same time, the West has probably never been as strong as today, and has never had such an advantage over Russia.

What about Ukraine in all of this?

Putin cannot tame Ukraine. By some accounts Russia refrained from attacking Ukraine this Spring because of a warning sent out by Biden. I don’t believe this version of events. The reason the Russian army did not go on the offensive is that the price would have been too high. Even an army of more than 100,000 men concentrated on Ukraine’s borders would not have been enough to conquer that country. Using the air force and bombing Ukrainian cities is simply unthinkable. As a good mafia boss, Putin assesses risks and avoids undertaking anything that could undermine his power. Of course, the Russian regime would have loved to dismember Ukraine, and it tried to do so in 2014. It did not work.

Rumors have been circulating for months that Putin has health problems. Is that a hoax?

Such rumors are typical around dictators. They are always sick and always ready to leave. I am not interested in such rumors because I know that in any dictatorship the state of health of the dictator is an absolute secret. Usually, when such rumors circulate, they don’t correspond to reality.

How do you analyse Alexei Navalny’s return to Russia?

The space for public freedoms has been shrinking inexorably since Putin came to power. Navalnymade an utterly heroic but unwise move. He may not have understood that the regime’s “red lines” had moved again. For several years, Russian authorities tolerated him, and he probably even had allies among the ruling elite who thought Putin had gone too far. That time is over. The Russian regime is moving downhill, ever faster. It’s like a law of physics. This regime has now turned into a pure and simple dictatorship. There is a widespread myth among opposition figures: a real politician should live in Russia. This is not true. If the aim of politics is to take power, which means the prior collapse of the Putin regime, you have to think about where you can be most effective. Navalny’s ideas, such as “smart voting” [voting for any candidate who could win against the United Russia candidate], are only a distraction. It creates the illusion something’s going on there. I regret that Navalny did not remain in the West. With his status, he could have met with western leaders, such as Biden or Macron, his word would have carried weight, he could have influenced decision-making about Russia.

Is there a chance Navalny could be exchanged, as Vladimir Bukovsky once was?

Biden missed a unique opportunity. If he’d said to Putin: put Navalny and Protassevich on a plane, then we’ll meet in Geneva and take a picture together — it could have worked. Putin needed this summit, he could have accepted. Biden could also have made a symbolic gesture before meeting with Putin : by visiting Zelensky [the Ukrainian president] in Kiev, and by signing a contract for the delivery of combat aircraft, or perhaps by meeting with Svetlana Tikhanovskaya in Vilnius. This would have been behavior worthy of the leader of the free world!

The ethical AI—paradox: why better technology needs more and not less human responsibility | AI and Ethics | June 24, 2021

My latest paper with Prof David De Cremer is out, on AI Ethics. More powerful, more autonomous tech requires greater accountability for its human creators and operators. Are we ready? https://t.co/XSBCSH7vUy pic.twitter.com/rQzxqF5MCM

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) June 28, 2021

By David de Cremer and Garry Kasparov

Read the original article at SpringerLink

Because AI is gradually moving into the position of decision-maker in business and organizations, its influence is increasingly impacting the outcomes and interests of the human end-user. As a result, scholars and practitioners alike have become worried about the ethical implications of decisions made where AI is involved. In approaching the issue of AI ethics, it is becoming increasingly clear that society and the business world—under the influence of the big technology companies—are accepting the narrative that AI has its own ethical compass, or, in other words, that AI can decide itself to do bad or good. We argue that this is not the case. We discuss and demonstrate that AI in itself has no ethics and that good or bad decisions by algorithms are caused by human choices made at an earlier stage. For this reason, we argue that even though technology is quickly becoming better and more sophisticated a need exists to simultaneously train humans even better in shaping their ethical compass and awareness.

There is no doubt that AI has become part of the business world and is here to stay. The potential of AI in terms of economic benefits is unrivalled. This emerging intelligent technology is even considered by many to be more important and impactful than the internet was [1]. It is then also no surprise that AI is increasingly involved in decision-making, either as a tool, advisor or even manager [2]. This means that today intelligent technology is increasingly acquiring power to influence a wide variety of outcomes important to society. As we all know, with greater power also comes greater responsibility. For this reason, we need to start addressing the question of whether AI is intrinsically equipped to be a responsible actor and as such act in ways that we humans—as the important end-user—consider ethical.

This question is receiving much attention as the adoption of AI has created ethical concerns about, among others, privacy (compromising personal information), biased decisions (based on flawed historical data), lack of transparency (how decisions are made), and the risk to lose one’s job due to automation. With such ethical concerns, fear and even anxiety about the employment and advancement of AI has surfaced in society and business. Interestingly, the narrative that surrounds the discussion about the ethicality of AI is characterized by the tendency to attribute human-like qualities to AI [3]. Because of this tendency—referred to as anthropomorphism—we seem to create the impression that AI itself can be inherently bad or good. As we tend to attribute AI such magical and human-like powers, a trend is emerging to see this intelligent (and thus learning) technology as the one being responsible for its actions and decisions. What can we learn from this trend?

This perspective identifies the important role that humans’ expectations about a machine plays. Specifically, a kind of illusion seems to be in play where our enthusiasm for the supposedly magical powers of AI has led us down a road in which we essentially reduce ethics to a technological issue. How? First of all, developments in computer science contribute to this kind of thinking as fairness and ethics in this field is increasingly being seen as the same as transparency and intelligibility. Both features can be optimized by modifying technological features to algorithmic solutions [4]. Second, the developments taking place in the big tech industry also adopt a narrative that introduces ethics as a technological solution. Take, for example, Google’s ethics-as-a-service message, which conveys to business leaders the idea that ethics is something that can easily be fixed if you have the right technology at hand. For some, this kind of message is typical of the Silicon Valley attitude, which finds solutions for almost all problems in technology. Recall Mark Zuckerberg’s response in the 2018 Congressional hearings where he responded to questions from lawmakers in the House and Senate by referring to the unlimited power of AI to fix all kind of problems ranging from hate speech, fake accounts, racially discriminatory ads, to terrorist content and recruitment. As a result, we see that the practice of being ethical in the business world is transforming gradually more into an issue of technical competencies. Rather than wondering whether they should still pay attention to ethics themselves, business leaders are starting to think: “ethics, isn’t that what we have AI for now?”

But, if we are honest, reality is that there is nothing magical about AI. AI does not say or demonstrate anything new that does not exist yet in the data that it is learning from. As such, AI cannot be considered to be an entity that has its own intentions, which are necessary to initiate and decide in autonomous ways to show good or bad behaviour. True, AI can move across the line between good and bad, but can only do so as a function of the intentions of the human or organization that is employing this technology. Our main point is thus that AI itself does not decide to do good or bad for the simple reason that it has no ethics. Even more so, it is our opinion that AI cannot be made intrinsically more ethical than any other technology (or even humans) just because it is “intelligent”. The reason for this is that AI is a technology that is built by humans and therefore basically acts as a mirror to our biases. Consider, for example, the recent saga in the UK where algorithms were used to predict the results of A-Levels students based on how the secondary schools have scored historically. This algorithm-driven approach revealed an unethical outcome as many students’ results were downgraded, particularly those from poorer schools. What happened is that the use of algorithms, meant to reduce teachers’ bias in predicting the students’ results, in reality amplified this bias. So, the reality is that complaining about bias in AI is like complaining about the image in the mirror. Hence, because the “mirror” image of AI exposes biases and flaws in our human thinking, we cannot expect AI to be suddenly more ethical than us. This also means that we have to leave behind the idea that we can trivially design machines that are more ethical than we are in the same way a programmer can create a chess program that is far better at chess than they are. We cannot!

What does our view teach us on how to manage and employ AI at work and society? We agree that AI can be used to optimise informational trends in data to create more transparency and accuracy in terms of the predictions we make. And, from this point of view, we regard AI acting as a mirror of our own biases to be a useful and powerful learning tool. Indeed, being confronted with an accurate mirror of how easily we display biased behaviour should make us appreciate AI as a tool that can help to identify our biases—of which we may not be aware—and learn from it to eliminate them where possible. Such an approach, however, does make it clear at the same time that to diminish—or even eliminate—the influence of biases on our behaviour in the future remains essentially a human responsibility. As such, we cannot pretend that it is possible to pass human responsibility and accountability over to algorithms. The phrase “the algorithm did it” should not even be part of our vocabulary. Nevertheless, we seem on the verge to consider such use of language to be legitimate.

Take, for example, the recent report from the UN Security Council revealing that an autonomous drone attacked humans without being specifically ordered to [5]. This news item gathered much attention and soon opinions converged that drones had become autonomous war tools that required no human controller anymore. Such perspective implies that the actions of an autonomous algorithm are considered separate from human decision-making. If this is truly the case, then this perspective makes it legitimate for us to look at algorithms as responsible for the possible unethical actions it will undertake. According to us, however, this idea is tantamount to saying that a gun fired itself after a person pulled the trigger. Indeed, what people seem to forget is that these drones at an earlier stage in time were programmed to attack targets and that coordinates were loaded into the software by humans. So, even though the drone autonomously decided on the attack (based on the relevant statistics), it cannot be seen as separate from human decision-making. It is thus difficult to say that the algorithm did it, because the action of hunting down a person by a drone was still the result of the actions that humans made beforehand. The work of the German and American computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum is especially relevant here. In his 1976 book “Computer power and human reason: From judgment to calculation”, he notes that computers can decide on an action that has been programmed, but it cannot choose. The reason for this is that making a choice is a product of judgment, and only humans possess the ability to make a judgment call. So, using Weizenbaum’s narrative, the drone decided to attack, but it was ultimately the human that chose to upload the relevant information in the code which resulted in the launch of the drone.

All of this makes it clear that AI can show bad or good behaviour, but in its current capacity cannot be considered as the one responsible for the display of those behaviours. Whether bad or good behaviour will follow from the use of AI will be and remains a human responsibility. This viewpoint has clear implications for what AI ethics is really about. And, to be clear, it is not the Silicon Valley narrative of big tech companies advocating that ethics has become a technology issue and that we best leave people out of it. Such a mindset can be regarded as a convenient way to facilitate the possibility for those companies to blame anything else except themselves when something goes wrong. For example, consider Facebook’s Yann LeCun suggesting that as biased data lead to biased algorithms, it should follow that one should find de-biased data and let the algorithm do its work [6]. And, if the so-called indifferent algorithm—unable to be biased—still does not work then Google will come over and fix the tech [7]. Clearly, big tech companies state that ethics is important, but as many analyses have shown by now is that at the end of the day the reality for these companies is that technology is not going to wait for us (see Mark Zuckerberg’s claim during the Cambridge Analytica case that his main responsibility is to innovate and provide the best technology possible). For this reason, speed and creating an environment that enables technology to innovate is what matters most making that ethics cannot be allowed to disrupt the market-dominated capitalist system that big tech company’s build their reputation on (see Google’s poor handling of the business-ethics balance) [8] No doubt that such a mindset indicates that the big tech companies unfortunately seem unable to take a sufficiently broad enough view of what exactly their responsibility is when it comes down to the technology that they develop.

The broader implications of the above for all of us are also clear. With the arrival and application of AI in our organizations and society, governments around the world have emphasized the need for everyone to engage in digital upskilling. A problem that we see is that in this legitimate search for more digital savviness, we seem to forget the importance to foster and even promote further our own unique human abilities that machines does not have. In other words, we fear that with an almost obsessive focus on digital upskilling, we’re also creating a situation where humans will pay less attention to their strengths and as a result may lose their unique social skill powers over time. Such an outcome will only serve to harm society in the long term. And, this will especially be the case when it comes down to the ethical and responsible use of AI. As we’ve indicated, in the case of AI ethics, it is clear that how intelligent technology is used can only intentionally and intrinsically be determined by humans and their own ethical compass and awareness. For that reason, we suggest that scholars and practitioners alike, should be encouraged in creating more awareness that intelligent technology as it exists today cannot be a substitute for a human ethical compass. Instead, in addition to enhancing technological features that can help make data analyses more transparent and thus also more interpretable, we need to have human decision-makers that are especially more educated in ethics. Specifically, human decision-makers will need to be trained even more than ever to think through the ethical implications of decisions and be more aware of the ethical dilemmas out there.

An important conclusion is therefore that in addition to digital upskilling—which today is encouraged globally—we will need to invest more in human upskilling, and especially so in the field of ethics. We need to become better skilled at understanding our own good and bad behaviour and apply those insights to interventions and training sessions on how to use intelligent technologies in more responsible ways. Such awareness training of what we call the psychological underpinnings of (un)ethical behaviour can teach us when humans are most likely to show unethical behaviour and translate those into the settings of designing and employing intelligent technology [9]. As such, the development of ethical AI will have to be founded on an interdisciplinary approach between computer science and social sciences to arrive at an understanding that will enable humans to use intelligent technology to—at the same time—augment their abilities while being able to make decisions in efficient yet ethical ways.

How meeting with Biden put Putin on top of the World | CNN Opinion | June 19, 2021

Putin got what he wanted the moment the summit with Biden was announced. We still don’t know what Biden wanted. My op-ed on Geneva for @CNNOpinion. https://t.co/a4yrbH2L7l

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) June 20, 2021

Read the original article at CNN Opinion

Editor’s Note: “Garry Kasparov is the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative and the Human Rights Foundation and a former world chess champion. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.

(CNN) In the run up to the Geneva summit with President Joe Biden on Wednesday, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin had been on a rampage. A Russian court designated the opposition group led by Alexey Navalny an extremist network, after crackdowns across the country. Cybercriminals who operate in Russia are believed to have attacked critical US infrastructure, targeting the energy and food supply. And a week before the two leaders’ one-day meeting, the Washington Post reported that Russia was planning to give an advanced satellite system to Iran.

Any of these incidents would have been good reason for Biden to call off a summit that never should have existed. Now that it’s over, I’m even more mystified as to why it happened at all. I can answer for Putin, of course. Dictators love events that put them on an equal footing with democratic leaders and sitting one-on-one with the president of the United States is the most coveted prize of all. Putin already scored a major victory the moment the summit was announced, especially since Biden himself proposed the meeting. For Putin, it wasn’t just a meeting between heads of government — for him, it was literally the highest point, the top of the world.

Putin, who has been legitimized on the world stage and enabled by trade and economic relations with the West, has constructed a massive, well-funded police state in Russia in the 21 years since he came to power. The only real threat to Putin is losing the support of his billionaire cronies, the mafia that runs Russia and spreads its corruption around the world. As long as he guarantees their assets abroad—the cash and real estate and firms they have established so they and their families don’t have to live in Russia—Putin is safe.

It doesn’t matter how many sanctions the US and Europe apply on Russia, even the more effective ones under the Magnitsky Act. If Putin is still recognized as the big boss by both his oligarchs and leaders around the world, he won’t see any reason to change his aggressive behavior. Why should he? For Putin, a summit that elevates him to the standing of the American President will only embolden him. His thinking likely goes something like this: “Biden called me a killer, but he’s still shaking my hand and smiling. I’m not going anywhere.”

As for the Biden administration, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan acknowledged there were no “deliverables” ahead of the Geneva summit and explained that the meeting was “an opportunity to communicate from our president to their president what American intentions and capabilities are and to [hear] the same from their side.” But why not leverage what Putin wants most — power and status on the world stage — and use it to demand an end to his aggression, from murder campaigns and election interference abroad to his ongoing invasion of Ukraine? Even if the US doesn’t care about the demise of Russian civil society—and it’s become clear over the last two decades that the West doesn’t—Putin’s war against the international order demands a response.

Instead, all we heard was that it was important for the two leaders to meet. Why? Because it is important for them to meet! For the leader of the democratic free world, a summit isn’t supposed to be a goal unto itself. Talking just to talk isn’t a goal. American national security is. As is recognizing Ukrainian sovereignty, maintaining the international order and putting a stop to cyberattacks, assassination plots and attacks on dissidents. Ultimately, Biden cannot advance those objectives by normalizing Putin and dictatorships in general.

While the summit itself never should have taken place, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. It’s a blessing when bad food comes in small portions — and the meeting between Biden and Putin was shorter than expected. Biden’s supporters came out to tout their man’s performance, contrasting his wise words and serious mien with Donald Trump’s confused and obsequious mewling when he met Putin three years ago in Helsinki.

Boasting about a better performance than Trump is to damn with faint praise, especially where Putin is concerned. It’s the results that matter. Putin doesn’t care if Biden sounds strong. He doesn’t care if some American journalists ask him tough questions to flaunt the fact that he cannot have them beaten or jailed the way he does their Russian counterparts. (Those tough questions, by the way, were far tamer when the translator presented them to Putin in Russian during the press conference.)

Of course, those are all good developments. I don’t wish to appear unappreciative that Biden highlighted human rights in a way his predecessor never would, or that reporters brought up Navalny’s plight. But these things aren’t going to change Putin’s behavior, whereas the summit elevates and emboldens him.

I watched Putin’s press conference after the summit meeting, but since Russians have heard most of his lies and evasions for years, there wasn’t much new for me. The foreign audience seemed shocked when Putin said Navalny had only himself to blame for consciously breaking parole by leaving the country — even though Navalny was evacuated to Germany in a poison-induced coma. He also tried to justify the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014 (which he used to deny) by arguing that it had introduced “stability” after the independent nation struggled to free itself from Putin’s grip. Putin also denied responsibility for cyberattacks and blamed the US for being the biggest offender.

These are examples of the absurd, reality-twisting nonsense Russians are fed 24-7 by the state-controlled media, and Putin was delighted to have the chance to spread it around the world. Had Biden wanted to send a real message to Putin, he would have met instead with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine. Or with Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the leading opposition candidate in Belarus’ sham elections last year, who is now living in exile after fleeing persecution by Putin’s loyal servant Belarusian despot Alexander Lukashenko. Or Biden could have extended a White House invitation to the families of Putin’s many victims.

Before leaving for Geneva to meet Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, Ronald Reagan said in his address to the nation, “People don’t start wars, governments do.” But Putin is the only government in Russia, and he started a war on the free world. He will keep fighting it — and winning — until his targets fight back.

The summit was a mistake, but Biden is no fool. He can rectify the error and take measures to contain and deter Putin by targeting his oligarchs and thugs and their dirty money, as recommended by Navalny’s organization. Biden can also support Ukraine and Putin’s other targets, and work to remove Russia from the international organizations it manipulates and corrupts.

Biden had better start now because Putin’s next attack is imminent. The glow he acquired in Geneva will begin to wane and he will need another show of strength. The Biden administration may be embarrassed to react after making an effort to woo Putin in Geneva. But if the US fails to respond, Putin will be convinced that Biden is another American paper tiger. Words are easy, action is hard.

Garry Kasparov: «Où sont les de Gaulle et les Churchill?» | Le Figaro | June 17, 2021

My interview with ⁦@Kasparov63⁩ @Le_Figaro about Russia, Putin, the Geneva summit and the crisis of the West Kasparov:«Où sont les de Gaulle et les Churchill?» ⁦@andrewmichta⁩ ⁦@anapalacio⁩ ⁦⁦@johngizzi⁩ ⁦@linda_feldmann⁩ https://t.co/3sXeJNDA1S

— Laure Mandeville (@lauremandeville) June 18, 2021

By Laure Mandeville

Read the original article at Le Figaro

ENTRETIEN – L’ancien champion du monde des échecs, connu pour son opposition à Poutine et son combat pour les droits de l’homme a profité de son passage aux Conversations Tocqueville pour partager ses réflexions sur l’avenir russe et la crise d’identité de l’Occident.

LE FIGARO. – La Russie est au cœur de l’actualité avec le sommet Biden-Poutine à Genève. Mais comment voyez-vous l’évolution du pays, vous qui avez dû le quitter parce que vous étiez menacé en tant qu’opposant?

Garry KASPAROV. – La situation en Russie évolue selon un scénario qui ne nous est pas complètement connu, mais ce qui s’y passe – la destruction de toute opposition, l’absence de règles, le mépris de la loi, la corruption généralisée – doit nous concerner. Le régime de Poutine représente une menace globale, pas locale. L’idée d’Obama selon laquelle la Russie ne pouvait représenter qu’une menace régionale s’est avérée une erreur majeure, que l’on a payée cher, comme on l’a vu en Syrie ou avec l’immixtion du Kremlin dans les élections américaines de 2016. Cette erreur a mené à une approche d’apaisement, d’accords partiels. Mais on ne peut séparer les problèmes les uns des autres, et j’essaie d’expliquer, parfois de crier, que le régime Poutine a cessé d’être seulement le problème de la Russie, de l’Ukraine ou des pays Baltes. C’est un défi pour tout le monde, car le modèle qu’il défend va à l’encontre du modèle de fonctionnement mis en place après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, visant à la baisse du niveau de violence et à s’appuyer sur des accords mutuels. Mais les pays occidentaux ne sont pas prêts à se battre, et cela finit par les toucher par ricochet.

La Russie se sent forte parce que l’Occident est en crise et doute de lui-même…

C’est juste. La force du régime de Poutine vient de la faiblesse de l’Ouest. Car ce régime n’est pas celui de Staline. Le potentiel économique et militaire de l’URSS était tout autre. On n’est pas en 1948, au moment où Truman prenait la décision de défendre Berlin. Mais le régime de Poutine a ses points forts, qui sont liés au fait que la société occidentale a perdu son unité. Avant aussi, il y avait des divisions, des écrivains, comme Sartre, qui cherchaient l’apaisement, mais dans l’ensemble les sociétés comprenaient qu’on était dans une opposition existentielle de deux systèmes. Aujourd’hui, nous ne savons plus pourquoi nous nous battons, pour quel système de valeurs. De son côté, le régime de Poutine dispose dans la guerre hybride qu’il nous livre d’un avantage par rapport à l’URSS. Il n’est pas lié par des limitations idéologiques.

Poutine estime que tout groupe radical qui ébranle la solidité du système politique occidental est son allié. Cela lui permet, dans une situation où il dispose d’une quantité illimitée d’argent (ce qui n’était pas le cas de l’URSS), d’agir de manière très efficace en Occident. Il peut se permettre de donner un pot-de-vin de 1 milliard sans rien demander à personne! Et il peut s’appuyer sur les partis d’extrême gauche comme d’extrême droite, sur Mélenchon comme sur Le Pen, pour mener sa guerre hybride. Il est donc étrange de voir les dirigeants occidentaux, l’un après l’autre, Macron, Merkel, et maintenant Biden, rechercher une relation positive (avec Moscou). Encore une fois Poutine est fort parce que l’Ouest refuse de s’opposer à sa politique. C’est dû en partie au niveau phénoménal de la corruption qui se déploie ici. Je pense que nous ne voyons que la partie émergée d’un énorme iceberg quand nous assistons de facto à «l’achat» par Poutine d’un ancien chancelier allemand comme Schröder, ou plus récemment de M. Fillon.

Le fait que Schröder soit devenu le «salarié de Poutine» (via le consortium North Stream de Gazprom, dont il est devenu le vice-président, NDLR) montre qu’une partie importante de l’establishment économique et politique allemand est prête à travailler avec la Russie parce que c’est profitable. Cela en dit long sur l’Ouest, qui sacrifie ses intérêts nationaux stratégiques pour des profits tactiques. Quant à Macron, qui parle de dialogue de sécurité avec Poutine, de quoi parle-t-il? On est en 2021, et le régime de Poutine présente tous les traits d’une dictature fascisante, avec un appareil de propagande puissant et un écrasement total des libertés civiques. On peut faire de la prison pour un tweet! C’est un régime qui met en œuvre une politique étrangère agressive. Le problème n’est pas seulement la négation de la vérité et le fait de répondre à toute question par une critique en ricochet. L’annexion de la Crimée a été un coup très dur porté à tout le système de sécurité international post-1945: Elle indique que le fort peut prendre au faible ce qu’il veut.

Ne pensez-vous pas que l’Occident reconnaît la réalité de cette guerre hybride, mais ne sait comment répondre?

Je n’entends pas dans la bouche de Biden qu’il prend la mesure de la situation. Ce que j’ai entendu de sa bouche avant le sommet, c’est que la principale menace de sécurité pour les États-Unis est le changement climatique. Sommes-nous des idiots pour nous satisfaire de cette vision? Nous avons un problème avec la Russie. C’est la raison pour laquelle, je pense qu’avoir rencontré Poutine sans précondition a été une erreur très importante. Biden lui a donné une formidable victoire géopolitique, après l’avoir appelé «tueur», lui conférant son ancien statut de «grand» de la guerre froide. Il aurait fallu exiger la libération d’Alexeï Navalny et du jeune blogueur biélorusse Roman Protassevitch comme précondition à la rencontre.

Biden a tout de même mis en garde Poutine sur plusieurs sujets, et relancé un dialogue sur la stabilité stratégique d’État à État.

Il n’y a pas aujourd’hui de menace de guerre nucléaire. Quant aux mises en garde, le Kremlin n’en tient pas compte, car les actes des Occidentaux contredisent ces avertissements. On voit que l’Allemagne augmente ses approvisionnements en gaz russe via North Stream et que Biden a renoncé à s’y opposer. Poutine, pendant sa conférence, a signifié qu’il continuerait à agir comme il l’entend. Il ne peut y avoir de dialogue puisqu’il ne reconnaît pas la vérité, nous autres, opposants russes, le savons puisque nous écoutons ses mensonges depuis plus de vingt ans! Pour Poutine, le sujet brûlant est de garder son pouvoir, et pour cela il a besoin de sa confrontation avec l’Occident.

Dans sa conférence de presse, Poutine a mis dans le même sac l’Occident et l’opposition russe, qui serait manipulée.

Toute dictature se nourrit d’ennemis. Aujourd’hui, toute critique du régime russe devient un crime pénal, et aussi toute tentative de fixer des faits historiques! Les récits des crimes de Staline pendant la guerre font aussi l’objet de poursuites pénales, il est interdit d’identifier les points communs entre l’URSS stalinienne et le nazisme. De plus, la plus grande partie de l’opposition russe est détruite, beaucoup, comme moi, se trouvent dans l’émigration ou en prison ou ont été tués. Ceux qui agissent encore ne peuvent le faire que dans les limites posées par le Kremlin. C’est un contrôle total, même si ce n’est pas l’URSS, parce que Poutine a la possibilité de s’intégrer dans l’économie de l’Ouest. C’est le côté imitation de la démocratie de ce régime, qui permet cette intégration profonde. Elle se traduit par l’achat de clubs de foot, comme Chelsea, par des oligarques proches du régime et l’utilisation de fortunes gigantesques pour investir le processus social occidental. Qui est par exemple le plus grand philanthrope d’Angleterre? Alicher Ousmanov, oligarque russe qui a investi 4,2 milliards de livres sterling dans la philanthropie! Aucun Komintern ne peut se comparer à cette force de frappe. Et il n’est pas seul, ces oligarques sont légion à l’Ouest. C’est la raison pour laquelle les pays occidentaux ne prennent aucune décision radicale vis-à-vis de Moscou.

Les Occidentaux estiment néanmoins que la menace chinoise est plus importante vu la puissance de la Chine

Je ne vais pas nier l’évidence de cette autre menace, qui est stratégique. Mais la menace russe est plus immédiate. La Chine occupe une position plus avantageuse, car la Russie fait le travail d’attaque et de déstabilisation de manière très ouverte. Il suffit d’écouter la propagande de la télévision russe. Poutine se sent très à son aise. Le fait qu’il puisse d’abord essayer de tuer Navalny, et maintenant décider de le faire mourir lentement en prison, n’a pas suscité de réaction concrète. Et Loukachenko vient quant à lui de commettre un acte de piraterie internationale. Il a fait clairement torturer Roman Protassevitch, qu’il a kidnappé dans les airs. C’est un avertissement pour dire: tout peut arriver. L’impuissance de l’Occident signifie que l’on peut recommencer un tel acte. Bien sûr, Poutine enregistre l’information sur notre passivité. Bill Browder en a parlé dans un récent papier et je me pose aussi la question. Est-on encore en sécurité dans un avion?

Quand je vous ai vu pour la première fois, en 1990, vous créiez un parti démocratique russe. Il y avait une immense espérance. Trente et un an plus tard, la Russie est revenue à la répression  des opposants, l’omniprésence des services. Vous gardez espoir?

Vous en êtes à quelle République en France? La Ve! Vous n’y êtes pas arrivés d’un coup! Quels que soient les traits noirs du système Poutine, il a beaucoup changé et il n’est pas idéologique, il est essentiellement criminel. J’estime donc que la Russie a l’espoir de revenir sur le chemin de la civilisation, parce qu’il n’y a pas de plan pour le futur. En dehors de la symbolique nationaliste, il s’agit surtout d’une dictature corrompue basée sur l’exploitation du passé et sur l’idée d’un État fort, d’un pouvoir sacré, auquel il faut rester loyal et qui a tous les droits. Mais la logique de verrouillage rigidifie de plus en plus le système, qui devient plus fragile. Un seul coup pourrait le casser…

« L’Amérique reste le lieu où l’on continue de créer librement, elle doit en être fière au lieu de se laisser aller à l’auto-destruction »

Que pensez-vous de la crise d’identité de l’Occident, de la «cancel culture», des guerres raciales? Ce n’est pas une bonne nouvelle pour l’opposition russe…

Bien sûr qu’il faut parler des pages noires du passé. Mais essayer d’utiliser les péchés des siècles précédents pour influencer le présent et mettre en danger le futur, ce n’est pas juste. Quels que soient ses défauts, le projet américain était fondamentalement positif et, la preuve, ce sont les progrès et correctifs qui ont été apportés à la démocratie américaine. L’Amérique pour moi reste, malgré tous ses problèmes, le phare de la liberté et du monde libre, l’endroit où l’on continue de créer et d’inventer librement, celui où Elon Musk a construit son projet spatial pour aller sur Mars et nous envoyer des photos de là-bas! L’Amérique doit en être fière au lieu de se laisser aller à l’autodestruction. Même chose dans la crise du Covid: le virus est venu de Chine, le vaccin d’Occident! Les Occidentaux doivent utiliser cet avantage, qu’ils ont encore, au lieu d’ouvrir le champ aux populistes de gauche et de droite, et aux régimes autoritaires russe et chinois, par la haine qu’ils ont d’eux-mêmes. Mais il est vrai qu’il y a une pénurie de leaders. On voit une foule de Chamberlain et de Daladier, mais peu de De Gaulle et de Churchill!

 

 

Garry Kasparov : «La technologie fait pencher la balance en faveur du monde libre» | Le Figaro | June 14, 2021

By Paul Sugy

Read the original article at Le Figaro

Il est pourtant l’un des mieux placés pour savoir que la machine supplante désormais l’homme dans toutes les disciplines où ils concourent l’un face à l’autre. Pourtant le champion d’échecs russe n’est pas rancunier : il défend désormais l’intelligence artificielle alors qu’il fut le premier grand joueur d’échecs défait par le supercalculateur Deep Blue, en 1997, après avoir travaillé plusieurs années sur l’élaboration des premiers prototypes de joueurs virtuels d’échecs.

Invité des Conversations Tocqueville, Garry Kasparov a eu longuement l’occasion de s’en expliquer face à la députée européenne Svenja Hahn, spécialisée au sein du Parlement européen sur les questions de régulation de l’intelligence artificielle et des nouvelles technologies de l’information. Tous deux étaient interrogés par la journaliste du Figaro Laure Mandeville sur les risques que représente le progrès technologique pour la démocratie. «L’intelligence artificielle est partout» a d’abord précisé Svenja Hahn, rappelant aux auditeurs présents à la Tocqueville Foundation et aux téléspectateurs connectés sur le site du Figaro que cette approche technologique «choisit déjà les musiques que vous écoutez, ou les personnes que vous rencontrez sur les applications de rencontre en ligne».

Une omniprésence que reconnaît le champion d’échecs sans que pour autant celle-ci ne l’inquiète outre mesure quant à l’avenir de l’humanité, laquelle reste seule à détenir à proprement parler l’ «intelligence», a-t-il précisé. «Deep Blue, l’ordinateur qui m’a vaincu aux échecs, n’était pas intelligent. Et d’ailleurs il n’est pas tout à fait approprié de parler d’intelligence artificielle. Certes et j’en sais quelque chose, la machine triomphe désormais dans tous les jeux qu’on lui propose : échecs, jeu de go, même le poker qui pourtant est réputé contenir une grande part de psychologie. Mais la machine ne peut apprendre et gagner que dans un système fermé. Nous n’avons pas l’ombre d’une preuve qu’elle saura un jour transférer une information d’un système fermé à un autre, or précisément le monde sensible dans lequel nous évoluons est le contraire d’un système fermé.»

Reconnaissant néanmoins, à la suite d’une question posée par Laure Mandeville, que la technologie mise entre les mains de systèmes politiques mal intentionnés peut renforcer le pouvoir de contrôle des États sur les populations, Garry Kasparov insiste en revanche sur l’opportunité qu’elle offre en retour aux individus d’échapper à ce contrôle. «Les États sont plus forts grâce à la technologie, mais les individus aussi y trouvent un espace de liberté : regardez ce qui se passe à Hong Kong, ou dans d’autres pays où d’importants mouvements de liberté ont vu le jour, la technologie donne une répercussion mondiale à ces luttes.» La lutte du monde libre contre les dictatures existe depuis longtemps, bien avant l’apparition de l’intelligence artificielle, a-t-il ajouté, mais selon lui «la technologie fait pencher la balance en faveur du monde libre».

Schumpeterien

Sans balayer d’un revers de la main les «peurs» qu’elle suscite, Garry Kasparov a tenu à dissocier la technologie du monde réel d’avec les «fantasmes hollywoodiens» sans rapport selon lui avec ce que sera l’intelligence artificielle demain. Et de décrire, en détail, les transformations présentes et à venir qu’occasionne le basculement du monde dans l’univers des objets connectés et des intelligences artificielles. Schumpeterien, le champion d’échecs ne perd pas son temps à pleurer sur l’ancien monde, louant au contraire les créations d’emploi et les opportunités économiques nouvelles que permettent cette transformation et l’irruption de ce nouveau paradigme.

Dans ses échanges avec la députée Svenja Hahn, il n’en a pas moins convenu de la nécessité d’une régulation des technologies et de l’intelligence artificielle, passant avec elle en revue plusieurs des grands chantiers qui attendent les pays et les organisations internationales dans ce vaste champ politique. «Le facteur humain reste le plus important de tous» ont-ils conclu à l’unisson, tandis que Laure Mandeville rappelait en remerciant les deux intervenants la nécessité selon Tocqueville de faire confiance à la société civile pour garantir le respect de la démocratie malgré la volonté de puissance de l’État.

Quant à l’idée que le paradigme technologique dessine les contours d’un nouveau monde, désincarné et déshumanisé, dans lequel les interactions avec nos semblables seront en partie remplacées par la machine, l’objection de la journaliste est cette fois restée sans réponse. «C’est en effet un dilemme», s’est contenté de répondre Garry Kasparov.