More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
January 4 - January 4, 2021
First, by 2020, China planned to match the highest levels of AI technology and application capabilities in the US or anywhere else in the world. Second, by 2025, they intend to capture a verifiable lead over all countries in the development and production of core AI technologies, including voice- and visual-recognition systems. Last, by 2030, China intends to dominantly lead all countries in all aspects and related fields of AI.
In the age of artificial intelligence, second place will be of an ever-diminishing and distant value.
the assumption that AI is unavoidably destined, sooner or later, to develop its own consciousness and its own autonomous, evil intent.
To create drama, there has to be conflict, and the humans in these stories are almost always overwhelmed and outmatched, naturally unable to compete against the machines’ vastly superior intelligence and mechanical strength. Iconic movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix, The Terminator, Ex Machina, and I, Robot, along with television series such as Westworld and Black Mirror, have turned our underlying fears and suspicions into deep-seated and bleak expectations.
In this new world of ours, intelligence and consciousness are not interdependent.
There’s a completely reasonable argument that we do in fact pay for what we use by giving those who provide such services consumer and behavioral information about us that they can then use for their own commercial benefits—to generate revenue, for instance, through targeted advertising campaigns. As can rightly be said, “If you don’t think you’re paying for it, that just means you’re not the customer—you’re the product.”
The single, underlying goal of AI is to empower computer systems to perform the higher kinds of intellectual functions we’ve traditionally thought are only possible by humans.
the aim of AI is to create computer systems that learn to perform better as they acquire more data and objective experiences related to whatever task they’re designed to accomplish.
For a computer, data is the equivalent of experience. So, the more data that a machine learning system processes, the better it becomes.
Reinforcement learning is similar to unsupervised learning in that the training data isn’t labeled. But when the system draws a conclusion about the data or acts upon it in some way, the outcome is graded, or rewarded, and the algorithm accordingly learns what actions are most valued.
Convolutional neural networks are the most commonly used network for computer vision programs or any machine learning applications that require the system to recognize images or shapes.
Unlike humans, machine learning applications are not capable of applying strategies, knowledge, or skills acquired in one area to another. They’re therefore called narrow AI.
Narrow AI is very strong, efficient, and quite capable at its purposed job. It’s just incompetent at anything beyond it.
AGI, also known as strong AI, is the type of hypothetical artificial intelligence that could operate beyond a single domain of information or task orientation, and that could perform successfully at any intellectual task just as well as a human.
In his 2014 bestselling book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies,5 Bostrom warned of a theoretically possible future state of AI when it might become so much smarter than us that it could radically outperform even the most intelligent, knowledgeable, and expert human in every field and at every endeavor—generally, mathematically, scientifically, and socially—and be able to analyze situations and discern solutions to any problem on any topic.
Robots, then, are machines that have at least some minimal level of autonomous functionality enabled by some type of computer or information processor.
AI is a disruptive technology with widespread influence that may cause: transformation of employment structures; impact on legal and social theories; violations of personal privacy; challenges in international relations and norms; and other problems. It will have far-reaching effects on the management of government, economic security, and social stability, as well as global governance. —State Council of the People’s Republic of China “Next (New) Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan,” July 20, 2017
Called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI),20 the policy is historically unparalleled. It’s designed to build a unified market of international trade, economic reliance, and cultural exchange broadly similar in function and value to the Silk Road trade routes that connected the Far East to Europe and the Middle East from antiquity to the fifteenth century.
Sedol’s loss reverberated throughout China in profound ways and awakened the Chinese people to the potential of machine learning.
Chinese citizens have never had the right to really express their opinions; in the constitution it says you can, but in the real world it is more dangerous. In the west people think it’s a right they’re born with. Here it’s a right given by the government, and one that’s not really practiced. —Ai Weiwei Chinese Artist and Activist
With the advance of twenty-first-century technology, the watchful eye of the Communist Party’s authority has become even more penetrating. Digital methods of censorship, surveillance, and social control have become unavoidable, integral parts of Chinese society. Those methods provide the Communist Party, which essentially is the state, with powerful eyes, ears, and influence over most aspects of its citizens’ lives.
Often described as the world’s super app, WeChat is used for everything from text, audio, and video messaging to information searches, purchases, banking, personal finances, and medical records management. It’s a compilation, in one app, of Google, Facebook, Amazon, PayPal, Instagram, Uber, and any number of other social and transactional applications you can think of.
Chinese citizens can find themselves blacklisted or otherwise restricted from renting cars, buying train or airplane tickets, obtaining favorable loan rates, acquiring insurance, purchasing real estate or otherwise obtaining affordable housing, making financial investments, and even attending preferred schools or qualifying for certain jobs and career opportunities.
Putin made no qualms about telling the world in September 2017, “Whoever becomes the leader in (AI) will become the ruler of the world.”
Putin’s defense agencies and military designers are aggressively putting machine learning technologies to their most immediately accomplishable and impactful uses—electronic warfare (EW) and robotic weapons.
“Absher” (roughly translated as “Yes, Sir” or “Yes, done”) is a product of the Saudi Interior Ministry that gives Saudi Arabian men the ability to exercise their guardian rights over women by tracking their locations and blocking their ability to travel, conduct financial transactions, and even obtain certain medical procedures.
