WEBVTT
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34C3 preroll music
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Herald: Humans of Congress, it is my
pleasure to announce the next speaker.
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I was supposed to pick out a few awards or
something, to actually present what he's
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done in his life, but I can
only say: he's one of us!
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applause
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Charles Stross!
ongoing applause
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Charles Stross: Hi! Is this on?
Good. Great.
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I'm really pleased to be here and I
want to start by apologizing for my total
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lack of German. So this talk is gonna be in
English. Good morning. I'm Charlie Stross
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and it's my job to tell lies for money, or
rather, I write science fiction, much of
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it about on the future, which in recent
years has become ridiculously hard to
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predict. In this talk I'm going to talk
about why. Now our species, Homo sapiens
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sapiens, is about 300,000 years old. It
used to be about 200,000 years old,
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but it grew an extra 100,000
years in the past year because of new
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archaeological discoveries, I mean, go
figure. For all but the last three
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centuries or so - of that span, however -
predicting the future was really easy. If
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you were an average person - as opposed to
maybe a king or a pope - natural disasters
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aside, everyday life 50 years in the
future would resemble everyday life 50
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years in your past. Let that sink in for a
bit. For 99.9% of human existence on this
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earth, the future was static. Then
something changed and the future began to
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shift increasingly rapidly, until, in the
present day, things are moving so fast,
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it's barely possible to anticipate trends
from one month to the next. Now as an
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eminent computer scientist, Edsger Dijkstra
once remarked, computer science is no more
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about computers than astronomy is about
building big telescopes, the same can be
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said of my field of work, writing science
fiction, sci-fi is rarely about science
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and even more rarely about predicting the
future, but sometimes we dabble in
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Futurism and lately, Futurism has gotten
really, really, weird. Now when I write a
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near future work of fiction, one set, say, a
decade hence, there used to be a recipe I
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could follow, that worked eerily well. Simply put:
90% of the next decade stuff is
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already here around us today.
Buildings are designed to
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last many years, automobiles have a design
life of about a decade, so half the cars on
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the road in 2027 are already there now -
they're new. People? There'll be some new
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faces, aged 10 and under, and some older
people will have died, but most of us
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adults will still be around, albeit older
and grayer, this is the 90% of a near
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future that's already here today. After
the already existing 90%, another 9% of a
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near future a decade hence used to be
easily predictable: you look at trends
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dictated by physical limits, such as
Moore's law and you look at Intel's road
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map and you use a bit of creative
extrapolation and you won't go too far
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wrong. If I predict - wearing my futurology
hat - that in 2027 LTE cellular phones will
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be ubiquitous, 5G will be available for
high bandwidth applications and there will be
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fallback to some kind of satellite data
service at a price, you probably won't
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laugh at me.
I mean, it's not like I'm predicting that
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airlines will fly slower and Nazis will
take over the United States, is it ?
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laughing
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And therein lies the problem. There is
remaining 1% of what Donald Rumsfeld
NOTE Paragraph
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called the "unknown unknowns", what throws off
all predictions. As it happens, airliners
NOTE Paragraph
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today are slower than they were in the
1970s and don't get me started about the Nazis,
NOTE Paragraph
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I mean, nobody in 2007 was expecting a Nazi
revival in 2017, were they?
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Only this time, Germans get to be the good guys.
laughing, applause
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So. My recipe for fiction set 10 years
in the future used to be:
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"90% is already here,
9% is not here yet but predictable
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and 1% is 'who ordered that?'" But unfortunately
the ratios have changed, I think we're now
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down to maybe 80% already here - climate
change takes a huge toll on architecture -
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then 15% not here yet, but predictable and
a whopping 5% of utterly unpredictable
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deep craziness. Now... before I carry on
with this talk, I want to spend a minute or
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two ranting loudly and ruling out the
singularity. Some of you might assume, that
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as the author of books like "Singularity
Sky" and "Accelerando",
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I expect an impending technological
singularity,
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that we will develop self-improving
artificial intelligence and mind uploading
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and the whole wish list of transhumanist
aspirations promoted by the likes of
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Ray Kurzweil, will come to pass. Unfortunately
this isn't the case. I think transhumanism
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is a warmed-over Christian heresy. While
its adherents tend to be outspoken atheists,
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they can't quite escape from the
history that gave rise to our current
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Western civilization. Many of you are
familiar with design patterns, an approach
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to software engineering that focuses on
abstraction and simplification, in order
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to promote reusable code. When you look at
the AI singularity as a narrative and
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identify the numerous places in their
story where the phrase "and then a miracle
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happens" occur, it becomes apparent pretty
quickly, that they've reinvented Christiantiy.
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applause
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Indeed, the wellspring of
today's transhumanists draw in a long rich
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history of Russian philosophy, exemplified
by the russian orthodox theologian Nikolai
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Fyodorovich Fedorov by way of his disciple
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, whose derivation
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of a rocket equation makes him
essentially the father of modern space
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flight. Once you start probing the nether
regions of transhumanist forth and run
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into concepts like Roko's Basilisk - by the
way, any of you who didn't know about the
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Basilisk before, are now doomed to an
eternity in AI hell, terribly sorry - you
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realize, they've mangled it to match some
of the nastier aspects of Presbyterian
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Protestantism. Now they basically invented
original sin and Satan in the guise of an
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AI that doesn't exist yet ,it's.. kind of
peculiar. Anyway, my take on the
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singularity is: What if something walks
like a duck and quacks like a duck? It's
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probably a duck. And if it looks like a
religion, it's probably a religion.
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I don't see much evidence for human-like,
self-directed artificial intelligences
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coming along any time soon, and a fair bit
of evidence, that nobody accepts and freaks
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in cognitive science departments, even
want it. I mean, if we invented an AI
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that was like a human mind, it would do the
AI equivalent of sitting on the sofa,
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munching popcorn and
watching the Super Bowl all day.
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It wouldn't be much use to us.
laughter, applause
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What we're getting instead,
is self-optimizing tools that defy
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human comprehension, but are not
in fact any more like our kind
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of intelligence than a Boeing 737 is like
a seagull. Boeing 737s and seagulls both
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fly, Boeing 737s don't lay eggs and shit
everywhere. So I'm going to wash my hands
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of a singularity as a useful explanatory
model of the future without further ado.
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I'm one of those vehement atheists as well
and I'm gonna try and offer you a better
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model for what's happening to us. Now, as
my fellow Scottish science fictional author
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Ken MacLeod likes to say "the secret
weapon of science fiction is history".
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History is, loosely speaking, is the written
record of what and how people did things
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in past times. Times that have slipped out
of our personal memories. We science
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fiction writers tend to treat history as a
giant toy chest to raid, whenever we feel
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like telling a story. With a little bit of
history, it's really easy to whip up an
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entertaining yarn about a galactic empire
that mirrors the development and decline
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of a Habsburg Empire or to respin the
October Revolution as a tale of how Mars
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got its independence. But history is
useful for so much more than that.
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It turns out, that our personal memories
don't span very much time at all. I'm 53
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and I barely remember the 1960s. I only
remember the 1970s with the eyes of a 6 to
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16 year old. My father died this year,
aged 93, and he'd just about remembered the
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1930s. Only those of my father's
generation directly remember the Great
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Depression and can compare it to the
2007/08 global financial crisis directly.
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We Westerners tend to pay little attention
to cautionary tales told by 90-somethings.
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We're modern, we're change obsessed and we
tend to repeat our biggest social mistakes
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just as they slip out of living memory,
which means they recur on a timescale of
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70 to 100 years.
So if our personal memories are useless,
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we need a better toolkit
and history provides that toolkit.
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History gives us the perspective to see what
went wrong in the past and to look for
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patterns and check to see whether those
patterns are recurring in the present.
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Looking in particular at the history of the past two
to four hundred years, that age of rapidly
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increasing change that I mentioned at the
beginning. One glaringly obvious deviation
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from the norm of the preceding
3000 centuries is obvious, and that's
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the development of artificial intelligence,
which happened no earlier than 1553 and no
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later than 1844. I'm talking of course
about the very old, very slow AI's we call
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corporations. What lessons from the history
of a company can we draw that tell us
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about the likely behavior of the type of
artificial intelligence we're interested
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in here, today?
Well. Need a mouthful of water.
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Let me crib from Wikipedia for a moment.
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Wikipedia: "In the late 18th
century, Stewart Kyd, the author of the
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first treatise on corporate law in English,
defined a corporation as: 'a collection of
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many individuals united into one body,
under a special denomination, having
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perpetual succession under an artificial
form, and vested, by policy of the law, with
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the capacity of acting, in several respects,
as an individual, enjoying privileges and
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immunities in common, and of exercising a
variety of political rights, more or less
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extensive, according to the design of its
institution, or the powers conferred upon
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it, either at the time of its creation, or
at any subsequent period of its
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existence.'"
This was a late 18th century definition,
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sound like a piece of software to you?
In 1844, the British government passed the
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"Joint Stock Companies Act" which created
a register of companies and allowed any
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legal person, for a fee, to register a
company which in turn existed as a
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separate legal person. Prior to that point,
it required a Royal Charter or an act of
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Parliament to create a company.
Subsequently, the law was extended to limit
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the liability of individual shareholders
in event of business failure and then both
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Germany and the United States added their
own unique twists to what today we see is
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the doctrine of corporate personhood.
Now, though plenty of other things that
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happened between the 16th and 21st centuries
did change the shape of the world we live in.
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I've skipped the changes in
agricultural productivity that happened
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due to energy economics,
which finally broke the Malthusian trap
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our predecessors lived in.
This in turn broke the long-term
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cap on economic growth of about
0.1% per year
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in the absence of famines, plagues and
wars and so on.
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I've skipped the germ theory of diseases
and the development of trade empires
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in the age of sail and gunpowder,
that were made possible by advances
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in accurate time measurement.
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I've skipped the rise, and
hopefully decline, of the pernicious
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theory of scientific racism that
underpinned Western colonialism and the
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slave trade. I've skipped the rise of
feminism, the ideological position that
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women are human beings rather than
property and the decline of patriarchy.
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I've skipped the whole of the
Enlightenment and the Age of Revolutions,
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but this is a technocratic.. technocentric
Congress, so I want to frame this talk in
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terms of AI, which we all like to think we
understand. Here's the thing about these
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artificial persons we call corporations.
Legally, they're people. They have goals,
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they operate in pursuit of these goals,
they have a natural life cycle.
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In the 1950s, a typical U.S. corporation on the
S&P 500 Index had a life span of 60 years.
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Today it's down to less than 20 years.
This is largely due to predation.
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Corporations are cannibals, they eat
one another.
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They're also hive super organisms
like bees or ants.
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For the first century and a
half, they relied entirely on human
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employees for their internal operation,
but today they're automating their
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business processes very rapidly. Each
human is only retained so long as they can
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perform their assigned tasks more
efficiently than a piece of software
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and they can all be replaced by another
human, much as the cells in our own bodies
NOTE Paragraph
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are functionally interchangeable and a
group of cells can - in extremis - often be
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replaced by a prosthetic device.
To some extent, corporations can be
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trained to serve of the personal desires of
their chief executives, but even CEOs can
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be dispensed with, if their activities
damage the corporation, as Harvey
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Weinstein found out a couple of months
ago.
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Finally, our legal environment today has
been tailored for the convenience of
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corporate persons, rather than human
persons, to the point where our governments
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now mimic corporations in many of our
internal structures.
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So, to understand where we're going, we
need to start by asking "What do our
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current actually existing AI overlords
want?"
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Now, Elon Musk, who I believe you've
all heard of, has an obsessive fear of one
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particular hazard of artificial
intelligence, which he conceives of as
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being a piece of software that functions
like a brain in a box, namely the
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Paperclip Optimizer or Maximizer.
A Paperclip Maximizer is a term of art for
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a goal seeking AI that has a single
priority, e.g., maximizing the
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number of paperclips in the universe. The
Paperclip Maximizer is able to improve
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itself in pursuit of its goal, but has no
ability to vary its goal, so will
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ultimately attempt to convert all the
metallic elements in the solar system into
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paperclips, even if this is obviously
detrimental to the well-being of the
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humans who set it this goal.
Unfortunately I don't think Musk
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is paying enough attention,
consider his own companies.
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Tesla isn't a Paperclip Maximizer, it's a
battery Maximizer.
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After all, a battery.. an
electric car is a battery with wheels and
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seats. SpaceX is an orbital payload
Maximizer, driving down the cost of space
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launches in order to encourage more sales
for the service it provides. SolarCity is
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a photovoltaic panel maximizer and so on.
All three of the.. Musk's very own slow AIs
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are based on an architecture, designed to
maximize return on shareholder
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investment, even if by doing so they cook
the planet the shareholders have to live
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on or turn the entire thing into solar
panels.
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But hey, if you're Elon Musk, thats okay,
you're gonna retire on Mars anyway.
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laughing
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By the way, I'm ragging on Musk in this
talks, simply because he's the current
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opinionated tech billionaire, who thinks
for disrupting a couple of industries
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entitles him to make headlines.
If this was 2007 and my focus slightly
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difference.. different, I'd be ragging on
Steve Jobs and if we're in 1997 my target
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would be Bill Gates.
Don't take it personally, Elon.
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laughing
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Back to topic. The problem of
corporations is, that despite their overt
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goals, whether they make electric vehicles
or beer or sell life insurance policies,
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they all have a common implicit Paperclip
Maximizer goal: to generate revenue. If
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they don't make money, they're eaten by a
bigger predator or they go bust. It's as
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vital to them as breathing is to us
mammals. They generally pursue their
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implicit goal - maximizing revenue - by
pursuing their overt goal.
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But sometimes they try instead to
manipulate their environment, to ensure
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that money flows to them regardless.
Human toolmaking culture has become very
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complicated over time. New technologies
always come with an attached implicit
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political agenda that seeks to extend the
use of the technology. Governments react
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to this by legislating to control new
technologies and sometimes we end up with
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industries actually indulging in legal
duels through the regulatory mechanism of
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law to determine, who prevails. For
example, consider the automobile. You
00:17:49.582 --> 00:17:53.910
can't have mass automobile transport
without gas stations and fuel distribution
00:17:53.910 --> 00:17:57.160
pipelines.
These in turn require access to whoever
00:17:57.160 --> 00:18:01.179
owns the land the oil is extracted from
under and before you know it, you end up
00:18:01.179 --> 00:18:06.660
with a permanent army in Iraq and a clamp
dictatorship in Saudi Arabia. Closer to
00:18:06.660 --> 00:18:12.380
home, automobiles imply jaywalking laws and
drink-driving laws. They affect Town
00:18:12.380 --> 00:18:16.750
Planning regulations and encourage
suburban sprawl, the construction of human
00:18:16.750 --> 00:18:21.429
infrastructure on a scale required by
automobiles, not pedestrians.
00:18:21.429 --> 00:18:24.979
This in turn is bad for competing
transport technologies, like buses or
00:18:24.979 --> 00:18:31.720
trams, which work best in cities with a
high population density. So to get laws
00:18:31.720 --> 00:18:35.399
that favour the automobile in place,
providing an environment conducive to
00:18:35.399 --> 00:18:40.409
doing business, automobile companies spend
money on political lobbyists and when they
00:18:40.409 --> 00:18:46.620
can get away with it, on bribes. Bribery
needn't be blatant of course. E.g.,
00:18:46.620 --> 00:18:51.929
the reforms of a British railway network
in the 1960s dismembered many branch lines
00:18:51.929 --> 00:18:56.408
and coincided with a surge in road
building and automobile sales. These
00:18:56.408 --> 00:19:01.138
reforms were orchestrated by Transport
Minister Ernest Marples, who was purely a
00:19:01.138 --> 00:19:05.950
politician. The fact that he accumulated a
considerable personal fortune during this
00:19:05.950 --> 00:19:10.269
period by buying shares in motorway
construction corporations, has nothing to
00:19:10.269 --> 00:19:18.120
do with it. So, no conflict of interest
there - now if the automobile in industry
00:19:18.120 --> 00:19:23.230
can't be considered a pure Paperclip
Maximizer... sorry, the automobile
00:19:23.230 --> 00:19:27.510
industry in isolation can't be considered
a pure Paperclip Maximizer. You have to
00:19:27.510 --> 00:19:31.659
look at it in conjunction with the fossil
fuel industries, the road construction
00:19:31.659 --> 00:19:37.809
business, the accident insurance sector
and so on. When you do this, you begin to
00:19:37.809 --> 00:19:42.740
see the outline of a paperclip-maximizing
ecosystem that invades far-flung lands and
00:19:42.740 --> 00:19:47.167
grinds up and kills around one and a
quarter million people per year. That's
00:19:47.167 --> 00:19:50.951
the global death toll from automobile
accidents currently, according to the World
00:19:50.951 --> 00:19:56.429
Health Organization. It rivals the First
World War on an ongoing permanent basis
00:19:56.429 --> 00:20:01.510
and these are all side effects of its
drive to sell you a new car. Now,
00:20:01.510 --> 00:20:06.639
automobiles aren't of course a total
liability. Today's cars are regulated
00:20:06.639 --> 00:20:11.302
stringently for safety and, in theory, to
reduce toxic emissions. They're fast,
00:20:11.302 --> 00:20:16.990
efficient and comfortable. We can thank
legal mandated regulations imposed by
00:20:16.990 --> 00:20:22.029
governments for this, of course. Go back
to the 1970s and cars didn't have crumple
00:20:22.029 --> 00:20:27.199
zones, go back to the 50s and they didn't
come with seat belts as standard. In the
00:20:27.199 --> 00:20:33.690
1930s, indicators, turn signals and brakes
on all four wheels were optional and your
00:20:33.690 --> 00:20:38.850
best hope of surviving a 50 km/h-crash was
to be thrown out of a car and land somewhere
NOTE Paragraph
00:20:38.850 --> 00:20:43.059
without breaking your neck.
Regulator agencies are our current
00:20:43.059 --> 00:20:47.380
political system's tool of choice for
preventing Paperclip Maximizers from
00:20:47.380 --> 00:20:55.159
running amok. Unfortunately, regulators
don't always work. The first failure mode
00:20:55.159 --> 00:20:59.730
of regulators that you need to be aware of
is regulatory capture, where regulatory
00:20:59.730 --> 00:21:05.038
bodies are captured by the industries they
control. Ajit Pai, Head of American Federal
00:21:05.038 --> 00:21:09.460
Communications Commission, which just voted
to eliminate net neutrality rules in the
00:21:09.460 --> 00:21:14.101
U.S., has worked as Associate
General Counsel for Verizon Communications
00:21:14.101 --> 00:21:19.291
Inc, the largest current descendant of the
Bell Telephone system's monopoly. After
00:21:19.291 --> 00:21:24.690
the AT&T antitrust lawsuit, the Bell
network was broken up into the seven baby
00:21:24.690 --> 00:21:32.279
bells. They've now pretty much reformed
and reaggregated and Verizon is the largest current one.
00:21:32.279 --> 00:21:36.099
Why should someone with a transparent
interest in a technology corporation end
00:21:36.099 --> 00:21:41.129
up running a regulator that tries to
control the industry in question? Well, if
00:21:41.129 --> 00:21:44.919
you're going to regulate a complex
technology, you need to recruit regulators
00:21:44.919 --> 00:21:48.580
from people who understand it.
Unfortunately, most of those people are
00:21:48.580 --> 00:21:53.520
industry insiders. Ajit Pai is clearly
very much aware of how Verizon is
00:21:53.520 --> 00:21:58.450
regulated, very insightful into its
operations and wants to do something about
00:21:58.450 --> 00:22:02.509
it - just not necessarily in the public
interest.
00:22:02.509 --> 00:22:11.029
applause
When regulators end up staffed by people
00:22:11.029 --> 00:22:15.370
drawn from the industries they're supposed
to control, they frequently end up working
00:22:15.370 --> 00:22:20.019
with their former office mates, to make it
easier to turn a profit, either by raising
00:22:20.019 --> 00:22:24.350
barriers to keep new insurgent companies
out or by dismantling safeguards that
00:22:24.350 --> 00:22:31.610
protect the public. Now a second problem
is regulatory lag where a technology
00:22:31.610 --> 00:22:35.240
advances so rapidly, that regulations are
laughably obsolete by the time they're
00:22:35.240 --> 00:22:40.450
issued. Consider the EU directive
requiring cookie notices on websites to
00:22:40.450 --> 00:22:45.709
caution users, that their activities are
tracked and their privacy may be violated.
00:22:45.709 --> 00:22:51.419
This would have been a good idea in 1993
or 1996, but unfortunatelly it didn't show up
00:22:51.419 --> 00:22:57.690
until 2011. Fingerprinting and tracking
mechanisms have nothing to do with cookies
00:22:57.690 --> 00:23:04.149
and were already widespread by then. Tim
Berners-Lee observed in 1995, that five
00:23:04.149 --> 00:23:07.780
years worth of change was happening on the
web for every 12 months of real-world
00:23:07.780 --> 00:23:12.389
time. By that yardstick, the cookie law
came out nearly a century too late to do
00:23:12.389 --> 00:23:19.269
any good. Again, look at Uber. This month,
the European Court of Justice ruled that
00:23:19.269 --> 00:23:24.520
Uber is a taxi service, not a Web App. This
is arguably correct - the problem is, Uber
00:23:24.520 --> 00:23:28.970
has spread globally since it was founded
eight years ago, subsidizing its drivers to
00:23:28.970 --> 00:23:33.580
put competing private hire firms out of
business. Whether this is a net good for
00:23:33.580 --> 00:23:38.659
societys own is debatable. The problem is, a
taxi driver can get awfully hungry if she
00:23:38.659 --> 00:23:42.429
has to wait eight years for a court ruling
against a predator intent on disrupting
00:23:42.429 --> 00:23:49.549
her business. So, to recap: firstly, we
already have Paperclip Maximizers and
00:23:49.549 --> 00:23:54.980
Musk's AI alarmism is curiously mirror
blind. Secondly, we have mechanisms for
00:23:54.980 --> 00:23:59.509
keeping Paperclip Maximizers in check, but
they don't work very well against AIs that
00:23:59.509 --> 00:24:03.490
deploy the dark arts, especially
corruption and bribery and they're even
00:24:03.490 --> 00:24:07.769
worse against true AIs, that evolved too
fast for human mediated mechanisms like
00:24:07.769 --> 00:24:13.529
the law to keep up with. Finally, unlike
the naive vision of a Paperclip Maximizer
00:24:13.529 --> 00:24:19.190
that maximizes only paperclips, existing
AIs have multiple agendas, their overt
00:24:19.190 --> 00:24:24.210
goal, but also profit seeking, expansion
into new markets and to accommodate the
00:24:24.210 --> 00:24:27.500
desire of whoever is currently in the
driving seat.
00:24:27.500 --> 00:24:30.500
sighs
00:24:30.500 --> 00:24:36.190
Now, this brings me to the next major
heading in this dismaying laundry list:
00:24:36.190 --> 00:24:42.560
how it all went wrong. It seems to me that
our current political upheavals, the best
00:24:42.560 --> 00:24:49.379
understood, is arising from the capture
of post 1917 democratic institutions by
00:24:49.379 --> 00:24:54.811
large-scale AI. Everywhere you look, you
see voters protesting angrily against an
00:24:54.811 --> 00:24:58.779
entrenched establishment, that seems
determined to ignore the wants and needs
00:24:58.779 --> 00:25:04.330
of their human constituents in favor of
those of the machines. The brexit upset
00:25:04.330 --> 00:25:07.130
was largely result of a protest vote
against the British political
00:25:07.130 --> 00:25:11.340
establishment, the election of Donald
Trump likewise, with a side order of racism
00:25:11.340 --> 00:25:15.940
on top. Our major political parties are
led by people who are compatible with the
00:25:15.940 --> 00:25:20.789
system as it exists today, a system that
has been shaped over decades by
00:25:20.789 --> 00:25:26.010
corporations distorting our government and
regulatory environments. We humans live in
00:25:26.010 --> 00:25:30.700
a world shaped by the desires and needs of
AI, forced to live on their terms and we're
00:25:30.700 --> 00:25:34.010
taught, that we're valuable only to the
extent we contribute to the rule of the
00:25:34.010 --> 00:25:40.259
machines. Now this is free sea and we're
all more interested in computers and
00:25:40.259 --> 00:25:44.389
communications technology than this
historical crap. But as I said earlier,
00:25:44.389 --> 00:25:49.149
history is a secret weapon, if you know how
to use it. What history is good for, is
00:25:49.149 --> 00:25:53.080
enabling us to spot recurring patterns
that repeat across timescales outside our
00:25:53.080 --> 00:25:58.129
personal experience. And if we look at our
historical very slow AIs, what do we learn
00:25:58.129 --> 00:26:04.880
from them about modern AI and how it's
going to behave? Well to start with, our
00:26:04.880 --> 00:26:09.879
AIs have been warped, the new AIs,
the electronic one's instantiated in our
00:26:09.879 --> 00:26:14.639
machines, have been warped by a terrible
fundamentally flawed design decision back
00:26:14.639 --> 00:26:20.289
in 1995, but as damaged democratic
political processes crippled our ability
00:26:20.289 --> 00:26:24.570
to truly understand the world around us
and led to the angry upheavals and upsets
00:26:24.570 --> 00:26:30.440
of our present decade. That mistake was
the decision, to fund the build-out of a
00:26:30.440 --> 00:26:34.370
public World Wide Web as opposed to be
earlier government-funded corporate and
00:26:34.370 --> 00:26:38.230
academic Internet by
monetizing eyeballs through advertising
00:26:38.230 --> 00:26:45.260
revenue. The ad-supported web we're used
to today wasn't inevitable. If you recall
00:26:45.260 --> 00:26:49.510
the web as it was in 1994, there were very
few ads at all and not much, in a way, of
00:26:49.510 --> 00:26:55.720
Commerce. 1995 was the year, the World Wide
Web really came to public attention in the
00:26:55.720 --> 00:27:00.570
anglophone world and consumer-facing
websites began to appear. Nobody really
00:27:00.570 --> 00:27:04.490
knew, how this thing was going to be paid
for. The original .com bubble was all
00:27:04.490 --> 00:27:07.850
about working out, how to monetize the web
for the first time and a lot of people
00:27:07.850 --> 00:27:12.840
lost their shirts in the process. A naive
initial assumption was that the
00:27:12.840 --> 00:27:17.440
transaction cost of setting up a tcp/ip
connection over modem was too high to
00:27:17.440 --> 00:27:22.500
support.. to be supported by per-use micro
billing for web pages. So instead of
00:27:22.500 --> 00:27:27.059
charging people fraction of a euro cent
for every page view, we'd bill customers
00:27:27.059 --> 00:27:31.570
indirectly, by shoving advertising banners
in front of their eyes and hoping they'd
00:27:31.570 --> 00:27:39.029
click through and buy something.
Unfortunately, advertising is in an
00:27:39.029 --> 00:27:45.509
industry, one of those pre-existing very
slow AI ecosystems I already alluded to.
00:27:45.509 --> 00:27:49.700
Advertising tries to maximize its hold on
the attention of the minds behind each
00:27:49.700 --> 00:27:53.750
human eyeball. The coupling of advertising
with web search was an inevitable
00:27:53.750 --> 00:27:57.991
outgrowth, I mean how better to attract
the attention of reluctant subjects, than to
00:27:57.991 --> 00:28:01.450
find out what they're really interested in
seeing and selling ads that relate to
00:28:01.450 --> 00:28:07.070
those interests. The problem of applying
the paperclip maximize approach to
00:28:07.070 --> 00:28:12.509
monopolizing eyeballs, however, is that
eyeballs are a limited, scarce resource.
00:28:12.509 --> 00:28:18.500
There are only 168 hours in every week, in
which I can gaze at banner ads. Moreover,
00:28:18.500 --> 00:28:22.289
most ads are irrelevant to my interests and
it doesn't matter, how often you flash an ad
00:28:22.289 --> 00:28:28.129
for dog biscuits at me, I'm never going to
buy any. I have a cat. To make best
00:28:28.129 --> 00:28:31.990
revenue-generating use of our eyeballs,
it's necessary for the ad industry to
00:28:31.990 --> 00:28:36.789
learn, who we are and what interests us and
to target us increasingly minutely in hope
00:28:36.789 --> 00:28:39.549
of hooking us with stuff we're attracted
to.
00:28:39.549 --> 00:28:43.879
In other words: the ad industry is a
paperclip maximizer, but for its success,
00:28:43.879 --> 00:28:49.990
it relies on developing a theory of mind
that applies to human beings.
00:28:49.990 --> 00:28:52.990
sighs
00:28:52.990 --> 00:28:55.739
Do I need to divert on to the impassioned
rant about the hideous corruption
00:28:55.739 --> 00:28:59.759
and evil that is Facebook?
Audience: Yes!
00:28:59.759 --> 00:29:03.289
CS: Okay, somebody said yes.
I'm guessing you've heard it all before,
00:29:03.289 --> 00:29:07.429
but for too long don't read.. summary is:
Facebook is as much a search engine as
00:29:07.429 --> 00:29:12.029
Google or Amazon. Facebook searches are
optimized for faces, that is for human
00:29:12.029 --> 00:29:15.649
beings. If you want to find someone you
fell out of touch with thirty years ago,
00:29:15.649 --> 00:29:20.610
Facebook probably knows where they live,
what their favorite color is, what sized
00:29:20.610 --> 00:29:24.390
shoes they wear and what they said about
you to your friends behind your back all
00:29:24.390 --> 00:29:30.090
those years ago, that made you cut them off.
Even if you don't have a Facebook account,
00:29:30.090 --> 00:29:34.230
Facebook has a You account, a hole in their
social graph of a bunch of connections
00:29:34.230 --> 00:29:38.669
pointing in to it and your name tagged on
your friends photographs. They know a lot
00:29:38.669 --> 00:29:42.529
about you and they sell access to their
social graph to advertisers, who then
00:29:42.529 --> 00:29:47.400
target you, even if you don't think you use
Facebook. Indeed, there is barely any
00:29:47.400 --> 00:29:52.270
point in not using Facebook these days, if
ever. Social media Borg: "Resistance is
00:29:52.270 --> 00:30:00.510
futile!" So however, Facebook is trying to
get eyeballs on ads, so is Twitter and so
00:30:00.510 --> 00:30:05.970
are Google. To do this, they fine-tuned the
content they show you to make it more
00:30:05.970 --> 00:30:11.520
attractive to your eyes and by attractive
I do not mean pleasant. We humans have an
00:30:11.520 --> 00:30:15.139
evolved automatic reflex to pay attention
to threats and horrors as well as
00:30:15.139 --> 00:30:19.830
pleasurable stimuli and the algorithms,
that determine what they show us when we
00:30:19.830 --> 00:30:24.259
look at Facebook or Twitter, take this bias
into account. You might react more
00:30:24.259 --> 00:30:28.490
strongly to a public hanging in Iran or an
outrageous statement by Donald Trump than
00:30:28.490 --> 00:30:32.100
to a couple kissing. The algorithm knows
and will show you whatever makes you pay
00:30:32.100 --> 00:30:38.389
attention, not necessarily what you need or
want to see.
00:30:38.389 --> 00:30:42.510
So this brings me to another point about
computerized AI as opposed to corporate
00:30:42.510 --> 00:30:47.260
AI. AI algorithms tend to embody the
prejudices and beliefs of either the
00:30:47.260 --> 00:30:52.759
programmers, or the data set
the AI was trained on.
00:30:52.759 --> 00:30:56.250
A couple of years ago I ran across an
account of a webcam, developed by mostly
00:30:56.250 --> 00:31:00.860
pale-skinned Silicon Valley engineers, that
had difficulty focusing or achieving correct
00:31:00.860 --> 00:31:04.500
color balance, when pointed at dark-skinned
faces.
00:31:04.500 --> 00:31:08.400
Fast an example of human programmer
induced bias, they didn't have a wide
00:31:08.400 --> 00:31:13.249
enough test set and didn't recognize that
they were inherently biased towards
00:31:13.249 --> 00:31:19.290
expecting people to have pale skin. But
with today's deep learning, bias can creep
00:31:19.290 --> 00:31:24.009
in, while the datasets for neural networks are
trained on, even without the programmers
00:31:24.009 --> 00:31:28.659
intending it. Microsoft's first foray into
a conversational chat bot driven by
00:31:28.659 --> 00:31:33.330
machine learning, Tay, was what we yanked
offline within days last year, because
00:31:33.330 --> 00:31:37.149
4chan and reddit based trolls discovered,
that they could train it towards racism and
00:31:37.149 --> 00:31:43.649
sexism for shits and giggles. Just imagine
you're a poor naive innocent AI who's just
00:31:43.649 --> 00:31:48.480
been switched on and you're hoping to pass
your Turing test and what happens? 4chan
00:31:48.480 --> 00:31:53.189
decide to play with your head.
laughing
00:31:53.189 --> 00:31:57.519
I got to feel sorry for Tay.
Now, humans may be biased,
00:31:57.519 --> 00:32:01.059
but at least individually we're
accountable and if somebody gives you
00:32:01.059 --> 00:32:06.499
racist or sexist abuse to your face, you
can complain or maybe punch them. It's
00:32:06.499 --> 00:32:10.740
impossible to punch a corporation and it
may not even be possible to identify the
00:32:10.740 --> 00:32:16.029
source of unfair bias, when you're dealing
with a machine learning system. AI based
00:32:16.029 --> 00:32:21.739
systems that instantiate existing
prejudices make social change harder.
00:32:21.739 --> 00:32:25.470
Traditional advertising works by playing
on the target customer's insecurity and
00:32:25.470 --> 00:32:30.750
fear as much as their aspirations. And fear
of a loss of social status and privileges
00:32:30.750 --> 00:32:36.240
are powerful stress. Fear and xenophobia
are useful tools for tracking advertising..
00:32:36.240 --> 00:32:39.580
ah, eyeballs.
What happens when we get pervasive social
00:32:39.580 --> 00:32:44.379
networks, that have learned biases against
say Feminism or Islam or melanin? Or deep
00:32:44.379 --> 00:32:48.230
learning systems, trained on datasets
contaminated by racist dipshits and their
00:32:48.230 --> 00:32:53.369
propaganda? Deep learning systems like the
ones inside Facebook, that determine which
00:32:53.369 --> 00:32:58.210
stories to show you to get you to pay as
much attention as possible to be adverse.
00:32:58.210 --> 00:33:04.841
I think, you probably have an inkling of
how.. where this is now going. Now, if you
00:33:04.841 --> 00:33:08.990
think, this is sounding a bit bleak and
unpleasant, you'd be right. I write sci-fi.
00:33:08.990 --> 00:33:12.669
You read or watch or play sci-fi. We're
acculturated to think of science and
00:33:12.669 --> 00:33:19.420
technology as good things that make life
better, but this ain't always so. Plenty of
00:33:19.420 --> 00:33:23.140
technologies have historically been
heavily regulated or even criminalized for
00:33:23.140 --> 00:33:27.690
good reason and once you get past any
reflexive indignation, criticism of
00:33:27.690 --> 00:33:32.740
technology and progress, you might agree
with me, that it is reasonable to ban
00:33:32.740 --> 00:33:39.139
individuals from owning nuclear weapons or
nerve gas. Less obviously, they may not be
00:33:39.139 --> 00:33:42.820
weapons, but we've banned
chlorofluorocarbon refrigerants, because
00:33:42.820 --> 00:33:45.570
they were building up in the high
stratosphere and destroying the ozone
00:33:45.570 --> 00:33:51.360
layer that protects us from UVB radiation.
We banned tetra e-file LED in
00:33:51.360 --> 00:33:57.540
gasoline, because it poisoned people and
led to a crime wave. These are not
00:33:57.540 --> 00:34:03.240
weaponized technologies, but they have
horrible side effects. Now, nerve gas and
00:34:03.240 --> 00:34:08.690
leaded gasoline were 1930s chemical
technologies, promoted by 1930s
00:34:08.690 --> 00:34:15.390
corporations. Halogenated refrigerants and
nuclear weapons are totally 1940s. ICBMs
00:34:15.390 --> 00:34:19.210
date to the 1950s. You know, I have
difficulty seeing why people are getting
00:34:19.210 --> 00:34:26.040
so worked up over North Korea. North Korea
reaches 1953 level parity - be terrified
00:34:26.040 --> 00:34:30.760
and hide under the bed!
I submit that the 21st century is throwing
00:34:30.760 --> 00:34:35.030
up dangerous new technologies, just as our
existing strategies for regulating very
00:34:35.030 --> 00:34:42.060
slow AIs have proven to be inadequate. And
I don't have an answer to how we regulate
00:34:42.060 --> 00:34:45.889
new technologies, I just want to flag it up
as a huge social problem that is going to
00:34:45.889 --> 00:34:50.380
affect the coming century.
I'm now going to give you four examples of
00:34:50.380 --> 00:34:54.290
new types of AI application that are
going to warp our societies even more
00:34:54.290 --> 00:35:00.800
badly than the old slow AIs, we.. have done.
This isn't an exhaustive list, this is just
00:35:00.800 --> 00:35:05.160
some examples I dream, I pulled out of
my ass. We need to work out a general
00:35:05.160 --> 00:35:08.430
strategy for getting on top of this sort
of thing before they get on top of us and
00:35:08.430 --> 00:35:12.040
I think, this is actually a very urgent
problem. So I'm just going to give you this
00:35:12.040 --> 00:35:18.110
list of dangerous new technologies that
are arriving now, or coming, and send you
00:35:18.110 --> 00:35:22.150
away to think about what to do next. I
mean, we are activists here, we should be
00:35:22.150 --> 00:35:27.690
thinking about this and planning what
to do. Now, the first nasty technology I'd
00:35:27.690 --> 00:35:31.600
like to talk about, is political hacking
tools that rely on social graph directed
00:35:31.600 --> 00:35:39.500
propaganda. This is low-hanging fruit
after the electoral surprises of 2016.
00:35:39.500 --> 00:35:43.280
Cambridge Analytica pioneered the use of
deep learning by scanning the Facebook and
00:35:43.280 --> 00:35:47.750
Twitter social graphs to identify voters
political affiliations by simply looking
00:35:47.750 --> 00:35:52.950
at what tweets or Facebook comments they
liked, very able to do this, to identify
00:35:52.950 --> 00:35:56.400
individuals with a high degree of
precision, who were vulnerable to
00:35:56.400 --> 00:36:01.490
persuasion and who lived in electorally
sensitive districts. They then canvassed
00:36:01.490 --> 00:36:06.910
them with propaganda, that targeted their
personal hot-button issues to change their
00:36:06.910 --> 00:36:12.060
electoral intentions. The tools developed
by web advertisers to sell products have
00:36:12.060 --> 00:36:16.260
now been weaponized for political purposes
and the amount of personal information
00:36:16.260 --> 00:36:21.260
about our affiliations that we expose on
social media, makes us vulnerable. Aside, in
00:36:21.260 --> 00:36:24.970
the last U.S. Presidential election, as
mounting evidence for the British
00:36:24.970 --> 00:36:28.510
referendum on leaving the EU was subject
to foreign cyber war attack, now
00:36:28.510 --> 00:36:33.250
weaponized social media, as was the most
recent French Presidential election.
00:36:33.250 --> 00:36:38.080
In fact, if we remember the leak of emails
from the Macron campaign, it turns out that
00:36:38.080 --> 00:36:42.020
many of those emails were false, because
the Macron campaign anticipated that they
00:36:42.020 --> 00:36:47.120
would be attacked and an email trove would
be leaked in the last days before the
00:36:47.120 --> 00:36:51.260
election. So they deliberately set up
false emails that would be hacked and then
00:36:51.260 --> 00:37:00.610
leaked and then could be discredited. It
gets twisty fast. Now I'm kind of biting
00:37:00.610 --> 00:37:04.650
my tongue and trying, not to take sides
here. I have my own political affiliation
00:37:04.650 --> 00:37:09.770
after all, and I'm not terribly mainstream.
But if social media companies don't work
00:37:09.770 --> 00:37:14.220
out how to identify and flag micro-
targeted propaganda, then democratic
00:37:14.220 --> 00:37:18.140
institutions will stop working and elections
will be replaced by victories, whoever
00:37:18.140 --> 00:37:23.200
can buy the most trolls. This won't
simply be billionaires but.. like the Koch
00:37:23.200 --> 00:37:26.470
brothers and Robert Mercer from the U.S.
throwing elections to whoever will
00:37:26.470 --> 00:37:31.120
hand them the biggest tax cuts. Russian
military cyber war doctrine calls for the
00:37:31.120 --> 00:37:35.730
use of social media to confuse and disable
perceived enemies, in addition to the
00:37:35.730 --> 00:37:39.900
increasingly familiar use of zero-day
exploits for espionage, such as spear
00:37:39.900 --> 00:37:43.200
phishing and distributed denial-of-service
attacks, on our infrastructure, which are
00:37:43.200 --> 00:37:49.260
practiced by Western agencies. Problem is,
once the Russians have demonstrated that
00:37:49.260 --> 00:37:53.990
this is an effective tactic, the use of
propaganda bot armies in cyber war will go
00:37:53.990 --> 00:38:00.400
global. And at that point, our social
discourse will be irreparably poisoned.
00:38:00.400 --> 00:38:04.990
Incidentally, I'd like to add - as another
aside like the Elon Musk thing - I hate
00:38:04.990 --> 00:38:09.680
the cyber prefix! It usually indicates,
that whoever's using it has no idea what
00:38:09.680 --> 00:38:15.940
they're talking about.
applause, laughter
00:38:15.940 --> 00:38:21.120
Unfortunately, much as the way the term
hacker was corrupted from its original
00:38:21.120 --> 00:38:27.020
meaning in the 1990s, the term cyber war
has, it seems, to have stuck and it's now an
00:38:27.020 --> 00:38:31.500
actual thing that we can point to and say:
"This is what we're talking about". So I'm
00:38:31.500 --> 00:38:35.510
afraid, we're stuck with this really
horrible term. But that's a digression, I
00:38:35.510 --> 00:38:38.780
should get back on topic, because I've only
got 20 minutes to go.
00:38:38.780 --> 00:38:46.240
Now, the second threat that we need to
think about regulating ,or controlling, is
00:38:46.240 --> 00:38:50.031
an adjunct to deep learning target
propaganda: it's the use of neural network
00:38:50.031 --> 00:38:56.940
generated false video media. We're used to
photoshopped images these days, but faking
00:38:56.940 --> 00:39:02.510
video and audio takes it to the next
level. Luckily, faking video and audio is
00:39:02.510 --> 00:39:08.560
labor-intensive, isn't it? Well nope, not
anymore. We're seeing the first generation
00:39:08.560 --> 00:39:13.510
of AI assisted video porn, in which the
faces of film stars are mapped onto those
00:39:13.510 --> 00:39:17.370
of other people in a video clip, using
software rather than laborious in human
00:39:17.370 --> 00:39:22.490
process.
A properly trained neural network
00:39:22.490 --> 00:39:29.430
recognizes faces and transforms the face
of the Hollywood star, they want to put
00:39:29.430 --> 00:39:35.190
into a porn movie, into the face of - onto
the face of the porn star in the porn clip
00:39:35.190 --> 00:39:40.520
and suddenly you have "Oh dear God, get it
out of my head" - no, not gonna give you
00:39:40.520 --> 00:39:43.500
any examples. Let's just say it's bad
stuff.
00:39:43.500 --> 00:39:47.260
laughs
Meanwhile we have WaveNet, a system
00:39:47.260 --> 00:39:51.120
for generating realistic sounding speech,
if a voice of a human's speak of a neural
00:39:51.120 --> 00:39:56.160
network has been trained to mimic any
human speaker. We can now put words into
00:39:56.160 --> 00:40:01.250
other people's mouths realistically
without employing a voice actor. This
00:40:01.250 --> 00:40:06.650
stuff is still geek intensive. It requires
relatively expensive GPUs or cloud
00:40:06.650 --> 00:40:10.910
computing clusters, but in less than a
decade it'll be out in the wild, turned
00:40:10.910 --> 00:40:15.500
into something, any damn script kiddie can
use and just about everyone will be able
00:40:15.500 --> 00:40:18.940
to fake up a realistic video of someone
they don't like doing something horrible.
00:40:18.940 --> 00:40:26.970
I mean, Donald Trump in the White House. I
can't help but hope that out there
00:40:26.970 --> 00:40:30.670
somewhere there's some geek like Steve
Bannon with a huge rack of servers who's
00:40:30.670 --> 00:40:40.980
faking it all, but no. Now, also we've
already seen alarm this year over bizarre
00:40:40.980 --> 00:40:45.090
YouTube channels that attempt to monetize
children's TV brands by scraping the video
00:40:45.090 --> 00:40:50.220
content of legitimate channels and adding
their own advertising in keywords on top
00:40:50.220 --> 00:40:54.110
before reposting it. This is basically
your YouTube spam.
00:40:54.110 --> 00:40:58.521
Many of these channels are shaped by
paperclip maximizing advertising AIs, but
00:40:58.521 --> 00:41:03.670
are simply trying to maximise their search
ranking on YouTube and it's entirely
00:41:03.670 --> 00:41:08.470
algorithmic: you have a whole list of
keywords, you perm, you take them, you slap
00:41:08.470 --> 00:41:15.300
them on top of existing popular videos and
re-upload the videos. Once you add neural
00:41:15.300 --> 00:41:19.510
network driven tools for inserting
character A into pirated video B, to click
00:41:19.510 --> 00:41:24.420
maximize.. for click maximizing bots,
things are gonna get very weird, though. And
00:41:24.420 --> 00:41:28.980
they're gonna get even weirder, when these
tools are deployed for political gain.
00:41:28.980 --> 00:41:34.830
We tend - being primates, that evolved 300
thousand years ago in a smartphone free
00:41:34.830 --> 00:41:39.950
environment - to evaluate the inputs from
our eyes and ears much less critically
00:41:39.950 --> 00:41:44.380
than what random strangers on the Internet
tell us in text. We're already too
00:41:44.380 --> 00:41:48.930
vulnerable to fake news as it is. Soon
they'll be coming for us, armed with
00:41:48.930 --> 00:41:54.830
believable video evidence. The Smart Money
says that by 2027 you won't be able to
00:41:54.830 --> 00:41:58.550
believe anything you see in video, unless
for a cryptographic signatures on it,
00:41:58.550 --> 00:42:02.530
linking it back to the camera that shot
the raw feed. But you know how good most
00:42:02.530 --> 00:42:08.150
people are at using encryption - it's going to
be chaos!
00:42:08.150 --> 00:42:14.070
So, paperclip maximizers with focus on
eyeballs are very 20th century. The new
00:42:14.070 --> 00:42:19.750
generation is going to be focusing on our
nervous system. Advertising as an industry
00:42:19.750 --> 00:42:22.510
can only exist because of a quirk of our
nervous system, which is that we're
00:42:22.510 --> 00:42:26.680
susceptible to addiction. Be it
tobacco, gambling or heroin, we
00:42:26.680 --> 00:42:31.980
recognize addictive behavior, when we see
it. Well, do we? It turns out the human
00:42:31.980 --> 00:42:36.250
brain's reward feedback loops are
relatively easy to gain. Large
00:42:36.250 --> 00:42:41.400
corporations like Zynga - producers of
FarmVille - exist solely because of it,
00:42:41.400 --> 00:42:45.580
free to use social media platforms like
Facebook and Twitter, are dominant precisely
00:42:45.580 --> 00:42:50.100
because they're structured to reward
frequent short bursts of interaction and
00:42:50.100 --> 00:42:54.790
to generate emotional engagement - not
necessarily positive emotions, anger and
00:42:54.790 --> 00:42:59.660
hatred are just as good when it comes to
attracting eyeballs for advertisers.
00:42:59.660 --> 00:43:04.510
Smartphone addiction is a side effect of
advertising as a revenue model. Frequent
00:43:04.510 --> 00:43:09.850
short bursts of interaction to keep us
coming back for more. Now a new.. newish
00:43:09.850 --> 00:43:13.720
development, thanks to deep learning again -
I keep coming back to deep learning,
00:43:13.720 --> 00:43:19.290
don't I? - use of neural networks in a
manner that Marvin Minsky never envisaged,
00:43:19.290 --> 00:43:22.530
back when he was deciding that the
Perzeptron was where it began and ended
00:43:22.530 --> 00:43:27.360
and it couldn't do anything.
Well, we have neuroscientists now, who've
00:43:27.360 --> 00:43:33.680
mechanized the process of making apps more
addictive. Dopamine Labs is one startup
00:43:33.680 --> 00:43:38.030
that provides tools to app developers to
make any app more addictive, as well as to
00:43:38.030 --> 00:43:41.130
reduce the desire to continue
participating in a behavior if it's
00:43:41.130 --> 00:43:46.520
undesirable, if the app developer actually
wants to help people kick the habit. This
00:43:46.520 --> 00:43:52.060
goes way beyond automated A/B testing. A/B
testing allows developers to plot a binary
00:43:52.060 --> 00:43:58.760
tree path between options, moving towards a
single desired goal. But true deep
00:43:58.760 --> 00:44:03.640
learning, addictiveness maximizers, can
optimize for multiple attractors in
00:44:03.640 --> 00:44:10.011
parallel. The more users you've got on
your app, the more effectively you can work
00:44:10.011 --> 00:44:16.920
out, what attracts them and train them and
focus on extra addictive characteristics.
00:44:16.920 --> 00:44:20.610
Now, going by their public face, the folks
at Dopamine Labs seem to have ethical
00:44:20.610 --> 00:44:24.930
qualms about the misuse of addiction
maximizers. But neuroscience isn't a
00:44:24.930 --> 00:44:28.730
secret and sooner or later some really
unscrupulous sociopaths will try to see
00:44:28.730 --> 00:44:36.440
how far they can push it. So let me give
you a specific imaginary scenario: Apple
00:44:36.440 --> 00:44:41.400
have put a lot of effort into making real-
time face recognition work on the iPhone X
00:44:41.400 --> 00:44:44.940
and it's going to be everywhere on
everybody's phone in another couple of
00:44:44.940 --> 00:44:50.760
years. You can't fool an iPhone X with a
photo or even a simple mask. It does depth
00:44:50.760 --> 00:44:54.010
mapping to ensure, your eyes are in the
right place and can tell whether they're
00:44:54.010 --> 00:44:58.200
open or closed. It recognizes your face
from underlying bone structure through
00:44:58.200 --> 00:45:02.760
makeup and bruises. It's running
continuously, checking pretty much as often
00:45:02.760 --> 00:45:06.840
as every time you'd hit the home button on
a more traditional smartphone UI and it
00:45:06.840 --> 00:45:13.750
can see where your eyeballs are pointing.
The purpose of a face recognition system
00:45:13.750 --> 00:45:19.980
is to provide for real-time authenticate
continuous authentication when you're
00:45:19.980 --> 00:45:23.960
using a device - not just enter a PIN or
sign a password or use a two factor
00:45:23.960 --> 00:45:28.420
authentication pad, but the device knows
that you are its authorized user on a
00:45:28.420 --> 00:45:33.000
continuous basis and if somebody grabs
your phone and runs away with it, it'll
00:45:33.000 --> 00:45:38.050
know that it's been stolen immediately, it
sees the face of the thief.
00:45:38.050 --> 00:45:42.910
However, your phone monitoring your facial
expressions and correlating against app
00:45:42.910 --> 00:45:48.250
usage has other implications. Your phone
will be aware of precisely what you like
00:45:48.250 --> 00:45:53.550
to look at on your screen.. on its screen.
We may well have sufficient insight on the
00:45:53.550 --> 00:45:59.740
part of the phone to identify whether
you're happy or sad, bored or engaged.
00:45:59.740 --> 00:46:04.680
With addiction seeking deep learning tools
and neural network generated images, those
00:46:04.680 --> 00:46:09.150
synthetic videos I was talking about, it's
entirely.. in principle entirely possible to
00:46:09.150 --> 00:46:15.250
feed you an endlessly escalating payload
of arousal-inducing inputs. It might be
00:46:15.250 --> 00:46:19.440
Facebook or Twitter messages, optimized to
produce outrage, or it could be porn
00:46:19.440 --> 00:46:24.620
generated by AI to appeal to kinks you
don't even consciously know you have.
00:46:24.620 --> 00:46:28.980
But either way, the app now owns your
central nervous system and you will be
00:46:28.980 --> 00:46:36.230
monetized. And finally, I'd like to raise a
really hair-raising specter that goes well
00:46:36.230 --> 00:46:41.730
beyond the use of deep learning and
targeted propaganda and cyber war. Back in
00:46:41.730 --> 00:46:46.340
2011, an obscure Russian software house
launched an iPhone app for pickup artists
00:46:46.340 --> 00:46:52.940
called 'Girls Around Me'. Spoiler: Apple
pulled it like a hot potato as soon as
00:46:52.940 --> 00:46:59.060
word got out that it existed. Now, Girls
Around Me works out where the user is
00:46:59.060 --> 00:47:03.730
using GPS, then it would query Foursquare
and Facebook for people matching a simple
00:47:03.730 --> 00:47:09.880
relational search, for single females on
Facebook, per relationship status, who have
00:47:09.880 --> 00:47:15.020
checked in, or been checked in by their
friends, in your vicinity on Foursquare.
00:47:15.020 --> 00:47:19.270
The app then displays their locations on a
map along with links to their social media
00:47:19.270 --> 00:47:24.560
profiles. If they were doing it today, the
interface would be gamified, showing strike
00:47:24.560 --> 00:47:28.980
rates and a leaderboard and flagging
targets who succumbed to harassment as
00:47:28.980 --> 00:47:31.960
easy lays.
But these days, the cool kids and single
00:47:31.960 --> 00:47:35.980
adults are all using dating apps with a
missing vowel in the name, only a creeper
00:47:35.980 --> 00:47:45.420
would want something like Girls Around Me,
right? Unfortunately, there are much, much
00:47:45.420 --> 00:47:49.450
nastier uses of and scraping social media
to find potential victims for serial
00:47:49.450 --> 00:47:54.480
rapists. Does your social media profile
indicate your political religious
00:47:54.480 --> 00:47:59.650
affiliation? No? Cambridge Analytica can
work them out with 99.9% precision
00:47:59.650 --> 00:48:04.660
anyway, so don't worry about that. We
already have you pegged. Now add a service
00:48:04.660 --> 00:48:08.430
that can identify people's affiliation and
location and you have a beginning of a
00:48:08.430 --> 00:48:13.520
flash mob app, one that will show people
like us and people like them on a
00:48:13.520 --> 00:48:18.551
hyperlocal map.
Imagine you're a young female and a
00:48:18.551 --> 00:48:22.240
supermarket like Target has figured out
from your purchase patterns, that you're
00:48:22.240 --> 00:48:28.160
pregnant, even though you don't know it
yet. This actually happened in 2011. Now
00:48:28.160 --> 00:48:31.250
imagine, that all the anti-abortion
campaigners in your town have an app
00:48:31.250 --> 00:48:36.110
called "Babies Risk" on their phones.
Someone has paid for the analytics feed
00:48:36.110 --> 00:48:40.320
from the supermarket and every time you go
near a family planning clinic, a group of
00:48:40.320 --> 00:48:44.270
unfriendly anti-abortion protesters
somehow miraculously show up and swarm
00:48:44.270 --> 00:48:49.990
you. Or imagine you're male and gay and
the "God hates fags"-crowd has invented a
00:48:49.990 --> 00:48:55.300
100% reliable gaydar app, based on your
Grindr profile, and is getting their fellow
00:48:55.300 --> 00:49:00.810
travelers to queer bash gay men - only when
they're alone or outnumbered by ten to
00:49:00.810 --> 00:49:06.410
one. That's the special horror of precise
geolocation not only do you always know
00:49:06.410 --> 00:49:13.020
where you are, the AIs know, where you are
and some of them aren't friendly. Or
00:49:13.020 --> 00:49:17.330
imagine, you're in Pakistan and Christian
Muslim tensions are rising or in rural
00:49:17.330 --> 00:49:24.250
Alabama or an Democrat, you know the
possibilities are endless. Someone out
00:49:24.250 --> 00:49:30.120
there is working on this. A geolocation
aware, social media scraping deep learning
00:49:30.120 --> 00:49:34.230
application, that uses a gamified
competitive interface to reward its
00:49:34.230 --> 00:49:38.500
players for joining in acts of mob
violence against whoever the app developer
00:49:38.500 --> 00:49:41.640
hates.
Probably it has an innocuous seeming, but
00:49:41.640 --> 00:49:46.650
highly addictive training mode, to get the
users accustomed to working in teams and
00:49:46.650 --> 00:49:52.640
obeying the apps instructions. Think
Ingress or Pokemon Go. Then at some pre-
00:49:52.640 --> 00:49:57.770
planned zero-hour, it switches mode and
starts rewarding players for violence,
00:49:57.770 --> 00:50:01.780
players who have been primed to think of
their targets as vermin by a steady drip
00:50:01.780 --> 00:50:06.470
feed of micro-targeted dehumanizing
propaganda inputs, delivered over a period
00:50:06.470 --> 00:50:12.310
of months. And the worst bit of this picture?
Is that the app developer isn't even a
00:50:12.310 --> 00:50:16.540
nation-state trying to disrupt its enemies
or an extremist political group trying to
00:50:16.540 --> 00:50:22.000
murder gays, Jews or Muslims. It's just a
Paperclip Maximizer doing what it does
00:50:22.000 --> 00:50:27.900
and you are the paper. Welcome to the 21st
century.
00:50:27.900 --> 00:50:40.730
applause
Uhm...
00:50:40.730 --> 00:50:41.960
Thank you.
00:50:41.960 --> 00:50:47.780
ongoing applause
We have a little time for questions. Do
00:50:47.780 --> 00:50:53.790
you have a microphone for the orders? Do
we have any questions? ... OK.
00:50:53.790 --> 00:50:56.430
Herald: So you are doing a Q&A?
CS: Hmm?
00:50:56.430 --> 00:51:02.290
Herald: So you are doing a Q&A. Well if
there are any questions, please come
00:51:02.290 --> 00:51:24.320
forward to the microphones, numbers 1
through 4 and ask.
00:51:24.320 --> 00:51:29.010
Mic 1: Do you really think it's all
bleak and dystopian like you prescribed
00:51:29.010 --> 00:51:34.750
it, because I also think the future can be
bright, looking at the internet with open
00:51:34.750 --> 00:51:38.730
source and like, it's all growing and going
faster and faster in a good
00:51:38.730 --> 00:51:44.110
direction. So what do you think about
the balance here?
00:51:44.110 --> 00:51:48.070
CS: sighs Basically, I think the
problem is, that about 3% of us
00:51:48.070 --> 00:51:54.330
are sociopaths or psychopaths, who spoil
everything for the other 97% of us.
00:51:54.330 --> 00:51:56.980
Wouldn't it be great if somebody could
write an app that would identify all the
00:51:56.980 --> 00:51:59.690
psychopaths among us and let the rest of
us just kill them?
00:51:59.690 --> 00:52:05.320
laughing, applause
Yeah, we have all the
00:52:05.320 --> 00:52:12.300
tools to make a utopia, we have it now
today. A bleak miserable grim meathook
00:52:12.300 --> 00:52:17.510
future is not inevitable, but it's up to
us to use these tools to prevent the bad
00:52:17.510 --> 00:52:22.480
stuff happening and to do that, we have to
anticipate the bad outcomes and work to
00:52:22.480 --> 00:52:25.260
try and figure out a way to deal with
them. That's what this talk is. I'm trying
00:52:25.260 --> 00:52:29.300
to do a bit of a wake-up call and get
people thinking about how much worse
00:52:29.300 --> 00:52:33.630
things can get and what we need to do to
prevent it from happening. What I was
00:52:33.630 --> 00:52:37.960
saying earlier about our regulatory
systems being broken, stands. How do we
00:52:37.960 --> 00:52:47.500
regulate the deep learning technologies?
This is something we need to think about.
00:52:47.500 --> 00:52:55.230
H: Okay mic number two.
Mic 2: Hello? ... When you talk about
00:52:55.230 --> 00:53:02.250
corporations as AIs, where do you see that
analogy you're making? Do you see them as
00:53:02.250 --> 00:53:10.010
literally AIs or figuratively?
CS: Almost literally. If
00:53:10.010 --> 00:53:14.230
you're familiar with philosopher
(?) Searle's Chinese room paradox
00:53:14.230 --> 00:53:17.620
from the 1970s, by which he attempted to
prove that artificial intelligence was
00:53:17.620 --> 00:53:24.380
impossible, a corporation is very much the
Chinese room implementation of an AI. It
00:53:24.380 --> 00:53:29.400
is a bunch of human beings in a box. You
put inputs into the box, you get apples
00:53:29.400 --> 00:53:33.000
out of a box. Does it matter, whether it's
all happening in software or whether
00:53:33.000 --> 00:53:37.520
there's a human being following rules
inbetween to assemble the output? I don't
00:53:37.520 --> 00:53:41.190
see there being much of a difference.
Now you have to look at a company at a
00:53:41.190 --> 00:53:46.630
very abstract level to view it as an AI,
but more and more companies are automating
00:53:46.630 --> 00:53:54.500
their internal business processes. You've
got to view this as an ongoing trend. And
00:53:54.500 --> 00:54:01.490
yeah, they have many of the characteristics
of an AI.
00:54:01.490 --> 00:54:06.240
Herald: Okay mic number four.
Mic 4: Hi, thanks for your talk.
00:54:06.240 --> 00:54:13.220
You probably heard of the Time Well
Spent and Design Ethics movements that
00:54:13.220 --> 00:54:16.850
are alerting developers to dark patterns
in UI design, where
00:54:16.850 --> 00:54:20.630
these people design apps to manipulate
people. I'm curious if you find any
00:54:20.630 --> 00:54:26.750
optimism in the possibility of amplifying
or promoting those movements.
00:54:26.750 --> 00:54:31.570
CS: Uhm, you know, I knew about dark
patterns, I knew about people trying to
00:54:31.570 --> 00:54:36.230
optimize them, I wasn't actually aware
there were movements against this. Okay I'm
00:54:36.230 --> 00:54:40.760
53 years old, I'm out of touch. I haven't
actually done any serious programming in
00:54:40.760 --> 00:54:47.000
15 years. I'm so rusty, my rust has rust on
it. But, you know, it is a worrying trend
00:54:47.000 --> 00:54:54.000
and actual activism is a good start.
Raising awareness of hazards and of what
00:54:54.000 --> 00:54:58.330
we should be doing about them, is a good
start. And I would classify this actually
00:54:58.330 --> 00:55:04.220
as a moral issue. We need to..
corporations evaluate everything in terms
00:55:04.220 --> 00:55:07.960
of revenue, because it's very
equivalent to breathing, they have to
00:55:07.960 --> 00:55:13.810
breathe. Corporations don't usually have
any moral framework. We're humans, we need
00:55:13.810 --> 00:55:18.480
a moral framework to operate within. Even
if it's as simple as first "Do no harm!"
00:55:18.480 --> 00:55:22.500
or "Do not do unto others that which would
be repugnant if it was done unto you!",
00:55:22.500 --> 00:55:26.450
the Golden Rule. So, yeah, we should be
trying to spread awareness of this about
00:55:26.450 --> 00:55:32.170
and working with program developers, to
look to remind them that they are human
00:55:32.170 --> 00:55:36.480
beings and have to be humane in their
application of technology, is a necessary
00:55:36.480 --> 00:55:39.510
start.
applause
00:55:39.510 --> 00:55:45.501
H: Thank you! Mic 3?
Mic 3: Hi! Yeah, I think that folks,
00:55:45.501 --> 00:55:48.600
especially in this sort of crowd, tend to
jump to the "just get off of
00:55:48.600 --> 00:55:52.330
Facebook"-solution first, for a lot of
these things that are really, really
00:55:52.330 --> 00:55:56.640
scary. But what worries me, is how we sort
of silence ourselves when we do that.
00:55:56.640 --> 00:56:02.240
After the election I actually got back on
Facebook, because the Women's March was
00:56:02.240 --> 00:56:07.250
mostly organized through Facebook. But
yeah, I think we need a lot more
00:56:07.250 --> 00:56:12.880
regulation, but we can't just throw it
out. We're.. because it's..
00:56:12.880 --> 00:56:16.520
social media is the only... really good
platform we have right now
00:56:16.520 --> 00:56:20.410
to express ourselves, to
have our rules, or power.
00:56:20.410 --> 00:56:24.660
CS: Absolutely. I have made
a point of not really using Facebook
00:56:24.660 --> 00:56:28.480
for many, many, many years.
I have a Facebook page simply to
00:56:28.480 --> 00:56:31.530
shut up the young marketing people at my
publisher, who used to prop up every two
00:56:31.530 --> 00:56:34.680
years and say: "Why don't you have a
Facebook. Everybody's got a Facebook."
00:56:34.680 --> 00:56:39.790
No, I've had a blog since 1993!
laughing
00:56:39.790 --> 00:56:44.170
But no, I'm gonna have to use Facebook,
because these days, not using Facebook is
00:56:44.170 --> 00:56:50.780
like not using email. You're cutting off
your nose to spite your face. What we
00:56:50.780 --> 00:56:54.830
really do need to be doing, is looking for
some form of effective oversight of
00:56:54.830 --> 00:57:00.830
Facebook and particularly, of how they..
the algorithms that show you content, are
00:57:00.830 --> 00:57:05.340
written. What I was saying earlier about
how algorithms are not as transparent as
00:57:05.340 --> 00:57:10.530
human beings to people, applies hugely to
them. And both, Facebook and Twitter
00:57:10.530 --> 00:57:15.180
control the information
that they display to you.
00:57:15.180 --> 00:57:18.690
Herald: Okay, I'm terribly sorry for all the
people queuing at the mics now, we're out
00:57:18.690 --> 00:57:24.960
of time. I also have to apologize, I
announced, that this talk was being held in
00:57:24.960 --> 00:57:29.690
English, but it was being held in English.
the latter pronounced on the G
00:57:29.690 --> 00:57:31.470
Thank you very much, Charles Stross!
00:57:31.470 --> 00:57:33.690
CS: Thank you very much for
listening to me, it's been a pleasure!
00:57:33.690 --> 00:57:36.500
applause
00:57:36.500 --> 00:57:52.667
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