How swarm intelligence could save us from the dangers of AI

Image Credit: diez artwork/Shutterstock

We’ve heard a lot of talk recently about the dangers of artificial intelligence. From Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates, to Elon Musk, and Steve Wozniak, luminaries around the globe have been sounding the alarm, warning that we could lose control over this powerful technology — after all, AI is about creating systems that have minds of their own. A true AI could one day adopt goals and aspirations that harm us.

But what if we could enjoy the benefits of AI while ensuring that human values and sensibilities remain an integral part of the system?

This is where something called Artificial Swarm Intelligence comes in – a method for building intelligent systems that keeps humans in the loop, merging the power of computational algorithms with the wisdom, creativity, and intuition of real people. A number of companies around the world are already exploring swarms.

• There’s Enswarm, a UK startup that is using swarm technologies to assist with recruitment and employment decisions. 
• There’s Swarm.fund, a startup using swarming and crypto-currencies like Bitcoin as a new model for fundraising. 
• And the human swarming company I founded, Unanimous A.I., creates a unified intellect from any group of networked users.

This swarm intelligence technology may sound like science fiction, but it has its roots in nature.

It all goes back to the birds and the bees – fish and ants too. Across countless species, social groups have developed methods of amplifying their intelligence by working together in closed-loop systems. Known commonly as flocks, schools, colonies, and swarms, these natural systems enable groups to combine their insights and thereby outperform individual members when solving problems and making decisions. Scientists call this “Swarm Intelligence” and it supports the old adage that many minds are better than one.

But what about us humans?
Clearly, we lack the natural ability to form closed-loop swarms, but like many other skills we can’t do naturally, emerging technologies are filling a void. Leveraging our vast networking infrastructure, new software techniques are allowing online groups to form artificial swarms that can work in synchrony to answer questions, reach decisions, and make predictions, all while exhibiting the same types of intelligence amplifications as seen in nature. The approach is sometimes called “blended intelligence” because it combines the hardware and software technologies used by AI systems with populations of real people, creating human-machine systems that have the potential of outsmarting both humans and pure-software AIs alike.

It should be noted that “swarming” is different from traditional “crowdsourcing,” which generally uses votes, polls, or surveys to aggregate opinions. While such methods are valuable for characterizing populations, they don’t employ the real-time feedback loops used by artificial swarms to enable a unique intelligent system to emerge. It’s the difference between measuring what the average member of a group thinks versus allowing that group to think together and draw conclusions based upon their combined knowledge and intuition.

Outside of the companies I mentioned above, where else can such collective technologies be applied? One area that’s currently being explored is medical diagnosis, a process that requires deep factual knowledge along with the experiential wisdom of the practitioner. Can we merge the knowledge and wisdom of many doctors into a single emergent diagnosis that outperforms the diagnosis of a single practitioner? The answer appears to be yes. In a recent study conducted by Humboldt-University of Berlin and RAND Corporation, a computational collective of radiologists outperformed single practitioners when viewing mammograms, reducing false positives and false negatives. In a separate study conducted by John Carroll University and the Cleveland Clinic, a collective of 12 radiologists diagnosed skeletal abnormalities. As a computational collective, the radiologists produced a significantly higher rate of correct diagnosis than any single practitioner in the group. Of course, the potential of artificially merging many minds into a single unified intelligence extends beyond medical diagnosis to any field where we aim to exceed natural human abilities when making decisions, generating predictions, and solving problems.

Now, back to the original question of why Artificial Swarm Intelligence is a safer form of AI.
Although heavily reliant on hardware and software, swarming keeps human sensibilities and moralities as an integral part of the processes. As a result, this “human-in-the-loop” approach to AI combines the benefits of computational infrastructure and software efficiencies with the unique values that each person brings to the table:

• creativity, 
• empathy, 
• morality, and 
• justice. 

And because swarm-based intelligence is rooted in human input, the resulting intelligence is far more likely to be aligned with humanity – not just with our values and morals, but also with our goals and objectives.

How smart can an Artificial Swarm Intelligence get?
That’s still an open question, but with the potential to engage millions, even billions of people around the globe, each brimming with unique ideas and insights, swarm intelligence may be society’s best hope for staying one step ahead of the pure machine intelligences that emerge from busy AI labs around the world.

Louis Rosenberg is CEO of swarm intelligence company Unanimous A.I. He did his doctoral work at Stanford University in robotics, virtual reality, and human-computer interaction. He previously developed the first immersive augmented reality system as a researcher for the U.S. Air Force in the early 1990s and founded the VR company Immersion Corp and the 3D digitizer company Microscribe.

ORIGINAL: VentureBeat

LOUIS ROSENBERG, UNANIMOUS A.I. 

NOVEMBER 22, 2015

Pope Francis blames 'human selfishness' for global warming

The Pope calls for a radical change in behaviour to save the planet for future generations

Pope Francis has blamed human selfishness for global warming in his long-awaited encyclical calling for action on climate change.

In the letter, he urges the rich to change their lifestyles to avert the destruction of the ecosystem.

Environmentalists hope the message will spur on nations ahead of the UN climate conference in Paris in December.

But parts of the document, leaked earlier this week, have already been criticised by some US conservatives.

It has been dismissed by two Republican presidential candidates.

Humans to blameThe encyclical, named "Laudato Si (Be Praised), On the Care of Our Common Home", aims to inspire everyone - not just Roman Catholics - to protect the Earth.

The 192-page letter, which is the highest level teaching document a pope can issue, lays much of the blame for global warming on human activities.

Pope Francis writes that: "We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will.

"The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life." 

The letter highlights the loss of biodiversity in Amazonian rainforests and the melting of polar glaciers

 He criticises what he calls a "collective selfishness", but says that there is still time to stop the damage, calling for an end to consumerism and greed.

'Moral approach'
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi launched the pontiff's second encyclical at a news conference on Thursday.

The teaching is more evidence of a pontiff determined to act as a catalyst for change, and a powerful diplomatic player on the world stage, says the BBC's religious affairs correspondent Caroline Wyatt.

The release comes six months before international leaders gather in Paris to try to seal a deal to reduce carbon emissions.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the document, saying climate change was a "moral issue requiring respectful dialogue with all parts of society". 

Metropolitan of Pergamon Joannis Zizioulas (left) became the first high-ranking Orthodox Church official to present a papal document

It has also been widely praised by environmental groups, with WWF president Yolanda Kakabadse saying it "adds a much-needed moral approach'' to the debate on climate change.

Greenpeace leader Kumi Naidoo highlighted passages calling for policies that reduce carbon emissions, including by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy.

But a leak of the document, published by Italy's L'Espresso magazine on Tuesday, had a frosty response from sceptical conservatives in America, including two Roman Catholic presidential candidates.

Jeb Bush said he did not get his economic policy from his bishops, cardinals or pope - so why his policy on the environment?

Meanwhile Rick Santorum questioned whether the Pope was credible on the issue of climate science.

US Senator, Jim Inhofe, chairman of the US Senate Environment Committee, said he disagreed with the Pope's "philosophy" on global warming.

"I am concerned that his encyclical will be used by global warming alarmists to advocate for policies that will equate to the largest, most regressive tax increase in our nation's history."

However, many academics have welcomed the pontiff's input.

Prof Myles Allen, Professor of Geosystem Science at the University of Oxford in the UK, said: "If Pope Francis can't speak up for our unborn grandchildren, then God help us all."

Will Pope sway Americans? - Roger Harrabin, BBC News environment analyst 

Jeb Bush dismissed a leaked draft of the encyclical

 The UN's climate change chief Christiana Figueres says the Pope's message will influence talks in Paris this year on a deal to tackle global warming.

Developing countries are demanding firmer promises of financial help from rich countries so they can adapt to inevitable changes in the climate and get clean energy to avoid contributing to further warming.
Ms Figueres said their position would be strengthened by the Pope's insistence that this was the clear moral responsibility of the rich.

The encyclical will be welcomed by poor countries in Africa and Latin America.

The big question is how it will play in the USA, where it has already been dismissed by a Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, who is a Catholic.

Leading Republicans have warned the UN that they will undo President Barack Obama's climate policies - so if the encyclical sways any of the conservative Catholics in Congress that could prove significant.

ORIGINAL: BBC

June 18, 2015

Is That Really You or Just Your Brain?

Recently, I spent a long weekend with a handful of the smartest people I know, including Juan Enriquez, a biotech venture capitalist and founding director of the Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project. Juan had sent each of us a draft of his new book, out now, called Evolving Ourselves: How Unnatural Selection and Nonrandom Mutation Are Changing Life on Earth.

The book, written with his colleague Steve Gullans, who was a professor at Harvard Medical School for 18 years, is a fascinating, scary and remarkably optimistic tour of how quickly humans are becoming adept at changing their bodies and their own evolution. It’s a perfect primer for investors on the power of genetics research. I highly recommend you get a copy.

As my friends were discussing aspects of the book, we drifted into a really spooky conversation about the state of the art of transplant surgeries and various strategies for keeping the body from rejecting a transplant when it isn’t a perfect genetic match from an identical twin. The book delves into this subject wholeheartedly, discussing the ethical boundaries of transplanting parts, or all, of a human brain.

In the book, Enriquez and Gullans point out that when the first heart transplants were entertained, people wondered “if the recipient would fall in love with the donor’s wife.” That weekend, we got into a discussion about what the effects might be of a brain/head transplant. “Would memories and emotions transfer along with the brain?” ask Enriquez and Mullens in the book. Indeed. “Or will it turn out that that the brain, too, is simply a type of electrochemical organ and not the custodian of all emotion and consciousness?”

The question sparked quite a debate among us, and I’ve been carrying it everywhere with me since, asking neuroscientists, computer whizzes and biologists, among others, what they think. The range of answers is remarkable, but the level of uncertainty is too.

Danny Hillis, the computer genius who co-founded Thinking Machines, the company that built some of the first parallel supercomputers, asked me when I discussed this idea with him while we were both at the TED conference in Vancouver if I thought I’d be more feminine if my brain were transplanted in a woman. He guessed my personality would change in a different hormonal environment. Wow.

But so far, the killer question belongs to Enriquez. Starting with the assumption that most people think the brain is the center of consciousness — the “soul,” if you like — he innocently asked: “Suppose we do a head transplant and we don’t remember who we are. Then where is consciousness?”

What if there is a car accident and four people are nearly killed. Two victims have their bodies crushed beyond repair and two victims have crushed skulls. So doctors transplant the two savable brains into the two savable bodies. Do the brains have a continuous experience, or do they reboot and start over?

Is the brain so simple an organ, or something truly unique?

These are not idle questions. We are rapidly approaching the day when this level of surgical expertise will be a reality. Developments with stem cells will only hasten the day when the experiment can be done.

Meanwhile, we’re certainly not close to being able to handle the moral and ethical questions involved. So let’s continue the discussion. Write me at tomorrowinreview@agorafinancial.com with your thoughts about a brain/head transplant. I’ll publish the most interesting musings.

To a bright future,

Stephen Petranek

for The Daily Reckoning

ORIGINAL: Daily Reckoning

by Stephen Petranek

May 1, 2015

11 Reasons to Divest from the Fossil Fuel Industry

ORIGINAL: Common Dreams
by Chuck Collins. Common Dreams 

July 23, 2013

A future without oil, coal, and gas companies is being forged by individual, institutional and religious investors

Image via Stefan Bumbeck/7dvt.com)There is a robust debate happening in university halls, around religious congregations, and at individual kitchen tables nationwide. The driving question: Should we divest from the fossil fuel industry?

Whether you are a college student, a trustee of a religious or educational institution, or an individual with a retirement fund, this is a relevant question for you.

Earlier this year, several community organizations in Boston, including the Institute for Policy Studies’ Jamaica Plain Forum, held a community forum in Boston to discuss the moral and practical issues of divesting from fossil fuel companies as a strategy to combat climate change.

The forum, viewable here, brought together those with expertise in 

• finance, 
• community organizing, 
• social justice, and 
• policy 

to address questions surrounding the basic nature of fossil fuel divestment as well as its implications for our investments and our world. Some of the questions we debated were: 

• Is divestment meaningful? 
• Can we exert leverage over energy companies by retaining the leverage of ownership? 
• Would divestment reduce the investment returns required to sustain our institutions and income needs?

Our view is that our current economy, based on insatiable extraction and consumption, is simply unsustainable – for the planet as well as for us. Powerful fossil fuel corporations exercise an undue influence on environmental and economic policy, thwarting our ability to adopt sane and far-sighted energy policies. Here's what we found:

1. We Did the Climate Change Math: Now We Must Act
We must compel the 200 largest fossil fuel corporations to keep 80% of their carbon assets “in the ground.” Extracting and burning these reserves of oil, coal and gas would raise the earth’s temperature over 2 degrees centigrade, unleashing climate catastrophe. [Read: Rolling Stone, Bill McKibben, “Global Warming's Terrifying New Math”]

2. Time to Choose Sides: We Must Raise the Cost of Extracting and Burning Carbon

If we succeed in averting climate catastrophe, it will be because we have succeeded in raising the cost of fossil fuels and forcing the industry to internalize its real costs to society and the environment. This will lower the profitability of the sector – and lower returns for investors. Our cities, congregations, and universities should not be in a position where we are rooting for the fossil fuel industry to win. It isn’t right that the value of a sector doesn’t reflect its impact on the earth and society. In the long-term, destroying the planet doesn’t help us boost our investment returns.

Additional Reading:

Bill McKibben: Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math

Dirty Energy Money: Challenging Dirty Energy's Dominance Of Our Democracy

Carbon Tracker: Unburnable Carbon: Are global financial markets carrying a carbon bubble?

Naomi Klein: Time for Big Green to Go Fossil Free

Northstar Asset Management: The Cost of Fossil Fuel Divestment Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

Aperio Group: Do the Investment Math: Building a Carbon-Free Portfolio

Jamaica Plain Forum: May 13th Boston panel on divestment

Price of Oil: Exposing the True Costs of Fossil Fuels

New York Times: Room for Debate: Is Divestment an Effective Means of Protest?

It will take more than just divestment: Does Divestment Work? - Harvard Institute of Politics

Cities divesting: San Fransisco, Seattle … & Boston?

ACTIVIST ORGANIZATIONS

As You Sow - Environmental and Social Corporate Responsibility

Community-based and socially- responsible investing:
Sprout Lenders & Common Capital:

350.org

Oil Change International

Responsible Endowments Coalition


3. We Are All Responsible for Carbon Pollution, But the Fossil Fuel Industry Has a Disproportionate Responsibility for Climate Change

While each of us should take personal responsibility for reducing our individual carbon usage, the fossil fuel industry has disproportionate responsibility for climate change. Many of us would like to have lower carbon lifestyles, but we’re systemically blocked from doing so via the lobbying power of the fossil fuel industry. The fossil fuel industry uses their considerable financial and political power to rig the rules to block regulation, block sane energy policy, extract taxpayer subsidies, thwart renewables, and limit consumer choice. They are writing government policies and fundamentally distorting our democracy. The industry is institutionally caught in a short-term system, where their economic interests are aligned with destroying the planet. If we had a carbon tax, innovation and development would be pushed towards energy efficiency. [See: Oil Change International's Dirty Energy Money index.]

4. Fossil Fuel Profitability is Based on Rigging Our Political Systems

The profitability of the fossil fuel sector is based on their ability to politically influence and rig the system and shift the real costs associated with their industry onto society. The externalities that they shift include:

• environmental pollution, 
• worker health and safety, 
• cost of military deployment in oil-producing regions, 
• negative health impacts, 
• global climate change, and 
• political corruption. 

 If fossil fuel companies had to absorb the true costs of these externalities, the industry would be transformed—and would probably likely focus first on energy conservation and sustainable energy sourcing before further extraction. Their dependence on political rules makes them a risky and volatile sector as investments. When their political clout diminishes, as we hope it will, they will become less profitable. [See: Oil Change International]
5. Investment Returns in Fossil Fuels Will Inevitably Decline

Over the last 20 years, the fossil fuel energy sector has been among the most profitable of all sectors. For a variety of reasons, including those described above, this will not remain true. As policy makers start pushing back, they will eliminate government subsidies for fossil fuel, as President Obama has proposed. They will pass laws requiring fossil fuel producers to be more responsible for their negative environmental and social impacts. There is also growing evidence that the assets of fossil fuel industries are greatly over-valued. And, if we are successful, many fossil fuel companies will have “stranded assets,” reserves that will not be tapped. When the real value of carbon holdings is adjusted downward, billions in shareholder wealth will evaporate. [See: Carbon Tracker]

6. Divesting from Fossil Fuels Will Not Negatively Impact Return

Investors are understandably concerned that their investments will earn less money if they eliminate profitable fossil fuel corporations. It may not be prudent to sell off securities with large capital gains all at once; individuals and investors should get professional advice on the best divestment strategy. Some institutions have long-term relationships with trusted investment advisors who have helped their investments grown. It is not ungrateful or unprofessional to direct these advisors to gradually divest from dirty energy and reinvest in socially responsible alternatives. Beware, however, of advisors who tell you it can’t be done or predict huge losses overtime.

It is conventional investment wisdom that if you narrow the breadth of your investments—and fossil fuel securities are approximately 10 percent of the public equities market—that you increase risk. But there is plenty of expertise in the “socially responsible investment” field as to how to divest and design an investment portfolio that will still earn comparable returns. Industry professionals are working now to design “fossil fuel free” investment portfolios and mutual funds.

7. The Fossil Fuel Sector Will Not Reform Itself

The fossil fuel industry will only reform when we change the rules that shape their marketplace and operations. This can be accomplished through regulation and taxation. Instituting a robust carbon tax, phased in over several years and with offsets to address its regressivity, would signal huge market shifts. Many thoughtful people believe we should stay invested in fossil fuel corporations to have leverage with them and engage with them. This has not worked.

8. Support the Movement and an 'Outside Strategy'

Selling stocks in fossil fuel companies may not drive down stock prices or even devalue the industry since other buyers will purchase those stocks. Regardless, the goal of the dirty energy divestment fight is to change public dialogue and society’s lifestyle, not stock prices. A traditional approach has been inside: engaging with the company and using our ownership stake to press the company to reform. This hasn’t worked. To send a strong message, we need to sever our ties to this sector and make these companies moral pariahs, similar to how the public treated tobacco companies.

Thankfully, there is a radical edge emerging to avert climate catastrophe. The “inside” strategy of working with the fossil fuel industry to reform itself is not moving fast enough. The new “outside strategy” activists are calling out the historic environmental groups who have compromised themselves into irrelevance. They are calling out Wall Street—those interested in only their own private gain at the expense of society and the earth. They are upping the ante in terms of direct action, civil disobedience along with traditional organizing and electoral politics. The call for divestment is part of this movement. [See: 350.org]

9. Engaged Shareholder: You Can Still Work the "Inside Strategy" If You Want

Some institutional investors argue that they can change the behavior of the fossil fuel industry by retaining ownership of corporate shares and being engaged investors. Institutions or individuals that want to actively engage in shareholder activism—introducing social issue resolutions— should retain the $2,000 of stock that enables them to introduce resolutions, as Greenpeace and the Institute for Policy Studies do. Ownership is only one source of leverage, however. We should engage as full stakeholders—citizens, employees, consumers, communities, and moral actors.

10. The Moral Question Is Why Should Any Institution or Individual Stay Invested: This Is an Abolitionist Cause

Divestment is not primarily simply an economic strategy, but also a moral and political one. If slavery is wrong, is it wrong to make a profit from it? If Apartheid is wrong, is it wrong to make a profit from it? “If it is wrong to wreck the planet, then it is wrong to profit from it.” [See: The Boston Phoenix, Wen Stephenson, “The New Abolitionists”]

11. We Can Divest from Fossil Fuels and Invest in the New Economy

The next 20 years will be unlike the last 50 years. We are entering a stage of discontinuity thanks to ecological and economic change. We are in a transition to a new economy—based on an entirely different set of assumptions about energy and the future source of livelihoods. We need to shift capital investment away from the dinosaur economy and towards the sustainable and just new economy. Compared to the limited, risky, corrupt and unethical fossil fuel sector, there is a wide range of socially responsible investment opportunities with comparable returns for individuals, religious institutions, and other institutions. [See: New Economy Working Group]

Conclusion: We Should Divest from Fossil Fuels and Invest in the New Economy

There is no good reason why we should remain invested in the fossil fuel industries, not when we can continue to powerfully advocate with corporations and maintain sufficient returns. We can and should find ways to shift our investment capital to the socially and environmentally attuned institutions and enterprises of the new economy.

Written with assistance from Jonah Reider.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License



Chuck Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies where he directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good (www.inequality.org), and the author of the new book, 99 to 1: How Wealth Inequality Is Wrecking the World and What We Can Do about It. Chuck is also a co-founder of Wealth for the Common Good, a network of business leaders, high-income households and partners working together to promote shared prosperity and fair taxation.He is co-author of The Moral Measure of the Economy and with Bill Gates Sr. of Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes

Frans de Waal: Comportamiento moral en los animales

ORIGINAL: TED

Frans de Waal

Frans de Waal studies primate social behavior -- how they fight and reconcile, share and cooperate.

Why you should listen to him:

Dr. Frans B. M. de Waal is a biologist and primatologist known for his work on the behavior and social intelligence of primates. His first book, Chimpanzee Politics (1982), compared the schmoozing and scheming of chimpanzees involved in power struggles with that of human politicians. Ever since, de Waal has drawn parallels between primate and human behavior, from peacemaking and morality to culture. His scientific work has been published in hundreds of technical articles in journals such as Science, Nature, Scientific American, and outlets specialized in animal behavior. His popular books – translated into fifteen languages – have made him one of the world’s most visible primatologists. His latest books are Our Inner Ape (2005, Riverhead) and The Age of Empathy (2009, Harmony).

De Waal is C. H. Candler Professor in the Psychology Department of Emory University and Director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Center, in Atlanta. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (US), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences. In 2007, he was selected by Time as one of The Worlds’ 100 Most Influential People Today, and in 2011 by Discover as among 47 (all time) Great Minds of Science.

Quotes by Frans de Waal 

“If you ask anyone, what is morality based on? These are the two factors that always come out: One is reciprocity, … a sense of fairness, and the other one is empathy and compassion.”

“Humanity is actually much more cooperative and empathic than [it's] given credit for.”

“There's actually a lot of evidence in primates and other animals that they return favors.”