Category: Institutions and Revolutions

How the Military Is Struggling to Position Itself on Autonomous Weapons

The issue of autonomous weapons creates a heated debate. There is a push to get them banned (see our previous post ‘Why the Terminator Conundrum Requires Active Anti-proliferation Policies‘ and ‘How Urgent It Is to Ban Autonomous AI Driven Weapons‘). However, at least in the western world, the military appears to be quite reluctant to push for full autonomy, in particular when deciding to use lethal force. This debate is reflected in an excellent interview by The Verge ‘The future of war will be fought by machines, but will humans still be in charge?‘.

The interesting part I find, and I read about it also in other places too, is that the military is reluctant to leave the robot take lethal engagement decisions on its own. Autonomy allows the weapon to use less manpower for moving around, analysing threats, reporting on the situation; but when it comes to engagement, the military want to have a stop button. In addition, it is probably also a good idea in case autonomous weapons would stop from identifying separately friend and foe!

One concern is that this approach may not be followed by Russia or China, or potentially terrorist organisations that would use some form of autonomous weapons. Some also mention that this willingness to keep humans in the loop may stem from the fear of losing one’s job. In any case, developments in this area are interesting to follow, in particular when there might be, somewhere in the world, some actual small scale engagement of weapons more autonomous than the current contraptions. This might take some time though as I guess that the military will not want its technology to fall in the hands of the opponent!

Share

How The Power of Communication and Free Speech of the Fourth Revolution Bears an Intrinsic Contradiction

This interesting speech ‘The First Amendment in the Second Gilded Age – The 2018 Mitchell Lecture‘ addresses the evolution of the theory of Free Speech and the contradiction between the fact that the Collaborative Age technology increases considerably our capabilities of Free Speech at the same time as it empowers much more powerful surveillance.

Most of the infrastructure we rely on for internet is privately held, and regulations need to exist to ensure that free speech and access is preserved, while privacy is guaranteed.

The statutes around Free Speech were developed in a time where most of the media was just broadcasting media. It was difficult to publish and most communication channels were subject to editing. The objective of former Free Speech statutes was to ensure proper information of the public against the media monopoly. Those statutes are thus probably obsolete today and need to be upgraded.

Today, the issue is to guarantee free speech for everyone while managing fake news content and protecting privacy. We have not matured yet the legal statutes to provide those guarantees. It is a great challenge toward the Collaborative Age.

Share

How Manufacturing Jobs Won’t Come Back, and We’d Better Look into Collaborative Age Occupations

There is an increasing number of papers, particularly in the US, on the fact that developed countries lose manufacturing jobs due to globalisation and trade rather than automation, such as this Quartz paper ‘The epic mistake about manufacturing that’s cost Americans millions of jobs‘. This is particularly trendy, of course, in view of the need to justify Donald Trump stance on the need for protectionism.

My view is that those papers raise an obsolete debate. They are missing the most important point: the economy transforms and the future is not in manufacturing jobs. We’ll never get them back. What’s the point in wishing those jobs to return? Of course in the previous century those were high value added, safe jobs for the middle class. But in the Collaborative Age, manufacturing jobs will become like what farm jobs have become in the Industrial Age: low value jobs.

The economy is changing, fast, and it might look like a “manufacturing job implosion” like the paper says. And this is certainly dramatic for many people. But those jobs won’t come back, even with some backward policies around protectionism. Their value is evaporating. Governments should better help people find new, high value added occupations into the Collaborative Age.

Share

How To Properly Regulate Facebook

Following from our previous post ‘How Facebook Model is Addiction and Growth – and Why It Can’t Change‘, people talk more and more about regulating Facebook. But, as Frederic Filloux argues in his post ‘Facebook could actually benefit from a little regulation‘, that may come exactly at the right time for Facebook as it currently has a dominating position – by making harder for competitors to be compliant. This is further developed in Techcrunch ‘Regulation could actually protect Facebook, not punish it‘

 

“Why the hell would Facebook’s lider maximo welcome the intrusion of a regulator? Two reasons: it could help his business in the long run, and by the time any regulation takes effect, Facebook will have consolidated even further its already immense power.”

All agree that Facebook have very little to fear from the regulator, except if some sort of anti-trust approach would be used that would force the conglomerate to split in various entities. That was actually what allowed capitalism to overcome the large trusts and dominating capitalist companies at the beginning of the 20th century. Is forceful split of the large internet companies the solution?

Share

How Facebook Model is Addiction and Growth – and Why It Can’t Change

Famous blogger Om Malik‘s post ‘The #1 reason Facebook won’t ever change‘ is worth reading. It came at the beginning of Facebook’s crisis about the leakage of personal data. His point is that Facebook model is based on addiction, data gathering and sharing and it won’t change.

Om Malik describes the DNA of Facebook as “a social platform addicted to growth and engagement. At its very core, every policy, every decision, every strategy is based on growth (at any cost) and engagement (at any cost). More growth and more engagement means more data — which means the company can make more advertising dollars, which gives it a nosebleed valuation on the stock market, which in turn allows it to remain competitive and stay ahead of its rivals.”

“Facebook is about making money by keeping us addicted to Facebook. It always has been — and that’s why all of our angst and headlines are not going to change a damn thing.” So, in spite of all the discussions and show times, Facebook model is not going to change. It will try to increase its addiction and lure all the users that still resist to it.

Share

How Videos can now be Faked Easily And What It Means

There is a deep change coming upon us: the ability to manipulate videos is now so advanced that it is easy to do and videos can’t be taken any more as proofs. This issue is discussed at length in The Atlantic paper ‘The Era of Fake Video Begins‘.

I believe the impact of this technological change is quite underestimated, in particular because it will be democratized in the next months. Until now it was easy to fake or manipulate a sound track, but much harder to do so with video; in addition videos are intrinsically more believable because “we see it with our own eyes”. New technology allows easily to replace a face in a video, or else manipulate them in an undetectable manner. And this will be a huge problem because we have come to rely on video as a means of proof (for example, equipping police forces with video cameras). As the paper says, “We’ll shortly live in a world where our eyes routinely deceive us. Put differently, we’re not so far from the collapse of reality.”

Some call these manipulated videos ‘deepfakes’ and it is quite a good image. We won”t be able to believe any more what we see. Video certification programs will have to be developed to give us trust. Regulation will have to kick-in. A new world is coming.

Share

How Facebook Faces a ‘Big Tobacco’ Addiction Industry Problem

I find this post ‘Facebook has a Big Tobacco Problem‘ just excellent – and the title is great too. Facebook is clearly addictive, pervades society, has adverse effect on mental health, and.. is in denial.

“Facebook’s problems are more than a temporary bad PR issue. Its behavior contributes to a growing negative view of the entire tech industry.“. Facebook is currently working hard to change its image, but the amount of evidence of its effect on behavior also mounts.

This existential issue is a threat to the entire technological world and society will have to find a solution that will necessarily involve regulation.

Some comparisons developed in the post are even thrilling: “As in the 1990’s, when Big Tobacco felt its home market dwindling, the companies decided to stimulate smoking in the Third World. Facebook’s tactics are reminiscence of that. Today, it subsidizes connectivity in the developing world, offering attractive deals to telecoms in Asia and Africa, in exchange for making FB the main gateway to the internet”

It might well be that there will soon be some kind of existential crisis to make social networks mature in terms of model and rules.

Share

How Major Internet Companies Are Concerned About Societal Impact

There is an increasing concern by the leading Internet companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft etc of the societal consequences of technology. And they are trying to take the initiative, probably because they fear that otherwise there will be laws and regulations against them.

They went up to create a group called ‘Partnership on AI‘ that is currently bringing together internet giants, NGOs, key industrial consultants. It was ‘Established to study and formulate best practices on AI technologies, to advance the public’s understanding of AI, and to serve as an open platform for discussion and engagement about AI and its influences on people and society.’ It is based on the tenet that ‘We believe that artificial intelligence technologies hold great promise for raising the quality of people’s lives and can be leveraged to help humanity address important global challenges such as climate change, food, inequality, health, and education.’

The Bloomberg article ‘Microsoft Says AI Advances Will Require New Laws, Regulations‘ explains why those large companies are becoming concerned. The impact of AI will be wide ranging but first of all it is essential to prevent social upheaval. It feels a bit like the concern of the largest capitalists in the 19th century, keen to prevent the communist revolution: it is essential that benefits of the new value creation flow back to the people and that protection be granted. And in turn this would protect the de-facto monopoly of the internet giants. Will they win of lose?

Share

How Insurance Companies Are Already Offering Discounts for Automated Driving

In this excellent post ‘Insurance Companies Are Now Offering Discounts if You Let Your Tesla Drive Itself‘, we discover that insurance companies are offering discounts for Tesla owners that use the self-driving feature, both in the UK and in the US.

Tesla on autopilot

It appears that it is not yet due to some visible statistics about less accidents but rather to gain some useful data insight into the benefits of autonomous system driving. Still, it shows how closely insurers do follow this evolution and how they expect it to change (for the better) the accident and incident statistics.

Autonomous driving has the potential to substantially transform the way we drive and the insurance industry at the same time. And it has already started!

Share

How Good Visionary Decisions Are In Fact Reflections of Social Mindset Changes

When automated roadside speed cameras were introduced in France a few years ago, the behavior of drivers with regards to speed was substantially changed and the statistics of rod casualties dropped significantly. This introduction did generate some reactions, but overall it was accepted by the population that was fed up with the dangers of automobile driving – there were no massive demonstrations as it sometimes happen in the country.

The key question here is whether the introduction of speed cameras was the trigger of the change (and a visionary act by a leader), or whether it was rather the concrete result of a change of viewpoint by society.

Today with some hindsight the view is rather the latter: this change was probably more the result of a change of mindset (contrary to what the leader in question – who went on to be President of France- would like us to believe!). It might have taken some courage to transform this change of mindset into an actual concrete change, but that was not the source of the transformation.

It is astonishing to find out that many of the key policy changes in organizations or in society are rather the courageous formalization of an already evolving mindset rather than the visionary decision of a single leader – contrary to what the lore tries to make us believe. Actually purely visionary decisions without a background of mindset change is highly suspicious. Good decisions are the formalization of a pre-existing condition.

Share

How to Re-Engineer Higher Education

This column by Seth Godin in Medium is worth reading: ‘“Will this be on the test?” Rethinking online education“. Seth Godin is an acclaimed marketing guru who we have often quoted in this blog. He is also a founder of what he calls an alternative MBA or altMBA. His educational approaches in this program are widely different from conventional higher education, and he explains why there are dramatically more effective – and why MooCs are not so successful.

Industrial-Age Higher Education: the student factory

Traditional higher education is defined by institutions: “large universities that have built their institutions around lectures, tests and accreditation. So have many internal training functions.” This is why the main question is not whether one learns useful things, but whether it will be on the test as the only objective is to pass.

Online learning developed by universities is just a transfer into the online space of universities’ basic assumptions, which don’t really work. This explains why after an initial fervor for MooC, we find out now that most participants lack engagement and 99% of students don’t finish the courses.

Seth Godin’s proposal, executed in his acclaimed altMBA program is: “At its core: enrollment, not tests. Experiences not media consumption. Peer to peer, not top down“. This has been the foundation for a very successful program for executives. Those principles could be used for the re-foundation of higher education in the Collaborative Age.

Share

How Telling People What To Do is Easy, but Building Real Change and Agreement is Hard

Today I am in for a rant: I am amazed at how people still believe that change is so easy it is enough to tell people what to do. To force them doing something different. In reality, deep and sustainable change has to be built over time over a wide agreement of the participating group.

Not quite the right manner to implement change management

I am still called up to effectuate deep changes in organizations under the belief that the orders from the top combined with the industry best practice experience from a consultant will create a sustainable change of habits and ways of working. Worst is that many consulting firms do nothing to dissipate this illusion; they are too happy to work undisturbed to develop tools and processes that at the end will never get deployed for lack of knowledge and understanding.

This is too naive to be true, but believe me it still happens! (although not always exposed as directly). And we have some great examples at the moment in the world that this approach does no work: an American President that tells people what to do, and noting gets ever really done after the announcement.

Creating sustainable change requires a more subtle, engaging and inclusive approach that involves the people that will later implement those changes in their daily activities. This is why successful transformation programs are often longer and more resource-intensive at the start, because they need to involve more people. This investment redeems itself many times after during actual implementation.

Share