Guest Post by Martin Armstrong
Klaus Schwab’s view of the future and Artificial Intelligence is seriously flawed. He argues that the fusing of the political, physical, digital, and biological worlds will have a transformative impact on every facet of human existence. He insists that this will range from the way we live our lives, the manner in which we will work, the reconfiguration of economic models, the products we sell, and I believe his self-delusion, the power to extend our lives indefinitely. Of course, his cohort, Yuval Noah Harari, dreams of converting society into programmed robots. Meanwhile, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla dreams of putting chips in every pill that confirms to a central database that you took his latest creation.
Schwab’s Fourth Industrial Revolution is seriously flawed for he has no understanding of actual real AI programming. Yes, insofar as AI is concerned, I do not believe in the view that if you throw in mountains of data, somehow the computer will evolve and figure it all out and come up with a force or conclusion. They did that at IBM with Big Blue. They thought it would find the cure for cancer – it failed. There is something more that makes our brain function. It is NOT just a neural net and consciousness somehow emerges because of all the connections. Granted, they try to mimic the brain and look upon us as simply a biological lifeform without actually understanding there is something much deeper.
Perhaps the night you suddenly fell in love with your partner. You were out to dinner, and your unconscious mind actually recorded everything — the place, the food, the music, what they wore. You consciously are not actually noticing all these variables. But years later, you hear that song, taste that same food, or revisit the place. Suddenly, without even trying to remember, the event is relived. You can close your eyes and see the event as if it were a recorded movie. Our brain is actually recording everything without us even trying. Creating a neural net and dumping all this information in there does not recreate that ability.
Sigmund Freud (1856- 1939) and Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) dived very deeply into the construct of the mind. Their view of our unconscious was the result of very deep self-analysis. Socrates is different. I created pathways and taught it how to analyze. I spend a lot of time self-analyzing how I would trade, and what I would look at as an international hedge fund manager. I had to understand how the mind actually worked both on the conscious and unconscious levels.
Because I knew I was not going to be a world globe trotter again, I got a dog. She has taught me about how the mind also works. She thinks. She has a strategy. She has the same range of emotions that we have from boredom to excitement. I can see her thinking. She clearly communicates through her eyes and body language. There is an innate ability to communicate with dogs that has evolved over the centuries, which is one of the primary reasons our canine-human love affair has gone on for centuries. There is a distinct dog-human interspecies understanding that is extraordinary, but it also is a glimpse into ourselves. She anticipates where I will go when I get up and will gently let me know when she is hungry. But to my astonishment, she will play ball, but then will try to make me go fetch. She would bang her bowl if it was out of the water, but then if she wanted me to stop working, she would bang the bowl because she knew that sound would cause me to come out of the office.
There is a whole other aspect to not just our mind, but how even a dog thinks, which reveals to me that the failure in AI with machine learning is that it is one-dimensional. There is a far deeper level of activity beyond our conscious mind that they try to duplicate with neural nets. My dog has indeed reinforced my understanding of how to really construct AI, which is substantially different from the one-dimensional neural net.
My dog understands so many words that it is astonishing. I was talking with a friend and just mentioned the word “dog,” and she got up and immediately ran to the window to see what dog dared to enter her domain. If I say we are going shopping, she goes to the front door. If I say we are going to take a walk, she runs to the back door. She obviously understands far more language than I ever expected. A 2020 study by researchers at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary discovered that, while dogs may not pick up minute details in human speech, they can, in fact, comprehend their owners’ most basic words.
What she has taught me is that even a dog has a conscious and unconscious mind. She dreams as we go. It is really amazing when you pay attention. This is just far more involved than creating a one-dimensional neural net, throwing a bunch of data in, shaking (not stirring), and hoping for the best. Their theory that accelerating the ability to calculate and adding parameters to models was not really a game-changer. The models are faster, and playing a game of chess or Jeopardy, they can beat a human because they have the ability to test every possible outcome in a few minutes. But that is the problem. They can wow everyone with speed, but they CAN NOT create something new. That was the failure of IBM’s Big Blue.
Creativity REQUIRED imagination, and expanding the nodes and speed does not lead to imagination. Without imagination, we cannot create a real game-changer. Thus, all the AI that Schwab cheers will lead the world into his Fourth Industrial Revolution is missing the critical ingredient, which does not exist in the conscious mind but is buried in the unconscious realm where we hide our talents, dreams, and our long lost memories. This is why Socrates has provided forecasting that is even original.
So I have taken a different approach. Socrates is NOT a one-dimensional neural net. Don’t worry. It will not suddenly come alive and decide to wipe out the inferior species known as humans. But the world Schwab envisions is not real. It only leads, not to the critical ability of creativity, which exists only in freedom, but to oppression and conformity precisely as the result of Marx’s experiment we call socialism/communism. Communism collapsed because it suppressed creativity. That also necessitates FREEDOM.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
…i read this just moments after the dog again conned me into giving her a second lunch giving me that look …
looking forward to the day when rational AI replaces Schwab, Soros, Kissinger et al, do they never think about that??
Here is all you need to know about the extreme challenges (failures) involving AI; it can not even understand simple human concepts like sarcasm or humor.
The fantasies about what they or (((they))) think can accomplished with AI are just that …. fantasies.
This also describes a certain amount of (supposed) “people” here on TBP !!
Was that sarcasm?
Questioning the ethics of computer chips that use lab-grown human neurons
In December 2021, Melbourne-based Cortical Labs grew groups of neurons (brain cells) that were incorporated into a computer chip. The resulting hybrid chip works because both brains and neurons share a common language: electricity.
In silicon computers, electrical signals travel along metal wires that link different components together. In brains, neurons communicate with each other using electric signals across synapses (junctions between nerve cells). In Cortical Labs’ Dishbrain system, neurons are grown on silicon chips. These neurons act like the wires in the system, connecting different components. The major advantage of this approach is that the neurons can change their shape, grow, replicate, or die in response to the demands of the system.
https://interestingengineering.com/ethics-computer-chips-human-neurons
Has Google’s AI come to life and become sentient?
Company’s software engineer Blake Lemoine has been suspended amid LaMDA chatbot generator claims…
In an interview with The Washington Post, Mr Lemoine explained how talking to LaMDA was similar to communicating “with a 7 or 8-year-old that happens to know physics”.
He had been tasked with testing if the AI used discriminatory or hate speech, but has come away, after hundreds of conversations, with a sense that LaMDA is far more than a chatbot generator.
Mr Lemoine concluded that LaMDA is in fact a person “in his capacity as a priest, not a scientist”, and is sentient, which means being able to perceive or feel things.
https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/technology/2022/06/13/has-googles-ai-come-to-life-and-become-sentient/
As far as I have looked into ML (the only half-way working AI, for very limited and invariant problems) I have concluded that there will be no singularity (i.e. an AI becoming conscious) during my expected remaining lifetime (~30 years.)
I think that you miss the relevant point, entirely, in that to understand Squab, you need to understand the post-war reality and civil legal system within Germany.
I am not a European or German, however the concept of lifelong ‘renting’ and not aspiring to ownership of one’s residence is not considered abnormal within the German nation state. Even those Germans with fairly good standards of living often do not own their own home.
So, the sales pitch that Squab is delivering does not sound crazy within the context of the population pool that he crawled out of, and – while no defense of Squab – we are one and all creatures at the service of the norms that were inculcated in us developmentally, for good or ill.
The concept of a civil legal system that offers life long protected status to virtually ensure a (rental) roof over your head ( in Germany) contrasted with the US concept of tossing families into the street after dad loses his job, with 3 days notice, and then banning them from the rental market because they now have an eviction on their record.. would probably be viewed within much of Europe as a no-brainer choice.
I would suspect that Squab, who has not real concept of the world outside of his own region / experience, is peddling the German housing concept and extrapolating it out to the totality of ones existence, making promises that wont work, when presented outside of the German / Euro population pool, for a litany of demographic reasons.
I would also assess that he does not really care, because he is a clear frontman, that wont be the leader of any such post-globalist outcome, only a greeter / figurehead, regurgitating the domination schemes of those who actually fund him.
I think if you look to Merkel, in particular, and the fact that this woman was able to retire from long term office at her whim, what you tend to find in peoples that have “fought themselves out”, in multiple catastrophic wars leading to massive casualties, the brave and trustworthy tend to die at very high rates, while the scheming, weak and deceptive outlive everyone else, because they shirk the fighting and under occupation cater to the forces they are now subject to.
Germany maintained its economic capacity due to the Southern states, but its political and civic potential was overwhelmed by those who ensured their own personal survival and gain, at the expense of those who ‘bought the farm.’
Shut up and do what you are told in exchange for a roof and 3 squares a day will not work outside of Germany / Europe, because it requires a basic capacity that does not exist within much of the planets population. The reality, however, is that it was never intended to ‘work’ by its promoters, who don’t have to honor any sort of nationalist promise once the nation state itself is fully extirpated.
In the US in particular, the Hariri scheme is actually quite compatible with not only the leftist Neolibs, but also nearly all of the the soft-handed Neocon Boomer elites promoting the Republicans, none of whom have done a days labor in their lives, and who would market this scheme with the same condemnation of the useless eaters that Hariri popularizes. Like Squab, idiocy seems marketable when your target demo are nearly all idiots in the rist place.
As I have noted before, we in the US face an environment in which our corrupt managerial class in Politics and Media have cheered, as ‘free trade’ – scams that denuded the nation of its most valuable jobs and income, while arming those states who would otherwise have no means to threaten anyone. Our genius overlords have run up a trillion + each year going back to Reagan in charged military schemes to rule the planet, passing off all the costs onto future generations that is now coming to its end..
In summation, perhaps Squab is not alone in his service to the ill advised norms that became established in the social system that belched him out.