If you think democracy is broken, here’s an idea: let’s replace politicians with randomly selected people. Author and activist Brett Hennig presents a compelling case for sortition democracy, or random selection of government officials — a system with roots in ancient Athens that taps into the wisdom of the crowd and entrusts ordinary people with making balanced decisions for the greater good of everyone. Sound crazy? Learn more about how it could work to create a world free of partisan politics.
This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxDanubia, an independent event. TED’s editors chose to feature it for you.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Brett Hennig · Author, activist
Brett Hennig co-founded and directs the Sortition Foundation, which campaigns to institute the use of stratified, random selection (also called sortition) in government.
When people see machines that respond like humans, or computers that perform feats of strategy and cognition mimicking human ingenuity, they sometimes joke about a future in which humanity will need to accept robot overlords.
But buried in the joke is a seed of unease. Science-fiction writing and popular movies, from “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) to “Avengers: Age of Ultron” (2015), have speculated about artificial intelligence (AI) that exceeds the expectations of its creators and escapes their control, eventually outcompeting and enslaving humans or targeting them for extinction.
Conflict between humans and AI is front and center in AMC’s sci-fi series “Humans,” which returned for its third season on Tuesday (June 5). In the new episodes, conscious synthetic humans face hostile people who treat them with suspicion, fear and hatred. Violence roils as Synths find themselves fighting for not only basic rights but their very survival, against those who view them as less than human and as a dangerous threat. [Can Machines Be Creative? Meet 9 AI ‘Artists’]
Even in the real world, not everyone is ready to welcome AI with open arms. In recent years, as computer scientists have pushed the boundaries of what AI can accomplish, leading figures in technology and science have warned about the looming dangers that artificial intelligence may pose to humanity, even suggesting that AI capabilities could doom the human race.
But why are people so unnerved by the idea of AI?
An “existential threat”
Elon Musk is one of the prominent voices that has raised red flags about AI. In July 2017, Musk told attendees at a meeting of the National Governors Association, “I have exposure to the very cutting-edge AI, and I think people should be really concerned about it.”
“I keep sounding the alarm bell,” Musk added. “But until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react, because it seems so ethereal.”
Earlier, in 2014, Musk had labeled AI “our biggest existential threat,” and in August 2017, he declared that humanity faced a greater risk from AI than from North Korea.
Physicist Stephen Hawking, who died March 14, also expressed concernsabout malevolent AI, telling the BBC in 2014 that “the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”
It’s also less than reassuring that some programmers — particularly those with MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts — seem determined to prove that AI can be terrifying.
Barcelona’s graceful Casa Milà looks a lot less inviting after a pass through the Nightmare Machine.
Credit: Nightmare Machine
A neural network called “Nightmare Machine,” introduced by MIT computer scientists in 2016, transformed ordinary photos into ghoulish, unsettling hellscapes. An AI that the MIT group dubbed “Shelley” composed scary stories, trained on 140,000 tales of horror that Reddit users posted in the forum r/nosleep.
“We are interested in how AI induces emotions — fear, in this particular case,” Manuel Cebrian, a research manager at MIT Media Lab, previously told Live Science in an email about Shelley’s scary stories.
Fear and loathing
Negative feelings about AI can generally be divided into two categories: the idea that AI will become conscious and seek to destroy us, and the notion that immoral people will use AI for evil purposes, Kilian Weinberger, an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University, told Live Science. [Artificial Intelligence: Friendly or Frightening?]
“One thing that people are afraid of, is that if super-intelligent AI — more intelligent than us — becomes conscious, it could treat us like lower beings, like we treat monkeys,” he said. “That would certainly be undesirable.”
However, fears that AI will develop awareness and overthrow humanity are grounded in misconceptions of what AI is, Weinberger noted. AI operates under very specific limitations defined by the algorithms that dictate its behavior. Some types of problems map well to AI’s skill sets, making certain tasks relatively easy for AI to complete. “But most things do not map to that, and they’re not applicable,” he said.
This means that, while AI might be capable of impressive feats within carefully delineated boundaries — playing a master-level chess game or rapidly identifying objects in images, for example — that’s where its abilities end.
“AI reaching consciousness — there has been absolutely no progress in research in that area,” Weinberger said. “I don’t think that’s anywhere in our near future.”
The other worrisome idea — that an unscrupulous human would harness AI for harmful reasons — is, unfortunately, far more likely, Weinberger added. Pretty much any type of machine or tool can be used for either good or bad purposes, depending on the user’s intent, and the prospect of weapons harnessing artificial intelligence is certainly frightening and would benefit from strict government regulation, Weinberger said.
Perhaps, if people could put aside their fears of hostile AI, they would be more open to recognizing its benefits, Weinberger suggested. Enhanced image-recognition algorithms, for example, could help dermatologists identify moles that are potentially cancerous, while self-driving cars could one day reduce the number of deaths from auto accidents, many of which are caused by human error, he told Live Science.
But in the “Humans” world of self-aware Synths, fears of conscious AI spark violent confrontations between Synths and people, and the struggle between humans and AI will likely continue to unspool and escalate — during the current season, at least.
Editor’s note: This is the final feature in a three-part series of articles related to AMC’s “Humans.”The third season debuted June 5 at 10 p.m. EDT/9 p.m. CDT.
MY JUNE 10TH TALK will explore Creativity and our Animal Nature.
MY AUDIENCE is people who are questioning life: “Is this all there is?”
My AUDIENCE is people who want to know themselves.
MY AUDIENCE is people who want to contribute to creating a better world.
MY GOAL: to inspire people to practice Self Observation.
MY GOAL: to inspire people to practice tools that help them to re-identify.
MY GOAL: to inspire people to activate their innate creativity.
Our creativity connects our human and spiritual self. When we practice the piano or draw or paint or write poetry we are connecting our human and spiritual self. This connection is essential is helping us to transform ourselves so we can evolve. The danger is that our human/animal nature is unconsciously and habitually hooked to instincts like the fear/aggression drive where life is “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”. This is war all the time.
“Unless and until I come to know myself, I am driven by habits which I do not see and over which I have no control: I am a machine. I am not aware but mechanical. I imagine I am awake because my eyes are open. But habit is unconscious, automatic-pilot. Inside I am asleep.”~ Red Hawk in his book, Self Observation.
Published: 14:06, 08 May 2018 (suffolkfreepress.co.uk)
Alan Deakins is cycling from Russia to Bury St Edmunds to raise money for Bury St Edmunds and West Suffolk Samaritans in June.”’PICTURE: Mecha Morton
A 72-year-old man from Sudbury will test his mettle on an ambitious charity bike ride setting off from Russia to the UK.
Alan Deakins, of Friars Road, is embarking on a 60-day trip that will see him attempt to cycle from St Petersburg to the Samaritans centre in Bury St Edmunds, where he volunteers.
Mr Deakins came up with the idea after recovering from a stroke two years ago.
“I started riding a bike when I joined the Samaritans,” said Mr Deakins, who will be raising money for the Samaritans, where he volunteers as a phone operator on its helpline. “I felt like an adventure.”
An avid cyclist, Mr Deakins often completes a 10 to 20-mile route each day; which he is expecting will double during his trip.
Flying out to St Petersburg, he will encounter countries across Europe which he has not visited before, including Estonia and Latvia.
Mr Deakins who had a successful career as a film director before retiring, was inspired to support the charity where his son, Joseph, volunteered as a youngster.
Although rewarding, Mr Deakins said working at the charity, which offers emotional support to anyone in distress, struggling to cope, or at risk of suicide, was not always easy.
“It’s amazing and tough,” he said. “It can be difficult and the stories harrowing.
“But it’s excellent what listening can do for people.”
The father-of-two has set himself a fundraising target of £7,500 – and has already collected £650.
Mr Deakins’ sons, Zack, 34, and Joseph, 31, are both impressed with the scale of his challenge.
“They think it’s terrific,” said Mr Deakins. “Joseph was really excited because he used to be a Samaritan.”
To donate towards Mr Deakins’ fundraising trip, go online to https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/alandeakins1.
“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”
― Muriel Rukeyser (December 15, 1913 – February 12, 1980) was an American poet and political activist, best known for her poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism. Kenneth Rexroth said that she was the greatest poet of her “exact generation.” Wikipedia
This is an important idea. Trying to control your thoughts is difficult, frustrating, and rarely effective, all ways in which your thoughts are controlling you by causing you to make this stressful and futile effort.
You can stop letting them control you by letting go of resisting them and just observing them with neutral attention, letting go of wanting to control them in any way. When you do that they simply arise and flow by.
A wise sage once said, thoughts are no trouble if you let them fly by over your head, but are big trouble if you allow them to make a nest in your hair.
In some cases, however, the flow of your thoughts can be helpful. In my case, when I used to do a lot of lecturing, I never used notes because it makes the talk feel canned, lose its spontaneity and be boring.
So I pushed myself to just walk up to the podium or stage and trust that I would know what to say when I needed to say it. After a lot of practice, a very interesting thing began to happen: the flow of my thoughts became exactly what I needed to say at each instant, and quite often those thoughts were better than any thoughts I had had about the topic before, new ideas were coming in, in some cases thoughts that had never been thought by anyone ever before.
But this can’t happen if you’re in the habit of fighting to control your thoughts. Just let them flow. And more and more you’ll find that they’ll be precisely the thoughts you need in the particular situation you are in moment by moment.
