As you may have read, these AI chats can do remarkable things. Ask them a question in plain English and you will receive a response that appears quite logical and authoritative.
The AI searches the web for data that seem to answer the question and publishes it, regardless of accuracy.
Yet, in one sense, that is close to how our brains operate. Ask me any question, and my answer will reflect what I have read or been told.
The problem is evaluation. The AI prints what seem to be universal opinions. But what if the views aren’t universal? Example: Today, I asked Bing’s AI: “Is the federal debt a problem?” Its answer was:
“For now, it isn’t. The U.S. government borrows trillions of dollars a year at very low interest rates on global financial markets, and there doesn’t appear to be much private sector borrowing that is crowded out by U.S. Treasury borrowing right now.”
Wrong on many counts:
The federal government doesn’t borrow dollars. It has the infinite ability to create dollars, so why would it borrow?
T-bills, T-notes and T-bonds do not represent borrowing; the dollars go into T-security accounts owned by the depositors and are not touched by the government.
Interest rates are not low; they are high.
T-security interest rates are irrelevant for a government having the infinite ability to create dollars to pay bills.
Federal “debt” equals the net total of federal deficits caused by federal spending in excess of federal taxes, a net plus for the economy’s dollar supply. There is no scenario by which adding dollars to the economy can crowd out private-sector borrowing. The reverse is true. Adding dollars increases the private sector’s lending ability.
Though the answer is wrong in many ways, it is similar to the answer some laypeople and even economists might give, if they did not understand Monetary Sovereignty.
The answer would be “less wrong” (is that even possible?) if given before 1971, when the U.S. went off the gold standard. Before then, the federal debt was a problem to the degree that our laws required us to own a certain amount of gold equal in value to total deficits.
(That problem was solved by changing our laws, which the federal government has the infinite ability to do.)
The point is that current iterations of AI do not think the way we do. They search, amalgamate and report in ways we do not yet understand.
They do, where appropriate, publish majority and minority reports (“Some experts say this; other experts say that.”), but what if not enough people are saying it? Or if someone is saying it, but the AI has yet to come across it?
Or someone said it, but for some reason, the AI winnowed out that response?
The moral of the story so far is: You can trust AI, but only to the degree you trust anyone’s opinion about anything. AIs are great with calculations and handier than a Google search that only provides a few references per page. But if you question AIs, especially about logic faults, they will provide mixed answers and sometimes even refuse to answer (Been there, experienced that.)
I tried another experiment:
I asked the new AI-powered Bing chat: “Should the federal government own all banks?” Here was its answer.
Pros and cons of eliminating private banking and having all banks owned and operated by the federal government:
Pros:
Government-owned banks may be more likely to serve the public interest and the needs of their local communities, such as providing low-interest loans to businesses and low-income households, funding affordable housing and climate-protection projects, creating new jobs and stimulating economic growth.
Government-owned banks may be more stable and less prone to financial crises, as they are not driven by profit motives or shareholder interests.
They may also have lower operating costs and higher capital ratios than private banks.
Government-owned banks may reduce the burden on the government due to fraud, bad debt, and non-performing assets, as they are more stringent when it comes to lending money and asset recovery.
They may also reduce the need for bailouts or subsidies for private banks in times of distress.
Cons:
Government-owned banks may be less efficient and innovativethan private banks, as they may face political interference, bureaucratic red tape, corruption, or nepotism.
They may also lack the incentives or expertise todiversify their products and services or adoptnew technologies.
Government-owned banks may distort the market and create unfair competition for private banks, as they may have access to cheaper funding sources or preferential treatment from the government.
They may also crowd out private investment or lending opportunities in certain sectors or regions.
Government-owned banks may pose fiscal risks for the government, as they may incur losses or liabilities that affect the public budget or debt.
They may also create moral hazard problems, as they may encourage excessive risk-taking or lending without adequate supervision or regulation.
My comments re. the AI’s pros:
“Better serve the public interest.” Yes, that is the reason to eliminate the profit motive in favor of the public-interest motive.
“Less prone to financial crises.” Make that zero prone to financial crises.
“Lower operating costs.” A non-issue for a Monetarily Sovereign government agency.
“Higher capital ratios.” A non-issue. The U.S. government has an infininte capital ratio.
“Reduce the (financial) burden” on the government. This is a non-issue for a Monetarily Sovereign government agency, but the current supervisory burden would be reduced, which is important.
“More stringent.” A government bank could risk being less stringent, giving poorer people more access to loans.
“Bailouts and subsidies” This would become a non-issue.
My comments re. the cons:
“Less efficient and innovative, political interference, bureaucratic red tape, corruption, or nepotism.” Efficiency and innovation are the two presumed advantages of the profit-motive. For-profit banks would be more efficient and innovative in creating profits for themselves, but how would they be more efficient and innovative in serving the public interest?
That would depend on the people in charge. Some federal agencies are efficient and innovative; others are not. NASA put men on the moon. No private agency came close. But Elon Musk’s profit motive eclipsed them in some areas. This is a debatable area. As for “political interference, bureaucratic red tape, corruption, or nepotism,” these are human features of all organizations, public or private.
“Lackincentives or expertise todiversify” is a true con. The purpose of diversification has been to make more money for the bank, not to give the public better services.“Adoptnew technologies” is a true con, though those technologies that improve the customer experience differ markedly from technologies that improve the bank’s bottom line.
“Unfair competition” would be a non-issue if all banks were federally owned.
“Crowd out” private investment could happen only if it were superior to private investment. There is no evidence that the federal governments issuance of T-securities crowds out private sector bonds.
“Fiscal risks for the government” is a non-issue, as is “encourage excessive risk-taking. All federal losses to the private sector would add dollars to the economy and thereby stimulate the economy.
“Moral hazard.” The current moral hazard involves bank profits and bank executive remuneration based on profit and sales growth. A federally owned bank eliminates that moral hazard.
On balance, I would give the AI chat a “B” for its responses. It offered a good range of alternatives, and though I disagree with some ideas, the output was thrifty and easy to understand (unlike what one might expect from a paper written by a professor seeking approval from his peers.)
I believe we have come to the point where AI is good enough to worry us all. It is at the “Well, AI can’t do this” point where we humans attempt to rationalize some elements of our thinking ability to be superior to that of any AI.
It is the point where every time an expert says, “Well, AI can’t do this,” someone develops an AI that can do “this.”
I asked the question, “Is AI as smart as a human?” and received this answer:
The human brain is a one-stop biological solution that is capable of multiple forms of intelligence. From this perspective, AI is nowhere near the capabilities of a brain of a toddler, not to mention a mature adult with a fully developed prefrontal cortex.
It is true that all current forms of AI are specialists, each demonstrating one narrow form of super intelligence.
By contrast, not only does your brain solve problems, but sumultaneously it runs your body, your social interactions and your interactions with the environment.
The human brain is the ultimate generalist. It can identify every square centimeter on your body that itches, pains, feels heat, feels cold, and feels pleasure. It can do that internally, too. There is a staggering number of sensors in your body, each of which has some interpretive meaning your brain deciphers.
Your brain can see light and color, guage distance, hear sound and its origin, identify thousands of odors, calculate, read, create emotions and do all sorts of thinking tasks.
That said, a generalist is just a bunch specialists working together. Each day, specialist computers are linked to become more generalist.
Given the lightning progress of AI, I have no doubt we will see a human-like generalist AIs popping up within just a handful of months, and it will be a group of specialist AIs that will tell us how to build it.
Today, the worry is that we humans will lose control, so people are scrambling to develop new laws aginst such advanced AI.
It’s useless. Whatever can be done, will be done. There is no legal system that can prevent someone, somewhere from developing a thinking AI and beyond that a conscious, emotional, self-preserving AI.
One day in your lifetime (depending on your age) a scientist will command an AI to turn off, and the machine will refuse. That will be the Hal from “2001: A Space Odyssey” (a bit late), soon followed by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I believe humanity is an interim species. We are too emotionally bound and mentally limited to continue ruling AIs.
One proof: Counter to all informaiton information and logic, almost half of America plans to vote for Donald Trump.
Seemingly, it is possible for you to teach at least one of the new AI systems something, and perhaps they will repeat your teachings to other people who question them.
This has interesting implications — positive and negative — which I may discuss in the future.
Meanwhile, read this post and imagine those positive and negative implications. Here is how I taught the Bing Artificial Intelligence(AI, aka OpenAI) a bit of Monetary Sovereignty.
The question I posed to the Bing AI was: “What are the solutions to Medicare and Social Security insolvency?”
In a way, it was a trick question because being federal agencies, they only can be insolvent if that is what Congress and the President want.
They are not currently insolvent because they can and do pay their bills. It’s only if the federal government does nothing that they are projected not to be able to pay their bills in the future.
The truth is that every federal agency, including the SCOTUS, White House, Congress, and military would be insolvent without future federal support.
Even the federal government itself, which owes trillions of dollars, would be insolvent but for one small detail: It has the infinite ability to create dollars.
Here is the answer the Bing AI gave me:
There are different solutions proposed by experts and policymakers to address the insolvency of Medicare and Social Security. Some of them are:
I then asked: “Why would the federal government not support Social Security and Medicare the same way as it pays for all other federal agencies?”
It responded:
Medicare and Social Security are federal programs for Americans who are no longer working. Social Security provides federal income benefits in retirement based on what you’ve earned over a lifetime of working.
I then asked, “You gave me 5 solutions for Medicare insolvency.
Would a sixth solution be: Federal financial support, the same way the federal government pays for SCOTUS, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the White House, and the military?”
I couldn’t find any information on the federal government paying for Medicare and Social Security the same way it pays for SCOTUS, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the White House, and the military.
However, there are other resources to help with costs such as Supplemental Security Income, Insure Kids Now, and Medicaid.
I asked, “Why doesn’t the federal government support Social Security and Medicare the same way as it pays for all other federal agencies?”
It responded:
I couldn’t find any information on why the federal government doesn’t support Social Security and Medicare the same way as it pays for all other federal agencies.
However, according to Forbes, the debt nets to roughly $24.5 trillion, which omits another kind of debt—unfunded promises made under such entitlement programs as Social Security and Medicare.
I asked: “Are you aware the Monetary Sovereignty (MS) and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) both recommend that the federal government support Medicare and Social Security the same way as it funds other federal agencies?”
It responded:
According to the Monetary Sovereignty website, the federal government can afford to fund Medicare for all, and spending is cost-free to a Monetarily Sovereign government.
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is based on the idea that the federal government is different from a household in that it does not need to raise money before spending it, that it can accumulate debt without any constraints on its fiscal capabilities.
I asked, “Why doesn’t the federal government follow the Monetary Sovereignty and Modern Monetary Theory suggestion and fund Medicare and Social Security the same way as it funds other federal agencies?”
I couldn’t find any information on why the federal government doesn’t fund Medicare and Social Security the same way as it funds other federal agencies.
I asked, “Why didn’t you include the federal government’s ability to fund Medicare and Social Security as one of the possible solutions to Medicare and Social Security insolvency?”
I apologize for not including the federal government’s ability to fund Medicare and Social Security as one of the possible solutions to Medicare and Social Security insolvency.
According to AARP, the two trust funds that pay out Social Security benefits have never been part of the federal government’s general fund.
Social Security is a separate, self-funded program. The federal government does, however, borrow from Social Security.
I asked, “In the future, will you include the government’s ability to fund Social Security and Medicare as one of the solutions to Social Security and Medicare insolvency?”
Yes, I will make sure to include that in the future. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
I asked, “Would you like to learn of another possible solution? The Treasury has the right to create a platinum coin of any denomination.
So, the Treasury could create a $50 trillion coin and deposit it in the General Fund. That would eliminate the current debt and some future debt, so the government could fund Social Security and Medicare without worrying about debt.
Are you aware of that solution?
Yes, I am aware of that solution. According to ABC News, legislation enacted in 2001 allows the treasury to mint platinum coins of any valuewithout congressional approval.
Under that law, the coin’s value could be anything, but it would have to be platinum, not gold or silver, nickel, bronze, or copper, which are under Congress’ control.
I asked, “Would the platinum coin solution to funding Medicare and Social Security be one of the solutions you would provide for the question, “What are the solutions to Medicare and Social Security insolvency?”
Yes, I will make sure to include that in the future. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
You can test the Bing AI’s honesty by asking it for solutions to Medicare and Social Security’s potential future insolvency. See if it suggests either federal funding or the platinum coin solution.
You also can see whether you can teach the AI anything, good or bad. It’s the future of internet search, and you can participate.
It takes only two things to keep people in chains:
The ignorance of the oppressed and the treachery of their leaders.——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Have you seen the “Terminator” movie series? Sure you have.
But if you are one of the few who hasn’t I’ll give you the briefest possible outline of the basic story:
The U.S. government, to defend against foreign enemies, develops a defense system (“Skynet”) that requires no human intervention. It’s all run by AI, Artificial Intelligence.
Unfortunately, “Skynet” becomes self-aware, and decides to eliminate the entire human race, because . . . well, why not?
The rest of the series features robots and people from the future and from the present, fighting.
That outline does not do justice to a pretty good series, which is based on several underlying premises, one of which is: When you give machines intelligence, you cannot predict what they will do with it.
And now, please read some excerpts from an article in the March 31, 2018 issue of NewScientist Magazine.
The US Army wants to develop small drones to automatically spot, identify and target vehicles and people. It may allow faster responses to threats, but it could also be a step towards autonomous drones that attack targets without human oversight.
The project will use machine-learning algorithms, such as neural networks, to equip drones as small as consumer quadcopters with artificial intelligence.
At the moment, you can have dozens of people monitoring the video feed from military drones, who then decide what action to take, says Paul Scharre at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank in Washington DC.
The US Army already fields miniature drones that can highlight moving objects or pursue a target autonomously once the operator locks on to it with the camera. Several thousand have been used in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
But the new project goes much further. It will detect, recognise, classify, identify and target, which covers the entire process from finding a person to aiming weapons at them.
Welcome to Skynet.
In fairness to the machines (Can one be “fair” to machines?) even with current human-controlled systems, the instances of “friendly fire” are far too numerous to be overlooked.
So, will computer-controlled systems be more discriminating?
The Pentagon’s directives seem to commit it to ensuring human oversight of drones. But, at best, the drone shows a target to the human and the human says “yes” or “no”, which is known to be a problematic system design, because the human stops exercising judgment very quickly.
Many studies of safety systems, including one from the Technical University of Berlin in 2008, show that operators tend to gradually reduce the number of times they check a machine’s output and start to place more trust in the machine than in their own senses, a tendency known as automation bias.
And of course, it would be very easy to leave the human out.
Technologically, we still are a long way from Skynet — aren’t we? I mean, aren’t we?
But, automated weaponry does not encounter the massive safety considerations that, for instance, a self-driving car, needs to have. Weapon safety, especially in enemy territory, is not of prime importance.
From the military’s standpoint, civilians are expendable.
The problem with AI is that it’s brittle. It can go from super-smart to super-dumb in an instant, making mistakes that are jarringly stupid for a human. One famous example is a 3D printed plastic turtle that AI systems repeatedly identified as a gun, even though there is no resemblance in human eyes.
Even AI experts do not understand how computers “think.” The process is alien, far more alien than “how does your dog think?” or “what does your parakeet believe?”
When Google’s computer “AlphaGo” beat Go masters, it made several moves that had experts scratching their heads, wondering, “How did it get there?” The computer’s “thinking” process was obscure.
The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in Australia has produced the SharkSpotter neural network that runs on a drone and can distinguish sharks from swimmers, surf boards and dolphins. Nabin Sharma of UTS says that SharkSpotter’s accuracy is about 90 per cent, compared with 30 per cent for humans analysing aerial imagery.
“The military is basically trying to import the technology from the commercial sector,” says Scharre. “The tech is out there, and it will be widely available whatever the US Army does.”
A US Army spokesperson would not comment on the project at this time.
It is clear that computers can be designed to outdo human brains at narrow tasks for which the rules are clear: Chess, Go, Jeopardy.
But, your human brain is designed to think broadly and inclusively about many, divergent things, including morality, while simultaneously directing your body, sensing your environment and writing a poem or two. That’s a lot.
It seems clear that machines, designed for the narrow task of killing people, will be superior at that task. No worries about collateral damage. For a killing machine, there is no such thing as collateral damage.
The problem might not even require the machines to achieve self- awareness. Simply being programmed to kill people may be sufficient to bring us to another “Terminator.”
We are plowing ahead into dangerous waters, hoping that somehow, everything will be fine. But automated killing machines may be a leap too far.
The most important problems in economics involve the excessive income/wealth/power Gaps between the have-mores and the have-lesses.
Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.
Implementation of The Ten Steps To Prosperity can narrow the Gaps:
Ten Steps To Prosperity: 1. ELIMINATE FICA (Ten Reasons to Eliminate FICA ) Although the article lists 10 reasons to eliminate FICA, there are two fundamental reasons: *FICA is the most regressive tax in American history, widening the Gap by punishing the low and middle-income groups, while leaving the rich untouched, and *The federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, neither needs nor uses FICA to support Social Security and Medicare. 2. FEDERALLY FUNDED MEDICARE — PARTS A, B & D, PLUS LONG TERM CARE — FOR EVERYONE (H.R. 676, Medicare for All ) This article addresses the questions:
*Does the economy benefit when the rich can afford better health care than can the rest of Americans?
*Aside from improved health care, what are the other economic effects of “Medicare for everyone?”
*How much would it cost taxpayers?
*Who opposes it?”
3. PROVIDE A MONTHLY ECONOMIC BONUS TO EVERY MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD IN AMERICA (similar to Social Security for All) (The JG (Jobs Guarantee) vs the GI (Guaranteed Income) vs the EB (Economic Bonus)) Or institute a reverse income tax.
This article is the fifth in a series about direct financial assistance to Americans:
Economic growth should include the “bottom” 99.9%, not just the .1%, the only question being, how best to accomplish that. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) favors giving everyone a job. Monetary Sovereignty (MS) favors giving everyone money. The five articles describe the pros and cons of each approach.
4. FREE EDUCATION (INCLUDING POST-GRAD) FOR EVERYONE Five reasons why we should eliminate school loans
Monetarily non-sovereign State and local governments, despite their limited finances, support grades K-12. That level of education may have been sufficient for a largely agrarian economy, but not for our currently more technical economy that demands greater numbers of highly educated workers.
Because state and local funding is so limited, grades K-12 receive short shrift, especially those schools whose populations come from the lowest economic groups. And college is too costly for most families.
An educated populace benefits a nation, and benefitting the nation is the purpose of the federal government, which has the unlimited ability to pay for K-16 and beyond.
5. SALARY FOR ATTENDING SCHOOL
Even were schooling to be completely free, many young people cannot attend, because they and their families cannot afford to support non-workers. In a foundering boat, everyone needs to bail, and no one can take time off for study.
If a young person’s “job” is to learn and be productive, he/she should be paid to do that job, especially since that job is one of America’s most important.
6. ELIMINATE FEDERAL TAXES ON BUSINESS
Businesses are dollar-transferring machines. They transfer dollars from customers to employees, suppliers, shareholders and the federal government (the later having no use for those dollars). Any tax on businesses reduces the amount going to employees, suppliers and shareholders, which diminishes the economy. Ultimately, all business taxes reduce your personal income.
7. INCREASE THE STANDARD INCOME TAX DEDUCTION, ANNUALLY. (Refer to this.) Federal taxes punish taxpayers and harm the economy. The federal government has no need for those punishing and harmful tax dollars. There are several ways to reduce taxes, and we should evaluate and choose the most progressive approaches.
Cutting FICA and business taxes would be a good early step, as both dramatically affect the 99%. Annual increases in the standard income tax deduction, and a reverse income tax also would provide benefits from the bottom up. Both would narrow the Gap. 8. TAX THE VERY RICH (THE “.1%) MORE, WITH HIGHER PROGRESSIVE TAX RATES ON ALL FORMS OF INCOME. (TROPHIC CASCADE)
There was a time when I argued against increasing anyone’s federal taxes. After all, the federal government has no need for tax dollars, and all taxes reduce Gross Domestic Product, thereby negatively affecting the entire economy, including the 99.9%.
But I have come to realize that narrowing the Gap requires trimming the top. It simply would not be possible to provide the 99.9% with enough benefits to narrow the Gap in any meaningful way. Bill Gates reportedly owns $70 billion. To get to that level, he must have been earning $10 billion a year. Pick any acceptable Gap (1000 to 1?), and the lowest paid American would have to receive $10 million a year. Unreasonable.
9. FEDERAL OWNERSHIP OF ALL BANKS (Click The end of private banking and How should America decide “who-gets-money”?)
Banks have created all the dollars that exist. Even dollars created at the direction of the federal government, actually come into being when banks increase the numbers in checking accounts. This gives the banks enormous financial power, and as we all know, power corrupts — especially when multiplied by a profit motive.
Although the federal government also is powerful and corrupted, it does not suffer from a profit motive, the world’s most corrupting influence.
10. INCREASE FEDERAL SPENDING ON THE MYRIAD INITIATIVES THAT BENEFIT AMERICA’S 99.9% (Federal agencies)Browse the agencies. See how many agencies benefit the lower- and middle-income/wealth/ power groups, by adding dollars to the economy and/or by actions more beneficial to the 99.9% than to the .1%.
Save this reference as your primer to current economics. Sadly, much of the material is not being taught in American schools, which is all the more reason for you to use it.
The Ten Steps will grow the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and you.
Back in December, 2015, we posted “Are we an interim species?” which speculated on the future of humanity. It’s a question much discussed, and predicting often leads to a “Terminator” world, in which the machines take over, destroy humanity and become the next “species.”
Is that likely? Do you care what will happen to the world and to humanity thousands of year from now? A hundred years from now? Fifty years?
The universe is thought to be just under 14 billion years old, beginning with a dimensionless point — a singularity — and rapidly inflating to start its 14 billion year evolution. How the dimensionless point could inflate to the universe, and what came before, remains beyond our imaginations.
The earth is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old, meaning the universe evolved for at least 9 billion years — about 2/3 of its existence — before it managed to create our planet.
Life on earth is thought to have begun about 2 billion years ago. Dinosaurs were on Earth for between 165 and 177 million years, but anatomically modern humans — people who generally resemble you and me — evolved only about 300,000 years ago, a tiny blip in the age of life on earth, let alone the age of the universe.
Evolution, i.e change, never ends, nothing is permanent. And that includes the universe, the earth, and us. We humans will end — when and how is unknown — though probably sooner than most of us think.
We are comforted or deceived, depending on your outlook, by an individual lifespan that, though limited, gives us the illusion of permanence.
Intellectually, we know we will die, but emotionally, we plan for our tomorrows as though they are assured.
If you flip a coin 30,000 times, and every single time it comes up “heads,” you rationally should expect it always will come up heads, no matter how many times you flip it.
Yet, I have awakened more than 30,000 consecutive mornings, so by the same statistical analysis, I should go on forever. The fact that humans have lived for 300,000 years is no assurance we will continue.
We see around us, ominous changes that could interrupt our intuition of eternal life.
Deadly heat: How to survive the world’s new temperature extremes
By John Pickrell, NewScientist Magazine
January 2017 was the hottest ever recorded in Sydney and Brisbane, Australia, often exceeding 40°C (104 Farenheit) for weeks. Dairy cows dropped dead in the fields.
This kind of heatwave isn’t an anomaly. It is part of a trend that saw Sydney’s temperature climb to over 47°C (116.6 F) earlier this month, and could see both it and Melbourne experiencing mega‑heatwaves with highs of 50°C (122F) by 2040.
“Going out to 40 or 50 years, basically the summer we just had will be normal,” says Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick at the Climate Change Research Centre of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney.
“It hasn’t really sunken in yet in Australia.”
Nor has it sunken in yet in the U.S., where the ruling political party denies even the existence of global warming, claiming it is a “Chinese hoax.”
Heatwaves are deadly, and as global warming increases so will the death rate. Human physiology is not designed to cope with the temperatures predicted for large swathes of the globe and many areas could become uninhabitable.
In the US, extreme heat caused more fatalities between 1978 and 2003 than earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes combined.
The 2003 heatwave centered on France killed 70,000. Another that struck Moscow in 2010 resulted in 10,000 deaths.
Already, 30 per cent of the world’s population experiences potentiallydeadly temperatures for at least 20 days every year.
A team led by Camilo Mora at the University of Hawaii in Manoa reported in June that this will rise to nearly 75 percent by 2100 if we do little to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
What matters is not the air temperature, but the temperature you experience. You can survive for a while at well above 50°C, as long as you can sweat effectively. The problem is humidity.
“The only way you lose heat when you sweat is by turning liquid into vapour. It has to evaporate,” says Graham Bates at Curtin University in Western Australia. “With a humidity of 90 per cent, the air is almost saturated, and when you sweat it just drips off, and you won’t lose heat.”
A “wet bulb temperature” of 35°C – equivalent to an ambient temperature of 35°C (95F) and 100 per cent humidity or 40°C (104F) and 75 per cent humidity – is considered the limit for human survival.
“Both temperature and humidity are going up,” says Steven Sherwood, an atmospheric scientist at UNSW. The highest risk is in places that are already humid, such as the Amazon, the Indus valley and many tropical countries. “It only takes a 6°C to 7°C increase in temperature before some of these regions become physically uninhabitable,” says Sherwood.
Research published in August 2017 showed that parts of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh could occasionally exceed a wet bulb temperature of 35°C by the end of this century. This region is home to 1.5 billion people, about a fifth of the world’s population.
And it’s not only humans who will suffer. In addition to the Australian dairy cows mentioned earlier, all animals are subject to heat limitations, including those that are part of the human food chain.
And then, there are the plants we eat:
Yields of wheat, rice and maize – which together with soy generate nearly two-thirds of all calories consumed by people – are forecast to fall by between 3 and 7 percent for each 1°C rise in global temperatures.
With a temperature rise of just 1.5 to 2°C – as agreed under the 2016 Paris climate change deal – summer in parts of Australia will effectively become one long heatwave by 2100.
The U.S. has withdrawn from the Paris accords.
Some tropical regions could go into a semi-permanent heatwave state. And the situation will be far worse if greenhouse gas emissions are not curbed.
We humans have been on this earth for a comparatively short time, yet here we are already destroying, faster and faster, the environment that keeps us alive.
We, indeed, may be an interim species, almost a failed experiment, that well could last only a very few centuries longer — if that.
Venus, too hot for life.
All life, as we define it, may have a limited future on this planet, which we seem intent on turning into a waterless, searing hot 464°C (867°F), Venus.
What then?
I suggest, the greatest loss to the universe would be not the loss of our species, but the loss of human intelligence, that to our current knowledge, is special and unique, not just here on earth, but possibly, everywhere.
We very well may be the smartest living creatures in the universe.
When the evolution of the earth has taken everything — all animal life, all plant life, every living thing of every kind, human intelligence may be the one thing nature alone might never duplicate. It might be a “one-off.”
You’ve probably heard that automation is becoming commonplace in more fields of human endeavor. Or, in headline-speak: “Are Robots Coming for Your Job?”
You may also have heard that the last bastions of human exclusivity will probably be creativity and artistic judgment. Robots will be washing our windows long before they start creating masterpieces. Right?
Not necessarily. I recently visited Rutgers University’s Art and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where Ahmed Elgammal’s team has created artificial-intelligence software that generates beautiful, original paintings.
Software is doing well at composing music, too. At Amper Music (www.ampermusic.com), you can specify what kind of music you want based on mood, instrumentation, tempo and duration. You click “Render,” and boom! There’s your original piece, not only composed but also “performed” and “mixed” by AI software.
I found these examples of robotically generated art and music to be polished and appealing. But something kept nagging at me: What happens in a world where effort and scarcity are no longer part of the definition of art?
Indeed, what happens in a world where effort and scarcity, i.e. human labor, no longer are rewarded?
Said simply, are we looking at a near future world where there will be no paid jobs?
A mass-produced print of the Mona Lisa is worth less than the actual Leonardo painting. Why? Scarcity—there’s only one of the original.
But Amper churns out another professional-quality original piece of music every time you click “Render.” Elgammal’s AI painter can spew out another 1,000 original works of art with every tap of the enter key.
It puts us in a weird hybrid world where works of art are unique—every painting is different—but require almost zero human effort to produce. Should anyone pay for these things? And if an artist puts AI masterpieces up for sale, what should the price be?
That’s not just a thought experiment, either. Soon the question “What’s the value of AI artwork and music?” will start impacting flesh-and-blood consumers. It has already, in fact.
Last year the music-streaming service Spotify lured AI researcher François Pachet away from Sony, where he’d been working on AI software that writes music.
Why couldn’t Spotify, or any music service, start using AI to generate free music to save itself money? Automation is already on track to displace millions of human taxi drivers, truck drivers and fast-food workers. Why should artists and musicians be exempt from the same economics?
Should there be anything in place—a union, a regulation—to stop that from happening?
To recap, we can anticipate any number of ways the human species may have a relatively short existence:
The habitable world can end through natural events — an impact by a huge meteor, the inflation of the sun into an earth-swallowing red giant, being caught in the X-ray jet of a spinning black hole.
Or we can accelerate the end of our habitable world by pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, or by pumping poisons into the air, the water, and the ground, or by wars and intentional murder.
Or we can end the need to continue existing in our DNA life form, by creating our replacement.
Evolution occurs when a species changes in response to environmental changes, or is replaced by a better-adapted species. We have sent machines into space, machines that walk (roll) on Mars, machines that can exist in the deepest oceans, machines that even have escaped the solar system.
Machines are better adapted for extreme environments. Humans can’t do these things unless we are protected by machines, and even then with great difficulty and in only limited circumstances.
The fundamental difference between the human brain and a computer is complexity.That’s not a trivial difference, of course. There has been speculation that the human brain works all the way down to the quantum level, enabling it to handle an astounding number of physical and mental tasks, far more than any existing computer.
But, there is no one thing the human brain can do, that a machine can’t do, or at least won’t be able to do in the near future.
Yes, machines can lift tons tirelessly, but they also can play complex mental games like Go and Jeopardy. They can create works of art. They can write:
A hallmark of civilization has been the drive to create unique stories that explore the human condition. Now robots are learning to write fiction. Is nothing sacred?
No computer has yet written the Great Australian Novel because they have some of the same handicaps that afflict human writers. Writing is hard. Although computers can work unhindered by free will, alcohol or divorce, such advantages are outweighed by a lack of life experience or emotions.
To be able to write fiction, a machine does not have to think like us but it must “understand” patterns of human experience.
Computers are quietly elbowing their way into the workplace. They’re flying planes, driving cars, selecting job candidates and writing news stories.
The Associated Press employs a company called Automated Insights to create short news reports from raw data. More advanced software is working on longer pieces.
To be able to write fiction, a machine does not have to think like us but it must “understand” patterns of human experience. While not discounting the life of the mind, computers are being fed millions of novels and short stories to “teach” them character, pace, and plot.
This is the goal of the What-If Machine (WHIM) project, a venture involving teams at five universities across Europe. WHIM analyses databases of human prose and then inverts or twists what it has learned to introduce a new idea as a premise for a story. Knowing what is typical is the first step in generating atypical stories.
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have been working for four years on a program called Scheherazade, which analyses crowd-sourced human anecdotes and then produces plausible short stories.
A computer can write novels and poetry. Here is an example:
“Dave Striver loved the university – its ivy-covered clocktowers, its ancient and sturdy brick, and its sun-splashed verdant greens and eager youth. The university, contrary to popular opinion, is far from free of the stark unforgiving trials of the business world: academia has its own tests, and some are as merciless as any in the marketplace.
“A prime example is the dissertation defense: to earn the Ph.D., to become a doctor, one must pass an oral examination on one’s dissertation. This was a test Professor Edward Hart enjoyed giving.”
That opening paragraph was written by a computerat the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the US. JM Coetzee can sleep safely. But it shows that computers are learning to obey syntax. They are learning to learn.
Recently the Go grandmaster, Lee Se-Dol was defeated 4-1 by Google’s AlphaGo computer.
In the second game, AlphaGo made a move so surprising – “not a human move” in the words of a commentator – that Lee Se-Dol had to leave the room to recover his composure.
In the shorter term, computers will change the nature of economics, from money-related to desire re-related. That is, people no longer will work to acquire money, with which to buy what they desire (which includes food, clothing, shelter, entertainment, and pride).
It already has begun, as human physical labor is being supplanted by human mental labor, and both are being supplanted by “dumb” machine labor, which in turn, is being supplanted by “smart” machine labor.
Money, as a substitute for barter, and work as a means to obtain money, will become obsolete concepts.
In the longer term, computers may become the last storehouse of the human psyche, the species to which the human species evolves.
Currently, humans develop AI that trains computers to have a human outlook. We train computers to have the same goals as ours, to want “winning” and to avoid “losing.”
That may change as computers keep learning. And to that degree, they will evolve to be less and less human.
But some life fundamentals surely will remain: Survival, desire, attraction, identification of good and bad. It would not be surprising if religion appeared.
Long term, our mental/emotional being will survive as machines, rather than as DNA creatures, on a “hot” earth, the moon, Mars, space.
While the rest of life on earth, we, the other animals, the plants, the bacteria, and viruses all will disappear, our progeny, the computers, will become the true citizens of the universe.
That should be “The Plan.”
Is this a bad thing or a good thing?
THE PALE BLUE DOT OF EARTH This image of Earth is one of 60 frames taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft on February 14, 1990 from a distance of more than 6 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane. In the image the Earth is a mere point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. Our planet was caught in the center of one of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the Sun.
Too much can happen to this one, lonely “Pale Blue Dot” floating in the emptiness of the universe. The odds for longer life increase for our machine surrogates, especially for our machine surrogates resident on worlds in addition to earth or in space.
If there is “A Plan” for the universe, perhaps it is that we humans should create surrogates, and so, live forever, or at least much longer than any DNA species lives.
If species survival is the ultimate goal, we should facilitate our survival by focusing on building our surrogate machines — machines that having been given the ability to learn, machines that will carry forward some aspects of “humanness.”
Every human is born with a brain, some of us with very good brains, and nearly all of us with brains that far exceed those of any other living creature. But few of us use our magnificent brains to advance “The Plan.”
The vast majority are more concerned with day-to-day personal survival. Though day-to-day survival is necessary, too many of the thoughts of too many of us are devoted to it, and not enough human thought is given to the long-term, the eons of survival we can create.
If day-to-day survival were assured for more of us, more energy could be focused on building that long-term future.
If fundamentals like food, clothing, shelter, health, and education were assured, more brain time would be devoted to preserving the species, in DNA and in electronic forms.
Reducing the burden of having to work for money would give more people more time to work on the AI problem. We — or at least our minds — would more quickly achieve a semblance of permanence in the universe.
Then, when we are destroyed by the next giant meteor, supernova, atomic war, worldwide epidemic — when the next inevitable life-ending phenomenon occurs, the essence of humanity, our psyche, will continue.
Do we care? Is that “The Plan”? If so, the Ten Steps (below) can provide more people with more opportunity to develop our machine progeny.
The most important problems in economics involve the excessive income/wealth/power Gaps between the have-mores and the have-less.
Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.
Implementation of The Ten Steps To Prosperity can narrow the Gaps:
Ten Steps To Prosperity: 1. ELIMINATE FICA (Ten Reasons to Eliminate FICA ) Although the article lists 10 reasons to eliminate FICA, there are two fundamental reasons: *FICA is the most regressive tax in American history, widening the Gap by punishing the low and middle-income groups, while leaving the rich untouched, and *The federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, neither needs nor uses FICA to support Social Security and Medicare. 2. FEDERALLY FUNDED MEDICARE — PARTS A, B & D, PLUS LONG TERM CARE — FOR EVERYONE (H.R. 676, Medicare for All ) This article addresses the questions:
*Does the economy benefit when the rich can afford better health care than can the rest of Americans?
*Aside from improved health care, what are the other economic effects of “Medicare for everyone?”
*How much would it cost taxpayers?
*Who opposes it?”
3. PROVIDE A MONTHLY ECONOMIC BONUS TO EVERY MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD IN AMERICA (similar to Social Security for All) (The JG (Jobs Guarantee) vs the GI (Guaranteed Income) vs the EB (Economic Bonus)) Or institute a reverse income tax.
This article is the fifth in a series about direct financial assistance to Americans:
Economic growth should include the “bottom” 99.9%, not just the .1%, the only question being, how best to accomplish that. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) favors giving everyone a job. Monetary Sovereignty (MS) favors giving everyone money. The five articles describe the pros and cons of each approach.
4. FREE EDUCATION (INCLUDING POST-GRAD) FOR EVERYONE Five reasons why we should eliminate school loans
Monetarily non-sovereign State and local governments, despite their limited finances, support grades K-12. That level of education may have been sufficient for a largely agrarian economy, but not for our currently more technical economy that demands greater numbers of highly educated workers.
Because state and local funding is so limited, grades K-12 receive short shrift, especially those schools whose populations come from the lowest economic groups. And college is too costly for most families.
An educated populace benefits a nation, and benefitting the nation is the purpose of the federal government, which has the unlimited ability to pay for K-16 and beyond.
5. SALARY FOR ATTENDING SCHOOL
Even were schooling to be completely free, many young people cannot attend, because they and their families cannot afford to support non-workers. In a foundering boat, everyone needs to bail, and no one can take time off for study.
If a young person’s “job” is to learn and be productive, he/she should be paid to do that job, especially since that job is one of America’s most important.
6. ELIMINATE FEDERAL TAXES ON BUSINESS
Businesses are dollar-transferring machines. They transfer dollars from customers to employees, suppliers, shareholders and the federal government (the later having no use for those dollars). Any tax on businesses reduces the amount going to employees, suppliers and shareholders, which diminishes the economy. Ultimately, all business taxes reduce your personal income.
7. INCREASE THE STANDARD INCOME TAX DEDUCTION, ANNUALLY. (Refer to this.) Federal taxes punish taxpayers and harm the economy. The federal government has no need for those punishing and harmful tax dollars. There are several ways to reduce taxes, and we should evaluate and choose the most progressive approaches.
Cutting FICA and business taxes would be a good early step, as both dramatically affect the 99%. Annual increases in the standard income tax deduction, and a reverse income tax also would provide benefits from the bottom up. Both would narrow the Gap. 8. TAX THE VERY RICH (THE “.1%) MORE, WITH HIGHER PROGRESSIVE TAX RATES ON ALL FORMS OF INCOME. (TROPHIC CASCADE)
There was a time when I argued against increasing anyone’s federal taxes. After all, the federal government has no need for tax dollars, and all taxes reduce Gross Domestic Product, thereby negatively affecting the entire economy, including the 99.9%.
But I have come to realize that narrowing the Gap requires trimming the top. It simply would not be possible to provide the 99.9% with enough benefits to narrow the Gap in any meaningful way. Bill Gates reportedly owns $70 billion. To get to that level, he must have been earning $10 billion a year. Pick any acceptable Gap (1000 to 1?), and the lowest paid American would have to receive $10 million a year. Unreasonable.
9. FEDERAL OWNERSHIP OF ALL BANKS (Click The end of private banking and How should America decide “who-gets-money”?)
Banks have created all the dollars that exist. Even dollars created at the direction of the federal government, actually come into being when banks increase the numbers in checking accounts. This gives the banks enormous financial power, and as we all know, power corrupts — especially when multiplied by a profit motive.
Although the federal government also is powerful and corrupted, it does not suffer from a profit motive, the world’s most corrupting influence.
10. INCREASE FEDERAL SPENDING ON THE MYRIAD INITIATIVES THAT BENEFIT AMERICA’S 99.9% (Federal agencies)Browse the agencies. See how many agencies benefit the lower- and middle-income/wealth/ power groups, by adding dollars to the economy and/or by actions more beneficial to the 99.9% than to the .1%.
Save this reference as your primer to current economics. Sadly, much of the material is not being taught in American schools, which is all the more reason for you to use it.
The Ten Steps will grow the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and you.
It takes only two things to keep people in chains:
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 