Virtually every commentary about AI approaches the topic at a too low perspective: the impact on jobs, privacy, energy vulnerability, etc. In fact, AI is a global issue that will change global politics, global trade and a new era of feeding the world. Below is an expert’s insights as to how AI will change the world – worth reading. From AXIOS:
The only daily news mariner reads are the email titles from news websites. He avoids television news. However, given a decent education and actively pursuing information during two presidential elections, he has a perspective about the way things are going. More than once he read headlines about two billionaire preachers trying to turn the US government into a theocracy – an awkward interpretation of the spirit of Jesus similar to what Rome did 2,400 years ago.
Anyone who takes the New Testament even half seriously asks about billionaire preachers. Isn’t that a blatant oxymoron? How can a representative of Jesus’ instruction that one is with God only when giving, sharing or helping become a billionaire? Remember the main parable about the Good Samaritan? Samaritan Jews and traditional Jews did not get along well (sort of like Protestants and Catholics} but a Samaritan is traveling in traditional Jewish neighborhoods when he comes upon an injured Jew by the side of the road. The Samaritan gets the Jew to an inn, pays his housing costs and assures the innkeeper that he will cover medical costs. Mariner is pretty sure the Samaritan is not a billionaire in Rome-dominated Israel.
At a minimum what the preachers are doing is even worse than what Donald is doing. Metaphorically, if the nation were a shrub, Donald is using shears to cut it to the ground but is possible that the shrub will grow back; the preachers want to pull the shrub out by the root.
Of course one of the benefits is that the US congregation will have its own pope – probably a billionaire.
As many folks may experience, a sound sleep may be disturbed by a brain chasing some weird thoughts during the night. Mariner experienced this phenomenon last night when he was disturbed through the night by his brain struggling with language.
This time it was the troubles humans have because they must use the same sounds over and over again for different words because the human limits on making different sounds cannot handle the billions of words humans have invented. So humans have to use the same sound for many different words and meanings. Just a few simple one-syllable examples:
Cow, now, sow, plow, mean, bean, lean, tree, flee, see, flea, sea, etc.
If one sounds out the vowel letters in the alphabet (a,e,i,o,u and sometimes y, which is redundant to i), that’s about the limit of different noises a human can make. Humans try to stretch these sounds so they can invent more words. That is called slurring, or respectfully, dialect.
So humans use five sounds over and over and over again by attaching distortions of the throat, mouth, tongue, teeth, lips and jaw. These noises are called consonants.
Twenty-six letters constitute all the letters one is supposed to need to make words. But it isn’t that easy thanks to the Great Vowel Shift that occurred between 1400 and 1600. The shift made it easier to invent more words with the same vowel noises. Check these examples:
plough as well as plow, slough as well as slough – tricky, one uses the ‘ow’ sound, the other uses the ‘u’ sound; the other direction to make more words with no more vowels is to combine words, allowing vowels to be used more than once in one word. For example, tie dye as a simple one and Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is a complex one that means ‘fear of big words’, something about which Icelandic and Welsh languages have no concern.
What would it be like to be a crow and have to develop an entire vocabulary based on ‘caw’ noises. They have, you know.
So mariner can understand the problems ChatGPT (which stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) has trying to capture nuance and relevancy in human languages.
The dialect piece can be entertaining. Jimmie Carter and Fats Domino never end a word with the ‘ur’ sound; mariner’s friend from Boston puts ‘ur’ noises wherever he likes.
Thinking further, one wonders how the vowel noises are represented in sign language, There are only so many gyrations of the face, arms and hands.
No doubt readers have had enough fantasizing about archaeology and the role of humans. Today the post is about the behavior that keeps humans and communities bound to one another. This bonding is not limited to humans but also includes many of our mammal friends.
Mariner’s daughter, an excellent published author, came across a poem that she shared with her family:
Small Kindnesses
by Danusha Lameris
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
An sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead – you first,” “I like your hat.”
It is remarkable how this poem calms us and makes us feel secure. Our interpersonal behavior, at its most intimate and respectful moments, is the strong glue that holds society together. These simple, often automatic comments are what strengthens complex ideas like “equality”, “all men are created equal” and “one man, one vote”. These gestures and comments should reflect out into our political behavior.
The presence of weaponized politics is the absence of small gestures that are above ideology.These gestures and comments also lie beneath bonding – a desire to unify and find security in belonging by sharing similarities rather than differences. Everyone likes to be respected, to feel valued, to feel uniquely important. How powerful is the effect of offering a seat on the bus to an unknown person. Do you know they murdered their mother? Of course not but bonding goes beyond prejudice, beyond race, beyond station. Bonding is the glue of civilization.
It is our human responsibility to sustain community by acting in the manner of Danusha Lameris’ poem.
In a recent post, mariner mentioned four forces of nature that would determine the future of Homo sapiens. They were global warming, population, disappearing resources and AI. This post offers resources that help understand why AI may not be the blessing of other advances like the automobile, airplanes, can openers, electric lights, etc.
Often mentioned is the movie Matrix which has become a movie series. It is about the battle a few independent humans have against an AI brain that totally controls the human race; humans are kept alive in caskets so central AI intelligence can use them as batteries; These humans are fed a fake reality that makes them believe they are living a normal life.
Another frequently mentioned source is a PBS documentary ‘Hacking the Brain’ about the powers of AI and how, if controlled, AI can be useful but the documentary also displays the dangers of AI in its ability to manipulate humans even as they think they are living normal lives.
One source mariner hasn’t mentioned in a while is ‘The Social Dilemma’ available on Netflix. Largely, it is an interview of AI experts and managers who have left the AI corporations because of the immoral and intensely capitalistic policies exercised by corporations collectively known as Silicon Valley and which generate all the social media content with ulterior motives.
As to mariner’s prediction of Armageddon, AI is not a tool for making life better. There is an element of improvement reflected in better health care, resource management and supply chain efficiency but the AI technology is not controlled by anyone but the corporations themselves.
As it stands, social media can start wars, erroneously destroy careers, turn gossip into national policy, etc. – and does this without government restraint, without individual control of personal information, without total control of AI intrusion into economic sectors, and without due diligence to protect against hackers and international political abuse.
It is an area of the future which has yet to show its true colors. We will just have to wait and see how things turn out.
Mariner stopped by to visit with Nosey Mole yesterday. He discovered that Nosey had blocked all his tunnel entrances. Then mariner read the headline on one of his news headline emails: The republicans in Congress have submitted a bill that would allow only republicans as eligible to vote for the Speaker of the House.
Will Donald really become our first dictator? He has said a time or two that if he won, there wouldn’t be any more elections.
The next vote for Congressman is two years away. It may be the citizen’s last chance for sustaining a democracy.
Metaphorically, in the last post about the distant future, mariner borrowed a Musk tourist rocket. In this post, he takes a ride on the fact tractor, that heavily geared pursuit vehicle most of us need to delve into truth, reality and comprehension (TRC).
Today, the tractor goes by many names but two are prevalent and represent the only publicly handy sources for TRC: Wikipedia and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). There are many, many other TRC internet sites and publications but typically, they are known to fewer searchers and often have privacy procedures.
Only the two mentioned sites honor the factual standards of that time when TRC was available only in books. How many readers had a twenty-volume ‘Book of Knowledge’ reference when they were young? Mariner still has his, published in 1938, and the distance to the moon and stars was represented in an image of railroad trains setting off on trips to the Universe.
Both Wikipedia and PBS have fact-checking and nuance-rinsing requirements before broadcasting. PBS has a large library of insightful documentaries about every thought under the Sun – including the Sun. Further, PBS news editors do their best to represent today’s cacophony in a neutral manner. Wikipedia will print at the top of an article whether there needs to be some further editing by contributors.
Except for highly specialized subjects, jumping on the search engine or television to do some dependable research finds little to be confident about TRC beyond Wikipedia and PBS.
But today they need our help in a serious, continued survival way. They need subscribers to help pay the bills. Mariner subscribes to both, otherwise he would be embarrassed given the number of times each day he accesses each. As readers may know, all US governments are as happy as a bunch of three-year-olds being let into a playroom; anything is subject to abuse. At risk is Federal funding that contributes to PBS overhead. It is a specified target for the circus performers in Washington.
Wikipedia, just like all of us, has been overrun by social media. It requires a lot more staff and automated crosschecking to keep the dinner dishes clean, metaphorically speaking.
So here is a chance to help out. Become a subscriber.
You do not need to mark this post as ‘trash’. It is the only request for you to help out two TRC information sources that we use every day.
For many folks, filling the mind, body and soul can be a real challenge. Especially if one doesn’t watch TV for news or entertainment, one hasn’t had a smartphone implant, one is getting really old, one is severely ill or one suffers disabilities.
If the reader has any interest in the state of their contemporary knowledge or has a strange confusion about how reality works, mariner suggests documentaries. Documentaries come in all forms of media. Want to travel? sign up for onsite education programs sponsored by a university. Want to avoid travel? register for a campus-based class. Like to read? visit the library or purchase an institutionally recommended book. Like to scroll a smartphone? download documentaries from endless institutional resources.
Even among the morass of television broadcasting one can find excellent documentaries from felting to building a house or, if one is intellectual, try watching 51 seasons of NOVA on PBS. YouTube has a number of top class documentaries – especially about human history and documentaries about well known personalities.
If one likes to talk back, Ted Talks is a good watch for eccentricities in human life – or watch the pseudo doctors who can heal any ailment.
Mariner presents below a teaser list that he feels provides a life lesson as well as new information:
⊕ HACKING THE MIND – PBS. This is an older documentary that still is popular. It shows a blind man whose eyes can actually see where to go and a three-year-old who forms firm prejudices without any thought process. The major point is that the subconscious brain is really in charge of everything we do.
⊕ SECRETS IN YOUR DATA – PBS. A lot of consternation is around today because new AI technologies will invade our privacy. Do not worry – it already has. One example displays to a person the names of all his friends and acquaintances from many years ago; how about everywhere you went on your vacation, including stores. The major point is that everything is known to Google. Now it’s time for Google to live it for you; Google also speaks the subconscious language.
⊕ MESOPOTAMIA – THE GARDENS OF BABEL – YOUTUBE. This is an outstanding documentary about the beginning of western society. It began 15,000 years ago along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the region between Iraq and Iran. Many of the worldly events like the Tower of Babel and Noah’s flood which were realities in Mesopotamia’s time, show up in the mythology of the Old Testament. Mesopotamia was the giant world leader for 300 years until surrounding population and new industrial progress allowed smaller states to bring Mesopotamia down. Hmm, 300 years? new industrial progress ….?
In a past post, mariner said that neither the human eye nor the snail’s eye reflect what reality really looks like. He took this insight from the following documentary.
⊕ DECODING THE UNIVERSE, 4 PART SERIES – PBS. The subject is quantum mechanics, a reality that doesn’t work the same as the universe humans live in – a quandary in itself – so pay attention (a warning to anyone who wanders into the quantum world). It seems the mysterious Black Cloud has some important functions that hold the Universe together.
So check out documentaries on the television and check out hobby interests on YouTube. They will fill one’s day many fold.
Living here in a small town is very pleasant. The local folks are engaged in the practice of survival, that is, participating in community activities in various holiday celebrations, neighborly exchanges of small gifts and visitations, and multi-generational family gatherings. There is a positive air covering the town!
Nevertheless, only because few residents want to talk about it or still watch broadcast news and have ignored social media’s tendency to fawn upon itself, it is almost possible to separate community from national and world catastrophe. One forgets how pleasant normal life can be.
It’s amazing how many hobbies surface during the holidays. A service organization is building a tiny house for a veteran; the quilting club is turning out quilts for sale; several folks make their own holiday greeting cards – some quite exquisite; many choirs perform musical events around the county; there are Santa events in most public service agencies. Even Nosey Mole was seen wearing a Santa hat.
Appropriately, if not conveniently, the weather outside is frightful but the fire is so delightful, and since we’ve no place to go let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
There is no doubt that a human’s emotional survival skills have evolved with significant intensity and purpose. Let us pray that increased disorder will not test them further.
Seasoned readers may remember that, on occasion, mariner yields a post to the creative works of his wife. She is a nonprofit, unpublished professional poet. Her collection on 8 1/2 x 11 paper is close to three inches deep. He has urged her to get published to improve the family income. Here is her poem:
A Short Sermon
If you go for a walk in the woods
You need a walking stick:
Something to support you
When the footing is dangerous,
Something to defend you
When the cougar stalks.
You don’t need aluminum
Trekking poles with hand grips
And carbon steel tips-
Any stick will do.
You only have to look around
To see that the woods provides
Sticks in abundance.
The woods which is full of treacherous footing
And cougars
Is also full of sticks.
It is, after all,
What the woods is made of: sticks.
Isn’t it a miracle
That what we most need
Is provided in abundance?
And by sticks I mean
Courage, hope, faith, love.
And by woods I mean
The world
