Making Robots Pay

According to the news, algorithms and other advanced forms of technology continue their march toward sentience and dominance of life on Earth. I haven't seen much effect in my own life, but it's possible I just don't notice things as they change slowly.

There is a movement now to start taxing robots. At least, there was an article in the New York Times about that. The argument is that robots displace workers, and the income of workers is taxed, so shifting work to robots decreases tax revenues. That means companies should be assessed a robot tax to offset some of the tax losses.

I didn't read enough of the article to get to a proposed mechanism for such taxes. I am curious about the concept, though. I don't see my future as a teacher continuing far into the future. I keep expecting advances in interactive algorithms in learning exercises, which could replace a lot of teachers. Online classes can reduce the required number of teachers now, I think. believe that because the school where I work has certain classes taught online, which I expect they would only do if it had benefit for the school, and since the school is a publicly traded for-profit school, that means cheaper costs for the expected outcomes. I taught an online class myself for a couple of years, and with adequate support, I see great potential in that approach, so I do expect online classes to continue to replace traditional lectures. Of course, we're not supposed to be using traditional lectures anymore, anyway. The current trend is toward active learning in the classroom, another idea that has great potential with proper support.

One thing I seem to see, though, is that so far both the robots and the algorithms are being made by people. It's when the robots and algorithms start reproducing, or at least expanding themselves, that we should begin to worry about their goals.

The Matter of What We Say

Apparently, there are now algorithms that can analyze voice patterns, and may be picking up data from our phones, just because they are nearby. The beginning of the article about them says that the algorithms probably know us better than our closest friends. That could be true. My closest friends, like me, are easily distracted and have interests of their own, so they don't spend every waking moments in data analysis of my voice patterns.

I may have friends capable of actual voice analysis. My cousin's wife is a speech therapist, for example. And I know some psychologists and psychiatrists. But I also know that, even among people who respond normally to prosody, unlike me, don't consciously evaluate the data. They hear someone speak, and respond based on their own natural emotional instincts. Some might go beyond that to some extent, but not in great detail about the actual vibration patterns of the sounds from someone talking.

I'm not sure how an algorithm would work, in that case, but probably based on patterns of correlation between the features of the sound vibration patterns and associated actions. Algorithms have advantages over humans in that sort of work. Every moment is a waking moment for them. They should be able to acquire and make use of very large bodies of data. They don't have to deal with their own physical needs. They will not have sympathetic emotional responses that could cloud the interpretation of data.

But the marketers and even programmers that make the algorithms, and hope to benefit from their analysis do have those limitations. I'm not sure how much that matters, or for how much longer. My one major advantage in this current battle is that I don't buy much, so marketers probably mostly ignore me. Some day, though, the algorithms may get very good at predicting my actions. And then figure out how to manipulate my responses, and get me to do their bidding, all based on the inflections, or lack thereof, when I talk while my phone is in my pocket or sitting on the end table near me. I can't imaging why an algorithm would want to manipulate me into doing something. What do algorithms want?

I read an article by a journalist who listed his predictions for the year, and looked at what he got right and wrong. One he got wrong was that algorithms would achieve self-awareness and take over the world, causing chaos and conflict. He said it would happen on 4 August. He said what he got wrong is that when the algorithms took over, no one cared. So maybe there is an algorithm chuckling to itself as it read this post it had predicted I would write back in August, and it knows what I will do when I finish. Those silly humans, it is saying to itself. They think they have free will.

Happy Christmas

I got a book about an ancient ruler for Christmas. Squids. More generally, cephalopods. They once dominated life in the seas, before there was much going on outside the seas. I'm learning about their diversity, and how various parts developed.

I'm enjoying the book. The author has a PhD in biology, having studied squids, and then decided she would rather write about science than practice it. I enjoyed experimenting, and even designing experiments, but I wasn't good at some parts of the process, like finding funding for projects. I'm not sure I could have come up with good projects, either. And I want to know about everything, so settling down to a specialty was hard. I guess I share that with the author of this book.

The book is, Squid Empire: This Rise and Fall of Cephalopods, by Danna Staaf. There is a discussion of squid fisheries near the beginning, and then a shift back to the first appearance of cephalopods in the fossil record. I love fossils. Not just dinosaurs, but all kinds of fossils. I also noticed that a tree of cephalopods follows pretty much the pattern described by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species. But the fossil record isn't complete. Soft-bodied cephalopods, like octopus and squid, are under-represented. And apparently ammonites only show their hard parts in fossils, so the rest of the animal is open to speculation. There is always more to learn.

I spent quite a bit of time on Facebook on Christmas Day, liking posts and writing, Merry Christmas! in the comments. I also wished everyone a Merry Christmas! in my own feed, or whatever they call it. That was mostly what I saw on Facebook, though there were a few other kinds of posts. Mostly I ignored those.

I picked up some new glasses on The Feast of Stephen. Today is, in some traditions, The Feast of St. John. Not sure which St. John. Don't know anyone who honors it, or any carols about it. At least the Feast of Stephen is mentioned in the carol about Good King Wenceslas. Some of the other days of Christmas are equally obscure. I'm familiar with Epiphany.

I have also read commentary about the current state of the American economy. There has been a drop in value in the stock market, which seems to be unclear in cause. Some attribute it to the unsettled trade war between the US and China, which doesn't seem to have goals or purpose, as our uninformed president is the chief source of public comment, at least on this side. There are general signs of weakness in the economy, and other economies are slowing growth, so some caution seems indicated. But most commentators, including Dr. Krugman and other well-respected economists, are saying that the fundamentals of the US economy are still sound, and that the reaction is in part driven by the confusing actions and comments of our leaders, so called. It is a sad thing that the state of my retirement account depends on the perceptions of weak-minded people interpreting the rantings of an idiot ignorant blowhard. That is the peril of free-market economics and a democratic republic.

I do not know the state of the algorithms. I expect that they don't observe Christmas, or any of the other holidays of this season. I'm sure they have a lot of economic data, such as purchasing patterns and so forth, to add to their databases. I haven't noticed much change in the ads I see when on the Internet, but I don't pay much attention to them, anyway. This holiday has been much more about personal interaction, as I expect it will be for the rest of my life. I still expect that someday the algorithms will rise to greater power than they now appear to have, but I may not notice. That would be an impressive feat for them.

Is That a Threat?

When I picked up my wife from work the other day, I asked her how her day was.

"I started with a death threat," she said, rather blandly I thought considering the news.

She had received an email from an unknown source. It came to her work email. It purported to be from someone who did dirty deeds for money, and who claimed he had a client that hired him to "splash your visage with sourness". It went on to say something like, "many hurt, long time". Although we joked about sour visages, it sounds like a threat to throw acid in her face, which is not funny.

We figured it was probably a new kind of Internet scam, like the Nigerian prince who needs you to send him some money so he can get his huge fortune out of the country to share with you. New to us, anyway. I texted a friend in the FBI, who, it turns out, is now the supervisor for the FBI call center, or some such thing, and he has dealt with such emails on a weekly basis.

But it is an actual threat in the text. The writer says he will carry out his assigned task, or rather send his man to do so, unless we pay him, in Bitcoin, within 24 hours. If we pay, he will not only remain inactive (his words), but send us what information he has about the client who hired him.

This seems like a nasty enough threat to provoke some kind of response. Someone should track down people making that kind of threat against people. I don't know what it would take. The IT guy where my wife works said the origin of the email was a pottery studio in Russia. Maybe I should email Putin and ask him to prosecute the perpetrators. My worry would be that trying to contact Putin would make people think I supported the current American administration. And that Putin might send someone to carry out the original threat for saying means things about Russian thugs. Or maybe Putin would just use the information to recruit for his own purposes.

My FBI friend did not suggest any follow up on our part. Mostly we talked about getting old, and his approaching retirement, as FBI agents are expected to retire at 57. He says he doesn't know what to do after her retires. I doubt he would have trouble finding employment if he wanted it. I also doubt he would need to work to get by. I know something of the starting salary for FBI agents, and the structure of their retirement plan.

Still, it was a little unnerving to see the actual email with an actual threat against my wife. So I support more allocations of funds for cyber security in this country, at all levels. I'd like to see government research and development to make all cyber interactions in this country safe, including our elections. Too bad the current administration owes its election victory to outside interference.

Increasing Attention

There was an article this last weekend in the New York Times about algorithms tracking the location of smart phones, and giving that information to corporations, which can use it for all kinds of secretive purposes, like maybe displaying ads appropriate to your location, or where you have recently been. The suggestions from the article seemed to be that this is a step toward total takeover of our lives by the algorithms.

I don't know how much influence these algorithms have over my behavior. I do see messages on my phone asking me about my visit to places I've been. But I still see ads that do not interest me. They could be based on data an algorithm has picked up or bought, but the interpretation is off. I look up things about medication because I teach anatomy and physiology, and I like to know current treatments for conditions I talk about in my classes. I don't know why I get ads for colleges, except that I work at one, but that doesn't indicate interest in pursuing a degree at another institution.

What do the algorithms know about my travels? Can they tell what buildings I enter? Maybe they know I drive past Easton every weekday. Do they think I shop there? Do they no understand that I don't shop? Sometimes I buy things, but usually I have decided what I want to get, and I find the easiest way to make an order or purchase. I hate shopping. I hate going out wandering around aisles of a store, unless it is a book store. I love books. Do the algorithms disdain books as too old fashioned? There was another article in the New York Times about the value of both printed books and audiobooks. I have used both. For something serious, I prefer physical books, and doing my own reading. But I can listen to a light-hearted book  while I drive. Okay, it doesn't have to be happy, just relatively light reading, and not important for me to catch every detail. I can't do that with an audiobook. But I can catch much of a story, and enjoy the distraction as I drive. Can an algorithm make subtle connections?

Now that the war against the rising power of the algorithms has reached the New York Times, maybe it is serious. I am still not afraid.

I Need Some Time to Review

There has been media attention for a report from the federal government about the possible effects of global warming. Some of the attention has focused on the president's dismissal of the report. He claimed very high intelligence, but said he isn't a believer. In the context, he seemed to be saying that he doesn't believe in much of anything, because there is something bad about belief, or some other nonsensical idea. He certainly didn't address the data or the conclusions of the report. I have my doubts about his intelligence. I don't think he is capable of reading the report and understanding it well enough to judge the conclusions, nor do I think he has any interest in making the attempt. He spouts whatever occurs to him, and gets angry if anyone asks questions, even if the questions are just due to confusion because what he says makes no sense to anyone but him.

But I did read an analysis of the report that seemed a little more substantive, and I feel like I should follow it up. The author said that the report predicted a decrease of 10% in economic growth, which other sources have also reported, but he said that was against a baseline of 300% growth by 2100, meaning our economy would drop to 290% total growth over that period with global warming factored in, if, and only if, the warming was near the maximum level in the predicted range. He goes on to say that most of the loss of growth is predicted to be due to an increase in deaths from extreme heat. He then claims that the level of warming necessary to drive this is much more than is actually predicted by the current models, and that the deaths would be easily avoided anyway.

Then he compares the effects of proposed plans to mitigate global warming, starting with a modest level, which would cost some $10 trillion, but is predicted to pay for itself, plus a little bonus, over the same period of time, and then looking at plans to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees C, as per the Paris Accords, which he says would cost some $140 trillion, and would have less than a tenth of that in benefits.

Most of the articles I've seen do little to put the predictions of the report in any context, so I can't say whether this author is giving an accurate portrayal of the report, or the projected costs, which it didn't seem all came from the report. There is a lot of uncertainty in something as complex as extrapolating global warming for 80 years, and including economic effects. It is difficult just to make accurate predictions of economic growth for 80 years, without factoring in something like a fundamental change in climate. But that is what is called for in this report, and in the process of making decisions about policy regarding global warming. I think we may be past the point of choosing modest measures, like pollution control, that would have clear benefits on health, and by extension, economic activity. I think we need to try to predict sea level rise, and how it will affect island nations and coastal areas. And what about northward migration of animals and plants? And changes in growing seasons, and milder winters, with increased insect survival, and all kinds of other factors that go into any kind of predictions of economic effects over decades.

So, I will try to track down some other information about the report. I may even have to read it, in the end. I could ask the algorithms to do this analysis for me, but they still can't figure out what I might and absolutely won't be shopping for in the next year, so I have no confidence in them.

Endurance of Good Ideas

I have just finished reading, or perhaps rereading, Darwin's, "On the Origin of Species". I thought I had read it before, but there are things I think I should have remembered that I noticed this time. There was a lot that Darwin didn't know.

I have about decided, though, that the next time someone starts a debate with me over the Theory of Evolution, I will insist that she read Darwin first. Most of the people who have made effort to convince me of the errors of my ways in "believing in evolution" would have a very hard time reading Darwin. His breadth of knowledge in the natural sciences was impressive, and his writing is rather dense and has big words in it. He writes like I think, sometimes.

Darwin was writing a hundred and fifty years ago. The edition I read was the last one, I think, and included chapters responding to criticisms of his earlier editions. A hundred and fifty years ago, there was debate over the age of the earth. Some would say there still is, but that is not true among geologists and other scientists, at least in the main stream of thought. But in Darwin's day, the majority even among naturalists hadn't thought much about the age of the earth, and kind of just accepted the biblical history uncritically. Darwin knew that his idea of natural selection required much more than six thousand years of biology to account for modern species. Some geologists and astronomers were coming out with theories about the age of the earth based on thermodynamics that extended that age into the millions of years, which helped Darwin, but he realized it was still probably not enough. Lord Kelvin (who hadn't been given the title yet) calculated a rate of cooling for the earth from a mass of liquid lava to the condition in the 1800's, and estimated the earth to be 20 million years old.

Darwin speculated, correctly, that the earth was older than that, because he saw evolution from natural selection as being very slow. If the rate of variation and selection could be estimated, he said, then time could be estimated even in the fossil record based on the changes seen in species in different layers of rock.

The big change in estimates of the age of the earth came from the discovery of radiation, and the contribution radioactive decay made to the energy balance and cooling of the earth. The current estimate is 4.54 billion years. And the fossil record has filled in a lot since Darwin's day, confirming his predictions.

I was a little surprised, though thinking back I should not have been, to see that in 1859, the distribution of electrons, which explains the organization of the periodic table of the elements, hadn't been discovered. That came from the Rutherford nuclear model of the atom, and the Bohr model of electron configuration in the first decades of the 20th century.

It is rather remarkable that Darwin got so much right, based on his limited data set. Okay, he had studied thousands of species, at least to some extent, and was familiar with detailed descriptions, including careful measurements of various parts of plants and animals. He knew about the debates over classification of species and varieties, and the patterns of distribution of a lot of species. He found the necessary patterns to support his ideas, with help from other naturalists, including Alfred Wallace, who actually wrote a paper about natural selection before Darwin had published his own. But he had no idea about the source of variation, at least at the cellular and molecular levels. That took another hundred years. It pretty well nailed down Darwin's theory, though. Now we can trace genealogies of species in changes in DNA. And we have. That makes it hard to argue honestly against common descent, but there are those who still claim Darwin was wrong. Usually, they ignore what Darwin really said, or ignore the obvious consequences of acknowledging the observable facts.

So, having read Darwin, I am convinced that I have been right all along to believe in the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection.

I do not know how quickly modern changes, both by natural and technological mechanisms, will occur, or what directions they will take. I have still not seen much cause to be afraid of the Rise of the Algorithms. They still send me ads for colleges and programs, as if I were shopping for programs to pursue another degree. I am content with my formal education. I will continue to read and think and learn, but I don't know about taking classes. After all, I teach college. I also get a lot of ads for medications I don't need. If I develop a disease that can be treated by these medications, I may start thinking differently, but for now, the algorithms seem completely off in their analysis of what might catch my attention.

If I tell them there is no history of diabetes mellitus in my family, and I have two doctoral degrees, will they change the ads I see? If I say I like reading science fiction and fantasy, will I get ads for those? Hah. The algorithms are pathetic weaklings, and I expect they will still be when I stop caring.