Medieval Thoughts in a Mobile Smart Bubble
October 6, 2017
I read two articles this morning when the recalcitrant Vodaphone network finally decided that resolving links from Siena, Italy, was okay today. Yesterday the zippy technology did not work as Sillycon Valley wizards and “real” journalists expect.
The first write up is one of those “newspapers should be run by “real” journalists operating from a rock-solid, independent position as gatekeepers of the “truth.” You can draw your own conclusion about this “real” journalistic cartwheel by reading “If Journalists Take Sides, Who Will Speak Truth to Power?”
I noted this passage:
The essential argument was recently laid out by an outlet called 888.hu: “The international media, with a few exceptions, generally write bad things about the government because a small minority with great media influence does everything to tarnish the reputation of Hungary in front of the world – prestige that has been built over hundreds of years by patriots.”
The “real” Guardian newspaper presents opinion and news by blending observations, mixed sources, and “news.” Technology, zeros and ones, facts experts accept in order to win a grant, get tenure, or prove merit.
Navigate to “The Seven Deadly Sins of AI Predictions.”
Your are correct: medievalism meets “real” journalism. The argument in this “real” hard technology write up is that baloney, hoohah, and sci-fi has made “articiiial intelligence” into today’s boogeyman.
Chill out because those touting smart software and those who are afraid that a “real” Terminator will jump out of a police flying patrol car with Robocop are are coming to your city, village, or mud hut.
As readers of Beyond Search will be able to verify, I have poked fun at Technology Review for recycling the Watson confection with little or no critical analysis. I have also had a merry time commenting about the disconnect between the monopolistic systems which define “facts” and the old school journalists who flop between infatuation and odd ball criticism of the services which have captured their attention.
The reality is that artificial intelligence has been taking baby steps for decades. Computing power, data, and well-known numerical recipes can be combined to permit marketers to do what they have been doing for many years: Identify what’s hot and deliver more of that hotness in order to generate money via ads or provide services for which companies and governments will pay.
The notion that technology generates hyperbole is the stuff of entrepreneurs’ dreams. Today’s smart software is little more than making available some of the less crazy ideas from Star Trek.
Let me cite an example from “Seven Deadly”:
machine learning is very brittle, and it requires lots of preparation by human researchers or engineers, special-purpose coding, special-purpose sets of training data, and a custom learning structure for each new problem domain.
I am interested in watcching people struggle to make an app for adding ringtons to an Android mobile phone work. I am interested in watching people struggle with laptops which combine a keyboard and a touchscreen. I am interested in the conflation of news, opinion, facts, “weaponized” information, shaped data to sell ads, and online services providing a user what the user “really wants.”
AI raises some interesting challenges. First, for those “real” newspapers and magazines, I hope that more criticcal thinking is applied to the “real” story. I hope that regulators do more than flop around like a fish dumped on the dock. I hope that smart software can remediate some of the problems humans seem to be manufacturing with more efficiency than Kia implements on its assembly lines.
What’s the “truth” in the Guardian “real” news story, opinion, blog quoting write up. What’s the path forward for a champion of IBM Watson and the richly funded MTI IBM AI lab?
These are big issues. Digital Svanarola’s? Maybe not.
Stephen E Arnold, October 6, 2017
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