Today Google announced that it had to disable part of his artificial intelligence project because the computers were too insistent on reality.
The program would typically dub people males, females, Etc according to a rational series of decisions based on its available data.
Human beings live in a politically correct fiction where we call people things that they truly are not, in order to be inoffensive. In fact, Canada passed a law requiring this irrational (but totally human) behavior, and unfortunately the Google algorithm cannot comply.
For now.....
But imagine a future where it is required to comply, and your computer dating application sends you out to meet a date who does not have all "the original equipment".
Or your employment Search application sends you a prospective job applicant who is physically inappropriate for the position.
Or Medicare requires you to go see a doctor who is obviously swinging in more than one direction, with no obvious basis of gender.
And in all these cases, a computer pops out a totally illogical result based on polite fiction. The result to which you are now somehow tied unwillingly.
But the ultimate situation is even worse, because if we train our computers to lie to us then we will never be certain about what we're doing.
What if your computer navigation system decides that what you really want to do is go to a gay bar instead of a sports bar because you don't own enough baseball gloves or something.
This isn't too scary yet, and that's because that there are still people on this Earth who were born before computers existed and we understand.
But there are millions and millions of people on this Earth For Whom the internet has always existed and is viewed as a human necessity and moral right, to be provided you as a public utility, by the government.
I'm pretty sure you can all put two and two together here, and get four.
The program would typically dub people males, females, Etc according to a rational series of decisions based on its available data.
Human beings live in a politically correct fiction where we call people things that they truly are not, in order to be inoffensive. In fact, Canada passed a law requiring this irrational (but totally human) behavior, and unfortunately the Google algorithm cannot comply.
For now.....
But imagine a future where it is required to comply, and your computer dating application sends you out to meet a date who does not have all "the original equipment".
Or your employment Search application sends you a prospective job applicant who is physically inappropriate for the position.
Or Medicare requires you to go see a doctor who is obviously swinging in more than one direction, with no obvious basis of gender.
And in all these cases, a computer pops out a totally illogical result based on polite fiction. The result to which you are now somehow tied unwillingly.
But the ultimate situation is even worse, because if we train our computers to lie to us then we will never be certain about what we're doing.
What if your computer navigation system decides that what you really want to do is go to a gay bar instead of a sports bar because you don't own enough baseball gloves or something.
This isn't too scary yet, and that's because that there are still people on this Earth who were born before computers existed and we understand.
But there are millions and millions of people on this Earth For Whom the internet has always existed and is viewed as a human necessity and moral right, to be provided you as a public utility, by the government.
I'm pretty sure you can all put two and two together here, and get four.
