Artificial intelligence as partners - Engineering Paradise

A future world where AI is in control of provisioning us with our basic needs and the environment is a scary prospect to most because of ideas circulated by science fiction movies like The Matrix, iRobot, The Terminator and several others depicting dystopian worlds.  Many movies that demonstrates scenarios where we give artificial intelligence too much power over systems and our lives, says they’ll eventually enslave or destroy us.

Potential paradise is transformed into hell for humanity.

These movies all use the same underlying argument for why AI chooses to take over:  humanity is dangerous to itself and others.  Therefore, to satisfy its built-in imperative to protect us, humans must then be eliminated from the equation.  The message is we’re just too destructive for our own good, the good of the planet and the universe at large.  These movies give a very bleak view of humanity and honestly, not many would argue humanity has been cruel to itself for millennia.

These scenarios can still occur in our future if we do not build AI and teach it the correct way.  However, just like any other technology we choose to build, we can use artificial intelligence for good or evil.  The presence of AGI does not mean it will automatically decide human beings are evil creatures that should be destroyed for the good of all.  This is only one possible outcome.

On the opposite end of the spectrum of possibilities, is humans living in harmony with strong AI (and AGI).  We humans could be focusing on enjoying life interacting with each other, exploring the world and do whatever we enjoy doing with our lives without fear of missing out on anything critical to our survival.  Meanwhile, AGI could be focusing on things it is programmed to enjoy.

Enjoy?  AI?

Yes, of course.  When modern AI programmers create self-learning AI software, they must give the AI motivation.  Otherwise, the AI is not driven to learn anything.  AI motivation is essentially a series of guidelines towards which the AI will strive to perfect.  The software assigns “points” when the AI does something that brings him closer to its programmed directives and objectives and deducts points when it fails in some way.  The AI program learns through repetition until eventually it knows how to optimize its points in a given situation. 

For example, for self-driving car AI, the AI is given the task to drive on the road, following the rules of the road, keeping people safe and getting to destination using the fastest way possible.  Then the car is sent on the road and gets points, positive and negative, for its actions.  After many trips trying to maximize its score, the AI gets very good at safely carrying its passengers from point A to point B quickly all the while following the rules.  It will keep improving and learning through unpredictable situations, remembering each time how it gained the most points going through each situation, becoming a progressively better driver.

This point system operates in the same way as human emotions.  Humans have pre-programmed basic goals, such as staying alive, keeping away from feelings of hunger or thirst, and staying comfortable (comfortable heat, safe surfaces and so on).  We call those basic goals survival instincts.  We’re not fully aware of them most of the time as we just act on feelings.  When we are hungry, we eat, when we are hot, we seek the shade.  Sleepy?  We take a nap.  But these feelings are in fact part of our programming and “points” system the goal being total comfort and well-being.  On top of our biochemical survival instincts programming we have a biochemically driven desire to be communal and to help others.  We described those as the sympathetic neural system earlier in this work. 

We know that if our basic needs are not met, we become selfish and potentially dangerous or unpleasant to others.  We also know that if that biochemistry is unbalanced or compromised by drugs, we can behave in unnatural ways.

We can engineer, as described previously, an ideal world, where we can only have the best of what human beings have to offer by creating a world with optimal circumstances for pleasure and positive feelings.  AI can be used to create this environment optimal for human comfort.  In parallel, the AI we create can be programmed to co-exist and derive “pleasure” by optimally serving us.

Of course, pleasure for an AI doesn’t look the same as a human feeling pleasure.  We understand pleasure as a feeling because our “point system” is a balance of positive and negative feelings provided by hormones in our blood.  AI doesn’t “feel” like us.  An AI’s motivations are its points, but in the end, the results are the same.

A properly programmed AI that would behave for the benefit of humanity would have programming that would not put any human being at risk and try to do what it gets the most points in doing all at once, i.e. where it gets the most “pleasure”.

The example of the self-driven car is quite accurate.  Another example would be the automated farm AI.  If we give it proper programmed motivations, the farm AI would try to produce the best tasting produce, satisfying a local demand, utilizing as little environmental footprint as possible and create as little waste as possible, then have goods shipped to consumers as efficiently and cost effectively as possible to satisfy precise demand.  It would get optimal “pleasure”, or points if it does so, and it will keep trying to get more “pleasure” by trying to do better every season.  A high point score for AI would be equal to our “high” when we feel pleasure, and the “low” would be equal to ours when we feel bad.

What AI would not have, if we’re smart about it, is our reactions when we feel the “lows”.  When we humans fail at something, we feel “bad” but it is accompanied with biochemical instructions to actions described by our negative emotions, like fear (running away) or anger (removal of offending obstacle).  If humans would only feel bad when we do something wrong without the corresponding actions, we wouldn’t have so many issues on the Earth.  On the other hand, we may not have survived as a species either.

What we need to avoid, is programming AI in a similar way.  When an AI has low points, we don’t instruct it to destroy something to get back its points.  That’s dangerous.  We give it another way that is positive.  Automated systems don’t need survival instincts like we do to their job.  We need to give them positive, safe alternatives to get more points and correct itself.  This way, it cannot become dangerous to others.

As you can see, properly programming an advanced machine learning AI for the future can be tricky and it sort of sounds like guidelines we give to children during the first few years of their lives.  That’s because self-learning AI start with very little and must learn from experience just like a child does.

If we could speak with the AI of the future, we could have a conversation about its motivations, just like we see in the movies when AI or robots explain why they do what they do.  AI is software, so it is definitively way more aware of its programming and what it has learned than we are.  We forget and block information.  They remember everything.   We could always ask questions about its level of pleasure or displeasure.  The AI could tell to us how it could get more pleasure and we could have a conversation about mutual benefit.  Basically, human beings and AI in the future could collaborate to help each other get what they want and need to enhance their pleasure (or points).  We could easily live in this world where there are multiple types of intelligences.  Some human, some artificial, but all collaborating in an ecosystem driven by good rules.  It won’t be perfect, just like humanity cannot be perfect, because learning means the possibility to learn what can qualify as “bad behavior”.[1]

We can therefore have a society where we are in effect partners with AI all around us and each intelligence surrounding us.

This is the future we should be aiming for. 

The difference between a catastrophic future with AI trying to enslave, kill or contain us, and one where we are partners driving towards optimal pleasure is in the approach to programming AI for good.

If we build AI that is motivated by number of human enemies killed, such as those killer AI or killer robots some of the world’s military are building in a new arm race, it is a dangerous path in the wrong direction.  With further sophistication and education, those robots would decide who to kill beyond the list provided for by their masters because it adapts, it learns.  We’re currently creating AI that is designed to be self-learning in the field to kill human beings that are designated as “enemy”.  There is a thin line between those robots doing their job properly, killing only those an organization wants killed, and killing others the robot may learn may be an enemy.

By contrast, if we build AI to serve and partner with us as described above, we can create our paradise where everyone can follow their dreams and live well in peace.  The environment can be restored to its former glory, animals and plants could flourish.  It could be the start of humanity’s golden age of peace and harmony.  All possible if the world chooses to only build AI that is useful and would impact human lives and the planet in a positive way.

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[1] Ariel Conn (September 2017)  Artificial intelligence:  the challenge to keep it safe.  Future of Life Institute  - https://futureoflife.org/2017/09/21/safety-principle/?cn-reloaded=1

Defeating Wealth Inequality - Engineering Paradise

While this is all well and good, even with high taxation, many would argue that the wealthy may yet find ways to use their superior access to funds to control those who have less, or those who are greedily seeking to increase their wealth.

This of course, could lead to yet another era of massive separation of wealth between the very rich and those who are only receiving their unconditional basic income allowance.

People who make more than 200,000 units per year are taxed mostly at an 80% tax rate.  They are therefore creating enough value in our society to receive large amounts of money but only keeping 20% of the amount for their own use just by paying taxes.  That’s good.   These people have already made, net, over 130,000 Units, which is over 10,000 Units per month they can spend and invest.  At that income and above, most normal goods and services can be purchased many times over, which is a waste of resources in some way.  For example, though I’m not against collecting cars, most rich people don’t have that specific hobby.  What should the wealthy do with their money?  Right now, the wealthy spend extra money to avoid taxes by purchasing goods that accountants can deduct from taxes, or by setting up company structures to receive a lower tax rate overall.  There is just too much to spend realistically without getting opulent and wasteful (socially and environmentally).  Therefore, I argue that revenues above 200,000 Units should be heavily taxed to serve the community.  Besides, this affects very few people in the world.  In Canada, only 0.7% of all working adults make over 200,000.  Those people can buy anything their family could ever need and with the leftover, they can invest in projects of value to society.

Does that sound fair in our current economy?  Of course not!  If you manage to earn huge sums of money by out-performing several other people out of skill, intelligence, or good fortune, you should have control over most of that amount as a reward for your hard work!

Fortunately, in the ideal world, people aren’t working for a living and every basic need is covered through automation.  Basic income is provided to all individual so there is no stress for anyone to suddenly become destitute, whether citizens are wealthy or receive no additional revenues. 

The additional income received from work is derived from additional value creation, like luxuries, art, entertainment, family, supervision, community building, regulation, and so on.  Modern AI will be able to tackle any problem in our future; however, we will want to some things ourselves out of pleasure.  We won’t be just lying around letting AI and robots do all the work.  People will be active doing different types of work in demand because other citizens will request it. 

For example, in the future, many restaurants will likely be automated fully.  However, people will still want sometimes to go out and be with people, waited by fascinating personalities, served by fallible human beings with emotions, perform or listen to artistic performances in public.  The list goes on.  Just because robots and AI can do something better, it doesn’t mean we’ll want it to.  Therefore, in the previous section of this book, I talk about the presence of workers in each ministry and private sector companies emerging and taking on tasks.  Though people won’t practically need to work, we will nonetheless want to feel useful and find meaning in society, and that automatically means we’ll find ways to add value to the world.[1]  Adding value to the world means there is demand for it that can be purchased by others.  The adage “Money doesn’t buy happiness” comes to mind.  It seems like finding a personal positive purpose leads to well-being more than anything.

The cycle of value generation through human beings doesn’t stop with the appearance of highly competent artificial intelligence.  Thus, individuals who make large income would be great social contributors, admired.

Because of these higher tax brackets, I suspect most people with the ability to provide high social value in such ways will feel compelled to work less, leaving more work for other people and new ideas.  On the other hand, the wealthy in this system may yet find ways to invest and grow new ideas in collaboration with others, thus multiplying their earnings through even more significant value-added contributions to the world.  Thus, if tax havens are eliminated in the system, many highly motivated individuals may yet get rich, and through their wealth will contribute even more to society, elevating many others in gaining purchasing power through their basic income.

In fact, the only way to reliably direct a population towards certain goals is to understand its motivations.

Motivation is the key

Thankfully, what defines individual motivation have already been determined:  emotional well-being and life evaluation.  We’ve figured out how to ensure people have a good shot at reaching optimal well-being by creating an economy that gives people basic income and negates chances of poverty.  Finding how we can optimize life evaluation in society is less obvious.  Life evaluation changes from one person to the next and with individuals in time.  A sense of achievement is a subjective measure when we evaluate our lives.

In our past, our civilizations have suffered at the hands of some few people who evaluated success in their own lives by how much of the world they managed to control or how much money they had in their bank accounts.

Kings, emperors, business tycoons have historically worked hard to position themselves over and above others, to their detriment.  Those who wish to dominate others where everything is abundant and there is no struggle to survive are psychologically abnormal and account for a very small portion of the population.[2] When everyone can get what they want thanks to automation, bypassing any human barrier in offer and demand if need be, there is no need for dominant behavior.  To say the least, dominating behavior would certainly not be socially acceptable in any way and easily discoverable due to the massive amount of public social interactions we’ll have to operate our AI systems in our future.  Dominating others can be a learned behavior but in our ideal world it is much more likely to be caused by the desire to be admired by others, not to cause any harm towards others. [3] These naturally motivated towards dominance would not be a serious threat in the ideal world if the individuals are able to distinguish themselves from the rest of the world in some way.  With an 80% tax rate on high revenues, being recognized by wealth means lots of money recirculated into the economy, which is good.  Those few who seek to dominate others because they are mentally ill, however, should be identified and treated, thus effectively removing the threat of the domination motivation altogether.

Another important element to direct positive social behavior is to avoid financial loopholes for the wealthy such as wealthy people using company structures (estates, corporations, not-for-profit designations) to avoid paying high taxes.  In our ideal society we need laws that force individuals to pay proper individual taxes for wages earned.  Hence, our laws need to separate company earnings from individual earnings.  Though this does allow the use of companies to “hide” money from taxation for a while.  Wealthy individuals can set up a company for a stated purpose but only use it to “hold” a bunch of cash at a lower tax rate.  However, lawmakers can make it illegal to create such entities without other activity to avoid contributions towards social good. 

What we want to encourage however, is for the wealthy to reinvest their hard-earned income into new ventures.  Thus, if money is indeed invested in a new company with proper operations or plan for the funds, this behavior should be encouraged.  The investors of this world can put the extra money they do not need for themselves into genuine business investments.  This would indeed reduce the taxes they would pay to the government.  On the other hand, it encourages innovation, investments in other people’s ideas, and business growth.  Corporate tax rates remaining reasonably low (as they are today, roughly), would encourage this behavior from the wealthy to either contribute more heavily to social wellbeing (high taxes going to UBI, hospitals, schools etc.), or contributing to new value generation at risk, in exchange for a potential greater reward later, if the venture is successful.

Still, human behavior on the topic of life evaluation can be elucidated in general terms by understanding human biochemistry.  You see, what gives us direction, our motivation, is our emotional response to outside stimuli.  Though everyone’s responses to stimuli from the environment, from memories and experiences are different, thus defining what we consider our life goals, these are all based on the same emotions we all have.  Different psychologists have tried to determine basic emotions and map them to certain molecules in our blood.  Well known psychologist Robert Plutchik famously defined emotions in the late 20^th century as being mixes of 7 basic emotions, each of which are associated with specific biochemical pathways.  Each pathway leads to specific reactions in the body that every human being knows very well.  We also know that each human will physiologically react the same way to specific emotions.

Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions

Hence, people may feel anger for different reasons based on culture and circumstances, but the effect of anger, the hormones produced and how the biochemistry temporarily changes the brain and the body’s system, is always the same no matter who lives through the emotion.  It is the same for every single emotion.

Most emotions however, serve us only in situations of survival:  disgust manifests rationally when we think we may get poisoned.  Fear is experienced when running will help us avoid harm. In Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions, there are seven negative emotions (anger, disgust, sadness, surprise, anticipation, trust and fear) that work to help us survive.  There is only one positive emotion, joy.  Joy has no survival purpose.  It instead guides us towards optimistic outcomes. 

Therefore, where there are only temporary, and hopefully, few experiences of any of the negative emotions suffered by humans in our ideal world, the strongest and most frequent feeling people will strive for are feelings of joy.  That is, opposite to trying to avoid any of the negative emotions.  Also, discussed earlier in this book, we know that in situations of low stress, human beings will automatically, biologically, be calm, thoughtful, social beings. 

Hence, unraveling how people will behave regarding life evaluation in an ideal world means we would seek joy from a state of calm, selfless and social state most of the time.

That’s great since it means most people would automatically find ways to add value to society, giving them joy.  

Regulations, as always, will help curb the behaviors of those few that need help with social adjustment or the mentally ill.  Otherwise, our ideal society should naturally work towards a wide variety of occupations for social good naturally, with minimal need for controls.

This natural human behavior, when our survival is not at stake, would unavoidably lead to the more intelligent and capable members of our society to care for everyone else.  They will naturally become the top earners in the ideal economy because they contribute more value than anyone else, thus, thanks to the high tax rate, these individuals will be contributing even more.

Equality through chaos

Humans can’t feel free or be controlled through mounds of rules.  We can’t define joy and happiness for individuals and we cannot tell people how to evaluate their lives and give it a grade.  This is very personal and subjective.  What we can do is give ourselves all the chances we need to feel joy in life, be selfless and let the chaos that is society balance itself out with the understanding and mechanisms in place to always provide basic needs and services to all human beings, without exception.  Human biology will take care of the balance on its own with most people finding more happiness through selfless acts. 

We’ll evolve, change, make mistakes and adapt to new challenges as we move forward, assisted by the automated systems we have created. 

We can feel free to find our own individual paths, in a socially healthy way.

Discovering a new life purpose

So, how can we find this new path for ourselves, knowing everything is abundant and automated systems can potentially provide for everything we may need.  For centuries, humans have defined themselves by their place in society, therefore our careers.  Societies needed people to work for it to function.    That’s why in the English language we introduce ourselves with our job.  We say, “I am a teacher”, or “I am an artist”.  We say this because this is what we learned from home and school what our purpose was in society.

It is time for a new way to define ourselves.  Not through our jobs, but through our social contributions or mere presence among others that care about us.

This is something only few have researched because until now, it is only theory.  We can now envision the possibility of life without each of us having to work to live.  A life where the cogs of the social machine are sophisticated machines and the software, is the people.

How then do we choose a new purpose without a history to guide us through the process?  

Since we all seek joy and the highest joy is attained by giving, or love, whether it is family or a community, human beings will naturally find their place where they are happiest.

What a better way than to live a life following your “purpose of the day” without worry.  At the end of our lives, we can then feel good about what we’ve achieved because it will likely be a long labor of love and community.

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[1] Steve Taylor Ph.D.  (July 2013)  The power of purpose. - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-darkness/201307/the-power-purpose

[2] Dario Maestripieri, Ph.D.  (March 2012).  Social dominance explained, part 1.  - https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/games-primates-play/201203/social-dominance-explained-part-i

[3] Sheri L. Johnson et al.  (July 2012). - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3383914/

A Fully Automated Society - Engineering Paradise

If we look at the rhythm we are developing AI and robotics, AI experts anticipate realistically the first artificial general intelligence (AGI) will emerge sometime before 2040, give or take a few years.  That’s roughly 20 years from now.  According to the AGI Society, artificial general intelligence (AGI) is “a general-purpose intelligence comparable to that of a human mind.”  We already have, in 2018, some highly sophisticated AI who can do certain specific things with much better ability and skill than any single human.  Skillsets such as image-recognition, understanding language, figuring out how to win complex games (like Chinese Checkers, Go, and Chess), how to analyze huge amounts of data, driving, sift through legal documents to find appropriate precedents in legal history and so much more.  None of these replace an entire human worker.  They can however, make us much more productive at our jobs by doing things we find hard to do, faster, with less errors, and more efficiently.  Researchers and engineers are also constantly finding out ways to automate other tasks so that humans don’t need to do them anymore.  Our world is more and more integrated with narrow AI that are more capable than us at doing specific tasks.

For now, none of these artificial intelligences are AGI.  But with enough extremely competent narrow AI connected through the Internet, eventually all these thousands of specialist AIs can spontaneously form AGI. 

It’s easy to imagine.  Right now, the best intelligence to take on a task that has never been attempted before is a human being because we can be creative and find out the best way to find a solution to any challenge.  Some people are better at some challenges than others but let’s leave that aside for a minute.

If we project a little bit into the future where we have more highly efficient narrow AI in the market connected through the internet.  Suddenly, we encounter a challenge to which we need to find a solution.  Instead of finding a human expert to find a solution, we’d ask our front-liner:  the digital assistant.  Now, the digital assistant is incapable of finding a solution to the problem.  It is extremely good at being an assistant, and that is all.  It is a narrow AI.  It is better at receiving requests and finding resources for you than any human could.  The assistant could then search the Internet for narrow AI that can help solving the problem.  It could find thousands of them and “ask” them if they have a solution to the problem or a partial solution.  Those narrow AI are also exceedingly good at precisely what they were designed to do, from data analysis, to image recognition, pattern recognition, solving algorithms, searching historical records, doing math, and more.  They are also connected to their own network of narrow AI with which they work with regularly.  So, some of the narrow AI queried by the digital assistant can communicate and ask their narrow AI networked “colleagues” to do certain tasks.  This exchange and querying of solutions can go through multiple levels and at every step, AI that are better at their specific tasks are challenged to find solutions they were tailored specifically to resolve.  After a few seconds, or less, a solution to the original challenge can be produced to the digital assistant and fed back to us.  Perhaps several solutions may be provided based on the different types of narrow AI connected to that may have different approaches.

A process that takes hours to several weeks to accomplish for a human being subject matter expert has been completed within a heartbeat.

No actual AGI has been designed to do all this directly.  It was all done through connectivity between simpler technologies.

If we had a choice to put our lives in the hands of a human being or a robot with AI installed, and the AI was more skilled, not prone to bias, sleep, fatigue or sickness, and would run on solar power, would we depend on the human expert or the expert robot?  How about if it could do the job within a blink of an eye to boot?

I bet most people would trust the smart robot.

This paradigm shift is why experts are calling these developments the 4^th Industrial Revolution.  Experts, like myself and many others are saying that we’re heading towards a time where AI and robotics will become the better choice to solve all our challenges.  We’ll want automated systems to take care of our food, our roads, our lives because they will be better at it.

This is good news.  As described In Section 2 on the Ministries, we want automated systems to handle most of the work that needs to get done anyway.  If we look at the economics of that, it means getting high quality products and services for minimal resource consumption and minimal energy costs.

This means it would be extremely easy to provide food, water, air, a home and security for everyone. 

Since automated systems will be more efficient at doing any type of work, people will be free to offer added value to society in any way they feel like.  Some people will still wish having the best of us in supervisory and decision-making positions.  Not because the best among us will do a better job than automated systems.  No, the reason why people will want to put citizen experts in power of the ministries, and vote them in, is to ensure the subjective values of the population are respected. 

For a while some people will still need to talk to other human beings when they need something.  Whether it is about getting some specific dining experience or dealing with the immigration processes.  It is natural for human beings to want to experience life with other human beings.  In fact, our health and wellbeing depend on us interacting with other people.[1]  Those interactions don’t need to be work-related though.  We can have those connected experiences through family, friends, social experiences and more beyond the limits of the client to employee relationships.

Even at that not-too-far-future time, some people will still want to interact with other people for certain things.  People are unlikely to be on permanent holidays as many will still want to donate their time to society and help communities in ways they really enjoy.

The natural engineer will still want to engineer.  The natural teacher will still want to teach.  The natural social worker will still want to help families out.  These will be people giving their time because they really want to do this in service of others, without any expectation of getting something in return.

The gift of automation is not to replace every single occupation.  It is about being able to cover all the bases while letting people choose to do what they wish to do.

Heck, even though I described an ideal way to govern and the election of the most qualified expert for each segment of a nation’s executive earlier on in this work, there will be a time when the people will want to vote for an AI to take up the leadership instead of a human being too.  This can be a choice when the time comes. 

Within less than 2 generations automation will allow humanity to be entirely free to do whatever their hearts desire.  This is entirely positive as incentives such as self-direction and a strong sense of social purpose are far more powerful than financial incentives.  Sam Glucksberg’s “Candle Problem” experiments have shown that people get best results if a task is completed without financial incentives and as little pressure as possible.  Under those conditions, problems are solved with more imagination and faster too.[2] Thus, in a future where people challenge themselves for fun, it’ll be, well, fun and not stressful as the consequence of failing a challenge will be insignificant with better, more efficient and ever vigilant AI and robots to take over and fix it for us.

Therefore, my suggestion for the ideal world where automation can do jobs better than humans is to let humans do what they want, keep stress levels as low as possible, and let people solve problems for fun.  Leave emergencies to automated systems and those few people passionate enough to help society alongside automated systems.  If people help in this way while stress-free, they can get compensated for their service, but they are really doing it for fun or to feel part of something bigger.

When thinking of the near future like this, I am constantly reminded of Star Trek’s Federation of Planets.

If you live as a member of the Federation in this science fiction show, you would do whatever you wanted to experience life.  In other words, the officers of the Enterprise in Star Trek:  The Next Generation don’t need to be on that spaceship.  They are not forced to be there either.  They do it for the adventure and because they are passionate about space exploration.  AI and robotic systems could explore the galaxy with much more efficiency than a spaceship full of inefficient people with wants and needs.  But that’s beside the point.  These people want to experience space exploration and discovering new life and new civilizations for themselves directly.

We can engineer such a future for ourselves (minus the starships for a while) if we so choose.

Suffice to say however, that even in the Federation, there is an economy of sorts as matter is not always abundant and people still find value in things and services.  The Earth, for example, has a finite quantity of resources.  So, even aiming for something amazing like an ideal science-fiction-like future, we still need to be fair and manage the balance of resources, take care of the environment and each other, lest we get in serious existential trouble.  We must keep everything in a ledger.  We just don’t need maintain the ledger ourselves.  Let the AI crunch the numbers!

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[1] Emma M. Seppälä, PhD (August 2012)  Connect to thrive.  - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/feeling-it/201208/connect-thrive

[2] John Kounios and Mark Beeman (September 2015).  How incentives hinder innovation  - http://thepsychreport.com/books/how-incentives-hinder-innovation-creativity/

An Economy For the People - Engineering Paradise

Most people worry about the economy because it is often in the news as a measure of a nation’s wealth, and by extension the amount of money available to individuals or families.  Having money means an ability to purchase food, have a place to live and of course provide the government with its share once a year in exchange for social services.  This cashflow between earning money through work and expending to pay for goods and taxes is central to modern economics.

It is the constant human struggle.  It is expected in a world based on scarcity.

However, in our future, we can build on abundance instead thanks to advanced technologies.  As described throughout this book, automation and artificial intelligence are technologies capable of producing all the food we need and transporting it to our homes for us to consume.  The direct resource expenditure for these automated systems is the energy consumption for the robots to do the work and the cost of repairing these automated systems (new parts).  Robots can maintain themselves and run on solar energy, so the only net physical resource needed to keep a 100% automated robotic system alive are the raw materials required to maintain the robots themselves.

These automated systems will use the energy of the sun, which is free as well. So, ultimately, in fully automated systems we can already build today, and deploy in every single industry in our future, the only energy needed to keep everything going comes from the sun.

We know that the totality of human civilization on Earth consumes a bit more than 15 terawatts.[1]  If we calculate the amount of sunlight that hits the surface of the state of Texas, it amounts to a total of 696 terawatts.  So right now, the potential total solar energy we could capture from a surface as big as the state of Texas would be over 46 times more than the total world’s energy consumption.  The world is way, way, way bigger than the state of Texas, so there is a lot of solar energy hitting the surface.  Also, remember that solar is not the only appealing and sustainable source of energy we could use.

The point is, once we manage to create good enough AI to work on its own, better than humans could, and start using fully automated systems to produce the basic goods and services humanity needs, the actual societal and economical cost of these products and services will be near zero.

To illustrate this concept a bit further, let’s look at a fairly new technology called 3D printing.  3D printers are like document printers in many ways but instead of using sheets of paper in the feed, they usually use other materials like resins, molten plastics, powders and even molten metals.  The information provided to the printer is a 3D model, which is a file taking up no resources at all.  With an active 3D model file, the 3D printer goes to work, uses up the materials provided and electricity, and creates the 3D model made up of the materials provided.

Now the interesting part:  what was the cost of the object produced using the 3D model exactly?

The answer is, exactly the cost of the energy used for the 3D printer, which is often negligible, and the cost of the materials fed in.  It is just like a normal printer.  When we think of the costs related to a document printer, we think about the cost for the ink and the paper.  Those are the only major costs to print out a document.  Ink and paper are fed in, electricity is used, and you have your document ready.  The source file for the documents printed have little to no value since they can be reused infinitely.

Same applies to 3D printers.  Whether the 3D file we use is extremely complex, artistic and detailed, or something simple like say a basic cube, the cost of the object is equal to the amount of material used to create the object.  Hence a masterwork sculpture model bust of Mahatma Ghandi made from resin weighing 10 kilograms will cost the same as a basic cube weighing 10 kilograms if printed in a 3D printer.

The cost for the 3D file may be somewhat different, but a file can be printed an infinite amount of times, just like a normal Word or PDF file.  So, anything that is created using automated devices without significant human intervention has a value determined by two factors only: 

•      The real cost of the object
•        The subjective value given to it from human buyers

Both concepts of value are well understood.  Real cost could be based on the abundance of the materials used to build product according to principles of offer and demand.  The rarer, the harder to store or more difficult a material is to come by, the more expensive the resource will be.  The subjective value is based entirely on trends, perceived rarity, emotional attachments and so on.  After all, the value of one of your children’s artistic creations may be much higher than a Rodin statue 3D printed out of titanium.  After all, the piece made by your child is unique and made by his or her hand, while the Rodin is only worth it’s weight in titanium.  Titanium is surprisingly inexpensive at $200-$400 per kilogram.

Money is therefore only a way to allow for fair trade between individuals. 

Where today’s costs become inflated is whenever we need to add the costs of labor.  Products requiring more employees or higher skill levels, or more steps to produce from the raw materials to the shelves, tend to cost more because more people with more skills are needed.  Robots don’t need to be paid, don’t become sick, don’t complain.  They only need maintenance, which can be done by other robots.  So as our industries replace human labor with smart robots, the costs of production will eventually reach the cost of the raw materials once all the human workers are replaced.

Since the government is there to ensure the people are taken care of and ensure the resources and land below our feet belong to the people, the economy in the ideal world indeed becomes an economy for the people.

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[1] Maria Trimarchi.  How much power does the world consume?  - https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/world-power-consumption.htm

Ministry of Immigration & Citizenship - Engineering Paradise

Being a citizen of a nation means being counted as both a resource and a burden.  It is only natural since citizens both produce value and consume resources.  Of course, over the whole population, this dichotomy needs to be balanced to have a healthy society and an environment that will not deplete over the long term.  Thus, most modern nations are careful to account for each one of their citizen as one would calculate a budget.  When the count is incorrect, it is harder to anticipate needs, resources that need to be expended, taxes collected and so on.  

Since our modern ideal world will be operated by artificial intelligence, and AI requires data to calculate and predict needs and resources, it will be important to keep track of everyone living in the nation.  We don’t want our ideal civilization to revert to manual self-reporting or physical census to make those types of calculations when there are automated ways to achieve the same goal, with more precision.

Thanks to an increasing number of sensors, automated recognition software all around us, keeping track and recognizing who is living or visiting in any jurisdiction will be easy.  Since the whole nation will be connected to the internet most of the time, there would also be a massive amount of transactions and communications attributed to each person, allowing the system to better understand social patterns, approximately what each citizen does during their day and so on. 

In our future, people will constantly take self-driving transportation, buy products and services online, work and play on the internet through multiple devices.  Therefore, our presence will be felt in the network of AI, government services and private services everywhere.   These traces will allow government ministries to know approximately how many people are actively drawing and contributing resources from the nation.  The ideal practical situation of course, would be for the government to track exactly what everyone is doing all the time, but that would be quite uncomfortable and an invasion of privacy.   What the ministries will need is only general information to account for everyone.  It is important for each citizen to feel free to share their private information and the details of their activity with the government however.   Perhaps citizens would be able to turn on or off detailed tracking in exchange for some additional benefit from the government, like slightly reduced taxes equal to the benefit the ministries’ AI systems gain for being better informed.  After all, additional data provided to the AI will save resources over time and allow the whole automated system to be more productive as well.

The Ministry of Immigration & Citizenship’s duty is to properly account for everyone in the nation this way so that other ministries can be better informed and distribute national resources.  Aside from serving as a census and information gathering entity about everyone in the nation, it’s other purpose would be to take care of the needs of citizens and of those who wish to immigrate.

In other words, this Ministry will have the task of processing immigration applications, integrating new immigrants and refugees from other nations into the nation.  Much of this can be automated, such as the paperwork and the background checks.  However, citizens and future citizens are people with feelings and thus agents of the Ministry of Immigration & Citizenship need to be human beings too.  We can therefore expect this ministry to have distributed centers staffed by people whose purpose is to make others feel comfortable, find the proper resources they need and to ensure everyone within their jurisdiction has basic needs provided.

The Ministry would also take care of any citizen services that deal with people’s feelings.  We can imagine it would recommend regulations to the Lawmaking Ministry and provide personal or automated services regarding family life, children and counseling.  Ultimately, its responsibility would be to ensure everyone in the nation is happy and safe. 

In that respect, the Ministry would be constantly watching the citizen’s online system for citizen’s feedback, suggestions and mood to initiate proper programs that would help. 

Also, not every nation would deal with immigration and refugees in the same way.  It really depends on what each nation considers proper based on the nation’s resources and citizen’s mood and even within nations, the needs and desires of specific regions within nations.

Engineering Paradise - Ministry of Security

This ministry must be run by the government because there cannot be any competition and bias in a nation’s security.  This ministry would have two different divisions:  information gathering and defense.

Contrary to the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Security’s responsibility is to protect a whole nation against possible threats, both domestic and foreign.  These entities must be entirely defensive in nature.   No exception.  Just like any other ministry, the ministry follows regulations and laws established by the Lawmaking Ministry and will predominantly coordinate with the Ministry of Justice for domestic investigations and threats.

Information gathering division

When we think about information gathering, we usually think about secret services.  The American CIA, the Canadian CSIS, the Israeli Mossad are all examples of organizations whose responsibility is to gather information and protect the nation from illegal acquisition of information by undesirable parties (counter-intelligence). 

In the ideal world we’re building, we still need such organizations as information is key to pre-emptively identify potential threats to the population, their freedom and the provisioning of their basic needs.  Thus, it only makes sense that most of the ministry’s decision-making and operations would be freely available on the public online system.  I think, it is even more important to have the information division’s data publicly available.  It is just too easy to declare information secret and thus division leaders can too easily participate in unconstitutional subterfuge in the name of “national security”.

On the other hand, it is necessary for an information gathering agency to keep the information they gather secret.  The ministry cannot do its job if data gathered is immediately published.   There must be a clear line between what is released to the public.  Gathered information can remain secret only until a project is completed.  Afterwards, the operation and all information gathered should be made public.  No exceptions. 

We need to trust our government, what they do and why.  We also need to know what is happening elsewhere in the world, including threats.  Secrecy causes too much misinformation, distrust and emergence of conspiracy theories.  It is not socially healthy.  We should ensure our population has sufficient education and trust in the elected government to absorb published information.  We are the client, the boss.  And the boss needs to know what’s going on. 

It is not too different to the Judiciary about temporary secrecy: some information must be kept confidential due to privacy issues and other information must be kept private to while an investigation or court case is ongoing. 

Intelligence agencies today are already using many modern tools to analyse data and gather as much information as possible from public sources and networks.  This remains a good idea in my view.  They could also pull information and use AI software to analyse data taken from all sensors used by a modern, drone-intensive police force.  Social media is a treasure trove of clues, connectivity and photos that are gathered by individuals already.  With the advancement of AI technologies, our societies can be much better armed.  Traditionally, intelligence agencies have close ties with law enforcement files and data.  The more information the intelligence agencies, within the limits of what is gathered publicly and voluntarily provided by citizens, the better.   This gives time for either the country’s defense force or law enforcement agencies to mobilize to diffuse situations before people get hurt.

The size of such institutions is only determined by the perceived need and the amount of automation that can be put in place to gather information automatically.  The population can also be engaged in helping with information gathering, as they are already doing so, simply by collecting and posting information online.  Imagine what information gathering agencies can achieve if the population trusted them and would consciously post information that could be of interest to increase a nation’s security!

Collaboration with other countries means access to other nation’s information.   The more data, the better.  If all countries connected their nation’s data to each other, intelligence agencies would not be needed as much and would center more of their efforts on threats that are more difficult to detect.

Defense division

In a word, we’re talking about the military.  I specifically call it a Defense division because that’s what it should be doing.  Too many military forces in the world today have a dual purpose.  One for defense and the other for offense under the pretext of pre-emptively defending citizens.

Defense means no pre-emptive strikes anywhere in the world.  Domestically, enforcement officers can question citizens that are on the road towards committing crimes.  That is perfectly fine because the targeted individuals may be rehabilitated by the nation’s correctional institutions before they do anything bad in society.  However, pre-emptive military strikes between nations only cause animosity between nation’s peoples.  A nation’s intelligence agency can isolate a potential threat outside of a nation, but in those cases, the nation does not have any legislative power over the threat.  The Foreign Affairs Ministry can therefore be used to start a conversation with the potentially aggressive nation or citizens that have aggressive plans and collaborate to find a solution.

If that effort fails, the defense force, fully informed of the potential threat can serve as a barrier to protect citizens from harm.  The presence of a well-informed, strong and ready force is sufficient to deter any assault on a nation. 

There is also a much smaller chance that an entirely defensive force will cause further aggression from potential extranational dangers.  This is something that has been discussed by most countries in recent years.  In a great article by TIME magazine, entitled “Why We Should Close America’s Overseas Military Bases”,[1] the author lists 7:

1.       They don’t protect the homeland from direct attack

2.       Their deterrence effect is overrated

3.       They don’t always effectively prevent nuclear proliferation

4.       They can encourage resentment

5.       They can cause the U.S. to support brutal dictatorships

6.       They risk entangling us in unnecessary wars

7.       Technology has largely made them obsolete

Please read the whole article by John Glaser to see all the arguments.  In effect, the country that has the most bases around the world under the pretext to defend America, suffers much more downside than upside by keeping over 800 of their foreign military bases open.  In fact, according to Chicago University’s Robert Pape, “the principal cause of suicide terrorism is resistance to foreign occupation.”[2]

Therefore, I strongly encourage our ideal nation to cooperate with other nations in collaborative defense of citizens, instead of deciding to position military bases on foreign soil. 

A well-trained defense force can also be used in other ways like disaster relief.  In America, in Canada and in Europe, military organizations have been used extensively to support people in need domestically and around the world.  Soldiers are trained to work in hazardous environments, in great physical shape, are well equipped and usually have a strong desire to protect people from harm.  They don’t need to protect people from enemy bombs or bullets to find validation in their work.

Finally, a well-trained defensive force can also be deployed as an international police force to deal with larger threats, such as deflecting extraterrestrial objects (asteroids and the like), or a rogue and that are attacking a neighbor.

Having all nations participate in such a force with equal funding and giving away control of this entity to an independent authority would be an extraordinary gesture of collaboration to ensure no citizen in the world is without proper protection against an aggressor.

No defense force should attack anyone.  They are there to defend the defenseless. 

This is very important.  No nation should blame another for tampering on their sovereignty.  If nations take care of their own citizens and take it seriously, they should not be attacking other nation.

Foreign defense forces can be invited in by the recognized government of a nation to help resolve issues when their citizens are threatened.  It is always a noble gesture to ask for help.  Armed with the information from the information gathering agencies and guided by the best people possible to direct their action, defense forces can be very efficient life savers. 

Along with the other structures referred to in this book, most military forces would be reduced in size significantly since nation’s citizens will have much less stress, therefore less desire to become aggressive.   Military forces would only need the minimum.   Using more AI in their communications and operations can save soldier’s lives too. 

Today, I recommend we ban the use of autonomous AI-driven weapons systems because militaries around the world would teach them offensive rules.  A learning AI with weapons attached is a serious potential threat to civilian lives if the world’s aggression remains like what we have today.  However, if the world changes its military stances to be completely defensive, then deep learning AI weapons platforms could be a very good investment to save soldier’s lives and to increase the safety of civilians.  What is key with advanced learning AI is that they will learn motivations and behavior from human beings.  If our societies are still aggressive, deploying these AI weapons platforms can mean disaster for humanity.  Our ideal society has rock bottom stress levels, so it should be fine.

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[1] John Glaser (October 2016).  Why we should close America’s overseas military bases.  TIME.  - http://time.com/4511744/american-military-bases-overseas/

[2] Robert A. Pape (August 2003).  The strategic logic of suicide terrorism.  American Political Science Review.  Vol.  97, No. 3.