Death of the Knowledge Society
March 4, 2009
Since the early 90s we have been living in what many have called the Information Society, although the notion goes back much further than that. Basically it is only since then that access to technology and information have been sufficiently democratised to enable a significant impact on the day to day lives of many people. This in its turn has enabled many more people to be implicated in the creation and sharing of knowledge, and the emergence of an immaterial economy. We are already well down the path (some would say too far) towards an economy where physical goods are the least significant contributor to the economy, meaning the physical content of a product is overshadowed by its knowledge content (R&D, design, marketing, support, etc.. )
Turning to Artificial Intelligence which has long been a favourite theme of Science Fiction, futurologists and technologists alike, we can add some spice. Ray Kurzweil is probably the best known of those suggesting that desktop computing power (if it continues to follow Moore’s law) will have the equivalent processing power of the human brain by 2029, although the ability to transform that power into true intelligence may lag behind. Nonetheless the last few months have seemed to be particularly active in this field with Anders Sandberg and Nick Bostrom publishing a credible Whole Brain Emulation – A Roadmap, and IBM’s Dharmendra S Modha’s project to emulate a rat’s brain, suggested to the Singularity Summit that the project was positioned halfway along that roadmap, (Next Big Future) – with the rat-scale model being 3.5 larger than the previous work on mouse brain emulation.
It was estimated that a system 400 times larger than the rat model would be needed to emulate the human brain, with the most powerful machines currently available being able to handle models 10 times larger than those of the rat. With DARPA contributing $4.9 million to the project, it is clear that this research is leading somewhere, and possibly faster than we expect, even taking into account the probable need for quantum computing to reach full human brain emulation.
This of course takes us towards Kurzweil’s singularity where machine intelligence will start evolving more rapidly by itself, and I question what will happen to the knowledge society/economy when machines can accumulate and generate and create knowledge more rapidly and more cheaply than a human counterpart.
Will these knowledge machines be creative? Intuitive? Empathetic? Will they become the wealth generating engines replacing talented humans. Will our values change, with personal knowledge being no longer being a key success factor?
We are talking of potential changes over the next 25 years, and remember that 25 years ago few believed the impact that the Internet and mobile technology would have on our lives and the way we do business. My guess is that these sentient technologies will start having an impact on defence applications much sooner than that.
Given that many policy makers and leaders still do not understand the implications of a networked society, what will they make of the post knowledge society, assuming they are still in charge.
March 7, 2009 at 7:04 pm
I wonder what model of the human brain is used, apart from ‘just’ the number of axions or entity-relations, which if they are to support a human, needs to be 100 billion or so. What structures will be functional and how? On how many levels? What sort of informations can be handled on what kind of scales (binary, nomological, interval)? Or are these trade secrets?
March 7, 2009 at 8:15 pm
I’m sure as the project advances the information will be forthcoming, DARPA permitting. Some guidance may be gained from the two preceding projects on the half and full mouse brain projects. The goal is total emulation, with the ability to transfer the functionality of a human brain. Apart from the emulation issues, the question of whether appropriate technologies will emerge to fully scan the synaptic structures is there. Worth watching – carefully.
March 12, 2009 at 1:27 am
Hi Ian,
Interesting perspective and mind challenging questions. My first thought after reading your post was “hopefully we’re not there yet”… as if the O-so-relative time between now and then would help us find answers to these questions. ; )
“Will these knowledge machines be creative? Intuitive? Empathetic?” Right on!
I’d say that the second word that popped to my mind was “consciousness”. Although this might seem to be an Hollywoodian vision of science; the day a computer or artificial intelligence system will acquire self-consciousness, we’ll seriously have to reposition ourselves vs machines (cfr. Hal 9000 in 2001 Space Odyssey, I Robot, AI, Battlestar Galactica, etc.). Question being: should we wait till we reach that point or anticipate?
“Consciousness” strikes again when thinking about your last paragraph and on 2 levels. Shouldn’t leaders obviously be “conscious” of “the implications of a networked society”? (I mean by definition, as leaders) Or maybe the other way around: what will the networked society do when the fact that leaders are not “aware” will spread the networked consciousness?
For the moment, my Utopian green eye likes to imagine a networked (human) filter of the information based on networked (human) values… to the rescue.
March 12, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Hi Luc,
Yes your comment reflect well on my underlying thoughts.
One of the problems we have now is that policy development on new issues has to be started proactively rather retrospectively. 30 years ago there was enough time for a phenomenon to be observed prior to taking action, because the pace of change was within the policy horizon.
The current trend for social network development is to my mind a response to a human need to share, and indeed a human “hive” would act as a balance towards machine intelligence. I can see potential for a political/administrative backlash against social networks with security, IPR, privacy, all being used to throttle the process. I don’t view this as any form of conspiracy, only a lack of perception.
March 16, 2009 at 4:55 pm
machines don’t feel fear…
in fact they don’t feel at all.
Pretty scary.
But no real surprise – as still today frauding a couple of 100 00 dollars or a few millions gives a longer imprisonment than killing another human being.
As long as we let greed dictate,
we can expect everything -
except empathy.
March 16, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Interesting contributions. Consciousness, emotions, moral fibre, are these things that are uniquely human, probably not we have signs of other primates that plan ahead, show self awareness and certainly emotions, and quite possibly we will see it in lower animals too. Not too many showing fraudulent tendencies yet. On the other hand we are ruled and governed by administrations and corporations that as entities do not have feelings either. Perhaps a machine intelligence could be endowed with a better sense of justice than we possess.