The Economic Singularity with Calum Chace

Have a little time on my hands these days, I went to see a presentation hosted by the London Futurists concerning the impact of artificial intelligence on the world economy. Chace is the author of two books concerning AI:

The first concerns what he terms the technical singularity. This is where AI becomes smarter than humans, attains consciousness, etc. The second book, the main subject of the presentation, concerns the impact of current AI developments on work and society. Jobs that we currently consider safe today, lawyers, truck drivers, doctors, etc. will be replaced by neural network-based AI's. This will lead to social instability and calls for economic reform, leading to a basic universal income state, with AI, or AI supported elites, making the decisions. Sounds awful. The banality of the future.

Back in the real world, the Oxfam shop has been flourishing due to the new precinct opening nearby, what Mark called The John Lewis Effect. "We're a Destination shop now", he proclaimed, to mutual joviality.

A Trip To Greenwich To See The London AI Futurists

For the inauguration of the new London AI Futurists, I attended a meeting at the Forum in Greenwich.

I took the DLR from Stratford to Cutty Sark, which took me through Docklands:

I must have been about seven or eight when I was last in Greenwich. It's a bit like a theme park, with Sainsbury's, M&S, etc., but that changed rapidly as I walked down the road towards the Forum.

The meeting was titled "Human Uniqueness or Simply Repeating Patterns?" and was given by a rather nervous German called Rob Wenzel.

His idea for the future of Artificial Intelligence was to model human personalities via the Myers-Brigg Type Indicator system. This gives sixteen broad types, each one matching another as the "ideal" partner. Thus an AI can be matched to an individual person and we could then relate to them better. Yes, folks, Genuine People Personalities (Marvin the Paranoid Android) might be a way of implementing AI for real. What was dissapointing was that Robert did not go further and explain his ideas for how it would be implemented, only that they serve as a guide for the future.

On the way back I passed through North Greenwich on the way to the tube station and saw the cable car system across the Thames near the Millenium Dome.

It was a long weary way home as the District line had engineering works and I was glad to get back to Chez Lemon.