The Danger of AI

Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking are warning us that AI will be the end of humanity. Others argue that machines lack emotions, therefore they are not dangerous.

Now, for the facts:

·       Machines already are more intelligent and effective than any human in a lot of fields and they will steal all our jobs in a short period.

·       Singularity and other forms of intelligent machines are science fiction. At least for now. November 2017. Next month I am not sure.

·       AI is not emotions even not intuition – it is just statistics. If the price of the apartments in this area is x dollars, then this apartment probably can be sold for x dollars. That’s it. It doesn’t matter if the methods are – classification or regression, supervised, unsupervised or reinforced – we are talking about knowledge and probabilities. The whole thing is based on analysis of a lot of data and parameters. A lot, that’s what makes them super intelligent.

Machines are not dangerous to the humanity they are dangerous to people.

Because machines don’t possess emotions, because of the fact it is just statistics and data they are dangerous. Those statistics are based on the reality as we know it. And the reality is racist, homophobe and discriminates women. The machines will augment it. Exponentially.

That is the danger.

When I was in jail in Israel there were a majority of Arabs, a lot of Oriental Jews and some Ashkenakies.

Put this in an AI machine and the result will be immediate: Arabs are bad, Oriental Jews are suspicious and Ashkenazies are good.

The Israelis will put this kind of logic in a drone and the drone will start killing a lot of Arabs.

Machines will be biased by our reality and will serve the dominant classes.

I don’t see machines destroying the humanity but I see a very dark near future reality.

Walking New York in VR

On April 26, 2015 Elmar received his fifteen minutes.

He received a lot more than fifteen minutes. He is the star of The New York Times Magazine for this date but more than that he participated in the virtual reality video telling the story of how the French artist JR put this 20 years old waiter in the cover of the magazine dedicated to the immigrants of the city.

The video is called Walking New York and is a breakthrough in documentaries, in how to relate to the VR video media and creates a new kind of art.

The story is simple: New York Times decided to dedicate a number of its magazine to the immigrants of New York. As JR himself explains in the video: everybody in New York is an immigrant or a son of an immigrant or a grandson of an immigrant.

For the cover of the magazine they contracted JR for a large-scale street photography.

JR is a French artist known mainly by its huge photographies that he applies to street walls.  

JR is a French artist known mainly by its huge photographies that he applies to street walls. 

He chooses Elmar because he likes the way the young waiter walks. JR with a group of friends take some photos of Elmar walking, print it, apply it to the floor of a central place in New York.

Then on the afternoon “when the lights were right” JR get up with an helicopter and took the picture of the picture of Elmar walking in New York.

All this was filmed using the virtual reality technologies creating an incredible work of art.

By far the best VR video ever made.

About JR
WIRED: How The NY Times Is Sparking the VR Journalism Revolution
Face2Face: JR on the Israeli Palestinian Wall