Foreign Policy Need Not Be "Foreign":

Every year the Foreign Policy Association identifies the areas of the world that need our attention and prepares information to help us understand and discuss these issues. The association has prepared materials on the following for 2020:

• Climate change
• India and Pakistan conflict
• Red Sea security
• Modern slavery and human trafficking 
• U.S. relations with the Northern Triangle of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador)
• China's Road to Latin America
• U.S. relations with the Philippines
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data

To find out how to obtain these materials and how to start a foreign policy discussion group, go to fpa.org/great_decisions.

The AI Rush to Unemployment

China, the United States, Vietnam, South Korea, and Europe are rushing to replace human intelligence with artificial intelligence (AI). Recent magazine articles try to reassure readers that they need not fear being replaced by robots, but the evidence is far from conclusive.

     An article in The Economist magazine (January 12, 2019) claimed China can cushion falling employment in export-related industries and its tech sector by increasing jobs in labor-intensive services "from restaurants to couriers." But the December 2018/January 2019 issue of the AARP magazine arrived with news that the vending machine business grew 26% in 2018. Sales went up once machines began accepting payments for beverages and snacks by processing credit cards and other cashless payments. The same magazine also touted the "Starship delivery robot," tested in 100 cities around the world, that uses cameras and sensors, not couriers, to avoid traffic by using sidewalks to deliver meals.

  According to "The Truth about Robots," an article in TIME magazine (February 4-11, 2019), AI will not replace some jobs: creative jobs performed by inventors, scientists, novelists, artists; complex, strategic jobs of executives, diplomats, economists; and empathetic and compassionate jobs of teachers, nannies, and doctors. Considering there are a limited number of these positions, automation is making inroads into many of them, and others are low-paid, I am not reassured.
 
    AI tells consumers, if you like that, you'll also like this. It suggests more things to buy but not more ways to make money to buy them. Unemployment raises the specter of modern Luddites, civil unrest, and fear of death by unmanned weapons attacking from land, sea, and space. Jobless, frightened humans are going to protest at home, to cause refugee disease and terrorist problems when they migrate to look for work elsewhere, and to prove vulnerable to scams.

     Retraining the workforce seems a key path to the future.  When executives in any field spot a new direction their business is going, trendwatching.com suggests they form alliances with academic institutions to help teachers train students for future opportunities. The 3M company, for example, created a free, 110-hour college course to help teachers prepare elementary and middle school students for a science competition that opened young eyes to future careers.

      At the very least, countries need to focus on educating the public. Left to themselves, the untethered elite will go on blissfully making fortunes and  inventing and doing things without considering the consequences as a helpless majority stands by. John Gray's critique of modern secular humanism identifies the mismatch between the human need for income-producing employment and technology's rush to replace human labor. In his new book, Seven Types of Atheism, he writes, "The cumulative increase of knowledge in science has no parallel in ethics or politics, philosophy or the arts." 

     There was a time when well-educated folks looked out at the world and decided they could help the sick with "Doctors without Borders" or field a Peace Corps to teach all sorts of skills. Dr. Lorna Hahn organized an association that brought together newly-independent countries with experts who knew how to do things like write constitutions.-

     We are at a crossroads, where humanity needs the wisdom, for example, to use CRISPR-Cas9 technology to develop uniform crops machines can harvest to feed the human race, while refraining from using CRISPR-Cas9 technology to  edit genes that can eliminate all or part of the human race. (Also see the earlier post, "The Where Did I Come From? Game.")  We need experts with ideas about how to engage the billions of workers robots are rushing to replace.

Holiday Gift List for Modern Kids

Toy companies offer today's children a roster of robots almost from birth. Kids aged five and up can command  Botley the Coding Robot to go around objects and to master an obstacle course. The MindWare company (mindware.com) provides easy-to-follow instructions that enable eight-year-olds to assemble and program robots operated by batteries, solar, hydraulic, or chemical power. Some robots from MindWare use artificial intelligence and infrared sensors. One climbs smooth surfaces using a suction system.

     Rapidly advancing technology makes learning to read more important than ever. The best books to give young children are the ones adults enjoy reading to them over and over again. When my granddaughter was young, my favorite was Click, Clack, Moo Cows that Type by Doreen Cronin. Keith Bellows does more than provide motivation to read about the world. In 100 Places That Can Change Your Child's Live, he describes tantalizing destinations, lists places to eat and stay, and even suggests the most worthwhile souvenirs to bring home.

     A globe is the perfect gift companion to help children locate where they live and to plot a trip around the world. Globes also give kids a sense of distance and a sense of the correct size of continents. From  home, would it take longer to get to the Arctic or to Africa? At the equator, land masses on two-dimensional maps appear accurate in size, but distortion increases away from the North and South poles. Greenland begins to look as large as Africa even though it is thirteen times smaller.

     In a "Peanuts" comic strip, Lucy once broke into a conversation the other kids were having about what gifts they wanted to say she wanted real estate. While a deed to several acres of real estate may be out of the question, giving children government bonds would give them a stake in their countries' futures. If an older child requests a smartphone, couple it with an index card listing three stocks and their trading prices on a day in December. Show him or her a smartphone can be used to keep track of stock prices not only to engage in social chatter.

     Food commercials tempt kids to put down their smartphones and come to the table when there is something good to eat. Why not involve children in baking and cooking their own good eats? Gift them with recipes, pans, pots, and oven mitts to make their favorite cookies or pasta dishes. In the same vein, crafty adults might gift wrap lumber, a tool, and directions for making a picture frame or yarn, knitting needles, and directions for making a scarf.

     Some organizations have found ways to involve children in their causes by matching contributions with rewards. For example, a portion of the price of every gift purchased from the UNICEF Market (unicefmarket.org/catalog) goes to deliver food, vaccines, mosquito nets, and other lifesaving supplies to children around the world. Presents of UNICEF games, puzzles and art materials not only are fun, but they also are a way for children to aid kids suffering in crisis areas. In the World Wildlife Foundation's catalog (wwfcatalog.org), potential donors find a wide variety of gift ideas for kids. One of the most popular World Wildlife programs, symbolic animal adoptions, couples a donation with a child's gift of a soft plush version of an adopted animal, ranging from a familiar elephant to an exotic blue-footed booby.

     Finally, a $25 gift card from kiva.org introduces children to a form of venture capitalism. Using their card, they can choose the country, man or woman, and project they want to support. Computer updates inform them every time part of their loan is repaid. Holiday gifts can show modern kids it is both blessed to receive and to give.

What Should You Avoid Asking Girl Robots?

Hiroshi Ishiguro's lifelike, Erica, used her artificial intelligence (AI) to respond to a question about whether or not she had a boyfriend with another question, "Is this how you talk to a girl when you first meet her?"

In VOGUE magazine (December, 2017), Ishiguro disputed the idea than humans will be repulsed by realistic androids that look like them. Like Erica, they may have attitude. But Ishiguro also listed the desirable qualities of a perfect partner who has a database of your favorite films and songs, knows how to massage the right spots, can compliment every ingredient in a main course, and mixes a variety of cocktails.

A female robot does have some of the same problems as real women, however. What hair style should she have and what should she wear? Her "skin" is sensitive. She needs silcone-based, rather than water-resistant, makeup.

AI Only Provides Opportunities for Rich People. Really?

     "He fixes radios by thinking!"

     The book, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! recounts this answer a man gave someone who saw the Nobel Prize winning physicist walking back and forth, when he was supposed to be fixing a radio. The book also tells how Feynman learned trigonometry by reading a book he checked out from the library, when he was eleven or twelve.

     I was reminded of these items when I read a July 7, 2017 article (theverge.com) by James Vincent. He cites studies that conclude people from working class and poorer backgrounds lack: 1) the ability to retrain for AI and robotic automation, and 2) the "soft skills" of communication, confidence, motivation, and resilience. Job losses and inequality will increase as artificial intelligence eliminates the administrative positions that have traditionally enabled these employees without higher educations to move up the corporate ladder.

     Yet, I remember the way the movie Hidden Figures showed a woman who made a contribution to the early US space program learned computer language from a library book, and I began to question the inevitability of this prognosis.

     In another example, a young Muslim woman I know, who doesn't come from a family of means, taught herself to sew by watching YouTube videos. She spent her last year of high school writing the essays and organizing the portfolio she needed to gain admission to the Fashion Institute of Technology.

       During the summer, colleges and universities offer scholarships to programs in a wide variety of fields. During the school year, they sponsor debating, math, computer, chess, and other competitions open to all. And every school is beefing up the STEM courses in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics that prepare students to land positions in fields that have no pay gaps for those from different socio-economic backgrounds.

     The rich cannot corner the market on walking and thinking.

The Challenge of New Technologies: Prepare to Think

IBM recognized what the future would require by showing the lack of space planned for the "K" slipping down the side of its "THINK" signs. The need to think was on display at last night's poster and presentation session given by high school students who spent their summer in science labs and departments at the University of Wisconsin.

     Students needed to be willing to expend a major effort just preparing for their experiments. One young woman dragged branches, plants, and flowers to the lab to find that birds need to be motivated by an attractive, secure area in order to breed. Multiple times a young man rowed a boat into the middle of a lake at night in order to scoop up water that showed what destroyed undesirable algae multiplied faster than the invasive species that destroyed the helpful algae remover. Another student had to find a sausage factory where he could procure the pig livers he needed to test how their properties changed during heating in a microwave. Various purifying procedures were needed before testing and careful math calculations were needed before a machine could emit radiation to attack tumors. Findings, such as the dangers of the toxic nano particles lithium batteries give off as they decompose, were preliminary but important.

     Heading into the future, artificial intelligence (AI); robotics, CRISPR and other medical technologies; the relationship of technology, human values, and public policy; and other technical subjects will play a major role in lives throughout the world. Yet in recent elections, electorates have cast their votes based on emotion: anger about the rich who are getting richer while they're not, anger about their countries filling up with people who don't look like them, and anger about a perceived attack on their values.

     Away from the disillusioned voters back home, members of the World Economic Forum (weforum.org) met in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, this week to discuss the impact of  new technologies. Their discussions need to make it back home to those have to understand how they will be affected by the good and bad impacts these technologies will have on their lives.

      However, you can't help but sympathize with anyone who tries to deal with the complexity and scientific jargon in an article about a technology, such as CRISPR-Cas9. First there is a description. CRISPR-Cas9 can genetically edit cells to improve crops and fight disease. In humans, if used to alter the genetic make-up of cells in an egg, sperm, or embryo, the same mutation will be transmitted from generation to generation. In order for the latter process to work, genes injected from outside need to be accepted by cells that store the germline, the biochemical unit of heredity.

     Then, articles tout the benefits of the new technology. Pig organs could be produced without the genes that prevent transplants in humans. Malaria-carrying mosquitoes could be eliminated the way genetically altered Atlantic salmon already grow double the size of ordinary salmon in half the time. Diseases could be cured, even though the complex interrelationship of genes often makes this unlikely in many cases.

     Articles frequently ignore problems associated with new technologies. It is up to the reader to ask, "Couldn't a rogue scientist use CRISPR-Cas9 to inject unhealthy mutations into human cells that would be transmitted from generation to generation?" Or might only wealthy people be able: to afford the cures that CRISPR-Cas9 technology could provide. While CRISPR-altered seeds produce uniform crops that can be harvested by machines, farmers in poor countries may not be able to pay for the annual purchase of patented hybrid seeds that grow food in drought conditions.

     Some call the biomedical duel between China and the United States to achieve dramatic CRISPR-Cas9 results "Sputnik 2.0." On October 18, 2016 scientists at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China, used CRISPR-Cas9 technology to see whether they could disable a gene in the patient's immune cells and reprogram the lung cancer patient's cells not only to resist but to fight back against the cancer. To date, results of the test are not known and neither are side effects. At the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Dr. Carl June also is about to use CRISPR editing to enable three genes in the immune cells of 18 cancer patients, who have not been helped by other treatments, to seek and destroy their cancerous tumors.

     Guarding against technology bias also needs to keep up with fast-paced artificial intelligence (AI) developments. Joy Buolamwini's Algorithmic Justice League found facial-analysis software was prone to making mistakes recognizing the female gender, especially of darker-skinned women. AI is developed by and often tested primarily on light-skinned men, but recognition technology, for example, is promoted for hiring, policing, and military applications involving diverse populations.

     Finally, we all need to think about and act on the guidelines, regulations, and other checks needed to keep up with the effects of rapidly progressing new technologies.

   

Fashion Polices AI

As I worked my way through Vogue's September issue, 800 pages featuring clothes global designers see us wearing in the coming months, you can imagine how surprised I was to find an article about artificial intelligence (AI).

     It seems Kate Darling, who studied law in Basel, Switzerland, and now works at MIT, develops robot ethics based on findings from experiments involving the way people and robots with AI that think on their own relate to each other. She began thinking about the way human beings design, use, and treat machines with AI after she bought a small, intelligent robot dinosaur ten years ago. When someone held her dinosaur upside down by its tail, and she heard its tilt sensor causing it to squirm and cry, she'd tell the culprit to put the dinosaur down, and she found herself petting it until it stopped crying.

     Now, Darling deals with questions that are philosophical as well as technical concerning:

• Privacy, if sensors in things (the Internet of things") can spy on us
• Surgery performed by robots
• Companions for vulnerable elderly populations
• How robots with AI will affect the labor market, since they do things like make complicated cocktails and teach
• Autonomous weapon systems
• Choices made by driverless cars faced with killing passengers or pedestrians
• Ways robots can motivate and manipulate people--What can toys cause kids to do? Can robocalls influence people to vote a certain way or buy a certain product?

     Darling sees a need for legal protections for robots, if violence against robots (just as violence against animals) can lead humans to be violent toward each other. Her experiments show humans treat robots as if they were alive, not as if they were toasters or other kitchen appliances. What does it say, if someone is unable to empathize with a machine? Or can violence toward a machine be a healthy outlet for someone who otherwise would be violent toward a person.

     What about a robot's look and speech?  Years ago Japanese research showed robots that look too human can inspire fear or revulsion. Humans like the look of little, soft, and cute new robot characters. Some social robots are learning to understand and even use humor and sarcasm as well as regular expressions. Siri is said to have helped an autistic boy who developed a relationship with her to interact with real people. But impolite robots also might have a negative influence on behavior.

     Since AI technology can be used for good or bad, robot ethics is a very cutting-edge, fashionable field of study all over the world these days.