HoBB Part II/ On the Verge of Chatting With Whales/ Lidar Enabled Archeology/ Where Computing Might Go Next/ Yet Another Boston Dynamics Video…

HoBB Part II. Now that the House of Beautiful Business’ live event is behind us (here ?the summary and the highlights of day three), a few considerations from my side, germinated at the HoBB but not only related to the HoBB.?

I have been writing about the necessary shift from an exploitative paradigm to a generative one. I have written about it while talking about nature co-design and how we need to rethink and redo the economic and industrial tissue of modern civilization, which has been built upon an exploitative paradigm, that was at the core of the first and the second industrial revolution and that is still shaping much of the world as we know it.

At a very high level, exploitative is everything that starts from something bigger and by exploitation gets to something smaller, generative is everything that starts from the small and generates something bigger (or grows into it). The consequences of the two paradigms go far beyond the economic and industrial realm and have huge implications on our society, and its mindset. Underlying an exploitative paradigm is a “scarcity mindset”, as you start from a finite starting point. One of the consequences is that competition is about getting the biggest slice of the pie. In a generative paradigm, the reference is an “abundance mindset”, as you can generate what you have. So, conversely, one of the consequences is that competition is about making the pie as big as possible, not necessarily about getting the biggest slice.

So far, I always thought of the above in the context of the “physical” world, but during Concrete Love I came to the realization that we are undergoing a similar shift from exploitative to generative in the digital world. With the so-called Web3.0 you can see how things are moving from extraction of value from (our) data to a paradigm centered on creation and generation. And an additional proof of that is to be seen in the rise of Generative AI vs. “classical” Machine Learning, focused on extracting value from huge amount of data. It is not by chance that data has been often referred to as the new oil…

Another aspect I have been writing about a lot is the innovative power that is coming out of the fusion of technologies related to matter and energy with computation and cognition through sensing and actuation. The result is not the simple combination of existing technologies to create what Brian Arthur calls “combinatorial innovation”, it is something different, way more powerful, something new that can do things that were simply unthinkable before and is at the core of the shift to the generative paradigm.

I was therefore extremely (pleasantly) surprised to learn that one of the characteristics of the Web3.0 is that it fuses the digital and physical world into something new, into what has been dubbed “phygital” (personally not a big fan of such neologisms, but it gives the idea…).

Of course, there is a lot of confirmation bias from my side embedded in the paragraphs above, and there is way more subtlety to be articulated and discussed around Web3.0 and its characteristics. That said, I came away with a much-reinforced feeling that the necessary shift from exploitative to generative is closer than I thought and that it is going to impact society way more broadly than I ever dreamed of.

Closing this week’s intro with one of the highlights from Lisbon: the installation by?Jonathan Rosen . His work is impressive, and much needed…?here is why .

Are We on the Verge of Chatting With Whales?

Can AI-powered Natural Language Processing (NLP) models help us talk to animals? NLP has understandably focused almost exclusively on human language - e.g. ,?OpenAI's GPT-3 . But in 2020, an international, interdisciplinary team of scientists created ?Project CETI ?to try and decipher communications between sperm whales - and maybe even 'speak' with them.

Whether animals even have the capacity for language has long been the subject of debate. According to animal behaviorism pioneer Konrad Lorenz: "Animals do not possess a language in the true sense of the word." But much has changed since Lorenz's claim in 1948. Scientists now argue that certain animals demonstrate language's three criteria: semantics, grammar, and learning new vocabulary that's not innate.

What have the machine learning Doolittles of Project CETI discovered to date? Sperm whales communicate through a series of "clicks" - lending themselves to digital analysis in a way more continuous sounds produced by other species do not. And because sperm whales communicate over vast distances, they rely entirely on acoustic sound - not body language or facial expressions. But before a sperm whale "chatbot" becomes a realistic possibility, Project CETI needs to collect vast amounts of data - the goal is 4B words, even though no one knows yet what a "word" is.

Project CETI has notable skeptics, including renowned cognitive scientist and linguist ?Steven Pinker : "If whales could communicate complex messages, why don’t we see them using it to do complex things together, as we see in humans?" On the other hand, according to Project CETI's ?Michael Bronstein :

"I think it is very arrogant to think that?Homo sapiens?is the only intelligent and sentient creature on Earth. If we discover that there is an entire civilization basically under our nose—maybe it will result in some shift in the way that we treat our environment. And maybe it will result in more respect for the living world."

News items:

The Makeup of the Future Will Be Grown in a Petri Dish

Is biotech the answer for making a new kind of makeup with less negative environmental impact?

Lidar Reveals Hundreds of Long-Lost Maya and Olmec Ceremonial Centers

An airborne ?lidar ?survey - similar to radar but using light instead of radio waves - recently identified 478 long-lost Maya and Olmec ceremonial sites in southern Mexico. According to University of Arizona archaeologist ?Takekeshi Inomata : "It was unthinkable to study an area this large until a few years ago. Publicly available lidar is transforming archaeology."

In recent years, "lidar surveys have revealed ?tens of thousands of irrigation channels, causeways, and fortresses across Maya territory , which now spans the borders of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize." Such discoveries have led to many new theories about the relationship between the Maya and the older Olmec civilizations. But, according to Inomata:

"Continuing to excavate the sites to find answers will take much longer and will involve many other scholars. There are still lots of unanswered questions."

News items:

Amazon Joins Race for Quantum Computer With New Caltech Center

Amazon has officially entered the race to build the first quantum computer alongside such competitors as Google, IBM, Honeywell, Microsoft, and startups like ?IonQ ?- not to mention China.

Where Computing Might Go Next

Silicon Valley has "perpetuated the mythos of an innovative land of garage startups and capitalist cowboys" being responsible for modern computing. According to MIT Tech Review, "the reality is different. Computing’s history is modern history—and especially American history—in miniature."

Offering an overview of "the past seven decades [that] have produced stunning breakthroughs in science and engineering," University of Washington historian and author ?Margaret O’Mara ?concludes, "The information age of late has been more effective at fomenting discord than advancing enlightenment, exacerbating social inequities and economic inequalities rather than transcending them." So what's next? First, the American tech community needs to address the problems of diversity in its ranks and leadership, unregulated monopolies that stifle innovation, and international competition. Further, according to O'Mara:

"Many modern technologists - especially those at the helm of large for-profit enterprises - disdain politics and resist getting dragged down by the realities of past and present as they imagine what lies over the horizon. They dream of a new age of quantum computers and artificial general intelligence, where machines do most of the work and much of the thinking. Whatever computing innovations will appear in the future, what matters most is how our culture, businesses, and society choose to use them."

News items:

How Silicon Valley Hatched a Plan to Turn Blood Into Human Eggs

Can ?Conception ?- a startup founded by Y Combinator alumnus ?Matt Krisiloff ?with investors like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Skype founder Jaan Tallinn - change the way we make babies?

Boston Dynamics’ Spot Robot Looks Like a Scary Jim Henson Puppet in This Rolling Stones Tribute

With the sad recent exception of ?Charlie Watts , it seems The Rolling Stones will just keep on rolling forever. But when it comes to longevity, even The Stones' eternal frontman, Mick Jagger, may have met his match. In honor of the recent 40th anniversary of the Tattoo You album , Boston Dynamics released a video of its Spot robot mimicking Jagger's iconic dance moves to the LP's single, ?Start Me Up , and it's both impressive and creepy. And once you start it up, it never stops (with the proper maintenance, of course.)

For many, Spot is the harbinger of a dystopian future that looks something like a ?Black Mirror episode . While Boston Dynamics is happy to ?sell its robots to the police , it does have ?a policy against weaponizing its devices ?- for now. According to The Verge's ?James Vincent , you should keep that in mind "in 30 years’ time when you get tazed by a robot dog for not mining steel fast enough to build Bezos’ third space mansion. That machine may once have had dreams of being a dancer."

News items:

From a Hidden Picasso Nude to an Unfinished Beethoven, AI Uncovers Lost Art — And New Challenges

As AI uncovers or completes lost and unfinished works by masters like Beethoven and Picasso, it's also creating legal and ethical questions about whether it should be allowed to do so and what consequences its developers might face.

Yuval Harari Warns Humans Will Be "Hacked" if Artificial Intelligence Is Not Globally Regulated

Famed author of Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, ?Yuval Noah Harari ?is sounding the alarm about the risk of humans being "hacked" by AI. According to Harari, "To hack a human being is to get to know that person better than they know themselves. And based on that, to increasingly manipulate you. Netflix tells us what to watch and Amazon tells us what to buy. Eventually, within 10 or 20 or 30 years, such algorithms could also tell you what to study at college and where to work and whom to marry and even whom to vote for."

Despite Harari's dire predictions, he sees an upside to AI - if we control it. According to Harari:

"The whole thing is that it's not just dystopian. It's also utopian. I mean, this kind of data can also enable us to create the best health care system in history. The question is what else is being done with that data? And who supervises it? Who regulates it?"

News items:

How Well Can an AI Mimic Human Ethics?

AI misalignment - the risk that AI may not operate as we expect or in humanity's best interests - has long been a sci-fi trope. Now it's a legitimate and growing concern. Can we trust AI to teach itself right from wrong???