The Edge 250_The Edge 172.qxd 25/07/2017 08:47 Page 26
EVERYBODY LIES On my commute home from the office last week I listened to an interview with a guy called Seth Stephens-Davidowitz who’d just released a book with the above title. Seth is a Harvard educated economist and former Google data scientist and not, as being called Seth might suggest, someone that lives in a trailer and cooks Meth. While he worked at Google his job was to collate and study what they call ‘Big Data’ which is basically everything you ‘leave’ online, in particular your search history. Seth realised that while we often lie to colleagues, friends and loved ones, we didn’t lie to Google, so he started pulling together data based on Google searches to build up a picture of what people are really interested in and, by extension, use that to extrapolate their feelings and behaviours. It’s a great idea that’s already causing a stir in social science circles and I’m eagerly awaiting my copy of his book to arrive. Unsurprisingly the results Seth found were often less than flattering. One of the top searches from parents is ‘Is my son gifted?’ which is pretty harmless, until you see that one of the other top searches from parents is ‘Is my daughter a slut?’ - so it would appear there is still a positive bias towards male offspring and a tendency to doubt the ‘purity’ of female offspring, which is both archaic and slightly creepy. Why are the so-called saviours of the white race always the worst examples of it? One of the other big findings which really struck me was that, according to what people type into Google at least, America is still racist. Really worryingly racist. Searches containing the ‘N-word’, white power groups and segregation are scarily prevalent and Seth actually predicted the election of Trump using the data. I’m not saying that everyone who voted for Trump is an idiot racist, but it appears that everyone who is an idiot racist voted for Trump. I can’t wait to get my hands on my own copy of the book and I’m sure I’m going to be as enthralled as I am horrified by some of the things in there. If it’s as good as I think it’s going to be, I’ll let you know.
ME & MY adamantium skeleton
The Kingmeister reports DON’T BE AN IDIOT I’m taking a bit of a hiatus from Facebook at the moment as the amount of spiteful, stupid and frankly racist idiocy I’m seeing on there is getting on my wick. What’s really winding me up is that it’s all coming from people on my ‘Friends List’ and this, unfortunately, includes family members. I get that after Westminster, Manchester and Borough Market it’s easy to feel scared and angry, but some of us really need to pull our heads out of our collective arses. I’m not trying to downplay the atrocities at all, but asking people to keep things in perspective is always a useful exercise. In terms of terrorist attacks, Europe is safer than it has been in decades. Gone are the days of groups like the IRA, ETA and the Red Army Faction which rampaged across England and the EU during the 70’s and 80’s. We suffered far more prolific and horrific attacks from these homegrown terrorists than we’ve ever seen from Islamist extremism so far, so why are we all acting like this is both a new thing and the biggest threat to our safety that we’ve ever seen?
All that ‘freedom’ we gave Iraq really worked out for them, didn’t it? Yes, of course fundamentalism and extremism is a problem in any form and if you don’t think there aren’t plenty of dangerous, hateful white Christian groups murdering people out there, then I have a bridge to sell you. Islam isn’t the problem. There are around a billion Muslims in the world, so if Islam wanted us all dead, then a hell of a lot more of us would already be dead and that’s a fact. So stop and think before you start spouting some ‘ban the burka’ rubbish, or sharing that shocking story you saw about the implementation of Sharia law. They’re both equally stupid and wrong and you should know better. You think England is a great country? Good, then celebrate it by celebrating freedom, respect and inclusiveness. Celebrate it with a straight back and a stiff upper lip. But nothing says you can’t stand proud and hold out a welcoming hand at the very same time. You don’t celebrate freedom by banning stuff and you don’t celebrate freedom by letting wildly over-exaggerated fear rule your life and ignoring facts. If you’re going to do that, you might as well move to America. Page 26
AI When you think of Artificial Intelligence you think of Skynet. You think of Arnie and “I’ll be back”. You think of the Matrix and the eventual enslavement of the human race by robotic overlords. Or actually, maybe that’s just me. The term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ has been bandied about since the 1950’s and, like it or not, it’s something that has been growing more and more sophisticated every day and will continue to do so. It already does most of the flying for us when we go off on holiday and soon enough it will be driving some of our cars, something I know a lot of people are less than enthusiastic about. Me? I think it’s a great idea and I can’t wait to have a robo-car deal with all the bell-ends on the A127 every working day while I sit in the back and read a book. The automation of mundane jobs and tasks has been happening for some time now and is only going to increase. Personally, I don’t see this as a bad thing, although I’m sure there are going to be some bumps along that particular road (unless we let a robot drive the car). Personally I think the increasing power and effectiveness of AI is something that could benefit all of us in the future. Whether you like it or not, AI is something that you’re probably using every day already. Ask Siri or Cortana a question? That’s AI. Get Alexa to order you a takeaway? That’s AI. I love talking to that little black hockey puck from Amazon and getting her to get me news, traffic and weather reports, or tell me really awful jokes. But getting her (and I do refer to Alexa as ‘her’ and also say please and thank-you) to get a takeaway delivered? That, my friends, is the future! Even writing this article and getting (admittedly usually stupid and unwelcome) suggestions on my grammar or sentence structures is rudimentary AI and they’re now working on ‘artistic’ AI that will be able to write movie scripts and stories. Some people might think that having a robot take on the role of an artist is faintly horrifying. But me? I love it and I’m already looking forward to the day when E.E. asks me for my latest column and I can get a robot to do it for me while I eat the pizza that Alexa just ordered for me.
I’LL BE BACK!
The Edge 01245 348256