As the final part of TU100 Block 1 Part 1 Activity 8, "communicating on the move," I selected a 5G news story from the Economic Times.

5G is expected to be available in 2020 and they are claiming the whole content of a DVD can be transmitted in a fraction of a second!

Minoru Fujishima Professor at Hiroshima University in Japan said; "This year, we developed a transmitter with 10 times higher transmission power than the previous version's. This made the per-channel data rate above 100 Gbit/s at 300 GHz possible". http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/56996124.cms

I have to ask the question, how on earth are they going to develop the processing capability, internal storage and battery life in the next generation of mobile phones to accommodate this among of data streaming?

We are talking three years away I suppose, so I await with interest!

As part of TU100 Block 1 Part 1 Activity 8 discussing entertainment, I was interested to read the latest developments in Oculus technology. A technology that has been shrouded in its fair share of headlines concerning the Rift Kickstarter seed funding campaign that raised over 2½ million dollars only two months after being formed. Two years later Facebook paid 2 billion dollars to buy the company.

The Gear VR is compatible with the Samsung Galaxy phones. This means their virtual world can be anywhere! A scary thought. It is certainly a massive market, “With WebVR, developers can reach a huge potential audience of over three billion web users. By giving those who haven't experienced VR a preview of what they're missing, WebVR content can accelerate the adoption of VR for people everywhere." Source Oculus VR, LLC from Facebook. https://developer.oculus.com/webvr/

As part of TU100 Block 1 Part 1 Activity 8 discussing information I thought this was an interesting piece of news. There seems to be quite a difference of opinion between a Philadelphia Magistrate and a Federal Appeal Court in the United States which could affect us all indirectly in the future.

The difference of opinion concerns the FBI wishing to seize data held on foreign servers as part of a US Fraud investigation. Google has said that a US Federal Warrant impinges privacy rights and that it has no jurisdiction over such data.

A Federal Appeal Court in the US ruled in a similar case where a warrant was issued to Microsoft, that Microsoft moving personal data from Foreign servers to the US did indeed infringe data privacy and jurisdiction.

Philadelphia Magistrate Judge Thomas Rueter ruled, "Though the retrieval of the electronic data by Google from its multiple data centers abroad has the potential for an invasion of privacy, the actual infringement of privacy occurs at the time of disclosure in the United States". He also argued there was "no meaningful interference" with the account holder's "possessory interest."

Judge Reuter did agree there was a “potential for invasion of privacy” but argued moving the data from abroad, in this case emails, “did not constitute seizure.”

I look forward to reading the Appeal Ruling as, to me, this raises many ethical questions and privacy concerns. The news item that caught my eye was written for Beta New Dot Com by Mark Wilson on the 5^th February 2017 at https://betanews.com/2017/02/05/google-must-give-email-data-to-fbi/

A Conversation We Should Be Having

As part of TU100 Block 1 Part 1 Activity 8 discussing business I was reading an article in the Harvard Business Review written by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, Avi Goldfarb (in the Harvard Business Review, https://hbr.org/2016/12/the-obama-administrations-roadmap-for-ai-policy), I remembered a conversation I once had with a scientist working on artificial intelligence at Edinburgh University back in 2007. The conversation revolved around the feasibility of cognitive and self-learning function in non-organic processors. I could not accept the premise then, I am however, more inclined to a different worldview today.

Robin Li, the founder of Baidu in China said, “when the age of AI arrives, the [internet of things] will become a big market and completely change manufacturing. I think that in the future all manufacturing will be a part of the AI industry… China is a manufacturing giant, and I think we need to really pay attention to AI tech development…” The implications for manufacturing can already be seen in our car production facilities and our pharmaceutical industries.

These machines have though, so far, lacked "real" artificial intelligence. Why is this so important? Humans are quite useful in that they are able to understand context, problem-solve within that context, and are cognitively aware. As far as I am aware, processors lack the ability to determine self. By determining self, a natural empathy evolves. Without that, in my view, the “Terminator” movies of the past might possibly become a future reality. After all, humans are not perfect, machines have the ability to become perfect. Natural order determines the strongest survive. This was my argument back in 2007, and still is

Practical applications already exist. Researchers at Stanford University “are excited after artificial intelligence was repurposed for software developed by Google to determine the difference between cats and dogs. It was shown 129,450 photographs and told what type of skin condition it was looking at in each one. It then learned to spot the hallmarks of the most common type of skin cancer: carcinoma, and the most deadly: melanoma. Only one in 20 skin cancers are melanoma, yet the tumour accounts for three-quarters of skin cancer deaths. The experiment, detailed in the journal Nature, [full publication available from: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v542/n7639/full/nature21056.html] then tested the AI against 21 trained skin cancer doctors.” (excerpt from an article by: James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News website, 26/1/17 at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38717928)

Leading the way is China. Given their massive population, it makes sense to increase their manufacturing capacity and productivity. Close behind in the conversation is the United States with England fifth producing journal articles mentioning keywords; “deep learning” or “deep neural network,” (according to “The National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan in October 2016).

Whatever your view, I think cognitive function will not ever be truly possible. I do however think, something extremely close will evolve. A Frankenstein monster? We can only wait and see.