In his article on his blog, tech and security engineer and visionary (in my books, anyway - he's been around such things for longer than the age of my average reader and he actually knows stuff) Bruce Schneier imagines our soon-to-be AI infrastructure being able to remove "lossy bottlenecks" in all manner of things where they currently exist.
Bottlenecks and Bottle Openers
A bottleneck exists where there are things available on one side, a demand exists on the other side, but the process of traversing the bottleneck impedes the transfer. If some of the demands on one side, and/or things on the other side, are unable to pass through the bottleneck then it's also lossy. Bruce cites a kitchen on one side, a patron on the other, and how the many possible meals the kitchen can produce, and the many possible choices of meals and meal options on the patron side, have to be limited to an a la carte menu of choices.
It's probably not the most important bottleneck we face nowadays though, is it? Schneier also describes a system where your exact political, legislatory, and moral positions are put into an "AI mediator" which can then convey your exact positions on these to the exact right combination of government people/departments to help achieve your desired outcomes, rather than having to limit yourself to one single Party or one Elected Representative where many of their other positions may not be so well aligned with your own. Or just, as he says, continually votes on your behalf on each individual issue.
And yep I have to agree, there's one way that AI can remove lossy bottlenecks. We keep improving technology and it will easily handle an AI in your pocket managing your affairs. Imagine if you will that the device is impregnable and unhackable and able to manage everything in and around your life. It can remember what bar/cafe/restaurant you usually go after a discussion with one particular colleague that always leave you simmering, and what you generally order, and can order it for you.
But it's still a technical device in your pocket and it's the result of a lot of conscious decisions and knowledge steps and manufacturing steps and you had to go and decide which one you wanted and what you wanted it to do and what colour and shape and - the physical embodiment of the device is still Technology, in your face, your mind, and your consciousness.
We need to get to a stage where we have the Magic Matrix Moment:
There Is No Bottle
Think about it. We've been making structures and buildings for tens, and possibly hundreds if some archaeology is to be believed, and they've almost become ubiquitous, opaque, and invisible to us. (If you, you know, ignore the whole hulking in your face buildingness of them that is.) But we certainly don't concern yourself about what roof trusses keep the roof up, the specifics of the wall construction, how many miles of cable are in it, if the glass came from one glass company or the other.
The brief we give the architect in fact will most likely contain the very things that give buildings that hulking, in your face buildingness - I want a roof with eaves, this floorplan, columns either side of the entrance - but you're hardly going to discuss the R3.5 or higher doors and windows and walls in great detail, nor the precise dimensions of the framing timber and so forth, or the gauge of the lighting wiring. There are standards for those sorts of things that render them effectively invisible for you and anyone looking at the house.
Pens, pencils, and paper are another one of those ubiquitous and mostly invisible things. They're there when you need them, and you only really notice them when you can't find them. Housing is becoming ubiquitous and mostly invisible. But none of it is really as ubiquitous. Here - here's some VERY visible technology that shows how prominent tech is in our lives and how burdensome a "convenience" can become.
It's not really invisible, is it? How often do you look at the sky and see the blue? The clouds? Do you walk around noticing every tree and bush that's, in effect, being your life support system and recycling your CO2 into oxygen and organic material which will eventually come back to you in your food items? Now THAT is where we need technology to be.
We need to get to the stage where there's no bottleneck between what you need or want, and the thing in question. We want there to be no bottleneck because there's no bottle.
Imagine This:
You're outside and it starts to rain. You don't even think about not wanting to get wet, but a silent drone above projects some energy sideways to deflect rain because the "tech bottle" around the whole planet knows who you are and what you're wearing, and that you wouldn't want to get wet on the way to the thing you're going to see.
If, indeed, you're actually walking. Because while you don't own a house or a vehicle, when you want to stop somewhere for a while, the invisible tech around you would basically put 'your' housing right around you, with all 'your' comforts and belongings created on the spot. If you have a pet then it would have been right there with you, and it too wouldn't find it odd at all that it could just sit and be moved along silently close to you, could bounce off to pee on a stone, and then just think about you and the tech would see its movements, interpret them, and whisk it to you again.
Neither of you would consider it noteworthy at all.
Want one of those "Big Burger" things that you've been looking at? Turn, and there's a Big Burger franchise stand, with the exact burger you were wanting. When you were satisfied, the whole edifice just vanishing as you turn away wouldn't even blink.
After all, all matter can be manipulated with energy into anything. And energy from the sun is free and plentiful, technology has made all these processes incredibly efficient anyway - and raw material is just - lying on the ground and floating around in the air. And when you turn away, it all goes back there.
THAT is how technology has to become. And AI will help it happen, if we don't end up using it to exploit one another to death first. It's going to be the keystone of the ubiquitech[tm: Me!] of the future.
Compare to: This cheugy video.
We Have This:
As I intimated a few paragraphs back, we already have some ubiquitous and life-enabling technology. It's called the planet. What? Where's the technology? What do you think biology is? Geology? The whole planet? It's machines made out of carbon and other materials. It's programmed by its own properties, by it's DNA if it's an organism. All powered by an Original Big Bang some tens of billions of years ago.
This whole machine has been out life support for a very long time, and it would still do that if we hadn't started to *#^k with it. So we're having to replace it bit by bit with our own tech, and it's a losing battle. But we could still win the battle to keep the machine running if we realise right now that just because it's ubiquitous doesn't mean it's unbreakable...
Now Please:
I've told you that my wife is in a medical crisis and I won't be able to spend as much time on the blog for around a year. But you can still help me out. In the graphic below are three icons, the outer two are for donations if you feel like it, but the centre one of a rolled-up newspaper is a link to my site where the latest 20 or so articles are linked. If you could share that URL in your social media or just with your friends, it'll help keep traffic up to the blogs. If you could donate, you're a god-level hero! It's hard to keep all this stuff online.
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