WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
Only a few articles this week – mainly because two of them took up more space than I realised! So what we have is a piece on self-driving cars, a piece on the whole Cambridge Analytica affair, and some material (including an URL to the pictures) on laser weapons. In the Scanner section there’s also URLs pointing to stuff about getting fake articles into dodgy journals, space hotels, a secret French woodworking society, tapestry making (fascinating stuff), smart glass, and the alignment of the pyramids. Oh! and there’s a quote from the writer Osbert Lancaster.
Shorts:
Self-driving cars are in the news again – this time because an Uber car hit a pedestrian who later died. That’s a first Uber could have done without. According to the cops, it seems that there was little that even a regular driver could have done to avoid the crash. What the accident does raise is the issue of liability.
Who pays? In this case the issue is simplified because it was an Uber car with Uber in control on a test drive, and it seems that the person killed may have been at fault. At the moment there are, as far as I’m aware, no true self-driving cars in mass production. Tesla’s version, for instance is more, is more of a car with a souped up cruise control, and drivers are supposed to be constantly monitoring what the car is doing.
Actually, this is worse than a genuine self-driving car. It’s redolent of the early industrial revolution with all that open machinery and drive belts. If, as a factory worker, you didn’t pay attention, you could easily get killed by getting caught in the works. The truth is that if the ‘driver’ is not actually driving, then after a short period of time attention will wander. Human beings just aren’t built to spend long periods of time monitoring something while physically doing nothing.
We need to think this through, before it goes much further. I actually like the idea of genuine self-driving cars, both for long distance driving and for the last mile (if it’s raining). I also like the idea being put forward by Lyft of a subscription service, rather than owning your own self-drive car. I suspect that the real solution is that we are going to have to give self-driving cars their own driving zones separate from everyone else. Perhaps tunnels would do the trick...
In the meantime, the Beatles had their own take on the issue!
Baby you can drive my car
Yes I’m gonna be a star
Baby you can drive my car
And maybe I’ll love you
I told a girl I can start right away
And she said listen babe I got something to say
I got no car and it’s breaking my heart
But I’ve found a driver and that’s a start
from the track ‘Drive My Car’ on the Beatles ‘Rubber Soul’ Album
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/19/uber_self_driving_car_fatal_crash/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/intelligent-to-a-fault-when-ai-screws-up-you-might-still-be-to-blame1/
https://www.popsci.com/lyft-subscription-self-driving-car
Homework:
I don’t quite know what the situation is in the US, but on this side of the pond, the Cambridge Analytica affair seems to have become a big issue. Strangely enough, my take on the whole thing seems to be a little bit different from everyone else’s. But first the facts. The firm is one of a large number of small companies who use a variety of techniques to analyse data and identify trends for their clients. The sector is getting crowded and I suspect is due for a shake up very soon.
Before the latest stuff broke it had already been established that the company had managed to slurp around 50 million people’s Facebook profiles, much to the annoyance of Facebook. They did this by producing an app which not only pulled in the profiles of its 270,000 app users, but also the profiles of all their friends. Very unethical. My only surprise was that Facebook didn’t immediately buy them!
This week one of our UK TV channels aired an undercover investigation in which reporters posed as Sri Lankan potential clients looking to help their man in a forthcoming election. To quote The Register, “senior executives from the firm were then shown on camera boasting about the use of dark methods, including honey traps, fake news and sub-contracting with ex-spies to entrap individuals.”
Fascinating, but what we need to do here is to apply a bit of common sense. To me this sounds like a complete fantasy made up to impress potential clients with money. They probably decided that the would-be client, being a foreigner, and maybe even corrupt, was too stupid to know better.
But there is still one oddity. Why is this fantasy being taken serious by the powers that be and the ‘serious’ press?
If things were logical, you could make a very good case that data analytics firms like this one should be investigated and, given their access to personal data, should be subject to legal constraints. However, that would also scoop in all the big Silicon Valley firms as well, and it ain’t gonna happen any time soon. No. The issue is politics!
In the last two years, the establishments in both Washington and London each suffered a major upset, where the ‘little people’ didn’t do as they were told. In the US it was the election of Trump, in the UK it was the result of the referendum to leave the EU, Brexit. (As an aside, the EU bureaucracy was also upset, but they were upset with the UK establishment who failed to call further referendums until the ‘correct’ result was achieved!).
The Washington and London establishments were (and still are) outraged, and started looking round for fall guys. The possibility that the reason was that so many people had come to really, really dislike the people in power and the establishment policies they were pushing, was not to be even considered. After all, if that was the case, it would be their own fault! Enter Cambridge Analytica with their foolish boasting about what data analysis can achieve and their suggestions of dirty tactics. Perfect fall guys.
People are, rightly, already worried about the collection and misuse of their personal data by the big internet companies and the credit rating agencies. What better than for the establishment to be able to claim unethical and even illegal manipulation caused the ‘wrong’ result rather than their own policies. Even better, the accusations of illegal manipulation help to undermine the validity of the results. And finally, even if, by some fluke Cambridge Analytica manage to wriggle out of the hole they’ve dug themselves into, there are plenty of other companies with foolishly exaggerated claims about their ability to influence people.
So, do I think the claims of the data analysis people are complete fantasies? No, not exactly. The field is still in its infancy. Eventually, it may well be able to do what it claims, but to do so will require the sort of data sets only the very big companies have. What it can do already is to allow businesses, websites, etc to tune their policies to what is already out there to attract more eyeballs.
What I think is going to be really dangerous is to have a situation where large datasets are being used in conjunction with opaque algorithms to make important decisions (for example legal ones). Large datasets reflect existing biases, and algorithms often reflect the biases of those who commission, pay for, and write such algorithms. A dangerous combination.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/18/facebook_confirms_cambridge_analytica_
stole_its_data_its_a_plot_claims_former_director/
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/19/boom_cambridge_analytica_explodes_
following_extraordinary_tv_expose/
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/19/facebook_suspends_account_of_cambridge_
analytica_whistleblower_chris_wylie/
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/20/facebook_europe_privacy/
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/21/cambridge_analytica_ceo_suspended/
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/21/zuckerberg_good_news_facebook_data_
abuse_problems_mostly_solved/
Pictures:
Here, for a change, are some pictures – 40 of them no less – and an article about the development of the laser as a weapon. Among the pictures is one of the very first lasers, a very Heath Robinson/Rube Goldberg (take your pick according to your cultural background) affair. Incidentally, the article makes good reading as well, explaining both what a laser is and why it’s so difficult to turn it into a science fiction style ‘death ray’!
https://newatlas.com/laser-weapons-future-warfare/52801/
Scanner:
Biologist gets a fake Star Trek paper accepted by four dodgy science journals
https://www.sciencealert.com/biologist-fake-star-trek-paper-warp-speed-accepted-4-dodgy-science-journals-predatory-trekkie
Two space hotels could open as early as 2021
https://futurism.com/space-hotels-open-2021/
Marvel at tiny, perfect staircases made by a secret society of French woodworkers
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/compagnons-tiny-staircases-models
How the ornate tapestries from the age of Louis XIV were made (and are still made today)
http://www.openculture.com/2018/03/how-the-ornate-tapestries-from-the-age-of-louis-xiv-were-made.html
Ultra-thin coating makes “dumb” glass smart
https://newatlas.com/vanadium-dioxide-window-coating/53588/
An archaeologist says he’s figured out the secret of the pyramids’ peculiar alignment
https://www.sciencealert.com/archaeologist-secret-why-the-great-pyramid-of-giza-is-aligned-so-perfectly-fall-equinox
Coda:
This week’s quote is from the writer and cartoonist Osbert Lancaster:
“All over the country the latest and most scientific methods of mass-production are being utilized to turn out a stream of old oak beams, leaded window panes and small discs of bottle-glass, all structural devices which our ancestors lost no time in abandoning as soon as an increase in wealth and knowledge enabled them to do so.”
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb and Fi for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Thunderbird spam filter...
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
25 March 2018
Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist, the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/index.html.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
