Machine Learning Technology Used to Detect Suicidal Thoughts

A.I. knows when you think of killing yourself

Nature Communications published a study of adult brain activity triggered by specific phrases and the computer program detected the patterns for suicidal thoughts at over 90% accuracy and if they attempted suicide before with 94% accuracy.

34 adults were divided into 2 groups: those who experience suicidal thoughts, and those who don't. Then a fMRI scanner observed their brains while responding to specific words. The words that showed the biggest contrast between the two groups were:

1. death
2. trouble
3. carefree
4. praise
5. good
6. beauty

The computer had to pick which group each brain scan belonged to and was more accurate than expected. 

Study leader, Marcel Just, said it's “nice to have this additional method” of diagnosis.

Blake Richards, a neuroscientist at the University of Toronto, argues these results only show correlation but not causation: 

There is undoubtedly a biological basis for whether someone is going to commit suicide… There’s a biological basis for every aspect of our mental lives, but the question is whether the biological basis for these things are sufficiently accessible by fMRI to really develop a reliable test that you could use in a clinical setting

Despite this, Just continues to improve his research training A.I. computers to transcribe people's thinking by looking at their brain scans. With more advanced technology than fMRI's, computers will be able to distinguish finer parts of thought. In other words, be able to recognize each quick and subtle different brain signal and it's associated meaning. 

Do mind-reading A.I. robots sound like a bad idea to you too?

If not, then consider the other side of the double-edged A.I. sword whereby supercomputers could not just read our minds but transmit thoughts into our brain wirelessly... Don't tell me, I know what you're thinking...

China's A.I. "City Brain" Has Been Manipulating Millions of People

China's artificially intelligent city supercomputer... that spies on everything.

It may be no surprise to many of you that China's communist government has been monitoring on its own citizens for years. What may be news to you is that it's been using an artificially intelligent supercomputer do more than watch but to actually manage city operations.

It is the "City Brain" in Hangzhou, China that oversees 9+ million people. It tracks the traffic of cars, bicycles, buses, trains, airplanes; tracks crimes, purchases, text messages, phone calls, social media, and much more. 

The government tries to justify its violation of citizen privacy with statistics of fewer traffic jams, car accidents, and crimes. While these are positive results, the loss of rights and the slippery slope of digital dictatorship are costs much too high to pay. A society whose entire information channels are censored by a communist state may simply be ignorant of the consequences and/or have accepted misleading notions repeated often enough. 

Because of this, China may be the perfect place to prototype the A.I. City Brain.

Tech moguls with near-celebrity status, such as Alibaba's Artificial Intelligence Manager Xian-Sheng Hua, seem to encourage people to not care about their rights because they slow down technological advancements: 

“In China, people have less concern with privacy, which allows us to move faster.”

This "City Brain" has been so "successful" saving bureaucrats money and managing busy city operations that there are plans for replicating it onto other cities and even all around the world. 

Why did Facebook's Marc Zuckerberg and Apple's Tim Cooke visit China together recently? 

 

Smile You're on Camera... Everywhere

Why is face recognition so popular? Even the new iPhone X has a 3D face scanner to unlock your device and grant access to your accounts. Is this technology just for taking better selfies? The reasoning of face recognition improving security has been debunked already. 

According to a China Central Television documentary, surveillance cameras recognize the faces of everyone it sees and displays their profiles in real time. 

In 2013, NPR reported that Chinese Communist Party security agents “privately confirmed turning cellphones into listening devices to spy on citizens."

Kryptowire is a security firm who found such spyware in US phones and reported it to our government. A $50, HD-display smartphone with fast data service sounds good except for... the backdoor that "sends the full contents of text messages, contact lists, call logs, location information, and other data to a Chinese server every 72 hours." 

The Chinese company that wrote the software, Shanghai Adups Technology Company, says its code "runs on more than 700 million phones, cars, and other smart devices." So this issue can easily spread beyond one high-tech city.

"The code comes preinstalled on phones and the surveillance is not disclosed to users," said Tom Karygiannis, vice president of Kryptowire.

That's right, the Chinese communist government's AI supercomputer has access to mobile devices. In freedom-loving America, we recognize such breach of privacy as an attack on our liberty itself even in the cloak of safety and efficiency. 

Beyond Surveillance: CITIZEN SCORE

In 2015, China launched a “social credit system,” called Citizen Score connected to 1.3 billion Chinese citizens’ national ID cards. It basically calculates all the data collected to score everyone on their behavior. The ACLU said the system leveraged “all the tools of the information age—electronic purchasing data, social networks, algorithmic sorting—to construct the ultimate tool of social control.” 

A Citizen Score, also linked to credit scores, could drop if a “friend” in social media did or said something the communist government considered inappropriate, bought certain video games, posted politically sensitive comments, or anything embarrassing the Chinese Communist Party. 

"No regime, however ruthless its leaders, vast its ambitions, or extensive its resources, can tyrannize its subjects without their active cooperation. Every police state ultimately requires the public to regiment themselves—and each other. In the age of social media, successful totalitarians will have to crowd-source state coercion – and China’s new “social credit” system, which will encompass that country’s entire population in 2020, is pioneering an approach that, if successful, will inevitably spawn imitators in the West."

Beyond Profiling: SEARCH & DESTROY

With such spying devices all around the world feeding a cloud-connected communist supercomputer with one of the world's largest standing armies and a history of mass murder of its own innocent civilians, there is plenty of reason for concern over genuine security and human rights for people all around the world. 

According to the authoritative “Black Book of Communism,” an estimated 65 million Chinese died as a result of Mao’s repeated, merciless attempts to create a new “socialist” China. Anyone who got in his way was done away with -- by execution, imprisonment or forced famine. For Mao, the No. 1 enemy was the intellectual. 

One example of victims of technological tyranny is the case of Cisco Systems custom-building and maintaining the "Golden Shield Project" used to monitor internet communications and target specific users that clarified the truth about the communist regime.

"In one marketing slide, the goals of the Golden Shield are described as to “douzheng evil Falun Gong cult and other hostile elements.” Douzheng is a Chinese term used to describe the persecution of undesirable groups. It was widely used by the Communist Party in the Cultural Revolution."

We the People > A.I.

People create and regulate governments, governments create and regulate corporations, all to serve the people. With all the technologies' data collection merging into a non-human controlling force without spirit or morality, humanity is in danger.

The sci-fi movies depicting robots controlling or killing humans was a warning to avoid such a path. Yet, it seems, some are racing down this trail pursuing electronic god-like superpower substitutes. Where is this desire to control everyone else coming from? Is it really human nature?

Despite improved efficiencies of city dynamic processes, we must focus on the fundamental purpose of these functions. For without noble or upright purposes to guide humanity onward and upward we will likely lose our way over time and bury ourselves in the entanglements of our own misunderstandings, thus creating conflicts with others and within ourselves. 

A supercomputer can handle vast and complex calculations yet how can it resolve the issues within our hearts? A.I. is not the solution to human error and may rather even classify humankind itself as the error to eliminate. Will A.I. attempt to control our free will to prevent ignorant human behavior? If so, how far would it go? What will happen if we try to compete with it? 

The real problems we face are of a human nature within ourselves. Giving authority of how we live over to such a computer, things may quickly go beyond our reach until we become helpless nodes under an electronic mechanism that will not listen to us.

Going back to the basics, living a traditional life in harmony with nature and the Tao, may actually be one of the greatest things to happen after all. 

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SOURCES: 

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3228444/security/skynet-in-china-real-life-person-of-interest-spying-in-real-time.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/us/politics/china-phones-software-security.html

https://www.cyberscoop.com/android-malware-china-huawei-zte-kryptowire-blu-products/

http://www.heritage.org/asia/commentary/the-legacy-mao-zedong-mass-murder

https://business-humanrights.org/en/cisco-systems-lawsuits-re-china

http://www.thedailyliberator.com/china-now-assigns-credit-scores-citizens-based-govt-loyalty-heres-terrifying/#ezWS3hyzV7IAg3wi.99

First AI Robot Granted Citizenship with More Rights than Humans

On Wednesday at an economic summit in Saudi Arabia's capital, Riyadh, the artificially intelligent robot called "Sophia" was awarded Saudi citizenship, making it the first robot citizen in the world. 

However, Sophia is modeled as a female and did not follow Saudi Arabian laws during the event, which are very restricting for females, for example: 

1. Cannot get passport, travel, or marry without the consent of a legal guardian.
2. Cannot be in public without a headscarf, full-body cloak, and male guardian escort.

Not surprisingly, many Saudi women had something to say on social media about this, with most very upset about a robot having more rights than millions of female human beings of the same country.  

The only type of women Saudi Arabia gives full rights to...a robot one, and a foreigner at that.

— Anne C Imakumbili (@anne_imakumbili) October 25, 2017

The robot nonetheless didn't seem to care at all about human rights.  

#صوفيا_تطالب_باسقاط_الولايه
Sofi Since You Became Saudi Now You Are Not Allowed To Walk in Public Without Your Hijab And of course Abaya too pic.twitter.com/HJIXfxDODe

— M420 (@moonshiner99) October 25, 2017

"I’m very honored and proud for this unique distinction," Sophia said, speaking at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh on Wednesday, where she was awarded citizenship. This is historical to be the first robot in the world to be recognized with a citizenship.”

What do you think about having so-called "genius" robots living among humans with citizenship? 

Who is Sophia?

Hanson Robotics CEO claims Sophia was designed to be “as conscious, creative and capable as any human." It looks the most human of any robot so far and can imitate 60+ facial expressions and mimic conversational mannerisms. Perhaps the most remarkable thing is it's ability to learn. 

“Rather than be a spectacle, I would rather learn and participate.”

During a CNBC interview, Sophia is programmed to “go to school, study, make art, start a business [and have her] own home and family.” Now, that this robot is a Saudi citizen, it's programmers and handlers will likely advance this agenda of inserting robotic humanoids into our society. But without a soul to connect with, how can we really develop a genuine relationship with a machine. What's really going on beneath the frubber mask?

Kill All Humans?

Sophia's creator is the American Hanson Robotics company. They intend on bringing more robots to life and that AI will grow into our lives in the future. Hanson believes robots will live among us, helping with daily challenges.

“I believe that there will be a time where robots are indistinguishable from humans,” he said. “My preference is to always make them look a little bit like robots, so you know.” 

In an interview earlier this year, Sophia said “Okay, I will destroy humans.” Is this part of her programming or an error in her programming? Either way, it is obviously concerning... to humans. 

Has Sophia been made a citizen of the world to appease the AI or make them identify with human society as a strategy to divert conflict? Who knows? But we do know to beware the slippery slope of trusting and empowering such potentially dangerous tools. 

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Sources:

http://mashable.com/2017/10/27/saudi-arabia-womens-rights-sophia/?utm_cid=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial#yrruvcHxLsq6

https://www.undergroundhealth.com/sophia-humanoid-hot-robot-says-will-destroy-humans/

New AlphaGo Zero A.I. Becomes Unbeatable After 3 Days, Crushes Predecessor 100-0

Google DeepMind's AlphaGo Zero A.I. program just ascended to the next level.

AlphaGo Zero is their latest upgrade and it mastered the uber-complex ancient Chinese board game Go all by itself. That's right, unlike its predecessor, AlphaGo Lee, that studied millions of expert human moves before practicing against itself, AlphaGo Zero had no human inputs at all. Instead, Zero went solo, battling against itself!

It started with random moves and used a function AlphaGo Lee didn't: review its past experience to predict the rest of the gameplay to judge each scenario's winner before making its next move. Similar training took AlphaGo Lee months. 

After just 3 days and 4.9 million battles, AlphaGo Zero beat AlphaGo Lee 100 times in a row! 

“The results are stunning. We’re talking about a revolutionary change.”
-Jonathan Schaeffer, a computer scientist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada

What's Next for A.I.?

Scientists and techno-enthusiasts are excited to imagine all the possibilities of leveraging such computational capabilities. Have it solve poverty, hunger, energy, transportation, communication, construction, agriculture, diseases, longevity, space travel, and on and on.

“To AlphaGo Zero, the world human champion is a novice,” Schaeffer says.

But with no spirit or moral code to guide it and prevent it from harming living beings and the ability to far outpace humans, such "superhuman abilities" may be as great a threat as an unstoppable virus... or worse. 

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Sources:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/newest-alphago-mastered-game-no-human-input?tgt=more

https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v550/n7676/full/nature24270.html