Few years back Facebook hit the news with their chatbots Alice and Bob making waves. Facebook’s claim was that their chatbots had ‘developed’ a language, that seemed indiscernible to humans, to communicate with each other. The bots were pulled down because they quite did not fit into what Facebook wanted out of them — to communicate more effectively with humans. Worse still, whatever the version of the story is from Facebook, the media did make a fuss about the fear of A.I. taking over.

几年前，Facebook的聊天机器人爱丽丝(Alice)和鲍勃(Bob)掀起了波澜。 Facebook声称他们的聊天机器人已经“开发”了一种人类似乎无法识别的语言，可以彼此交流。 机器人之所以被取消，是因为它们与Facebook想要的不完全匹配，无法与人类进行更有效的交流。 更糟糕的是，无论故事的版本来自Facebook，媒体都对AI接管的恐惧大惊小怪。

Let’s sit back and analyze — Did Facebook’s bots really ‘develop’ a new language to communicate amongst themselves?

让我们坐下来分析一下-Facebook的机器人是否真的在“开发”一种新的语言来在彼此之间交流？

Facebook uses the same technology that is available to the common man — the same core of microprocessors, the same instruction set, the same firmware, the same application programs. The brands maybe different, but the constructs remain the same. Computers based upon axiomatic systems (digital Boolean logic in our case) cannot mimic consciousness or awareness. Turing’s Insolvability of the Decision Problem, and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem are enough arguments to prove this fact as discussed in our previous article.

Facebook使用了普通人可以使用的相同技术-相同的微处理器核心，相同的指令集，相同的固件，相同的应用程序。 品牌可能不同，但结构保持不变。 基于公理系统(在我们的情况下为数字布尔逻辑)的计算机不能模仿意识或意识。 Turing的决策问题的不可解决性和Gödel的不完全性定理足以证明这一事实，正如我们在上一篇文章中讨论的那样 。

Alice and Bob never developed a new language — they never could. And Facebook saying bots ‘developed’ a new language would be nothing but sophistry. Whatever be the case, in our daily lives, we forget how much we have allowed the big brands to flood in — Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon. We are living in a world where we have been squeezed out of ourselves in order that we can be filled in by what they want. We are slaves.

爱丽丝和鲍勃从来没有开发过一种新的语言-他们从来没有。 Facebook称机器人“开发”了一种新语言只是诡辩。 无论如何，在我们的日常生活中，我们会忘记让大品牌涌入Google，Facebook，Microsoft和Amazon的程度。 我们生活在一个被挤出自己的世界，以便我们可以被他们想要的东西充实。 我们是奴隶。

Technology in our lives

我们生活中的技术

The world has changed dramatically in the past century. With advances in media and communication — the print, the telegraph, the radio, the telephone, the personal computer, the internet — Our lives have become what is presented before us. Today, we seldom need to move from our couch to get a bank transaction done, send a mail, buy a burger, almost everything. As we slip more into our comfort zones, what we overlook is how much space we are allowing the agents that offer these. Virtual assistants have almost become an extension of our selves. Misplacing our mobile phones has become the horror of our living. Social media — we invent and maintain our alter selves there. While slowly we allow us to enslave ourselves to technology, we are in the process of encouraging centralized control — the big brands are the Big Brother.

在过去的一个世纪里，世界发生了巨大的变化。 随着媒体和通讯技术的发展(印刷，电报，广播，电话，个人计算机，互联网)，我们的生活已成为摆在我们面前的事物。 今天，我们几乎不需要从沙发上走下来即可完成银行交易，发送邮件，购买汉堡，几乎所有东西。 当我们更多地进入舒适区时，我们忽略的是我们允许提供这些服务的代理商有多少空间。 虚拟助手几乎已经成为我们自身的延伸。 手机放错地方已经成为我们生活中的恐怖。 社交媒体-我们在那里发明和维护自己的替代品。 尽管我们允许我们慢慢地奴役技术，但我们正在鼓励集中控制-大品牌就是老大哥。

In History

在历史上

Technology began becoming part of the individual’s life with the telephone — probably the first thing that was personal to us. There was a time when in North America, if you wanted to use a phone, you had to go to AT&T. The strategy was not to share the advanced long-distance network AT&T had, with local independent carriers.

通过电话，技术开始成为个人生活的一部分-可能对我们而言是第一件事。 曾经有一段时间，在北美，如果您想使用电话，则必须去AT＆T。 策略是不与本地独立运营商共享AT＆T拥有的先进的长途网络。

For quite some time, AT&T solely had the luxury of funding pure research projects. The Bell Labs, Murray Hill, New Jersey was the Mecca for such projects. Though AT&T held monopoly over the telephone for about a century, the legacy would be cut short by restrictions on AT&T to sell computer systems, just for the fear of AT&T’s monopoly in the computer industry. An offering this situation had in store for the world was an operating system — UNIX, and the free communal development culture that came with it.

在相当长的一段时间内，AT＆T完全没有资金资助纯粹的研究项目。 位于新泽西州默里山的贝尔实验室就是此类项目的麦加。 尽管AT＆T通过电话垄断了大约一个世纪，但由于担心AT＆T在计算机行业中的垄断地位，因此对AT＆T出售计算机系统的限制将缩短遗产。 这种情况在全球范围内可以提供的一种解决方案是一个操作系统— UNIX，以及随之而来的免费社区开发文化。

The personal computer took over in the 1970s, and by 1980s we had computers that started becoming a household appliance — like an iron box, or a washing machine. These sometimes-had graphical interfaces like the early Macintosh launched in 1984. However, the Volkswagen of computers was to be the IBM-PC/MS-DOS pair. Cheaper and ubiquitous, they took the computer industry by storm. Microsoft simply took its grip on the future, and on people. The operating system became Microsoft’s flagship, maintaining the software proprietary.

个人计算机是在1970年代接管的，到1980年代，我们拥有的计算机开始成为家用电器，例如铁箱或洗衣机。 这些有时具有的图形界面，例如1984年推出的早期Macintosh。但是，大众计算机将成为IBM-PC / MS-DOS对。 廉价且无处不在，他们席卷了计算机行业。 微软只是对未来和对人的控制。 该操作系统成为Microsoft的旗舰，保持了该软件的专有权。

Well, there is nothing wrong in keeping things proprietary: but manipulating customers to remain loyal to products is. Your system gets outdated in a couple of years in terms of OS software, in five years in terms of hardware capabilities, and support for old software just get pulled down. We get forced to buy new machines and software. There is control behind the strategy — for Microsoft or for Apple. Our ‘why should I care’ attitude siphons off our pockets to these manufacturers’, one penny at a time. Sure, there is art in Apple’s products — worth every penny you pay, but they too don’t come with extendable hardware, let alone the OS. The same goes for the handheld devices like the iPhone. The best value for money that Apple has given us is the iPod — software upgrade is purely optional. There is also personal signature associated with it — you are your music. And if the standard music formats remain, the iPod runs. Rest of all their products need constant replacements in time.

嗯，保持事物专有性没有错：但是要操纵客户以保持对产品的忠诚度。 就OS软件而言，您的系统已经过时了两年；而在硬件功能方面，您的系统已经过时了五年；而对旧软件的支持则被取消了。 我们被迫购买新机器和软件。 对于Microsoft或Apple，该策略背后都有控制力。 我们的“我为什么要关心”的态度使这些制造商从口袋里抽了出来，一次只花了一个便士。 当然，苹果产品中有艺术品-您付出的每一分钱都值得，但它们也没有可扩展的硬件，更不用说操作系统了。 iPhone等手持设备也是如此。 苹果提供给我们的最高性价比是iPod，软件升级完全是可选的。 也有与之相关的个人签名-您就是您的音乐。 如果保留了标准音乐格式，则iPod将运行。 他们所有其他产品都需要及时更换。

The Information Bandwagon

信息潮流

We live in the information age, where every move that we make are getting converted into ready-to-read information. We rely too much on information, and technologies and hence products and brands that base upon Information Theory, and they have coupled with our lives indispensably necessarily. Sure, the hopes when the internet was launched way back in was sky-high, but what we see is a state of affairs we have seen in the politics — a maniacal run for power.

我们生活在信息时代，在这里，我们所做的每一步都已转化为易于阅读的信息。 我们过分依赖信息，技术以及基于信息论的产品和品牌，它们必不可少地与我们的生活息息相关。 当然，当互联网重新建立时，希望寄予厚望，但我们看到的是我们在政治中看到的一种状况-疯狂的权力争夺。

The World Wide Web was launched in 1991 with a distributed architecture foreseeing the dangers of centralization of information control.

万维网于1991年启动，其分布式架构可以预见到信息控制集中化的危险。

Social groups were in the manifesto of the World Wide Web, but we have social websites like Facebook breaking all barriers and skewering into our lives, controlling us, deciding for us. Google is a modern day version of the Whole Earth Catalog, that had its roots in the hippie counterculture of the 1960s, with one single object — free guidance to information for all, but with a difference — it is a capitalist venture and with similar motives. But we seldom scroll beyond the first page of search results that Google gives us — or decides to give us. Our lives are slowly getting molded with what we are being fed — not what we are seeking.

社交团体是万维网的宣言，但是我们拥有诸如Facebook之类的社交网站，它打破了所有障碍，闯入了我们的生活，控制着我们，决定了我们。 Google是《现代地球目录》的现代版本，其起源可追溯至1960年代的嬉皮文化。它具有一个单一的目标-为所有人提供免费的信息指南，但有所不同-它是一种资本主义事业，其动机相似。 但是，我们很少滚动到Google提供给我们的搜索结果首页，也很少决定提供给我们。 我们的生活正在慢慢地被我们所喂养的东西所塑造，而不是我们所寻找的东西。

Facebook’s and Google’s Machine Learning algorithms decide what we read, whom we associate with, what we buy, when we sleep, even whom we elect to govern us. We are bare naked in the information world. The digital trails we leave every time we go online (offline even) is turned into records on some distant server underground, beneath layers of snow. We are being watched, we are being manipulated, we are ripped of our free will.

Facebook和Google的机器学习算法决定了我们阅读的内容，与之相关的人，购买的物品，何时入睡，甚至我们选择统治我们的人。 在信息世界中，我们赤身裸体。 每次我们上线(甚至离线)时，我们留下的数字踪迹都被转换为雪层下地下某个远程服务器上的记录。 我们被监视，我们被操纵，我们的自由意志被剥夺了。

We are relying too much on Information — we hope the Information bandwagon is the panacea for anyone. As Shannon once said in an article in IRE Transactions in 1956,

我们过分依赖信息-我们希望信息潮流是任何人的灵丹妙药。 正如Shannon在1956年IRE Transactions中的一篇文章中所说，

‘It will be all too easy for our somewhat artificial prosperity to collapse overnight when it is realized that the use of a few exciting words like information, entropy, redundancy do not solve all our problems.’

当我们意识到使用一些令人兴奋的词(例如信息，熵，冗余)并不能解决我们所有的问题时，我们有些虚假的繁荣将在一夜之间崩溃太容易了。 '

Well today, in 2020, we need replace the words information, entropy and redundancy with Facebook, Google and Amazon, and quite paint the bog we are wading in knee deep.

好在今天，即2020年，我们需要用Facebook，Google和Amazon取代信息，熵和冗余一词，并充分掩盖我们陷入困境的困境。

The ways of the Big Brother

老大哥的方式

War mobilizes Science. The World wars were instrumental in lifting the curtains of the Information Age. The first computers were built for accurate predictions of missile trajectories, naval charts, weather charts and the like. Even computers like The Colossus and The Enigma were built for this purpose. The funds form the national treasuries and huge capital establishments like the AT&T or the IBM. The military-academic-commercial trilateral managed our progress. As Shannon mentioned, we are embarked on the Information bandwagon, without an oversight.

战争动员了科学。 二次世界大战为拉开信息时代的帷幕发挥了作用。 建造了第一批计算机，用于精确预测导弹的轨迹，海图，天气图等。 甚至像Colossus和The Enigma之类的计算机都是为此目的而构建的。 资金由国家财政部和庞大的资本机构(如AT＆T或IBM)组成。 军事-学术-商业三边关系控制了我们的进步。 正如Shannon所言，我们在没有监督的情况下踏上了信息潮流。

We may not have the war along borderlines, yet the establishments hold the reins for research — Google and Stanford, Facebook and Harvard, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon — and directed at one single object of controlling the human course. We are the materials of social engineering. Our psyche is being distorted every moment with what we experience in the digital world. We are the faceless many, every ready to be reshaped. And the heretics amongst us, against the scheme just get sucked in, in a warm embrace by these establishments. And in moves like Facebook’s Alice and Bob, we swallow what is being fed to us.

我们可能没有沿边界进行战争，但是两家机构控制着研究的对象-Google和Stanford，Facebook和哈佛，微软，苹果，亚马逊-只是针对控制人类行为的一个单一目标。 我们是社会工程学的材料。 我们在数字世界中所经历的每时每刻都在扭曲我们的心理。 我们是不露面的许多人，每一个都准备好重塑。 在这些机构的热烈拥护下，我们中间的反对该计划的异教徒刚刚被吸进来。 在像Facebook的Alice和Bob这样的举动中，我们吞下了正在喂给我们的东西。

The Parallel Movement

平行运动

Did you know that anybody could write their own Operating System?

您是否知道任何人都可以编写自己的操作系统 ？

This may seem like a daunting task because of our conditioning in the digital world. According to Steve Jobs,

由于我们在数字世界中的状况，这似乎是一项艰巨的任务。 根据史蒂夫·乔布斯的说法，

”When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

” 当您长大后，往往会被告知世界就是它的样子，而您的生活只是在这个世界中生活。 尽量不要向墙壁猛扑。 尝试过上美好的家庭生活，玩得开心，省些钱。 那是非常有限的生活。 一旦发现一个简单的事实，生活就会变得更加广阔：您所称的生活中的所有事物都是由比您更聪明的人组成的。 您可以更改它，可以影响它……一旦了解到这一点，您将永远不再一样。 ”

We have a choice — whether to corrode away in the acid rains of these establishments like Google and Facebook and Amazon, or to shield ourselves snug and dry under our own umbrellas. The anti-establishment, distribution of control principle is in effect parallel to our lives. We have the Linux-class operating systems that are free and open source, and a myriad of application software that come along. The world wide web, the Wikipedia foundation is testimony to the truth in humanity.

我们有选择-是在Google，Facebook和Amazon这样的机构的酸雨中腐蚀自己，还是在我们自己的保护伞下保护自己的舒适和干燥。 反建立，分配控制原则实际上与我们的生活平行。 我们拥有免费和开源的Linux级操作系统，以及随之而来的众多应用程序软件。 万维网基金会是维基百科基金会的见证，它是人类真理的见证。

We urge you donate to Wikipedia and similar open source communities to support such initiatives.

我们敦促您向Wikipedia和类似的开源社区捐款以支持此类计划。

Currently control and access of user data is handled by technological giants — mostly for their profit making. If capture and usage of data is regulated by an authority, then misuse of this information can be avoided.

当前，用户数据的控制和访问由技术巨头来处理-主要是为了牟利。 如果数据的捕获和使用受到权威机构的监管，则可以避免滥用此信息。

1. Is user data a private property of these companies?用户数据是这些公司的私有财产吗？
2. Should this data be owned by govt. regulatory authority?此数据应归政府所有吗？ 监管机构？
3. Should the usage of user data by companies be regulated more stringently?公司是否应该更严格地限制用户数据的使用？
4. Should individuals be responsible enough to not expose such personal data to technological giants?个人是否应该承担足够的责任，不要将此类个人数据暴露给技术巨头？
5. Should this data be made available to authorized parties who would like to research in the area of AI?是否应将这些数据提供给想要在AI领域进行研究的授权方？

Transparency is Truth. The best brand names we could sport on ourselves is ourselves. We need to be reminded of the efforts of selfless individuals Stewart Brand, Tim-Berners Lee, Richard Stallman, Linux Torvalds, and many of the unsung greats like Nikola Tesla to stop, alight and think where we are treading. Life has more to offer than just ‘likes’ on Facebook and views on YouTube. And as Carl Sagan once said,

透明就是真理。 我们自己可以运动的最好的品牌就是我们自己。 我们需要提醒我们无私的个人Stewart Brand，Tim-Berners Lee，Richard Stallman，Linux Torvalds以及许多像尼古拉·特斯拉(Nikola Tesla)这样的不起眼的伟大人物所做的努力，他们停下来，下车并思考我们的脚步。 生活提供的不仅仅是Facebook上的“喜欢”和YouTube上的观看次数。 正如卡尔·萨根(Carl Sagan)所说，

‘We are one race; we are one planet.’

'我们是一场比赛； 我们是一个星球。

Next week: Mind and Matter

下周： 心灵与物质

Previous week: Turing Machines

上周： 图灵机

First week: Can Machines Think?

第一周： 机器可以思考吗？