They are nine. All can, in principle, be called global, but you can still divide them into two clusters: the american and the chinese. Or in two other clusters: the old it giants (Microsoft, IBM, Apple) and the new (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu).
Amy Webb, who, with the good can reasonably be called the world’s most respected quantitative futurulog (a clearer concept of ”futurologist” and dare not even think the thought to call her ”trend forecaster”), has a very clear picture of what these nine companies represent a long-term perspective.
Power. More power than we can understand today.
in ”The Big Nine”: the nine companies for a long time been responsible for the most extensive investment in artificial intelligence, machine learning, or deep neural networks, depending on which concept you want to use.
It is the companies that build the world’s largest and most advanced thinking and increasingly independent learning machines. Although many of the day the most see companies as e-commerce companies, social platforms, or soft – and hardware manufacturers. But the Web is clear in its analysis: together, these nine companies greater control over our future than most states – and for many of the companies, not just the chinese, it is, of course, in a tight symbiosis with the states ‘ interests of control and censorship.
we found ourselves in a tipping point when it comes to the AI beat Amy Web wired already for a couple of years ago. She pointed then at how a series of crucial technologies were on the way to merge and make new uses. Algorithms and AI was then on his way to bring us into a landscape that we do not really recognize. Now we begin to see more clearly the impact and how we manage it will have powerful consequences for the whole of humanity, ” she says.
It developed is, above all, new types of systems for artificial intelligence, which goes much further than solving the individual tasks and create a ”general” artificial intelligence, that can solve the broader, cognitive tasks, because they do, that they can think more ”like people”.
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The Big Nine” is a series of what-if scenarios and detailed portrait of AI-the world’s centres of power, not least by the chinese kolosstrion BAT (Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent), which probably still is strikingly unfamiliar to many, despite the fact that in many areas is the most technologically advanced, and above all, the company as the fastest driver in the development of individigenkänning through everything from facial expressions and physique to the behavior and känsloläge. Anyone who thinks that Alibaba is ”only” a ehandelsbolag for example, the detailed depictions of how the company’s technology can be used to read the social concern and stämningsförändringar in chinese cities. To take just one example.
But the book is also one of the best introductions I have read to this elusive topic, for those who don’t know about the AI most be construed as an abundance of rogue radio matteformler or as the first step towards the ”technological singularity” which means that we completely lose control over the development to the thinking machines.
the Web is one of the few who can see and reflect on both sides of a judicious and thoughtful way. In the chapter ”Man and machine – a brief history of AI”, she makes a furious effective exposé of the view of the machines ‘ capabilities and sorts out the possible responses on Alan Turing’s classic question ”Can machines think?”. She has eyes as clear attached on the philosophical argument as on the technology and the potential and go from Aristotle to Alexa, from Descartes to the Deep Mind and the tangles of life unravel and elegant up the red thread between them.
how tight the new AI-power realm is. It’s not just about the nine dominant companies, which may seem bad enough, but if a cycle of dependencies between the companies and all the leading universities and research institutions in the area. The web goes back to the 1950’s pioneering AI-conference at the university of Dartmouth, where a group of men with similar background sketched up framtidskartan for mainframe computers, robots, and machine learning. Her image is that it basically looks the same today: who controls development is an extremely homogeneous and internberoende group, with few senior women and poor ethnic and social mix.
It is in its way more threatening than the nine companies ‘ domination, she concludes, because it allows the perspectives of efficiency and success is so narrow and one-sided. It is not the machines we need to fear, but the principles that guide them. In particular, if they are invisible.
