If there's a global technology race, Europe is going to lose.

This is clear from an interview in Der Speigel with Pedro Domingos, author of 'The Master Algorithm' (which, we're told sits on Xi Jinping's bookshelf alongside Marx and Mao):

My literary agent told me: "You are going to sell this book all over the world, but not in France and Germany." And that's what happened. "The Master Algorithm" was sold to Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea. There are Polish and Russian translations. But my agent was right when he said: "The Germans and the French don't like these things."

There still isn't a German translation of the book and it's because the Europeans are terrified of technology's implications:

The picture coming out of Silicon Valley is a very optimistic one, informed by libertarian ideas. The very opposite is true for Europe: I just came back from a conference in Berlin where I was struck by the sheer pessimism. Every other session was about: "Oh, we have to fear this. Who knows what may be going on here?"

This technology - Artificial Intelligence - is our future economy, it is our escape (if Silicon Valley's libertarianism wins over Jinping's autocracy) from being what sociologist C. Wright Mills called The Cheerful Robot back in 1959 (if not it's a world more like Taylorism on steroids - Zamyatin's 'We'). Yet European governments are closing the doors to the idea - from proposals for limits on robots to government access to commercial algorithms the EU and other European governments are set against the idea of a liberal, free market artificial intelligence.

Here in Britain it's not much better with the recent Facebook / Cambridge Analytica sessions, the House of Lords' risible report on AI regulation, the febrile 'we're being spied on by evil capitalists' line of national broadcasters and broadsheets, and a government that can't see how giving the state access to encrypted messaging makes that messaging useless.

We need a debate about the risks and benefits rather than about how we can control the technology - what are the downside risks of unregulated commercial AI set against the upside benefits of giving technology innovators free rein? What, as Domingos comments, is the balance between 'explainability' (this is what the algorithm does) and effectiveness?

Right now Europe, for all its brains and corporate clout, is dragging its heels and, worse, has a government in the EU that is actively opposed to both a liberal US-style technology surge and an autocratic Chinese-style approach. Whoever wins this battle, it isn't going to be Europe.

....

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing...

...almost none is a disaster. Here's the House of Lords on Artificial Intelligence:

“These principles do come to life a little bit when you think about the Cambridge Analytica situation,” he told the Guardian. “Whether or not the data analytics they carried out was actually using AI … It gives an example of where it’s important that we do have strong intelligibility of what the hell is going on with our data.”

The HoL (or one of its committees) has published a call for regulation of AI because of scary foreign monopolies:

In a wide-ranging report, the committee has identified a number of threats that mismanagement of AI could bring to Britain. One concern is of the creation of “data monopolies”, large multinational companies – generally American or Chinese, with Facebook, Google and Tencent all named as examples – with such a grip on the collection of data that they can build better AI than anyone else, enhancing their grip on the data sources and creating a virtuous cycle that renders smaller companies and nations unable to compete.

It's not at all clear as to whether the committee's concern is data collection and use (for which we have the new GDPR regulations and the Information Commissioner) or artificial intelligence. They produce a vague set of 'principles' (including one lifted straight from 'I Robot' - one wonders whether they read the book) and then present the standard response of fussbuckets:

“Of course, if in due course people are not observing these ethical principles and the regulator thinks that their powers are inadequate, then there may be a time down the track that we need to rethink this.”

Ah. "Nice AI you have there, would like to see it damaged"!

Judging from the principles, the nonsense about Cambridge Analytica and the threat of unspecified regulation, what we have here is the classic approach of the ignorant - "I've never tried it but I don't like it" - combined with regulatory authority - "we don't know what it does so we'd better stop it just in case". And if you don't think they're ignorant, suck on this...

“We want there to be an open market in AI, basically, and if all that happens is we get five or six major AI systems and you have to belong to one of them in order to survive in the modern world, well, that would be something that we don’t want to see.”

....