by Editor | Dec 11, 2023 | News
Minh Nguyen is the Editor of the Boston Global Forum and a Shinzo Abe Initiative Fellow. She writes the Four Pillars column in the BGF Weekly newsletter.
The US and European states, two of the Pillars, have been facing threats in the Middle East recently from Iranian proxies. The American embassy in Baghdad was, and continues to be, under fire from militant groups. These are semi-coordinated attacks, but it is unclear if it is under direct orders from Iran. It was hit with seven mortars. France intercepted two drones that targeted its ship in the Red Sea, originating from Yemen (read: Houthis). This comes on the back of Houthis attacking American ship USS Mason and making waterways hostile in the region.
The Pillars have been weighing options to address the recent threats to the freedom of navigation. However, the Biden administration is considering to have a more mitigated response, in part for fear of exploding a powder keg in the Middle East, when there is a need to draw back and focus on Asia-Pacific.
Economically, Apple and other companies continue to move away from China and invest more in India, a Pillar, and other countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam. This is important as China becomes more of a risk to invest in, and decoupling continues, in preparing for potential geopolitical confrontations.
French ship FREMM Languedoc
by Editor | Dec 10, 2023 | Global Alliance for Digital Governance
Boston, December 12, 2023 – In a landmark initiative, prominent scientists, strategists and policy makers are joining forces to redefine the public narrative surrounding artificial intelligence (AI), grounding it in the science of computational physics, biology, and neuroscience. The Active Inference Institute and the Boston Global Forum, through a joint letter signed by leading experts, announce a pivotal effort to reshape the discourse on AI.
Titled “A Natural AI Based on The Science of Computational Physics, Biology, and Neuroscience: Policy and Societal Significance,” the letter addresses the remarkable advancements in AI, especially Large Language Models (LLMs) and Transformer models. While acknowledging their achievements, the letter underscores concerns about the lack of scientific principles guiding their development and the absence of independent performance standards.
Signatories emphasize that current LLMs and Transformer models are “corpus bound,” relying on parameters that remain enigmatic and inaccessible to scrutiny. Despite their capabilities, a critical understanding of these systems and their implications is missing.
Challenging the popular narrative of AI as an existential threat or the emergence of “super intelligence,” the letter argues for a more nuanced view rooted in computational neuroscience, biology, and physics, highlighting the interconnected “intelligences” of all living things.
The signatories stress that a nuanced scientific understanding of AI is crucial for effective policies and regulations. They highlight the relevance of studying the human brain-mind to optimize the integration of human intelligence with artificial intelligence in a pro-social manner.
Addressing economic, policy, and social misunderstandings surrounding AI, the letter challenges the notion that only “Big Tech” companies can afford AI commercialization.
It anticipates a future where distributed and biologically grounded intelligences can operate on mobile devices with lower energy requirements, promising transparency, privacy, security, and equitable access.
In response to these challenges, the signatories propose interdisciplinary public workshops to convene legislators, regulators, technologists, investors, scientists, journalists, NGOs, faith communities, the public, and business leaders. The goal is to foster an alternative, science-based understanding of the biological foundations of AI and transform the way AI is approached, developed, and integrated into society.
This initiative is a collaborative effort between the Active Inference Institute, grounded in the science of computational physics and biology, the Neuropsychiatry and Society Program, focused on understanding the societal implications of the human brain-mind, and the Boston Global Forum, dedicated to forming global policies and an AI World Society model for the inclusive and beneficial application of AI.
Boston Global Forum is set to host the AIWS Roundtable on December 12, 2023, to announce and discuss the letter and initiative. Additionally, a significant conference is planned at Harvard University Loeb House on April 30, 2024, focusing on this pioneering initiative.
For more information, please visit:
Contact Information:
Jim McManus,
Principal Partner of Slowey McManus Communications
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 617-413-9232
John Clippinger,
Co-Founder, BioForm Labs
Email: [email protected]
About the Active Inference Institute:
https://www.activeinference.org/about/strategy
About the Neuropsychiatry and Society Program:
https://www.brighamandwomens.org/psychiatry/brigham-psychiatric-specialties/psychiatry-law-and-society
About the Boston Global Forum:
The Boston Global Forum (BGF) offers a venue for leaders, strategists, thinkers, and innovators to contribute to the process of Remaking the World – Toward an Age of Global Enlightenment.
The BGF introduced core concepts that are shaping groundbreaking international initiatives, most notably, the Social Contract for the AI Age, AI International Law and Accord, the Global Alliance for Digital Governance, the AI World Society (AIWS) Ecosystem, and the AIWS City.
by Editor | Dec 10, 2023 | News
The Boston Global Forum celebrates its 11th birthday (December 12, 2012) by honoring Governor Michael Dukakis, Co-founder and Chair of the BGF with the book “From the Massachusetts Miracle to the Age of Global Enlightenment”
Harvard Professor David Silbersweig wrote in the book:
“Governor Dukakis has been a beacon of perspective, wisdom, graciousness and integrity for the Boston Global Forum, for our state and for the world. He has brought deep experience and ability to get right to the heart of the matter, rooted in ethics and knowledge of politics. He has exemplified leadership and given a platform for others to lead for good. He bridges the latest advances with age-old human nature to maximize the impact of the BGF and AIWS, in its partnership with other leading international organizations. He reminds us all of common human decency, of how we as societies are falling short, and how we need to keep our eye on the most important elements to improve local, national and global lives.”
Read or download the book here:
https://bostonglobalforum.org/publications/from-the-massachusetts-miracle-to-the-age-of-global-enlightenment/
On December 12, 2023, BGF and Active Inference Institute officially launch the Letter on: A Natural AI Based on The Science of Computational Physics, Biology and Neuroscience: Policy and Societal Significance and AIWS Natural AI Initiative
Signatories include esteemed leaders, strategists, scholars such as Governor Michael Dukakis, former Prime Minister of Italy Enrico Letta, Nazli Choucri, Beth Noveck, Alex Pentland, John Clippinger, David Silbersweig, Thomas Patterson, Nguyen Anh Tuan, and others.
On December 12, 2023, BGF will publish writing of BGF CEO Nguyen Anh Tuan “Building Spiritual Values for AI World Society”. BGF collaborates closely with spiritual leaders and religious figures to gather esteemed values, contributing to the creation of the spiritual values framework for AIWS. Notably, Amma, a revered spiritual leader, actively supports and participates in the development of AIWS Spiritual Values.
Governor Michael Dukakis, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves and Nguyen Anh Tuan at the launch of AI World Society on December 12, 2017 at Harvard University Loeb House
by Editor | Dec 10, 2023 | News
December 12, 2023
Introduction:
The astonishing achievements of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Transformer models have exceeded the expectations of even their most ardent supporters. Foundational advances were made in the discovery of the power of Markov processes, tensor networks, transformers, and context-aware attention mechanisms. These advances were guided, not by specific scientific hypotheses, but by sheer engineering ingenuity in the application of mathematical and novel machine learning techniques. Such approaches have relied upon massive computational capabilities to generate and fit billions of parameters into models and outputs that achieve outcomes tied to the expectations of their respective creators. Notwithstanding the massive advances in system performance, potential use cases, and adoption of such systems, no scientific principles nor independent performance standards were referenced or applied to direct the research and development, nor to evaluate the adequacy of their outputs or contextual appropriateness of their performance. Consequently, all current LLMs and Transformer models are “corpus bound,” and their parameter-setting criteria are confined to an inaccessible and undecipherable stochastic “black box”.
The rapid advance and notable successes of LLM and Transformer models in processing information is historically unprecedented and has led to proclamations, by some reputable individuals, of “existential” threats to human civilization and emergent “super intelligence” or “Artificial General Intelligence”. No doubt the potential for intentional abuse (and negligent application) of such powerful and novel technologies is enormous, and likely to dwarf those harms arising in social media contexts. However, suppositions as to what constitutes “intelligence”, much less a “super” or “AGI” are ill founded and foster highly misleading public narratives of the future of intelligent systems generally. This de facto narrative is rooted in popular tropes characteristic of apocalyptic science fiction, but are not supported by scientific evidence. Contrary to the popular narrative, a substantial and credible body of scientific research exists today, grounded in computational neuroscience, biology, and physics, that supports a much more nuanced, and ultimately positive and tractable narrative relating to the phenomenon of intelligences. This perspective is one that integrates AI, human intelligence, and other intelligent forms into an overall description and understanding about the interconnected “intelligences” of all “living things”. The emerging field of Diverse Intelligence, which is highlighting forms of cognition in unconventional substrates is an essential part of the AI debate, and a necessary balance to misguided comparisons to human minds as the essential rubric for evaluating AI.
This alternative scientific narrative that harmonically couples conceptions of “life” and “intelligence” is the precursor to next generation forms of ultra-high capacity, distributed AI composed of self-explanatory, self-reflective, and self-corrective intelligences.
Without a proper and nuanced scientific understanding of current and future AI technologies, policies and regulations intended to manage AI systems and their impacts are likely to be misdirected and ineffective.
Neural systems arising in nature have evolved to achieve an impressive array of adaptive capabilities. Human societies and the capacity for symbolic communication, have leveraged natural evolution of fitness to the point where human organisms can convey information across time and space, fostering the accumulation of knowledge at an ever-accelerating pace. The human mind and its extensions have advanced to the point where it can create AI.
Why is the human brain-mind relevant to the future of AI? A deep understanding of the structure and functions of the human brain and its emergent mental functions can not only help shape future technological possibilities (with and beyond neural network models), but will also be essential in optimizing how human intelligence integrates and works with artificial intelligence in a pro-social, rather than anti-social, manner. The human brain-mind has evolved in ways that lead to both advantages and limitations. It will be necessary to work synergistically with AI (including, for example, possible brain-computer interfaces in the treatment of diseases), and to guide its ethical development.
Critical misunderstandings are not just scientific and academic but in a broader economic, policy and social structural contexts as well. For example, due to their high computational costs and dependency on large volumes of training data, LLMs and Transformer models are broadly presumed to be only affordable for commercialization by “Big Tech” companies. Hence, the argument is made that Big Tech should be courted and granted special consideration by regulators and deference by the general public. But this need not be the case, as AI technology does not have to be monolithic nor concentrated to be successfully commercialized and appropriately regulated. In the very near future distributed and biologically grounded intelligences will have the capacity to run on mobile devices with far less energy than current systems, and with the intrinsic ability to self enforce and self correct their actions and goals, vastly outperforming current and future centralized AI system architectures. Such transparent cognitive architectures and edge infrastructures upon which such future intelligence infrastructures will run will be critical to preserving privacy and security and in attaining the equitable, sustainable and democratic use of this promising and necessary technology.
Call for actions:
We the undersigned signatories believe that it is vital at this juncture in the commercialization and regulation of AI that an alternative and science-based understanding of the biological foundations of AI be given public voice and that interdisciplinary public workshops be convened among legislators, regulators, technologists, investors, scientists, journalists, NGOs, faith communities, the public and business leaders.
Through the combined efforts of the Active Inference Institute, whose founding principles are grounded in science and the computational physics and biology of living intelligences and open technologies, the Neuropsychiatry and Society Program, whose focus is bringing an understanding of the human brain-mind to societal issues and technological developments, and the Boston Global Forum, whose mandate is the formation of global policies and AI World Society model for the inclusive and beneficial application of AI, there can be real transformative change in the way we approach, develop, and integrate artificial intelligence into our societies.
Signed,
Signatories list:
Krishnashree Achuthan, Dean, Amrita University
Nazli Choucri, MIT professor, Boston Global Forum Board Member
John H. Clippinger, Ph.D., Active Inference Institute; Bioform Labs
Scott L. David, University of Washington – Applied Physics Laboratory
Ramu Damodaran, The First Chief of the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI), Co-Chair of the United Nations Centennial – BGF and UNAI Initiative in Honor of the United Nations 2045 Centenary, Representative of Boston Global Forum in New York
Governor Michael Dukakis, Co-founder and Chair of Boston Global Forum
Chris Fields, Ph.D., Tufts University; Private consultant
Daniel Ari Friedman, Ph.D., Active Inference Institute; COGSEC
Karl Friston, MD, PhD, University College London
Thomas Kehler, Ph.D., CrowdSmart.ai; CommonGoodAI
Virginia Bleu Knight, Active Inference Institute
Zlatko Lagumdzija, Former Prime Minister of Bosnia & Herzegovina, Ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the United Nations
Francesco Lapenta, John Cabot University in Rome, Representative of Boston Global Forum in Rome
Enrico Letta, Former Prime Minister of Italy, president of the Institut Jacques Delors
Michael Levin, Ph.D., Director, Levin Labs, Allen Discovery Center, Tufts University
Yasuhide Nakayama, Former Japanese State Minister of Defense and Foreign Affairs
Paul Nemitz, Principal Adviser on the Digital Transition in DG Justice and Consumers, EU Commission, Representative of Boston Global Forum in Brussels and Berlin
Nguyen Anh Tuan, Co-founder and CEO of Boston Global Forum
Martin Nkafu Nkemnkia, the Pontifical Lateran University, Vatican
Beth Noveck, Northeastern University, the first United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer under President Obama at the White House
Thomas Patterson, Harvard Kennedy School professor, Co-founder of Boston Global Forum
Alex Pentland, MIT professor, Boston Global Forum Board Member
Matthew Pirkowski, Bioform Labs
Joshua Shane, Bioform Labs
David A. Silbersweig, MD, Chairman, Department of Psychiatry, Co-Director, Center for the Neurosciences, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Stanley Cobb Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Bert de Vries, PhD, Professor, Eindhoven University of Technology
by Editor | Dec 4, 2023 | News
Minh Nguyen is the Editor of the Boston Global Forum and a Shinzo Abe Initiative Fellow. She writes the Four Pillars column in the BGF Weekly newsletter.
More information has been made clear regarding a naval confrontation in the Horn of Africa. A civilian vessel, owned by an Israeli group and flagged as Liberian, sent out an SOS call in response to a raid by Somali pirates. However, their call was apparently ignored by the nearby Chinese military vessels. It was then that a US vessel, the USS Mason, along with an ally, reported to be Japan, a Pillar, finally intervened. This resulted in the boarding and arrest of the pirate vessels and those on board. Interestingly, the USS Mason was the one that came under fire from Houthi, an Iran-backed rebel group in Yemen, by two missiles that missed earlier that week. This incident demonstrates that the Four Pillars are an important and necessary player on the global stage. Coordination between the Four Pillars means that the Pillars can better defend themselves, and those that support the rule of law. It enhances democracy across the world. This incident also demonstrates that one should be wary of Chinese or Russian hegemony in the world, where the rule of law is not considered, or calls for assistance against lawless actors go unnoticed.
However, this naval incident is just one of many to befall US or allied (eg. Japan) vessels in recent weeks, in light of the war in Gaza. It has been reported that three commercial vessels had been targeted by the Houthis, and the Pentagon has threatened to take actions.
Japan and Vietnam have elevated their relationship to Strategic Comprehensive Partnership. This will enhance not just economic cooperation, but security cooperation as well, seeing both states have concerns and territorial disputes with China. Additionally, this has been a convergence of economic and security interests from both sides, building up from decades. This is the third Pillar that Vietnam has attained status with (the others being India and the US), and the second of this year.
Something to watch out in the Four Pillars space (none of the Pillars have taken action yet) is that Venezuela, a rival of the US in Latin America, has been eyeing to annex the western half of its neighbor Guyana, which recently discovered oil in the region. Most recently, the country’s population has “approved” a referendum to claim sovereignty over Essequibo, the aforementioned oil-rich region. However, it should be noted that this may just be posturing to distract the domestic population and won’t lead to consequential actions.
USS Mason and JS Akebono, credit: JMSDF Twitter
