(from left to right: Governor Michael Dukakis, President of Estonia Toomas Hendrik Ilves, and Professor Patrick Winston
at the AI World Society’s first meeting December 12, 2017.)
Patrick Winston, a beloved professor and computer scientist at MIT, died on July 19 at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He was 76.
A professor at MIT for almost 50 years, Winston was the director of MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory from 1972 to 1997 before it merged with the Laboratory for Computer Science to become MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).
A devoted teacher and cherished colleague, Winston led CSAIL’s Genesis Group, which focused on developing AI systems that have human-like intelligence, including the ability to tell, perceive, and comprehend stories. He believed that such work could help illuminate aspects of human intelligence that scientists don’t yet understand.
His Genesis project aimed to faithfully model computers after human intelligence in order to fully grasp the inner workings of our own motivations, rationality, and perception. Using MIT research scientist Boris Katz’s START natural language processing system and a vision system developed by former MIT PhD student Sajit Rao, Genesis can digest short, simple chunks of text, then spit out reports about how it interpreted connections between events.
Winston’s dedication to teaching earned him many accolades over the years, including the Baker Award, the Eta Kappa Nu Teaching Award, and the Graduate Student Council Teaching Award. He was also renowned for his accessible and informative lectures, and gave a hugely popular talk every year during the Independent Activities Period called “How to Speak.”
A past president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Winston also wrote and edited numerous books, including a seminal textbook on AI that’s still used in classrooms around the world. Outside of the lab he also co-founded Ascent Technology, which produces scheduling and workforce management applications for major airports.
As a pioneer researcher in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Professor Patrick Winston was also key figure to the AI World Society (AIWS), which has been established by Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation (MDI). He was an intellectual and active contributor to AIWS and MDI from the very first days, including AI World Society first meeting on December 12, 2017 at Harvard University Faculty Club.
Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation (MDI) and AI World Society (AIWS) express sincere condolences to professor Patrick Winston and his family. Professor Patrick Winston is always memorized as an inspirational AI expert in AI World Society for promoting ethical norms and practices in the development and use of AI.
“A Proposed Social Contract 2020, Regarding Rules and International Laws for AI and the Internet “ is a theme of the AI World Society (AIWS) Conference on September 23, 2019 at Harvard University Faculty Club, MA, USA. Professor Alex Sandy Pentland, Director of Connection Science from MIT, and co-founder of the Social Contract 2020, is the keynote speaker of the conference, Governor Michael Dukakis, Chairman of the Boston Global Forum, co-founder of the AI World Society and the Social Contract 2020 is the moderator of the conference. Professor Pentland will present concepts of the Social Contract 2020, a very important part of AI World Society.
Professor Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland directs the MIT Connection Science and Human Dynamics labs and previously helped create and direct the MIT Media Lab and the Media Lab Asia in India. He is one of the most-cited computational scientists in the world, and Forbes recently declared him one of the “7 most powerful data scientists in the world” along with Google founders and the Chief Technical Officer of the United States. He is on the Board of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, co-led the World Economic Forum discussion in Davos that led to the EU privacy regulation GDPR, and was central in forging the transparency and accountability mechanisms in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
The Boston Global Forum and the United Nations Academic Impact co-organized an AI World Society Distinguished Lecture on United Nations Charter Day, June 26, 2019. The AI World Society Distinguished Lecture was delivered by Dr. David A. Bray in the ECOSOC Chamber, United Nations Headquarters. On this special day, the AI World Society Distinguished Lecture is named as the United Nations Charter Day Lecture.
Theme:
Artificial Intelligence, the Internet and the Future of Data: Where Will We Be in 2045? will examine the impact of technology on the mission of the UN 100 years after its creation.
The Lecture start at 10:00 am with film about establish United Nations Charter on June 26, 1945 in San Francisco, followed by participants standing to read key messages of UN Charter.
Then, Mr. Nguyen Anh Tuan, CEO of the Boston Global Forum introduced the AI World Society Initiative and AI World Society Distinguished Lecture, and honored to name the AI World Society Distinguished Lecture as United Nations Academic Impact Charter Day Lecture on this special day.
Then, Dr. Bray, presented the Lecture with his vision about the world in 2045, 100 years of United Nations, and at the time that he will be 67 years old.
Moderator
Maher Nasser, Director, Outreach Division Department of Global Communications, United Nations.
Panelists:
Mariko Gakiya, Shine Advisory Board Member-Sustainability and Health Initiative, Visiting Scientist-Environmental H, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Fabrizio Hochschild, United Nations Under Secretary-General and Special Adviser on the Preparations for the Commemoration of the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the United Nations
Ajeet N. Mathur,
Professor in Strategy and International Business,
Business Policy and Economics Areas, IIM Ahmedabad
Atefeh Riazi, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and Chief Information Technology Officer
David Silbersweig, Chairman of psychiatry at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, and
co-directs the center for the neurosciences;
Academic Dean, and Stanley Cobb Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Board Member of the Boston Global Forum, Member of AI World Society Standards and Practice Committee.
Delegation of the Boston Global Forum, including Governor Michael Dukakis, Mr. Nguyen Anh Tuan, Professor Thomas Patterson, Professor Nazli Choucri, Professor Thomas Creely, and Mr. Allan Citryn, attended AI World Government Conference and Expo in Washington DC. The BGF is a part of the strategic alliance of this event. BGF hosted the Summit of AI World Government with the topic “AI Governance, Big Data, and Ethics”. After Governor Michael Dukakis give opening remarks, Prof. Thomas Patterson presented the AI World Society-G7 Summit Initiative. He focused on the AI-Government model and AI-Citizen, in which AI-Citizen as new concepts. AI-Government affects the public through improvement of public services, such as health care and education. This impact, however, deals only with individuals as subjects – recipients of government action. AI also has the capacity to empower individuals and make them more responsible for their actions. In this sense, AI is a mechanism for enhancing individuals as citizens rather than merely as subjects.
As we envision the AI World Society (AIWS), it is a society where innovation, creativity and dedication are promoted and given material support, and in which individuals who contribute to society through innovation, creativity and dedication are heard, recognized and rewarded.
We also envision it as a society that increases citizens’ opportunities to influence governmental decisions and to hold government accountable for its actions. Citizen participation is not a substitute for representative institutions, but the AIWS model expands the range of decisions in which citizens are directly and materially involved. AI in this context should support the self- organization of citizens in structures of civil society and those for political action, thus contributing to a more vibrant and open society and a living democracy.
AI-Citizen would seek to nurture innovation, creativity and dedication and the ability to organize for a common purpose; develop a mechanism for rewarding innovation, creativity and dedication, getting organized for public interest purposes; develop ways for individuals to participate more fully and actively in government decisions, parliamentary and other democratic activity and civil society; and provide ways for individuals to hold government and other actors accountable for decisions affecting them and society generally.
Prof. Patterson introduced the Social Value Reward (or Social Value Recognition) SVR. This system is in contrast with Social Credit System of China. Social Value Reward is for citizens and by citizens. Mr. Nguyen Anh Tuan, CEO of BGF, emphasized that the Social Credit System of China government is anti-democratic, and the world need a democratic system to replace the Social Credit System of China.
Social Value Reward (SVR) System would provide a way for citizens to track their contributions to society, as well as a way for society to acknowledge those contributions. It would allocate reward based on citizens’ adherence to norms such as their dedication and their innovative, creative contributions. It stands in sharp contrast to China’s “social credit” system, which is a mechanism of state control. Based on a blockchain system, SVR would not have government input or be accessible by government. Reward would be allocated by civic-minded non-governmental organizations. The system is used to recognize and honor citizens for their contributions to society. Punitive action is prohibited. SVR would also permit citizens to evaluate the leaders of governmental institutions, governments, non-government organizations, and firms for their contributions to society. SVR would accord with The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and The Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (AI) issued by the European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence.
Professor Patterson informs that BGF are discussing about The New Social Contract for AI, Data, Internet society.
BGF delegation attended AI World Government.
Governor Michael Dukakis gives opening remarks at the Summit of AI World Government.
The prime minister Abe called for the reform of the World Trade Organization, which has been criticized for not functioning properly. He also stressed to leaders the necessity of compiling a new global taxation rule aimed at imposing greater taxes on large information technology companies by next year.
The G20 summit officially started on Friday at noon with a special leaders event on the digital economy. On the first day of the summit, leaders mainly discussed the global economy, trade and investment, and dinner was to be hosted by Abe. On Saturday, the second day of the summit meeting, issues such as climate change, the environment and energy will be discussed.
The Boston Global Forum honored Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with the World Leader for Peace and Cybersecurity Award on Global Cybersecurity Day December 12, 2015 at Harvard University Faculty Club.
Prime Minister Abe sent an acceptance speech through video and Japanese Consul General in Boston, representative of Prime Minister Abe, received the Award at Global Cybersecurity Day.
Automation is to achieve efficiency. What if AI sees humanity itself as the thing to be optimized? The New York Times this week wrote about the possibility of robots replacing your bosses.
It is happening indeed, kind of. Amazon’s complex algorithms are already used to track worker productivity in its fulfillment centers and can automatically generate the paperwork to fire workers who don’t meet their targets. IBM’s AI Platform, the Watson, its A.I. platform can predict future performance of employees with almost 100% accuracy. Cogito is an AI supervisor for call centers and other workplaces; it gives workers feedback in real time.
But the use of AI program to manage workers remains controversial. “It is surreal to think that any company could fire their own workers without any human involvement,” Marc Perrone, the president of United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. How do you resolve conflict between the workers and the platforms serving as the supervisor?
Defenders of workplace AI argue that these systems are meant to make workers better. For example, there may be situations in which human bias skews decision-making, such as hiring and this is where AI can help.
Nevertheless, one should by all means avoid the temptation to abuse AI for the purpose of big-brother watching the workers. The full article of the New York Times is here.
The field of artificial intelligence (AI) is exploding with projects such as IBM Watson, DeepMind’s AlphaZero, and voice recognition used in virtual assistants including Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Google’s Home Assistant. Because of the increasing impact of AI on people’s lives, concern is growing about how to take a sound ethical approach to future developments. Building ethical artificial intelligence requires both a moral approach to building AI systems and a plan for making AI systems themselves ethical. For example, developers of self-driving cars should be considering their social consequences including ensuring that the cars themselves are capable of making ethical decisions.
“Decisions about AI should be based on human needs rather than on greed.” This philosophy is also aligned with Artificial Intelligence World Society (AIWS) for the purpose of promoting ethical norms and practices in the development and use of AI. According to AIWS ethics report, AI can be an important tool to serve and strengthen democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.
Whether it’s at rescue and firefighting operations or deep-sea inspections, mobile robots finding their way around unknown situations with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) can effectively support people in carrying out activities in hazardous environments. The potential as well as the concrete benefits of AI in this field are illustrated in a current report from Plattform Lernende Systeme, Germany’s Platform for Artificial Intelligence, using two application scenarios.
In future, mobile self-learning robots can relieve people from dangerous or harmful activities. At the same time they can make operations in difficult-to-access terrain more economic or possible in the first place. The use of artificial intelligence comes with enormous opportunities for our society. Especially in disaster prevention, the decommissioning of nuclear power plants and in the maritime field there are a number of options for effectively supporting professionals with the help of artificial intelligence.
According to Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation (MDI), AI can be a force for helping people achieve well-being and happiness, unleash their potential, obtain greater freedom, relieve them of resource constraints and arbitrary/ inflexible rules and processes, and solve important issues, such as SDGs.
On June 26, 2019, the 74th anniversary of the United Nations Charter Day, Boston Global Forum (BGF) was pleased to collaborate with United Nations Academic Impact to co-organize the AI World Society Distinguished Lecture delivered by Dr. David A. Bray in the ECOSOC Chamber, United Nations Headquarters. On this special day, the AI World Society Distinguished Lecture is named as the United Nations Charter Day Lecture.
Mr. Nguyen Anh Tuan, CEO of the Boston Global Forum, presented the AI World Society Distinguished Lecture Plaque to Dr. David Bray, after the Lecture.
Dr. Bray is the Executive Director of the People-Centered Internet Coalition and a Senior Fellow of the Institute for Human-Machine Cognition, one of 24 American under 40 year- old that changed the world, Member of the AIWS Standards and Practice Committee.. He was a co-chair of the Summit on AI Governance, Big Data and Ethics, a special program of the AI World Government Conference two days earlier in Washington DC, of which the BGF was a part of the Strategic Alliance.
Dr. Bray’s talk consists of three main parts. In the first part, he raised several current issues which technology can help address, and suggested that the UN be an ideal place to start the conversation about them. An issue is that globalization has not benefited everyone and when it comes to the revolution involving AI automation, certain groups of people are not convinced enough to sign up. Another issue is that the technology also can incentivize wrong behaviors. The third issue is due to the fact that a significant number of people still do not have the same empathy toward their fellow human beings.
In the second part, Dr. Bray talked about ongoing tensions in both open and closed societies under ripple effects of technology. He mentioned global libertarianism, progressive localism, national protectionism, global neoliberalism, and national developmentalism as competing ideologies in open societies. In closed societies, tensions are due to taller “walled gardens”, increased censorship, and longing for a new world order.
In the third part, he proposed that technology can have impact on the following key questions: will tech continue to erode social cohesion? can we “act locally” and AIs “think globally” safely? will cognitive cold wars misuse the internet? will globalization’s “low tide” decimate rural areas”? and can tech balance national and ecological interests?
He concluded the talk with some actions the UN should consider. Firstly, we should demonstrate how people can have greater decision-rights regarding personal data. Second, we should use AI to make public health and health care in general more affordable. Last but not least, we should demonstrate how technology can positively reframe how we work as individuals and communities.
Dr. Bray’s talk was presented before a UN panel on Academic Impact. It offers a proposal on global developments not foreseen when the UN Charter was drafted but which, wisely used, could contribute to the realization of its purposes and principles.
