{"id":3984,"date":"2014-07-14T22:48:39","date_gmt":"2014-07-14T20:48:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/?p=3984"},"modified":"2014-07-19T22:28:39","modified_gmt":"2014-07-19T20:28:39","slug":"technology-isnt-going-to-solve-all-our-problems-just-ask-johnny-depp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/archives\/3984","title":{"rendered":"Technology isn&#8217;t going to solve all our problems, just ask Johnny&nbsp;Depp"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of weeks ago I watched Johnny Depp&#8217;s new movie Transcendence &#8211; spoiler alert: it&#8217;s a love story (kind of) &#8211; and found the issues the movie touched on quite intriguing. A lot of it focused on people&#8217;s reliance on technology and how it was suppose to give us all the answers to life. The premise in the movie was that there were two opposing perspectives on technology: one was to give ourselves completely to technology and artificial intelligence (AI), while the other was on balancing human vs. machine decision-making where we\/humans are in the ones in control. Well, all hell breaks loose when Depp&#8217;s consciousness gets uploaded into an AI&#8230; just watch the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VCTen3-B8GU&amp;feature=kp\">trailer<\/a> below to see what happens.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VCTen3-B8GU\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The topic of humans vs. machines has always been around (remember 1984&#8217;s <a title=\"Terminator\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Terminator\">Terminator<\/a>?). It&#8217;s just that now, it&#8217;s actually happening with more and more technology infiltrating our lives. I don&#8217;t have to go very far to think about how often I jumped to attention when getting a Facebook, Gmail, or Twitter notification on my phone &#8211; isn&#8217;t the beep from our phones kind of like a master calling his dog?<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3993\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3993\" style=\"width: 1000px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/IMG_0614.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3993\" src=\"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/IMG_0614.jpg\" alt=\"Nice to see that life can still be entertaining (and distracts us from our phones) like this drummer asking people to play with him.\" width=\"1000\" height=\"562\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/IMG_0614.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/IMG_0614-300x168.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3993\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nice to see that life can still be entertaining (and distracts us from our phones) like this drummer asking people to play with him.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>While these scenarios are scary (otherwise how would Hollywood make more movies??), more insightful thinkers like Clive Thompson makes the argument that it&#8217;s still possible, even necessary, to blend humans and machines together to actually evolve and help society. This doesn&#8217;t mean turning everyone into cyborgs, but really looking at how we can use the best of both worlds. In the early chapters of Thompson&#8217;s book &#8216;<a title=\"Smarter Than You Think\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/1594204454\">Smarter Than You Think&#8217;<\/a>, he provides examples of how chess grand masters worked with computers to not only improve the speed, but also creativity of play. I&#8217;ve just started the book, so definitely more insights to come.<\/p>\n<p>My favorite quote so far:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;At their best, today&#8217;s digital tools help us see more, retain more, communicate more. At their worst, they leave us prey to the manipulation of the toolmakers. But on balance, I&#8217;d argue, what is happening is deeply positive. This book is about the transformation.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Update: Thx Mr. Thompson!<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p>Of Johnny Depp, AI, and our human-machine anxieties: <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/aW8qsxg1w0\">http:\/\/t.co\/aW8qsxg1w0<\/a> By <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/vfung\">@vfung<\/a> (Now I want to see Transcendence too!)<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Clive Thompson (@pomeranian99) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/pomeranian99\/statuses\/489882048476487682\">July 17, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of weeks ago I watched Johnny Depp&#8217;s new movie Transcendence &#8211; spoiler alert: it&#8217;s a love story (kind of) &#8211; and found the issues the movie touched on quite intriguing. A lot of it focused on people&#8217;s reliance on technology and how it was suppose to give us all the answers to life. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/archives\/3984\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Technology isn&#8217;t going to solve all our problems, just ask Johnny&nbsp;Depp<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3993,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124,269],"tags":[25,26,363,362,61,364],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3984"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3984"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4006,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3984\/revisions\/4006"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}