We Are in the Presence of a Formidable Creature

Artificial intelligence changes science and technology. Clear. But what does it do with society? Engineers, artists and scientists come to an inescapable realization.

By Andrian Kreye, October 13, 2017

[Editor’s Note: Edge was in London once again to continue its ongoing collaboration with The Serpentine Gallery and its “supercurator” Hans Ulrich Obrist. Longtime Edge contributor Andrian Kreye flew in from Munich for the event, and, wearing his hat as Feuilleton editor of the influential German national newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, wrote the front page lede story in the weekend edition. We are pleased to run the following translated excerpt. —JB]

It is not at all mistaken to look for insight into artificial intelligence by reading the folk tales in 1001 Nights. The writer Adam Thirlwell and the literary scholar Marina Warner, currently the President of the Royal Society of Literature, did just that last week in the great hall of the London City Hall. In the mighty spiral dome overlooking the Thames and Tower Bridge, a few dozen scientists, engineers, artists and writers met to look for coherent images for the artificial intelligence.

Sitting in the architecturally high-quality glistening autumn light, they publicly thought about whether the Oriental fairy-tale genie Djinn, this serviceable wish filler of smokeless fire, was not the perfect symbol for those digital forces, which are currently being unleashed everywhere. Not only could you see the digital flare as a contemporary image for the smoke-free fire, but it also poses the question of the controllability of this rebellious spirit of the bottle. Whoever frees him from his divine imprisonment has no idea of what Djinn's magical powers could do.

UPDATE: RICHARD THALER WINS 2017 NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS [10.9.17]

[View the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Press Release]

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Daniel Kahneman & Richard Thaler
Edge Retreat, Spring Mountain Vineyard, Napa, California, August 22, 2013

What we're saying is that there is a technology emerging from behavioral economics. It's not only an abstract thing. You can do things with it. We are just at the beginning. I thought that the input of psychology into behavioral economics was done. But hearing Sendhil was very encouraging because there was a lot of new psychology there. That conversation is continuing and it looks to me as if that conversation is going to go forward. It's pretty intuitive, based on research, good theory, and important. — Daniel Kahneman

Richard Thaler	Sendhil Mullainathan	Daniel Kahneman

Edge Master Class 2008 
Richard Thaler, Sendhil Mullainathan, Daniel Kahneman
Sonoma, CA, July 25-27, 2008

A decade ago, Edge convened its first "Master Class" in Napa, California, in which psychologist and Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman taught a nine-hour course: "A Short Course On Thinking About Thinking." The attendees were a "who's who" of the new global business culture. 

The following year, in 2008, we invited Richard Thaler, the father of behavioral economics, to continue the conversation by organizing and leading the class: "A Short Course On Behavioral Economics." 

Thaler arrived at Stanford in the 1970s to work with Kahneman and his late partner, Amos Tversky. Thaler, in turn, asked Harvard economist and former student Sendhil Mullainathan, as well as Kahneman, to teach the class with him.

The entire text to the 2008 Master Class is available online, along with video highlights of the talks and a photo gallery. The text also appears in a book privately published by Edge Foundation, Inc.

Nathan Myhrvold	Jeff Bezos	Elon Musk

Whereas the focus for Kahneman's 2007 Master Class was on psychology, in 2008 the emphasis shifted to behavioral economics. As Kahneman noted: "There's new technology emerging from behavioral economics, and we are just starting to make use of that. I thought the input of psychology into economics was finished, but clearly it's not!"

The Master Classes are the most recent iteration in Edge's development, which began its activities under the name "The Reality Club" in 1981. Edge is different from The Algonquin, The Apostles, The Bloomsbury Group, or The Club, but it offers the same quality of intellectual adventure. The closest resemblances are to The Invisible College and the Lunar Society of Birmingham.

In contemporary terms, this results in Edge having a Google PageRank of "8," the same as The Atlantic, Corriere della Sera, The Economist, the Financial Times, Le Monde, The New Yorker, the New Statesman, Vanity Fair, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, among others. 

The early seventeenth-century Invisible College was a precursor to the Royal Society. Its members consisted of scientists such as Robert Boyle, John Wallis, and Robert Hooke. The Society's common theme was to acquire knowledge through experimental investigation. Another example is the nineteenth-century Lunar Society of Birmingham, an informal club of the leading cultural figures of the new industrial age—James Watt, Erasmus Darwin, Josiah Wedgwood, Joseph Priestley, and Benjamin Franklin.

In a similar fashion, Edge, through its Master Classes, gathers together intellectuals and technology pioneers. George Dyson, in his summary (below) of the second day of the proceedings, writes:

Retreating to the luxury of Sonoma to discuss economic theory in mid-2008 conveys images of Fiddling while Rome Burns. Do the architects of Microsoft, Amazon, Google, PayPal, and Facebook have anything to teach the behavioral economists—and anything to learn? So what? What's new?? As it turns out, all kinds of things are new. Entirely new economic structures and pathways have come into existence in the past few years.

Indeed, as one distinguished European visitor noted, the weekend, which involved the two-day Master Class in Sonoma followed by a San Francisco dinner, was "a remarkable gathering of outstanding minds. These are the people that are rewriting our global culture."

— John Brockman, Editor

Sean Parker	Salar Kamangar	Evan Williams

RICHARD H. THALER is the Ralph and Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at Chicago's Booth School of Business and director of the University of Chicago’s Center for Decision Research. He is coauthor (with Cass Sunstein) of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, and author of Misbehaving. Thaler is the recipient of the 2017 Nobel Prize in economics. Richard Thaler's Edge Bio Page

NASA Langley's shy 'mad scientist' dies 
By Mike Holtzclaw [September 3, 2017]

Philip Brockman was shy by nature and rarely talked in specifics about the work that he did at NASA Langley Research Center during a career that spanned four decades.

Brockman, a research physicist, was involved with the early U.S. space program and later did work that led to tremendous advances in airline safety. But his own brother did not fully grasp the scope of that work until Brockman died on Tuesday at age 79 after a long illness.

This prompted John Brockman to talk with some of his brother’s old colleagues and to read some accounts that he had never seen before.

“He took a lot of pride in his work — he certainly did,” John Brockman said. “But I didn’t know what he was up to. He was reticent. He always wanted to stay behind the scenes. He would often contribute to papers and not want his name on them. That was just his way.”

Philip Brockman spent much of his early career in magnetoplasmadynamics (MPD), a form of propulsion. Macon “Mike” Ellis, head of the MDP branch, would refer to this group as the “mad scientists” of NASA Langley.

Their work was key to the Mercury Program that sent our nation’s first astronauts into space. Brockman also later devoted much of his work to improving safety standards for commercial flight.

“I remember him at JFK (airport in New York) spending 12 hours at the end of a runway in the cold winter wind, measuring things and looking for ducks and geese and air currents,” John Brockman said. “I didn’t realize what that was really about until I saw a graph on Tuesday night showing the sharp decline in deaths per million passengers since 1970. He was a technical lead in the FAA-NASA project to do that, and I didn’t even know it.”

Steven Harrah, who spent a decade as the NASA Windshear Radar Principle Investigator, said that Philip Brockman “helped establish the engineering fundamentals of airborne and space-based lidar that has led to numerous aviation safety enhancements and a greater understanding of our atmosphere and its complex processes.”

Brockman was a native of the Boston area and came to NASA Langley in the late 1950s after graduating from University of Massachusetts. He later would earn a master’s degree in physics from the College of William and Mary in 1963.

Dick Davis, a senior scientist who retired from NASA Langley in 2007, worked with Brockman in the area of remote sensing and the use of radar and other technology to detect turbulence, wind shears and other dangers.

“He was very much a cooperative guy, very easy to work with and good on teams,” Davis said. ”He seemed to think a lot about other people. He was very good about suggesting ways we could work together to do things.”

Engineer Grady Koch remembered Brockman as “a valued mentor” as he began his career at Langley building Doppler lidar for atmospheric studies.

“He was a wealth of knowledge and always happy to lend advice,” Koch said. “I’ll particularly miss Phil for his skill in reducing the esoteric nature of new technologies to practical implementation and for his entertaining wit while doing so.”

Brockman retired in 2003 and relocated to Raleigh, N.C., but he continued to contribute information via regular conference calls with his NASA colleagues. He is survived by his wife, Alexandra Campbell; his brother, John Brockman (wife Katinka); nephew Max Brockman (wife Jennie); and great-niece Juliet and great-nephew Miles.