CAUGHT OFF-GUARD BY THE DIGITAL SEXAGENARIANS

There is something happening around the world, that the big tech companies are not talking about. Or perhaps are not aware of - as unbelievable as that might seem - that is catching them off guard in the AI crusade. Seems the media aren’t clued up on it either.

And this article on ABC, demonstrates this paradox.

What is off-guard and problematic, is the portrayal of older people and disabled people in the media and broader commentary, as fragile creatures, incapable of innovative thought, incapable of the power and means of creation, the mere recipients of great things created by big tech - mostly tech bro, where the only commentary worth noting is from big tech and their billion dollar sales forces and sycophantic consulting friends who are all drinking the same cool aid.

Wrong, wrong, wrong on so many levels.

Paradoxically, there is a quiet AI revolution being driven and created by the fragile creatures of pity illustrated, the very subjects portrayed in so many futuristic pieces.

It says a lot about the distasteful bigoted Australian perspective, that one of the world’s most advanced projects in Artificial Intelligence - Nadia - created by people with disability, is ignored. Ignored by people who have never seen the messy unpleasant side of human service delivery, where life is often in the balance, who have never actually delivered an AI system, or any system - yet prefer the theoretical confines of policy sophistry where cosplay can be neatly dressed up as reality.

And that is one of the reasons why I wrote the book “Nadia: Politics | Bigotry | Artificial Intelligence”.

But the ABC article would have us believe that the Australian Government has a plan.

After 30 years, the Australian Government cannot escape the unfathomable abyss it is in. Lacking in imagination, incapable of anticipating the future, fixated with creating horrendous websites, tens of thousand of inaccessible forms, graveyards of apps, inaccessible chatbots, voluminous turgid bureaucratic language, now papering over all this with unlawful lethal robo systems and Automated Decision Making. The Australian Government is so deep in this abyss, it will never emerge. The only thing that emerges is the latest logo - like a turd being passed.

It’s not AI that is dystopian, but a cadaverous and deeply defective government administration captured by big tech. AGI is marketing gumbo. AI will never be sentient, no matter the pleadings of Ray Kurzweil. And I explain this in the Nadia book, together with the dangers of Large Language Models in service delivery, and why and how bounded domains bring the necessary context and guardrails.

AI has however been a life saver for our family - literally. Would you trust your life, every day, to AI? We do. But would you trust your life to government AI? Ah, No? Thought not.

People like me who have been around digital government for 30 years or more - and there are more than a few of us around the world - people who have actually been delivering, not just talking the AI BS hype - know how bad things have become, and the depth of the abyss.

We digital sexagenarians are a powerful mob, with no alliances, and we are not quiet. And here is where big tech is being caught off-guard. We possess the most valuable of resources that money cannot buy: decades of experience, half a century for some; crazy skills; and the freedom of time and thought.

This is not pitting the older generation against the younger generation - quite the opposite. We all have a stake in and a responsibility for the future. But the bias and bigotry is distorting the story telling about the future.

We the older people, disabled, chronically ill, dare you to look beyond the old faces and gnarly hands. We are sophisticated technologists, the builders and deliverers of systems over the decades - and we are doing a thing nobody is talking about. Because it’s not sexy. And it challenges the stereotypes so many commentators and vested interests are locked into.

We are building now the systems and concepts, what many see as a dream in 40 years time. There is no new invention needed to achieve this. No new scientific discovery. Why wait? Heck, in 40 years time our grandson himself will nearly be a sexagenarian. Trust me, he and his generation do not look like any of the stereotypes presented in these futuristic pieces. And that’s a whole other story of bigotry and bias.

So, here’s what #CardiacMan and I have been working on for the past few years. And there’s a write up on YouTube and my website that explains what we are doing and why.

And here we are testing another version of the Digital Human Cardiac Coach with the same corpus, in the Nullarbor, Central Australia.

And this, from 6 years ago. Digital Immortality? Give it to us? Game’s changed: we are not waiting for the tech gods.

We are actively creating it. Not in university labs, not in research centres, not in tech incubators. But in our home offices, our ‘labs’, with our own powerful computers, using cloud compute, using commodity applications. In many ways, the COVID lockdown and working-from-home accelerated this and intensified our purpose.

And we have no boss or investors telling us to stop.

There are many of us around the world: exchanging ideas amongst independent thinkers, unaligned technologists, creators, with crazy skills and experience that will blow your mind. Explain then, what sovereign AI actually is.

So please stop with the lazy boring stereotypical fragile old people images, memes and themes.

We are the digital sexagenarian, sorta like mycelium, that will catch Microsoft and every other big tech totally off guard. And that is a very big story. You have all being caught off-guard.