Last Week on Earth with GARI

Today’s podcast with Sebastian Hallensleben includes topics on the impact of generative AI with tools like deep fake, the future of platforms like Facebook and the creation of new platforms for constructive discourse, quantum computing, using a piece of the sun for energy on earth, and lastly, how to fund foundational research. 

Sebastian Hellensleben is the head of digitalization and AI at VDE, and works on concepts and infrastructures for trust in the digital space. 

Impact of generative AI - tools such as deep fakes - in the digital space. We haven’t yet understood it properly.

 Generative AI tools:

- being able to create profiles of people that don’t exist

- creating media for people that don’t exist

- virtual influencers that can have followers

The contest of quantity between product promoters is who has more bots. How can we trust ratings? 

Democratic discourse: if we lose the digital space as a platform for discourse to bots, it’ll have a major impact on the ability of democratic systems to function.

How to regulate this?

Regulation is never going to turn platforms like Facebook into a forum for constructive discourse. And that’s something we really have to understand.

So we have to look elsewhere and we need to create new kinds of platforms where constructive discourse can happen.

You need to create different incentive mechanisms. Like to convince another person of your position, or to gather reputation if you're able to build consensus between groups of 20 or 30 other users.

Where are platforms like Facebook heading? 

It is frightening that the owners of these platforms either haven't asked the question or there is no answer, to how these platforms can evolve in a more sustainable way. 

What technology are you excited about now?

Quantum computing - because it’ll be more disruptive - it is certainly a very fascinating technology. It's hard to say are we 5 years or 50 away from breakthroughs. It shares that with much older technology like nuclear fusion. But the mere notion of being able to have a piece of the sun on earth and use it to create energy.

Who should be funding all this?

Foundational research will never be funded by commercial investment. Because rewards are 20, 30 or 40 years away and it might not be clear what these rewards are. It's important governments support foundational research. It would be wise to have budgets to do research and just see where it takes us. 

How do we get countries that spend less than 3% of their GDP on research and innovation to spend more?

We need to link foundational research to certain megatrends:  aging population, finite natural recourses, the need to keep this planet liveable, and also from a perspective of how to keep people living together peacefully. Building resilient democracies for stable economies.

American versus European approach to spurring innovation. 

Fresh thinking on what the European Union actually is
 
Triggered by Brexit and Putin’s war and Trump, but nevertheless triggered. What is the goal and if the facets of that goal are still remnant? And a fresh perspective on the internal structures. Is it an economic union? Yes, to what

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
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• What is surprising about the Russian aggression toward Ukraine?
• Is it possible Putin didn’t have contingency plans for partial or total failure?
• Russian doctrine of power and success
• Did the Russian intelligence community really get it wrong or did they try to please Putin with their assessment?
• The problem of cognitive dissonance
• What will be the biggest challenge now for Ukraine and the Western allies?
• What will NATO's worth be for countries in Europe if NATO doesn’t react?
• What will happen next?
• Is there a development in the Ukrainian public opinion? Greater resilience or exhaustion? 
• What are the unlikely developments? What is inevitable.
• There are a lot of structural conditions that point to a strong possibility that there will be further decoupling and deglobalisation.  Will there be a breaking point?

What are the 3 things to watch in the next few weeks to watch in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine?

1. Use of chemical weapons by Russia won’t make any difference to NATO - it didn’t in Syria.

2. The Russians won't use a tactical nuclear weapon at this stage. They want to maintain a tactical war of attrition. Nuclear Weapons are not the sort of things you’d use in that. 

3. Putin wants to reach some sort of victory by the 9th of May. The question is what can constitute victory? - Maybe a Russian defeat of Donbas - a mass levelling of Ukrainian cities at a much greater level than now, can precipitate a reaction of other countries to give some air defence to Ukraine. Intercepting Russian aircrafts from neighbouring countries. 

4. Another possibility for a shift, would be a situation in Moscow where somebody will suggest to Putin to change course and instability in the Kremlin would have a lot of impact. But destabilisation within the Kremlin will put pressure on Putin to take more drastic action, to achieve victory at any cost. That is where tactical nuclear weapons will come in. The US will have to raise the nuclear alert. 

Shmuel Bar: https://il.linkedin.com/in/shmuelbar
More on Intuview: https://www.intuview.com/
More on the Global Arena Research Institute: https://www.globari.org/

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
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Welcome to the new year of GARI podcasts! We’re excited by our 2022 guest lineup, starting with the brilliant Shmuel Bar!

Dr. Bar is the founder and CEO of IntuView – an Israeli based software company that has developed an integrated semantics-driven platform for fully-automated real-time analysis and “meaning mining” of unstructured textual documents in various languages. Dr. Bar served for thirty years in various positions in the Israeli Office of the Prime Minister of Israel.  Since 2002, Dr. Bar has headed research projects – some of them for US government agencies - and published extensively on issues relating to the Middle East

Our main topic of discussion will be the current conflict around Russia and Ukraine and the actual international meaning of it all.

• Can Russia get most of what it wants just by threatening to do it?
• How far can Russia get in achieving its goal in reinstating a new regional or world order in which Russia is returning to some level of status that is comparable to what the Soviet Union had? The question is how much are the Americans interested in blocking that? Or are they reconciled with a  new world order where the US is trying to get out of legacy commitments and even formal obligations?
• Will the current issue do minor modifications for the next year or few years, or are we talking about a major shift in a trend, the abdication of the US as a world superpower?
• We have a new nemesis to focus on - China
• Putin knows he's actually doing Biden a favour, he has no interest in invading - but by making a crisis, the cusp of WW3  - Biden can “prevent” it. Allowing Biden to give Putin what he wanted to give him anyway. This allows Americans to claim a great victory and deal with the Chinese threat.

What does Intuview do?

• Langauge, especially in the age of social media, changes very rapidly
• We need to collect the information and allow the information to tell you what is prominent and what is not. Bringing together things that mean the same, so it's meaning mining

What has Intuview worked on?

• What do people want in Saudi Arabia? Women cannot drive - husbands who cannot afford chauffeurs for their wives have to drive them around themselves. Intuview's research showed that what will make, especially Saudi Arabia's youth, happy, is to allow women to drive cars
• Four or five months before the Arab Spring Intuview predicted that Tunisia, Lybia and Egypt (and Syria for other reasons) are liable to fall. The reason was that if you have an old autocratic leader that has been surrounded by the same people for 20 years who are yes men and have never made decisions all their life, as the leader gets older and is unable to control, then you can have the evolution of a crisis and nobody can control it. In the case of Egypt, the army men come from areas where they are posted, and they wouldn't open fire on the people they know and grew up with, so the only political force in the country that can take over would be the Muslim Brotherhood.

So what will happen now with Russia?

Russia is in no rush to resolve the conflict.  Headlines will continue to say “we are on the

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
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This episode’s guest is the American physicist Dr. William Colglazier. With an impressive resume, Colglazier’s long career has taken him to the Secretary of State, where he provided scientific and technical expertise and advice in support of the development and implementation of U.S. foreign policy as a Science and Technology Adviser. Today, he is the Editor-in-Chief of Science & Diplomacy and Senior Scholar in the Center for Science Diplomacy at the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Colglazier got his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology in 1971. He has since then worked at several prestigious institutes such as the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.  The years before his time at the Secretary of State, he oversaw studies in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the National Research Council (NRC) to provide independent, objective scientific advice on domestic and international public policy issues.

In this episode, Colglazier talks about his way into science and politics and his work to implement the Sustainable Development Goals through science, technology and innovation. He describes the current setbacks to science in public policies such as the Paris Agreement, Iran Nuclear Deal and the unpreparedness of the US in the recent pandemic.

Global Arena Research Institute is an independent, non-partisan research organisation that combines the most advanced methods of AI-driven data, scientific and other artificial reasoning capabilities, elevating data science into completely new levels of opportunity. Our goal is to provide unprecedented insights into the nature, impact, and management of globalization in order to improve institutional and governmental as well as business, energy and other sectors’ decision making. Our mission is to make the most of organically connecting AI-level reasoning capacities with the human-level critical reasoning capacities for the sake of a better future.

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
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Our 18th episode is joined by Alexander Ruiz, Founder of Phaedrus LLC, an engineering company supporting the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community, and Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, who discusses the transforming digital arena and the ensuing threats.

Ruiz got into the cyber-digital domain in his early years. Inspired by 90s movies like Top Gun, Alex devoted himself to computer communication. He continued his career in the American Air Force, effectively understanding the complex digital systems and later on turning to engineering. He saw the international cyber norms changing, threats growing and the nature of conflicts transforming.

To navigate through the new era of disinformation, Alex raises the issue of acknowledging the problem. We need to recognise the underpinnings of the information that affects us. Firstly, there are nefarious actors actively feeding us false information to swing an election or shape public opinion, but there are also the commercial actors who are using marketing tools like algorithms and optimization to benefit their own shareholders. The reconciliation needed is in the form of policy, but to update our laws to control what companies are allowed to do, the challenge often lies in lawmakers not knowing enough about the industry that they are trying to regulate.

Another issue is the growing gap between the institutional cyber capacity of governments and the one of il/legitimate non-state actors. The technical incapabilities of governments will affect the relationship between the government and the governed. How the state actors are supposed to control disruptive and harmful information alongside sects and conspirators, all while safeguarding freedom of speech, is something that Ruiz believes will be a huge challenge in the future. This development can partly be curbed by new technologies that can groom the information environment in order to protect against nefarious actors and social collapse.

Global Arena Research Institute is an independent, non-partisan research organisation that combines the most advanced methods of AI-driven data, scientific and other artificial reasoning capabilities, elevating data science into completely new levels of opportunity. Our goal is to provide unprecedented insights into the nature, impact, and management of globalization in order to improve institutional and governmental as well as business, energy and other sectors’ decision making. Our mission is to make the most of organically connecting AI-level reasoning capacities with the human-level critical reasoning capacities for the sake of a better future.

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
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Dr Mark Galeotti joins Last Week on Earth for a conversation on Russia. Galeotti, Director of the consultancy firm Mayak Intelligence, Honorary Professor at UCL School of Slavonic & East European Studies and Senior Associate Fellow at RUSI, has spent the last 40 years researching Russian history and security issues. In the episode, he gives an introduction his latest book A Short History of Russia while sharing some short anecdotes from Russia's history, specifically about the character that is Peter the Great.

Galeotti tells the history of modernisation in Russia and how different rulers have approached the subject, with occasional bloody despotism. Today in Putin's Russia, modernisation has partly advanced through technical solutions, but they are still lacking in rule of law and corruption. However, Galeotti describes how there might soon be an advancement of rule of law by the kleptocratic elite. These corrupted leaders, who have stolen from the public good, will soon get the incentive to create rule of law to protect their stolen plunder and support the transfer of wealth to the new generation.

There are many misconceptions about Russia, one of them being that the West assumes that Russia always, cunningly, has a plan. Like any other state, Russia is a diverse and opportunistic country, that is not as centrally controlled country as many people may think. They want to be perceived as strong and powerful, and they thus act accordingly, regardless of their actual geopolitical status. When looking at Russia, there is a consistent focus on Putin, who, on one hand is a powerful actor but far from the only one. Russia's administration is complex one with many important characters who often tend to get overlooked.

The discussion continues by addressing the new Biden administration, the recent summits and what the newly elected American president would like to see from Russia. The Russo-American relation is special and for Russia, the single most important actor is the US, thus meaning that the EU is not prioritised - the US have clear leadership and collective approach while the policy vision of the EU is a scattered one.

Global Arena Research Institute is an independent, non-partisan research organisation that combines the most advanced methods of AI-driven data, scientific and other artificial reasoning capabilities, elevating data science into completely new levels of opportunity. Our goal is to provide unprecedented insights into the nature, impact, and management of globalization in order to improve institutional and governmental as well as business, energy and other sectors’ decision making. Our mission is to make the most of organically connecting AI-level reasoning capacities with the human-level critical reasoning capacities for the sake of a better future.

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
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@GARInstitute) / Twitter

Today’s guest Banning Garrett has over four decades of experience as a strategic thinker, writer and speaker on international relations and global trends. As a consultant to both the World Bank and the United Nations, Garrett writes and speaks on long-term global trends and the impact of exponential technologies. After sixty-one trips to China since 1981 for consultations with Chinese officials and analysts, Garrett has also developed a thorough understanding of Chinese politics and shares his takes on the competition between China and the USA.

Garrett has been a part of taking forward the Global Trends report, a report used to brief former President Barack Obama, and he comments on its conclusions and shares his view on the challenges that humanity will have to face in the following decades. We must learn to navigate among the global challenges of future pandemics and the issue of healthcare, climate change and international agreements, population growth of urban areas in the Global South, and future food production, all of which are carrying the risk of migration and conflict. Furthermore, the question of climate change holds another dimension of complexity as us humans have brought it on ourselves. What happens with the responsibility and accountability when blame cannot be placed? 

Garrett continues with discussing China that, especially under Xi Jinping, has moved in a hyper-nationalist direction. He concludes that the Chinese government tries to create an almost totalitarian regime on technological steroids for internal control and suppression of descent like what has happened to the Uighurs,  and in Hong-Kong and Taiwan. He comments on the bipolar tech competition between China and the US and asserts that confrontation is possible, but not probable to a higher extent since the mutually assured nuclear destruction is too strong. The cooperation between the two states should focus on climate as, without Chinese-American collaboration, international dialogue is not going to be constructive.

Global Arena Research Institute is an independent, non-partisan research organisation that combines the most advanced methods of AI-driven data, scientific and other artificial reasoning capabilities, elevating data science into completely new levels of opportunity. Our goal is to provide unprecedented insights into the nature, impact, and management of globalization in order to improve institutional and governmental as well as business, energy and other sectors’ decision making. Our mission is to make the most of organically connecting AI-level reasoning capacities with the human-level critical reasoning capacities for the sake of a better future.

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
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@GARInstitute) / Twitter

In this episode the European legend Joachim Bitterlich,  former advisor to German Chancellor Kohl and member of JEDI (Joint European Disruptive Initiative), joins us for a discussion on contemporary European affairs. Tune in for a conversation on the current, most pressing issues like strategic autonomy, Franco-German relations, the upcoming German elections and lastly Turkey and the EU. Bitterlich also shares a historical look back at the history of the EU and what could have been done differently.

Joachim Bitterlich, a senior expert on the European arena, entered the Federal Foreign Office already in 1976 and continued his career as an advisor in the private office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hans-Dietrich Genscher (1985-87), head of the European Policy Department at the Federal Chancellor’s Office (1987-93) and Foreign and Security Policy Advisor to Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl (1993-98). 

• Differences between Europe and the US.

Vaccine development on the two continents and the evident split - private or public funding, perseverance, failure of established forces and the European bureaucratic methods.

• Where is German politics heading and what will happen in the upcoming elections?

Joachim Bitterlich shares his predictions and thoughts on how the German party system is evolving.

• The issue of strategic autonomy - The future of the transatlantic relation and dependence on China and the US.
• The expansion of the EU in Eastern Europe och the continuous rift between East and West.
• The political integration and support of East Europe. 
• Sovereignty and European solidarity - a promising concept?
• Franco-German relations today.

Policy differences and the cultural translation of French and German rhetoric.

• Turkey in a vulnerable position.

The Turkish drift away from the West and the turn towards the East and South East.

Global Arena Research Institute is an independent, non-partisan research organisation that combines the most advanced methods of AI-driven data, scientific and other artificial reasoning capabilities, elevating data science into completely new levels of opportunity. Our goal is to provide unprecedented insights into the nature, impact, and management of globalization in order to improve institutional and governmental as well as business, energy and other sectors’ decision making. Our mission is to make the most of organically connecting AI-level reasoning capacities with the human-level critical reasoning capacities for the sake of a better future.

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
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@GARInstitute) / Twitter

• Examples of AI technologies in the field of human rights
• How is AI practically used for the environment?
• 1.5/2 degree goal and tipping points for the climate, AI as a possibility?
• Successes and failures for AI in the fight against climate change
• How well is AI data received by governments?
• Which technologies are already being used for the climate?
• May new technologies be the solution to climate change?
• Carbon emissions in construction, can AI help?
• Impact of international AI panels?
• Future challenges and opportunities

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
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Our guests is Holger Hoos, co-founder of CLAIRE, the Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence Research in​ Europe, and professor of Machine Learning at Leiden University. I had the pleasure of joining Holger at last week's event  Vision for AI 2021 in response to the European Commission’s publishing their “European Approach to Artificial Intelligence”.  We’re chatting about the real back end of AI, its beginnings, why it’s so cool, where do we already encounter it in our everyday lives and what should Europe’s AI look like?

Why should I care about AI? What are the right reasons?

What would you have said to people 200 years ago on why should I care about electricity? Because it will change your life, work, everything, it will make things possible, it will make the world a better place, you can say the same about AI

It is a transformative technology. We have manoeuvred ourselves as humanity into a position where human intelligence is too limited for the mess we’ve made. We need more powerful tools than we’ve had in the past. Climate change and responsible and sustainable use of resources.

 A lot of people’s views of AI has been formed by science fiction movies, in some cases, this is rather dystopian and in other cases, it’s an overly optimistic view. Destroy us or make paradise? What we’re really looking at is a foundational technology, computers taken to the next level. 

Automative AI - bringing down the level of expertise needed to use AI. People become more productive and what they do becomes better than what they can do alone. 

Why is it the most underappreciated area of AI?  Examples of aeroplanes flying, computers enabling us to talk to each other via zoom, what is enabling us to do all this? Automative reasoning - the hardware on which all of this is running, (banks, medical equipment), all computer-controlled, and we trust the hardware.

Where should this not be used? If we were to date Mr Spock, we’d find that pure logic has limits. The same is for AI. Particularly when it comes to dealing with people, and all their limitations and bias.

Human-centred AI  - AI build by people, for people, for the benefit of people. We have to compensate for some of our limitations, and automotive reasoning and deep learning does this well. It should do all of this in order to help us reach our goals, and this isn't something you can do as a second thought, it needs to be designed with this purpose.

European AI - do we go it alone? Does it make sense to do anything of global consequence alone? No, it doesn’t!

CLAIRE - why does it exist? Because AI is important for our future, and all the citizens of Europe and the world. The two superpowers, China and the US are making massive investments, and there is a real risk of losing talent to them and the edge that we could and should have in AI technology that is so transformative.

Is there such a thing as US AI or China AI or European AI? What are the differences? At a simplistic level, AI in China is government-driven, which is a great thing

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
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@GARInstitute) / Twitter