Towards an EarthMoonshot with Cognitive Computing

Apollo-like Projects: Towards a New Landscape for Global Thrivability

Information Fabrics Global Understanding Solution Seeking Global Thrivability Bay Area Open Source Meetup March 26, 2015 Alex Graebe, Organizer Jack Park TopicQuests Foundation

© 2015 TopicQuests Foundation CC by NC SA 4.0 Img: Wikipedia

While the Apollo Project Gave Us a New Perspective on Our Planet and

Ourselves… Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour, Rains from the sky a meteoric shower Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined. Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill Is daily spun; but there exists no loom To weave it into fabric

Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1939

Img: Otto Scharmer: MITx: 15.S23x U.Lab

A Universal Goal: Thrivability

http://www.triarchypress.net/thrivability.html

We Start with Innate Resilience

Really Big Picture

.

Microbe

From Microbes to Planetary Ecosystems In a few small steps…

Not drawn to scale

Our Problem Space Revisited

• Some Big Issues (no particular order)

– Climate change

– Public and individual health

– Education

– Unemployment

– Polarization in Politics

– Clean Water

– Any water at all…

Within that problem space

* Ted Nelson, 1974

Everything is deeply Intertwingled*

Limits of our Knowledge

• We can open a microbe to study all the parts

• Opening the microbe kills it

• Why did opening a microbe to count all the parts kill it? – What is life?

• Did opening the microbe to count its parts get us any closer to an answer?

• Answers are bound to the nature of Complex Systems

Img: Wikipedia

On Complex Systems

• What is a complex system? – Keywords (from Wikipedia)

• Self-organizing

• Feedback

• Decay

• Sensitive to initial conditions

• Non-linear

• Relational

• We must pay as much attention to the relations as we pay to the parts

Relations Among the Parts

• Counting parts is a start – But, everything is

intertwingled

• Understanding the relationships among those parts and between them and their environment is the next step

• Relations as complex, interwoven fabrics

• Use Cognitive Computing to augment our capabilities

Img: © Regents of University of California

Cognitive Computing: My View

• Cognitive Computing is:

– Far less about what a computer knows

– Far more about how computers can augment human cognitive capabilities

– Based on the J.C.R Licklider and Douglas Engelbart augmentation work

J.C.R. Licklider

Douglas Engelbart

Imgs: Wikipedia

Cognitive Computing Related Work

• Commercial – IBM Watson – Wolfram Alpha – Viv – Saffron 10 – Clueda – Siri – Google Now – Cortana – …

• Open Source – OAQA – DeepDive – OpenCog – OpenNARS – Watsonsim – YodaQA – AKSW OpenQA – AKSW QA – AquaLog – OpenSherlock – OpenIRIS (CALO) – Sirius – …

• Research

– Project Aristo

– Project Halo

– FREyA

– CASIA

– NLP-Reduce

– EIS Sina

– WDAqua ITM

– Intui2

– …

The Engelbart Program

• Actors – Humans

• Human knowledge

– Tools

• Process – Human capabilities and tools co-evolve – Continuous improvement of capabilities – Form communities

• Improvement communities

– Network communities • Networked Improvement Communities

• Goals – Problem Solving – Discovery – Thrivability

Augmenting Human Capabilities

Why Do This?

• Augment human capabilities in problem solving

– GlobalMoonshots

• Participate in Open Science as an instance of collaborative problem solving and discovery

– LocalMoonshots

EarthMoonshot as federated LocalMoonshots

From the perspective of complexity theory, emergence arises from complex systems that create new properties from “autonomous unities coming together into larger, more powerful unities”

Augmenting Human Capabilities Complex Systems Shared Stories Collaboration in a Knowledge Garden

Img: Olen Gunnlaugson (2011). A Complexity Perspective on Presencing. Complicity, Vol 9, No 1 (2012). Online at: http://ejournals.library

The emergence we seek is that of insight into the nature of and solutions to complex problems

Barn Raising

Knowledge Garden as Context

A Garden Scenario—Discoveries in Disparate Conversations?

Discovery?

Joe is in Medical School studying to be a doctor

Joe is preparing for a test on Bacterial Infections

A Scenario—1

Immune Response

Bacterial Infection

Macrophage

Free Radical

Reactive Oxygen

macrophages use free radicals to

kill bacteria

Bookmark page with these tags

Annotate page with this idea Use garden condo tools to

record discoveries

A Scenario—2

Sarah lives a healthy lifestyle

Sarah read that free radicals can cause cancer

A Scenario—3

Antioxidant

Free Radical

Bookmark page with these tags

antioxidants kill

free radicals

Annotate page with this idea Use garden condo tools to

record discoveries

A Scenario—4

Ben is a cancer patient with recurring bacterial infections

Ben visits a garden condo to research bacterial infections

A Scenario—5

Note: Ben is modeled after the author; while the author made the same discovery, it occurred by different means. Still, this scenario supports the case that important discoveries are available through federation of individual acts.

Ben makes a discovery

What’s this all about?

Ben becomes curious about free radicals—a new concept to him

A Scenario—6

Free Radical

macrophages use free radicals to

kill bacteria

antioxidants kill

free radicals

antioxidants kill

free radicals

macrophages use free radicals to

kill bacteria

Ben adds a new Connection between

the two ideas

Use garden condo tools to record discoveries

Must Avoid

A Scenario—7

Ben makes a decision Sounds like I should not take any more antioxidant pills!

Olivia is a Medical Doctor interested in immune system subjects

A Scenario—8

antioxidants kill

free radicals

macrophages use free radicals to

kill bacteria

Need to restate this information

“Must Avoid” doesn’t really

convey a proper sense of reality

Must Avoid

A Scenario—9

Olivia visits the garden

antioxidants kill

free radicals

Contraindicates

macrophages use free radicals to

kill bacteria

Bacterial Infection Antioxidants

Because

Create a new set of representations by connecting the two core concepts and

explaining the connection

Olivia gets bonus points for justifying her assertion.

Use garden condo tools to record discoveries

A Scenario—10

Contraindicates Bacterial Infection Antioxidants

A Scenario—11

A Challenge is posed to the primary

assertion

“Compromised host” as a new concept to be represented in the

knowledge base

Use garden condo tools to record discoveries

A Scenario—12 Structured conversation responds

antioxidants kill

free radicals

Contraindicates

macrophages use free radicals to

kill bacteria

Bacterial Infection Antioxidants

Because

Appropriate For

Compromised Host

Use garden condo tools to record discoveries

A Scenario—13 Co-created resource in the garden

Open Science as LocalMoonshots

37

Cognitive Computing and an EarthMoonshot

• A simple proposition: – IBM’s Watson has shown the way forward

• Watson is already augmenting health, banking, and other sectors

• Watson could engage in a much wider range of activities related to global collaboration

– Open source Watson-like computers are on the way • They can work alone with groups

• Groups can federate to share knowledge assets

• Watson, itself, can be a part of that federation

What is an EarthMoonshot?

• For sake of conversation – A definition of an EarthMoonshot should grow organically, but…

• It should entail a wide range of cultures • It can follow patterns pioneered by Douglas Engelbart, Ted Nelson, and other leaders in

the field of augmentation of human intellect – Human capabilities co-evolve together with tool system capabilities

– A suggested thought space for an EarthMoonshot: • As a Global Conversation facilitated by on-line and recorded social meetings • Entails Theory U as a guiding principle (understanding before deciding) • Entails Bohmian (agenda-free) conversations in the beginning • Engages tool systems (Cognitive Computing) to harvest, organize, and present

deliberations, topics, and relations among topics. • Goal oriented to examine each global issue in the context of the largest possible picture.

– An EarthMoonshot must include: • Governments • Industry • Academia • Everyone else

Looking Ahead

• This meetup is really just the beginning of what should be a very large conversation – Options

• A Meetup.com venue which has chapters in cities around the world

• TEDx meetings

• Online collaboration outside Meetup – A global knowledge garden

– http://www.debategraph.org/

– A federation* of many different problem solving venues

– …

*http://www.knowledgefederation.org/

Some Options

• Co-evolution of collaboration systems augmented by open source and commercial cognitive systems

– Federation of open source and, for instance, IBM’s Watson serving groups working to solve problems and prevent those problems from recurring

– Industry, Academia, Open Source consortium

• MOOCs to engage many in learning opportunities

A Related TED Talk

http://www.ted.com/talks/jason_pontin_can_technology_solve_our_big_problems?language=en

A Workshop Resource

• About international, institutional collaboration

– Talks about disseminating research results

• Why not include people outside institutions?

http://www.nap.edu/catalog/18970/building-infrastructure-for-international-collaborative-research-in-the-social-and-behavioral-sciences

Completed Representation

antioxidants kill

free radicals

Contraindicates

macrophages use free radicals to

kill bacteria

Bacterial Infection Antioxidants

Because

Appropriate For

Compromised Host

Let us co-create an EarthMoonshot [email protected]

Slides: http://slideshare.net/jackpark/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/gardenfelder

GitHub: https://github.com/knowledgegarden & https://github.com/opensherlock/

Blog: https://knowledgegardens.wordpress.com/