Macro – why human and AI – knowledge, networks, markets…2a
Computer networks are now processing over a petabyte of data in 6 hours, so vast amounts of computers and other machines are interacting with each other. The growth of the internet has meant that millions of humans are also connected to these, interacting through their keyboard, mouse and lets not forget the current breed of mobile touchoholics too.
Enough of that, barefeet across hot coals time – a quick charge through knowledge and networks and see where this ends up. So, if I wanted to find out about the concept of knowledge what could I do in 2009 – ask people, go to a library, read something. However I can also do this online – ask via Twitter, search Google or hashtags, read online publications etc etc If I find out something about the concept is this information that is stored by me or is this information totally separate from my human self either offline or online examples.
Behavioural economics studies in Predictably Irrational, How We Decide, Animal Spirits – have many examples where people are in supermarkets or on a university campus making decisions about money. For some of these they will also have been looking at computer screens (see Neuroeconomics video from 1b yesterday) but where I have become confused in studying economics is that it is difficult to find the connections in these studies and between humans interacting with technology, knowledge and decision making.
George Siemens, Stephen Downes and 2000+ other people looked at ideas around knowledge and networks last year including:
“Connectivism is the application of network principles to define both knowledge and the process of learning. Knowledge is defined as a particular pattern of relationships and learning is defined as the creation of new connections and patterns as well as the ability to maneuver around existing networks/patterns.”1
See also the LTC wiki and Knowing Knowledge book. There are literally thousands of references and ideas from the 2000+ contributors which I cannot possibly do justice to in one post that could also be referenced here. Also Dave Snowden’s Rendering Knowledge , Stephen Downes’ Types of Knowledge .
All of these seem immediately different to the studies in behavioural economics. If I go into a supermarket in real life and make a financial decision about purchasing items, as a human making that decision, it is very – one-way. I go in, I look at signs maybe but ultimately I choose a product and the only information held by the supermarket is my receipt and stock levels as a result of that purchase. But if I do this online, it is immediately two way – a computer has provided a direct link between myself and my purchase back to the supermarket. This information could be processed by additional systems (e.g. Amazon or others’ recommendations based on previous purchases or Google/Yahoo autosuggest features operate in a similar way) so information from one human is spread in multiple directions in a matter of seconds.
Although the initial interaction may be from one human, the data quickly spreads across multiple computers / devices – in order to produce a recommendation, does this mean it is ‘networked’ knowledge – are there patterns, relationships that have been analysed? Is this artificial intelligence – in the Daden video in 1a, Halo was using web services – they said that they had deliberately decided not to try and store knowledge ‘in’ Halo.
… time for a commercial break…
So, will attempt to look at this further now as start to look at financial data and markets.
Is economic or financial knowledge different to other types of knowledge?
“An economic theory of knowledge would be grounded in three quite distinct facts, all of which matter to anyone whose knowledge we wish to explain. First, knowledge has value as a resource and is therefore an economic good; hence, people will seek it. Second, the acquisition of knowledge often entails costs, so that its value trades off against the values of other things, such as resources, time, and consumptions. And third, a lot of our knowledge, which we may call “happenstance knowledge,” is in various ways fortuitously available when we have occasion to use it. Some knowledge comes to us more or less as a by-product of activities undertaken for purposes other than acquiring the knowledge, so that in a meaningful sense we gain that knowledge without investing in it—we do not trade off other opportunities for the sake of that knowledge”2
So any type of knowledge can have a value attached to it which individuals may decide at a micro-level, but as with many social software features, it is not just individuals – rankings can be achieved and distributed across a physical and social network which can add to an individual’s knowledge and decision making. So social networks become knowledge markets, although each individual may have a different context, if many people access e.g a blogpost or a link/retweet over a short period of time – this is dynamic activity which can be measured in exactly the same way as share prices. The relevance, timing of these key pieces of information will all be factors that an individual will consider in deciding whether what it is worth in terms of their time, but it can quickly become complex because information sharing is not done in a way that is ideal yet e.g. choices about
- clicking on a ‘bit-ly’ or ‘tiny-url’ which has no preview but has been shared / retweeted by someone they know
- clicking on a ‘bit-ly’ or ‘tiny-url’ which has no preview and not by someone they know – just bored or curious
- clicking on a delicious link which does not have notes or any clue in the link as to its content
- clicking on a message sent by a social network which says ‘…’ has sent you a message but there is no preview
At this point, the network (who consists of ?) might ‘know’ something that individual doesn’t and any of the above examples will not help the individual in becoming more informed – so how do they decide? But does the network know – are there layers of artificial intelligence that are becoming informed, everytime something is shared, dugg etc ? Does Google know more about what I’m doing and can influence my actions if this is intelligence that is being stored and communicated across their networks ? Is any of this information being transmitted, reproduced, repurposed independently ? And at a more complex level of intelligence – could this be described as thinking ?
Way too many questions, but information probably does have an economic or financial value and this information with a value attached could be described as knowledge. At a physical, hardware layer of processing a network does not demonstrate emotion or rational / irrational behaviour but it is capable of both efficiency and inefficiency. So even at this level, information or data can be affected by the slightest of changes and can now communicate them:
So are they capable of rational decision making if they are networked / connected to other hardware and software and also to humans.
“A question that immediately arises is whether autonomy is useful and appropriate for agents in virtual environments in the way it is for agents in the real world. In the real world, the environment functions independently of the agents within it — an individual agent can only perceive part of it (and may be wrong about what it does perceive) and is subject to independent processes and the activity of other agents. Under these circumstances, predictions about the world are always likely to be fallible. Autonomy is an appropriate response because leaving the agent to decide its actions allows it to take account of the current — rather than a predicted — state of the world. In a virtual environment, the situation is very different”3
More on this in 2b, hopefully tomorrow or Monday.
- Siemens G (2008), What is the Unique Idea in Connectivism, available at http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=116
- Hardin R (2009), How Do You Know – the Economics of Ordinary Knowledge, Princeton, sample available at http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8928.html
- Aylett R, Luck M (2000), Applying Artificial Intelligence to Virtual Reality: Intelligent Virtual Environments, University of Salford, University of Warwick, available at: http://www.dcs.kcl.ac.uk/staff/mml/publications/assets/aai00.pdf
