Can AI Think?


QUESTION: In George Gilder’s book “Life after Google” he states:
“AI cannot compete with the human intelligence that connects symbols and objects. AI cannot do without the human minds that provide it with symbols systems and language; programs it; structures the information it absorbs in training, whether word patterns or pixels; provides and formulates the big data in which it finds numerical correlations; and sets up the goals and reward schemes and target sequences that allow it to iterate, optimize, and converge on a solution. Consisting of inputs cascading through complex set of algorithms to produce outputs. AI cannot think at all.”

As someone who has developed Socrates I was wondering what your thoughts are as to the future of AI?

CSK

ANSWER: George Gilder is not a programmer. His comment is just skimming the surface. There is no complex set of algorithms that will stand the test of time. A computer cannot think, which is correct. That does not mean it is impossible to beat humans. Even Big Blue defeated the best chess player. A computer can analyze every possible strategy and select the best one whereas a human cannot.

When I designed Socrates, I fully understood that there could be no fixed algorithm that would work because the world was all connected and moving dynamically. After all, no empire ever lasted. Everything rises and then falls.

Feeding everything into the system and designing it to investigate, as I would in the human world, allows AI to make decisions based upon those investigations. It does mimic my thinking process, but it is not a biological entity so it has no soul and cannot think.

I taught it language and how to speak back in the 1980s because it would come up with conclusions that baffled me. I had to devise a way to communicate with it to understand how it reached certain conclusions.

Fixed Exchange Rates Have Always Caused Major Financial Crises


Margaret Thatcher on the ERM Crisis & why even the euro will f

All Bob’s Money


The World through Everyone’s Eyes


COMMENT: Sir,

I appreciate that I may not always agree with what you write but I listen and examine and respect your viewpoint. You, in turn, have answered my many questions and discussed my comments with respect in return.

This makes me worry that the ability to discuss problems in a straightforward and thoughtful way may not be possible in the future.

Keep up the good work

F

REPLY: In order to be an international adviser, the very first lessons I learned was (1) listen to everyone, and (2) view the world through their eyes.

I was giving a lecture in Geneva to a small group of institutions back in 1982 but some had flown in from other countries. One was from Canada and the exchange was quite interesting. I had provided the forecasts on the individual currencies and then I moved to the commodities. The Canadian asked so he should be a buyer of gold and I said yes. The on Swiss institution said yes but your forecast on the Swiss franc would mean I would lose money.

When I looked at it in terms of each perspective it was clear. The rally in gold would be impressive only in US$ and CD$ so it was a buy for the Canadian and a sell for the Swiss. Indeed, the rally into 1983 was a strong rally for gold in US$ and CD$, but not in Swiss.

We all have a view and money to each of us is still a mental calculation based upon our home currency. To even do my job, I have to be able to see the world from all perspectives. We are all human and we will all act in our own self-interest.

My clients have trained me. Having to deal with many crises around the world forced me to see the world through global eyes. This is why MY DEFINITION of what constitutes a bull market is something which rises in ALL CURRENCIES!!!!! 

We will all never agree for we will always see things through our own pair of glasses. Never forget, others will respond in the same way.

My philosophy is very simple. There should be no law which compels others to act in a way I believe if correct provided their actions do not harm anyone else. I leave you alone and you leave me alone and we can all get along. I object to politics that seeks to exploit class warfare for historically that has ALWAYS, and without exception, led to civil wa

Lebanon Declares State of Economic Emergency


Lebanon has maintained a peg to the US dollar for about two decades and as all pegs go, this one is under pressure as the rise in the dollar imports deflation. The central bank has declared an economic emergency as it attempts to reassure people it will hold the peg. Lebanon is one of the world’s most indebted nations and it maintains its pound to a peg of around 1,507.5 to the dollar. This attempt to reassure investors about the country’s ability to repay its debt and strengthen its currency is not being considered reliable as the start of Sovereign Defaults is underway on an economic pressure. Countries have been borrowing year after year with no intention of paying off their national debts. It has been a fool’s game and we are starting to see this pressure build as it will FIRST on the currency pegs, and then on the inability to meet debt payments.

Welcome to Big Bang (2015.75-2022). We begin with peripherals and state/provincial level as well as municipal

Only a Computer can Forecast What no Human Has witnessed in Modern Times


COMMENT: Marty; I found my ticket to your Japanese session from March 1999 when you warned the audience the club was targeting the yen for March-end. You told everyone how to defeat their manipulation and that was just great. You saved everyone billions that day. They called you Mr. Yen for that one. The club didn’t appreciate that call. I heard that on the phones. I remember the yen went from 117 to 122. They lost a lot that week.

I am coming to this 2019 WEC. For someone who has been following you for decades, I understand what you mean that this is an event that has never taken place before in modern market history so we will really need Socrates this time.

May I suggest that you give a quick demo on how to use Socrates to its fullest for this event. I think it would be really helpful this year.

Cheers;

GC

REPLY: Nice to hear from you. Wow, you still have a ticket from Tokyo. That is an excellent suggestion. You are correct. I will do a demo and show how to look for the indicators because it will indeed take a computer to do what no human has ever seen before in modern times.

All the best

Why Japan Lost So Big Post-1989


QUESTION: Hi Marty, I come from a golfing family and remember very well the shock when a Japanese investment group bought the Pebble Beach Golf Links, in 1990, for $850 million. The previous October Japanese investors bought the Rockefeller Center, triggering a flurry of Japanese purchases of signature U.S. properties such as Pebble Beach.

Was all this investment caused by The Plaza Accord in 1985, which devalued the USD by 40 percent? Which, as you’ve pointed out, also devalued American assets held by Japanese, igniting a sell-off of American investments and the 1987 crash. With cash repatriated back to Japan, the capital inflows into Japan ran the Nikkei up to its peak, in 1989. Within this late-80s early-90s timeframe, this is when the Japanese made their global malinvestments such as Pebble Beach, which they sold just two years later, in 1992, for $500 million, taking a 42 percent loss. Do I have the correlations and causations correct?

Thanks,

TGM

ANSWER: Yes. The Japanese bought US assets at the peak of their markets in 1989. As you can see, the dollar against the yen kept falling into April 1995. Not only did the Japanese lose money on US assets, but they also lost, even more, when they sold them and converted it back to yen on the decline in the dollar.

Currency is EVERYTHING. It dramatically alters the capital flows and can destroy economies because people remain clueless about how foreign exchange markets even function. That should be no surprise since they still teach all the economic theories of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate era including Keynesianism.

That is why everyone in the field is self-taught. You cannot get a degree in hedge fund management. Christine Lagarde of the IMF and soon to be head of the European Central Bank is a lawyer with no experience in funds management. People run for president spouting economic promises without the slightest background even in economics. What they teach in school has become ever more irrelevant in the real world. Other than a doctor or lawyer, it is hard to find someone who is working in the field in which they obtained a degree

Martin Armstrong now in Asia with a Front Row Seat


QUESTION: How long will you be here in Asia?

PP

ANSWER: It is very interesting that we have clients on both sides of all these disputes here in Asia, except in North Korea. The great concern is that if China did send into Hong Kong troops, would they leave? Would this tip the scales of Hong Kong as a financial center? Will Thailand and Singapore continue to benefit from this shift in Asia. Then there is the India crisis.

This is very interesting because we have clients on all sides here. We have held WEC conferences in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Bangkok, and Singapore. So we have always been well entrenched throughout Asia and we are inside China where Socrates publishes forecasts each day on all the top Chinese stocks.

So we are here indeed with a front row seat addressing questions on each side from such diverse positions. It looks like this will be a while. We have a lot of clients in Asia.