IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2017 - 83

PERSPECTIVE

Peter Zilahy
Ingerman

The Dangers
of Distributed
Intelligence

here is an increas-
ing interest in, and
implementation of,
the Internet of Things.
As the number and
types of interconnections increase,
it is important to be aware of the dan-
gers of distributing the required intel-
ligence among the participants, and
the consequences of not foreseeing
the dangers.
In order to address these dan-
gers, it is necessary to understand
the notion of a "partial pattern match."
As two examples of this kind of think-
ing, consider computer program-
mers (who look at similar pieces of
code and by tweaking them, make
a single subroutine out of them),
and punsters (who make partial pat-
tern matches among words  .... If
Miss Piggy says "moi aussi" it does
NOT imply that she is Australian!)
The generalization is that any time
intelligence is distributed, it should
be examined in as many disparate
contexts as is reasonably possible,
to see if there will be a troublesome
possibility of misinterpretation, ide-
ally by an entity not part of either pro-
vider or user (see definitions below).
If the circumstances warrant, the
examiner should be at least familiar
with other languages, if not a poly-
glot or polymath.
Initial example: The rules for Day-
light Saving time in the United States
changed in 2007, by which year
there was a great deal of distributed
intelligence in the form of comput-
ers and microprocessors that were

ISTOCK

T

concerned with monitoring time.
Computers per se caused little prob-
lem, because the operating systems
could  be (and were) easily updated
over the Internet. However, there
were issues with traffic lights and ele-
vators (both involving the direction
of traffic during rush hours, either
horizontally or vertically), where the
individual controllers could not be
automatically updated.

■
■

■

Definitions
■

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2017.2697084
Date of publication: 8 June 2017

June 2017

■

∕

Information: The construction that
is placed on data or the absence

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

of data, by either the provider or
the user of information.
Provider: The intelligence that
serves as the source of the in-
formation provided.
User: The intelligence that responds
to the information provided.
Enthymeme: An unstated axiom
of a system that is a required part
of the system, but is assumed
or implied.
Intelligence is distributed when
the provider of information is
not an intrinsic part of the user
of information (or vice versa).

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