Posts by LionelB

Googler says she was forced out after opposing $1.2bn cloud contract with Israel

Re: A very political employee throwing a hissy fit

Again, you were not listening. I am indeed sympathetic to the motivation behind Zionism (how could I not be, given my family history?) But, firstly, as I explained, I don't buy into that motivation personally. Secondly, I am deeply opposed to the actual implementation of Zionism, as it happened and continues to play out. I deplore the suffering it has caused, and continues to cause to Palestinians, and make no bones about accusing the perpetrators, whom I would also like to see face justice. If you think that makes me "a Zionist"... I don't know what to say. Simplistic hardly gets close.

I completely agree that Palestinians have suffered far more at the hands of the Israeli state than vice versa; that the military might and killing of civilians is highly asymmetrical. And I deplore that.

I have never once implied that the wrongs "stopped". You put those words in my mouth.

I know what I wrote, and stand by it. If you choose to read it through a distorting lens of assumptions and stereotypes, I cannot do anything about that.

Re: A very political employee throwing a hissy fit

"You are a Zionist..."

It turns out that you do not get to define who/what I am (any more than I do you). To think otherwise is extraordinary arrogance.

But you are not listening; you are pigeonholing and hearing what you want to hear.

I wish you well.

Re: A very political employee throwing a hissy fit

"Attempt to link a genocidal settler colonial enterprise dedicated to erasing the inhabitants of a country with European racism towards Jews is a Zionist rhetorical trick."

Did you even read my post? I categorically rejected that "rhetorical trick".

"Another Zionist rhetorical trick. Firstly the suggestion is that the "wrongs" are "historical", or in the "past"."

Again: I am not a Zionist. The historical wrongs I referred to there are specifically those perpetrated during the formation of the Israeli state. If you were actually paying attention to my comments you would be aware that I don't dispute that the wrongs are ongoing.

"You are a Zionist ...".

Errm, no, I am not. I explained why.

"Who said [the Jews of Israel/Palestine] have to leave ..."

Many, many Muslim religious extremists in Palestine and beyond (as you well know). Those people are quite simply racist, and mirror the racism of Jewish religious extremists in Israel and beyond.

It seems you have stopped listening (if you ever were), and are simply ranting against a perceived stereotype. This is sad, as in fact I am in agreement with you more than you seem to realise. Sadly, again, this mirrors what we see on the political level - two opposed parties screaming past each other, with the prospect of peace an ignored bystander.

"... one day Palestine will be a different country, and the Apartheid will be over. People will live with equal rights, this day could be tomorrow - or the next but it will happen."

There you go - I completely agree with you! But that day will not come as long as people on both sides are merely shouting accusations into the void rather than listening to each other.

Unfortunately, as you seem to have stopped listening we cannot have a meaningful discussion. I wish you well.

Re: A very political employee throwing a hissy fit

I think that's a somewhat rose-tinted view of Palestine under the Ottomans... but I don't disagree re. European antisemitism. (As an ironical aside, a large proportion of Maghrebi Jews -- who generally lived peacefully among predominantly Muslim populations -- ended up migrating to Israel/Palestine after the creation of the state of Israel turned Muslim sentiment against them.)

Re: A very political employee throwing a hissy fit

Note firstly that the Zionist movement was a response to repeated (antisemitic) crimes against humanity which persisted from the birth of Christianity onwards - i.e., for many hundreds of years prior to the 20th century.

I don't disagree that there were grave historical wrongs against the Palestinian people in the history of the formation of the state of Israel. No-one comes out of that well. Nor am I claiming that the (continued) suffering of the Palestinian people is in any way justified by the (nearly 2000 years of) suffering of European Jews. My stated position is that I am not in fact a Zionist, but that I understand why many other Jews are.

But we cannot turn back the clock. Name-calling and finger-pointing will not achieve a just peace, and the notion that the Jewish people living in Israel/Palestine are going to simply get up and leave is a pipe-dream, and a recipe for indefinitely protracted suffering on all sides, with the Palestinian people, as usual, bearing the brunt. We need to work towards an in-place political settlement. Can we agree on that?

Re: A very political employee throwing a hissy fit

"... people can live where they want, with whom they want, with the same rights and freedoms as each other - just like before the Zionist occupation began."

He, he. You mean all those rights and freedoms under occupation by, ooh, let me see... the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Muslim Caliphates, Crusaders, Ottomans and good ol' British?

Re: A very political employee throwing a hissy fit

Enough with the "Zionist State Terrorist group". Zionism is a fact, a done deal. The state of Israel exists. History, for better or for worse, is not simply reversible. It is the politics of the Israeli state which is the problem - effectively hijacked by religious fanatics (it has not always been so). The tragic irony is that Palestinian politics has also been hijacked by religious fanatics (it has not always been so).

Re: A very political employee throwing a hissy fit

I am not (if that's what you were implying) anti-Zionist. But nor am I a Zionist (see below). I am in favour of a political (possibly, but not necessarily, two-state) settlement for Israel/Palestine - although, tragically, that possibility seems to recede ever further with politics on both sides hijacked by religious fanatics.

Here's why I am not a Zionist. I perfectly understand the motivation. My mother's German-Jewish family fled Berlin in 1937. It is hardly surprising that Jews of the diaspora might, after centuries of murderous persecution, seek a permanent geographical refuge. But here's the thing: my mother's family had every right to be in Berlin and not be fucked with. Jews have every right to be wherever they are and not be fucked with. (Oh, of course that goes for all you lovely non-Jews too ;-)). As a Jew I embrace the diaspora, which I believe has enriched every part of the world it has touched. I am of it, and happy to be so. I may well be (I don't know) in a minority among Jews in that regard; but I am certainly not, and have no right to be, critical of Jews who feel otherwise.

Re: but capitalism is working how it is supposed to.

You forgot whatabout-ism.

Re: A very political employee throwing a hissy fit

The fact that some opposition to Israeli state aggression against Palestinians uses deplorable terror tactics does not, however, excuse vile behaviour by the Israeli state.

The Israeli state, furthermore -- much as it tries to claim otherwise -- does not represent some kind of monolithic Jewish sentiment, either in Israel itself or worldwide; nor does criticism of its actions (by anyone) constitute antisemitism. As a human being who happens to be Jewish and fundamentally opposed to Israeli policy towards the Palestinians, I deeply resent my Jewishness being conflated with support for the actions of the Israeli state.

Record label drops AI rapper after backlash over stereotypes

Re: And here I thought imitation was the sincerest form of flattery.

Not sure about the arcana of sub-sub-genres of rap/metal hybrids, but anything south of Run DMC is probably best avoided (you might say the latter have a lot to answer for, but at least they did it with with a pinch of style, camp and humour).

Re: And here I thought imitation was the sincerest form of flattery.

Worse still, those genres of bad are not even mutually exclusive. Empirical evidence, furthermore, strongly suggests that their conjunction scales as bad^bad.

Re: And here I thought imitation was the sincerest form of flattery.

Sure, if you draw a line through the median then half of anything is "bad". That was not, of course, my point. I rather doubt you'd conclude that Bach is in general bad Late Baroque classical music.

Re: Back to the AI rapper

According to the white, middle-aged, middle-class stereotype, yes.

There is, and always has been rap that does not conform to the stereotype, from De La Soul in the late 80s through Kendrick Lamar, to contemporary UK rappers like Little Simz and Dave.

Sure, the bone-headed thuggish variety is still around (generally in the guise of "drill" these days), but current UK rap in particular is decidedly woke - that's "woke" in its original African-American slang meaning of "alert to social injustice".

Recently watched London rapper Dave performing an intense 20-minute reflection on love, death, and coming-of-age (backed by a string quartet) at the Reading Festival. The (mainly white, teenage) audience chanted along with every word.

Re: And here I thought imitation was the sincerest form of flattery.

Well, you can say that about bad rap in general.

Re: NI3

We tried to find out if you really could blow up an unsuspecting fly with it. Whoever coined that one clearly never thought through why a fly would want to land on it. Our daft mate was more obliging, but the explosion/victim ratio was less satisfying.

Re: Chlorine

Cue Battle of the Somme re-enactments...

Our chemistry teacher, in an moment of extraordinary irresponsibility, once demonstrated how easy it is to make nitrogen triiodide. You can guess the rest (happily, no eyes or fingers were lost).

Re: Call center "non English speaking Enggrish"

I notice that our work coffee machine descaler fluid is actually lactic acid-based. Lactic acid, it's in yoghurt, must be mild stuff, innit? Not a bit of it - it's pretty vicious. You definitely don't want to mix that with chloride-based products.

Re: Rei Toei....?

Not familiar with Hatsune Miku then? Ok, not quite Gibson, but...

(Ex-Max Headroom fanboi.)

Re: Call center "non English speaking Enggrish"

Also, don't mix toilet cleaners. Had to actually evacuate the house once when the bowl started spewing pure chlorine gas. I don't recall what the specific cleaners were.

Re: Call center "non English speaking Enggrish"

"Note that pronunciation is part of a language skill."

Well, yes and no (as the last paragraph of your post acknowledges). Those Indian call-centre workers are probably speaking perfectly-pronounced Indian English*, while my partner, who is a non-native (but very competent) English speaker struggles mightily with perfectly-pronounced Scottish English, as she is accustomed to the South-East England variety.

*As an academic, I was at one time vexed by emails from Indian academics/students expressing a "doubt" about my work - until I twigged that in Indian English this simply meant they were having difficulty understanding something, rather than insinuating I'd got it wrong.

Re: Diversity disparities

Fully agreed, but how do you actually gauge equality of opportunity? Equality of opportunity may exist on paper, in law, or in the noble words of company execs - but be undermined in practice by the (possibly subtle, even unconscious) prejudices of those tasked with providing the opportunities.

This has been demonstrated time and again, e.g., in studies which show that recruitment outcomes can be very different when the race/gender/etc. of the applicant is hidden from the recruiter.

How archaeologists can use AI to date our ancestors

Re: "The only alternative is ..."

I think the point is that the more independent techniques you have, the better to identify and reconcile the quirks and indeterminacies of the individual techniques.

Re: Assumptions are the problem

It may well be the case that lactose tolerance evolved more than once. However, AC's point (above) still stands: it may not be a case of "the" lactose mutation. The researchers here appear to be using a specific lactose tolerance genetic marker, and it is (probably, but I'm not certain) unlikely that that specific mutation will have occurred independently more than once.

"Using an AI only affirms the assumptions put into the system. The bias of the scientists and data become the assumptions and bias of the model."

That, of course, applies to all scientific models. And science is, fundamentally, all models.

Re: AI? Really?

Do keep up: like it or not, machine learning is now popularly known as "AI".

Disclaimer 1: There is no convincing consensus on what constitutes AI (or even just the I, for that matter). There is only "That's not real [sic] AI".

Disclaimer 2: I don't make the rules.

Meta's AI internet chatbot demo quickly starts spewing fake news and racist remarks

Re: Nothing changes

I think it's mostly just GO, actually.

Tech industry stuck over patent problems with AI algorithms

Re: Patents Require People

"This is the sort of discussion that we should be having over one of these --->"

Indeed, it's Friday, it's afternoon, off for one as we speak.

Cheers!

Re: Patents Require People

Ha, ha, no, I wasn't arguing the part that says we should only be granting patents to responsible, um, entities, but rather your phrasing which implied that those responsibilities were part of your definition or desiderata for machine intelligence. I suspect you didn't really mean that (but tell me if I'm wrong, and why).

As to whether using found objects as tools counts as "invention", well, it depends where you want to draw the line. And I believe tool-making in chimps and corvids is actually learned (i.e., cultural) rather than "instinctive" behaviour. Would, say, breaking, sharpening or bending a stick to make it more functional, as opposed to just using a found stick, count as invention? (I think I read somewhere that some corvids actually do something comparable, but I may be mistaken.)

Re: Patents Require People

"And until I am convinced that a machine intelligence exists, is sentient, compos mentis, and able to take on the rights and responsibilities of a human, I will consider it a machine and no more capable of inventing something than my pen is. "

That's setting the bar a bit high for machine intelligence, isn't it!?

How about intelligence in other creatures? Can we not credit intelligence to, e.g., a (sentient, compos mentis) chimpanzee or corvid because they are unable to take on the rights and responsibilities of a human? Note that those animals are toolmakers (tool inventors?)

It seems your definition for a "machine intelligence" is essentially a human simulacrum.

Claims of AI sentience branded 'pure clickbait'

Re: Neither unquantifiable nor undefineable

"Also, your posting (Possibly unintentionally, feel free to clarify) seems to frame a binary choice of opinion on if we CAN achieve AI, especially forms of general AI."

I'm not quite sure how you read that into my comment.

In fact I probably agree with you. My feelings are that we will, incrementally, approach levels of machine "intelligence" (in various directions) which would be generally recognised as such, but not necessarily resemble human intelligence that closely.

A more nuanced view, is to ask what we are actually trying to build AI for. What's our agenda? If it's human simulacra, then I think that's way, way off anything even nearly achievable (in my lifetime and probably beyond). Or is it engineering - building machine intelligences to address (human) problems?

"I also don't buy some of your assertions on definitions."

I think I did say that not everyone (including my scientific peers) is likely to agree with me on this one :-)

"They are pretty essential in most cases, ..."

But are they? My example of the 19th century development of our understanding of electromagnetism was intended to confront that assertion. Bear in mind that electromagnetism (or in fact electricity and magnetism, before their linkage was recognised) may well, to the early 19th-century mind, have appeared every bit as mysterious and mystical as sentience or consciousness appear to us today. But the resolution was not achieved by pinning down definitions. Likewise Darwin and Wallace's elucidation of what "life" actually is/means was not based on definitions (no élan vital required!).

" ...but there is a real pitfall in trying to pin them before you really understand the idea or system you are defining."

Very much the case. As an illustrative example, the 19th-century idea of the "ether" arose, one might say, out of a desire to define "what space is". It turned out to be wrong - and, tellingly, Einstein again did not in fact arrive at relativity theory by pondering what space(time) "is". He did not try to define it. Rather, he successfully discovered through reason and thought (as well as physical) experiment how it behaves, the role it plays in the physical world.

Definitions, to my mind, are -- on the basis of historical observation --- certainly essential in mathematics, but not so much (or even a hindrance) in science.

Re: That last part is getting somewhere

"But the existing generation of ML tools are based on an incomplete and inaccurate model of human brain function."

I prefer a more nuanced view. We might ask why or whether machine-learning/intelligence should be modelled on human brain function. (Certainly as things stand that is practically unfeasible in terms of functionality and scale.)

The answer, I suppose, lies in what we think ML/MI is for. What are we trying to achieve here? Do we really just want simulacra of humans? (That last is intended as a rhetorical question.)

Then there's the question - still highly current and hotly debated - as to whether cognition/sentience/intelligence/consciousness (take your pick) are "substrate-dependent" or not. Is there something innate to biological substrate(s) (let's say neural electrochemistry) such that biology-like entities may not be based on other substrates (e.g., in silico).

Re: Definition

Okay, until you can explain to me what it means for an entity to "understand" something -- and, more importantly here in the real world, how you intend to recognise whether some entity understands something -- this conversation is pointless.

I don't necessarily disagree with you that currently "AI does not exist", modulo whatever you or I take "intelligence" to mean, and -- again importantly -- how to recognise it. (And we are unlikely to agree on those things... in fact in my experience any two random people, even [or especially!] among the non-clueless, are quite likely to disagree on those things.)

And I certainly agree that currently we completely lack knowledge of the organisational and architectural principles behind natural intelligence - unsurprising, as they are the result of several billion years of evolutionary hacks.

There is, however, a catch-22 here, as someone else pointed out in another comment: that for many people, and I suspect many on this forum, "artificial intelligence" is effectively an oxymoron, since their definition of intelligence simply equates to "human intelligence". Whereas, I suspect there will come a time where we will have some kind of artificial "intelligence", but it may look decidedly non-human.

Re: Definition

Yup. And as I've argued, I don't believe we actually even need a definition, at least until we have better clarity on how sentience/intelligence/consciousness actually work.

Re: Definition

Thank you for your patronising comments.

I am a mathematician and scientist currently working in a consciousness science research centre (my role is to develop techniques for analysis of neuroimaging data). I previously worked in artificial neural networks (around the time "connectionist" ideas in AI were really taking off).

"For example it's easy to say e = ½mv² but if you don't understand what kinetic energy is or how to apply the knowledge then it's meaningless."

You don't need to "understand what kinetic energy is" to be able to apply and manipulate it. All you need is to be able to apply and manipulate it! And that capability could as well be acquired through "rote learning". Or even, in principle, by an AI. I truly do not know what it even means to "understand what kinetic energy is". I do, however, through having studied physics, have a good idea about its role and usefulness in describing how the physical world functions. It would not surprise me too much if, in the not-too-distant future, some AI could exhibit a comparable "grasp" on the idea of kinetic energy to my own. (Note that exhibit -- when it comes to AI, or even other humans, "exhibit" is all we have to go on.)

I don't think you really took on board what I was saying about understanding - principally that it is not a useful concept as regards making distinctions between "real" and artificial intelligence.

Re: Turtles all the way down

"We've not got sentient AI, not sure we ever will, because we humans are very sure that we have some 'intelligence' which can't be replicated merely by doing what we do."

Exactly. The AI naysayers' definition of AI is oxymoronic - it equates to: If it's not human it's not "real" intelligence.

(Also see my rant in another thread about why definitions are not necessarily particularly useful in science.)

Re: Artificial stupidity

AI ... Ryanair ...

We're doomed, I tell you.

Re: Definition

"Maybe, maybe not but that is a complete strawman argument, the issue is understanding what a "sister" is. I think you've taken a different interpretation of "understanding" in this context."

Maybe I have... I took it to mean something along the lines of "able to explain ...". And I appreciate that you were not claiming "understanding" as the criterion for intelligence.

But what does it even mean to "have an understanding of what a sister is"? How can you - even in principle - tell whether some entity has that kind of "understanding". (Of course asking it won't help.) Essentially, you only recognise that form of apparent "understanding" because you (think you) have it, and, reasonably, impute it to other humans.

I simply don't see that concept of "understanding" as being remotely useful or usable. See also Philosophical Zombies.

Re: Agree 100%

"... is nothing more than sophisticated pattern matching carried out at high speed with considerable resources."

You've said it before, you'll say it again, and you'll still be wide of the mark.

How sure are you, really, that human cognition is not (at least in part) "sophisticated pattern matching carried out at high speed with considerable resources" writ large? As regards humans (and arguably many other organisms) I don't think anyone would quibble with the "sophisticated", "high speed" or "considerable resources". And what about "pattern matching"? Is that not precisely what you are doing when you pick out a familiar face in a crowd? Or even when composing a response to something your friend just said (are you not matching their verbal input to an expected appropriate verbal output?)

Of course, as compared to AI humans have the advantage of aeons of evolutionary "design", and lifetimes of training in rich, complex real-world environments, so it's a rather one-sided contest as things stand.

Not that I believe "pattern matching" is by any means the whole story when it comes to cognition/sentience/intelligence/consciousness, but it may well be an integral component of those things. There is some serious (and even testable) hypothesising along those lines; see, e.g., "predictive processing" theory.

See also "Philosophical Zombies".

Re: Definition

I partly disagree, and believe the (heavily downvoted) OP does make a valid point.

I happen to work in consciousness science (yes, it is now a science), and definitions of sentience and consciousness are heavily debated and far from straightforward, on every level from the philosophical to the physiological.

I also happen to think (and here I depart from many but not all my scientific peers) that pinning down definitions is not necessarily that useful in science. To make that point: when Faraday, Henry, Volta, Ohm, Ampere, ..., Maxwell et al. elucidated electromagnetism in the 19th century they most certainly did not do so by sitting on their arses and cogitating about what electromagnetism is. Rather, they got down and dirty and discovered what it does; how it works. They modelled it, hypothesised and designed experiments. Electromagnetism, consequently, does not feel terribly mysterious to us now. Ditto Darwin, Wallace, et al. and biology/life. That is how science works, and I believe that's how consciousness science will progress. The phenomenon will be de-mystified.

I do wholeheartedly agree that measuring sentience/consciousness is both necessary and hard - I know this because that's pretty much my day job (I am an applied mathematician, and develop techniques for analysing neuroimaging data, frequently in conjunction with cognitive psychological experiments).

Re: Definition

"Another important factor is understanding, an "AI" can spew out reams of conversations but it does not have any underlying understanding of the subject, it's just following (admittedly complex) rules."

I think that's actually a rather poor criterion for sentience/consciousness.

Are you (assuming you are indeed a sentient, conscious being) able to understand how you picked out your sister's face in a jostling crowd? Are you able to understand how an inspirational idea popped into your head while you were in the shower letting your mind wander? Or were you perhaps "just following (admittedly complex) rules" when you did those things? Is your dog sentient/conscious? Does it have an underlying understanding of the funny/annoying things it does (and how could you even tell)?

Are you sure I'm not just a bot?

MIT boffins make AI chips '1 million times faster than the synapses in the human brain'

Re: Super technology.......shame about the way the marketing comes over!

I'd go as far as to say that most of our mental life - and that certainly includes intelligent processing - is performed unconsciously. It feels like we are only able to apply a narrow focused attention at any one time to our own mental machinations.

Re: Super technology.......shame about the way the marketing comes over!

Obviously.

My point was, of course, the exact converse of that.

Re: A million times faster

Fully agreed. What we lack almost entirely in our attempts at AI, is even an inkling of the organisational principles -- designed through aeons of evolutionary time, and trained through countless gazillions of lifetimes of experience -- that underpin the massively parallel computational problem-solving capabilities of natural neural systems.

Simply building bigger, faster, whizzier and bangier networks will not help until we have at least some understanding how to design and program the damn things. Convolutional Deep Networks are baby-steps along that route - not insignificant, but way, way off sufficient.

Re: Super technology.......shame about the way the marketing comes over!

That is extremely naive. Bear in mind that human beings are not necessarily that great at explaining our own "logic".

For instance, can you explain to me precisely the logic you used to pick your sister's face out in a jostling crowd?

Another example: I am a mathematician. When I arrive at a new approach to attacking a problem, chances are I couldn't for the life of me explain how I got there - it seemed to crystallise out of a mess of half-formed, nebulous and abstract ideas floating around in my head (apropos of nothing, this usually happens in the shower, after a good night's sleep).

When a musician composes (or even just plays) a piece of music, do you imagine they can explain to you the logic behind accomplishing those things?

Do you think it is even possible to trace the dynamical logic behind the extraordinary feats of aerial manoeuvring performed by a bee, a housefly or a bat?

If you want a system which simply chugs through clearly differentiated logical pathways, you are talking about "expert systems". You can certainly explain how they arrive at a result - problem is expert systems turned out to be pretty rubbish at dealing with real-life problems (look up "GOFAI" - Good Old-Fashioned AI). That project died in the 80s, floundering in an ocean of combinatorial explosions. It is not how nature solves complex problems.

Future AI is not going to look like an expert system, and it is not going to tell you (or not very well, at any rate) how it does what it does. Get used to that.

Windows Start Menu not starting? You're not alone

Re: Of course Linux was there first

Yes you're right, it was there first.

Anyway as written it does go trolling through the entire directory tree - which in my case tends to be about the size of the internet. (I couldn't be arsed to look up the voodoo to only search for executables, and only in sensible places - i.e., to make it actually useful.)

Re: Surprised? Nah!

Of course locate would be faster (modulo the daily updatedb), but real programmers use find ;-)

Re: Surprised? Nah!

"Like a kind of reinvented command line"

Of course Linux was there first:

$ `find / -name *myapp*`

Okay, it's not that speedy, and the result is occasionally not quite what you expected, but hey...

Or just leave it off?

Anyway, mightn't a UIR (Unknown Issue Rollback) be equally if not more useful?

Russian ChessBot breaks child opponent's finger

This brought to mind a video that was doing the rounds of robotics labs in the mid 90s (I happened to be adjacent to one at the time).

Some researchers were demoing their latest elegant software upgrade for their experimental robot (large, solid, clunky) for the company execs. It was supposed to retrieve a bottle of beer from the fridge. It had done the job perfectly in trials of course, but with the extra attention it decided, for reasons never made clear, to go route one. With calm deliberation, it punched its arm straight through the fridge door, grabbed a beer bottle, retrieved it, and to the consternation of the assembled onlookers, swung round, pulling the fridge door off its hinges in the process.

(You had to be there - just had a look online, but can't seem to find it. I've probably remembered it wrong.)