Tag Archives: learning

text | poetry, The field of AI

<< Bruto Network >>

As above ground mycelia
—largest succulent horizontal trees of life—
mesh more Honey Mushroom
on homely Planet A, mesh more

— note: wink, listen, give joy—

slithering to the gates
creeping in the wood to carved doors
silently across the Western fronts
and where compost may lay

—note: critique, be within Earth, reflect—

tech bros building concrete brute bunkers
gold bars, pellets, bullets and jars
fearing what they feast on
fencing fancying fable and farce

— note: breathe, pause, give space—

toying inorganic creating animation
foiling organic modeling replication
geeking the germs as molds in moulds
of topsoil stainless steel, math-neurons and codes

—note: debate, relate what is needed—

here is democracy, is anti-minus
all inclusive, all mined, all open
to misses, disses and malles
as trunks, as sticks, containing truths

—note: stop, look, smell, act for others to become—

beating actualities, containing realities representing fasces as infomercials
to want, urge, need, and faint agency
forced to overjoy and overwhelm as spores

—note: smile, just smile, all iz well—

Welcome to the underbelly
unfolded for-all, summarizing air
generating flair on call,
making choice easy, too, some say

—note: be a Water-bear, a Spanish Dancer, be you, and let be any totem—

be mycelium brother
be mycelium sister


living, more as ever,
now is still,
to be
your art

—animasuri’24

—-•
trigger

India Arie. (2001). Back To The Middle. IN: Acoustic Soul.

text | poetry, The field of AI

<< Recipe for Rule >>

if imagination rims
it is a model of mind’s running

as much as running
decompletes geometries

and geometries might
lessen lines decomposed

pointing out
higher dimensions

to a dot
•
say dot

convinced as your lover and claimed
to recreate imagination

as if a finding of the century
compared to the greats

equated even
enunciated to inflate

make all believe
sanity is a concentrate

in
you

            —animasuri’24
text | poetry

<< Pinged Science, Tried Poetics >>

From The Closed World
to The Infinite Universe
from a closed mind
to an enclosed one

at that point where
kinetic elasticity
snaps consciousness
out of place

and yet again
knows but of
expanding,
ex-panding,
ex-pan-ding

to Things Never Seen ping
Thoughts Never Thought
On the Real Space
or the Infinite Being rung

what scientific exploration
speaks one of
where poetics
has no place?

if universes were
such silenced places
matter to waves
would bewilder life

losing their ways
diverging from their root
if universes were predefined
does it wave preference to zero

I mean, or do I,
that type with cubist sharp edges
and deschooled breakage
from meter or measurements

that type escaping clutches
of scholarly veneration
escaping space or place
that type typically touted
by few and written to be unspoken

that type when observed
is altered to serve
meaning what is found
approaching the root
at your pleasure, ah reader, dear.

                        —animasuri’24

—-•
some triggers

Raphson, Joseph. (1702). Analysis Equationum UNIVERSALIS, SEU Ad EQUATIONES ALGEBRAICAS Resolvendas METHODUS Generalis, et Expedita, Ex nova Infinitarum serierum Doctrina, DEDUCTA AC DEMONSTRATA.

Thomas, D. J., & Smith, J. M. (1990). Joseph Raphson, F.R.S. Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 44(2), 151–167. http://www.jstor.org/stable/531605

text | wondering, The field of AI

<< Learning is Relational Entertainment; Entertainment is Shared Knowledge; Knowledge is... >>

3 Comments

context: Tangermann, Victor. ( Feb 16, 2023). Microsoft: It’s Your Fault Our AI Is Going Insane They’re not entirely wrong. IN: FUTURISM (online). Last retrieved on 23 February 2023 from https://futurism.com/microsoft-your-fault-ai-going-insane

LLM types of technology and their spin-offs or augmentations, are made accessible in a different context then technologies for which operation requires regulation, training, (re)certification and controlled access.

If the end-user holds the (main) weight of duty-of-care, then such training, certification, regulation and limited access should be put into place. Do we have that, and more importantly: do we really want that?

If we do want that, then how would that be formulated, be implemented and be prosecuted? (Think: present-day technologies such as online proctoring, keystroke recording spyware, Pegasus spyware, Foucault’s Panopticon or the more contextually-pungent “1984”)

If the end-user is not holding that weight and the manufacturer is, and/or if training, (re)certification, access and user-relatable laws, which could define the “dos-and-don’ts,” are not readily available then… Where is the duty-of-care?

Put this question of (shared) duty-of-care in light of critical analysis and of this company supposedly already knowing in November 2022 of these issues, then again… Where is the duty-of-care? (Ref: https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/what-did-they-know-and-when-did-they?r=drb4o )

Thirdly, put these points then in context of disinformation vs information when e.g. comparing statistics as used by a LLM-based product vs the deliverables to the public by initiatives such as http://gapminder.org or http://ourworldindata.org or http://thedeep.io to highlight but three instances of a different systematized and methodological approach to the end-user (one can agree or disagree with these; that is another topic).

So, here are 2 systems which are both applying statistics. 1 system aims at reducing our ignorance vs the other at…increasing ignorance (for “entertainment” purposes… sure.)? The latter has serious financial backing, the 1st has…?

Do we as a social collective and market-builders then have our priorities straight? Knowledge is no longer power. Knowledge is submission to “dis-“ packaged as democratized, auto-generating entertainment.

#entertainUS

Epilogue-1:

Questionably “generating” (see above “auto-generating entertainment”) —while arguably standing on the shoulders of others—rather: mimicry, recycling, or verbatim copying without corroboration, reference, ode nor attribution. Or, “stochastic parroting” as offered by Prof. Dr. Emily M. Bender , Dr. Timnit Gebru et al. is relevant here as well. Thank you Dr. Walid Saba for reminding us. (This and they are perhaps suggesting a fourth dimension in lacking duty-of-care).

Epilogue-2:

to make a case: I ran an inquiry through ChatGPT requesting a list of books on abuses with statistics and about 50% of the titles did not seem to exist, or are so obscure that no human search could easily reveal them. In addition a few obvious titles were not offered. I tried to clean it up and add to it here below.

bibliography:

Baker, L. (2017). Truth, Lies & Statistics: How to Lie with Statistics.

Barker, H. (2020). Lying Numbers: How Maths & Statistics Are Twisted & Abused.

Best, J. (2001). Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Best, J. (2004). More Damned Lies and Statistics.

Dilnot, A. (2007). The Tiger That Isn’t.

Ellenberg, J. (2014). How Not to Be Wrong.

Gelman, A., & Nolan, D. (2002). Teaching Statistics: A Bag of Tricks. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Huff, D. (1954). How to Lie with Statistics. New York, NY.: W. W. Norton & Company.

Levitin, D. (2016). A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age. Dutton.

O’Neil, C. (2016). Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. New York, NY Crown.

Rosling, H., Rosling Ronnlund, A. (2018). Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World–and Why Things Are Better Than You Think. Flatiron Books; Later prt. edition

Seethaler, S. (2009). Lies, Damned Lies, and Science: How to Sort Through the Noise Around Global Warming, the Latest Health Claims, and Other Scientific Controversies. Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Press.

Silver, IN. (2012). The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – but Some Don’t. New York, NY: Penguin Press.

Stephens-Davidowitz, S. (2017). Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are.

Tufte, E. R. (1983). The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press.

Wheeler, M. (1976). Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics: The Manipulation of Public Opinion in America.

Ziliak, S. T., & McCloskey, D. N. (2008). The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.


References

this post was triggered by:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/katja-rausch-67a057134_microsoft-its-your-fault-our-ai-is-going-activity-7034151788802932736-xxM6?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

thank you Katja Rausch

and by:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marisa-tschopp-0233a026_microsoft-its-your-fault-our-ai-is-going-activity-7034176521183354880-BDB4?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

thank you Marisa Tschopp

Emily M. Bender, Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, and Shmargaret Shmitchell. 2021. On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜 In Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT ’21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 610–623. https://doi.org/10.1145/3442188.3445922

“Verbatim copying” in the above post’s epilogue was triggered by Dr. Walid Saba ‘s recent post on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/walidsaba_did-you-say-generative-ai-generative-ugcPost-7035419233631039488-tct_?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios

This blog post on LinkedIn

The field of AI, thoughts of the wise old woman

<< Boutique Ethic >>

Thinking of what I label as “boutique ethic”, such as AI Ethics, must indeed come with thinking about ethics (Cf. here ). I think this is not only an assignment for the experts. It is also one for me: the layperson-learner.

Or is it?

Indeed, if seen through more-than a techno-centric lens alone, some voices do claim that one should not be bothered with ethics if one does not understand the technology which is confining ethics into a boutique ethic; e.g. “AI”. (See 2022 UNESCO report on AI curriculum in K-12). I am learning to disagree .

I am not a bystander, passively looking on, and onto my belly button alone. Opening acceptance to Noddings’ thought on care (1995, 187) : “a carer returns to the cared-for,” when in the most difficult situations principles fail us (Rossman & Rallis 2010). How are we caring for those affected by the throwing around of the label “AI” (as a hype or as a scarecrow)?

Simultaneously, how are we caring for those affected by the siphoning off of their data, for application, unknown to the affected, of data derived from them and processed in opaque and ambiguous processes? (One could, as one of the many anecdotes, summon up the polemics surrounding DuckduckGo and Microsoft, or Target and baby product coupons, and so on)

And yet, let us expand back to ethics surrounding the boutiqueness of it: the moment I label myself (or another such as the humans behind DuckDuckGo) as “stupid”, “monster”, “trash”, “inferior”, ”weird”, “abnormal;” “you go to hell” or other more colorful itemizations, is the moment my (self-)care evaporates and my ethical compass moves away from the “...unconditional worth of all human beings and the equal respect to which they are entitled” (Rossman & Rallis 2010). Can then a mantra come to the aid: ”carer, return to the cared-for”? I want to say: “yes”.

Though, what is the impact of the mantra if the other does not apply this mantra (i.e., DuckDuckGo and Microsoft)? And yet, I do not want to get into a yoyo “spiel” of:
Speaker 1:“you first”,
Speaker 2: “no, you first”,
Speaker 1: “no, really, you first”.
Here a mantra of: “lead by example, and do not throw the first or n-ed stone” might be applicable? Is this then implying self-censorship and laissez-faire? No.

I can point at DuckDuckGo and Microsoft as an anecdote, and I think I can learn via ethics, into boutique ethics, what this could mean through various (ethical and other) lenses (to me, to others, to them, to it) while respecting the act of the carer. Through that lens I might wonder what drove these businesses to this condition and use that as a next steppingstone in a learning process. This thinking would take me out of the boutique and into the larger market, and even the larger human community.

The latter is what I base on what some refer to as the “ethic of individual rights and responsibilities” (Ibid). It is my responsibility to learn and ask and wonder. Then I assume that, the action by an individual who has following been debased by a label I were to throw at them (including myself), as those offered in the preceding sentence, is then judged by the “respect to which they are entitled” (Ibid). This is then a principle assuming that “universal standards exist” (Ibid). And yet, on a daily basis, especially on communal days, and that throughout history: I hurdle. After all we can then play with words “what is respect and what type of respect are they indeed entitled to?”

I want to aim for a starting point of an “unconditional” respect, however naive that might seem and however meta-Jesus-esque or Ghandi-esque, Dr. King-esque, or Mandela-esque that would require me to become. Might this perhaps be a left libertarian stance? Can I “respectfully” throw the first stone? Or lies the eruption in the metaphorical of “throwing a stone” rather than the physical?

Perhaps there are non-violent responses that are proportional to the infraction. This might come in handy. I can decide no longer to use DuckDuckGo. However, can I decouple from Microsoft without decoupling from my colleagues, family, community? Herein the learning as activism might then be found in looking and promoting alternatives toward a technological ecosystem of diversity with transparency, robustness and explainability and fair interoperability.

“Am I a means to their end?” I might ask then “or am I an end in myself?” This then brings me back to the roles of carer. Are, in this one anecdotal reference, DuckDuckGo and Microsoft truly caring about its users or rather about other stakeholders? Through a capitalist lens one might be inclined to answer and be done with it. However, I prefer to keep an openness for the future, to keep on learning and considering additional diversifying scenarios and acts that could lead to equity to more than the happy few.

Through a lens of thinking about consequences of my actions (which is said to be an opposing ethical stance compared to the above), I sense the outcome of my hurdling is not desirable. However, the introduction of alternatives or methods toward understanding of potentials (without imposing) might be. I do not desire to dismiss others (e.g., cast them out, see them punished, blatantly ignore them with the veil of silenced monologue). At times, I too believe that the act of using a label is not inherently right or wrong. So I hurdle, ignorant of the consequence to the other, their contexts, their constraints, their conditions and ignorant of the cultural vibe or relationships I am then creating. Yes, decomposing a relationship is creating a fragmented composition as much as non-dialog is dialog by absence. What would be my purpose? It’s a rhetorical question, I can guess.

I am able to consider some of the consequence to others (including myself), though not all. Hence, I want to become (more) caring. The ethical dichotomy between thinking about universals or consequence is decisive in the forming of the boutique ethic. Then again, perhaps these seemingly opposing ethics are falsely positioned in an artificial dichotomy. I tend to intuit so. The holding of opposing thought and dissonance is a harmony that simply asks a bit more effort that, to me, is embalmed ever so slightly by the processes of rhizomatic multidimensional learning.

This is why I want to consider boutique ethics while still struggling with being ignorant, yet learning, about types and wicket conundrums in ethics , at larger, conflicting and more convoluted scales. So too when considering a technology I am affected by yet ignorant of.

References

Gretchen B. R., Sharon F. R. (2010). Everyday ethics: reflections on practice, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 23:4, 379-391

Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Rossman, G.B., S.F. Rallis. (1998). Learning in the field: An introduction to qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Rossman, G.B., S.F. Rallis. (2003). Learning in the field: An introduction to qualitative research. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

UNESCO. (2022). K-12 AI curricula-Mapping of government-endorsed AI curriculum.

text | wondering, The field of AI, thoughts of the wise old woman

<< Demons and Demos >>


The New Yorker and NSO in some glorious spy-novel context here

…and further, as a cherry on this cake, one might quickly conjure up Cambridge Analytica , or singularly, Facebook with its clandestine 50000+ or so datapoints per milked data-cow (aka what I also lovingly refer to as humans as datacyborgs) which the company’s systems are said to distill through data collection . Yes, arguably the singularity is already here.

Then, more recently, one can enjoy the application by a facial recognition service, Clearview AI, that uses its data mining to identify (or read: “spy on”) dead individuals; a service which might seem very commendable (even for individuals with no personal social media accounts, one simply has to appear in someone else’s visual material); and yet the tech has been applied for more.

The contextualization might aid one to have the narrative amount to:

“Alienation” and that, if one were to wish, could be extended with the idea of the “uncanny” hinted at with my datacyborg poetics. “Alienation” here is somewhat as meant as it is in the social sciences: the act of lifting the intended use of one’s data, outside of that intended use, by a third party. The questionable act of “alienation” is very much ignored or quietly accepted (since some confuse “public posting” with a “free for all”). 

What personally disturbs me is that the above manner of writing makes me feel like a neurotic conspiratorial excuse of a person… one might then self-censor a bit more, just to not upset the balance with any demonizing push-back (after all, what is one’s sound, educated and rational “demos” anyway?). This one might do while others, in the shadows of our silently-extracted data, throw any censorship, in support of the hidden self (of the other), out of the proverbial window.

This contextualised further; related to memory, one might also wish to consider the right to be forgotten besides the right to privacy. These above-mentioned actors among a dozen others, rip this autonomous decision-making out of our hands. If then one were to consider ethics mapped with the lack of autonomy one could be shiveringly delighted not to have to buy a ticket to a horror-spy movie since we can all enjoy such narratives for “free” and in “real” life. 

Thank you Dr. WSA for the trigger


Epilogue:

“Traditionally, technology development has typically revolved around the functionality, usability, efficiency and reliability of technologies. However, AI technology needs a broader discussion on its societal acceptability. It impacts on moral (and political) considerations. It shapes individuals, societies and their environments in a way that has ethical implications.”

https://ethics-of-ai.mooc.fi/chapter-1/4-a-framework-for-ai-ethics

…is ethics perhaps becoming / still as soothing bread for the demos in the games by the gazing all-seeing not-too-proverbial eye?

In extension to my above post (for those who enjoy interpretative poetics):

One might consider that the confusion of a “public posting” being equated with “free for all” (and hence falsely being perceived as forfeiting autonomy, integrity, and the likes), is somewhat analogous with abuses of any “public” commons.

Expanding this critically, and to some perhaps provokingly further, one might also see this confusion with thinking that someone else’s body is touch- or grope-for-all simply because it is “available”.

Now let’s be truly “meta” about it all: One might consider that the human body is digital now. (Ie my datacyborg as the uber-avatar. Moving this then into the extreme: if I were a datacyborg then someone else’s extraction beyond my public flaneuring here, in my chosen setting, could poetically be labeled as “datarape”)

As one might question the ethics of alienatingly ripping the biological cells from Henrietta Lacks beyond the extraction of her cancer into labs around the world, one might wonder about the ethics of data being ripped and alienated into labs for market experimentation and the infinite panopticon of data-prying someone’s (unwanted) data immortality

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks

text | wondering

Looking into underpinnings of learning and tech in and beyond technology-imbued learning environments


Over the past 150 years, give or take a year, the most impactful theories of learning have been defined into a few isms. According to UNESCO’s International Bureau of Education, these can be identified as:  behaviorism, cognitive psychology, constructivism, social learning theory, socio-constructivism, experiential learning, multiple intelligences, situated learning theory, community of practice, and 21st century learning 

Intuitively, one might sense various filtering attributes within the above paragraph. For instance “150 years”, “most impactful”, “theories”, “isms”. While these listed theories might find their roots in yet other pedagogical theories and practices, the constraining parameters might either function as biases and blinders, or rather, might be enriched or contextualized. 

Tribal methods of knowledge transfer, for instance, are not mentioned in this list; a list that feels, ever-so slightly, Eurocentric. If one were to imagine a child learning in a “remote” tribe (or various less remote yet self-sustaining communities) where such theories have not penetrated the colorful diverse foliage of community learning, is the child then learning via a less defined or less impactful theory? Strecthing beyond the intended meaning: would learning then be less impactful? 

Even within flavors of the New or Old World, there too methods of learning that could be distilled from those described in classical settings, are hidden or perhaps not sufficiently made explicit: Plato (in The Republic) as well as Socrates and their respective methodologies.

Yet another example, stretching both the space and time of impactful theories: the thousands of years of highly elite and selective learning methods in China are neither there, besides its present-day methodological implementation of Labor Education, as one of the five pillars of educational and learning theory and practices in the country. 

Then comparison or cross-pollinatable attributes of, for instance, Labor Education with scientifically corroborated methodologies, such as those found with Montessorian methods and theory (or perhaps even links with character-building as hinted at in Plato) are, understandably, neither obvious in such list of the influential few. 

The potential of cross-pollination of methodology or theory that explores potentials in-between the impactful theories, is subdued by the mere mentioning of these as segregated in or by their impact.  Sure, some might need highly creative or perhaps construing effort to be (partially) combined. 

Arguably too imaginative: one could consider that if “the media is the message,” that the technological structures and architectural frameworks could be implied to be a “theory of learning” as well. That is, if a medium (which is implicitly a technology) can define the message, then the structure (again, the technology) influences that what is being learned. One could imagine that structures hence could be designed as such to define a process of learning. Though, do they and are they consciously designed as such, or is the influence on learning often a collateral effect or damage? One might herein consider the field of AI, and Machine Learning and how it is mapped into Edtech. 

As Professor Luckin suggested in the Financial Times article of 14 August 2021, “English schools turn to AI to help students catch up after Covid”,  AI systems should be challenged by teachers. It is perhaps not too farfetched to assume such challenging might occur through ideological lenses, and secondarily, through pedagogical lenses, or hence through theories of learning, heralded by said teachers. 

If, however, the learning theories that are being conjured up are excluding those learning methods that are not recognized as sanctioned theories (conjectured by the idea of being insufficiently “impactful”), then it might again be not too far-fetched to assume that such challenge might be biased and exclusive of those who follow various other methods (or implicit theories, or not yet theorized practices).  Here hints of equity or equality or at least some degree of (minor) consideration might be felt.

Is it of high probability that those “others” who do not follow “most impactful” methods, might count into the millions of learners? i.e. China alone accounts for about 200 million students per annum; most of whom are not only influenced by these most impactful theories alone. Who out there, is learning outside of these “most impactful” learning theories? 

I can’t help but intuit this group of humans might not be negligibly small. I can intuit,  if I were to question the theories that underpinned the majority of our learning, that I would find it educational to see those diversities to be offered at least some footnote in a text that is promoted by a pan-national institution, such as Unesco. 

Imagine looking into EdTech applications (and their ML-underpinnings) through such lenses of both impactful and other learning (and assessment) theories and practices. Let us just imagine…

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Sources:

UNESCO. International Bureau of Education. “Most influential theories of learning”. Last retrieved on Monday, November 22, 2021 fromhttp://www.ibe.unesco.org/en/geqaf/annexes/technical-notes/most-influential-theories-learning

Financial Times (14 August, 2021). “English schools turn to AI to help students catch up after Covid”. Retrieved on Monday, November 22, 2021 fromhttps://www.ft.com/content/006ebaf6-a76c-4257-a343-f1db1f7b39e7

Ogilvy, J. (1971). “Socratic Method, Platonic Method, and Authority.” Wiley Online Library. Retrieved on Monday, November 22, 2021 fromhttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-5446.1971.tb00488.x

text | wondering, thoughts of the wise old woman

The Monoverse: a Never-singular Institute


one could find metaphorical keys to open visualized doors, and activate figurative wobbly wormholes, into proverbial parallel universes, of meaning-making fabric, that might ever so probabilistically, prop-up one’s monoverse/universe of models of thinking; only as if being those “…secretive sides of our nature”

Without the proper keys (imagined by oneself & the many ‘other’) it could make it perceived as impossible to be(come) who one “is” in some of that collection of meaning-making universes, which one might refer to as the ‘social’. The latter is a subset; a noticeable one yet, still a subset

The opening of proverbial doors is not so much an escapism but rather an airing out of stuffiness in one’s thought without having to throw out (while, by less than snap-of-finger, it is an option to simply let go) the proverbial meaning-clinging furniture: a letting in of a breeze of “what ifs” without having to deconstruct one monoverse/universe for another —simply reinstitutionalizing fabric for another patterned fabric

‘Institutions’, of which, e.g., ‘professionalism’ could be one of, are as boxes; are as “monoverses”

These monoverses are examples of what imaginatively could be vast universes (expanding, shrinking, big banging) with surprising metaphorical physical laws

At times, various monoverses are claimed to be incompatible. Yet the act of claiming is the act of entering yet another monoverse, known as Claim-of-Falsity-or-Actuality, and there to hold one’s ground: the falsification or reinforcements of “boundaries”

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The monoverses, as if wobbly boxes, are found to be silent & beautiful, to those holding the packaging tape; they (“they” is the non-conspiratorial “they” and includes the “you” and the “I”) might be ignoring the imaginable spaces in-between

The interesting (and dare I say, the nurturingly #humane) about these proverbial keys, universes, propping-up one’s monoverse, are not the “keys”, nor the “universes” themselves

The interesting is the in-betweens; those mental spaces in-between the pseudo-quantifiable role, act, persona, character, institution, as if clean datasets

The in-betweens are not revolutionary since they can only exist by not negating, diminishing, ignoring or debasing that what is enabling to be in-between of. That stated, the borderlines are negotiated; feverishly and infinitely

The institutional, the professional & so on, can be dynamically experienced & do not always have to be, as we are experiencing, in the here & now, with this who nor what

‘Ephemerally-adapt’: a new compound word that could be implying the opening of those so-called doors or imagined windows, and letting it imaginatively breeze a bit; only then, and due to whatever impetus toward whichever aim (if any identifiable one at all), could one perhaps imagine of what a healthy, humane multiverse might be.

text | poetry, text | wondering, thoughts of the wise old woman, Uncategorized

Enlightened Darkness


An enlightened room…is that a non- or de-darkened room, as if a “dark room” that is not a dark room?

An enlightened black color… is that a color that is non-black as if a “black color” that is not a black color? A tromp l’œil or a trick of the brain’s visual cortex’s processes?

An enlightened despot is that a non- or de-psychopathed leader as if a ”psychopathic individual” that is not psychopathic?

Which characters & imaginable (absurd/ funny/ scary/ enlightening/ …) stories does an “enlightened [__________________]” conjure up?

One might like to play with words such as: demon, female bricklayer, husband, angel, giant gnome, virus, blood clot, idiot, belly, fossil fuel vendor, genius, antisocial personality, compassionate moral individual, axolotl, solar panel vendor, robber, bank,…

Knowing that 1 of the denotations for “enlightened” is “freed from #ignorance & #misinformation”, then how might a bright, well-lid room, any tone of white color, or a functional altruist, be differentiated from their somewhat enlightened counterparts, that were played with above?

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Some of the many triggers and vectors:

“What is the opposite of psychopathy? A statistical & graphical exploration of the psychopathy continuum”

“Enlightened room” a superficial online search result

the source for the one of many denotations for “enlightened”

#learning #multidimensionality #complexity #diversity #wink #imagination #nondualist #vectors #continuum

text | wondering, The field of AI

The Field of AI (part 02): A “Pre-History” & a Foundational Context.

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last update: Friday, April 24, 2020

URLs for A “Pre-History” & a Foundational Context:

  • This post is the main post on a Pre-History & a Foundational context of the Field of AI. In this post a narrative is constructed surrounding the “Pre-History”. It links with the following posts:
  • This post is a first and very short linking with on Literature, Mythology & Arts as one of the foundational contexts of the Field of AI
  • The second part in the contextualization is the post touching on a few attributes from Philosophy, Psychology and Linguistics
  • Following one can read about very few attributes picked up on from Control Theory as contextualizing to the Field of AI
  • Cognitive Science is the fourth field that is mapped with the Field of AI.
  • Mathematics & Statistics is in this writing the sixth area associated as a context to the Field of AI
  • Other fields contextualizing the Field of AI are being considered (e.g. Data Science & Statistics, Economy, Engineering fields)
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The Field of AI: A “Pre-History”.

A “pre-history” and a foundational context of Artificial Intelligence can arguably by traced back to a number of events in the past as well as to a number of academic fields of study. In this post only a few have been handpicked.

This post will offer a very short “pre-history” while following posts will dig into individual academic fields that are believed to offer the historical and present-day context for the field of AI.

It is not too far-fetched to link the roots of AI, as the present-day field of study, with the human imagination of artificial creatures referred to as “automatons” (or what could be understood as predecessors to more complex robots).

While it will become clear here that the imaginary idea of automatons in China is remarkably older, it has been often claimed that the historic development towards the field of AI, as it is intellectually nurtured today, commenced more than 2000 years ago in Greece, with Aristotle and his formulation of the human thought activity known as “Logic”.

Presently, with logic, math and data one could make a machine appear to have some degree of “intelligence”. Note, it is rational to realize that the perception of an appearance does not mean the machine is intelligent. What’s more, it could be refreshing to consider that not all intelligent activity is (intended to be seen as) logical.

It’s fun, yet important, to add that to some extent, initial studies into logic could asynchronously be found in China’s history with the work by Mòzǐ (墨子), who conducted his philosophical reflections a bit more than 2400 years ago. 

Coming back to the Ancient Greeks: besides their study of this mode of thinking, they also experimented with the creation of basic automatons.

Automatons (i.e. self-operating yet artificial mechanical creatures) were likewise envisioned in China and some basic forms were created in its long history of science and technology.[1] An early mentioning can be found in, Volume 5 “The Questions of Tang” (汤问; 卷第五 湯問篇) of the Lièzǐ (列子)[2], an important historical Daoist text.

In this work there is mentioning of this kind of (imagined) technologies or “scientific illusions”.[3] The king in this story became upset by the appearance of intelligence and needed to be reassured that the automaton was only that, a machine …

Figure 1 King Mù of Zhōu, who reigned a little more than 2950 years ago ( 周穆王; Zhōu Mù Wáng ) , introduced by Yen Shi, is meeting an automaton (i.e. the figure depicted with straighter lines, on the top-left), as mentioned in the fictional book Lièzǐ. Image retrieved on March 5, 2020 from here
Figure 2 Liè Yǔkòu (列圄寇/列禦寇), aka the Daoist philosopher Lièzĭ (列子) who imagined an (artificial) humanoid automaton. This visual was painted with “ink and light colors on gold-flecked paper,” by Zhāng Lù (张路); during the Míng Dynasty (Míng cháo, 明朝; 1368–1644). Retrieved on January 12, 2020 from here ; image license: public domain.

Jumping forward to the year 1206, the Arabian inventor, Al-Jazari, supposedly designed the first programmable humanoid robot in the form of a boat, powered by water flow, and carrying four mechanical musicians. He wrote about it in his work entitled “The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices.”

It is believed that Leonardo Da Vinci was strongly influenced by his work.[4] Al-Jazari additionally designed clocks with water or candles. Some of these clocks could be considered programmable in a most basic sense.

figure 3 Al-jazari’s mechanical musicians machine (1206). Photo Retrieved on March 4, 2020 from here; image: public domain

One could argue that the further advances of the clock (around the 15th and 16th century) with its gear mechanisms, that were used in the creation of automatons as well, were detrimental to the earliest foundations, moving us in the direction of where we are exploring AI and (robotic) automation or autonomous vehicles today.

Between the 16th and the 18th centuries, automatons became more and more common.  René Descartes, in 1637, considered thinking machines in his book entitled “Discourse on the Method of Reasoning“. In 1642, Pascal created the first mechanical digital calculating machine.

Figure 4 Rene Descartes; oil on canvas; painted by Frans Hals the Elder (1582 – 1666; A painter from Flanders, now northern Belgium, working in Haarlem, the Netherlands. This work: circa 1649-1700; photographed by André Hatala . File retrieved on January 14, 2020 from here. Image license: public Domain

Between 1801 and 1805 the first programmable machine was invented by Joseph-Marie Jacquard. He was strongly influenced by Jacques de Vaucanson with his work on automated looms and automata. Joseph-Marie’s loom was not even close to a computer as we know it today. It was a programmable loom with punched paper cards that automated the action of the textile making by the loom. What is important here was the system with cards (the punched card mechanism) that influenced the technique used to develop the first programmable computers.

Figure 5 Close-up view of the punch cards used by Jacquard loom on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, England. This public domain photo was retrieved n March 12, 2020 from here; image: public domain

In the first half of the 1800s, the Belgian mathematician, Pierre François Verhulst discovered the logistic function (e.g. the sigmoid function),[1] which will turn out to be quintessential in the early-day developments of Artificial Neural Networks and specifically those called “perceptrons” with a threshold function, that is hence used to activate the output of a signal, and which operate in a more analog rather than digital manner, mimicking the biological brain’s neurons. It should be noted that present-day developments in this area do not only prefer the sigmoid function and might even prefer other activation functions instead.

[1] Bacaër, N. (2011). Verhulst and the logistic equation (1838). A Short History of Mathematical Population Dynamics. London: Springer. pp. 35–39.  Information retrieved from https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-0-85729-115-8_6#citeas and from mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Verhulst.html  

In 1936 Alan Turing proposed his Turing Machine. The Universal Turing Machine is accepted as the origin of the idea of a stored-program computer. This would later, in 1946, be used by John von Neumann for his “Electronic Computing Instrument“.[6] Around that same time the first general purpose computers started to be invented and designed. With these last events we could somewhat artificially and arbitrarily claim the departure from “pre-history” into the start of the (recent) history of AI.

figure 6 Alan Turing at the age of 16. Image Credit: PhotoColor [CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)] ; Image source Retrieved April 10, 2020 from here


As for fields of study that have laid some “pre-historical” foundations for AI research and development, which continue to be enriched by AI or that enrich the field of AI, there are arguably a number of them. A few will be explored in following posts. The first posts will touch on a few hints of Literature, Mythology and the Arts.

[1] Needham, J. (1991). Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 2, History of Scientific Thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University.

[2] Liè Yǔkòu (列圄寇 / 列禦寇). (5th Century BCE). 列子 (Lièzǐ). Retrieved on March 5, 2020 from https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7341/pg7341-images.html  and 卷第五 湯問篇 from https://chinesenotes.com/liezi/liezi005.html   and an English translation (not the latest) from  https://archive.org/details/taoistteachings00liehuoft/page/n6/mode/2up  

[3] Zhāng, Z. (张 朝 阳).  ( November 2005). “Allegories in ‘The Book of Master Liè’ and the Ancient Robots”. Online: Journal of Heilongjiang College of Education. Vol.24 #6. Retrieved March 5, 2020 from https://wenku.baidu.com/view/b178f219f18583d049645952.html

[4] McKenna, A. (September 26, 2013). Al-Jazarī Arab inventor. In The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Online: Encyclopaedia Britannica Retrieved on March 25, 2020 from https://www.britannica.com/biography/al-Jazari AND:

Al-Jazarī, Ismail al-Razzāz; Translated & annotated by Donald R. Hill. (1206). The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel Publishing Company. Online Retrieved on March 25, 2020 from https://archive.org/details/TheBookOfKnowledgeOfIngeniousMechanicalDevices/mode/2up

[5] Bacaër, N. (2011). Verhulst and the logistic equation (1838). A Short History of Mathematical Population Dynamics. London: Springer. pp. 35–39.  Information retrieved from https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-0-85729-115-8_6#citeas and from mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Verhulst.html

[6] Davis, M. (2018). The Universal Computer: the road from Leibniz to Turing. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group