Category: Technology

Latest Read: Artificial Intelligence

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date October 28, 2021

Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie Mitchell. Melanie holds a PhD in computer science from the University of Michigan. Melanie is a professor of computer science at Portland State University. In addition, she is an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute.

It is certainly very rare that a book makes an impact like Melanie’s effort. Actually, this is one rare event: I would recommend everyone read her prologue “Terrified” regardless of their life’s path. Yes, this book is that powerful.

Furthermore, Melanie studied with a leading cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter at Michigan and collaborated to create the Copycat program, which makes creative analogies in an idealized world.

Upon finishing the prologue, everyone should certainly continue reading. This is an easy to read, yet deep examination of the current state of artificial intelligence.

In addition, Melanie provides a good history of artificial intelligence (AI), from inception in 1954 to multiple “freezes” in AI funding to the promise of amazing breakthroughs and shocking failures. Every element for better or worse is evenly written. Bravo!

Certainly the most impressive points across each chapter is how Melanie grounds user’s expectations of AI versus the hype. This is both from the consumer to artificial intelligence engineers.

Tags Artificial Intelligence, Melanie Mitchell

Education Innovation Reading Technology

Latest Read: How Innovation Works

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date October 14, 2021

How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom by Matt Ridley. Matt is a British journalist best known for his writings on science, the environment, and economics in The Times. He holds a seat in the British House of Lords.

Matt is certainly writing against government regulation and big business across many established and emerging fields: energy, transportation, food, and computing. Regulation and big businesses are hampering innovation due to oversight. He also addresses early innovations including farming and taming animals including dogs.

Every chapter is certainly intriguing. Vast amounts of stories and historical facts drove each innovation. Matt obviously makes it certainly clear that innovation is within democratic countries where freedom allows for ideas to flourish, leading to inventions.

Chapter 2, focusing upon Public Health innovation certainly reminds the reader how vaccines developed to curb the loss of lives across many continents in our global history. A very refreshing chapter for our COVID era. On the other hand, this would be publishing in May 2020, at the beginning of our pandemic.

The first airplane

Chapter 3, Transport has a particularly great recollection of The Wright Brothers innovation. Unquestionably, this storyline is parallel to Simon Sinek’s Start With Why, and reveals more details to the road both brothers took in finding success at Kitty Hawk.

Many readers will be captivated by the research Matt delivers in round after round of amazing stories of innovation not by the inventor, but rather by those who saw a vision of how inventions lay the foundation of innovations.

Tags Eniac, Innovation, Matt Ridley

Artificial Intelligence Education Google Network Reading Technology

Latest Read: Algorithms of Oppression

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date September 27, 2021

Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism
by Safiya Umoja Noble. Safiya is an associate professor at UCLA and is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry. Safiya’s research as a result, considers how bias has been embedded into search engines.

Clearly, search engine algorithms are not neutral by any means. This was indeed proving to be a very disturbing issue at the time of publication in 2018.

So, how did this happen in the first place? It is rather shocking to understand that a seemingly simple search term “black girls” results in such disgusting results.

Safiya certainly reveals this unforgiving gap and Google has made efforts to fix their errors. The result of her work has brought about the term algorithmic oppression.

Safiya explores how racism, especially anti-blackness, is generated and maintained across the internet, yet is focused squarely on Google.

In addition, Safiya reveals the impact of AdWords, Google’s advertising tool. I found it interesting that since search results are altered by paid advertising, Google is more of an advertising company than a search engine company.

Tags algorithmic oppression, Algorithms of Oppression, Artificial Intelligence, Google, inequity, racism, Safiya Umoja Noble, search

Education Globalization Google Innovation Network Reading Technology

Latest Read: Algorithms To Live By

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date September 16, 2021

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths. Brian is the author of The Most Human Human, a Wall Street Journal bestseller, New York Times editors’ choice, and New Yorker favorite book of the year. Tom is a professor of psychology and cognitive science at Princeton University. In addition, he directs the Institute of Cognitive and Brain Sciences.

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths

At first glance the idea of brining algorithms into our daily lives seems a bit too much, even for a budding computer nerd. At the same time, Brian and Tom prove that most of us are already doing this daily.

I recall spending many hours programming SQL while living in Chicago and realizing how much more efficient my grocery shopping would be if I actually transformed my shopping list into a SQL table:

SELECT * FROM FoodGroup
ORDER BY GroceryStoreIsle;

So I can certainly agree. Yet this idea still may seem daunting. If you begin thinking about repeating tasks you perform, even laundry should certainly make you believe there is a better way.

Algorithms will certainly make this possible. Therefore, you may be spending too much time repeating tasks. This is where the book reveals how you can become efficient, by sharing the history and development of many common algorithms. You will certainly discover a few frameworks.

Tags algorithms, Algorithms to Live By, Artificial Intelligence, Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths

Artificial Intelligence Education Innovation Network Reading Technology

Latest Read: What Algorithms Want

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date September 14, 2021

What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing by Ed Finn. Ed is an associate professor at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Arts, Media and Engineering. He also serves as the academic director of Future Tense, a partnership between ASU, New America, and Slate Magazine.

I really appreciate reading this book as a follow up to The AI Delusion. What Algorithms Want takes a liberal arts approach. This is very appealing and brings a valued perspective.

Ed is communicating that society innocently believes magical algorithms as a tool to a better life. For this purpose, Ed shares that Eric Schmidt indicated that people do not want Google to just provide search results. Rather, they “want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.” I find this difficult to believe.

However, Ed also is viewing this from a practical perspective. His view is that algorithms are not only for mathematical logic, but rather for philosophy, cybernetics, and creative thinking.

Accordingly, there is a gap that Ed identifies between theoretical ideas and pragmatic instructions. This is a view outside of traditional computer science books.

Clearly, most users are not aware of how Facebook’s timeline and Google search queries are executions that benefit their data collection and profits. Many would not even consider the impact of Facebook’s timeline as nothing more than the latest news from friends, when in reality it is far from that idea.

Machine Learning

What Algorithms Want takes a deeper dive on Google’s efforts to drive profits from the data mining services across every service they deploy. What is also emphasized is the automatic assumptions by society that Google has their own interests protected because of a flimsy “do no evil” pledge.

Tags Artificial Intelligence, deep learning, Ed Finn, machine learning, What Algorithms Want