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Latest Read: What Algorithms Want

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.

What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing by Ed Finn

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.

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Artificial Intelligence Education Innovation Network Reading

Latest Read: The AI Delusion

The AI Delusion by Gary Smith. Gary holds a Ph.D. in Economics is a professor Economies at Pomona College. He was a 1967 Woodrow Wilson Fellow and a 1968 Yale University Fellow. He was awarded a Stanford Research Institute Grant in 1978 and a NSF grant for an economics computer lab beginning in 1995.

The AI Delusion by Gary Smith

Gary certainly provides a solid narrative that artificial intelligence is not perfect. On the contrary, it is quite far from perfect. As a result, we should be aware of how much blind faith is given to so many artificial intelligence services. We do this at our own peril.

IBM’s Watson is an example. Gary explains why Watson, a question-answering computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language is a bad match for healthcare but can be an absolutely wonderful solution in other markets.

The AI Delusion certainly also reveals how many times artificial intelligence systems have simply failed. These lead to important lessons. At the same, time Gary does acknowledge that today’s machine learning has solved problems thought impossible just twenty years ago.

For example, the Obama campaigns in 2008 and his 2012 re-election deployed data analytics that were critical in his win and re-election. Yet, the Hilary Clinton campaign followed data insights from a machine learning system named Ada. This big data system advised against campaigning in Michigan and other states. This so upset former President Bill Clinton that he attempted to persuade the campaign to change strategy, however he was overruled by Ada. A powerful example of big data going off the tracks.

Gary is certainly acknowledging that machines in the future will have the ability to think, however today many are mislead by deep neural networks. Many on the surface associate brain neurons to artificial intelligence’ neural networks. Neural networks do not mimic the brain. Neural networks are indeed powerful programs that execute complex mathematical programs. However, today’s neural networks do not understand words, or images.

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Education Reading

Latest Read: The Color of Law

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein. Richard is a Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Poliy Institute, Senior Fellow (emeritus) at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and Senior Fellow at the Haas Institute at Berkeley.

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

This book is simply a must read in order to understand our historical application of de jure segregation. This is certainly almost never discussed, certainly not in public as a history of American segregation since the 1900s. Above all, this book will (and should) shock you to understand, perhaps for the first time a well hidden history of America.

The Color of Law documents de jure segregation actually promoted several discriminatory patterns that continue to this day. As a result, readers can fully understand, how legacy Federal, State, and Local laws empowered segregation. This is never an easy subject to study.

In fact, through extremely well documented research, Richard addresses that de facto segregation is myth. We should fully understand this in the context of de jure segregation:

myth | miTH | noun

A traditional story that focus on an early history of a people or explaining social phenomenon.
A widely held but false belief.

De jure segregation actually created government-segregated public housing, schools and neighborhoods. At the same time, this resulted in the demolition of previously integrated neighborhoods.

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Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: The Formula

The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. He is a former physics professor at the University of Notre Dame. Today Albert is the Director of Northeastern University’s Center for Complex Network Research (CCNR) associate member of the Center of Cancer Systems Biology (CCSB) at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute and visiting professor at the Center for Network Science at Central European University.

The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success by Albert-László Barabási

He introduced in 1999 the concept of scale-free networks and proposed the Barabási–Albert model to explain their widespread emergence in natural, technological and social systems, from the cellular telephone to the World Wide Web or online communities.

Surprising to realize 13 years ago I was reading his book Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means. Link certainly proved very thought provoking. It has aged well since 2008. Based upon that experience I quickly read his followup Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do in 2010.

Albert addresses how you can now quantify success. This will differ obviously across markets adn professions, but the ties linking them together are quite interesting. There is a building block of his expertise in networks.

He devotes a chapter for each of his defined universal laws of success.

Performance drives success, but when performance can’t be measured, networks drive success.

In athletics networks will not help you. If you win the US Open Tennis championship it will not matter who you know. Your success will drive instant recognition.

Yet, one focus of Chapter 1 is the Red Barron who remains the most famous World War I fighter pilot. Yet, René Fonck a French pilot actually scored more kills. However grocery stores today have Red Barron pizza. There are Red Barron 3D computer games. Even Charlie Brown, the most famous children’s cartoon holds the Red Barron as a character for Snoopy. Performance truly drives success.

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Education Flat World Globalization Innovation Reading Technology

Latest Read: The Premonition

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by Michael Lewis. A tough, certainly insightful look at men and women who understood and directly confronted the pandemic at the beginning. At the same time, they ran into bureaucratic roadblocks. Their efforts to save the country is the story of this book.

the premonition a pandemic story

For instance, as early as January 2020, Dr. Charity Dean, the assistant director of the California Department of Public Health in 2020. She certainly understood the coming pandemic and began warning California State officials. Surprisingly, Charity Dean was even prohibited from publishing the word “pandemic” in her research reports. Furthermore, as stunning as it may seem, her boss and the state locker her out of planning meetings.

Dr. Carter Mecher, senior medical advisor to the Veterans Administration initially helped craft the Bush Administration’s pandemic response plan. As a result, at the very beginning stages in January 2020, he observed similarities to the 1918 Influenza flu. Indeed, Carter was the early advocate to shut down schools to reduce spread. Tragically, he lost his own mother to COVID.

At the same time, Joe DeRisi PhD, a biochemist at UC San Francisco was involved in the development of the ViroChip. This is used to rapidly identify viruses in bodily fluids. He led a team to develop a very early COVID-19 testing facility at the outbreak of pandemic.

Dr. Richard Hatchett an epidemiologist was another who warned early on about the coming pandemic. He also contributed to the Bush era pandemic response plan. This book is a sobering reality of what could have been. These medical professionals were stopped by the same system they were trying to save. Michael certainly makes it very clear the US does not have a healthcare system.

Tipping point ignored

Surprisingly, President George W. Bush read The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. As a result, he triggered a plan to confront the next pandemic with Rajeev Venkayya, Richard Hatchett and Carter Mecher. This plan continued through the Obama Administration, but stopped under Trump.

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