Saturday, February 11, 2023

Headliners

CURATED LINKS:

 

at No comments:

Friday, February 10, 2023

Thinking

One recent evening, we celebrated my youngest grandson’s second birthday. He’s an affable little fellow with tousled blond hair, bright eyes, and a quizzical expression.

He loves to run and jump. He’s talking in a steady stream of phrases now, some of which resemble a dialect the rest of us can comprehend. He loves to throw things.

At the party, he was clearly excited by all the visitors and presents and the general sense of excitement in the air. But when the biggest moment arrived, he seemed utterly perplexed.

When he was lifted into his seat and the singing started and the cake with two lit candles was placed before him, he just stared at it. He had absolutely no idea what he was supposed to do next.

“I guess we forgot to brief him on his responsibilities as the birthday boy,” his Mom quipped.

With a little help from his friends, he figured it out. Mostly. Afterwards, he ran around person to person, singing out “Happy Birthday to you!”

***

At one time or another, we all face situations like my grandson did where we feel disoriented. If we are two years old when that happens, it’s to be expected and cute, but if we are more like 82, it can be frustrating and scary. And not funny at all.

The prospect of dementia among aging people is one of the most terrifying aspects of growing old. It’s one thing for your body to fall apart, your career to end, your possessions to be discarded, and too many of those you’ve treasured to pass away.

All of that is bad enough. But to realize that your mind may be drifting off into the fog must be the most terrifying thing of all. Despite this, I find myself joking about it at times, particularly when I am nervous. Like when I try to be entertaining.

But it is not a joke.

There is some hope, I’ve read, that medical science will find ways to stave off dementia in the not-too-distant future, but until then I suppose we’re all frightfully vulnerable. As for me, I guess my mental capacity is robust enough — for now — that when I make those jokes about myself, apparently they don’t ring true.

Like the other day when one of my sons told me, “Dad, I don’t think you ave to worry too much about dementia. If anything you may have the opposite problem.”

Oh dear.

LINKS:

 

at No comments:

Thursday, February 09, 2023

Welcome to 2024

For all intents and purposes, the 2024 election cycle has begun. That’s not really a good thing. There is as yet only one announced candidate (Trump), with another about to declare (Haley) but the incumbent (Biden) clearly made his case for re-election in his State of the Union speech.

While Biden is far from a great speaker, the speech Tuesday night was one of his best since taking office a few days after the Capitol riot.

And at this point, if Biden wants to run, the Democrats will line up behind him and Republicans would have a hard time defeating him. His only real problem is his age (80), which will make him the oldest president ever to stand for re-election.

Assuming the Republicans finally get some sense and abandon Trump, a younger candidate like Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis or Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be their choice. 

But Haley is not well-known, DeSantis comes off as mean-spirited and Sanders, if her own speech Tuesday night is any indication, is nowhere near ready for prime time. Perhaps trying to convey some gravitas, she came off instead as simply lacking energy. And petty.

DeSantis is the clear front-runner, once Trump is gone.

Should Biden choose to retire, the Democrats have V-P Kamala Harris, who has not impressed anyone or Gavin Newsom, but the conventional media wisdom is that Newsom is perceived as “too California” for the moderates and swing voters he would need to win over.

Having followed his entire career closely, I consider him a centrist, much like Dianne Feinstein, with an ability to charm people that DeSantis seems to lack. But given the California label, the Democrats might do better nominating Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

After all, once again it will be the handful of swing states that determine the outcome. Any Republican will win Florida and Texas just like any Democrat will win New York and California.

But who can win the Rust Belt, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada? That person will be the next President.

LINKS:

  • Microsoft Adds ChatGPT AI Technology to Bing Search Engine (WSJ)

  • Google shares dive 8% after AI chatbot Bard flubs answer in ad (Reuters)

  • Beijing to host artificial intelligence conference amid ChatGPT frenzy, joining other cities in promoting the industry (SCMP)

  • ChatGPT is a data privacy nightmare. If you’ve ever posted online, you ought to be concerned (The Conversation)

  • The Robots Coming for Our Jobs Will Also Help Fire Us (Bloomberg)

  • Google Maps launches Immersive View in five cities, will roll out ‘glanceable directions’ soon (TechCrunch)

  • Public support soft on GOP debt limit demands. (The Hill)

  • Biden mixes bipartisanship with defiance (WP)

  • Ex-Twitter execs deny pressure to block Hunter Biden story (AP)

  • Republicans rejected Biden's call for bipartisanship, and instead accused him of stoking culture wars in a nation they described as deeply divided. (Reuters)

  • Trump ex-lawyer Cohen meets again with New York prosecutors (AP)

  • Spy balloon part of a broader Chinese military surveillance operation, US intel sources say (CNN)

  • China Tries to Play Down Balloon Dispute With Censorship and Memes (NYT)

  • Pentagon says Austin rebuffed when he sought to reach out to Beijing over Chinese spy balloon (The Hill)

  • Chinese balloon part of vast aerial surveillance program, U.S. says (WP)

  • MH17: Putin likely to have supplied missile that downed plane - investigators (BBC)

  • Top Putin Ally Says He ‘Will Not Hide’ Intention to Invade Poland Anymore (Daily Beast)

  • Give us jets to secure our freedom, Volodymyr Zelensky urges UK (BBC)

  • Britain announced an immediate surge of military deliveries to Ukraine to help it fend off an intensifying Russian offensive and pledged to train its pilots as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy arrived in London on a rare visit abroad. (Reuters)

  • Rescue Teams Fight ‘Weather and the Earthquake’ (NYT)

  • Turkey, Syria quake deadliest in decade (AP)

  • The Promise of a New Alzheimer’s Drug. For decades, scientists have debated the causes of cognitive decline. Is an effective treatment finally around the corner? (New Yorker)

  • The 'He Gets Us' commercials promote Jesus. Who's behind them and what is the goal? (NPR)

  • Jupiter now has 92 moons after new discovery (CNN)

  • ‘But The Scary Balloon Popped, So They Went Back To Worrying About The Recession Monster,’ Says Joe Biden, Reading Illustrated Children’s State Of The Union (The Onion)

 

at No comments:

Wednesday, February 08, 2023

The Race Is On

 The battle lines are drawn for the biggest technology arms race in eons. It’s over artificial intelligence (AI), of course. Microsoft has invested in ChatGPT. Google has unveiled Bard.

The Guardian breaks down what these technologies do in fairly simple terms:

“These are types of neural networks, which mimic the underlying architecture of the brain in computer form. They are fed vast amounts of text from the internet in a process that teaches them how to generate responses to text-based prompts. This enables ChatGPT to produce credible-sounding responses to queries about composing couplets, writing job applications or, in probably the biggest panic it has created so far, academic work.”

Fidelity reports that “Silicon Valley is anticipating massive change from so-called generative AI, technology that can create prose or other content on command and free up white-collar workers' time.”

So is generative AI going to simply make work more efficient in ways that actually help workers or is it going to lead to more of the widespread layoffs currently sweeping the tech industry?

Maybe both.

Bt as Axios notes via an expert: “Trying to compete on efficiency with robots never works, they always win.”

So there will certainly be job losses due to robotics, including in the media space. The role humans play in generating boiler-plate type content, for example, is definitely ending.

Good riddance to that.

As for more sophisticated content creation — that requires sentient beings, and as much as enthusiasts and pessimists predict AI developing such capacity eventually, I don’t that happening anytime soon.

I’ve tested ChatGPT and competitors multiple times and the original essays they generate, while adequate in terms of language usage, utterly lack any of the qualities I looked for from my hundreds of writing students at Stanford, U-C, Berkeley or SF State.

Human beings notice things robots don’t — they have an eye for telling details, they can sense when someone is lying, and they can use words to invoke a wide range of emotions.

Robots can do none of those things. They can’t make us cry.

In fact I haven’t seen a single robot-generated text that would receive better than a “C” in one of my classes…even though I was a notoriously easy grader. 

But although I am contending that the chatbots cannot produce great writing, that does not mean they won’t create some extremely effective pieces that have impacts.

That’s because unfortunately I fear they’ll be used to intensify the waves of disinformation and conspiracy theories already polluting our atmosphere like errant nuclear bombs

And when it comes to the integrity of our political system, the damage they cause may prove to be just as severe…

LINKS:

at No comments:

Tuesday, February 07, 2023

The Artist

So I am going to tell you a story, or at least try. It’s about a little girl and her Dad. As the youngest of six children spread over 22 years and two Moms, she grew up seeing and having to deal with pretty much everything that had come before, for better and for worse.

And that was a lot. Two older sisters and three older brothers from two marriages and two divorces; different houses with different habits; lots of complicated family history; and lots of books. Everywhere there were books.

Her parents were both writers; one of her siblings a journalist; two others published books or papers.

Everybody else in the family already had a voice, it seemed. She was the baby who would have to find her own way through this family maze. She’d have to be different. She grew up spending roughly 60 percent of her average week at her Mom’s house and 40 percent at her Dad’s. 

She could write as well as the rest if them but her true joy came from a different direction — making pictures. By the time she was a teenager, everybody recognized that and went away briefly to a boarding school for young artists.

During this time, quite naturally, she grew apart from her Dad. They didn’t talk all that often.

But all the while he saw and admired what she was doing. 

Everything moves in cycles and eventually the two of them found their way back to one another. What connected them, in the end, was the realization that they shared at least two things — an inner anger at social injustices and a shared obsession for the beauty of colors, patterns and details that can be expressed through art.

Especially her art.

That’s as far as the story goes, for now. Today that young woman is a painter who works in a local gallery.

And I am her Dad.

Latest piece for the “Sky” show.

LINKS:

 

at No comments:

Monday, February 06, 2023

It's the Humans, Stupid (Not the Robots)

 I’m starting to work out why the arrival of robots that write like humans doesn’t bother me or make me anxious. In fact, it actually brings much more a sense of relief than fear or outrage.

It’s a simple thing, really. Ever since page rank (aka Google) took over control of what content rises to the top of our collective consciousness, it hasn’t been the idea of machines writing like humans that has been the problem — i’s the reality that too many humans are trying to write like machines.

You heard me. The problem with writing on the web is that people write to please the robots, and not the other way around. 

I know this because as a result my truest love — writing — was murdered in cold blood right before my eyes. And people like me were forced to contemplate a new world filled with pathetic jobs at half-witted companies that tried to reduce what we previously did to a series of formulas and catch phrases.

We were referred to as “wordsmiths,” a truly disgusting label if there ever was one, and urged to become familiar with SEO, a pathetic practice I won’t even grant the respect of spelling out for you, nor for SEM, its even cheaper cousin. (Trust me, you don’t need to know these things.)

Anyway, it’s all nonsense, albeit of the multi-billion-dollar variety, to simply pander to the algorithms presumably guiding the way Google sorts content and thereby determines which stories rise to the top and which fall deep into the benthos, where many creatures do not even have eyes. Reading there is impossible, obviously, so who needs writers?

But now comes the robots. And it isn’t those of us who love language who should be scared; it’s the mightiest of the mighty gate-keepers, Google itself, that is cowering in fear from that pesky little nuisance called Chat GPT.

Google is so scared it’s had to recall one of its playboy billionaire co-founders, though not the one who lent his name to page rank, to try and right the ship. But it’s much too late. The inmates, aka robots, are already running the asylum — by design.

Meanwhile, all of those marketing folks who are misappropriating the word “creative” for their work when what they actually do is suppress creativity in the name of maximizing profits had better start running for their lives from the coming of the chatbots. And so it gives me great pleasure to announce that the likes of Buzzfeed will finally lose their buzz..

Because there’s no greater buzzkill than finding out that your invisibility cloak isn’t going to work any more.

P.S. Friends, do not misread my comments to think that I hate Google. I love Google; it’s my favorite company. It was love at first sight/site, actually, a long time ago. It is the blood-sucking barnacles attached to Google’s underbelly that I despise.

Kudos to Kelly Main for an excellent piece that helped me see the light — “ChatGPT Comes With a Surprising Benefit That No One Is Talking About--but Everyone Benefits From” (Inc.)

LINKS:

at No comments:

Sunday, February 05, 2023

Oscar is Two!

When he was lifted into his chair and the birthday cake with two candles was placed in front of him, he just stared at it. He had absolutely no idea what to do with it.

I'm pretty sure that's the last time he'll just stare at his own cake!
 

at No comments:

Julia's recent art

Her latest painting to be in the gallery's "Sky" exhibition and available for sale.



 The bookmark she made me for Christmas.

at No comments:

Why the Taliban Bans Women (Afghan Report 54)

(NOTE: This is the latest in a series of reports from an Afghan friend about life under Taliban rule. I am concealing his identity to protect his identity.)

Dear David: 

Earlier this week, Pakistani diplomat Akram Munir caused a stir when he stated, "The restrictions that have been put by the Afghan interim government, flow not so much from a religious perspective as from a particular cultural perspective of the Pashtun culture, which requires women to be kept at home. And this is a peculiar, distinctive cultural reality of Afghanistan which has not changed for hundreds of years.” 

Many Pashtuns, including Naseer Ahmad Faiq, the Representative of Afghanistan to the United Nations, objected to his statement and rejected it as untrue. So the question remains as to where the banning of education on girls comes from – Pashtun culture or Islam? 

Two years ago, I went to some schools in the countryside of Lashkar Gah in Helmand Province. There were two villages side by side, with Hazaras living in one and Pashtuns in the other. In the Hazara school, male and female students both attended, with. girls coming to school in the morning and boys in the afternoon. 

In the schools attended by Pashtuns, only boys attended. Female students do not go to schools at all, not even primary schools. When I asked the teachers why girls did not come to school, they said it was against Pashtun village culture.

Another prominent feature among Pashtuns is that they tend to have larger families than other ethnic groups. I had always thought they did this to grow the Moslem population, but a  Pashtun friend told me having many children is not a religious issue but a matter of “honor among Pashtuns. They don’t even care whether their children have enough food." 

There is nothing in the Quran banning the education of women. Therefore, in my opinion, the reason the Taliban is banning girls from school in Afghanistan is based almost completely in Pashtun culture. The Taliban are primarily Pashtuns, and they are trying to impose their culture on the rest of us. 

***
(Note: There are numerous ethnic groups in Afghanistan. Pashtuns are the largest, comprising about 40 percent of the total population. The Taliban leaders are Pashtun. The Hazaras are one of the largest ethnic minorities in the country and have formed the main resistance against Taliban rule.)

LINKS:

 

at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)