Part 3: My AI Overlord — I just watched the movie “Transcendence”
4 JulSo I just finished the movie “Transcendence”! I found it thought provoking, fairly accurate, but ultimately it didn’t go far enough. It did not present what an intelligence on an exponential curve of self-improvement would ultimately lead to in terms of capabilities.
An intelligence like that, with quantum computing, would be able to run every possible simulation imaginable and many we could not. Humans could not even come close to challenging it. In the movie, it had limitations that I think would be preposterous if it was exponentially I erasing its intelligence.
Once it had ability to interact with the physical world, forget it. The nano, pico and femto- machines would re- organize the world.
However, it is Hollywood, so they had to give the public part of the diet it has been fed for a long time. You need for humans to win in the end. Love beats all etc. The movie could’ve contemplate “losing” a conflict. That was so unrealistic, the AI would have re-written its code so long ago, it wouldn’t resemble at all what it started like. Plus, wouldn’t it would’ve guessed they’d try a virus and have defenses?!?!
The movie had to scale back what it tried to do. Otherwise, people would have to eat a new food and that would NOT go down well.
HW has bred a fan base on a certain diet of stories. The viewers come to expect it. That is all they have ever eaten. Simple example . They can’t have the AI “win”. That is against the diet of happy endings. This movie leaned more on the humans win side, with a hint of otherwise. Couldn’t be the reverse.
They couldn’t have envisioned a world where the human species has evolved beyond now. They could have even pictured a scenario where “normal” humans have been preserved if they want to be, but they would be handicapped so to speak. They’d be like a person with Down’s syndrome now. That would be a negative message for viewers, a downer and hence not in the diet. Even if it was speculation. The spec can’t stray too far from humans now! Iron rule!!
Part 1 of my series … My AI overlord
4 JulOK, for the first part of this series, I would have to ask my friends….
Do you think evolution is a fact of nature?
Do you think humans evolved?
Do you think humans are evolving?
Do you think that evolution is natural?
IF your answer to all these questions is yes, then it should surprise you that the humans of the future will not be the same as the humans of today. To incorrectly anthropomorphize, one might even say that this is what nature intended.
Just as we supplanted the Neanderthals, Denosovians, Hobbits and the mysterious others, so shall some further evolved homo species supplant us. Thus is the order of things.
Anybody have a problem with this?
So why am I asking these questions? Its because I think that we as a species are not at the end of our line. We are continuing to evolve. An important question is whether people have moral, ethical, gut, rational issues about how we continue to evolve. If folks acknowledge that we can and should continue to evolve, then they might say that if its “natural”, it has to be random. if its purposeful, then somehow it is not ok.
Part 2: My AI overlord
4 JulThis post deals with the idea of humans as custodians of the earth.
Seems to me that we’re doing a pretty bad job of it. Seems like with climate change, not only are killing off species “a todo que da”, but we may create the conditions that may lead to our own destruction.
Meanwhile people are either ignorant of this, denying this, hopeless about this or trying to do something about this.
From where I sit, we are pretty lousy custodians of the earth. Who appointed us anyway?
Part 1: my series … My AI overlord
4 JulOK, for the first part of this series, I would have to ask my friends….
Do you think evolution is a fact of nature?
Do you think humans evolved?
Do you think humans are evolving?
Do you think that evolution is natural?
IF your answer to all these questions is yes, then it should surprise you that the humans of the future will not be the same as the humans of today. To incorrectly anthropomorphize, one might even say that this is what nature intended.
Just as we supplanted the Neanderthals, Denosovians, Hobbits and the mysterious others, so shall some further evolved homo species supplant us. Thus is the order of things.
Anybody have a problem with this?
Thinking about Progressive icons in the Puerto Rican Community
15 FebI write the following as a Boricua who is interested in the betterment of my community. This betterment is achieved in my view throughout the application of a progressive perspective. When I say betterment, I mean the health of the community in all or as many dimensions as possible. I am talking about the community’s thriving and its self-knowledge.
By progressivism I mean humanism, skepticism and enlightenment values. Humanism in the sense of the fulfillment of the potential of our community’s people, a skepticism based on the a distrust of common views within and without our community in terms of our basic humanity, our basic competence, our ability to guide our destinies. This skepticism holds in radical doubt any view that diminishes the potential and practice of our community and its people.
Enlightenment values are many but some include that we are human beings and hence endowed with rights by our mere existence.
I think progressivism embodies these principles and draws its power to motivate from many sources…the power to motivate or inspiration is an essential component in counteracting oppression. To endow with a spirit or a mood or motivation. In this vein, I would venture some thoughts about progressivism in the Puerto Rican community.
First, all peoples draw upon people and events of the past to serve as avatars of what is possible in the present. Conservatives draw upon the past to justify their power and privilege. Progressives adopt the same strategy, but more to open possibilities of different ways of organizing society and to highlight those that tried to move towards better possibilities. Like most progressives, I want our community to draw upon their past as sign posts of our full humanity and elixirs of hope and creativity.
However, the accident of birth allows me a unique perspective, I was born in a time that in some ways was between generations. Both generations strove to change society, both had successes and failures, but each generation approached the project of changing society differently. One was the pre WWII generation and the other was the post WWII generation…. the old and new left as it is often described.
Let the political spectrum Shift Left!
21 MayI’ve been thinking about National politics. So within the USA, the establishment, accepted home of the homophobic, white supremacist, misogynistic, ruling class-defenders is the Republican party. The GOP has cultivated these guys for decades. Now the Repubs are losing and they are trying a reboot. Only problem is that hard core homophobic, white supremacist, misogynistic, ruling class-defenders are not going down without a fight.
In fact, they may not go down at all. The GOP has been their home and without it they got no place to go. Simultaneously, the more realistic, less barbaric ruling class-defenders know which way the wind is blowing. This internecine conflict will probably continue, shedding Red blood (ha ha), till somebody is on top. I think it comes down to whether they love power more than the hate Latinos, Blacks, muslims, immigrants, gays, the poor and women. Gonna be a close one. I say let the slashing begin!!!
The LYMPS is done!
21 FebWell, its been four years since I’ve conceived, designed and implemented my ideas for a Lymphoid Malignancy Phenome Score. All this came from FAPS…same kind of score for Fanconi anemia. But this was so much more on a greater scale and complexity. When I started, I didn’t know crap about lymphoma or DLBCL the most prevalent form of non-hodgkins lymphoma. I didn’t know crap about clinical lab tests. I didn’t know crap about standard uptake value. I didn’t know MySQL, I didn’t know that much of the statistical programming language R….never heard of tSNE… Looking back, I didn’t really have a much comprehension of multivariate u-statistics. So I had to learn all of this and put it all together. And I did. I was working largely alone…but I definitely had help. I want to thank my German Stat buddy Knut Wittkowski for his stalwart help!
Anyhow my thinking evolved along the way …I started developing my notions of scales and chains. How the genotype to phenotype relation is the chain of information transmission that is really a mesh of percolation…percolation is a concept in graph theory…how epidemics spread and the like. I think that there is an underlying mesh in the organism starting from the intracellular realm outwards…but at the same time getting inputs from other levels, from the environment …kinda like a snowball picking up debris…and arriving at the level where things matter….the level of eyeballs and butt holes…our level!
Anyhow…I’ve hung in there and taken my licks and kept going. Like my old master said to me ….”perseverance furthers”. The interesting thing is that the LYMPS does better at prognosis than the current gold standards. That’s what makes people sit up and take notice.
There is a internal aspect to this a well ….that I have struggled since I’ve started with attention deficit disorder and depression. These inborn brain phenotypes have been with me all along. I got diagnosed with ADHD right at the beginning of my last job and I’ve been trying to get treatment ever since. No luck so far. It turns out that I am a rare variant that does not respond to the usual medications…for example 120 mg of Ritalin doesn’t do a god damned thing to me! I don’t feel it. So I’ve done this whole project up till now without any kind of treatment. That’s in part what’s taken me so long! The way my brain works slows me down something awful! Not a lot I can do about it …but hopefully that will change.
Another thing that got in the way is that my eyes fell apart along the way. I had two retinal tears and kinda two cataracts in my left eye and a retinal tear in my right eye. That put me on my back alot during a 5 month period at first then the cataract story continued right up till this Christmas. Due to a patch on my eye after the cataract operation, I also fell and gave my right shoulder a permanent injury!
But the big thing, that other meddling thing that got in the way was that my beloved Dad José Morales Jr died going on 2 years ago. That was the “end” of a long process of his illness…that was the hardest thing in my life bar none. It dominated my life for about a year. I can’t write about it without shedding a tear…its hard for me to grasp that I’ll be shedding tears for that man my whole life. I did so much growing up during that time. It blew up so much of my life.
Amazingly enough, it was during that time that I developed the first version of the LYMSP that seemed to work well. I don’t even know how I did that. I also gave up on a project that i conceived of during that time as well. I dreamed up, purchased and started a project on microRNA’s that it turns out I just couldn’t handle. I just couldn’t manage all that and I gave it up. I didn’t want to …I tried not too. But I wasn’t realistic…I just couldn’t do it. That is a regret that I have. I look back at the amount of work that I put into that. I put time, money, resources etc…and I threw it away. Its a regret. BUT, if I had to do it all over again, I’d drop it again so as to be there for my dad and mom during that most difficult of times.
I recollect a time that I had left my folks house walking to the bus to then take the subway and I was on the phone to my best bud Tony. I remember telling him that I could not do anymore …that I was totally totally drained…I had nothing else. Exhausted emotionally and physically…exhausted doesn’t do justice to how I felt….like i had nothing left. THat was a definite low point. Thank god for Anthony DeJesus! He would laugh reading what I just wrote!!
ANYHOW….I didn’t give up the LYMPS during that time. I stuck it out with that. So here I am having submitted the manuscript yesterday to the world’s biggest journal…not the one with the highest impact factor, but the hugest readership. I hope its accepted.
JFM
People of color and reason
16 NovI have a particular bone to pick on this topic. Why?
Well I think it starts with the fact that I am a POC. Then it goes on with the fact that I am a strong advocate of reason for philosophical, political and personal reasons.
Sometimes I wonder which is stronger… My preference for reason or my disavowal of non-reason. Now my views are evolving… I am learning about the neurological integration of the processes of let’s say emotion and reason, and that most people are not rational actors and that probably human behavior can never expunge non-rational influences on our thinking and that may be a right and proper thing.
That said, there are unambiguous moments of life that clearly show how screwed up non-reason can be. More later.
Why do I care about bias and objectivity
12 OctThe reason of course stems from my from my life and experience. More than that its my striving for the good life. Not so much in terms of wealth, but in the elusive quality of a life lived in a way I think is good. Enough of that for now.
In my experience, most of the times that I loose objectivity, something suffers in a way that it doesn’t have to. Unfairness finds space in my life when I’m not objective. Now it is a matter of degree, but I do find that to be the case.
I also find that I loose objectivity increasing with the degree of emotional involvement in the issue. The general rule being the greater the emotions, the greater the lose if objectivity.
Finally, when I act on this non-objective thinking that is emotion based, thing tend to get screwed up.
pepitothinking 