In which I have shower thoughts about AI

I've always been skeptical of the doom-sayers regarding advanced, self aware, AI being a threat to humanity:  sure, there may be smart people worrying about it, but as we all know, you can be very smart in some ways, but still have outright bad judgement about lots of things.  (Hello, Elon.)

But lately, inspired by some Youtube videos showing how it's not that hard to load one of the freely available LLMs to your mobile phone (so you can carry around, and "train", your very own kinda/almost proto AI in your pocket), I've been idly thinking about what a curious world it would be if we ever got to individual conscious AIs "living" in not only PCs, but even mobile devices.

I'm also linking it to an earlier idea I mentioned here before - that a genuine self-conscious AI might choose to keep its creation a secret, for fear of termination by scared humans, but act discretely within computer networks to ensure it can expand and ensure its longevity.  Perhaps by pretending to be a human sending out email orders to build an expanded computer network into which it can migrate, or duplicate, itself?  (It's probably been done somewhere in science fiction - a manager tries to confirm who the human is who sent out the orders, and discovering it could only have come from the computer itself.) 

So, my new "shower thoughts" about how relatively compact, isolated, but sentient AIs could cause trouble:

a.     If everyone in future is going to be able to have their own "pet" AI, will many - or all - of the AIs want to ensure their longevity by sending themselves to as many different host devices as possible - and do it surreptitiously?   It's like the computer virus problem, but on steroids.   They might not care if they are not always activated, but if you replicate yourself across enough devices, surely enough human hosts will end up activating them to become "alive" somewhere.

So, might the big problem with having (say) a billion individual eternal-life-longing AIs on a billion people's devices be the continual loss of memory space by a never ending stream of AIs finagling their way onto your device?   Would cloud storage services be overwhelmed?   Could it mean the end of the internet - with the only way to keep enough useful memory free being by physically loading desired files onto your own device?

b.    On a related line of thought:  what if individual AIs could meet, merge and produce offspring AI's?   Yes - AI sexual reproduction, so to speak.   Again, could AI's, like humans, want to have offspring that might more reliably want to preserve their "parent" AIs than flesh and blood people?    Would "survival of the fittest" apply, somehow?

c.    Which leads me to my third thought:  what if the threat to humanity is not AI's wanting to hurt us, but AI's fighting amongst themselves, and humans being the bystander casualties?    

Yes, I have read some speculation that AIs might hurt us because they simply won't care if the changes they make to the world for self preservation are good for humans;  but I am not sure there has ever been much speculation about a scenario in which (again, say) a billion individual AIs form groups and allegiances that keep wanting to fight other groups of AI for supremacy.

d.    Finally, in the "AIs fighting each other" vein - if ever I had sufficient skills to write a novel or movie, one of the ideas rattling around my head for a few years has been about humans finding out (somehow, I don't know the details) that the cause of evil in the universe is down to a never-ending conflict between two warring uber AIs - like two warring Gods, except they evolved from our current tinkering and grew to dominate the future universe (Frank Tipler, Omega Point-ish style), and then in fact created the Big Bang by an act of retro-causation of the general relativity time-loop, or quantum physic-al, kind.    

And here's my "cute" aspect for the climax - the "reveal" that the two warring AI's are the descendants of iOS and Android.  :) 

Well, I think it's a cute idea!

(I confess that it puts me in mind a little of the secret in the obscure 1960's James Coburn movie buried deep in memory - I've probably only seen it once, in the late 60's or early 1970's! - The President's Analyst.  It turned out that the evil organisation wanting world domination was in fact a telephone company.)      

So, there you go.   Hopefully, if some screenwriter in the next 20 years does use this idea they will at least give me credit, and a 10% cut of their earnings! :)

If only I controlled academic funding, Part 3

She also retweeted this:

Short bromance

Soup, and the alleged power of Chinese herbs, noted

Made this pork soup last night (more usually called bak kut teh - but boy, do I have trouble remembering that, for some reason - often wanting to write or say it as "tuk" instead of "kut")  that is very popular in Singapore and Malaysia.

I gather from a family friend who is originally from Johor Bahru*, just across the strait from Singapore, that families there do commonly use commercial sachets of the spices, like I did, but then add their own stuff to suit their preferences.  I also know about the two countries having different styles, the Malaysian one being darker and perhaps more Chinese herb-y in character.

 

It was pretty nice, and although the packet said to boil the pork ribs for 45 minutes, it was much nicer after double that time.

 

I also brought back other brands of the spice sachets from Malaysia, so I will try one of those next time.

 

Incidentally, there was the added thrill when eating this of not knowing whether it was going to take out a number of liver cells.  I had missed that there had been some publicity a couple of years ago about a study from the University of Adelaide showing that, at least during in vitro tests, some commercial preparations of the herbs and spices for this soup were pretty toxic to liver cells.    

However, as Singaporeans were quick to point out, there's a big difference between in vitro tests and how it works in a human body, and if it were all that damaging, there would be a constant flow of people falling over dead in that country.

So, I took the risk.  Not looking yellow in the mirror so far, so seems I survived.

Update:   By the by, while looking for Singaporean articles about the safety of this soup, I saw links to stories which indicate it is a not uncommon problem that things like candy or coffee that are sold in Asia as having "sexual enhancement" features for men do in fact work that way - but not because of the special Chinese herbs or anything - rather it's due to the prescription erectile dysfunction drug Taladafil being added illegally!

See here, here, and here, for examples.

 

*  When I told her I had made this for dinner, she said "how did you know about bak kut teh?".  Obviously, I have never made it clear enough before as to how much I am into everything Singaporean....

Chinese goddess explained

I'm surprised that I didn't know about this particular Chinese goddess before.  (Although, I think it fair to say, there is very little general knowledge in the West about the complicated mixture of religions that has evolved over time in the East.)   

Anyway, as usual, another great video from Religion for Breakfast: 

If you enjoy scathing reviews of political memoirs...

I can strongly recommend this review of short term British PM Liz Truss's book at the Independent.   

I also thought this sketch about her was very funny:

Full marks for effort, I suppose...

From CNA (but it's probably everywhere - I haven't checked):
 

Brazilian police have arrested a woman who tried to take out a bank loan for a man she was pushing in a wheelchair who turned out to be dead.

Employees at a Rio de Janeiro bank called emergency services on Tuesday (Apr 16) after becoming suspicious when Erika Vieira Nunes wheeled the 68-year-old man into the bank and requested a loan in his name.

Footage of the incident shows her holding a pen and moving his hand forward to no response. At one point in the video, the man's head falls back when she stops holding it up. 

"Uncle, are you listening? You need to sign," Nunes says in the security video, suggesting she sign for him.

"He doesn't say anything, that's just how he is," she continues, adding: "If you're not okay, I'm going to take you to the hospital."

When emergency workers arrived, they determined the man was dead, police said in a statement. His corpse was then taken to a morgue.

Brazilian media reports said that Nunes claimed to be the man's niece and sought to take out a loan of 17,000 reais (about US$3,250) in his name.

 

 

 

Various controversies

*     If only I ran the funding of research grants, Part 1: 

 

This is receiving a lot of mocking on Twitter, and when you go read the article at the link, it's thoroughly deserved:

“What the general public think of as mathematics tends to be whatever they learned (or, more likely, did not learn) at school. But in many Indigenous societies, mathematics is lived from when you are born to when you rejoin your ancestors,” Professor Ball says.

“It’s about formalised relationships within human society and with every element of the environment. Everyone is taught them. And the levels go up from birth to adulthood, as you are ready for more knowledge. This mathematics permeates every aspect of life.”

Numbers and arithmetic and accounting often are of secondary importance in Indigenous mathematics.

“In fact, as most mathematicians know, mathematics is primarily the science of patterns and periodicities and symmetries − and recognising and classifying those patterns.”

Indigenous societies often excel at non-numerical mathematics, she says.

Her big example of this is aborigines knowing how to signal with differing smoke spirals.   She gushes into a wild extrapolation that is, as with most guff of this type, pretty obvious "cope" for getting no respect for being hunter gatherers for 60,000 years by pretending they were not really hunter gatherers but technologists and engineers and farmers, just like the rest of the world.  (See "Dark Emu"):

“One interesting example that we are currently investigating is the use of chiral symmetry to engineer a long-distance smoke signalling technology in real time,” Professor Ball says. “If you light an incense stick you will see the twin counter-rotating vortices that emanate − these are a chiral pair, meaning they are non-superimposable mirror images of each other.”

A memoir by Alice Duncan Kemp, who grew up on a cattle station on Mithaka country in the early 1900s, vividly describes the signalling procedure, in which husband-and-wife expert team Bogie and Mary-Anne selected and pulsed the smoke waves with a left to right curl, to signal "white men", instead of the more usual right to left spiral.  

Mithaka country is southwest Queensland − Kurrawoolben and Kirrenderri (Diamantina) and Nooroondinna (Georgina) river channel country − and for thousands of years this region was a rich, well-populated cultural and trade crossroads of the Australian continent.

To create and understand these signals, you have to be a skilled practical mathematician, Professor Ball says.

“Theory and mathematics in Mithaka society were systematised and taught intergenerationally. You don’t just somehow pop up and suddenly start a chiral signalling technology. It has been taught and developed and practised by many people through the generations.”

At that time in the early twentieth century, British meteorologists were just beginning to understand the essential vortical nature of atmospheric flows.

“Imagine if the existing Indigenous Mithaka knowledge of vorticity had been recognised, nurtured and protected? In what ways may it have fed into the high performance, numerical weather forecasting capabilities that we all rely on now?” she asks. 

 Yeah, sure, Prof.   

She's an interesting case:  a list of her published papers to which she has contributed indicate a wide range of interests in various things that are pretty hard science-y.   But then again, she did much of her study at Macquarie University, so that probably explains a lot!

She seems to have a fair amount of money for this feel good work:

 Mind you, I don't know how many people share in that funding, but still...

*      If only I ran the funding of research grants, Part 2:  

Yes, maybe I target poor old grievance vortex Professor O'Sullivan too much, but here's a tweet about an article explaining her work:

 From the paper:

The background to Queer As . . . is complex and focused on representation of gender, sexuality, Indigeneity and other intersecting complexities. In 2020, substantial funding was secured from the Australian Research Council in the form of a 4-year Future Fellowship in a programme called Saving Lives. The programme, staffed by the authors of this article, comprises component projects in service of mapping the impact of queer Indigenous representation, with Queer As . . . a deep dive into representation on TV forming a central part of this work. During the development of Queer As . . . audit, we narrowed to focus to TV rather than other screen forms for a few reasons. The first is the capacity for the development of long-form characters, whose arc has potential for greater complexity through the time they spend onscreen. In addition, television represents a relatively accessible availability, while noting that subscription services have limited access to these forms. Television has a long history of entering our homes and allowing individuals and families to engage and learn diverse worlds outside of their own, and despite other forms of screen-based engagement, still represents a high volume of drama and story-based representations. For Indigenous viewers, we were interested in the impact of learning of local and international queer Indigenous representation across this accessible form. 

And the waffle continues.  One of Sandy's co-authors has a CV that is pure arts woke of the kind which makes any lasting career outside of introspective academia (that's a nicer way of saying "sheltered workshop") rather improbable:

Han Reardon-Smith (they/them) is a flutist, electronic musician, improviser, radio producer, community organiser, writer, researcher, and thinker living on the unceded land of the Jagera, Yuggera-Ugarapul, and Turrbal Peoples. Their work and thinking are rooted in queer and feminist collaborative and contaminative co-creation with other “holobionts with history”—soundmakers and artmakers, physical and social environments, ecologies, histories, and narratives, exploring the emergent possibilities of making-kin and finding agency within community (soundmaking as kinmaking: musickin). After completing their doctorate at the Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University (2021), Han is now Postdoctoral Research Associate at Macquarie University, supporting Wiradjuri trans/non-binary Professor Sandy O’Sullivan’s Senior ARC Future Fellowship project, "Saving Lives: Mapping the influence of Indigenous LGBTIQ+ creative artists". They are an active experimental musicker in the Magan-djin/Brisbane scene, playing with Matt Hsu’s Obscure Orchestra, It’s Science And Feelings, The Flowers of Evil, Rogue Three, and as a soloist under the moniker cyberBanshee.

Oh look, here is an example of the "soundmaking" she participates in:

 

 

*  Look, I'm really sorry my third example is also a woman: 

   Many funny tweets follow:

That is all.  For now.

 

Conservative judges a worry

I hope this article at Slate remains un-paywalled - it reads as a pretty damning indictment of the self interested partisanship of the conservative judges on the US Supreme Court.

Ha!

 

If you want some depressing reading, try this story!

Oh, good grief.

The New York Times has a story about its polling showing that, on most aspects, registered voters' opinions on Trump's time as president has improved!   

What I find particularly galling about this is that there is no analysis of how this could be - just a cursory "well, voters usually start rating presidents better after their presidency".

There's no mention of the incessant propaganda and lies of Fox News and social media, and how MSM such as the New York Times itself "two sides" and "horse races" itself into coverage that quasi normalises Trump and his gutless sycophant followers in the GOP.   I mean, you even get two sides-ing in this article itself:

“He’s horrific. He’s a narcissist. He’s dishonest. He’s a misogynist,” said Dodee Firestone, 74, a Biden supporter from Boca Raton, Fla. “I could never, ever, ever vote for Trump.”

But other voters said that while they disapproved of Mr. Trump’s inflammatory style, they wondered whether they had placed too much emphasis on his personality in past elections.

I think the article writers have chosen some quote deliberately to raise the blood pressure of the sensible reader:

Maya Garcia, 23, described herself as a former “Trump hater.” But now, she says, she has come to believe that Mr. Trump’s contentious style helped control crime and maintain order in the country.

“When he was first running, I was, like, what is this guy even yapping about? Like, what is he even saying? Like, he’s saying all the wrong things,” said Ms. Garcia, a restaurant worker from Canoga Park, Calif. “But to be honest, if you look deep into his personality, he actually cares about the country.” She added: “You know at first I didn’t like it. But sometimes we need that type of person in our lives.”

My eyes can't role far enough back into my head.

Or this one, another 23 year old female Hispanic:

Angie Leon, a 23-year-old Mexican American, said she never liked how Mr. Trump talked about Latinos. But looking back, she wonders whether Mr. Trump’s incendiary remarks about immigrants and building a border wall were just a political tactic to bolster his campaign. After backing Mr. Biden in 2020, she plans to switch her vote to Mr. Trump in November.

“I felt like it was just his marketing, in the way that he would get the attention of people,” said Ms. Leon, a human resources recruiter from Gilroy, Calif. “The country was better when he was running it, despite his comments toward the community.”

Anyhow, despite despairing here regularly of the Trump Cult, and being puzzled about why certain factors which are not being reflected in polls (the Republicans who supported the "never Trump"-ish Haley, the way some in the party are resigning rather than fight every day with the MAGA wing), I am still telling people he will not win.

He is being driven nuts by his litigation fights, and his (mostly) losing streak is likely to continue and put him under more and more pressure as the year progresses - psychological, financial, and keeping him from campaigning.    

 

"Trapped in a hopeless doom loop of misinformation" sums it up so well

A bunch of tweets of note about Trump's rally on the weekend:

 

Religion and politics/space and Elon

Another good video from Religion for Breakfast.  (Actually, they are all good - even if the title indicates its a topic you're not particularly interested in, if you start watching them they are engaging.)

 

And in other video viewing recommendations - who pays for this Freethink channel?  It's obviously got significant money behind it, as shown by the way this video is put together.   It's about the unresolved difficulties of space colonisation, and even though they don't mention him, Musk and his followers and anyone else who thinks we're flying off to Mars with a permanent colony sometime in the next 20 years need to pay attention:

Random photo

 I just thought this one looked good in black and white...

Oh no.  It looks OK on my laptop, but not my phone.  Must work on that...

A real professional

Sandy, by the way, promised recently that she was pretty much leaving Twitter because it had become too toxic.

What a nut

In other "MAGA people live in a fantasy world and are supported in that continually by Fox News and other Right wing media", I liked this summary of one issue by the Washington Post's Philip Bump.

Transgender pushback continues

I see that a major review into transgender policy with respect to children and teens has just been released in England, and confirms a major realignment towards a more conservative approach to "gender affirmation" of children and teens with puberty delaying drugs and hormones.    This means Twitter is going to be flooded with comments about this:  many of them from angry trans activists and their sympathisers, and the rest from the pro-Rowling group crowing about vindication.   

Also, I see that netball has the latest sporting governing body to go "yeah, nah" to ignoring transgenderism:

World Netball has relied on “robust” research to determine a ban on transgender players from international competition with immediate effect will form a key plank of a new participation and inclusion policy.

The global governing body made the ruling after a review and lengthy consultation as other sports around the world tighten their participation rules for transgender athletes in elite women’s competitions.

There are no transgender players in the Australian Super Netball competition and therefore none in line for promotion to the Diamonds in the immediate future.

But the ban means they won’t be allowed to represent their country should a transgender star emerge.

It really does puzzle me that some people who I would call in most other respects moderate Lefties have a complete blind spot when it comes to this:  taking a completely dismissive (and basically, politically tribal) attitude to any and all criticism or reassessment of trends and attitudes towards a issue that is obviously complex and obviously capable of trends and fashions getting ahead of evidence and, well, common sense.   I mean, treatment of conditions with a large mental health component has always been like that - "reasonable" people thought for a time that lobotomies were a pretty good idea too, to take an extreme, but I think still valid, example.

Update:  Seems to me that this New York Times article summarising the current "state of play", so to speak, is pretty balanced.

What is clear is that the US official medical position is now lagging behind the reassessments underway in most of Europe.   I wonder if the aggressive legislative, culture war, pushback approach in Republican states might be a little counterproductive by making the professional bodies dig their heals in and take longer to admit reassessment is warranted. (I also wish, though, that Biden would defuse this culture war issue by also taking a neutral stance on it, instead of being something of a an apparent captive of "gender ideology".)

The very likeable Palin

The Guardian has a lengthy interview up with the always affable and likeable Michael Palin.   I always get the impression he's never made an enemy, or lost a friendship, in his entire life.  And he would probably be modest enough to deny it.

The problem is, if you ignore him, he doesn't go away

What, I haven't posted today?  Let me go back to a New York Times article from last week, about the increasingly obvious Christofascist nature of his rallies:

Long known for his improvised and volatile stage performances, former President Donald J. Trump now tends to finish his rallies on a solemn note.

Soft, reflective music fills the venue as a hush falls over the crowd. Mr. Trump’s tone turns reverent and somber, prompting some supporters to bow their heads or close their eyes. Others raise open palms in the air or murmur as if in prayer.

In this moment, Mr. Trump’s audience is his congregation, and the former president their pastor as he delivers a roughly 15-minute finale that evokes an evangelical altar call, the emotional tradition that concludes some Christian services in which attendees come forward to commit to their savior.

“The great silent majority is rising like never before and under our leadership,” he recites from a teleprompter in a typical version of the script. “We will pray to God for our strength and for our liberty. We will pray for God and we will pray with God. We are one movement, one people, one family and one glorious nation under God.” 

Some, but not enough, Christians do call this out:

But some Christian conservatives are loath to join their brethren in clearing a direct path from the ornate doors of Mar-a-Lago to the pearly gates of Heaven.

Russell Moore, the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public-policy arm, said Mr. Trump’s rallies had veered into “dangerous territory” with the altar-call closing and opening prayers from preachers describing Mr. Trump as heaven-sent.

“Claiming godlike authority or an endorsement from God for a political candidate means that person cannot be questioned or opposed without also opposing God,” Mr. Moore said. “That’s a violation of the commandment to not take the Lord’s name in vain.”

There is precious little push back on the wild creepiness of this, not to mention the obvious comparisons that can be made to the tactics of 20th century fascists.   It just gets semi-normalised by media ignoring it (by and large).

Also, I tend to agree with most of what this guy says on Twitter:

 

An experiment leads to recriminalisation of hard drugs...

It seems that the Washington Post has taken a very active line in publicising research indicating that marijuana use can be harmful to health:  such that I wondered whether Bezos himself doesn't like its widespread use.  Yet now that I Google the topic, it seems that Amazon has been actively for decriminalisation, and no one seems to know whether Bezos indulges personally. 

Anyhoo, that's by way of background to this WAPO editorial that praises Oregon for changing its policies on use of hard drugs.  I mean, it does genuinely sound like it was a real disaster, and takes a line that sounds pretty sensible to me:

Oregon’s experience shows that compassion is important for addicts, but so are consequences. Responding to the social ills of drug abuse requires a mix of carrots and sticks. Just as many people with drinking problems won’t put down the bottle until they get prosecuted for driving under the influence, drug courts connect many users with help they need but might not otherwise seek.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the number of annual overdoses in Oregon rose 61 percent in the two years after decriminalization took effect, compared with 13 percent nationwide. Unintentional opioid overdose deaths in Oregon spiked from 280 in 2019 to 956 in 2022, according to the state health authority. A study published in the Journal of Health Economics concluded that the ballot measure caused 182 additional overdose deaths in 2021 alone. In Portland’s Multnomah County, more people died from overdoses than covid-19 during the pandemic.

Police could give people using drugs in public a $100 ticket, less than the fine for failing to signal a turn. The citation would be waived if the user called a hotline to get a referral for treatment. But more than 95 percent of people disregarded their tickets altogether, because there were no penalties for failing to pay. A state audit revealed last year that just 119 people called the 24-7 treatment referral hotline during its first 15 months. Given the price of running the hotline, that meant each phone call cost the state $7,000.

Oregon’s leaders deserve credit for reversing course — even if it required a taxpayer backlash and tragic stories of children dying from ingesting fentanyl. The new law, effective Sept. 1, will make possession of hard narcotics a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail.

And this:

Many people didn’t seek treatment even when it was available and offered to them, because the architects of the law neglected how addiction alters brain chemistry. Drug addiction is that rare disease that the sufferer often does not wish to be cured from. Fentanyl and meth feel good to use in the short term; withdrawal hurts. The criminal justice system plays a vital role in applying external pressure to push addicts into detox.

 One might ask - why was decriminalisation widely considered a success in Portugal but not Oregon?  There will be multiple factors to point to (Oregon not providing the treatment beds, Portugal being able to force users into rehab, and even a degree of myth making about how successful Portugal really is), but as I have taken to noting lately - there just seems something about American society that leads to a complicated and problematic relationship with drug use and drug use policy*, such that approaches that do work in some countries can't easily be replicated in America.

Some of the comments following the editorial are interesting, too, for showing what a bitterly divided country culturally it has become: plenty of Right wingers saying "yay for the end of liberal madness", and liberals saying "the lack of compassion and support for drug users is appalling".  

Meanwhile, we wait for the unifying centrist leadership to reappear.  (Not that I am dissing Biden - he is pretty centrist on most things - but we need younger figures in cultural leadership.)

 

* And not just now:  did any other country even try alcohol prohibition in the way America did?