This is the snapshot of my daily habit tracker for August. I have started with a smaller list — but I want to make sure the task itself doesn’t become a burden.
A brilliant essay at New Yorker on A.I. and intellectual debt, output of an often employed “approach to discovery — answers first, explanations later”. I was aware of, but never thought in detail on what would be the implications of letting independent, isolated machine learning models interact freely. This example is indeed eyeopening.
In 2011, a biologist named Michael Eisen found out, from one of his students, that the least-expensive copy of an otherwise unremarkable used book—“The Making of a Fly: The Genetics of Animal Design”—was available on Amazon for $1.7 million, plus $3.99 shipping. The second-cheapest copy cost $2.1 million. The respective sellers were well established, with thousands of positive reviews between them. When Eisen visited the book’s Amazon page several days in a row, he discovered that the prices were increasing continually, in a regular pattern. Seller A’s price was consistently 99.83 per cent that of Seller B; Seller B’s price was reset, every day, to 127.059 per cent of Seller A’s. Eisen surmised that Seller A had a copy of the book, and was seeking to undercut the next-cheapest price. Seller B, meanwhile, didn’t have a copy, and so priced the book higher; if someone purchased it, B could order it, on that customer’s behalf, from A.
Each seller’s presumed strategy was rational. It was the interaction of their algorithms that produced irrational results. The interaction of thousands of machine-learning systems in the wild promises to be much more unpredictable.
Yep, indeed. May be such interactions need more control? May be we have one more thing about AI to worry about?
Much of the timely criticism of artificial intelligence has rightly focussed on the ways in which it can go wrong: it can create or replicate bias; it can make mistakes; it can be put to evil ends. We should also worry, though, about what will happen when A.I. gets it right.
Black coffee or a green tea - what would sit next to me as I get started on my next project? Uhmm … nah. Got to be the good old regular chai! ✍🏽
I’m seriously considering buying an instant camera — thought of having an analog note of a memory is genuinely appealing. However, I do wonder what am I signing up for? Would it stay locked in a drawer somewhere? What should I even look out for if I do decide to take the leap?
Written languages based on alphabets are one of the great human accomplishments. (…) when I write the word “human” you can fill in what you imagine a human to look like. The word itself carries some fundamental attributes of being a human but the rest is intentionally underspecified. This allows us to use a single word that applies independent of gender, nationality, race, clothing, etc. That is the power of language based on alphabets, because the letters themselves carry no meaning. Even the meaning of a word can evolve over time. For example, the word “couple” at one point might have meant a male-female couple but is now used to describe any two people who are paired.
A thoughtful essay, but I completely disagree. There is an innate assumption here that everyone can read and write English alphabet. It is, in reality, not the case. There are tons of alphabets across nations and regions. In India itself, there are 11 alphabets. My mom can fluently read and write Devanagari, but that is not the case with English alphabets.
Emoji cross the confines of regions - primarily because it is visual. Is it perfect? Of course, not — we have managed to mess up the standards in implementation across platforms.
However, at least, I can send my mom a “smile” emoji without spelling it out in Devanagari. It was the first thing that lent her confidence to start using smartphones, way before Devanagari support was even introduced.
A couple of my colleagues have been debating on since how long the dinosaurs have been extinct — one claims it was 200 years. Another says 2000 years. And am wondering who should I correct first? Or should I even correct anyone? Because I think it is completely meaningless.
Given a choice, would you prefer a prepaid unlimited plan for something or pay as you use? More things I review recently — mobile data plans, cable, broadband — I realize pay-as-you-use end up being costlier. I do not understand the business sense behind this.
I came across an interesting project - rwtxt - which is now serving the ideas subdomain of my website. I was, since long, in search of a simple writing pad to capture quick thoughts - light enough to be accessible from mobile. This fits the bill, so in trial mode now. (h/t @eli)
It has been pouring down incessantly since yesterday. The sound of stillness such that cloudburst spreads is both soothing and annoying at the same time. The wall of water stirs the emotions, but also keeps them lingering within without an outlet. Nothing, other than words.
I realized FaceId does not recognize me while am yawning. I doubt it may not even be a bug - may be it’s a feature. “If you are yawning such that your face is distorted, may be you aren’t awake enough to be allowed to work the device?”