Artificial Intelligence: Knocking on the doors of Creation

Since the later half of 20th century, the world has witnessed an exponential growth in information technology. Internet, cellular phones, semiconductor microprocessors, smartphones, supercomputers... One big wave after another, technological innovation spread like wildfire, pushing the boundaries of human experience to more and more alien territories. (1) Off late, the disruption has been driven by cloud storage, blockchain, cryptocurrencies, artificial intelligence, machine learning & even quantum computing. The boundaries between real & virtual, natural & artificial are blurring rapidly. And now we are at the cusp of creating new autonomous entities that can learn on their own & think for themselves. The fiction of Nueromancer, Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy & Star trek is about to become the reality. What an exciting time to be alive!

But not everyone shares this excitement. There has been plenty of fear-mongering, negative media coverage and controversial headlines about employees being replaced with robots. Some prominent scientists- the likes of Stephan Hawking, Nick Bostrom, Bill Bibbard- and leading innovators including Elon Musk, Peter Norwig have expressed their concern over the pace of AI development and its potential societal impact. (2)

Without a doubt, the potential applications & benefits of AI are enormous. Throughout our evolutionary journey, humans have added a huge value to life through our intelligence & curiosity. But we cannot realistically predict what miracles we might achieve when our intelligence is supplemented by AI tools. Perhaps the problems that are currently beyond human understanding or capacity can only be resolved with a helping hand of a super-intelligent system. So, let me briefly make a case for AI.

Science works on the principles of repetition and agreement. What one scientist discovers is validated by another by repeating the experiment in various conditions. But our understanding may be implicitly biased or flawed as we -through our human bodies- perceive the universe in a particular way, which is limited by and filtered through our senses. So our perception of reality is just our point of view; it may not be the reality of the universe. That's why we need other beings to build more consensus on reality. And due to the present lack of other intelligent civilizations, the only option we have is to 'create' something intelligent and give it its own will and sensory assets- an Artifical Intelligence. Once such an intelligent system becomes autonomous and starts running the same scientific experiments as us, it can actively participate in the scientific process of hypotheses testing. And perhaps then we may get closer to the truth.

Like it or not, AI is here to stay & it will have an unprecedented impact on human civilization. It may very well turn out to be our greatest discovery, or our final one. Therefore, we cannot ignore the pitfalls that come with it - remember how nuclear research in min-twentieth century quickly escalated into a nuclear war? History tells us that everything that rises too quickly falls even faster. The same technology that can cure cancer, solve world hunger and eradicate poverty can lead us to a dark dystopic future. So we better watch out! Because if we don't, this famous quote from Neuromancer may haunt us forever.

"I'm the matrix, Case."
Case laughed. "Where's that get you?"
"Nowhere. Everywhere. I'm the sum total of the works, the whole show."

IBM's Art with Watson: This is one of the first artworks created by IBM's Watson- a cognitive system that combines artificial intelligence and sophisticated analytical software for optimal performance. It is named for IBM's founder, Thomas J. Watson. https://www.ibm.com/watson/artwithwatson/

Foot Notes:

1. The disruption is elegantly captured in Moore’s law

2.  Read Research Priorities for Robust and Beneficial Artificial Intelligence: an Open Letter

Hypatia: The forgotten treasure of Alexandria

"History is written by the Victors." - Winston Churchill

The story of human civilization is littered with examples which prove that our historic records are just a version of events carefully selected and presented by the victor. And this victor, without a question, has always been a man. Such is the sorry state of affairs that an entire half of human society has been denied the right of self-expression and freedom of thought for centuries, just based on a random & natural genetic outcome. And whenever a woman has stepped up to challenge this rigged system, she has been summarily suppressed, shunned & publicly vilified. No matter what their internal differences, men have gone out of the way to unite and fight against this singular threat to their dominance.

This is a story of a woman in the 4th century CE, who was doomed because of her own brilliance - Hypatia. I got introduced to Hypatia through the book I am currently reading- 'The Swerve: How the World Became Modern' by Stephan Greenblatt.

Hypatia was a Greek born, raised in Alexandria, Egypt. Imagine a world where social order is paramount and religious dogma is the law of the land. All the high posts in magistrate, education and religious matters are held by men. Now imagine yourself as a woman in such a society.

The contemporary Christian historian Socrates of Constantinople described her as follows in his Ecclesiastical History:

"There was a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon, who made such attainments in literature and science, as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time. Having succeeded to the school of Plato and Plotinus, she explained the principles of philosophy to her auditors, many of whom came from a distance to receive her instructions. On account of the self-possession and ease of manner which she had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind, she not infrequently appeared in public in the presence of the magistrates. Neither did she feel abashed in going to an assembly of men. For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more."

It was said that Hypatia wore a philosopher's robes (known as Tribon) in public, as a male would. She drove her own chariot, sailed her own boat, rode a horse alone out into the deserts around Alexandria. She could stand and speak before thousands of men with confidence and authority. Before she was twenty, she surpassed her famous father in mathematics and astronomy. Science, as we know it now, did not exist in 400 CE. Mathematics mingled with divination, cosmology and astronomy went hand in hand with astrology. Alchemy was a secret 'science' that did indeed work with metals and their property, but its deeper truer purpose was the manipulation of the 'spirit'. In the mystery teachings, and Hypatia was a leading teacher of the ancient mysteries, alchemy was practiced with her inner circle in an attempt to reach the Divine. So, now it's easy to see why many men perceived her as a threat- a young, beautiful, intelligent, mysterious & risk taking philosopher. Jealous with her intellect and threatened by her charm, her enemies would whisper to each other that she must be a witch. But never openly in the public.

Alexandria was going through a religious turmoil at the time. There were 3 different groups co-existing for centuries in Alexandria- Jews, Christians and Hellenistic Pagans. Hypatia was a Pagan who were thought of at that time as practitioners of black magic. Ciril- an ardent opposer of Jews and Pagans - was recently appointed as the patriarch of Alexandria by the Roman Empire. The moment he took over Alaxandria, violent skirmishes broke out at the theater, in the streets, and in front of churches and synagogues. Jews taunted and threw stones at Christians; Christians broke into and plundered Jewish shops and homes.  Cyril demanded the expulsion of the city’s large Jewish population. Alexandria’s governor Orestes, a moderate Christian, refused, and this refusal was supported by the city’s pagan intellectual elite whose most distinguished representative was the influential and immensely learned Hypatia.

Hypatia’s support to Orestes may have set the unstoppable chain reaction that led to her demise. Ciril started circulating rumors that Hypatia's absorption in astronomy, mathematics, and philosophy proves that she is a witch, practicing black magic.

In March 415 the crowd, whipped into a frenzy by one of Cyril’s henchmen, erupted. Returning to her house from a temple, Hypatia was lynched from her chariot and taken to a church that was formerly a temple to the emperor. There, after she was publicly stripped, her skin was flayed off with broken bits of pottery. The mob then dragged her corpse outside the city walls and burned it.

Their hero Cyril was eventually rewarded with sainthood. 

Hypatia's murder was symbolic of the Alexandria's intellectual atrophy & eventual downfall. Even with a privileged background & high social connections, a woman could not make it in the ancient world. I quiver to think of all those women who were not so privileged; what must have been their fate?

We owe everything to all those forgotten women... The silent underground streams who have mad the ground above greener...

The roll call by Elizabeth Thompson (1874)
Reference: The Lady Vanishes- Revisionist History by Malcolm Gladwell http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/01-the-lady-vanishes

Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values

Was truly fortunate to read this masterpiece by Robert M Pirsig recently. It's such a radical work of philosophy, science & art, I was completely blown away by it. It's a deep inquiry into what is the meaning of 'quality' and how to distinguish it. 

When it comes to understanding & defining quality, the questions that everyone struggles with are:

1. If quality exists in the object,  why can't scientific instruments detect it? 
2. Is quality subjective? If so, quality would not reside in the object but in the observer. 

Since all the traditional methods of philosophy & science fall short to answer these questions, the author has laid down a completely out-of-the box contextual road-map. He states that "Quality is not a thing. It is an event. It’s a place where subject meets the object. An event where the subject becomes aware of the object... People differ about quality, not because quality is different, but because people are different in terms of experience... Quality is the continuous stimulus which our environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live. All of it."  

I was particularly struck by the following conclusion- 

A person who sees quality and feels it as s/he works, is a person who cares. A person who cares about what s/he sees and does, is a person who is bound to be given by quality. 

Sharing here some notes from this book that I found extremely useful in dealing with 'lack of gumption'. To the first time reader, it may sound a bit confusing. So I encourage everyone to read this book for themselves. These notes are just for the reference once you want to actually practice the Zen & the Art in real life.

Gumption traps:

The author calls this philosophy as 'Gumptionology 101—An examination of affective, cognitive and psychomotor blocks in the perception of Quality relationships.

Since it’s a result of the perception of Quality, a gumption trap, consequently, can be defined as anything that causes one to lose sight of Quality, and thus lose one’s enthusiasm for what one is doing.

There are 2 major types of gumption traps- Set backs and Hang-ups:

1. Setbacks (primarily caused by external conditions) 
1. Out-of-sequence-reassembly: occurs when  you're doing something for the first time. When you are almost done, you find something that's left out or is unexplained. 
• Solution: As you go about the process, maintain a thorough log of what you did, when,  how & why you did it. 
2. Intermittent failure setback: the thing that is wrong becomes right all of a sudden just as you start to fix it.
• Solution: Observe correlations. When is the failure occurring, in which conditions, what time, etc. 
3. Parts setback: when parts are to be replaced, you don't get the right parts. You may have mispecified the part, the dealer may have noted the wrong information, the part may be overpriced, etc. 
• Solution: Deal with the one supplier who is most cooperative. Keep an eye on the price-cutters, they sometimes have have good deals. Take calipers with you to measure the new part. Manufacturer your own parts. 
2. Hang-ups (primarily caused by internal conditions) 
1. Value traps: Which block affective understanding...
1. Value rigidity: Inability to revalue what one sees because of rigid commitment to previous values. The facts are right in front of you but you don’t see them. If your values are rigid, you cannot learn new facts. Happens in ‘premature diagnosis’, meaning, you are sure what’s wrong with something but then when it turns out that you are wrong, you are stuck.
• Solution: Slow down deliberately and just observe the facts. Evaluate whether what you thought was important was really important. Be with it for a while. What it the way you watch a line of fishing, and before long, you will get a nibble, a little fact asking in a timid, humble way if you are interested in it. That’s the way world keeps on happening. Be interested in it.
2. Ego: If you have a high evaluation of yourself then your ability to recognize new traps is weakened. Your ego isolates you from quality reality. When the facts show that you goofed up, you don’t accept it. The false information makes you ‘look good’ 
• Solution: Be modest. If that’s not possible, fake modesty to begin with.
3. Anxiety: You are so sure you’ll do everything wrong, you are afraid to anything at all! This makes it difficult to start anything new. So you end up fixing things that don’t need fixing & chase after imaginary ailments. You jump to wild conclusions and build all kinds of errors in the machine because of your own nervousness. These errors, when made, confirm your original underestimation of yourself. This leads to more anxiety & further errors- a self-stroking cycle.
• Solution: Work out your anxieties on paper. Read everything on the subject. Remember, it’s peace of mind you are after and not just fixing a problem. Understand the even the masters or experts goof up once in a while.
4. Boredom: You are off the ‘quality track’, you are not seeing things freshly, you’ve lost your beginner’s mind and your motorcycle is in grave danger. Boredom means your gumption supply is low & must be replenished before anything else is done.
• Solution: Stop. Do something else. If you don’t stop, a huge mistake is inevitable. Sleep. Get some coffee.
5. Impatience: You underestimate the amount of time an activity may take. And when things don’t work out, you impatience turns into anger. 
• Solution: Allow an infinite time for jobs, particularly the new or unfamiliar ones. 
2. Truth traps: These block cognitive understanding.
• In Japan, there's a concept of ‘Mu’ meaning ‘no thing’ or ’no class; not one not zero, not yes not no'. It points outside the dualistic way we see the world. It states that the context of the question is such that the question becomes too small for the truth of the answer. Our dualistic mind tends to see such Mu occurrences in nature as contextual cheating, or irrelevance, but Mu is found everywhere in nature & in science & nature’s answers are never irrelevant. (It's similar to the Quantum computing concept, where qubits do not represent the traditional dualism of 1 & 0, but 1 & 0 occur simultaneously.)
• Solution: When you come across a Mu, don’t brush it under the carpet hastily. It is an important answer. It tells the scientist that the context of the question is too small for nature to answer. So enlarge the context of the question and ask again. 
3. Muscle traps: They block psychomotor behaviors.
• Muscular insensitivity: Occurs due to lack of kinesthesia, a failure to realize that although the motorcycle is rugged and strong externally, the inside mechanisms that actually run it are delicate. This is what’s known as a ‘mechanic’s feel’.
• Solution: Realize the difference between ‘finger tight’, ’snug’ and ’tight’. Exercise ‘care’. 

“Well, if I get around all those gumption traps, then will I have the thing licked?” 

The answer, of course, is no, you still haven’t got anything licked. You’ve got to live right too. It’s the way you live that predisposes you to avoid the traps and see the right facts. You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. That’s the way all the experts do it. 

The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn’t separate from the rest of your existence. If you’re a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren’t working on your machine, what trap avoidances, what gimmicks, can make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh? It all goes together. But if you’re a sloppy thinker six days a week and you really try to be sharp on the seventh, then maybe the next six days aren’t going to be quite as sloppy as the preceding six. What I’m trying to come up with on these gumption traps, I guess, is shortcuts to living right.
  

The real cycle you’re working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be “out there” and the person that appears to be “in here” are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together.      
   

(Thanks to Par Bolina, MD for recommending this book to me. You are an inspiring leader, mentor and beyond all, a great human being. Thank you for everything.) 

 

UK May... or May not

Today we saw yet another turbulence in United Kingdom’s political climate. Theresa May’s gambit of calling for reelections, even when her party enjoyed a comfortable majority in the parliament, failed miserably. Although the May led Tories managed to retain their ’single largest party’ position, they have now lost independent majority. Other conservative leaning parties like DUP have come to their rescue and helped them form a minority government, the political life expectancy of which is uncertain. 

Theresa May was playing for a strong, authoritative entrance into the upcoming Brexit negotiations. She went all-in. But the results, to her dis‘may', have stripped away any hint of fortitude from her government. Her dream of consolidating voter base & rallying huge public support has gone to dust. In terms of absolute voting percentages, May has been able to improve her catchment by 5.5%, but the gains made by the Labour party were much higher at 9.5%. Thus, May's bold & ambitious move has backfired.

This is yet another example of a divided society that is unable to deliver a decisive verdict. The voters did not keep in mind the larger national consequences of this election and have further weakened their country's global position as a result.

But while many media channels are trashing these elections as a laughable gaffe or a political suicide, we must commend May for taking a chance- risking everything she has on this single decision. It’s easy to judge people in retrospect. But history dictates that no greatness is ever achieved without putting something important at stake. Going into this election, May fully understood the risks involved. She fell short of running an effective campaign to garner support. And even as she tenaciously clings on to power in an even more precarious position, I have no doubt that she will outlive this mess & outperform her critic’s expectations.

As someone aptly put it- ‘Nobody won these elections today, but the UK definitely lost'.