Tag Archives: engineering

The field of AI

<< Creating Malware: Technology as Alchemy? >>

Engineering —in a naive, idealized sense— is different from science in that it creates (in)tangible artifacts, as imposed & new realities, while answering a need

It does so by claiming a solution to a (perceived) problem that was expressed by some (hopefully socially-supportive) stakeholders. Ideally (& naively), the stakeholders equal all (life), if not a large section, of humanity

Who’s need does ChatGPT answer when it aids to create malware?

Yes, historically the stakeholders of engineering projects were less concerned with social welfare or well-being. At times (too often), an engineered deliverable created (more) problems, besides offering the intended, actual or claimed solution.

What does ChatGPT solve?

Does it create a “solution” for a problem that is not an urgency, not important and not requested? Does its “solution” outweigh its (risky / dangerous) issues sufficiently for it to be let loose into the wild?

Idealized scientific methodology –that is, through a post-positivist lens– claims that scientific experiments can be falsified (by third parties). Is this to any extent enabled in the realm of Machine Learning and LLMs; without some of its creators seen blaming shortcomings on those who engage in falsification (i.e., trying to proverbially “break” the system)? Should such testing not have been engaged into (in dialog with critical third parties), prior to releasing the artifact into the world?

Idealized (positivist) scientific methodology claims to unveil Reality (Yes, that capitalized R-reality that has been and continues to be vehemently debated and that continues to evade capture). The debates aside, do ChatGPT, or LLMs in general, create more gateways to falsity or tools towards falsehood, rather than toward this idealized scientific aim? Is this science, engineering or rather a renaissance of alchemy?

Falsity is not to be confused with (post-positivist) falsification nor with offering interpretations, the latter which Diffusion Models (i.e., text2pic) might be argued to be offering (note: this too is and must remain debatable and debated). However, visualization AI technology did open up yet other serious concerns, such as in the realm of attribution, (data) alienation and property. Does ChatGPT offer applicable synthesis, enriching interpretation, or rather, negative fabrication?

Scientific experiment is preferably conducted in controlled environments (e.g., a lab) before letting its engineered deliverables out into the world. Realtors managing ChatGPT or recent LLMs do not seem to function within the walls of this constructed and contained realm. How come?

Business, state incentives, rat races, and financial investments motivate and do influence science and surely engineering. Though is the “democratization” of output from the field of AI then with “demos” in mind, or rather yet again with ulterior demons in mind?

Is it then too farfetched to wonder whether the (ideological) attitudes surrounding, and the (market-driven) release of, such constructs is as if a ware with hints, undertones, or overtones, of maliciousness? If not too outlandish an analogy, it might be a good idea to not look, in isolation, at the example of a technology alone.

text | wondering, The field of AI

<< Not Condemning the Humane into a Bin of Impracticality >>


There’s a tendency to reassign shared human endeavors into a corner of impracticality, via labels of theory or thing-without-action-nor-teeth: Philosophy (of science & ethics), art(ists),(fore)play, fiction, IPR, consent & anything in-between measurability of 2 handpicked numbers. Action 1: Imagine a world without these. Action 2: Imagine a world only with these.

Some will state that if it can’t be measured it doesn’t exist. If it doesn’t exist in terms of being confined as a quantitative pool (e.g. data set) it can be ignored. Ignoring can be tooled in a number of ways: devalue, or grab to revalue through one’s own lens on marketability.

(re-)digitization, re-categorization, re-patterning of the debased, to create a set for remodeled reality, equals a process that is of “use” in anthropomorphization, and mechanomorphization: a human being is valued as datasets of “its” output, e.g., a mapping of behavior, results of an (artistic or other multimodal) expression, a KPI, a score.

While technology isn’t neutral, the above is neither singularly a technological issue. It is an ideologically systematized issue with complexity and multiple vectors at play (i.e. see above: that what seems of immediate practicality, or that what is of obvious value, is not dismissed).

While the scientific methods & engineering methods shouldn’t be dismissed nor confused, the humans in their loops aren’t always perceiving themselves as engines outputting discrete measurables. Mechanomorphism takes away the “not always” & replaces it with a polarized use vs waste

Could it be that mechanomorphism, reasonably coupled with anthropomorphism, is far more a concern than its coupled partner, which itself is a serious process that should also allow thought, reflection, debate, struggle, negotiation, nuance, duty-of-care, discernment & compassion?

epilogue:

…one could engage in the following over-simplifying, dichotomizing and outrageous exercise: if we were to imagine that our species succeeded in collectively transforming humanity (as how the species perceives its own ontological being) to be one of “we are best defined and relatable through mechanomorphic metaphors, relations and datafying processes,” then any anthropomorphism within technologies (with a unique attention to those associated with the field of “AI”) might be imagined to be(come) easier to be accomplished, since it would simply have to mimic itself: machine copies machine to become machine. Luckily this is absurd as much as Guernica is cubistically surreal.

Packaging the above, one might then reread Robert S. Lynd’s words penned in 1939: “…the responsibility is to keep
everlastingly challenging the present with the question: But what is it that we human beings want, and what things would have to be done, in what ways and in what sequence, in order to change the present so as to achieve it?”

(thank you to Dr. WSA for triggering this further imagination)

Lynd, R. S. (1939). Knowledge For What?. Princeton: Princeton University Press

text | poetry, text | wondering, thoughts of the wise old woman

<< Non-transparency >>


Some of us (I included) request transparency while various attributes & processes are narrated in our lives in a manner to allow comfort in a lack of transparency

As humans some of us are open, & to some extent enabled, to allow both simultaneously. Some can accept adaptation & change, depending on various influencing vectors

Collectively we built entire institutions around lack of transparency. We created these because they allow us a substitute for difficult to understand or difficult to accept results of the process of transparency. Or to control that what “must” be understood by others

Over the hundreds of thousands of years, our species created work-arounds & “pervertedly” took note of (understandably) avoided transparency via narration. Here “pervertedly” means “having altered the direction away from its initial course, meaning or state;” one can think of change, fluidity, dynamics, innovation, transformation or myth

This previous (ie the human, shared & individual histories), & the suggested “perversions,” quickly (in astronomical scales) started to be convoluted with control, & this via any narration which has been collectively embraced. Some of our transparency-hiding narratives are not falsifiable. This creates tensions & harmonies. Request or imposition for corroboration is, at times, systemically opposed, unless the imposer is relentless

We delegate transparency into a blackbox by a different name, while shining bright & sparkling lights upon it, & while collectively dancing around the bonfire lit in its name

Santa is real; the proverbial one & the one living on the North Pole. Arthur C. Clark said it eloquently. I will remain opaque as to which of his 3 laws I am alluding. & yet, Arthur, Santa & I have one thing in common: the joy for aesthetics, poetics & compassion toward the other; at least to bring them moments of uplifting escapism or support

The human choreography is one where we consider the balancing act of when to stimulate transparency & when to obfuscate. If all needs to be simple, clear & straight, we are equally doomed as when we tell blissful stories irrespective of the potentially disastrous or undesirable outcomes to oneself & the relations of oneself with any other; human & non-human

#Transparency & #understandability are interlinked. With these, so are #auditability & #explainability. Eg: by allowing us physical, emotional, intellectual, imaginative, relational & spiritual access to augmenting our senses with a highly powerful microscope or telescope of any engineered types; be these scientific &/or poetic. These nuanced balancing processes can be found in relations with technologies, spouse, students, citizens, communities, markets, policies & larger ecologies. Alternatively these relations can be shattered, brushed under the carpet, crudely abused or unwarranted guarded for the sake of guarding & no longer for the sake of #compassion for life as evolving in complex, paradoxical, diverse relations

text | wondering

AI, Impact Investment, Ethics & Deeply Human-Centered Innovation

Contents

 

This class of drugs also includes buy sildenafil india and viagra. What is the reason of Kamagra’s popularity? Increasing number of people are turning to the internet for their medication requirements, and this includes over-the-counter medications as well as prescribed ones like brand viagra overnight. Many men as well as couples prefer order generic viagra over other ED drugs. cialis causes fast and effective reaction by helping the men to get prolonged, harder and better erection. Many surveys revealed that after having a range of effective ED pills, still many order cialis canada of the ED sufferers for their sexual disorder.