What we've got here is failure to communicate

If you have ever watched America's Funniest Home Videos, you know that towards the end the studio audience votes for the top three by using the clickers they have been handed.  Those clickers made their way into higher education, too.  Of course!  I did not ever want to use them in my classes.  It is a wonderful tool, no doubt, but it depended on the sincerity of students to use that in order to advance their own learning.  I was afraid that without that sincere interest in learning, well, the disaster that education is will become a catastrophe.

Clickers and bubble-in answer sheets are machine-friendly, unlike oral and written communication. Can you imagine the complexity if a machine has to read essays that students turn in, provide comments, and finally determine letter-grades?

Hey, what if we could do away with the complexity of communication itself?  Nicholas Carr writes that a few weeks ago "Mark Zuckerberg offered a peek into the future of interpersonal communication":

One day, I believe we’ll be able to send full, rich thoughts to each other directly using technology. You’ll just be able to think of something and your friends will immediately be able to experience it too if you’d like. This would be the ultimate communication technology.

This is where you need to pause and think whether Zuckerberg's future is what we really want.

Did you think about it?

Carr then provides this interpretation:

But there is another, less frequently articulated reason why Silicon Valley wants to replace speech. One characteristic of verbal languages is that nobody can own them. Meanwhile, emoji characters are copyrighted, and software can be patented. The machinic capacity to measure emotions via the face or tone of voice is in the possession of businesses, and currently being rapidly capitalized by private-equity investment. Industrial capitalism privatized the means of production. Digital capitalism seeks to privatize the means of communication.

Do you see where this argument is going?  You need to pause and think.

Did you think about it?

Let me bring in Carr:

The best solution, if you have a need to get computers to “understand” human communication, may to be avoid the problem altogether. Instead of figuring out how to get computers to understand natural language, you get people to speak artificial language, the language of computers. A good way to start is to encourage people to express themselves not through messy assemblages of fuzzily defined words but through neat, formal symbols — emoticons or emoji, for instance.

 Now do you see what the worry is?  No?  Come on, already!

When we speak with emoji, we’re speaking a language that machines can understand.
People like Mark Zuckerberg have always been uncomfortable with natural language. Now, they can do something about it.

Of course, using emojis today will not literally change the world tomorrow.  But, what we need to recognize here is this: we are slowly changing our daily behavior in order to make them increasingly computer-friendly.  We change our behaviors in ways that make it easier for algorithms to understand what we do, what we say, where we go, what we eat, ... Meanwhile, we willingly feed those machines continuous data on our walking, breathing, blood pressure, pulse, thumb-print, ... Remember this from a while ago:

 Apple is building a world in which there is a computer in your every interaction, waking and sleeping. A computer in your pocket. A computer on your body. A computer paying for all your purchases. A computer opening your hotel room door. A computer monitoring your movements as you walk though the mall. A computer watching you sleep. A computer controlling the devices in your home. A computer that tells you where you parked. A computer taking your pulse, telling you how many steps you took, how high you climbed and how many calories you burned—and sharing it all with your friends…. THIS IS THE NEW APPLE ECOSYSTEM. APPLE HAS TURNED OUR WORLD INTO ONE BIG UBIQUITOUS COMPUTER.

Have a good weekend ;)

The human touch ... is also being phased out? :(

As if I don't have enough to read and freak myself out (and, perhaps, cause a few more to freak out as well) the friend emailed me a link to a NY Times piece.  So, get ready to either argue against, or join me in noting yet another milepost on the way to becoming subservient to our computer overlords!

First, the phrase of the day:  “automated narrative generation.”

Unlike any other technical mumbo-jumbo (a mouse is not really a mouse!) this one means what it the words mean--automated narrative generation.  You get machines to automatically generate narratives. Way better narratives than the randomness of putting a thousand monkeys in front of typewriters and ending up with a Shakespearean work.

Companies in this business aim to relieve humans from the burden of the writing process by using algorithms and natural language generators to create written content. Feed their platforms some data — financial earnings statistics, let’s say — and poof! In seconds, out comes a narrative that tells whatever story needs to be told.
These robo-writers don’t just regurgitate data, either; they create human-sounding stories in whatever voice — from staid to sassy — befits the intended audience. Or different audiences. They’re that smart. And when you read the output, you’d never guess the writer doesn’t have a heartbeat.

Not really news to readers of this blog, whom I have assaulted with cries of "AI is coming, AI is coming!"

But, despite my cries, the Cassandra Curse effect means that nobody listens to my warnings.  Heck, it is one awful "I don't get no respect" life! ;)

Consider the following examples in the NY Times piece, and guess which one was authored by a human and which one was not:

“Things looked bleak for the Angels when they trailed by two runs in the ninth inning, but Los Angeles recovered thanks to a key single from Vladimir Guerrero to pull out a 7-6 victory over the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park on Sunday.”
“The University of Michigan baseball team used a four-run fifth inning to salvage the final game in its three-game weekend series with Iowa, winning 7-5 on Saturday afternoon (April 24) at the Wilpon Baseball Complex, home of historic Ray Fisher Stadium.”
If you can’t tell which was written by a human, you’re not alone.

(Nope, I won't give away the answer, yet.  Either read this post to the end, or read the entire NY Times article!)

As with every other automation innovation, the rationale is that we humans will be liberated from the chores and can then spend our times on more creative aspects of life:

The mantra around all of this carries the usual liberation theme: Robo-journalism will free humans to do more reporting and less data processing.

Ahem, isn't that the gazillion dollar question: what exactly will be left for us humans to do?

Kristian Hammond, Narrative Science’s co-founder, estimates that 90 percent of news could be algorithmically generated by the mid-2020s, much of it without human intervention. If this projection is anywhere near accurate, we’re on a slippery slope.

More than a slippery slope.  Think about how easily narratives can be generated that will be customized for your specific tastes in order to manipulate your thinking.  You might think you are reading Sriram's blog but it might appear differently to another person depending on that person's digital footprint in the internet.  

Our phones can speak to us (just as a human would). Our home appliances can take commands (just as a human would). Our cars will be able to drive themselves (just as a human would). What does “human” even mean?

You see, that NY Times essay also comes down to the question that I often write about in this blog, talk with students about, and have even noted in more than one op-ed: what does it mean to be human?

My worry is that we are not considering that question enough.

With technology, the next evolutionary step always seems logical. That’s the danger. As it seduces us again and again, we relinquish a little part of ourselves. We rarely step back to reflect on whether, ultimately, we’re giving up more than we’re getting.

Good thing I am on a countdown, and--hopefully--will not get to experience the complete madness!

You read until here, or you scrolled down in a hurry?  In any case, the answer is "machine first, human second."

BTW, 

A shocking amount of what we’re reading is created not by humans, but by computer algorithms. Can you tell the difference? Take the quiz.

Cue the theme from the Twilight Zone! ;)

For want of a nail ... a plane-load of people were stranded!

Remember that old elementary school rhyme on the want of a horseshoe nail?

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

You forgot, eh!  What a shame!!! ;)

It is not to be taken literally that a kingdom was lost only because of one small little horseshoe nail. It is a metaphor at various levels, primarily on the cause and effect--which this blogger loves exploring--and is a rhyme variation of that other old idea that the strength of a chain depends on its weakest link.

I had plenty of time to think about that after I was stranded, again, in Denver.

Here's how the story developed: the aircraft arrived earlier than scheduled--we could see it through the glass.  I was looking forward to reaching home by midnight.  After a long, long flight and after a lengthy absence from my sweet home by the river--the Riverhouse, as the friend calls it.

It got to boarding time.  The person at the counter was working the phone and not announcing the boarding.

And then came the announcement at 9:40: flight canceled.

It was not a technical malfunction.  The aircraft was fine.

It was not a pilot issue--they were right there.

The flight was canceled because the cabin attendant did not show up for work.

Yep, no cabin attendant, no go.

Almost right away I then got the automated email from the airlines:

I think the capacity of that plane is sixty or seventy.  It was a full flight, post-holiday, and all of us were now stranded in Denver for the night, and perhaps more.

All was lost for the want of a horseshoe nail :(

We can expect a lot more such events because we now deal with immensely complex systems that can fail any minute depending on the weakest link.  In the digital world, it is possible to build in redundancy and decrease the failure rate to near zero.  But, that is with the data bits of ones and zeros. Building human redundancy, however, is expensive--to hire and have available "spare" replacement personnel.  When running an "efficient" organization, the tendency is not to have too many people as "spare" personnel.  Which means ... incidents similar to what happened in Denver.  

When life goes on really well, we even resort to describing it as "everything worked out like a well-oiled machine."  We have developed such an understanding so much so that we never refer to life going well as "everything worked out like a human."  The temptation is to then replace more and more humans from the commercial and other enterprises and replace them with ones and zeros.

But, here is what we need to remember: an error-proof technological world can be sterile. It can be, well, like a well-oiled machine. A life that is devoid of humanity itself.

I don't want to be in that world.   It is the humanness that makes life all the more exciting and worthwhile.  And painful, like when the attendant did not show up.

I worry that our rush to embrace technology removes, little by little, all those qualities that make the human existence, well, human.

Of course, I cursed the night away that I was stranded in Denver--when pricked, do I not bleed?  But, am glad that we are humans and not automatons. At least, not yet!

The wonders of modern life

Every time I board an airplane, I am simply amazed that these heavy objects can fly.  And fly at five miles above the ground.  And fly without stopping even for 18 hours at a stretch, as was the case from Los Angeles to Singapore or Bangkok or Dubai. 

When I tell my students that modern human achievements have resulted from brain power, as opposed to the brawn of the past, I doubt if even one really understands and appreciates that. 
Which is why I liked this short essay (ht) about how much humans were in awe of machines until very recently:

Today, we no longer approach our many machines with awe; in fact, the more personalized and individualized our machines have become, the less humility we feel in using them. No longer the large, rare dynamos of Adams's day, our machines are often portable and are such a central part of our everyday lives that we barely notice their presence. Rather than awe-inspiring symbols of man's power, they are merely extensions of ourselves, like the cell phone that helps us communicate or the microwave that speeds the cooking of our dinner.

While I don't care much for the backer of the publication (The Templeton Foundation,) I resonate a lot with the final comments in that essay:

The decline in humility toward our machines comes at a time when we know almost nothing about how or why they work. Although overwhelmed by its power, Henry Adams nevertheless had a basic understanding of how the dynamo operated. Most of us know very little about how our laptop computers run or how to repair our washing machines. Today we are less likely to feel awe in the presence of our machines than we are to experience what historian Jacques Barzun called "machine-made helplessness." This, too, is a form of blind faith, ...
The awe experienced by earlier generations was part of a different worldview, one that demonstrated greater humility about many things, not least of which concerned their own human limits and frailties. Today we believe our machines allow us to know a lot more, and in many ways they do. What we don't want to admit - but should - is that they also ensure that we directly experience less. Updating your Facebook page is a lot easier than venturing out into the world to confront a dynamo, as Adams did. But it is also, in the end, likely to be a lot less awe-inspiring.

The comment about how we don't know anything about the very gadgets we use reminds of the essay, "I, Pencil" that is often quoted by libertarians on the power of the free market. 
Thankfully, my Marxist and Socialists faculty colleagues are not into technology and, definitely, do not read this blog.  Else, I will be in more trouble for even referring to I, Pencil :)