Author: J.C. Cross

The Inbetween Times

“Oh that’s fake.”

Needs some repeating: Deepfakes and fake video are on the edge of indiscernibility. It’s a sea change coming. We won’t know disinformation when we see it.

The public may not be thinking of the immensity of this. “Oh, it’s just online memes.” Memes aside, real news and information are closer to truth oblivion. It’s still a fiction thing. AI has moved beyond audio; AI video will be widely available.

Concomitant with this is the normalization of insularity due to the pandemic’s effects.

Please, get outside. I’ll join you.

Try as you might, the out there becomes life

Neil DeGrasse Tyson brings the truth, the need for reconciliation of the biblical world and science. You can’t be afraid. 13.8 billion years ago the fire brought galaxies to bear.

How can we speak to those who are sold out on the scientific method. Why is this even a concern? The gravity of discussion calls to that high place where we can say “I don’t know.” But fear erupts when we see the whittling away of supposed biblical narrative. But those in the peer-reviewed community don’t get a satisfactory answer to their questions.

I’m not sold, I can’t be. Everything should go on as needed. Everything should cause us to welcome questions.

The new immigration

Recently seen more on European immigration. The scale is very similar to ours. But the type of immigrant is different from the past. How is the West going to survive in the same way at these levels? We and the Europeans were previously able to absorb and integrate people much different than us. In Italy for example, the population has dropped precipitously and other ethnicities are changing the fabric. Culture is changing in each Western nation. It’s a brave new world and I can’t see where it’s all going.

Calling all aliens

The problem of authority.

With models like Google Gemini and ChatGPT how can we determine 1) what is just nonsense, 2) when user generated content is helpful, and 3) when we need guardrails?

First, we need some level of “normalcy.” What do we appeal to? Second, we need to separate user opinion from relation of fact from perhaps, “private journalism.” Third, normalcy and fact checking need to guard against extremes.

The need for nonpartisanship is apparent. We need gatekeepers, but who are they? We need an alien intelligence.

The Heavier Requirement

The sometime appreciation for China’s poverty-reducing measures relies on the CCP’s supposed benevolence in other ways. From our vision outside China, we see:
* the ruthless treatment of minorities like the Uyghurs in the brainwashing camps
* the military drills with eyes on Taiwan, Japan, and other nations in China’s orbit
* the theft of our technology and IP
* the expansionist mindset with the Belt and Road colonies, including spying
* the monitoring of their populace with the social credit and other systems
* the stealthy weapon of TikTok and other Chinese tech companies
* the Chinese police stations in Western countries

The occasional Western fascination with China is a head scratcher. To the Left, the strange kingdom over seas appears more praiseworthy than our democracies. When taken together, I think this confluence of Leftist beliefs about the malignancy of capitalism and the various social issues of “oppressed minorities” has caused a lack of self-awareness in the progressive.

As upholders of true democracy, though imperfect, we must make every effort to see the world as it is.

AI reflex

Open AI caught Google and others off guard.

But the models I am working with are specialized. I had read that specialization is the future. I can see that small language models (SLM) may be the future. I’ve wondered whether certain ideas for language models could be built for purposes that are focused. Within this, I could love to create a Christian history model. It could include images, tables, graphs. Maybe someone has done this? The possibilities are intriguing.

Time for the focus on specialized purposes in AI.

Don’t win, just change the rules

It’s easier to change the rules than follow them. Radical egalitarianism results in:

– The electoral college
– End the filibuster
– Pack the court
– Add new states
– Nationalize voter laws
– Apportion senators by population
– Enlarge the house
– Nullify federal law
– Redefine impeachment

Respect federal, state, the courts — and the people.

On The Demolition of Francis Scott Key Bridge

Should we not look askance of the tearing down? Do the beautiful colors bleed? Not spoken of in prophecy, the fabric of democracy flutters in the breeze. Old ideas not so old, our lifespans but inches on the yardstick. Remember the profundity, remember the novelty, from voice to voice spread the call to arms. Something deep and wonderful.

How to win friends and influence people Pt. IV

IV. Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment

Principle I: Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
Principle II: Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
Principle III: Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
Principle IV: Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
Principle V: Let the other person save face.
Principle VI: Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.”
Principle VII: Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
Principle VIII: Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
Principle IX: Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.

The message I got here was not making a big deal about mistakes. Lift up the opponent. Be positive about it.

How to win friends and influence people Pt. III

Part III: How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking

Principle I: The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
Principle II: Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, “You’re wrong.”
Principle III: If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
Principle IV: Begin in a friendly way.
Principle V: Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately.
Principle VI: Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
Principle VII: Let the other person think the idea was his or hers.
Principle VIII: Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.
Principle IX: Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.
Principle X: Appeal to the nobler motives.
Principle XI: Dramatize your ideas.
Principle XII: Throw down a challenge.

Sometimes you can

How to win friends and influence people Pt. II

II. Six Ways to Make People Like You

Principle I: Become genuinely interested in other people.
Principle II: Smile.
Principle III: Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
Principle IV: Be good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
Principle V: Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
Principle VI: Make the other person feel important–and do it sincerely.

This section turns your self outward. Making them feel valuable and being sincere about it.

How to win friends and influence people Pt. I

Picked up Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People at the suggestion of a friend.

I. Three principles in Fundamental Techniques in Handling People:

Principle I: Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain.
Principle II: Give honest and sincere appreciation.
Principle III: Arouse in the other an eager want.

I think the takeaway is not making a big deal about errors, recognize another person, and try to get them to want to do what you would like by getting them to want to.

US and EU agree

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen indicated that the bloc is open to banning TikTok. This is in the middle of continuous cyber attacks and military provocation.

My long-time question is what would happen were there an actual hot war? For one, our military is a volunteer organization.  There is no draft and the volunteer numbers are dropping. What would happen in the event of a catastrophic cyber attack? Would we and our youth be prepared?

Second, the US has lost war game after war game. In spite of our advanced technology.

Can’t let this keep us up at night, but take note.

AI thoughts in only 2017

Besides the latency, this AI robot is really impressive. When will it be taken for granted? Innovations coming with furious speed.

Machine Learning? Oh yeah, seen that…

Deep Learning? Yep…

Back when intelligent computer vision was developing.

Was also listening to this old TED talk below. People thought of AI as something out there in the future some day. Now this looks antiquated. We’ve taken for granted the power of AI already.

On the precipice

I have for some time now realized that the biblical flood was a local event. The idea of a world wide flood is scientifically impossible. But I was listening to Jack Hibbs about the prophecies in Ezekiel and Daniel  wherein he asserts that Magog is now Russia. Does he not realize that he is saying that Magog is now a nation by another name?

If these things are true, why don’t believers realize that the flood narrative is also ancient? The Mesopotamians experienced a local flood. The epic of Gilgamesh is an alternative account of a historical event.

Building an AI

Training Set

  1. Figure out what you want from the data.
  2. Determine the type of machine learning model you need, standard ML algorithms or artificial neural network.

a. If a standard ML algorithm, then it could use K nearest neighbor or Naive Bayes.
b. If a neural network, feed a training set and determine how much to change the weights.
c. Use backpropagation to adjust the weights to lower the cost function, i.e., the system will go back through the network and adjust the dials to increase its accuracy.

Test Set

  1. Data will be added from the test set. The test set will not be labeled.
  2. If the data in the training set is not sufficient for the test set to do its classifications, then that’s called “overfitting” the data.AI systems are only as good as the data they are fed. They can learn by trying different things. They can do things humans cannot–and vice versa. AIs can process large amounts of data quickly and see patterns we cannot, but they still need supervision and direction.

AI == one result?

Search engines give you a list of results. Chatbots answer in a stream of one result. Google will be able to serve you with exactly what you want, but with only one result, the bot’s answer. Many people don’t specify the options for results:

  1. Ask for a chatbot to take on a role, e.g. “you are a rocket scientist, explain…”
  2. Give context information to go with the request.
  3. Give x number of examples. The capabilities of chatbots are there for the using, but I think users need to learn how to prompt better in the pursuit of the diversity of answers. A reasoning engine, like ChatGPT, Claude, Bing Copilot, understands your question rather than just giving you rankings. Taking advantage of this difference–prompt engineering–must be a taught skill. Bingchat unites a search engine with a reasoning engine: you get the conversation with clickable sources. It’s a good sign of what is coming.
  4. Ask for competing answers, i.e. answer in the debate style with points for and against.
  5. Ask for an answer using an analogy.
  6. Ask for the bot to be creative, ideate, brainstorm, give ideas.
  7. Ask for a summary of text you input into the reasoning engine when desired.

A consideration is to be wary of the factuality of the reasoning engine’s response since it can be wrong. It can certainly sound convincing, but don’t trust everything you see or hear.

Where will your prompt take you?

Bias considerations

Considerations to help avoid bias in AI classification:

  1. Gather diverse data.
  2. Include a wide range of judges.
  3. Monitor the output of the algorithm.
  4. Attend to edge cases.

    Cover as much as you can and make sure you are addressing it as a way to overcome the inherent tendency toward bias when labeling and enhance the generalizability and utility of the work you do.