Fulcra

→ Your key argument on the neuroscience side seems to be that weâ€™re hardwired to have theory of mind â€” basically trying to read and guess other peopleâ€™s emotions â€” and that makes narratives enjoyable even if theyâ€™re wrong or impossible to prove Oct 5, 2018 highlights & People

Your key argument on the neuroscience side seems to be that weâ€™re hardwired to have theory of mind â€” basically trying to read and guess other peopleâ€™s emotions â€” and that makes narratives enjoyable even if theyâ€™re wrong or impossible to prove. Can you tell us a little about theory of mind and how it works?

Theory of mind emerges from a much earlier mind-reading instinct thatâ€™s common to most mammals. Itâ€™s highly adaptive. Itâ€™s a quick and dirty solution to the problem we have of predicting the behavior of other Homo sapiens and potential predators and prey. It works well on the African savannah in environments of early adaptation, but only for people and other primates in our immediate vicinity in a very short space of time. It continues to work today in dealing with people face-to-face and hour-to-hour over limited periods.

But when you start to generalize and apply theory of mind across time and the environmental space, it begins to be so crude and so imprecise that it becomes useless as a tool for controlling and collaborating with other people. But weâ€™re still stuck with it as an explanation because it satisfies our curiosity. â€” https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/5/17940650/how-history-gets-things-wrong-alex-rosenberg-interview-neuroscience-stories

→ The problem is, these historical narratives seduce you into thinking you really understand what’s going on and why things happened, but most of it is guessing people’s motives and their inner thoughts Oct 5, 2018 highlights & People The problem is, these historical narratives seduce you into thinking you really understand what’s going on and why things happened, but most of it is guessing people’s motives and their inner thoughts. It allays your curiosity, and you’re satisfied psychologically by the narrative, and it connects the dots so you feel you’re in the shoes of the person whose narrative is being recorded. It has seduced you into a false account, and now you think you understand.
The second part is that it effectively prevents you from going on to try to find the right theory and correct account of events. And the third problem, which is the gravest, is that people use narratives because of their tremendous emotional impact to drive human actions, movements, political parties, religions, ideologies. And many movements, like nationalism and intolerant religions, are driven by narrative and are harmful and dangerous for humanity. — https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/5/17940650/how-history-gets-things-wrong-alex-rosenberg-interview-neuroscience-stories

→ At AI SF, Mehdi Miremadi from McKinsey Global Institute corroborated in “Have we reached peak human? Oct 5, 2018 highlights

At AI SF, Mehdi Miremadi from McKinsey Global Institute corroborated in “Have we reached peak human? The impact of AI on the workforce”:

economic futures look bleak when based on current trends in labor supply
“productivity growth” over the past five decades was based on large numbers of people entering the workforce
our ability to automate (up to 30% of many jobs) is how the story of AI will unfold

To wit, advanced analytics have near-term potential to unlock $11–13T in the economy (~15% of global GDP), with deep learning accounting for ~40%. Historical analogies exist, e.g., the era of early PC adoption created jobs despite dire warnings to the contrary.

— https://blog.dominodatalab.com/themes-and-conferences-per-pacoid-episode-2/

→ Van Horn and Perona open with a brilliant one-liner: the world is long-tailed Oct 4, 2018 highlights & Learning & global Van Horn and Perona open with a brilliant one-liner: the world is long-tailed. The diagram above shows analysis from Deep Learning Analytics, the #2 team placing in the iNaturalist 2018 competition. Part of that challenge was how many of the classes to be learned had few data points for training. That condition is much more “real world” than the famed ImageNet – with an average of ~500 instances per class – which helped make “deep learning” a popular phrase. The aforementioned sea change from Lange, Jonas, et al., addresses the problem of reducing data demands. I can make an educated guess that your enterprise ML use cases resemble iNaturalist more than ImageNet, and we need to find ways to produce effective models which don’t require enormous labeled data sets. — https://blog.dominodatalab.com/themes-and-conferences-per-pacoid-episode-2/

→ These days with fast commodity networking, the economics of cloud services don’t resemble “commodity servers” circa early Hadoop at all Oct 4, 2018 highlights These days with fast commodity networking, the economics of cloud services don’t resemble “commodity servers” circa early Hadoop at all. The argument centers more on networks than servers, but anywho Eric Jonas and crew did tons of research about bottlenecks, throughput, failure rates, economics, etc. Instead of bringing your compute to the data, now bring your data to the compute. — https://blog.dominodatalab.com/themes-and-conferences-per-pacoid-episode-2/

→ At AI SF, Danny Lange presented how to train puppies: “On the road to artificial general intelligence” — game simulations Unity3D plus reinforcement learning used to train virtual puppies to play “fetch” and other skills. Oct 4, 2018 highlights & Learning

At AI SF, Danny Lange presented how to train puppies: “On the road to artificial general intelligence” — game simulations Unity3D plus reinforcement learning used to train virtual puppies to play “fetch” and other skills. Building on this, Danny described several forms of learning inspired by biology, which go beyond deep learning. He showed examples of virtual puppies for:

Imitation Learning: e.g., see https://bit.ly/2zvYH51 (start 0:15)
Curriculum Learning: start with an easy problem, then make learning challenges progressively harder
Curiosity-driven Exploration: gets beyond problems which random exploration would never reach, i.e., agents don’t get stuck in a room (saddle points) because they want to explore other rooms

— https://blog.dominodatalab.com/themes-and-conferences-per-pacoid-episode-2/

→ Check out her Altimeter Group white paper, “The Customer Experience of AI: Five Principles to Foster Engagement, Innovation and Trust” Oct 3, 2018 highlights Check out her Altimeter Group white paper, “The Customer Experience of AI: Five Principles to Foster Engagement, Innovation and Trust”. One of Susan’s key takeways, reinforcing Maryam Jahanshahi’s points above, is that individuals make microdecisions based on their own biases (which everyone has) that cascade into microaggressions in aggregate. Again, this is related to how people do not naturally make good decisions in large groups. Even so, data science can help augment that baseline human condition, so that large organizations can collaborate to reach decisions objectively and ethically — https://blog.dominodatalab.com/themes-and-conferences-per-pacoid-episode-2/

→ A central theme in Amber’s work is about calm technology, the opposite of products which steal attention Oct 3, 2018 highlights A central theme in Amber’s work is about calm technology, the opposite of products which steal attention. This should inform how we build analytics and reporting. For example, how readily do decision-makers learn from the data visualizations and other interactive materials which we produce as data scientists? — https://blog.dominodatalab.com/themes-and-conferences-per-pacoid-episode-2/

→ Under the initiatives pillar, young people’s leadership, creativity and innovation skills will be harnessed to bolster their ability to be agents for positive change during the run-up to the fifth anniversary of the SDGs in 2020 Sep 27, 2018 highlights & People Under the initiatives pillar, young people’s leadership, creativity and innovation skills will be harnessed to bolster their ability to be agents for positive change during the run-up to the fifth anniversary of the SDGs in 2020.Adding to the existing “Young Leaders for the SDGs’ initiative, a “Youth Gateway” central knowledge hub on SDGs is planned, including a platform to map existing initiatives and provide opportunities for engagement, aimed at motivating more young people to take action. Tools will be developed to measure and track global indicators on youth development and well-being. — http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/article/544261/SAUDI-ARABIA/Misk-becomes-pioneering-partner-for-UN-youth-work

→ The EPCC and the wider university is working with partners in government, industry and other higher education centres to create a vibrant cluster of activity based on data science — the collecting, organising and interpreting of large sets of digital information Sep 25, 2018 highlights & Innovation The EPCC and the wider university is working with partners in government, industry and other higher education centres to create a vibrant cluster of activity based on data science – the collecting, organising and interpreting of large sets of digital information. These tasks can be summed up as data-driven innovation, or DDI. — https://www.scotsman.com/business/companies/tech/data-innovation-from-niche-concern-to-key-driver-1-4804849

→ Interpretability is needed when auxiliary criteria are not met and questions about bias, trust, safety, ethics, and mismatched objectives arise Sep 25, 2018 highlights & Learning Interpretability is needed when auxiliary criteria are not met and questions about bias, trust, safety, ethics, and mismatched objectives arise. Kim and Doshi-Velez “argue that the need for interpretability stems from incompleteness in the problem formalizing, creating a fundamental barrier to optimization and evaluation” for example, “incompleteness that produces some kind of unquantified bias”. — https://blog.dominodatalab.com/make-machine-learning-interpretability-rigorous/

→ Youtube is failing its creators Sep 21, 2018 highlights Can a channel that uploads only once a month actually make a living off of that? Are the higher views on a returning week from vacation significant enough to make up for taking a break — and if not, how much of a hit should one expect to take? —

Youtube is failing its creators

This phenomenon is an indicator of broader future-of-work issues. If more people are making their primary income from distributed micro-work style projects, where does income security come from?

→ Instagram is built for people to project their best selves; the aspirational version of everyday life where a cozy, rainy day cup of coffee post removes the part where I forgot an umbrella, stepped in dog shit, and am currently in the middle of a wicked anxiety spell Sep 21, 2018 highlights Instagram is built for people to project their best selves; the aspirational version of everyday life where a cozy, rainy day cup of coffee post removes the part where I forgot an umbrella, stepped in dog shit, and am currently in the middle of a wicked anxiety spell. — https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/20/17883298/harimao-lee-instagram-fairy-lights-flight

→ Charisma Star, real name Charis Lincoln, has used the phrase “shining stars” to describe her viewers since the beginning of her career as a way to bring them closer Sep 18, 2018 highlights Charisma Star, real name Charis Lincoln, has used the phrase “shining stars” to describe her viewers since the beginning of her career as a way to bring them closer. “By naming my audience, I feel that I have a very close connection to them, almost like a sister or BFF,” she tells The Verge.
She’s been extraordinarily effective at building that connection. Most of Lincoln’s 932,000 followers have never and will never meet her. Yet their dedication to her is undeniable, and it’s a perfect representation of the ever-expanding social phenomenon of parasocial relationships, wherein individuals attach affections to celebrity figures. The concept is more accurate than ever today, and it’s crucial to understanding the complications of life as an influencer or creator in 2018. — https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/17/17832948/youtube-youtubers-influencer-creator-fans-subscribers-friends-celebrities

→ All these examples tell the same story: that the world contains an unimaginably vast amount of digital information which is getting ever vaster ever more rapidly Sep 18, 2018 highlights & global All these examples tell the same story: that the world contains an unimaginably vast amount of digital information which is getting ever vaster ever more rapidly. This makes it possible to do many things that previously could not be done: spot business trends, prevent diseases, combat crime and so on. Managed well, the data can be used to unlock new sources of economic value, provide fresh insights into science and hold governments to account.
But they are also creating a host of new problems. Despite the abundance of tools to capture, process and share all this information—sensors, computers, mobile phones and the like—it already exceeds the available storage space (see chart 1). Moreover, ensuring data security and protecting privacy is becoming harder as the information multiplies and is shared ever more widely around the world. — https://www.economist.com/special-report/2010/02/25/data-data-everywhere

→ Contemporary extremism is designed to increase polarization Sep 17, 2018 highlights & Journalism Contemporary extremism is designed to increase polarization. One tactic is to twist frames. For example, “ideological diversity” has been deployed to suggest that people who hold conservative viewpoints experience a loss of opportunity similar to those who have faced systemic racism and sexism. But this isn’t about the history of economic inequality in the US. It’s a dogwhistle. It’s about using nominal conservatism as a cloak to promote toxic masculinity and white supremacy. It’s about extremists using conservatives. And it’s about intentionally twisting historical pressure to diversify newsrooms and Silicon Valley to open the Overton Window. Fundamentally, it’s a technique to grab power by gaslighting the public and making reality seem fuzzy. — https://points.datasociety.net/media-manipulation-strategic-amplification-and-responsible-journalism-95f4d611f462?source=rss—-2488f66d2e39—4

→ Last week, Facebook and Twitter were accused during a Congressional hearing of having conservative bias Sep 16, 2018 highlights & Journalism & Social Last week, Facebook and Twitter were accused during a Congressional hearing of having conservative bias. This should sound familiar to many of you in this room as you too have been accused for political purposes of being the “liberal media.” The core of this narrative is a stunt, architected by media manipulators, designed to trigger outrage among conservatives and pressure news and social media to react.It works. Over the last two years, both social media and news media organizations have desperately tried to prove that they aren’t biased. What’s at stake is not whether these organizations are restricting discussions concerning free-market economics or failing to allow conservative perspectives to be heard. What’s at stake is how fringe groups can pervert the logics of media to spread conspiratorial and hateful messages under their false flag of conservatism. — https://points.datasociety.net/media-manipulation-strategic-amplification-and-responsible-journalism-95f4d611f462?source=rss—-2488f66d2e39—4

→ Accusations of conservative bias are not evaluated through evidence because reality doesn’t matter to them Sep 16, 2018 highlights & Journalism & People Accusations of conservative bias are not evaluated through evidence because reality doesn’t matter to them. This is what makes this stunt so effective. News organizations and tech companies have no way to “prove” their innocence. What makes conspiratorial messages work is how they pervert evidence. The simplest technique is to conflate correlation and causation. Conspiracy makers point to the data that suggests that both journalists and Silicon Valley engineers are more likely to vote for candidates from the Democratic party. Or that they have higher levels of education than the average American and are more likely to live in Blue states.As my colleague Francesca Tripodi points out, accusing tech of conservative bias also leverages and reinforces a misunderstanding of how search engines and social media work. As she notes, “People believe Google is weighing facts instead of rank-ordering results that match the entered keywords.” When the goal is to drive a wedge among the public, it’s not hard to encourage people to see bias. — https://points.datasociety.net/media-manipulation-strategic-amplification-and-responsible-journalism-95f4d611f462?source=rss—-2488f66d2e39—4

→ We’ve seen that some careers have had huge positive effects, and some have vastly more than others Sep 15, 2018 highlights & People We’ve seen that some careers have had huge positive effects, and some have vastly more than others.Some component of this is due to luck – the people mentioned above were in the right place at the right time, affording them the opportunity to have an impact that they might not have otherwise received. You can’t guarantee you’ll make an important medical discovery.But it wasn’t all luck: Landsteiner and Nalin chose to use their medical knowledge to solve some of the most harmful health problems of their day, and it was foreseeable that someone high up in the Soviet military could have a large impact by preventing conflict during the Cold War. So, what does this mean for you?People often wonder how they can “make a difference”, but if some careers can result in thousands of times more impact than others, this isn’t the right question. Two career options can both “make a difference”, but one could be dramatically better than the other.Instead, the key question is, “how can I make the most difference?” In other words: what can you do to give yourself a chance of having one of the highest-impact careers? Because the highest-impact careers achieve so much, a small increase in your chances means a great deal. — https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-much-difference-can-one-person-make/

→ This last point is illustrated by the chart below, which compares the impact of doctors in different countries Sep 15, 2018 highlights & People This last point is illustrated by the chart below, which compares the impact of doctors in different countries. The y-axis shows the amount of ill health in the population, measured in Disability-Adjusted Life Years (aka “DALYs”) per 100,000 people, where one DALY equals one year of life lost due to ill health. The x-axis shows the number of doctors per 100,000 people. DALYs per 100,000 people versus doctors per 100,000 people. We used WHO data from 2004. Line is the best fitting hyperbola determined by non-linear least square regression. Full explanation in this paper.You can see that the curve goes nearly flat once you have more than 150 doctors per 100,000 people. After this point (which almost all developed countries meet), additional doctors only achieve a small impact on average. — https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-much-difference-can-one-person-make/