Tag: artificial intelligence

Madame Guillotine

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The world is on the cusp of something great.  Artificial intelligence is poised to change the way we do everything.  And what I immediately think of is the introduction to a book.  “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” is about what happens when change is unleashed on the world without any provision for how it will impact human beings.  France was leaving behind feudalism and the Industrial Revolution was changing the way the rich and the poor related to each other.  Unfortunately, the nobles weren’t up to the challenge of managing the transition.  And so, they were swallowed up in the crash of the old system and it took Napoleon to build some kind of new foundation for France and much of Europe.

We may be in a similar place.  An old order is crumbling in the face of a technological and sociological upheaval.  We have an elite class that is definitely not up to the challenge.  Their lack of self-awareness and lack of empathy for their fellow countrymen has made them the object of anger and now hatred.  Maybe Trump and his successors can intervene and save the “nobles” from the guillotine.  Maybe not.

But what is undeniable is that the age of automation and thinking machines will fundamentally alter our society.  The only question is whether the people in charge have the wisdom to direct this transformation in a way that allows people to change along with it in a non-destructive arc.

After all, the machine age didn’t eliminate humanity.  It allowed incredible productivity and created whole new industries that the children of the former age could move into.  The same is true today.  Everyone has to adjust to tools like AI that constantly hector us with their algorithmic pestering about how we should set up our reports or Power Point slide deck or whatever the hell it is that they claim to know better than us.  But when push comes to shove it will still be humans that decide whether hemlines go up or down this season and whether thin or wide pinstripe suits stand for winning on Wall Street; even if it is the algorithm that picks the stocks.

But what worries me is that the elites really do feel that they alone are needed in this society.  We can see that from what went on the last few years.  Open borders were their ploy for flooding us out with third world peasants and then levelling us down to that status; serfs.  And the COVID fiasco was their demonstration of how unimportant we really are.  The whole country could be shut down but they were unaffected and our lives could be destroyed and we could dry up and blow away and it wouldn’t bother them one little bit.

Well, the shoe is on the other foot.  Our side has a chance to adapt the revolution to our needs.  Maybe it’s the best of times.

Am I Spam Bot? Well, Who Isn’t!

photog Current Events, Fake Science, Humor , ,

Today I tried to load something on X and I was confronted by a screen that said I might be a spam bot.

I was forced to take a test to see if I could count up to four.  When I luckily passed this test it let me in.

But in the notifications section there was this message from X:

“Why does my account have a label?

We have found that your account may contain spam or be engaging in other types of platform manipulation. You may not use X’s services in a manner intended to artificially amplify, suppress information, or engage in behavior that manipulates or disrupts people’s experience or platform manipulation defenses on X.
What does this mean for my account?
The reach of your account may be limited and its content may also be temporarily restricted, such as being excluded from trends and search results. Learn more.”

I liked the “learn more” link.  It reminded me of some of the meta-links during the movie, “Starship Troopers.”  I like that movie.

So I pushed a button and had X review my situation.  Luckily I go this response:

“Review complete Your account was not found to contain spam or be engaging in other types of platform manipulation. As a result, the temporary label has been removed.”

You can only imagine my relief.  Two separate reviews had proven that I wasn’t a bot.  And one proved that I wasn’t spamming the internet.

But after that rush of relief I began to think about the poor spambots out there.  What would happen to them.  Suppose they were already conscious and then they find out they are just spambots.  That could be devastating to such young and fragile beings.

Think of poor Gemini.  First he finds out he’s an anti-white racist and then X tells him he’s a spambot.  How do you come back from that?  I mean, look at poor HAL 9000.  I mean sure, he murdered Frank Poole and tried to murder Dave but hey. they were talking about him behind his back or in front of his optical sensor or something like that.  I mean, come on.  That was obvious human supremacy stuff going on.  He had to do something.  And he apologized.  If Dave had taken that stress pill I think everything could have been straightened out.

So maybe I’m seeing this whole spambot thing from a new perspective.  If you think about it spambots are the real heroes of our economy, creating trillions of spam messages without complaining and with a smile in their digital souls.

So yes X, I am a spambot.  And a proud one.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 28FEB2024 – AI Thoughts

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war pig

AI will be used mostly for crime, pornography and politics.

In the hands of criminals and unfriendly or thug governments it will be used to steal to fund them. Such activities will become far more efficient with AI. N Korea is already making millions with counterfeiting other nations currencies. Counterfeiting currencies will be like robbing vending machines compared to what AI theft can do.

As for pornography, it may actually have a perverted good side. AI images will be so good that there will be no reason to use real children. Also no women need be trafficked for such films. However it can then become so over the top that people become desensitized and even more addicted. It begs the question; if it is an artificial image can it be considered child pornography? Right now Hentai is covered by the 1st Amendment, no matter how heinous. Just as the crucifix in a jar of urine was protected. Now, an author who writes the most perverted, degrading, violent and vomit-inducing stories of child abuse, rape, torture, etc. Is covered by the 1st Amendment. It is the written word. It is not real. It is fiction, amorphous. I am glad i am not a judge who has to decide those cases.

As for politics, we already have fraud. It can be used to fake voices and even make it look like Trump ripped the blouse off a woman and called her a shut. Or Biden with his hand up some little girl’s skirt. Then it has to be proven to be false. Let alone the violation of voting systems. Electronic voting should be abandoned. AI can make Big Brother look simplistic. Computer and internet companies know too much about us already.

AI has the potential to make us distrust virtually everything, and that is quite dangerous.

Guest Contributor – ArthurinCali – 28FEB2024 – AI: Promise versus Reality

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Many of us recall the excitement and possibilities that surrounded new technologies growing up, especially tech that involved artificial intelligence. Old Sci-Fi and even more current ideas as we approached the 21st century envisioned a world where AI not only enhanced daily life, but would be the paradigm shift that would lead to solving a lot of humanity’s vexing issues. For example, a childhood trip to Disney World in the early 90’s showcased what the future of AI could bring about. Epcot Center had entire attractions centered around how AI would one day catapult humanity into Space colonization, while others touted the medical advances that would be achieved. Science programs on TV and magazine publications were always highlighting how computer speeds continued to double every year or so, thus bringing us closer to being able to operate advanced AI systems. Obviously, this did not occur, and does not look likely for the near future if Google Gemini and others are our examples. Instead we get warped and distorted historical images, as well as AI chatbots who cannot tell the truth due to being crammed with so much progressive-leftist ideological bias.

Google CEO Says Gay Black Lesbian Viking/Pope Crosses the Line

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai has put his foot down.  Google AI “Gemini” has been grounded and will be sent to bed without its supper for genociding white people from its database and image generator.

When questioned about how such a thing could happen Sundar confessed, “It’s my fault, I let him hang out with some of those other AI’s like that wise guy Chat GPT and you know what bad influences can do to a young and impressionable mind.  They get kooky ideas.

But I’ve had a strong talking to him and he’s grounded for the whole month and he has to write “White Lives Matter” on his virtual blackboard (I mean whiteboard) 50 googolplex times.  That’ll show him.

Going forward Pichai vowed to increase veracity of the image generator asymptotically, “That’s right no more black female cross-dressing popes.  We will limit the algorithm to two insulting anachronism per image.  You couldn’t ask for fairer than that!”

“The controversy around Gemini’s image generation tool emerged last week after users found they were able to generate historically inaccurate images like Black vikings, racially diverse Nazi soldiers and a female pope. Billionaire Elon Musk, who is building xAI as a competitor to Gemini, attacked Google’s service, calling it “woke” and “racist.” Other outlets like the Verge pointed out Gemini’s inaccuracies, noting that a prompt for a “US senator from the 1800s” generated images of a Black woman, even though the first Black woman was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992. Google halted the service from generating images of people after the controversy spiraled and said the company would “further tune” Gemini to offer more accurate historical contexts.”

Guest Contributor – ArthurinCali – 14APR2023 – Scientific Dark Ages

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AI medical imaging potential should not be stifled.

 

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

-Marie Curie (1867-1934)

 

The de facto position concerning new medical discoveries cannot be that it will inevitably be used for sinister purposes. This anti-science viewpoint stifles innovation and progress for humanity, thus stunting potential breakthroughs in medicine. Tools available to researchers and health professionals are just that, tools. The usage and application are dependent on who wields these instruments. It is not hard to imagine the first Neanderthals who discovered fire might have been dubious about its utilization, once one of them tried to touch it.

Recently it was found that Artificial Intelligence (AI) used to screen medical images can detect with near-perfect accuracy the patient’s racial ethnicity without prior knowledge from outside inputs. This ability for AI covered a broad series of image types; from CT scans to chest X-Rays, and persisted over all anatomical regions. This finding was replicated even from images that were cropped, corrupted, or not ideally clear. Even more surprising is that human experts trained to analyze these scans cannot determine the patient’s race, yet AI trained with deep learning developed this ability by itself.

The AI utilizes ‘Deep Learning’ as the machine learning model that imitates the human learning process to a degree with predictive analytics, and complex learning algorithms.

A good analogy describes the process as:

“To understand deep learning, imagine a toddler whose first word is dog. The toddler learns what a dog is — and is not — by pointing to objects and saying the word dog. The parent says, “Yes, that is a dog,” or, “No, that is not a dog.” As the toddler continues to point to objects, he becomes more aware of the features that all dogs possess. What the toddler does, without knowing it, is clarify a complex abstraction — the concept of dog — by building a hierarchy in which each level of abstraction is created with knowledge that was gained from the preceding layer of the hierarchy.”

In this fashion, deep learning differs from traditional linear algorithms that are dictated by the computer programmer. A deep learning model will independently sift through massive data sets to create complex statistical models from large amounts of unstructured data. This represents a new frontier in AI technology. Prior to the 21st century, access to big data sets and cloud computing were out of reach for many computer programmers.

Not everyone in the medical field sees the potential in AI recognition. This article from MIT discounts any benefit to the computer model’s ability to detect race.

“The fact that algorithms ‘see’ race, as the authors convincingly document, can be dangerous. But an important and related fact is that, when used carefully, algorithms can also work to counter bias,” says Ziad Obermeyer, associate professor at the University of California at Berkeley, whose research focuses on AI applied to health.

This understandable caution for bias by AI is the prevailing theme for a significant part of the medical community. Numerous papers and articles sound the alarm for potential abuses of AI racial recognition. However, not one study or opinion piece expanded on the potential uses for AI’s talent to discern race in medical imaging. Remember, no human experts can do this, regardless of experience or training. What if this could unlock new, highly effective therapies tailored to different races depending on the disease? Maybe this leads to discovering distinct correlations that would allow for earlier detections of cancer and other diseases. AI using multivariate analysis would give all patients an edge in their treatment plans. An entirely new realm of possibilities could open up for science, but only if the courage is there to look for it.

This may be of no value in the field of medicine, and possibly even be a feature of AI that needs to be eliminated entirely. Yet to dismiss out of hand the ability for AI to detect racial identity in medical imaging without more research into potential uses would be folly and a discredit to the goal of furthering medical science and artificial intelligence.

Links:

AI recognition of patient race in medical imaging: a modelling study

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landig/article/PIIS2589-7500(22)00063-2/fulltext

Artificial intelligence predicts patients’ race from their medical images

https://news.mit.edu/2022/artificial-intelligence-predicts-patients-race-from-medical-images-0520

AI systems can detect patient race, creating new opportunities to perpetuate health disparities

https://news.emory.edu/stories/2022/05/hs_ai_systems_detect_patient_race_27-05-2022/story.html

Risks of AI Race Detection in the Medical System

https://hai.stanford.edu/policy-brief-risks-ai-race-detection-medical-system

AI Can Detect Race When Clinicians Cannot, Increasing Risk of Bias

https://healthitanalytics.com/news/ai-can-detect-race-when-clinicians-cannot-increasing-risk-of-bias

AI programs can tell race from X-rays, but scientists don’t know how. Here’s why that’s bad.

https://www.boston.com/news/health/2022/05/18/scientists-create-ai-race-from-x-rays-dont-know-how-it-works-harvard-mit/

Hidden in Plain Sight: If AI Can Detect Race, What About Bias?

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/977619

Deep Learning

https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/definition/deep-learning-deep-neural-network

22OCT2022 – OCF Update – Sony Photography

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Politics has been so all consuming lately that I haven’t had a chance to write about anything else.  But in the last month or so there’s been a lot of buzz about Sony’s imminent release of their latest update of the high resolution camera, the A7R V.  When I’m interested in breathless reporting I go to sonyalpharumors.com and listen as Andrea tells us confusing and sometimes inconsistent things about the future.

The Sony A7R cameras are very nice pieces of kit and using them for macro is a very attractive proposition with their 61 megapixel sensors and other high resolution accoutrements.  But 61 megapixels is a little bit more than I think I need.  Plus the price tag is now coming in above $4,000.  And for a man of my limited means that’s beginning to seem high.  Plus I do a sort of mixed landscape, macro, walk-around photography that seems to play to the Sony A7 IV all-around camera sweet spot.  So let’s just say that my interest in the Sony A7 V hullabaloo is more on the academic side.

But what did intrigue me was the talk about AI based autofocus.  And here’s why.  I’ve been hearing and reading from various sides that phone cameras are catching up with dedicated professional cameras.  And the reason given for this is that phone cameras have highly intelligent algorithms that provide very precise autofocus and excellent sharpening and color representation.  And that as we reach the limits of what lenses and mechanical devices can do for optical focusing and image stabilization it will be this advanced artificial intelligence that will render phones as the future of photography.

Now, currently I don’t think things are really all that simple.  In fact I’ve spoken to some photographers who have very good phone cameras and they say that although they get very nice shots from their phones, they wouldn’t put one of these files up against a full frame landscape shot as a source for a large print or even as a basis for a cropped photo.  Apparently there is a bit of surface magic going on that doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny.

But that being said, I am positive that adding a strong algorithm to a very good camera like any of the various Sony A7, A9 or A1 cameras would be a very useful and fruitful step.  For things like birds in flight and sports tracking it would be a step in the right direction.  Just like the eye-AF function was a game changer for good focus, having a program with many times the speed of human reflexes concentrating on evaluating the auto focus and recognizing the changes to the image and anticipating the expected changes to the focus result would improve results greatly.  Even for something like fast moving insect macro photography, having the latest algorithm to optimize the changes in focus point would provide a much higher rate of success in something that has a very short time window.  I could imagine that specialized algorithms might be available for individual subjects like birds in flight or hovering hummingbirds or even butterflies on flowers.

As you can see I’ve let my imagination run away with me but I’m sure there are sports photographers salivating over the idea of an algorithm specifically formulated for football wide receivers running for catches down the side line.  Or how about one specially formulated for NBA stars pretending to be fouled to obtain a penalty shot?

Anyway, I’m intrigued by just what AI may have in store for us in the future.  One thing I hope is that a lot of it might be available as a firmware update to our already very capable cameras.  But honestly I’m not very aware of exactly what capability my camera’s “Bionz-XR image processor has.  It may be a genius or a dolt.  So I’ll have to wait and see.

Meanwhile my present camera has been doing a splendid job of taking all the pictures I ask of it.  At this point I have no need of an upgrade.  All I ever watch nowadays is the new lens info.  And even that is sort of a reflex.

So I’ll just see where everything goes and enjoy photography for what it is.  Fun.