Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell on AI Accountability

2023.4.24: news.cyb/ai/
Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell on AI Accountability

. late 2020 and early 2021, two researchers 

— Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell — 

were given special attention

after they authored a research paper

addressing flaws in today's AI systems.

[James Vincent Apr 19, 2023]

https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/19/23689554/google-ai-chatbot-bard-employees-criticism-pathological-liar

pioneers of the abstract data type or object-oriented modularization

2021.7.21..8.19: news.adda/lang/
pioneers of the abstract data type or object-oriented modularization/
Wirth 1979`founders of abstract data type were C.A.R. Hoare, P. Brinch Hansen:

. I had recently heard prof Liskov 2013

explaining how she was the origin of the ADT

(abstract data type) back in 1971

when she was working on the Venus system;

http://amerdreamdocs.blogspot.com/2021/07/drbarbara-liskovthe-software-crisis.html

but prof Wirth 1979 claims the idea came from

C.A.R. Hoare and P. Brinch Hansen;

however, he gives no details or a date.

. about the same time that Liskov was working on Venus

David L. Parnas was mentioning "information hiding" 

referring to object-oriented modules

being preferred to functional decomposition.

I, robot (2004)

10.24: tv.adds/robotics/I, robot (2004):
summary:
. the movie "I, robot" had me realizing
how complicated good programming is.
[full synopsis]

#robotics #AI heaven-or-hell-its-your-choice.com

1.10..11: news.cs/robotics/heaven-or-hell-its-your-choice.com:
summary:
. Alan Keeling` Heaven or Hell It's Your Choice;
is a book warning us about the coming robotics age.
. his idea of machine learning dangers is delusional
but he's onto something when he warns that
the current political systems will create killer robotics.
. robotics is a weaponizable technology
and it needs to be tightly controlled by a global government
in order to keep various military powers
from programming the robots to kill each other.
. the reason for capitalism is a sort of fascism
where good people take resources from the others
and good is defined by who's most profitable.
. let the free market decide who makes the money
and thus who can support unlimited breeding rates.
. it's civil war as each culture fights to expand;
and, free markets are the battleground;
but, robotics can be used to cheat capitalism
by sabotaging or killing competitors.
. we need to insist that all robotics are open sourced;
and prove that any robot unleashed in the real world
is following a constitution that hurts no humans.

Raffi Khatchadourian`doomsday invention #robotics

12.14: cs/ai/Raffi Khatchadourian`doomsday invention:
. an article in the New Yorker, nov 23, p64,
Raffi Khatchadourian "the doomsday invention:
will artificial intelligence destroy us?":
. Nick Bostrom wrote in "superintelligence:
paths, dangers, strategies"
that humans risk being killed off when the robotic network
"gains the ability to improve itself,
and in short order exceeds the intellectual potential
of the human brain by many orders of magnitude."

robot-human interactions

12.28: summary:
. ideas about robot-human interactions
inspired by the movie Her,
about falling in love with AI .

dream theory's tech perfection plan

12.8: adds/relig/dream theory's tech perfection plan:
. welcome to my wealth4all religion .
. you don't even have to believe in it to be saved by it,
but if everyone did believe,
it would save a lot of grief .
. the universe's god has no way of
not choosing bad experiences
(all that's left for the god to do
is making sure the bad comes first
and that some good experiences
are in power to keep civilization alive
during this boot camp of evolution);
but we've already seen
every sort of pain and inequality,
so, any time now,
we certainly could move on to
experiencing pure wealth4all .
. the emotional pains the god gives us
are put there just to provoke the wars
that promote evolution of the technology
that ensures eternal survival beyond sun death;
but, if everyone were to realize
god needs tech not war,
then we could simply volunteer
to put more money into tech .
. of course that would mean less money for
the popular entertaining games such as:
my family is bigger than your family ...
so, it's not a belief without costs;
but non-believers are welcomed to be
dragged through war:
wealth4all is optional
until tech is perfected .
. it's not like god is punishing us for
being uncooperative with the needed
Tech Perfection Plan
but if you did believe that,
the obvious data certainly could
support that view;
however, at this point in the
universe's experience distribution
war is no longer needed for
pinning the pains to the beginning;
but, war is still a backup plan
in case we don't feel it necessary to
divert population expansion funds
towards the Tech Perfection Plan .
. wealth4all: I'm a believer .

college attracts female software engineers

4.3: news.cyb/dev.py/
college attracts female software engineers:
. after switching to an easy programming language
(going from Java to Python)
Mudd college is attracting many more females
into their computer science programs .
David MacQuigg:
edu-sig@python.org/transforming CS at Harvey Mudd/5:40 PM:

Excellent article.  It is good to see the revolution
moving forward in at least a few schools.
Khan Academy is also adding CS.
This is very encouraging.
When I read the headline
"Giving Women the Access Code",
I was worried that it sounded like a
watered-down course for women.
It's not that at all.
It's the guys that need to change their attitude.
When I see our introductory class
with 220 freshmen in a course on C,
2/3 of whom will be "washed out" by next year,
I wonder how many of them will go on to be
leaders in law, politics, even technology.
What will be the impact of their lack of
understanding or appreciation of what us techies do.
It's no wonder engineers are not even in the room
when important decisions are made.

my response:
. the article he refers to said women got interested
in a computer science program
after the program shifted its focus:

"(. this course isn't about wrestling with
monster languages like Java or C;
we use an easy language like Python
so you can get on with what's important:
getting your machine to do more of your job .)

I think he goes on to say:
. so many of tomorrow's leaders
are being put off by the monster languages;
and, they are destined thereafter to have
little understanding or appreciation
of what techies[automators] do.
(make the world a more efficient place).
. engineers are not invited to requirements meetings?
I don't think it's because of a lack of
understanding or appreciation of what techies do;
rather, the psychology of leadership
includes something like computer science's
Principle of Least Priviledge:
the safest and simplest way to conduct business
is to develop modules with clean, minimal interfaces:
that means interfaces that don't include
inputs a module doesn't need .
. engineers may prefer having a say in their job,
but an engineer's performance should not require that,
unless it's a very new technology,
in which case the mgt has no idea what is possible
without the engineer's input .
. what's missing from an optimal world
is making everyone fluent in their ability to
automate or precisely document their job;
and, I think moving to Python
is a step in the right direction .

when software capitalists become dictators

7.4: adds/security
/when software capitalists become dictators:
. we see what a mess engineers have made of
the internet and computer security;
as chips make more decisions in our appliances,
they are like new laws imposed upon our nature;
this is where capitalists would be legislators;
and they must therefore submit to our constitution:
ie, representatives are elected,
initiatives can be brought by the people
and laws are open to public scrutiny .
. not only is opensource software not communism
(Bill Gates was misquoted as suggesting this);
but software as private capital
is sure to present an inevitable tyranny
just like a communism will
without the checks and balances of
democracy and separation of powers .

7.15: adds/robot/constitution with context casing:
. one way to balance private and public interests
is by including a context chip,
which has the ability to override other chips
whenever it senses the robot is on public property .
. it would also have final say over
the use of force the public is interested in .

constitution for federated development

6.18:

. after reading about getting over benevolent dictating

I began to think about ways to make forking part of the process .

. each contributer would have their own root-level subfolder

within a familiar svn (subversion) repository .

. this would virtually turn svn into a git or mercurial

in that the primary design goal of git was to facilitate forking,

and make that a religion rather than a problem .

. svn can be used to talk with eachother via

writing comments and suggestions in each other's forks .

. you are not expected to keep these comments in your code

but you give them a quick review and either roll changes back

or merge the changes by following the advice .

. contributors can have various combinations of

both the implementation and interface forks;

eg,

interface forks will be for trade-off's between

efficiency and security,

while an implementation fork may be used for

practicing a different coding religion (language, format, ...);

[12.15: or,

they may do the documentation after the coding rather than before,

whereas, a major reason I started my own project

was that I wanted documentation written first

and I wanted the code written in my own language .

. another reason to fork is the interface religion:

eg, the mac strives for consistency through dictatorship,

whereas, the constitution of addx requires that

the user have intuitive access to an interface editor .

. the shared.subfolder would contain the constitution;

this includes any contributor requirements .

. for the most part, sharing between contributors is done by

viewing the code of other forks,

and linking to (rather than copying)

the modules of those that are either doing a great job on their own,

or are willing to negotiate mergings .

]

. if the forks can share much code,

then there is no issue with forks taking up limited resources;

otherwise, the shared.subfolder can point to where

various forks have migrated .

[12.15:

. the shared.subfolder will introduce each interface fork;

and, explain the extent to which the modules from various contributors

can be used interchangeably within a selected interface .

]

. the shared system described by the constitution

makes it easy to select a combination of modules

and have the system built from source without giving the user

headaches for making choices .