Stargate... Another few billons for Sammy's Toy Factory?

@lkedves1 day ago
25+ years in working with AI (NOT the current chatbot bubble) and the true pioneers of informatics say: it does not matter how far you go into a dead end street because you did not even know that there were maps showing where to go. The question is: when do you realise the mistake and turn back from it... (no problem if you delete this comment, just a minority report)


@rwlurk1 day ago
there is no insatiable demand for AI, but there is insatiable demand from investors for more growth in tech stocks, which are propping up the USA's security markets

@Abouttime-p8u4 hours ago
@lkedves it just might be too lste by then... AI makes work so much easier though, 10 hours of work turn into 1

@Abouttime-p8u4 hours ago
@rwlurk My reply: Have you seen how many billions of pare using AI? Just from the time ChatGPT started to a year later it tremendous growth. Sure, there is also a lot of demand from stock investors interested in companies related to AI.


@lkedves27 minutes ago (edited)
​ @Abouttime-p8u Ironically, you are right but maybe not for the reason you think. Social media is not a big fan of facts and real science, I try to be as lightweight as possible here. Let's quote Alan Turing, highlighting the keys that nobody seem to read. 

--- 

1. The Imitation Game 

I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think". The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous, If the meaning of the words "machine" and "think" are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, "Can machines think?" is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words. 

The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game." 

--- 

Understand? 

Turing stated that both the goals and the means of this current "mainstream AI" are absurd. The "imitation game" does not answer the question if machines can think but replaces it. Turing wrote this article in the Mind (a Quarterly Review on Psychology and Philosophy !) to explain why people should stop calling the Universal Turing Machine a "thinking machine". I don't think he could imagine that a whole industry will be based on misinterpreting the first page (and completely ignoring the next 21) Or rather, just quoting Benedict Cumberbatch from the movie because he is so cute. Scientists... 

I have spent good 25 years on finding a definition of these terms on par with the UTM. I follow Douglas Engelbart, a mentioned pioneer when read AI as Augmenting Intellect, because his forgotten results hold the key. My daily job is to deliver solutions to "impossible missions" in real life with real deadlines and restricted budgets, not hype riding. 

The ratio is not 10 to 1 but 1 to 0. 

On the other hand, social media defines "thinking" as skimming over the popular news following the latest hypes (including videos like this), conduct some excited discussions with relatable buddies in your idea bubble and regurgitate some word salad as your well-founded opinion. And you are absolutely right. 

LLMs can do this much better than 10 to 1. 

But, there is a question. Is this second path really worth billions of dollars and terawatts of consumption? 

Back in the days before LinkedIn turned to a GeekBook, I picked up a quote that still holds today: 

I suppose one way for a machine to pass the Turing test is to wait until the quality of actual human conversation is so bad that a bot could be an improvement. This seems to be happening here. 

Peace... 

---- Interestingly, the first comment remained public and got a response to it ----

@rhettmelton

I've been thinking about this in addition to a "maximum wage" in the USA. Thinking of ceilings for progress. I'm becoming ever-more convinced that we should impose ceilings as a society, to slow the rate of progress for the sake of security and happiness. 

EACC folks (effective accelerationists) encourage us to barrel forward because AGI will solve all of our problems. I have extreme doubts. We will see how it okays out.

@lkedves

Quite the opposite. If you understand that our monetary system is based on exponential functions (the definition of the yearly interest on your bank deposit, or the GDP), combine it with enough elementary mathematics or informatics to know what it means, you realise that there is no ceiling. The repeated hype-rides and falls are simple consequences of the systemic ignorance, under various, sometimes bittersweet ideologies. 

I often watch The Big Short, you only have to replace the few words and get the AGI story - the two mortgage brokers are just like Sammy boy and the whoever that showed the site to Emily. I play a mix of Mark Baum and Michael Burry. Informatics offered a solution but the middle men took over, check Joseph Weizenbaum, the creator of the first chatbot, ELIZA, 1966. For contrast, Softbank invested in all hypes so far: Theranos, FTX, WeWork... I would rather consider that a red flag. Let alone, a praise from Trump.

I wonder if Bloomberg shadow bans this comment individually, or I am banned as a person. Testing, testing... 

😉

What Is The Future Of Programming Languages?

The questions are excellent, the answers are "state of the art", the latter is not a compliment in this case. Here is a different take on the graph part.

0. You have two fundamentally different ways to transfer and curate knowledge, A: storytelling (very human, imprecise) or B: knowledge graph building (hard for a human, as precise as can be). 👉 JCR Licklider, Libraries of the Future (1965, book).
1. STEM knowledge is always B: a graph. When you have a problem in physics, biology, math, medicine, ... it's NOT about how you sing it or what language you use, but to build a precise network of property pages filled with data and linked to each other. The very terms (labels of data and links) are also graphs (DSLs). Information systems are graphs, too. In the computer's memory, you have flowcharts of the algorithms and you use the memory to hold the content of those property sheets. 👉 Ivan Sutherland Sketchpad (YouTube)
2. EVERY program is a combination of a DSL set (the "meta" layer of classes, members, functions and their parameters) and a bunch of stories (the code of the functions and procedures), quoting Bob Martin: the software is assignment statements, if statements and while loops 👉 Future of Programming (YouTube).
3. The real problem is that the text-based tools make us focus on the storytelling, we only see the big list of features or use cases, instead of the DSLs that allow us to describe and solve the atomic problems (modularity, KISS, DRY, SRP. ...). We have already solved every possible atomic problems literally millions of times, but repeating them every time (copy-paste or in "modern cases", LLMs🤦‍♂) in the endless possible combinations, and that grows every day. 👉 Alan Kay's Power of Simplicity (YouTube)
4. Introducing new programming languages that do the same has one effect: it even erodes the "burden" of cumulated human experience and the codebase, start it all over again, not solving the fundamental issue.

Problem: Information systems are graphs. Storytelling is not the right way to interact with graphs. The blamed imprecision is manageable "human error" in the case of graphs but inevitable fatal block in text-based programming. Teaser 👉 Bret Victor, Future of Programming (YouTube); hard-core answer 👉 Douglas Engelbart: Augmenting Human Intellect (report)

Solution: STEM languages are graphs (DSLs). THE future programming language is the DSL of information systems. The same that we have in physics, mathematics, biology, ...

Question: has anyone read this far? 😉

---[ discussion under a comment ]---

CallousCoder
Your behaviour is like the old horse and cart people against the automobile. It's nonsensical, the technology is here to stay. So either adopt it or you'll go extinct. You know that good developers are terrible managers, right? ;) Also I don't get it, what the resistance is. Whether you ask a junior or medior to implement something or you ask an LLM. It's no different other than that the LLM just does it and doesn't nag especially after the 2nd or 3rd iteration ;)

CallousCoder
“bro” is 52 years old and didn’t take philosophy but EE and CS.

lkedves
Age is just a number (happens to be the same...) Check the Mother of All Demos, that was real technology behind the Apollo program, while this chatbot AI is just another stock market bubble. Side note: before the previous AI winter, we won Comdex '99 with a data mining / AI tool. Back then people could read the first paragraph of Turing's article, the definition of "the test" instead of trying to implement cartoon dreams... (including a Nobel prize winner psychologist) 

But you got the point with "Modern software is a disease!" LLMs learn from their sources, kids copy-paste them to real software, LLM learns from them again. Quantity goes up, quality goes down. LLM companies use human slaves to avoid stupid mistakes in everyday tasks after the first flops. Regardless of we accept this as a solution, who will censor generated codes? 

Dead end.

cyberfunk3793
AI is obviously going to fix data races and buffer overflows and every other type of bugs you can think of. You don't understand what is coming if you think it's just hype. I don't know if it will be 5 years or 50, but at some point humans will only be describing (in human language) what they want the program to do and reviewing the code that is produced. Currently AI is already extremely helpful but still makes a lot mistakes. These mistakes will get more and more rare and the ability of AI to program will far exceed humans just like computers beat us at chess.

TCMx3
Chess engines did not need AI to curbstomp us at chess. Non-ML based engines with simple table-bases for endings were already some 700 points stronger than the best humans. Sounds like you don't actually know very much about chess engines lmao.

CallousCoder
btw playing chess with an LLM is a hilarious experience. If it looses it brings back pieces from the dead or just “portals” them into safety.

lkedves
[retry, I promise I leave if disappears again]

You may have missed so I repeat. We won Comdex '99 with a data mining / AI tool (and there is nothing new on this field except the exponential growth of the hardware). Since then I have worked on refining knowledge graph management in information systems under every single project I touched, often delivering "impossible missions". I work together with the machine because I follow a different resolution of AI: Augmenting Intellect (Douglas Engelbart) on systems that are of course smarter than me (and generate part of their own codes for years from these graphs). Right now at the national AI lab in a university applied research project that I will not try to explain here.
You find some of my conclusions with references to sources in my comment added to this video (11th May). 

I know the pioneers who predicted and warned about what we have today (recommended reading: Tools For Thought by Howard Rheingold, you find the whole book online). One of them is Alan Turing, who asked people not to call the UTM a "thinking machine" and wrote an article in Mind: A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy about the dangers of making such claims without proper definitions. Poor man never thought that in a few decades "IT folks" would think this was an aim. Or Joseph Weizenbaum, the guy who wrote the first chatbot, ELIZA. 

I know why your dream will never happen because I know informatics (its original meaning, not the business model Gates invented) was against this fairy tale. LLMs are just try to prove that old story from quantum mechanics, that infinite monkeys in infinite time will surely type in the whole Hamlet. The problem is that we don't have infinite time and resources, and the goal is not repeating but write the next Hamlet. Those who initiated informatics, made this clear. Start with Vannevar Bush: As We May Think, 1945. 

@TCMx3 , @CallousCoder - thanks for your answers... 🙏 Another excellent example - in chess, you have absolute rules.

In life, we know that all the laws we can invent are wrong (Incompleteness theorem) and thinking means improving the rules while solving problems and taking the responsibility of all errors. The ultimate example is the Apollo program with Engelbart's NLS in the background, that's how THEY went to the moon. We go to the plaza to watch the next Marvel story in 4D, now with the help of genAI. If we go with the question of predicting the next 50 years, look up "Charly Gordon Algernon 1968" here on YouTube.

---[ This answer "disappeared" for the second time so I left the place ]---

Immersive Technologies Policy Primer - reaction

On LinkedIn

This looks like a solid overview of the current "state of the art". What I don't see is the background, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐠𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐰𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐰𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 (and were afraid to look down so now we fall like a stone, just as predicted -> https://youtu.be/KZqsWGtdqiA?t=102 ).

When discussing the social effects of communication technologies, where is the reference to Neil Postman? -> neilpostman.org
https://youtu.be/QqxgCoHv_aE

When talking about education, where is PLATO?
https://youtu.be/THoxsBw-UmM

When discussing AR/VR, where is Ivan Sutherland?
https://youtu.be/AFqXGxKsM3w
Or at least, Alan Kay (among others, the real inventor of the tablet)...
https://youtu.be/pUoBSC3uoeo?t=5061

When thinking about informatics in general, where is Douglas Engelbart?
https://youtu.be/O77mweZ8-RQ?t=22
Or Ted Nelson?
https://youtu.be/KdnGPQaICjk

...

---

"Primer"... 🧐

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana

---
... and I guess this date should be 1994:
[3] Paul Milgram and Fumio Kishino (1884)

Haiku

The anti social medium. The Matrix dessert.

The crack on Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem.

The ultimate form of non-transformable information.

The Experience of Being Wrong

How could I be THIS STUPID???

Now, please stop reading and remember when you asked this, not just lightly but with the strange mix of real anger and shame.

...

That was the last time you learned something really important and this is the only way to it. It happened to me yesterday. At age 52 I think this is a very positive feedback: I can (very hardly but still) lower my ego and learn. Here is the story.

I have been repeating for years in every context that JCR Licklider separated transferrable and non-transferrable knowledge, and a root cause of today's mess in IT (and consequently, everywhere) is the fact that we forgot this. Banging my chest like a gorilla, like here...

But yesterday, as my young colleague is creating a proper scientific publication, we started looking for the exact reference. To my greatest surprise, I did not find it. In desperation, I started reading Libraries of the Future again, and realized (thankfully and ironically on page 2!) that...

Licklider never wrote that.

Here is the actual quote:

We delimited the scope of the study, almost at the outset, to functions, classes of information, and domains of knowledge in which the items of basic interest are not the print or paper, and not the words and sentences themselves —but the facts, concepts, principles, and ideas that lie behind the visible and tangible aspects of documents. The criterion question for the delimitation was: "Can it be rephrased without significant loss?" Thus we delimited the scope to include only "transformable information." Works of art are clearly beyond that scope, for they suffer even from reproduction. Works of literature are beyond it also, though not as far. Within the scope lie secondary parts of art and literature, most of history, medicine, and law, and almost all of science, technology, and the records of business and government.

He talks about "transformable information", not "transferrable knowledge".

What happened? Had I forgotten to read???

No, but I was not able to at that moment. This paragraph held a key to a question of computerized knowledge management I struggled with for decades, literally. When it hit me, my mind was blown immediately and started restructuring itself. I followed, remembered, and kept quoting my own revelation instead of the text that I thought I was reading. 

But why?

Knowledge in our minds is always a network: some attributes of and relations between "things". To store or transfer our knowledge of a topic, we "export" the related part of this network in a presentation, text, figures, pictures, videos. Other people will try to integrate this content with their existing knowledge. Here comes the trick: for those who can do this without changing anything in their minds, this was not "information" because information is only the part that you did not know and could not figure out from your existing knowledge.

At the first time I could not integrate Licklider's original message with my existing knowledge, it only triggered a change that took a long time. Now, when I revisited this paragraph, it was new again but now I could actually read it and integrate with my current knowledge. Fun fact: the word "respect" does not mean "obey" or "accept" but re-specto: examine it again.

Real information is like good chilli: it burns twice.

So, how do I read the message now?

This is a simple way to tell the difference between transformable and non-transformable information. I quoted the rest correctly: informatics (the "libraries of the future") should work only with transformable information.

• Transformable means you can say it hundreds of ways, the meaning will be the same. You focus on the knowledge graph in your head and try to build exactly the same in the audience: a physical phenomenon or a medical treatment. 
• Non-transformable information focuses on the message itself and the feelings created by it (not less important but totally different). With different tone, wording, or face, the message and the effect significantly changes.

A less nerdy example

I think 99% of modern pop music is not even information: repeats the same message about a boy, girl, love, hate, etc. that the audience is already familiar. (hashtag metoo?)

But the Sound of Silence is a perfect example of non-transformable information: I already knew the original song but this presentation by Disturbed delivered the message (which happens to be in close relation with the topic of this post).

[This post can be a pair of my more formal article, The Science of Being Wrong (a possible definition of informatics) as here I defined "infonauts" as experts in being wrong...]

Responsibility in "Mainstream IT" vs "Golden age informatics"

Charles Hoffman

I have been saying for years and years that more business professionals and liberal arts majors should be paying attention to artificial intelligence. Let me ask a question. When, or if, the tools that these professional computer scientists create go terribly wrong, should the computer scientists be held accountable in any way? If someone relies on these tools based on something some marketing campaign for artificial intelligence proclaimed, who will be held responsible? Buyer beware?

Humans in the AI Loop. AI in the Human Loop. Humans in Control

---

Lorand Kedves

There is one, similarly dangerous aspect of this question. Assuming that there are no "IT people" who are (with the necessary formal education, knowledge and experience, much more) worried about this situation thus outsiders should enforce discipline on us.

Listen to Bob Martin not only pointing out the core issues but giving an explanation and possible cure for them as well. The problem is that this is too technical for the outsiders and absolutely not popular for the vast majority of self-proclaimed IT people who happened to get old and established without ever receiving proper education. So, they teach the next generation of their cargo cults, blockchain or mainstream AI being the newest ones. [edit: ouch, forgot about the IT cult leaders who first got insanely rich, then start "changing the world for the better", making fame along the way and attract their followers to continue their "heritage"... 🤦‍♂️ ]
https://youtu.be/ecIWPzGEbFc?t=3057

I see nothing special in IT. We live in the predicted global Idiocracy and IT is not immune to it.

---

Charles Hoffman

Thanks for the video, Future of Programming. That is exactly the sort of thing I am talking about.

---

Lorand Kedves

Yes, you are "talking about" it while I can list you goals and names of the true IT pioneers, the best minds of the planet. They knew that any technology is exactly as dangerous as beneficial. The difference is that others change what you can DO in the real world, informatics changes what you SEE and THINK of it! Today we handle their warnings as a damned bucket list and of course, that is ignored as a CS PhD research topic.
https://bit.ly/montru_ScienceWrong

The roots were cut when IT became a for-profit venture funded by general business (M$) and rich daydreamers (Apple). I think you will like the ultimate arts person, Neil Postman, trying to educate Apple ("think different" 🤦‍♂️) folks in 1993...
https://youtu.be/QqxgCoHv_aE

IT is the "One Ring" (ref Bob Martin: you can't do anything without "us"). I wanted to use it in direct resource management (1) or education (2) but was ignored. Working in finance is like carrying that ring through Mordor but at least some people listen here and can even find "established" critics like Prof. Richard Murphy (3).
(1) https://bit.ly/montru_OpenSourceCivilization
(2) https://bit.ly/lkedves_Studiolo
(3) https://youtu.be/k5Yo3Y_SMow

---

Charles Hoffman

This is all interesting. One can compare this to things like the creation of "high fructuous corn syrup" and it effect on the food industry and people's health, mining techniques that destroy the environment, the way healthcare is practiced in the United States, the way the pharmaceuticals industry works to get people to pay pills for the rest of their lives.

---

Lorand Kedves

Only if you ignore the other side of the coin. Following your analogy, statistically speaking the goods you find in a pharmacy are either useless or outright dangerous, even lethal - yet, we need pharmacies and have been cured by the drugs they sell.

How comes?

Although a pharmacy looks like a shop, it MUST NOT give you what you ask, only the drugs your doctor prescribed after a careful examination, regardless of the money you offer. Theoretically... 🙁 But today we try to operate the pharmacy just like a bakery or a candy store: want to get more profit by giving you whatever you ask, even create marketing campaign, etc. (like the rest of the healthcare system btw.)

So, do you "rightfully" blame the pharmacy for poisoning and killing people?

Yes AND no. But the solution is not that "worried, responsible outsiders" flock in to the pharmacy and try to regulate it by their personal experiences or the color of the boxes. Instead, they should support pharmacists return to their role and rebuild the counter between them and the customers. And in the long run, realign the "healthcare system" to the meaning of this word...

Now, replace "health" with "knowledge" and got informatics.

Does this sound interesting?

---

Charles Hoffman

Sign me up! Informatics and cybernetics make complete sense to me. What I don't understand is why I don't "see" them in software development.

---

Lorand Kedves

Since the 20th century, mankind is a planetary species: science, communication, manufacturing, wars. Thinkers knew that civilization is not a thing but an often unpleasant process of making a peaceful, educated, cooperative homo "sapiens" from each "erectus" kid. The new power needs a "global brain", a transparent cooperation of "knowledge workers" to control it.

They did create an information system that organized 400,000 members solving one, impossible, objective goal - the Apollo program. An icon is Douglas Engelbart.
Introduction (1995): https://youtu.be/O77mweZ8-RQ
Eulogy (2013): https://youtu.be/yMjPqr1s-cg

However, the world population was (is) not ready. They prefer separating "them" from "us", hate the hardship of learning and choose the cheap illusion of knowledge by repeating hollow cliches. Add the dream of becoming rich and famous, let them use the infrastructure created above and you get the current Idiocracy. An icon is Elon Musk.
Prediction (1959): https://youtu.be/KZqsWGtdqiA?t=101

You don't "see" informatics as I talk about it because it was lost since 1973.
https://youtu.be/8pTEmbeENF4?t=1741

Rebels may pay with their lives like Aaron Swartz.
https://youtu.be/9vz06QO3UkQ

---

Charles Hoffman

Thanks for all this information. Now I have renewed motivation. I am now doing this for Doug. Building on his shoulders.

---

Lorand Kedves

As a bridge person between accounting and IT, you can do more.
- BE AWARE that 1945-1972 was the golden age and Douglas Engelbart represents that "state of the art".
- DEMAND anyone claiming to be an IT person to demonstrate the same moral and professional attitude.
- DON'T ACCEPT less from "us".

"Building on his shoulders" is another thing.

Here is his analysis (1962) behind the Mother of All Demos. It has one key paragraph ignored even by his followers.
https://bit.ly/Engelbart_AI

It relates to Ted Nelson's Xanadu and ZigZag (document and graph DB vision). Combined with Chomsky's research it shows a gap in the proof of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. That is the key to Turing's true challenge: define "machine" and "thinking". The Neumann Architecture CAN handle that, while the Harward is a dead end street. Conclusion: informatics is the necessary and sufficient doctrine of AGI as Augmenting Global Intellect, everything else is garbage.

This paragraph costs a lifetime and is worth it.

Meanwhile, our civilization is literally committing suicide and you are right: mainstream IT is part of the problem. About the necessary paradigm shift, here is another message from 1973:
https://youtu.be/WjR6nHhc6Rg

Brain Bar - Te hiszel még a jövőben?

https://brainbar.com/10-kerdes-a-10-eves-brain-bartol

Kedves Brain Bar,

Szerintem nem az a kérdés, hogy hisz-e valaki a jövőben, hanem hogy képességeihez mérten érte vagy ellene cselekszik, egyáltalán érti-e amit csinál, amiről beszél. Ez gyakorlatilag lehetetlen, ha nemhogy nem érti de nem is ismeri a múltat. ("Óriások vállán állva" az üres fecsegés is messzebbre hangzik...)

A múlt nem csak kijelöli a 10 kérdés közül a lényegeseket, de választ is ad rájuk. Tapasztalatom szerint viszont ezek nem csak a nagyközönség, hanem informatikai doktori kutatás környezetében is kívül esnek a komfortzónán (streetlight effect).

Lásd: https://bit.ly/montru_ScienceWrong

Buzgó, buzgó, buzgó...