#AI Algorithms

[rootsinthefuture]

In the web of technology, humanity is lost, trapped between threads of code and shimmering lights. We are fascinated spectators, but prisoners of innovation without mastery. In the cybernetic labyrinth, the secret is to dance between progress and understanding, to transform digital incantations into a rebellious symphony of autonomy, hoping not to lose ourselves.

Rootsinthefuture

[goldsasa]

Dear Sirs!

(or have some ladies also signed?)

A few days ago, you, Mr Musk, together with Mr Wozniak, Mr Mostaque and other signatories, published an open letter demanding a compulsory pause of at least six months for the development of the most powerful AI models worldwide.

This is the only way to ensure that the AI models contribute to the welfare of all humanity, you claim. As a small part of the whole of humanity, I would like to thank you very much for wanting to protect me. How kind! 🙏🏻

Allow me to make a few comments and ask a few questions in this context:

My first question that immediately came to mind:

Where was your open letter when research for the purpose of warfare started and weapon systems based on AI were developed, leading to unpredictable and uncontrollable conflicts?

AI-based threats have already been used in wars for some time, e.g. in the Ukraine war and Turkey. Speaking of the US, they are upgrading their MQ-9 combat drones with AI and have already used them to kill in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The victims of these attacks - don't they count as humanity threatened by AI?

I am confused! Please explain to me, when did the (general) welfare of humanity exist, which is now threatened and needs to be protected by you? I mean the good of humanity - outside your "super rich white old nerds Silicon Valley" filter bubble? And I have one more question:

Where was your open letter when Facebook's algorithms led to the spread of hate speech and misinformation about the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar?

Didn't the right to human welfare also apply to this population group? Why do you continue to remain silent on the inaction and non-transparent algorithms of Meta and Mr Zuckerberg? Why do you continue to allow hatred and agitation in the social media, which (at least initially) belonged to you without exception?

My further doubt relates to your person and your biography itself, dear Mr Musk.

You, known as a wealthy man with Asperger's syndrome and a penchant for interplanetary affairs, have commendably repeatedly expressed concern about the potentially destructive effects of AI robots in the past. I thank you for trying to save me from such a future. It really is a horrible idea!

And yet, Mr Musk, you yourself were not considered one of the great AI developers of Silicon Valley for a long time.

Your commitment to the field of artificial intelligence was initially rather poor. Your Tesla Autopilot is a remarkable AI software, but it was developed for a rather niche market.

I assume that you, Mr Musk, wanted to change that when you bought 73.5 million of Twitter's shares for almost $2.9 billion in April?

After all, to be able to play along with the AI development of the giants, you lacked one thing above all: access to a broad-based AI that is not limited to specific applications, as well as a comprehensive data set.

The way to access such a dataset was to own a large social network that collects information about the consumption patterns, leisure activities and communication patterns of its users, including their social interactions and political preferences.

Such collections about the behaviour of the rest of humanity are popular in your circles, aren't they?

By buying Twitter stock, you can give your undoubtedly fine AI professionals access to a valuable treasure trove of data and establish yourself as one of Silicon Valley's leading AI players.

Congratulations on your stock purchase and I hope my data is in good hands with you.

Speaking of your professionals, I'm interested to know why your employees have to work so hard when you are so concerned about the well-being of people?

I'm also surprised that after the pandemic your staff were no longer allowed to work in their home offices. Is working at home also detrimental to the well-being of humanity?

In the meantime, you have taken the Twitter platform off the stock market.

It was never about money for you, right? No, you're not like that. I believe you!

But maybe it was about data? These are often referred to as the "oil of our time". The data of a social network is like the ticket to be one of the most important AI developers in the AI market of the future.

At this point, I would like to thank you for releasing parts of Twitter's code for algorithmic timeline control as open source. Thanks to this transparency, I now also know that the Twitter algorithm has a preference for your Elon Musk posts. What an enrichment of my knowledge horizon!

And now, barely a year later, this is happening: OpenAi, a hitherto comparatively small company in which you have only been active as a donor and advisor since your exit in 2018, not only has enormous sources of money, but also the AI gamechanger par excellence - Chat GPT. And virtually overnight becomes one of the most important players in the race for the digital future. It was rumoured that your exit at the time was with the intention that they would take over the business? Is that true at all?

After all I have said, I am sure you understand why I have these questions for you, don't you?

I would like to know what a successful future looks like in your opinion? I'm afraid I'm not one of those people who can afford a $100,000 ticket to join you in colonising Mars. I will probably stay on Earth.

So far I have heard little, actually nothing, about your investments in climate projects and the preservation of the Earth.

That is why I ask you, as an advocate of all humanity, to work for the preservation of the Earth - with all the means at your disposal, that would certainly help.

If you don't want to do that, I would very much appreciate it if you would simply stop worrying about us, the rest of humanity. Perhaps we can manage to protect the world from marauding robots and a powerful artificial intelligence without you, your ambitions and your friends?

I have always been interested in people. That's why I studied social sciences and why today I ask people what they long for. Maybe I'm naive, but I think it's a good idea to ask the people themselves what they want before advocating for them.

The rest of the world - that is, the 99,9 percent - who are not billionaires like you, also have visions!

With the respect you deserve,

Susanne Gold

(just one of the remaining 99% percent whose welfare you care about).

[cr-ok]

If you’re ever struggling to think of comments that won’t shadow ban “political” content, just ask something open-ended while being “playfully controversial”. Examples below:

“What color notebooks do you all use for sience? I use orange”

“What do you all drink on a hot day? I drink a lot of hot chocolate”

“What temperature makes socks and sandals justifiable?”

“Do you all set your toilet paper towards you or the wall? I sit mine on top of the holder.”

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Scholars of antiquity believe they are on the brink of a new era of understanding after researchers armed with artificial intelligence read the hidden text of a charred scroll that was buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted nearly 2,000 years ago.

Hundreds of papyrus scrolls held in the library of a luxury Roman villa in Herculaneum were burned to a crisp when the town was devastated by the intense blast of heat, ash and pumice that destroyed nearby Pompeii in AD79.

Excavations in the 18th century recovered more than 1,000 whole or partial scrolls from the mansion, thought to be owned by Julius Caesar’s father-in-law.

However, the black ink was unreadable on the carbonised papyri and the scrolls crumbled to pieces when researchers tried to open them.

The breakthrough in reading the ancient material came from the $1m Vesuvius Challenge, a contest launched in 2023 by Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky, and Silicon Valley backers.

The competition offered prizes for extracting text from high-resolution CT scans of a scroll taken at Diamond, the UK’s national synchrotron facility in Oxfordshire.

On Monday, Nat Friedman, a US tech executive and founding sponsor of the challenge, announced that a team of three computer-savvy students, Youssef Nader in Germany, Luke Farritor in the US, and Julian Schilliger in Switzerland, had won the $700,000 (£554,000) grand prize after reading more than 2,000 Greek letters from the scroll.

Papyrologists who have studied the text recovered from the blackened scroll were stunned at the feat.

“This is a complete gamechanger,” said Robert Fowler, emeritus professor of Greek at Bristol University and chair of the Herculaneum Society.

“There are hundreds of these scrolls waiting to be read.”

Dr Federica Nicolardi, a papyrologist at the University of Naples Federico II, added:

“This is the start of a revolution in Herculaneum papyrology and in Greek philosophy in general. It is the only library to come to us from ancient Roman times.”

“We are moving into a new era,” said Seales, who led efforts to read the scrolls by virtually unwrapping the CT images and training AI algorithms to detect the presence of ink.

He now wants to build a portable CT scanner to image scrolls without moving them from their collections.

In October, Farritor won the challenge’s $40,000 “first letters” prize when he identified the ancient Greek word for “purple” in the scroll.

He teamed up with Nader in November, with Schilliger, who developed an algorithm to automatically unwrap CT images, joining them days before the contest deadline on 31 December.

Together, they read more than 2,000 letters of the scroll, giving scholars their first real insight into its contents.

“It’s been an incredibly rewarding journey,” said Youssef.

“The adrenaline rush is what kept us going. It was insane. It meant working 20-something hours a day. I didn’t know when one day ended and the next day started.”

“It probably is Philodemus,” Fowler said of the author.

“The style is very gnarly, typical of him, and the subject is up his alley.”

The scroll discusses sources of pleasure, touching on music and food – capers in particular – and whether the pleasure experienced from a combination of elements owes to the major or minor constituents, the abundant or the scare.

“In the case of food, we do not right away believe things that are scarce to be absolutely more pleasant than those which are abundant,” the author writes.

“I think he’s asking the question: what is the source of pleasure in a mix of things? Is it the dominant element, is it the scarce element, or is it the mix itself?” said Fowler.

The author ends with a parting shot against his philosophical adversaries for having “nothing to say about pleasure, either in general or particular."

Seales and his research team spent years developing algorithms to digitally unwrap the scrolls and detect the presence of ink from the changes it produced in the papyrus fibres.

He released the algorithms for contestants to build on in the challenge.

Friedman’s involvement proved valuable not only for attracting financial donors.

When Seales was meant to fly to the UK to have a scroll scanned, a storm blew in cancelling all commercial flights.

Worried they might lose their slot at the Diamond light source, Friedman hastily organised a private jet for the trip.

Beyond the hundreds of Herculaneum scrolls waiting to be read, many more may be buried at the villa, adding weight to arguments for fresh excavations.

"The same technology could be applied to papyrus wrapped around Egyptian mummies," Fowler said.

These could include everything from letters and property deeds to laundry lists and tax receipts, shining light on the lives of ordinary ancient Egyptians.

“There are crates of this stuff in the back rooms of museums,” Fowler said.

The challenge continues this year with the goal to read 85% of the scroll and lay the foundations for reading all of those already excavated.

Scientists need to fully automate the process of tracing the surface of the papyrus inside each scroll and improve ink detection on the most damaged parts.

“When we launched this less than a year ago, I honestly wasn’t sure it’d work,” said Friedman.

“You know, people say money can’t buy happiness, but they have no imagination. This has been pure joy. It’s magical what happened, it couldn’t have been scripted better."

Source: The Guardian

How the Herculaneum Papyri were carbonised in the Mount Vesuvius eruption – Video

5 February 2024

[regenesis01]

Idk who will read this rn as I made this account yesterday because I decided to quit Instagram and move my art here. But I swear that I love the fact that Tumblr doesn't have a stupid ass algorithm that doesn't let most people see your creations, or the fact that hashtags are actually useful here.

For those who don't know, Instagram made a new update were you can't see the recent posts in hashtags unless they're popular (top posts and recent top posts) . So now it's only the algorithm that decides which posts it will let you see. Horrible.

[techaiml]

Embracing the Revolution: Generative AI and Custom Software Development

Generative AI represents a paradigm shift in custom software development, offering unprecedented opportunities for innovation, efficiency, and creativity. By harnessing the power of AI algorithms, developers can accelerate the coding process, explore new design possibilities, and deliver highly customized solutions tailored to individual needs. As we embark on this journey of technological advancement, it's essential to embrace the transformative potential of generative AI while upholding ethical principles and ensuring inclusive and responsible development practices.

[garudabluffs]

Kyle Chayka is a founding editor of Dirt. This essay is drawn from his new book Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture

Welcome to Filterworld

Kyle Chayka writes, “Our personal desires are constantly being anticipated, served in advance, and perhaps thus undercut.”

"it only matters that you’re still watching and clicking, building a map of your interests that make you more targetable. It’s long past time that we realized these systems are not benefitting culture. Creators and consumers alike are pushed into preset formats that we may ultimately have no organic interest in. By giving in to algorithmic feeds, we are letting tech companies determine our tastes. 

Flatness, like scalability, is efficient. The same culture flows through the same pipes to the same net-average consumer. But since when did efficiency become the sole metric by which we judge art? Filterworld represents the idea that the messiness of culture can be optimized and that only what is optimized for shareability is worthwhile. I disagree."

READ MORE https://dirt.fyi/article/2024/01/welcome-to-filterworld

The tyranny of the algorithm: why every coffee shop looks the same 16 Jan 2024

From the generic hipster cafe to the ‘Instagram wall’, the internet has pushed us towards a kind of global ubiquity – and this phenomenon is only going to intensify

"YouTube, founded in 2005, allowed anyone with a powerful enough internet connection to upload and share video clips. Instagram followed in 2010 and created a larger culture of sharing snapshots from newly mainstream iPhone cameras."

“Globalisation takes place only in capital and data,” the literary theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has written. “Everything else is damage control.” We talk about politics, culture and travel becoming globalised, but on a more fundamental level, Spivak is correct that what really flows across the planet are various forms of money and information: investments, corporations, infrastructure, server farms and the combined data of all the digital platforms, sluicing invisibly like wind or ocean currents between nations. We users voluntarily pumped our own information through this system, turning ourselves into flowing commodities, too.

This homogenisation is not just a phenomenon of our own moment; it is a consequence of changes that happened long before algorithmic social media feeds, and is just as likely to intensify in the future. After all, each time a grand flattening is announced the world somehow finds a way to get even flatter."

by Kyle Chayka READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/jan/16/the-tyranny-of-the-algorithm-why-every-coffee-shop-looks-the-same

How social media algorithms 'flatten' our culture by making decisions for us

JANUARY 17, 2024

LISTEN 36-Minute Listen READ MORE https://www.npr.org/2024/01/17/1224955473/social-media-algorithm-filterworld

[enbycrip]

Another case of “department uses tool that they won’t allow to be interrogated that seems to flag people on protected characteristics without actually interrogating *if* those characteristics actually do equate to a risk for an individual case” being used against marginalised people for something as incredibly essential as whether they’re allowed to care for their kid.

Without *anyone* in the system interrogating whether the incident that brought the family into contact with CPS was caused by something that isn’t related to quality of parental care, like another medical condition, or whether being in the *foster care system* is in fact damaging the child in and of itself.

I am incandescent on reading this. Yes, I am aware media can slant things, but a) story they focus on shows *so* many characteristics of systemic issues we see all over the place, and b) the statistics quoted in it about 80% of disabled parents in that state having their kids removed speak for themselves.

They focus on AI in the article because it’s a hot button issue rn, but the only real relevance of it is that the algorithms it uses are not being divulged, which suggests to me that they are *absolutely* using protected characteristics as risk factors without interrogating *why* those effects are seen or exploring ways to mitigate them that don’t involve violating the human rights of everyone involved, including the kids that are supposedly being protected.

It’s *incredibly* notable that CPS services using such risk assessment systems, whether AI is involved or not, remove children from IBPOC parents, *particularly* indigenous parents and families, at an enormously inflated rate without addressing how removal from their cultures and communities in childhood affects those children for their entire lives

[shadow27]

[rootsinthefuture]

"In the temple of technological religion, humanity kneels before the gods of algorithms, offering the data of its being as a digital sacrifice."

Rootsinthefuture

[compassionmattersmost]

The Dark Side of Algorithms: Fake Accounts and AI-Driven Manipulation in Social Media

As AI continues to integrate itself into the fabric of modern life, the ethical challenges surrounding its use become increasingly critical. Nowhere is this more evident than in the world of social media, where artificial intelligence is being used to create fake accounts, skew public discourse, and promote harmful content for the sake of engagement. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter (X), and…

[ai-innova7ions]

Revolutionize Your Art with Leonardo AI!

Leonardo AI is revolutionizing artistic creation with its advanced algorithms that transform real-world ideas into stunning masterpieces. This dynamic platform empowers us to design imaginative game assets, including characters, artifacts, landscapes, conceptual visuals, and intricate architectures.

By merging cutting-edge technology with our creative fervor, Leonardo AI enables artists and designers to bring their visions to life. It injects depth and vibrancy into our projects, making it perfect for those looking to elevate their creative endeavors. Discover how this AI-driven toolset offers an unparalleled environment for artistic innovation!

#LeonardoAI #ArtisticInnovation

[techdriveplay]

What Is the Future of Digital Marketing in the Age of AI?

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve, it is dramatically altering the landscape of digital marketing. No longer just a futuristic concept, AI has become an essential tool that companies of all sizes are leveraging to streamline processes, improve customer experiences, and stay competitive. But what is the future of digital marketing in the age of AI, and how will these changes…

[atozofsoftwareengineering]

Mastering AI Algorithms: Your Key to Future Success #ai #artificialintel...

[mitsde123]

5 AI Trends That Will Shape Digital Marketing in 2024

The landscape of digital marketing is evolving at a breakneck speed, and one of the driving forces behind this transformation is Artificial Intelligence (AI).

As we step into 2024, AI continues to revolutionize how brands connect with their audiences, optimize campaigns, and predict consumer behaviour.

Here are five AI trends that will shape digital marketing this year and how you can stay ahead of the curve with the right skills and certifications.