David Erik Nelson's Blog, page 19

An Unconsciously Biased Mind Will Produce an Unconsciously Biased Machine🤖

Yet another example of how absurdly easy it is to manipulate artificial intelligence—or even just accidentally make them into terrible bigots (and slightly above average antisemites). 

From University of Cambridge’s Ross Anderson (via security guru Bruce Schneier, “Manipulating Machine-Learning Systems through the Order of the Training Data”):

Most deep neural networks are trained by stochastic gradient descent. Now “stochastic” is a fancy Greek word for “random”; it means that the training data are fed into the model in random order.

So what happens if the bad guys can cause the order to be not random? You guessed it –  all bets are off . Suppose for example a company or a country wanted to have a credit-scoring system that’s secretly sexist, but still be able to pretend that its training was actually fair. Well, they could assemble a set of financial data that was representative of the whole population, but start the model’s training on ten rich men and ten poor women drawn from that set – then let initialisation bias do the rest of the work.

Anderson concludes “It’s time for the machine-learning community to carefully examine their assumptions about randomness.”

I think that’s tangent to the real lesson, which is this:

All machines (including AIs) are created things, and created things bear the biases of their creators in unexpected, but ironclad ways: early color film was shite at photographing people of color simply because the folks who created the color film were all White and unintentionally selected techniques and chemical processes that worked better for their own paler skin tones than they did for darker ones. Similarly, male engineers built crash-test dummies that were roughly their own size and weight—and thus created “safety” features that killed women and children.

Was the Pied Piper of Hamelin a child molester?

SPOILER ALERT: Nope. But the facts are sorta more interesting, if less sensational: The Straight Dope: “Was the Pied Piper of Hamelin a child molester?”

Anyway, have a great school year everyone!

Study for ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’: The Children c.1871 George John Pinwell 1842-1875 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N02689

Dave, Tell Me the Tale of Tommy Tucker, the Trans Squirrel Pope Beloved by 1940s America!

Not much to tell, really: Lil Tommy Tucker was orphaned as an infant, and then adopted and raised Mrs. Mark Bullis of Washington, D.C.  It’s unclear when Tommy decided they preferred living life as a human female (as opposed to continuing to identify as a male squirrel).  I presume they were ultimately made Squirrel Pope, on account most squirrels were extremely progressive “Liberation” Catholics prior to the Red Scare. Since then, mainline squirrels have largely gravitated toward Lutheranism, and gotten hella racist. Pretty messed up, when you think about it.

(Yes, that is a real live squirrel in the picture.)

To learn more about this remarkable rodent and his contribution to Post-War America, ask your local librarian, or just click this link: LIFE Magazine: “A Squirrel’s Guide to Fashion”

Is this Presumably Bot-Designed Product Awesome, or in Remarkably Poor Taste? (redux)

Awesome. It’s clearly awesome. (for context, see this earlier post: “Is this Presumably Bot-Designed Product Awesome, or in Remarkably Poor Taste?”

Heinrich Lossow’s “The Sin“, but it’s a throw pillow.

As an aside, the artist (Heinrich Lossow) deserves props for the best two-sentence bio on all of Wikipedia: 

“Heinrich Lossow (10 March 1843 in Munich, Kingdom of Bavaria – 19 May 1897 in Schleissheim, Austria-Hungary) was a German genre painter and illustrator. He was a prolific pornographer in his spare time with an emphasis on analingus.” 

Wikipedia

Of course, not to be outdone, Ali Express has likewise charged into this brave new world of fully automated product creation:

Stay classy, Ali Express

I Guess I Know What Ukraine is Getting for Xrismanukamas!🎄🎅🏿🕎

“This rugged, sustainable platform will operate in permissive environments and austere conditions around the world to safeguard our Special Operations Forces on the ground,” USSOCOM Commander Gen. Richard Clarke said in an emailed statement.

Not for nothing, but “permissive environments” sure as heck sounds like Ukraine.

Just for context, I’m a lifelong Michigander (incidentally descended from Jews who fled Ukraine back in the 1920s). Cropdusters are still fairly common here in Michigan (and the terrain, I’m told, is quite Ukraine-ish).

My wife grew up in blueberry country, and there are still plenty of fields around her folks’ place, and folks spray them from cropdusters.  It is absurd and terrifying how nimble these planes are. Average Joe flyers regularly bring them in below the tree line to dust a field, and then pop back out to dive into the adjacent field. In other words, they can come in over the horizon too low to detect–likely too low to see–and be on top of you before you can bring a turret around.

Given the performance we saw of Russian tanks early in the war in Ukraine, planes like these would fucking mow them down like a goddamned scythe.

BURIED LEDE: Russia is sending volunteer recruits into Ukraine with ~4 DAYS of training. There they die. (CONTEXT: a US soldier gets between 4 and 6 MONTHS of training prior to deployment. The crappiest police depts in America require 10 weeks of training) https://t.co/mQjTQ5r195

— David Erik Nelson (@SquiDaveo) August 7, 2022

I don’t particularly dig McDonald’s, but I dig this McEnergy

(source)

“This Place is Best Shunned” 😱⛪️🦑

My latest dark tale, “This Place is Best Shunned,” is free to read on Tor.com RIGHT NOW!!!

Allie and Rooster are heading down to Asheville for Rooster’s new gig, a cushy stint as artist-in-residence at UNC. Rooster is more of a con artist than maker of art, but Allie doesn’t mind, because he’s good-looking, charming, and values what she is: a girl with a keen eye for abandoned places and a knack for getting into them. But when they stumble upon an old backcountry church—the perfect backdrop for Rooster’s latest project—they discover that some “abandoned” places have a knack for keeping themselves occupied.

(Amazing cover art is by David Palumbo!!!)

There’s a Hexagonal Storm Larger than the Earth Rotating at Saturn’s North Pole ‽

…AND NONE OF YOU TOLD ME!!!

natural color animation of hexagonal storm on Saturn (via Wikipedia)NASA’s page on this weather phenomenon (with some stunning images and animations):  Good overview of the science behind this over on Wikipedia. 

This weather feature has lasted decades, if not centuries. YOU HAD AMPLE TIME TO MENTION IT!!!

How do we sleep with the roiling eye of an angry God staring at us?

(via NASA)

See also:

“Saturn Devouring His Son” by Francisco Goya

“CHANGE PASSWORD.”

Instead of telling you when it's safe to cross the street, the walk signs in Crystal City, VA are just repeating "CHANGE PASSWORD".

Something's gone terribly wrong here. pic.twitter.com/W5h8OjBXUu

— Joey Politano (@JosephPolitano) March 13, 2022

[2022.03.17] Oops: Instead of telling you when it’s safe to cross the street, the walk signs in Crystal City, VA are just repeating ‘CHANGE PASSWORD.’ Something’s gone terribly wrong here.

EDITED TO ADD (4/13): Details of what happened.

via Bruce Schneier’s long-running “Cryptogram” newsletter.

Breathalyzers: Uh Oh.

“The Unforeseen Dangers of a Device That Curbs Drunken Driving” (Published 2019, Updated 2021):

“Those checks, known in the industry as rolling retests, occur at random. They require the driver to lift a hand off the wheel, pick up the device and blow — hard — into its mouthpiece for several seconds.”

So we take someone who’s a demonstrably shitty driver and purposely distract them behind the wheel‽ o_O How could that turn out poorly?

But more importantly: is this solution the best approach? We love technological solutions to social problems, because then we get to avoid conflict (“It isn’t me, man; the machine says you must be punished.” )

“The legislatures themselves have made this instruments God.  Any time you put all your faith in technology, there’s a chance you’re gonna get burned.”

John Fusco, former president of the breath-test manufacturer National Patent

“ 5 Reasons to Question Alcohol Breath Tests ” (Published 2019)

Important to remember that cops aren’t scientists, and lawyers aren’t scientists, and judges aren’t scientists, and juries are rarely full of scientists.  Putting a “scientific tool” in their hands doesn’t make them scientists, and doesn’t guarantee precise, accurate, or “scientific” results. Even the best tool in fallible hands will fail (at least occasionally).