Josh Clark's Blog, page 13

���Trigger for a rant���

In his excellent Four Short Links daily feature, Nat Torkington has something to say about innovation poseurs���in the mattress industry:

Why So Many Online Mattress Brands – trigger for a
rant: software is eating everything, but that doesn’t
make everything an innovative company. If you’re applying
the online sales playbook to product X (kombucha, mattresses,
yoga mats) it doesn’t make you a Level 9 game-changing
disruptive TechCo, it makes you a retail business keeping
up with the times. I’m curious where the next interesting
bits of tech are.

O'Reilly Media | Four short links

Should computers serve humans, or should humans serve computers?

Nolan Lawson considers dystopian and utopian possibilities for the future, with a gentle suggestion that front-line technologists have some agency here. What kind of world do you want to help build?

The core question we technologists should be asking
ourselves is: do we want to live in a world where computers
serve humans, or where humans serve computers?

Or to put it another way: do we want to live in a world
where the users of technology are in control of their
devices? Or do we want to live in a world where the
owners of technology use it as yet another means of
control over those without the resources, the knowledge,
or the privilege to fight back?

Read the Tea Leaves | Should computers serve humans, or should humans serve computers?

s5e11: Things That Have Caught My Attention

In a recent edition of his excellent stream-of-consciousness newsletter, Dan Hon considers Alexa Kids Edition in which, among other things, Alexa encourages kids to say “please.” There are challenges and pitfalls, Dan writes, in designing a one-size-fits-all system that talks to children and, especially, teaches them new behaviors.

Parenting is a very personal subject. As I have become
a parent, I have discovered (and validated through
experimental data) that parents have very specific
views about how to do things! Many parents do not agree
with each other! Parents who agree with each other
on some things do not agree on other things! In families
where there are two parents there is much scope for
disagreement on both desired outcome and method!��

All of which is to say is that the current design,
architecture and strategy of Alexa for Kids indicates
one sort of one-size-fits-all method and that there’s
not much room for parental customization. This isn’t
to say that Amazon are actively preventing it and might
not add it down the line - it’s just that it doesn’t
really exist right now. Honan’s got a great point that:

"[For
example,] take the magic word we mentioned earlier.
There is no universal norm when it comes to what���s
polite or rude. Manners vary by family, culture, and
even region. While ���yes, sir��� may be de rigueur in
Alabama, for example, it might be viewed as an element
of the patriarchy in parts of California."

Dan Hon | s5e11: Things That Have Caught My Attention

AI Is Harder Than You Think

In the New York Times opinion section, Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis suggest that today’s data-crunching model for artificial intelligence is not panning out. Instead of truly understanding logic or language, today’s machine learning instead identifies data patterns to recognize and reflect human behavior. The systems this approach creates tends to mimic more than think. As a result, we have some impressive but incredibly narrow applications of AI. The culmination of artificial intelligence appears to be making salon appointments.

Decades ago, the approach was different. The AI field tried to understand the elements of human thought���and teach machines to actually think. The goal proved elusive and the field drifted instead to what machines were already better at understanding, pattern recognition. Marcus and Davis say the detour has not proved helpful:

Once upon a time, before the fashionable rise of machine learning and ���big data,��� A.I. researchers tried to understand how complex knowledge could be encoded and processed in computers. This project, known as knowledge engineering, aimed not to create programs that would detect statistical patterns in huge data sets but to formalize, in a system of rules, the fundamental elements of human understanding, so that those rules could be applied in computer programs. Rather than merely imitating the results of our thinking, machines would actually share some of our core cognitive abilities.

That job proved difficult and was never finished. But ���difficult and unfinished��� doesn���t mean misguided. A.I. researchers need to return to that project sooner rather than later, ideally enlisting the help of cognitive psychologists who study the question of how human cognition manages to be endlessly flexible.

Today���s dominant approach to A.I. has not worked out. Yes, some remarkable applications have been built from it, including Google Translate and Google Duplex. But the limitations of these applications as a form of intelligence should be a wake-up call. If machine learning and big data can���t get us any further than a restaurant reservation, even in the hands of the world���s most capable A.I. company, it is time to reconsider that strategy.

The New York Times | AI Is Harder Than You Think

Google Duplicitous

Jeremy Keith comments on Google���s announcement of Google Duplex:

The visionaries of technology���Douglas Engelbart,
J.C.R Licklider���have always
recognised the potential for computers to augment humanity, to be bicycles for the
mind. I think they would be horrified to see the increasing
trend of using humans to augment computers.

Adactio | Google Duplicitous

Do You Have ���Advantage Blindness���?

At Harvard Business Review, Ben Fuchs, Megan Reitz, and John Higgins consider the responsibility of identifying our own blind spots���the biases, privileges, and disadvantages we haven’t admitted to ourselves. It’s important (and sometimes bruising) work���all the more important if you’re in a privileged position that gives you the leverage to make a difference for others.

To address inequality of opportunity, we need to acknowledge
and address the systemic advantages and disadvantages
that people experience daily. For leaders, recognizing
their advantage blindness can help to reduce the impact
of bias and create a more level playing field for everyone.
Being advantaged through race and gender come with
a responsibility to do something about changing a system
that unfairly disadvantages others.

Do You Have ���Advantage Blindness���?

The Juvet Agenda

I had the privilege last month of joining 19 other designers, researchers, and writers to consider the future (both near and far) of artificial intelligence and machine learning. We headed into the woods���to the Juvet nature retreat in Norway���for several days of hard thinking. Under the northern lights, we considered the challenges and opportunities that AI presents for society, for business, for our craft���and for all of us individually.

Answers were elusive, but questions were plenty. We decided to share those questions, and the result is the Juvet Agenda. The agenda lays out the urgent themes surrounding AI���and presents a set of provocations for teasing out a future we want to live in:

Artificial intelligence? It���s complicated. It���s the here and now of hyper-efficient algorithms, but it���s also the heady possibility of sentient systems. It might be history’s greatest opportunity or its worst existential threat ��� or maybe it will only optimize what we���ve already got. Whatever it is and whatever it might become, the thing is moving too fast for any of us to sit still. AI demands that we rethink our methods, our business models, maybe even our cultures.

In September 2017, 20 designers, urbanists, researchers,
writers, and futurists gathered at the Juvet nature
retreat among the fjords and forests of Norway. We
came together to consider AI from a humanist perspective,
to step outside the engineering perspective that dominates
the field. Could we sort out AI���s contradictions? Could
we describe its trajectory? Could we come to any conclusions?

Across
three intense days the group captured ideas, played
games, drew diagrams, and snapped photos. In the end,
we arrived at more questions than answers ��� and Big
Questions at that. These are not topics we can or should
address alone, so we share them here.

Together these questions ask how we can shape AI for
a world we want to live in. If we don���t decide for
ourselves what that world looks like, the technology
will decide for us. The future should not be self-driving;
let���s steer the course together.

The Juvet Agenda

Stop Pretending You Really Know What AI Is

“Artificial intelligence” is broadly used in everything from science fiction to the marketing of mundane consumer goods, and it no longer has much practical meaning, bemoans John Pavlus at Quartz. He surveys practitioners about what the phrase does and doesn’t mean:

It���s just a suitcase word enclosing a foggy constellation
of ���things������plural���that do have real definitions and
edges to them. All the other stuff you hear about���machine
learning, deep learning, neural networks, what have
you���are much more precise names for the various scientific,
mathematical, and engineering methods that people employ
within the field of AI.

But what���s so terrible about using the phrase ���artificial
intelligence��� to enclose all that confusing detail���especially
for all us non-PhDs? The words ���artificial��� and ���intelligent���
sound soothingly commonsensical when put together.
But in practice, the phrase has an uncanny almost-meaning
that sucks adjacent ideas and images into its orbit
and spaghettifies them.

Me, I prefer to use “machine learning” for most of the algorithmic software I see and work with, but “AI” is definitely a convenient (if overused) shorthand.

Quartz | Stop Pretending You Really Know What AI Is and Read This Instead

AI Guesses Whether You're Gay or Straight from a Photo

Well this seems ominous. The Guardian reports:

Artificial intelligence can accurately guess whether
people are gay or straight based on photos of their
faces, according to new research that suggests machines
can have significantly better ���gaydar��� than humans.

The
study from Stanford University ��� which found that a
computer algorithm could correctly distinguish between
gay and straight men 81% of the time, and 74% for women
��� has raised questions about the biological origins
of sexual orientation, the ethics of facial-detection
technology, and the potential for this kind of software
to violate people���s privacy or be abused for anti-LGBT
purposes.

The Guardian | New AI Can Work Out Whether You're Gay or Straight from a Photograph

The Tools I Use

I���ve been getting outsized joy from An Event Apart���s series The Tools We Use, in which my favorite web designers and developers share their most cherished tools and gewgaws. I love learning about the props, rituals, and machinery that we lean into to make things happen. I���m a voyeur of work habits, always peeking behind the curtain of other people���s personal productivity setups.

Fair���s fair, it���s my turn to reciprocate. My entry in the series�� just went online:

I���m both a creature of routine and a captive to my own muscle memory. This makes me incredibly (often ridiculously) loyal to my tools, and it takes a lot for me to pitch one overboard for a new one.

I mean, look, I���ve used the same brand of pen religiously for over a decade. I���ve inhabited the same software for 25 years (hi there, BBEdit). When I do adopt new software it���s often based on the same metaphors and keyboard shortcuts as familiar apps (Sketch works an awful lot like Keynote) so that I don���t have to do heavy context switching among apps.

In other words, my tools bend to the way I work and think, instead of the reverse. This makes me conservative about jumping onto the latest and greatest, but it also lets me focus on the task at hand instead of learning new settings, features and workflows.

Related: I tend to use Apple���s stock Mac software: Safari, Mail, iWork, Calendar… Individually, they���re not all best of class, but as a set they fit hand in glove and of course enjoy special integration with the operating system. It���s a suite of apps that talk easily to each other across devices, too, reducing friction and letting me get to work.

Here���s my kit.

Check out the full post for the 37 tools I can���t live without.