vertigobeagle - The Monday Morning Memo

The BeagleSword was juju
and the rabbit hole was a trip to Arizona
via the Algonquin Round Table.

The image behind me, by the way, was taken with an iPhone.
Can you guess what it is?

Even more dazzling is Wizzo’s partner, Sonya Winterbotham, who recently received 2 High Distinctions and 1 Distinction in her university studies of Psychology. Sonya is about to add some heavy-duty credentials to an already stellar record as a Wizard of Ads consultant on Craig Arthur’s team in Australia. Way to go, Sonya! – Indy

The photo is the ceiling of a very tiny bathroom in which hangs a light fixture featuring a couple of dozen faceted crystal globes lit from behind with halogen light.

“Whenever there’s a lot of patterns, a lot of data, A.I. is very good at processing that — certain things like the game of Go or chess. But humans have this tendency to believe that if A.I. can do something smart like translation or chess, then it must be really good at all the easy stuff too. The truth is, what’s easy for machines can be hard for humans and vice versa. You’d be surprised how A.I. struggles with basic common sense. It’s crazy.

You and I know birds can fly, and we know penguins generally cannot. So A.I. researchers thought, we can code this up: Birds usually fly, except for penguins. But in fact, exceptions are the challenge for common-sense rules. Newborn baby birds cannot fly, birds covered in oil cannot fly, birds who are injured cannot fly, birds in a cage cannot fly. The point being, exceptions are not exceptional, and you and I can think of them even though nobody told us. It’s a fascinating capability, and it’s not so easy for A.I.”

- Yejin Choi, a 2022 recipient of the prestigious MacArthur “genius” grant who has been doing groundbreaking research on developing common sense and ethical reasoning in A.I., interviewed by David Marchese, “An A.I. Pioneer on What We Should Really Fear,” NY Times, Dec 21, 2022

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