War and Peace

Exaggerated Automation Claim Story of the Week

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In 2016, a prominent computer scientist–a pioneer in artificial intelligence, he would be a winner of the 2018 Turing Award–said:

We should stop training radiologists now, it’s just completely obvious within five years deep learning is going to do better than radiologists.

Hasn’t worked out that way.   AI can be a useful supplement to a human radiologist, but I don’t think it’s being used anywhere on an exclusive, human-radiologist-replacing basis.

Just as well that the training of radiologists wasn’t shut down.

It is often unwise to make radical changes based on the opinions of experts who are proponents of particular technologies.   (Of course there are cases where such radical changes are called for–the aviation experts who in the 1920s and 1930s foresaw a major role for aviation in naval warfare, for example.)   But in the case of robotics/AI at the present time, I think over-claiming is generally more likely than under-claiming.

Just a Question

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Has modern history shown that invaders who have lost are less greedy for land after they’ve been given a partial parcel of the land they invaded but could not conquer?

Something Light from Ukraine

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Netflix is streaming Servant of the People; we’ve been enjoying it.   A sit com juxtaposed with the daily news of death and destruction is trivial, but few cultural artifacts are more interesting than those that reveal what a nation laughs at, what it likes.    The series satirizes corrupt government but also reflects daily life and asserts values that attracted its public.

The charismatic Zelensky we see on the news has a touch of the honorable, naive history teacher he portrayed just a few years ago;   we’ve only seen the first few episodes, but the ghost we might most want to represent our own history – Abraham Lincoln – appears to advise him as he nervously goes over his inaugural speech.

Some of you may be (quite understandably) opposed to Netflix, but I’m not sure if this is streaming somewhere else. If anyone knows   of other outlets or where the second season or the film produced between the two is showing, please comment.

Russia and Ukraine

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Vitaliy Katsenelson, who grew up in Russia and now lives in Colorado (where he works as an investment manager) has written a long 4-part essay on Russia/Ukraine.   Includes comments on what he is hearing from old friends back in Russia. Highly recommended reading.

You’ll need to register with an email address, but he only sends an email every 2 weeks or so, and it is usually interesting…hewrites primarily about investing, but also about art and music.

Link

Heuristics for Ukraine (and other places)

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NB: some of the following is from a recent videoconference that included our own Trent Telenko, who is very much the man of the hour, but some of it is more publicly available, not to mention common sense. First, though, as is my wont, a quadrant diagram to organize my presentation …

I. Theater “Hardware” (physical assets/consequences)

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