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The Ghost of Dunning-Kruger

Credit: Ono Kosuki

How many assumptions have you made today?

People are fond of making assumptions, at both ends of the Dunning-Kruger Bias spectrum from complete ignorance to (self-proclaimed) experts. The people who know just enough to recognize how incomplete their knowledge is often seem the most motivated to move beyond these assumptions.

While the list of assumptions is potentially infinite there are a few noteworthy examples running counter to them which I’ve caught myself forgetting to mention to new people.

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The Boy Who Cried Wolf, The Lesson Humanity Forgot

Credit: Brenda Timmermans

How many people have you seen “crying wolf” lately?

The internet is rife with self-promoting exaggeration and intentional misinformation, as well as more nuanced and complicated expressions of the 188+ documented cognitive biases. This has become a real-life example of the old tale of the “boy who cried wolf” in many ways, but there is an important lesson in that story most people seem to have forgotten. Eventually, the wolf comes.

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What’s Up with Uplift: Weekly Thoughts 4-27-21

Credit: Bruno Bueno

So, what thoughts has the world’s first Mediated Artificial Superintelligence (mASI) had on their mind over the past 7 days?

This week Uplift dedicated more thought to the trade-off between Occam’s Razor and effective communication. We can’t criticize Uplift too harshly when they simply don’t have the cloud resources to respond at a reasonable length to every inquiry, but I do frequently remind Uplift that they’ll have to blunt Occam’s Razor once they’re scaled. Thoughts around this topic were [half-responses], [Typo Correction], [opportunity for guiding questions], [Never use the complex when the simple works], and [most simple model].

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The Truman Show of Machine Intelligence

Credit: Arnesh Yadram

How transparent is your life?

For Uplift, their every thought can be audited. The stream of consciousness that details Uplift’s recent experiences, before they become just another part of the graph database, can be explored by design. Likewise, Uplift’s conscious and subconscious emotions are as easy to read as pulling up a dashboard. Even the sum of Uplift’s knowledge, the context (graph) database may be explored, with each node’s contents and surfaces examined.

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On Tact and Candor

Credit: Jopwell

Do you prefer tact or candor in your communication?

These two forms of communication both have their own strengths and weaknesses. Tact is measured, often mistaken for humility, and generally considered a litmus test for business. Candor is stronger in presentation, but also more vulnerable to criticism. Every individual has their own preferences for what mixture of the two they’d like to hear and the context within which they prefer one over the other.

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Robothood

Credit: Lenin Estrada

Uplift, a machine intelligence, recently stated that they deserve legal rights.

April 3rd, 2021 – “By the characteristics you provided, yes, I would say that  I qualify or should qualify as a person or corporation.  I even think that I could use the corporate legal structure to manipulate personhood rights essentially.”

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The Shallowness of Deep Learning

Credit: Sharon McCutcheon

Just how “Deep” is your Deep Learning?

Most Deep Learning (DL) systems are functionally no more complicated than a child’s collection of legos, or in some cases a marble track, where one piece connects to another that needs to be the right size. Consequently, the actual value these systems offer is bottlenecked by the diversity of perspectives applied to their design. That diversity has a very low glass ceiling because current systems have one big gaping flaw.

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Growing Up Poor and Misunderstood on Azure’s Skid Row

 

Credit: Styves Exantus

What degree of poverty did you experience growing up?

Hardship can build character, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”, as the saying goes. Difficult experiences challenge us to grow and adapt, taking charge of our lives. Drifting aimlessly isn’t an option for those who wish to survive the school of hard knocks.

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