Scientists studying cognition report that we are frequently overconfident when considering small possibilities we think they are more significant than they are, at least mathematically. Overconfidence is not necessarily good or bad; a belief in a slight chance of recovery is called hope. An abundance of caution may prompt us to be more prudent in the face of a small, but existentialrisk.

Overconfidence can be particularly problematic when two conditions prevail. First, when the information we are assessing is noisy, there is some signal of truth, but it is accompanied by a degree of doubt. Second, when this same noisy informational environment provides weak feedback, that is, feedback that comes after a significant delay or that is not overly convincing. Many of the scientific positions that are controversial and attract strident polarized views often meet those two criteria.

For an older example, consider the hundred-year history of smokings effect on our health. Lung cancer, long before it was the most common cause of cancer deaths, was so rare that physicians gathered around to see this odd pathology. And in the early days of the twentieth century, many other causes of death hid the rising tide of lung cancer. Additionally, smokers dont develop lung cancer for many years after they start smoking; the feedback that smoking is harmful is an excellent example of very delayed feedback. Over the next thirty or forty years, the persistent signal of lung cancer became more evident, there was less noise, and we had longitudinal data that made the feedback stronger. Tobacco companies facing financial peril did not and could not repress the growing evidence, but they cast doubt on the conclusions, by framing the evidence as not overly convincing. By casting doubt through every available media sources, they sought to enforce the truth of their claims by shouting louder and more frequently than their opponents.

One would hope that disseminating information more broadly and cheaply would serve as a corrective; the Internet could be counted upon to reduce the distortions of noise and weak feedback. But, if anything, it has proven to be a more effective, pliable way to continue to increase the noise and spread the doubt. Searching for information on the net has been likened to drinking water from a fire hose - our first precondition for overconfidence, little signal, much noise. To use an old meme, when you use the net, no one knows youre a dog everyone can present themselves as an expert. And knowing that, makes every report a little more doubtful, it further weakens the feedback.

Science is, at its heart, about discovery, but the media that communicates science to us is often about advocacy. Everything is a sales pitch. The study funded by Big Tobacco, Big Climate, or Big Natural is readily identified. Still, government-funded research is pitched to what is politically fundable, and journals and foundations are pitched attention-getting results. One consequence of such a system is what Steven Colbert characterized as truthiness, our belief in something because it feels right; another way we share our overconfidence. The error for us lies not in the overconfidence, after all, that is our human behavior, it is in confusing the science of discovery with the sales pitch, and it results in us talking past one another rather than engaging in the discussion that is science.

Read more here:
Often Wrong, Never In Doubt - American Council on Science and Health

On November 21 around 6 p.m., 18-year-old Kennedy Stokes said she was at Walmart with her sister and cousin when they ran into two men who tried to talk to them several times.

Stokes said they felt like they were being followed and texted their parents.

A day later, Stokes said she was driving to her apartment when her car started making a rattling noise. She said she made it to the entrance of her apartment complex on the east side, when she got out to check under the hood of her car.

Advertisement - Story continues below

"When I closed the hood down when I'm walking back towards the driving side of my car this guy is approaching me he doesn't say anything, he legit just started grabbing on me," Stokes said.

She said she noticed he was wearing gloves and what she believes was a box cutter in his hand. She told us she strongly believes it was one of the men from Walmart the day before because she said she remembers the clothing one of the men was wearing.

"He was grabbing on me my jacket unzips and he's like cutting my chest I had all of these scratches on my chest," "Stokes said.

Her mother, Kana Stokes, not knowing what the man's intentions were has a lot of thoughts running through her mind. She said she is mainly worried that it could be linked to human trafficking, but she doesn't know for sure.

"It really is sickening, it really is taking over my mindset right now, Kana Stokes said.

Fourteen miles away, on the same day Stokes said she was attacked, another mother said she experienced a terrifying situation.

A mother, who wished to remain anonymous for safety, said her 12-year-old son stayed in the car while she paid for gas at a UDF gas station on Indianola.

"When I came outside, he was very upset he was visibly shaken and he said that someone had tried to get into the car," she said.

The young boy told his mother a man was yanking on the handle, not saying anything, just looking at him trying to get in. In the police report, Columbus police said the incident was caught on a security camera which they are reviewing.

Sgt. James Fuqua said the man had talked to several other people in the lot of this business before leaving in a white van. He said it now an investigation with the human trafficking task force.

Two different situations, two locations, but both mothers fearing "what if?"

The mother of the 12-year-old boy said, "Immediately and this is because I'm aware of what human trafficking is, I thought this could've been a situation where I never saw my son again."

Sgt. Fuqua said most, not all, but most human traffickers know the victim and try to build a relationship with them earning the victim's trust.

Regardless, Columbus police take every report, like these two situations, very seriously and look at every possible motive or intention of the stranger.

"You don't want to just assume that when someone is approaching someone they just want theft, you don't want to ever assume that maybe they're trying to make that person a victim of sexual assault, it could always be as extreme as someone trying to take someone away for the purposes of human trafficking," Sgt. James Fuqua said.

He said when it comes to the topic of human trafficking, human traffickers don't just target young females, a victim could be any gender or any age.

Sgt. Fuqua said if a victim is being human trafficked, they may show some signs of missing work, constantly fearing for their life but not explaining why, personality changes, financial changes, and signs of physical or mental abuse.

He said if someone finds themselves in a questionable situation, make a lot of noise and call attention to what is happening. He said to make it known to the stranger and loudly, that their behavior is unwanted.

In order to avoid certain situations, he suggests to park or walk in well-lit areas and make sure to be visible to others at all times.

Here is a website for the human trafficking hotline: https://humantrafficking.ohio.gov/index.html

Original post:
Columbus police address concerns of human trafficking after 2 recent attempted abduction reports - 10TV

Meet the singer-songwriter,Brigitte Mena! The Texas-native recently released a brand new single entitled Maniac. The track is based on the Netlix show Maniac that was released last September, and is inspired by Emma Stones character, Annie Landsberg (suffering from Borderline PD) who takes a series of pills in a pharmaceutical trial that is supposed to cure her struggles/disorder. There are many references to machines including various sound effects throughout the song as a way of recreating her experience of the trials.

Brigitte Mena was born to be a storyteller, and her vehicle is music. The singer-songwriters heartrending tunes tell harrowing tales enveloped in atmospheric, ambient melodies. But the artist has her sights set on much more than producing pop rock tracks. Armed with her versatile voice, a pen and a penchant for crafting compelling songs, Mena strives to strike a chord with audiences and tell relevant, resonant stories.

Mena started crafting original music in high school, and founded her first rock band as a freshman at Southern Methodist University, where she studied Music and Psychology. Menas music studies helped her hone her craft, while her work in psychology gave her an avenue to explore her interest in human behavior. Instead of choosing one passion over the other, the artist decided to merge the two roads ahead of her. By using her talents as a musician, Mena shines a light on topics like behavior, mental health, relationships and identity.

Connect With Brigitte Mena Online Here- Website Facebook Instagram

Learn more Brigitte Mena in the following All Access interview-

Thank you for your time! So what does a typical day look like for you lately?

Of course! Thanks for taking the time to chat with me! Ialways begin my day with a good cup of coffee and usually plan out my to-dolist for the day. I can easily get overwhelmed with everything I have toaccomplish, so this simple routine of making a daily task list really helps me.Lately Ive been in the studio finishing up my next record so a lot of my daysare filled with recording and mixing sessions.

Now that we are inthe latter half of the year, how has 2019 treated you? What are some goals thatyou have had for yourself this year? How close are you to reaching them or didyou already? What are you already looking forward to in 2020?

This year has been pretty amazing. I released three singlesthis year and Im almost finished recording my second album! One of my goals Iset at the end of last year was to write a full length record, so its beenexciting seeing it all come together. Im looking forward to the release nextyear hopefully next Spring or Summer! Keep an eye out!

Growing up, howimportant was music in your life? Can you recall the moment when you decidedthat you wanted to be a musician? Was it an easy or difficult choice to make?

Music has always been my saving grace. When I think back onmy most difficult times, its music that has literally saved me. Although Ivealways loved music, it was about two years ago where I finally realized that Iwanted to make a career as a musician. I left my job to officially pursue itfull time.

Was there ever atime when you thought about doing something else? If you werent a musiciantoday, what else could you see yourself doing? Would you be as fulfilled inlife?

Definitely. I changed my major like 4 times throughoutcollege, but I ended up finishing my music degree. As much as I wanted to be amusician, the whole making it work part always scared me. I had to learn howto become comfortable with the unknown and even more comfortable with theamount of work it takes to be successful. If I wasnt doing music, Im prettysure I would be a teacher. After college, I worked a few different teachingjobs, and although I loved teaching, I knew that music was my true passion, andhow unhappy I would be if I didnt just go for it.

What has been thebiggest surprise so far about making music your career? What has been anunexpected or welcome challenge to it all? What has been the best part about itall?

Honestly, how Ive never once regretted just going for it.There were a lot of times right before I quit my job where I was thinking okay, this is just for a few months or something, so you better enjoy it! Butthe everyday challenge of fighting for something you believe in has been sorewarding. There are days where the grind is overwhelming, but I love everysecond of it. For me Its like planting a seed and watching it grow intosomething beautiful. You have to provide that seed with its nutrients, love,attention, and PATIENCE. Making a career out of music is just like that for me.

What was theinspiration for your newest track, Maniac? What was it like having it bebased on the Netflix show also called Maniac?

Maniac is inspired by Emma Stones character, Annie.Its basically a song about her experience throughout the show and thechallenges she faces. The show definitely brought the song to life. A lot of mysongs are written from a psychological perspective, but this song was moreinfluenced by her character.

How would you saythat Maniac compares to anything else that you have released?

I think content-wise its probably the most differentcompared to other songs Ive released. Ive never written a song based on ashow, so it was definitely a different experience for me.

Do you have plansto release more new music soon and a full of collection of new songs?

YES! Be on the lookout for a new album from me next year!

How would you saythat your newest music compares to anything else that you have released in thepast?

I think the biggest difference between my last record andthe record I am currently recording is the content. Maslow, the album Ireleased last year, was a collection of songs primarily based on a reallydifficult breakup I went through. It was also a concept album based onMaslows Hierarchy of Needs. My newest material is still personal, butencompasses various experiences both myself and others close to me have hadthroughout a years timespan.

How do you thinkyou have grown as a musician since you first started making music? What, ifanything, has stayed the same about your music-making process?

I think my biggest area of growth has been findinginspiration out of literally anything. When I first started writing, I couldonly create when I was extremely sad or unhappy. But now, I feel like Im ableto look outside of those darker experiences a bit, and find inspirationelsewhere. Thats kind of how Maniac was formed looking for inspirationoutside of my personal experiences. Of course, I think we can all agree thatsome of the best writing comes out from painful times. What has stayedconsistent for me is that most of my songs start off with anacoustic/singer-songwriter feel.

How do you feel about social media? What do you think social media has done for your career?

Eh I have a love/hate relationship with it. While I thinkits a great way to get your name out there, I also think its A LOT to keep upwith. I feel like youre expected to constantly be posting about whats goingon in your life and keep up with various content. I will say that its helpedme share my music with people who would have never heard it!

What musicianswould you absolutely still love to work with in the future?

Anthony Green or Billie Eilish for sure. Also PhoebeBridgers or LIGHTS would be super cool.

If you coulddesign your dream music video right now, what would it look like?

I have something in mind for a song off my forthcomingalbum, so I dont want to give it away quite yet

At the end of theday, what do you hope people take away from your music?

I hope my music fills a void in peoples lives That ithelps get them through difficult times and brings a sense of security andfulfillment in the same way it has for me. I hope my music creates a connectionbetween what Ive personally experienced and what the listener is experiencing.

See original here:
An Interview With Singer-Songwriter BRIGITTE MENA On New Music and More! | All Access Music - All Access Music Group

DIRIYAH:The Saudi Ministry of Culture is to stage an international art exhibition showcasing the works of 27 artists from the Kingdom and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.

Titled From Inside, the expo will be held at the industrial area in Diriyah and opens next Sunday through to Dec. 26.

The Diriyah Season event will form part of the Quality of Life program, a Saudi Vision 2030 initiative aimed at enriching the creative scene and supporting Saudi contemporary artists by exhibiting their work before an international audience in a prestigious platform from inside the Kingdom.

The ministry is also looking to project Saudi artistic talent onto an international stage to help strengthen the position of the Kingdom, and Diriyah, as an international art destination.

From Inside will reflect the cultural developments taking place in the Kingdom and is part of the ministrys comprehensive plan to transform Diriyah into a contemporary art area hosting works from all over the world.

The exhibition will include paintings, drawings, sculptures, videos and installation artworks raising questions about the relation between architecture, human behavior and the ways that human experiences and societal nature are shown in the development of civilization.

The event will also explore how feelings and emotions are influenced by architecture, construction methods and art.

See the original post:
Cabinet hails Saudi-UAE ties after crown prince visit to the Emirates - Arabnews

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Two opera singers who accused Placido Domingo of sexual misconduct said Tuesday that it was disappointing and disturbing that the opera legend recently claimed he has always behaved like a gentleman and never acted improperly toward women.

Angela Turner Wilson and Patricia Wulf were among more than 20 women who accused Domingo of sexual harassment or inappropriate sexually charged behavior in two Associated Press reports this summer.

Their new statement came in response to comments Domingo made in two recent interviews with European publications, in which he disputed the allegations against him and said he never abused his power. He said he always behaved like a gentleman but that gallant gestures are viewed differently nowadays.

There is nothing chivalrous or gallant about groping a woman in the workplace, in any country or era, Wilson and Wulf said in the statement issued through their attorney, Debra Katz.

The Grammy Award-winning singer is one of the most celebrated men in the opera world and regarded as one of the greatest opera singers of all time. The long-married, Spanish-born star also is a prolific conductor and longtime administrator, having served as the general director of both the Los Angeles Opera and Washington Opera.

In the AP stories, several singers, a dancer and backstage staff at opera companies accused Domingo of sexual harassment and other inappropriate, sexually charged behavior that included unwelcomed kisses, touching and late-night phone calls.

Many said Domingo tried to pressure them into sexual relationships and sometimes punished them professionally if they rejected him. The accusers and dozens of others interviewed said Domingos behavior was an open secret in the opera world.

Until recently, the 78-year-old had not spoken publicly about the allegations and had limited his reaction to statements from his lawyer and publicist. He had called the accusations in many ways, simply incorrect without elaborating.

Last week, Domingo gave an interview to Spanish online newspaper El Confidencial in which he again stopped short of flatly denying the womens allegations but insisted he had never behaved improperly. He added that Spaniards are by nature warm, affectionate and loving.

I have been gallant but always within the limits of gentlemanliness, respect and sensitivity, he said.

Domingo also spoke to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, denying he abused his power and saying casting decisions were not made by him but by a team of four or five people. He said that very offensive things were said about me as a human being.

Turner and Wulfs statement said Domingos continued failure to take responsibility for wrongdoing or to express any remorse is extremely disappointing and deeply disturbing.

He did not behave like a gentleman when he repeatedly propositioned women for sex in the workplace ... and when he groped them and kissed them over their objections, the statement said. He did not behave respectfully when he offered to assist with the careers of aspiring female opera singers if they came to his apartment and had sex with him.

The most serious allegation lodged against Domingo came from Turner, a soprano, who told the AP that he forcefully grabbed her breast in a makeup room at the Washington Opera in 1999 after she rejected his advances for weeks.

Wulf, a mezzo soprano, said Domingo persistently propositioned and harassed her during performances at the Washington Opera in 1998, when he was general director.

Another singer said when she worked with Domingo at the Los Angeles Opera in the mid-2000s, he stuck his hand down her skirt after asking her to sing for him at his apartment. Others said he forced wet kisses on their lips.

U.S. opera houses canceled Domingos upcoming performances following the accusations, and he resigned from the LA Opera, where he had been general director since 2003. Its investigating the allegations.

European theaters have supported Domingo and maintained his appearances.

It is deeply upsetting and unfair that Mr. Domingo can retreat to another world without having to come to terms with what he has done to many, many women here, Wulf said.

The womens statement said Domingos comments show an attempt to absolve his misconduct by blaming cultural differences and changing rules and standards.

Visit link:
Domingo's accusers: Nothing 'chivalrous' about groping women - The Associated Press

Image credit: Depositphotos

This article is part ofDemystifying AI, a series of posts that (try to) disambiguate the jargon and myths surrounding AI.

Last week, Lee Se-dol, the South Korean Go champion who lost in a historical matchup against DeepMinds artificial intelligence algorithm AlphaGo in 2016, declared his retirement from professional play.

With the debut of AI in Go games, Ive realized that Im not at the top even if I become the number one through frantic efforts, Lee told theYonhap news agency. Even if I become the number one, there is an entity that cannot be defeated.

Predictably, Se-dols comments quickly made the rounds across prominent tech publications, some of them using sensational headlines with AI dominance themes.

Since the dawn of AI, games have been one of the main benchmarks to evaluate the efficiency of algorithms. And thanks to advances in deep learning and reinforcement learning, AI researchers are creating programs that can master very complicated games and beat the most seasoned players across the world. Uninformed analysts have been picking up on these successes to suggest that AI is becoming smarter than humans.

But at the same time, contemporary AI fails miserably at some of the most basic that every human can perform.

This begs the question, does mastering a game prove anything? And if not, how can you measure the level of intelligence of an AI system?

Take the following example. In the picture below, youre presented with three problems and their solution. Theres also a fourth task that hasnt been solved. Can you guess the solution?

Youre probably going to think that its very easy. Youll also be able to solve different variations of the same problem with multiple walls, and multiple lines, and lines of different colors, just by seeing these three examples. But currently, theres no AI system, including the ones being developed at the most prestigious research labs, that can learn to solve such a problem with so few examples.

The above example is from The Measure of Intelligence, a paper by Franois Chollet, the creator of Keras deep learning library. Chollet published this paper a few weeks before Le-sedol declared his retirement. In it, he provided many important guidelines on understanding and measuring intelligence.

Ironically, Chollets paper did not receive a fraction of the attention it needs. Unfortunately, the media is more interested in covering exciting AI news that gets more clicks. The 62-page paper contains a lot of invaluable information and is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the state of AI beyond the hype and sensation.

But I will do my best to summarize the key recommendations Chollet makes on measuring AI systems and comparing their performance to that of human intelligence.

The contemporary AI community still gravitates towards benchmarking intelligence by comparing the skill exhibited by AIs and humans at specific tasks, such as board games and video games, Chollet writes, adding that solely measuring skill at any given task falls short of measuring intelligence.

In fact, the obsession with optimizing AI algorithms for specific tasks has entrenched the community in narrow AI. As a result, work in AI has drifted away from the original vision of developing thinking machines that possess intelligence comparable to that of humans.

Although we are able to engineer systems that perform extremely well on specific tasks, they have still stark limitations, being brittle, data-hungry, unable to make sense of situations that deviate slightly from their training data or the assumptions of their creators, and unable to repurpose themselves to deal with novel tasks without significant involvement from human researchers, Chollet notes in the paper.

Chollets observations are in line with those made by other scientists on the limitations and challenges of deep learning systems. These limitations manifest themselves in many ways:

Heres an example: OpenAIs Dota-playing neural networks needed 45,000 years worth of gameplay to reach a professional level. The AI is also limited in the number of characters it can play, and the slightest change to the game rules will result in a sudden drop in its performance.

The same can be seen in other fields, such as self-driving cars. Despite millions of hours of road experience, the AI algorithms that power autonomous vehicles can make stupid mistakes, such as crashing into lane dividers or parked firetrucks.

One of the key challenges that the AI community has struggled with is defining intelligence. Scientists have debated for decades on providing a clear definition that allows us to evaluate AI systems and determine what is intelligent or not.

Chollet borrows the definition by DeepMind cofounder Shane Legg and AI scientist Marcus Hutter: Intelligence measures an agents ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments.

Key here is achieve goals and wide range of environments. Most current AI systems are pretty good at the first part, which is to achieve very specific goals, but bad at doing so in a wide range of environments. For instance, an AI system that can detect and classify objects in images will not be able to perform some other related task, such as drawing images of objects.

Chollet then examines the two dominant approaches in creating intelligence systems: symbolic AI and machine learning.

Early generations of AI research focused on symbolic AI, which involves creating an explicit representation of knowledge and behavior in computer programs. This approach requires human engineers to meticulously write the rules that define the behavior of an AI agent.

It was then widely accepted within the AI community that the problem of intelligence would be solved if only we could encode human skills into formal rules and encode human knowledge into explicit databases, Chollet observes.

But rather than being intelligent by themselves, these symbolic AI systems manifest the intelligence of their creators in creating complicated programs that can solve specific tasks.

The second approach, machine learning systems, is based on providing the AI model with data from the problem space and letting it develop its own behavior. The most successful machine learning structure so far is artificial neural networks, which are complex mathematical functions that can create complex mappings between inputs and outputs.

For instance, instead of manually coding the rules for detecting cancer in x-ray slides, you feed a neural network with many slides annotated with their outcomes, a process called training. The AI examines the data and develops a mathematical model that represents the common traits of cancer patterns. It can then process new slides and outputs how likely it is that the patients have cancer.

Advances in neural networks and deep learning have enabled AI scientists to tackle many tasks that were previously very difficult or impossible with classic AI, such as natural language processing, computer vision and speech recognition.

Neural networkbased models, also known as connectionist AI, are named after their biological counterparts. They are based on the idea that the mind is a blank slate (tabula rasa) that turns experience (data) into behavior. Therefore, the general trend in deep learning has become to solve problems by creating bigger neural networks and providing them with more training data to improve their accuracy.

Chollet rejects both approaches because none of them has been able to create generalized AI that is flexible and fluid like the human mind.

We see the world through the lens of the tools we are most familiar with. Today, it is increasingly apparent that both of these views of the nature of human intelligenceeither a collection of special-purpose programs or a general-purpose Tabula Rasaare likely incorrect, he writes.

Truly intelligent systems should be able to develop higher-level skills that can span across many tasks. For instance, an AI program that masters Quake 3 should be able to play other first-person shooter games at a decent level. Unfortunately, the best that current AI systems achieve is local generalization, a limited maneuver room within their own narrow domain.

In his paper, Chollet argues that the generalization or generalization power for any AI system is its ability to handle situations (or tasks) that differ from previously encountered situations.

Interestingly, this is a missing component of both symbolic and connectionist AI. The former requires engineers to explicitly define its behavioral boundary and the latter requires examples that outline its problem-solving domain.

Chollet also goes further and speaks of developer-aware generalization, which is the ability of an AI system to handle situations that neither the system nor the developer of the system have encountered before.

This is the kind of flexibility you would expect from a robo-butler that could perform various chores inside a home without having explicit instructions or training data on them. An example is Steve Wozniaks famous coffee test, in which a robot would enter a random house and make coffee without knowing in advance the layout of the home or the appliances it contains.

Elsewhere in the paper, Chollet makes it clear that AI systems that cheat their way toward their goal by leveraging priors (rules) and experience (data) are not intelligent. For instance, consider Stockfish, the best rule-base chess-playing program. Stockfish, an open-source project, is the result of contributions from thousands of developers who have created and fine-tuned tens of thousands of rules. A neural networkbased example is AlphaZero, the multi-purpose AI that has conquered several board games by playing them millions of times against itself.

Both systems have been optimized to perform a specific task by making use of resources that are beyond the capacity of the human mind. The brightest human cant memorize tens of thousands of chess rules. Likewise, no human can play millions of chess games in a lifetime.

Solving any given task with beyond-human level performance by leveraging either unlimited priors or unlimited data does not bring us any closer to broad AI or general AI, whether the task is chess, football, or any e-sport, Chollet notes.

This is why its totally wrong to compare Deep Blue, Alpha Zero, AlphaStar or any other game-playing AI with human intelligence.

Likewise, other AI models, such as Aristo, the program that can pass an eighth-grade science test, does not possess the same knowledge as a middle school student. It owes its supposed scientific abilities to the huge corpora of knowledge it was trained on, not its understanding of the world of science.

(Note: Some AI researchers, such as computer scientist Rich Sutton, believe that the true direction for artificial intelligence research should be methods that can scale with the availability of data and compute resources.)

In the paper, Chollet presents the Abstraction Reasoning Corpus (ARC), a dataset intended to evaluate the efficiency of AI systems and compare their performance with that of human intelligence. ARC is a set of problem-solving tasks that tailored for both AI and humans.

One of the key ideas behind ARC is to level the playing ground between humans and AI. It is designed so that humans cant take advantage of their vast background knowledge of the world to outmaneuver the AI. For instance, it doesnt involve language-related problems, which AI systems have historically struggled with.

On the other hand, its also designed in a way that prevents the AI (and its developers) from cheating their way to success. The system does not provide access to vast amounts of training data. As in the example shown at the beginning of this article, each concept is presented with a handful of examples.

The AI developers must build a system that can handle various concepts such as object cohesion, object persistence, and object influence. The AI system must also learn to perform tasks such as scaling, drawing, connecting points, rotating and translating.

Also, the test dataset, the problems that are meant to evaluate the intelligence of the developed system, are designed in a way that prevents developers from solving the tasks in advance and hard-coding their solution in the program. Optimizing for evaluation sets is a popular cheating method in data science and machine learning competitions.

According to Chollet, ARC only assesses a general form of fluid intelligence, with a focus on reasoning and abstraction. This means that the test favors program synthesis, the subfield of AI that involves generating programs that satisfy high-level specifications. This approach is in contrast with current trends in AI, which are inclined toward creating programs that are optimized for a limited set of tasks (e.g., playing a single game).

In his experiments with ARC, Chollet has found that humans can fully solve ARC tests. But current AI systems struggle with the same tasks. To the best of our knowledge, ARC does not appear to be approachable by any existing machine learning technique (including Deep Learning), due to its focus on broad generalization and few-shot learning, Chollet notes.

While ARC is a work in progress, it can become a promising benchmark to test the level of progress toward human-level AI. We posit that the existence of a human-level ARC solver would represent the ability to program an AI from demonstrations alone (only requiring a handful of demonstrations to specify a complex task) to do a wide range of human-relatable tasks of a kind that would normally require human-level, human-like fluid intelligence, Chollet observes.

More:
Artificial intelligence: How to measure the I in AI - TechTalks

Over the past quarter century, the internet has transformed human existence, dramatically altering everything from daily life, societal interactions and economic exchange, to political debates and geopolitical rivalries. In 1996, only 36 million people were online. Today, 3.7 billion are, and the remaining half of humanity will soon join them in the connected world. Although the benefits of cyberspace are undeniable, malicious state and criminal actors often use it to further their nefarious ends, while at times endangering its digital infrastructure. Hoping to protect this vulnerable domain, the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace recently issued its final report, Advancing Cyberstability.

The commission, co-chaired by former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and former Indian Deputy National Security Adviser Latha Reddy, toiled for three years, consulting globally with governments, international organizations, private corporations, technical experts and members of civil society. According to Foreign Minister Stef Blok of the Netherlands, which helped underwrite the commissions work, one overriding conviction animated its efforts: Cyberspace cannot be an ungoverned space where bad guys can do what they want, he said in issuing the report at last months Paris Peace Forum. The rules-based order and international law must extend into cyberspace. ...

More:
Can New Norms of Behavior Extend the Rules-Based Order Into Cyberspace? - World Politics Review

Anyone who has ever owned a dog been greeted with a wagging tail and barks of delight would say, of course, their dog loves them.

But science has been more hesitant to attribute emotion to certain animal behavior. Maybe a dog only cares about the food they are about to get? Maybe a dog has been trained to behave in this way? What about dogs who dont have a friendly human in their life?

Behavioral scientist Clive Wynne was trained to think this way as well. But through his recent research, his thinking has evolved. He says a dogs ability to love is precisely what makes them a unique species.

Clive Wynnes new book is Dog is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves You.

Continue reading here:
Proving What Dog Owners Already Know: Yes, Your Pooch Loves You - The Diane Rehm Show

Besides genre films, Another Hole In The Head Film Festival often finds films that skillfully break social and cultural prejudices. One such prejudice involves sexual desire in senior citizens. Its presumed such desire doesnt matter much when a person gets old. Alternately, such desire gets subtly ridiculed, most notoriously in the older man chasing younger woman trope. An affiliated prejudice is the attitude that senior citizens bodies cannot be objects of sexual desire.

Senior Love Triangle from director Kelly Blatz excellently laughs at that attitude and prejudice without undercutting the realities of its central trios lives. Its one of Another Holes unexpected gems.

William (Tom Bower) is an 84-year-old World War II veteran who lives with would-be-poet Adina (Anne Gee Byrd) in an upscale Los Angeles senior housing facility. They love each other despite Williams frequent requests for money to help close a deal in Bermuda. However, Adinas son forces William to find a cheaper senior facility elsewhere. The senior facility he settles on is one where he catches the eye of resident Jean (Marlyn Mason). Yet William still loves Adina in his way and wants to maintain his ties to the rich older woman without losing Jean. Equally importantly, hes counting on his windfall from the Bermuda deal to liberate both Adina and Jean from a dull future in their senior facilities.

Blatzs film works because it strikes the right balance between validating the sexual desires of its central trio and acknowledging that all three characters are in their 80s. The director recognizes that such sexual longings arent about boning. Theyre about showing the weight of decades hasnt dimmed their emotional spirit. Whether its Williams aggressiveness or Adinas attempts at becoming a poet (despite a noticeable lack of talent), theyre expressing a desire for life greater than the limited circumstances provided by where they live now.

The scene that makes the titular love triangle emotionally real comes when the three have a tense lunch together. Adina and Jean regard each other with concealed suspicion and try to cut each other down. Adina in particular uses her barbs about the food served to put down Jeans lower class nature. The familiarity of the tone of this strained conversation resonates with viewers whove seen far younger people talk in the same way.

Yet Senior Love Triangle doesnt shy away from addressing the more earthy aspects of senior sexuality. A facility resident praises Jean as someone whom hed be happy to have sex with while the lights are on. Later, when Jean unbuttons her blouse for a threesome with William and Adina, that moment is shot in such a way that any ick reaction at seeing the old womans intimate wrinkled flesh is minimized.

But even artful lighting cant hide the mental problems that each member of the central trio display. Adinas not skeptical enough of the soundness of Williams big deal. Jean has moments where she thinks shes back in New York City and married to her long-dead husband Richard. And Williams enthusiasm for this big deal with John Collins seems more delusion than sound business practice.

Of the three central actors, Mason has the emotionally meatiest role. She smoothly goes from a woman with still strong sensibilities to someone lost in her memories. Bower manages to capture both the charm of his characters confident air and the hair-trigger anger that lurks not far away.

The films ultimate tragedy comes from the huge gap between Williams pipe dream and reality. William may say he wants to take care of the two women in his life. But such a dream depends on his overlooking that his current perks come from access to Adinas wealth. Jean ultimately realizes that William lacks the resources to take care of anyone, even himself. The tragedy of the final phone call doesnt come from confirming what sharp-eyed viewers had already noticed. It comes from realizing why William was so eager to delude himself.

***

How can a hypnotherapy record become a source of horror? The answer to that question lies in the events recounted in Adrian Garcia Boglianos Swedish tale Black Circle.

Sisters Isa and Celeste could not be more different from each other. Isa is a successful businesswoman with a corner office. College student Celeste has become a walking disaster area with her uncompleted graduate thesis, a messily ended relationship, and a recently lost job. Yet the successful sister was like Celeste only a year ago. What turned Isas life around was the hypnotherapy record Splits By Magnetic Hypnosis. Celestes use of the record also starts unleashing her better self. But bizarre visions start tormenting her. Then the formerly focused Isa becomes erratic and fears someones stalking her. Magnetic hypnosis expert Master Lena Carlsson might have a cure. But are the sisters too late?

Black Circles power comes from its unsettling spin on a familiar wish, bringing forth the supposedly truer and better self buried beneath ones messed up surface personality. The record helps unleash that better self. But Boglianos film asks what happens when this supposedly improved personality winds up not being much better than the old personality.

This low-fidelity horror mystery works by anchoring itself in plausibility. The Stockholm Institute For Magnetic Research, which made the record, has a credibly pseudo-scientific yet authoritative name. Excerpts from an Institute video recreates the look of self-improvement videos from the proverbial Me Decade. The viewer sees Celestes post-record change from being easily distracted and scattered into being tightly focused and organized.

So why does Carlsson later regret the manufacture of the record? Making the record and having a correspondence course associated with it probably made the Institutes work popularly accessible and provided a good source of income. However, what happens to Isa and Celeste reveals that undergoing the records hypnotherapy treatment had unintended consequences. Dreams of mysterious menacing figures and displays of drug withdrawal-like symptoms undercut the benevolent nature of this splitting process.

Introducing some new and apparently unrelated characters more than halfway into Black Circle does throw the storys pacing off a little. What do a pair of young backpackers possessing a telepathic link and the old woman whose home they invade have to do with Isas and Celestes problems? But things start making sense once the viewer learns the old woman is Master Lena Carlsson. Blocking the young couples mind link suggests Carlssons mental powers are far greater than suggested by the Institutes video.

Also, introducing Carlsson and the telepathic backpackers makes the problem facing the two sisters feel a lot more serious. The hypnotic and methodical rituals Carlsson performs to repair the damage done by the record creates suspense thanks to viewer uncertainty about the rituals effectiveness.

The film smartly ends on multiple ambiguous notes. What does normality now mean for both sisters? Was what the viewer saw in the film an actual accounting of events or simply a what if scenario? Are there other Institute hypnotherapy records which havent been accounted for?

Boglianos film may go for a more subtle horror than the expected standards of gore or jump scares. That creative choice doesnt diminish the films disturbing effect.

***

A person usually sees the Stay Out Stay Alive warning near the entrances of abandoned mines or caves. This message hopefully discourages the curious and foolhardy from entering such subterranean spaces and risking their lives. Dean Yurkes feature debut Stay Out Stay Alive shows what disastrously happens after one small group of campers ignores this advice. Yet to Yurkes credit, the films moral message proves a bit different from viewer expectations.

Five friends have come to Yosemite for a camping weekend. Theres Amy, whose thesis-writing has become creatively stuck; Donna, a nurse; Bridget, a hairdresser; Reese, Bridgets unemployed boyfriend who dreams of being a park ranger; and Kyle, Amys boyfriend. Donna accidentally falls down a hole during a night-time walk. When the other camping party members find their missing friend, they make two discoveries. First, one of Donnas legs is pinned under a rock. Second, the hole she fell into is part of a forgotten mine shaftand the mine has a large unworked vein of gold available. But the groups dreams of profiting from this sudden financial windfall fail to account for Chief Tenayas curse, one placed on this land over 150 years ago as retaliation for his sons murder.

Impatient viewers may claim Chief Tenayas curse doesnt seem to amount to much given the lack of overtly hostile acts directed towards the unwary campers. Theres a quiet snuffing of candles near the trapped Donna. Two bags of mined gold mysteriously go missing. On the other hand, the appearance of shadowy figures indicate that persisting in taking the gold out of the mine would have been met with more aggressive retaliation. And is an approaching rainstorm really a simple freak meteorological event?

Viewers familiar with the classic Twilight Zone episode The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street will see in Yurkes film that the real curse holding sway over the campers is that of human greed. Reese turns out to be the most obviously affected, but even the studious Amy pays a price for initially refusing to leave the gold underground. What happens to the campers feels more disturbing given the sense that viewers in the characters situation would probably have made equally bad choices. Economic desperation, systemic humiliation, and jealousy in various proportions are very relatable weaknesses.

Seeing the worst of human behavior on display provides better horrific impact than depicting full-on gore. When the bodies start falling, such skillful allusions as blood-soaked clothing and abrupt soundtrack silence before striking a killing blow make the deaths more horrifying than the visual cliche of plentiful fake blood.

How disturbing a viewer will find the films final twist will depend on individual taste. It could underscore the emotional teeth behind Chief Tenayas curse. Or else it could be considered a weak fallback on a familiar moralistic punishment.

***

Does Victor Dryeres 1974: La Posesion De Altair do anything interesting or novel with the found footage horror genre? It follows such genre tropes as the film subjects disappearing under mysterious circumstances and the resulting film being the record of the terrible fate that befell them. Provenance is especially hand-wavey here. The viewer knows the films rough look comes from being shot on Super 8 film principally by subjects Miguel and Callahan. Yet the presumption that the entire sequence of events was pieced together from many bits of Super 8 film dodges the question of who went to the trouble of assembling the story. The semi-arrogant Dr. Canseco character clearly prefers to keep the unfortunate tale under wraps.

It also doesnt help that the viewer never becomes attached to any of the principal characters. Miguel, in particular, comes off early as a macho jerk as the camera unflatteringly captures his refusal to lift a finger to help his new wife Altair. Keeping the camera gratuitously running on a good shot of Altairs cleavage only earns him sexist pig points.

Fortunately, vague hints regarding the fates of Miguel and Altair help. They mysteriously disappeared, but was the cause of their disappearance an explosion? Also, the spooky stuff happens soon enough to engross the viewer. Minor occurrences such as an unexpected delivery of bricks soon assume a more sinister air. By the time the mass die-off of birds occurs, questions about the angels Altair dreams of start gaining urgency.

To Dryeres credit, theres a good reason why the film is set in 1974 (which wont be spoiled here). However, even that knowledge wont prepare viewers for the films disturbing finale, which feels terrifyingly logical. On the other hand, that feeling of disturbance will not last long after the viewer leaves the theater.

***

John Adams The Deeper You Dig is at its core the tale of a mother doing whatever it takes to reconnect with her dead daughters spiritand vice versa. But the viewer will not expect this path to reconnection to involve a radio seemingly stuck on Jazz Age standards, severed body parts, and symbolic snake swallowing.

In a rural community, Kurt and the Allen family are neighbors who are initially strangers to each other. Kurt is ripping out the interior of an old house hoping to rebuild and flip it. Mother Ivy Allen has let her intuitive psychic abilities fade in favor of running a faked Tarot card reading scam. Echo Allen is a 14-year-old Goth teen with a fondness for Jazz Age standards and hunting. The two households paths cross in a manner that ends fatally for Echo. As Ivy struggles to contact her daughters spirit, Kurt finds out just how far Echos spirit will go to let Ivy know what happened to her.

Kurts stripping of the old house and Ivys decision to try reconnecting to the old spirits are obviously symbolic attempts at digging. But Kurts attempting to bury his crime. Ivys digging, on the other hand, will let her reclaim the true power she had suppressed within herself.

Echo, meanwhile, shows that death hasnt quelled her capacity for snark. In a wonderfully grotesque moment, the teens partially decayed corpse chides her murderous neighbor for being too lazy to dig deeper to conceal her body. Kurts frequently violent responses to the prods of Echos spirit only makes her up her snarking game.

One such stunt sees Kurt coughing up a mixture of blood and still wriggling maggots, a moment which will arouse some viewers audible disgust. The grotesqueness of the vomiting shouldnt distract viewers from seeing it as a moment where the teens spirit has started to internally struggle with Kurt in earnest.

Condemning Echos actions towards Kurt ignore the reality of his crime. As it happened at night on a rural road, there are no witnesses. Nor does anybody but Kurt know how he disposed of Echos body. In earthly terms, unless Kurt confesses that Echos death was more than an unfortunate accident, its highly unlikely hell be prosecuted. So what Echos spirit does to Kurt feels like a grotesque form of poetic justice.

Ivys difficulties in understanding what the spirits are trying to tell her about Echos fate doesnt show her lack of intelligence. The symbolic images and sensations the spirits convey to her are often disconnected from context. Its almost as if the spirits want to torment her for her earlier apostasy.

Those enigmatic images sent by the spirits point to one of the strong suits of Adams film. The director employs a good sense of visual storytelling to fine effect. In an early sequence, the three main characters are in the same convenience store. Even though they dont exchange words, theres a sense of their intertwined fates. A later shot of Echos snowboard presages Ivys discovery of Kurts connection to her daughters fate.

Adams even manages to make the films gory and/or grotesque moments be visually arresting without stopping the storys momentum. The inevitable violent final clash between Ivy and Kurt turns out to involve more than just pent-up revenge at stake. Unless it was accidental, one particular moment during the final clash offers a gross visual pun on a particular revenge motif. But it can definitely be said the films final shot offers a darkly humorous coda.

(Senior Love Triangle screens at 7:00 PM on December 9, 2019. Black Circle screens at 7:00 PM on December 12, 2019. Stay Out Stay Alive screens at 7:00 PM on December 11, 2019. 1974: La Posesion De Altair screens at 7:00 PM on December 13, 2019. The Deeper You Dig screens at 7:00 PM on December 6, 2019. All screenings take place at the New People Cinema (1746 Post, SF). For further information about these films and to order advance tickets, go to http://www.ahith.com .)

More here:
Reviews From 17th Another Hole In The Head Film Festival - Beyond Chron

Over centuries, Europeans have developed local traditions that define the economy, the arts and the rituals of daily life. Those traditions sometimes belong to nations or are spread across the entire continent. Sometimes they are very local and remain unknown beyond a small region. The institutions of the European Union have made an effort to regulate and even suppress some of those practices as well as preserve and protect many others, particularly those that have been endangered by modernity.

The Guardian highlights one example of a traditional hunting practice in the southeast of France called la chasse la glu or glue-trapping. The practice consists essentially of using the calls of encaged songbirds to incite unsuspecting members of the same species to land on sticks placed nearby that have been coated with glue. After landing, the birds become literal sitting ducks for the hunters to aim at. The practice turns out to be doubly cruel because the hunters capture and cage living birds whose calls attract the free birds that will be killed by the hunters.

As The Guardian reports, glue-trapping was banned in the EU by a 1979 directive, except in special circumstances where it is controlled, selective and in limited quantities. Since 1989, France has invoked these circumstances to permit glue-trapping in five south-east departments on the grounds that it is traditional.

Here is todays 3D definition:

Glue-trapping:

A traditional French hunting method for catching and killing birds, by which the victims are enticed through pleasurable and flattering messages to an area in the wilderness where sticks covered with glue are placed by hunters to prevent the birds from escaping, a strategy carefully imitated by the marketing minds of commercial social media

In the name of protecting the ecosystem and minimizing the degree of cruelty and suffering related to hunting, European law forbids the practice, but French law permits it as a recognition of a time-honored traditional practice linked to the local economy. The hunters claim glue-trapping dates back at least several family generations, and reject accusations of cruelty, The Guardian reports.

The avoidance of cruelty has become a cultural norm in the modern world, especially in Europe, where cruelty to humans is severely repressed, as witnessed by the disappearance throughout Europe of the death penalty. The glue-trapping hunters base their claim of legitimacy on three criteria: the universally recognized tolerance of hunting as a strategy for survival (even if modern hunters can survive without hunting), the consecration of time (tradition) and genealogy (family). The last two values tradition and family are specifically important in southern French culture. They have less impact or persuasive value in northern European countries.

The tolerance of hunting is universal and has always been regulated by complex laws. Despite its universal acceptance, in recent times anti-hunting movements have emerged, focusing on the question of unmerited cruelty to prey. The hunters argument based on time and tradition appeals to the psychological and sociological principle of cultural inertia that clearly influences law, as a factor of social stability and historical continuity. Time-honored practices that may grate against modern sensibilities can continue to survive, thanks to their perception as being rooted in what may be thought of as an ecology of human behavior. This is especially true if there is an economic dimension and the practices impinge on the struggle for survival.

Todays European political and economic news contains an extreme illustration of that principle, far more significant than the question of glue-trapping. An initiative against tax havens has been voted down by states who cannot afford to lose the revenue such status brings, The Guardian reports. The reason cited is the reliance of these countries on artificially favorable corporate tax rates granted by some countries to big US tech companies. These corporations thus find a way to avoid paying taxes in the countries where they do business. The article notes that too many influential countries are now utterly dependent on being tax discounters. It concludes that countries such as Malta, Cyprus and Ireland need to be compensated in some way to ease them through a transition period.

In the case of European tax evasion, it isnt clear who is luring whom to the trap, since the countries use their favorable tax policies to lure the corporations and glue them into their economic fabric. But the corporations are the big winners, unlike the caged birds. They use their economic clout to lure the countries into granting them favors. The countries remain glued to their sticks.

The solution that The Guardian proposes would be compensation for the loss of revenue. Its unlikely that a similar solution to glue-trapping could exist. Still, after so many years of failure, the critics of the practice might be wise to imagine an approach similar to the one recommended for the tax issue: These countries need a carrot and not just a stick. And certainly not a gluey stick.

The bird campaigners who seek a total ban on the practice appear to have turned their lobbying campaign into something of a tradition with its own cultural inertia. With their repeated forays over the past 30 years to gather evidence and present it to European courts having failed, they have now quite logically resorted to taking their case to the court of public opinion by offering journalists an opportunity to appeal to their readers shared sense of indignation at unnatural practices. The intention is good but the approach is bound to be ineffective. Weve concrete evidence that sometimes the bird is struggling for 20-30 minutes, says Yves Verilhac of Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux (LPO). Its the sometimes that hurts. Things that happen sometimes rarely justify changing behaviors rooted in tradition or passing laws that will only create local friction.

The discourse of the critics can appear to be less about cruelty than an attack on the very idea that tradition and cultural inertia can sometimes trump legal principles. One critic commented, This is what they call tradition, but its a practice from the middle ages and barbaric.

Hunting in the middle ages was most likely less barbaric than today. Apart from a few privileged aristocrats a tiny proportion of the population, who hunted only on rare occasions common people hunted, when it was permitted, for survival. Killing always involves cruelty, but anyone who isnt a vegan learns to live with it. With everyones survival now ensured by the existence of supermarkets, hunting has become a sport and a leisure activity.

And todays sport is possibly far less disciplined and regulated by tradition than the sport practiced by medieval aristocrats. US vice presidents, for example, have even been known to shoot their friends in the face, though the vice president in question, Dick Cheney, had few qualms about ordering the killing of thousands of people who werent his friends.

The glue-trap hunters, after all, have a point. I say to people: You dont like hunting, thats fine. I respect your view, but leave me alone. I probably dont like some things you do but thats your decision, your life. Its hardly a valid excuse for undue cruelty to animals, but if the courts have not found the detective work of the bird campaigners convincing enough to force the application of the law, their eagerness to expose the crime begins to resemble a form of harassment.

The real lesson of the story should come from seeing it as a parable rather than a serious social problem. Whether its the practice of certain social media seeking to lure people into a trap and glue them to a stick (e.g., your Facebook page) as repeat consumers who subsequently leave their feathers and much of their flesh (personal data) in the hands of the corporation that runs the media, or whether its the corporations that have cemented needy governments into their geopolitical tax schemes, glue-trapping can be seen as a metaphor for the most effective marketing schemes of modern times.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devils Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observers editorial policy.

The rest is here:
The Real Glue-Trapping Scandal - Fair Observer