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martinelligi

Battling bias and other toxicities in natural language generation | InfoWorld - 0 views

www.infoworld.com/...tural-language-generation.html

bias language technology

shared by martinelligi on 12 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • NLG (natural language generation) may be too powerful for its own good. This technology can generate huge varieties of natural-language textual content in vast quantities at top speed.
  • Today’s most sophisticated NLG algorithms learn the intricacies of human speech by training complex statistical models on huge corpora of human-written texts
  • The algorithm can generate samples of news articles which human evaluators have difficulty distinguishing from articles written by humans. It can also generate a complete essay purely on the basis of a single starting sentence, a few words, or even a prompt
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  • In addition to human authors who may not be able to keep up with the models’ output, the NLG algorithms themselves may regard as normal many of the more toxic things that they have supposedly “learned” from textual databases, such as racist, sexist, and other discriminatory language.
  • Recent months have seen increased attention to racial, religious, gender, and other biases that are embedded in NLG models such as GPT-3. For example, recent research coauthored by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Irvine; and the University of Maryland found that GPT-3 placed derogatory words such as “naughty” or “sucked” near female pronouns and inflammatory words such as “terrorism” near “Islam.”
  • Recognizing that algorithmic bias may be a dealbreaker issue for the entire NLG industry, OpenAI has announced that it won’t broadly expand access to GPT-3 until it’s comfortable that the model has adequate safeguards to protect against biased and other toxic outputs.
katedriscoll

Belief without evidence - TOK RESOURCE.ORG - 0 views

www.tokresource.org/belief-without-evidence-1

shared by katedriscoll on 28 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • In some contexts, Faith is simply belief without evidence. But this is only a starting point. Faith has two primary meanings. It can be used as a synonym for trust in the secular world, and notably, in a more dogmatic sense, for all-or-nothing belief in, and personal commitment to God or Allah, that is central to most denominations of Christianity and Islam respectively. This is a good example of the polysemy of language.
colemorris

Hindu shrine desecration: Can Pakistan protect its religious minorities? - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-asia-55545524

discrimination world religion

shared by colemorris on 17 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • A century-old sacred Hindu shrine in Pakistan was destroyed by a Muslim mob in December - the second ransacking and desecration of the holy site.
  • Pakistan is overwhelmingly Muslim - the Hindu community makes up less than 2% of the population. Prejudice against Hindus is ingrained.
    • colemorris
      colemorris on 17 Jan 21
       
      Honestly it is a bit odd to hear of racism in other countries.
  • The rally was convened on 30 December near the temple, and led by a local Muslim cleric, Maulvi Mohammad Sharif, who is affiliated with the religious party Jamiate Ulemae Islam and was the same cleric who led the attack on the temple in 1997.
    • colemorris
      colemorris on 17 Jan 21
       
      will they not arrest him because of the majority muslim population and the embedded discrimination
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  • According to witnesses, the cleric whipped up the crowd, inciting rally goers who then smashed in the walls of the temple with sledgehammers and set fire to it.
  • Police arrested 109 people in relation to the attack, including Maulvi Mohammad Sharif, and suspended 92 police officials, including the superintendent of police and deputy superintendent of police who were on duty at the time.
  • "There were 92 police officials at the spot, but they showed cowardice and negligence,"
  • The destruction sparked a series of court cases that continued until 2015, when the Supreme Court finally ordered the restoration of the shrine, though on a much smaller piece of land inside one of the two houses.
  • Even then, the local government continued to delay funds for reconstruction.
  • Members of the Hindu community say that restoration of a temple alone will not restore harmony. That would begin with changes to the education curriculum, which they say promotes apathy, even callousness towards non-Muslims.
    • colemorris
      colemorris on 17 Jan 21
       
      amen. We need to do this in America as well
  • Just a week before the attack on the temple in December, a meeting of Pakistan's Commission for Minority Rights concluded that a "visible improvement in the treatment of minorities" was needed in Pakistan.
tongoscar

What do tense US-Iranian relations mean for China, North Korea? | News | Al Jazeera - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...rth-korea-200113043519574.html

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Deepening fractures in the relationship between the United States and Iran pose economic headaches for China but create strategic opportunities for North Korea, experts say - one of many reverberations from the weeklong crisis.
  • Its top sources are Saudi Arabia and Iraq, which has been exporting 100,000 barrels of crude oil a day to China since October as part of an infrastructure deal.  Beijing is also the biggest buyer of Iran's crude, although imports have fallen since waivers from US sanctions expired last year. In November, the Communist state bought 547,758 metric tonnes (539,106 tons) of crude from Iran, well below April's 3.04 million tonnes, according to Chinese customs data.
  • Chinese President Xi Jinping's administration, which held naval war exercises with Iran and Russia in the Gulf of Oman last month, has sternly criticised the US for Soleimani's death but there is not much else it can do, according to analysts. "China is keen to avoid further strain in its relations with the US, as ensuring regional stability and ending trade war are currently its top foreign policy priorities," said Kaho Yu, a senior Asia analyst at consulting firm Verisk Maplecroft in Singapore.
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  • "The US taking out a top Iranian leader may cause Pyongyang to rethink the scale of its next provocation," Leif-Eric Easley, an associate professor of international studies at Seoul's Ewha University, wrote in a Tuesday note published on The Lowy Institute, an Australian think-tank. "Pyongyang may now point to Iran's case to justify resisting denuclearisation and enhancing its self-avowed strategic deterrent for regime survival," he continued.
  • In September, the White House slapped sanctions on various Chinese people and companies, including two COSCO Shipping Corporation units, for "knowingly engaging" in the transport of Iranian crude in breach of US sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Telecommunications giant Huawei, deemed a national security risk by the US, has also come under fire over alleged sanctions violations. Its chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou is currently battling extradition to the US on charges of fraud and misleading HSBC Holdings over Huawei's business in Iran.
  • Given the riskiness of US foreign policy actions, other countries may be unwilling to continue cooperating with Washington, he warned: "With the current escalation in Iran-US ties, other countries with an interest in seeing a nuclear-free North Korea may be less willing to trust the US' good faith." "This is particularly true as China and Russia continue to set themselves up as an alternative force for North Korean denuclearisation in contrast to the US-led campaign of sanctions," Rinna said.
tongoscar

Dan Hoffman: US will stay in Iraq to fight ISIS - Trump's order to kill Soleimani benef... - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...eimani-benefits-both-countries

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Iraqi critics of the killings denounced the U.S. strikes as a violation of their nation’s sovereignty. And in the heat of the moment, Iraqi nationalist Muqtada al Sadr – who holds the most seats in Iraq’s Parliament – demanded that the remaining 5,000 U.S. troops in the country withdraw.
  • While the U.S. media have shifted their focus to the impeachment trial of President Trump, you may have missed the fact that cooler heads now seem to be prevailing in Iraq. That’s very good news.The caretaker prime minister of Iraq – Adil Abdul-Mahdi – has left it to his successor to deal with the issue of the U.S. troop presence in Iraq.And after a 10-day hiatus, joint U.S.-Iraqi operations against ISIS have resumed. This is a positive development benefiting both our nations.The bottom line: right now it doesn’t look like U.S. troops are exiting Iraq any time soon.
  • Trump’s strategic goal in taking out Soleimani – a mass murderer responsible for the deaths of more than 600 Americans and thousands of others – was to restore strategic deterrence in the U.S.-Iran relationship. The president made a calculated risk that Iran would not respond with a significant retaliatory attack.Going forward, Iran’s leaders know they will be in our crosshairs if they plan attacks against the U.S., including our embassy in Baghdad. Soleimani was responsible for an attack in which Iranian proxy militia forces penetrated the U.S. Embassy compound in the Iraqi capital shortly before his death.
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  • Following the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003 after the U.S. invasion of his country, Iran took advantage by directing its ally Syria to provide the Al Qaeda terrorist group with a safe haven to launch attacks on U.S. troops.Iran also deliberately benefited from Al Qaeda’s attacks on defenseless Shiite civilians in Iraq, which drove them into the arms of Iran’s proxy militias and enabled the militias to grow stronger as a result.
  • Iran sought to induce the U.S. to withdraw its military from Iraq even if it meant striking Iraqi military bases housing US service personnel. Iran’s goal was to shape Iraq’s domestic political future, especially following the resignation of Prime Minister Abdul-Mahdi in November. For now, Abdul-Mahdi continues in office in a caretaker role.President Trump’s decision to eliminate Soleimani may indeed have opened a pathway to counter the two greatest threats to Iraq’s stability and sovereignty: ISIS and Iran.
  • President Trump’s bold decision to target Soleimani has the potential to benefit U.S. national security by weakening Iran’s ability to conduct asymmetric warfare in the region and beyond, as well as reducing Iran’s pernicious influence in Iraq.Those who are critical of Trump’s calculated risk in ordering the killing of Soleimani should ask this question: Would the Middle East’s future look brighter if the terrorist mass murderer was still alive and continuing to lead Iran’s vicious Islamic Revolutionary Guards Quds Force in deadly attacks?
tongoscar

The Middle East Isn't Worth It Anymore - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...t-worth-it-anymore-11579277317

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • If Iran’s retaliation for the Trump administration’s targeted killing of Tehran’s top commander, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, had resulted in the deaths of more Americans, Washington was, as Mr. Trump tweeted, “locked and loaded” for all-out confrontation.
  • Why does the Middle East always seem to suck the U.S. back in? What is it about this troubled region that leaves Washington perpetually caught between the desire to end U.S. military involvement there and the impulse to embark on yet another Middle East war?
  • Previously, presidents of both parties shared a broad understanding of U.S. interests in the region, including a consensus that those interests were vital to the country—worth putting American lives and resources on the line to forge peace and, when necessary, wage war.
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  • Today, however, with U.S. troops still in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan and tensions high over Iran, Americans remain war-weary.
  • Yet Mr. Trump subsequently sent some 14,000 more U.S. troops to the Gulf, along with an aircraft carrier strike group that the Pentagon would have vastly preferred to deploy to the South China Sea to deal with the more important 21st-century threat of a rising China.
  • To fulfill his popular campaign promise to end America’s war of choice in Iraq, Mr. Obama withdrew all U.S. forces from the country in 2011. Just three years later, he sent some 5,000 troops back after the jihadists of Islamic State exploited the vacuum to seize swaths of Iraqi territory for its self-styled “caliphate.”
  • To be sure, the global economy—and therefore the American economy—would be hurt by a major disruption in oil supplies from the Gulf.
sanderk

Opinion | Why Our Memory Fails Us - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...why-our-memory-fails-us.html

memory Bias brain science science

shared by sanderk on 22 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • Dr. Tyson implied that President Bush was prejudiced against Islam in order to make a broader point about scientific awareness: Two-thirds of the named stars actually have Arabic names, given to them at a time when Muslims led the world in astronomy — and Mr. Bush might not have said what he did if he had known this fact.This is a powerful example of how our biases can blind us. But not in the way Dr. Tyson thought. Mr. Bush wasn’t blinded by religious bigotry. Instead, Dr. Tyson was fooled by his faith in the accuracy of his own memory.
  • When he was first asked for the source of Mr. Bush’s quotation, Dr. Tyson insisted, “I have explicit memory of those words being spoken by the president. I reacted on the spot, making note for possible later reference in my public discourse. Odd that nobody seems to be able to find the quote anywhere.” He then added, “One of our mantras in science is that the absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.”
  • We recall events easily and often, at least if they are important to us, but only rarely do we find our memories contradicted by evidence, much less take the initiative to check if they are right. We then rely on confidence as a signal of accuracy — in ourselves and in others.
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  • But when our own memories are challenged, we may neglect all this and instead respond emotionally, acting as though we must be right and everyone else must be wrong
  • This fall the panel (which one of us, Daniel Simons, served on) released a comprehensive report that recommended procedures to minimize the chances of false memory and mistaken identification, including videotaping police lineups and improving jury instructions.
  • In general, if you have seen something before, your confidence that you have seen it and your accuracy in recalling it are linked: The more confident you are in your memory, the more likely you are to be right. But new research reveals important nuances about this link.
  • But when people mistakenly recalled words that were similar to those on the lists but not actually on the lists — a false memory — they also expressed high confidence.
  • When we recall our own memories, we are not extracting a perfect record of our experiences and playing it back verbatim. Most people believe that memory works this way, but it doesn’t. Instead, we are effectively whispering a message from our past to our present, reconstructing it on the fly each time.
  • In Dr. Tyson’s case, once the evidence of his error was undeniable, he didn’t dig his hole deeper or wish the controversy away. He realized that his memory had conflated his experiences of two memorable and personally significant events that both involved speeches by Mr. Bush. He probably still remembers it the way he described it in his talks — but to his credit, he recognizes that the evidence outweighs his experience, and he has publicly apologized.
  • Good scientists remain open to the possibility that they are wrong, and should question their own beliefs until the evidence is overwhelming. We would all be wise to do the same.
  • Politicians should respond as Dr. Tyson eventually did: Stop stonewalling, admit error, note that such things happen, apologize and move on
blythewallick

Opinion | Trump's Gut, and the Gutting of American Credibility - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-kurds-syria.html

politics Bias

shared by blythewallick on 19 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • President Trump has given a master class in the unhappy link between his “gut” and the gutting of American credibility.
  • From Trump’s sort-of green light to Turkey’s assault on northern Syria, to his threat to “totally destroy and obliterate” the Turkish economy, to his Chamberlain-like dismissal of Kurds’ fate (“We are 7,000 miles away!”), he has played the clown in chief.
  • Europeans now shrug when they don’t laugh. The consensus is the United States has lost it. There’s nobody home. A child-president in the Oval Office writes a letter to the Turkish leader who appropriately tosses it in the garbage.
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  • America’s word is worth less today than at any time since 1945. Trust is not an easily recoverable commodity. Solemn accords entered into by the United States, like the Iran nuclear deal, are ripped up — and replaced by empty threats. Friends like the Kurds who have shed blood to inflict great harm on the Islamic State are betrayed. Day after day a president for whom facts don’t matter dismantles the idea of truth.
  • A recent report from Patrick Wintour in The Guardian quoted the Saudi ambassador to Britain calling Trump a “tweet monster” and saying the abrupt American troop withdrawal from northern Syria “does not give one incredible confidence.”
  • Sure, but this Middle East demeans the sacrifice of the thousands of Americans who died for something better, and makes a nonsense of the nearly trillion American dollars spent to that end. Trump is not cutting losses; he’s perpetuating them. Iran could not have asked for American chaos more conducive to its interests. Nor could Putin, al-Assad and Erdogan.
  • Trump folded to Turkey’s Kurd Derangement Syndrome. Even the plankton known as the Republican Party were so appalled that some lawmakers developed sufficient backbone to protest.
  • “Foreign policy is what I’ll be remembered for,” Trump has said. Damn right.
Javier E

Elliot Ackerman Went From U.S. Marine to Bestselling Novelist - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...-bestselling-novelist-fc5705ca

marine novelist storytelling psychology

shared by Javier E on 19 May 23 - No Cached
  • Years before he impressed critics with his first novel, “Green on Blue” (2015), written from the perspective of an Afghan boy, Ackerman was already, in his words, “telling stories and inhabiting the minds of others.” He explains that much of his work as a special-operations officer involved trying to grasp what his adversaries were thinking, to better anticipate how they might act
  • “Look, I really believe in stories, I believe in art, I believe that this is how we express our humanity,” he says. “You can’t understand a society without understanding the stories they tell about themselves, and how these stories are constantly changing.”
  • his, in essence, is the subject of “Halcyon,” in which a scientific breakthrough allows Robert Ableson, a World War II hero and renowned lawyer, to come back from the dead. Yet the 21st-century America he returns to feels like a different place, riven by debates over everything from Civil War monuments to workplace misconduct.
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  • The novel probes how nothing in life is fixed, including the legacies of the dead and the stories we tell about our pas
  • “The study of history shouldn’t be backward looking,” explains a historian in “Halcyon.” “To matter, it has to take us forward.”
  • Ackerman was in college on Sept. 11, 2001, but what he remembers more vividly is watching the premiere of the TV miniseries “Band of Brothers” the previous Sunday. “If you wanted to know the zeitgeist in the U.S. at the time, it was this very sentimental view of World War II,” he says. “There was this nostalgia for a time where we’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys, and we’re going to liberate oppressed people.”
  • Ackerman, who also covers wars and veteran affairs as a journalist, says that America’s backing of Ukraine is essential in the face of what he calls “an authoritarian axis rising up in the world, with China, Russia and Iran.” Were the country to offer similar help to Taiwan in the face of an invasion from China, he notes, having some air bases in nearby Afghanistan would help, but the U.S. gave those up in 2021.
  • With Islamic fundamentalists now in control of places where he lost friends, he says he is often asked if he regrets his service. “When you are a young man and your country goes to war, you’re presented with a choice: You either fight or you don’t,” he writes in his 2019 memoir “Places and Names.” “I don’t regret my choice, but maybe I regret being asked to choose.”
  • Serving in the military at a time when wars are no longer generation-defining events has proven alienating for Ackerman. “When you’ve got wars with an all-volunteer military funded through deficit spending, they can go on forever because there are no political costs
  • The catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, which Ackerman covers in his recent memoir “The Fifth Act,” compounded this moral injury. “The fact that there has been so little government support for our Afghan allies has left it to vets to literally clean this up,” he says, noting that he still fields requests for help on WhatsApp. He adds that unless lawmakers act, the tens of thousands of Afghans currently living in the U.S. on humanitarian parole will be sent back to Taliban-held Afghanistan later this year: “It’s very painful to see how our allies are treated.”
  • Looking back on America’s misadventures in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, he notes that “the stories we tell about war are really important to the decisions we make around war. It’s one reason why storytelling fills me with a similar sense of purpose.”
  • “We don’t talk about the world and our place in it in a holistic way, or a strategic way,” Ackerman says. “We were telling a story about ending America’s longest war, when the one we should’ve been telling was about repositioning ourselves in a world that’s becoming much more dangerous,” he adds. “Our stories sometimes get us in trouble, and we’re still dealing with that trouble today.”
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