Blog

  • Impacts of AI programs in public sector

    As a local part-time politician I have noticed how artificial intelligence has become popular, especially among civil servants. Everyone is urged to “try out” ChatGPT, for the sake of its brilliance, its ability to help us. However, the impact of AI does not equal considerations of environmental impacts.

    In a very near future, my suspicion is that standard environmental impact assessments (EIA) might become a procedure, a common perspective brought to the table for consideration whenever an AI program (yes, I’m fully aware they’re called models, but I will persist in calling them programs, as in computer programs) is used or acquired by public authorities. How much energy has this program, used by land surveyors, cost to train? How much has this program, used for the registry or for writing a proposal referred, affected the climate as in carbon dioxide emissions?

    Likewise, I believe there will be risk assessments in alignment with the European Union’s AI Act.In fact, the Swedish government approved an Official Government Reports Series (named Safe and reliable use of AI in Sweden) to adapt Swedish regulation to the EU level.

    Another prediction is how AI will not remain large LLMs or programs. Instead, the public sector will use small, specific programs, perhaps even local programs similar to DeepSeek, to training on local data for local use.

    AI giants have increased their carbon emissions since the AI boom began. Microsoft has increased emissions, and so has Google, in both cases related to data centres focused on AI. I read in the Washington Post how Eric Schmidt (now of the Special Competitive Studies Project) asserted environmental concerns need to step back in favour of development of energy for the sake of AI. AI programs will simply solve climate change and environmental destruction. What a relief.

  • Book review: Unmasking AI

    Book review: Unmasking AI

    I simply don’t have the time to review the books I read concurrently with papers and book chapters from the courses I study. Only in the last month, I’ve read about 30 papers on mining, Indigenous peoples, sovereignty and territory. So, Joy Buolamwini’s book Unmasking AI: My mission to protect what is human in a world of machines I actually finished in April last year.

    Buolamwini is a computer scientist from MIT, who rose to stardom while doing research proving how artificial intelligence programs were trained on very skewed and distorted amounts of data. She mentions the Shirley card: a photographic standard with a white woman as the “ideal composition and exposure setting.” This is included in Brian Christian’s brilliant The Alignment Problem, the book where I found her name.

    Overarching aims of the book

    There are two important terms in the book. Algorithmic bias occurs when one is disfavoured or discriminated by an AI-program, and coded gaze is evidence of encoded discrimination and exclusion of certain people in technology. As Buolamwini does research on artificial intelligence in image processing, she discovers how algorithmic bias underlies many programs, and the coded gaze excludes her own face from being detected by an AI program.

    I agree wholeheartedly with her overarching approach: artificial intelligence will not solve climate change, racism or poverty. In the words of Rumman Chowdhury, “the moral outsourcing of hard decisions to machines does not solve the underlying social dilemmas.” Buolamwini continues: “AI reflects both the aspirations and limitations of its makers.” We must take initiatives to also halt our stop tools.

    Another important term is the AI functionality fallacy, normally called hallucination, which is, simply, when “the system doesn’t work properly,” though most people will be fooled by the program itself and believe it is working.

    Facial recognition technologies are the core of her research, as she states “there are many different types of face-related tasks that machines can perform.” I’m grateful she separates face/facial detection and facial recognition. Not many people explain the difference, which can be tremendous. When a program can detect a face, it’s face/facial detection. Facial recognition is when the program can discern faces, separate them, and might even be able to see who is who.

    Technological details

    For being a book for lay people, she takes a pleasant dive into technological details of how artificial intelligence programs can work, on nodes and neural networks. She asks very important ethical questions, which constitute a cornerstone of this book and her fame: “Was the data obtained with consent? What were the working conditions and compensation for the workers who processed the data?”

    Furthermore, she explains the importance of classification and strategic sampling of things and people. Being a student, her methods and choices of data collection are interesting. It matters much which data you choose and why you actually choose it. It needs thorough discussion in research. Motifs, reasons, usage should be transparent and well-comprehended by others.

    The power of labeling – ground truth – is in the hands of a very few people. What is depicted in an image? Few people hold the power to classify people, animals, plants, cars etc, and the abilities such as gender, sex, skin tone. The world gets a little more static in the form of gender and sexual orientation, although people are more fluid, not a brand stuck in time.

    Methodological issues

    The publication of her master’s thesis had implications for people’s jobs in companies related to her research. This very thing we discussed in one of my courses: how do you justify publication of your research if people or organisations are named? Is it truly justified? Why do you want to achieve: Attention, improvement, a job? This is an issue for me, since she mentions she excluded the worst findings: that would’ve been complete heresy in the social sciences. You include the general and the deviant, you don’t unselect data. That would severely damage your credibility.

    Affronted celebrity

    She, among others, is, as she writes later in the book, excluded as a participant on 60 Minutes. She is affronted and aggrieved. Together with teams of people she writes a petition to CBS.

    How many of us have “teams of people” signing a petition to a TV channel? In the book she mentions how she put at a lot of work into this participation, while also writing the last of her PhD dissertation. Funnily, we discussed this kind of behaviour in class : what happens to a researcher who’s used to stand in the spotlight, who’s used to be listened to? What happens when a researcher becomes an activist and a media star? Here, I think Buolamwini doesn’t see clearly, even when she admits she’s used to the spotlight.

    It could be that we, in this regard, live in very different countries, since a researcher here couldn’t really do all the commercials, sponsor documentaries covering themselves and running organisations doing similar work to their research project. It could be that I’m a social scientist, so this kind of critical thinking is supposed to pervade our education. It could be that our self-confidence differs greatly. You simply can’t take yourself that much for granted. But I do clearly think that she couldn’t blame anyone but herself for doing too many things at the same time. There’s only so much one person can do and accepting limitations is necessary, without blaming others. Furthermore, I disagree with her on being excluded as a black woman only. Most likely because she can’t see her own privilege after all the media attention. How many people achieves this status after a few years? I know researchers who can’t even get published in local news because they’re deemed not interesting or irrelevant. I know researchers who perceive you as mainstream, lame and non-critical if you participate on commercial conferences, on TV and in commercials, that you’re part of the system you pretend to fight. Lastly, simply because you think what you’re doing is important, doesn’t mean everyone else will, or at least not all the time.

    This is the only bad part of the book, but it is bad. Lamenting not being shown on national American TV, as if everyone famous is entitled to it, as if being famous for a cause equals the rights to be seen, heard, listened to.

    All in all

    Still, she’s impressive. During an ad campaign for Olay, she delves on the advantages and disadvantages of doing a campaign for skin care. It can seem shallow at first, but I definitely comprehend the reasons to do it. Women of colour are many times excluded, not being targeted as consumers. And why shouldn’t people want to look good, even if it depends on skin products? Why shouldn’t activists have the right to promote something they deem is important? To fight for inclusion and the right to be vain or good looking or whatever is part of democracy.

  • The American Wolf Warriors

    During the reign of Xi Jinping Chinese diplomacy, the dominant approach to other countries, with the exception of Russia, has been to call forth the Wolf Warriors. In just a matter of a few years, China went from a rather respected cooperative partner in countries like Sweden, for instance in creating Confucius Institutes and exchange programmes in the Academy, to being an enemy. Not an opponent or adversary, but a foe.

    As in France, the Chinese ambassador to Sweden, was seen as rude and unreasonable. Calls for his expulsion came from the right, the center and the left. In the Czech Republic, Chinese merchants were exposed exporting face masks and other medical equipment during the early phases of Covid pandemic, to selling (or was it donating?) them to the Czech Republic, calling it aid.

    In Southeast Asia, China has turned all other states into enemies, with their frequent harassment of fishers, border patrols and building military bases on reefs near or in other states. States turned to the United States of America to shield them. President Joe Biden iterated and reiterated his military protection of Taiwan. He talked to, and with, other states, let them front important political decisions.

    But now, the Trump administration has become the new Wolf Warriors, demeaning, slandering and threatening states: Ukraine, Russia, Denmark, Germany, Panama, Palestine. And the European Union. Trump and his lackey Ass Vance seem not to have learned anything from the Chinese way of diplomacy: you gain virtually no friends or allies. States shun you and realise they must cooperate more without you. How can you expect to gain friends by bullying, threatening and belittling people? Even the Russian regime understands this.

  • Harvesting US agencies for Grok?

    Few have escaped the unconstitutional encroachments of Elon Musk(olini) (professional manchild) into US agencies, with his team of followers (at least 37 people, because the portrayal of the single, man “genius” simply doesn’t exist – they always rely on lots of followers and fixers).

    Ostensibly they’re distmantling agencies (USAID was instituted by the Republican party in the 1990’s by the way) and “saving expenditures” for the sake of saving money and perhaps decreasing the US debt. Personally, I believe the real purpose is, primarily, to harvest as much data on the population as possible, to provide all of it to Muskolinis Grok AI. The scaling laws need more data, and why not harvest secret and non-official data? Without it, AI programs can neither proceed nor progress, and now Grok has an advantage. Whoever wins this war of artificial intelligence wins all of it (it is presumed) and can control the population with extremely sensitive data on virtually every American.

    Secondly, Grok will have the capacity to surveil and weed out uncomfortable and inconvenient employees in the federal bureaucracy. If necessary, they’ll fire more people and bring in loyalists and sycophants to fill the vacant places.

    As Ezra Klein put it: “Congress is a place where you can lose. […] Trump is acting like a king, because he’s too weak to govern like a president.” So, expect no resistance from the weak Republicans in Congress. And this is what happens to democracy and bureaucracy when “entrepreneurs” think they can play government.

    From now on, I’ll follow the Canadian motto “Buy Canadian”, though in the way of “Do not buy American whenever you can avoid it.”

  • And so it begins

    It’s time fot the big finale: the writing of the master’s thesis!

    Last year I tried to get a scholarship for data collection abroad. Unfortunately I didn’t, mainly because I study political science and not STEM (albeit, if I may say so myself, I study STS – science and technology studies).

    Many attempts were made to contact organizations and academics in Canada. After a while I managed to receive replies from people whom I could interview about mining, Indigenous peoples, land rights and critical minerals. After a video meeting with one person, I decided to pay for the journey to Canada myself.

    Why travel from Sweden to Canada just to interview a few people on these topics? I’ve been wanting to do it for several years. Besides, I didn’t want to read and write. I wanted more than that.

    The same week our course officially started, I traveled to Canada. Thus I could spend time there and get acquainted with the literature necessary for the literary review.

    Partly it felt weird and almost unjustified. I did get much information indeed, about the situation in Canada (and Sweden, since two of them had visited Sweden and written about Fennoscandia), but only during the last interview did we touch on a feasible topics I could write about: resistance to mines in previous mining-friendly municipalities.

  • A visit to Brussels

    A visit to Brussels

    In October our class went to Belgium with the purpose of visiting the European Week of Regions and Cities 2024 during our course on the European Union. We lived in Mechelen, a nice city north of Brussels. EURegionsWeek spans four days. Representatives from regions and cities from all over the EU, as well as academics and lobbyists, gather in Brussels to listen to workshops and panels on various themes, such as youth and democracy, energy and climate, digitisation and artificial intelligence.

    Each of us choose one or two themes, which could align with the assignment. Mine were AI and energy. My assignment focused on the implementation of the AI Act in a Swedish municipality’s social service.

    The most interesting panel discussion focused on the European semiconductor industry, with barely ten attendants, while the most boring panel discussion focused on a members personal interest in climate change (with a personal speech which gave no clue about her actual work for the organization she represented).

    To travel with the teachers was nice. They knew Brussels and EURegionsWeek well. We drank some Belgian beer (goeze) and wandered the streets of Brussels.

  • Restricted aid to Ukraine

    Restricted aid to Ukraine

    I planned to write this text regarding USA, Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Iran, North Korea, China and Trump a month ago, but didn’t have the time.

    Between the US presidential election and the inauguration of Donald Trump, many pundits and military analysts had hopeful discussions on how Trump could help Ukraine more than the Biden administration. I really couldn’t see this. I know the Biden administration has done wonder for Ukraine, and faltered, stammered and didn’t do enough for Ukraine “to win” (whatever that actually means). One of the main reasons, from my perspective, is ammunition constraints.

    Israel attacked Gaza and was on the verge of attacking Libanon and Iran after the 7th of October 2023. The Biden administration did all they could to restrain the Israeli government from a regional war. Simultaneously Biden warned China that the US would fight a war for Taiwan, with an ever-present Chinese military in the Taiwan Straight, while North Korea and Iran helped Russia against Ukraine.

    I believe Biden was afraid of regional wars in Europa, the Middle East and Asia, first and foremost because wars are bad. He had realized how bad they were before becoming president and was, thus, cautious. Secondly, the US can’t support its own military against China, Israel against Iran and its allies, and Ukraine against Russia. It simply doesn’t have the ammunition to do so. The war between Russia and Ukraine proved to the Americans how quickly ammunition is depleted. Javelins and Stingers were used in numbers they US couldn’t rebuild in many years, and that was a “small” war. Fighting one to three regional wars at the same time would have forced the US to choose which war to actually fight.

    There might’ve been several, to me unbeknownst, reasons for the Biden administration to restrain its support of Ukraine, but this is the most obvious one I can think of.

    Regarding Trump I didn’t for a second believe he was going to support Ukraine as much as Biden. The man has no comprehension of geopolitics whatsoever. He doesn’t understand politics, political power and power relations at all. He believes strong men should haggle, not negotiate. Biden stood back and let allies and his own secretaries and directors take place during his years as president. Trump has yes-sayers shouting and haggling as if they’re on some sort of parody of a Medieval market.

    Trump will pivot in any way he sees fit, because he can’t focus on any issue too long. One minute he’ll affront Russia, the next the European Union, and after that Ukraine. He’ll treat Ukraine like some American granary, attempting to haggle, while not understanding what haggling territory means for Ukraine and Russia.

    He has already ruined relations in the Middle East with the preposterous idea on Gaza, his relations with Canada and Mexico. Now he’ll ruin the relations ever further with the EU (he doesn’t understand how the EU works, therefore despising it) as well as with Ukraine. The result might be what Emanuel Macron has wanted for eight years: a stronger Europe (and a weaker US). At the same time, Russia and China will grow stronger, as will India and Brazil. Meanwhile, the Trump administration will continue to erode its power and power relations globally.

  • Book review: World on the Brink

    Book review: World on the Brink

    Sinea deterrendae sunt – China must be deterred. That is the maxim of World on the Brink: How America can beat China in the race for the Twenty-First Century by Dmitri Alperovitch (and Garrett M. Graff). The title is self-revelatory, because the book is mainly about China, the United States and Taiwan.

    Unfortunately, the book begins with an illustration of what a Chinese attack on said island-nation could look like, and several times before I’ve complained about the future as an example. It gets tiresome presenting the near future for an audience, however feasible and smart it may be.

    Taiwan

    The authors delve into the shifting antagonistic and fascinating periods of relations between the US and China, how entwined their histories have been for approximately 300 years. One center is the island of Taiwan, earlier called Formosa after the Portuguese word beautiful, home of the semiconductor giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), producer of Apple’s and nVIDIA’s chips.

    A blow to TSMC would, and I concur amateur as I am, most likely cause the global economy to collapse. TSMC, alongside the Dutch company Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography (ASLM), are considered (perhaps) the two most important companies in the world. The authors draw on Chris Miller’s fantastic book Chip War, and it truly is very hard not to acknowledge Alperovitch and Graff’s perception of these two companies as the pinnacle of modern human civilization. Without them no cars, phones, computers, satellites, HIMARs, airplanes etc.

    The Chinese Communist Party (the CCP) considers the island a province of China, a natural part of the mainland, so to speak. Little did I know the former Chinese empire did have a presence on the island, but never acknowledged it dominated and subjugated the island. Only after the Kuomintang fled the mainland and the Communist party conquered it, did the CCP turn its eyes on Taiwan (still named Formosa for many).

    Opening China

    Zhou Enlai, the eminent premier under (the crazy idiot) Mao Zedong uttered words about Taiwan, that sums it all up, to Henry Kissinger: “That place is no great use to you, but a great wound to us.” Richard Nixon, another paranoid leader, wrote some very insightful words about China though: “There is no place on this small planet for a billion of its potentially most able people to live in isolation.” Thus ensued the pivot under Nixon and Jimmy Carter, when China earned the status of Most Favoured Nation, and could rely on a steady growth related to trade with the US.

    It’s funny how things work out in reality: Pax Americana, with its financial and economic system, benefited China perhaps more than any other nation, and hopes were that China would become democratic. It was seen as unavoidable (the Olympic Games in 2008 contradict this, but the economic perspective and thirst prevailed).

    Anyone studying China knows that the importance of “The Century of Humiliation forms the spine of the People Republic’s founding mythology, where the party emerged as China’s rightful rules by avenging it’s indignities and restoring it’s honor”, as put by the reporter Chun Han Wong (cited by Alperovitch and Graff). Following Mao, Deng Xiaoping, in turn, spread the famous motto of “hide your strength, bide your time” (or “hide our capabilities, bide our time” as it truly was?). Roughly ten years ago a new leader emerged, who initiated the wolf warrior diplomacy and the current motto of “show your strength, waste no time.”

    Cold War Two

    Taiwan is Berlin during the 1950- and 60’s, and the US must “protect and preserve it as a bastion of Western alliance and avoid provoking a devastating global conflagration until an era of stability can take hold.” They agree with Theodore Roosevelt on “speak softly but carry a big stick.” Too late did the US understand that the so called cold war had begun decades earlier. Soviet spies and propaganda had been working against the US and only in the 1950’s did the Americans comprehend the scope of hostility and actions from the USSR. The Chinese hostile relation towards the US was proven, Alperovitch muses, in 2009 while Chinese hackers penetrated Google and a host of other American companies. Thus, a cold war is a concept, which relies on the defender to comprehend hostile actions. History shows this conception, perception, can take decades to comprehend.

    Next comes American arrogance. Americans have been prone to ignore threats and hostile actions at first, and later, they’ve had an inconsistent threat perception. Alperovitch and Graff argue that the American policy nowadays in shortsighted and incoherent in comparison to the anti-Soviet policy’s focus on the defeat of the Soviet Union. A real policy is based on the defeat of the Chinese communist party, requiring diplomatic, economic and military deterrent, a readiness to act at all times.

    Respectful and supportive treatment of friends will convince Europe China is a real threat. This the Biden administration has done, in my regard. Biden has let allies and his secretaries into the spotlight, given them room and spotlight. Biden has understood how allies appreciate information-sharing, carrots, not sticks, and support, although the US needs to step up more and needs to let countries know the US is on their side, be they the Phillipines or Sweden, according to Alperovitch and Graff.

    Population collapse

    I once wrote a very small examination on China and the gendercide/infanticide of girls and female foetuses. In China (and India) tens of millions of girls have been killed and female foetuses been aborted without medical reasons, resulting in a warped gender balance, with far more men than women. Ever since I have thought much about population collapse.

    As a parent (or would-be parent), China is one of the most expensive countries to live in. Funnily, China in this regard is very liberal, turning most costs on the parents, not society. Therefore, the average population estimate is that China has about 700 million inhabitants the year 2100. For Russia, the average estimate is 67 million inhabitants. Both countries are facing a population collapse, which might not have a precedent in countries without natural disasters and war.

    An issue I miss in the book is environmental collapse. A very large proportion of the Chinese population live in densely populated areas, with water scarcity an issue. They do tocuh on air pollution and water scarcity. During the presidency of Hu Jintao many thousand of protests on environmental issues occurred in China annually, now a past phenomena. The environmental issues haven’t decreased during Xi Jinping, but exacerbated. Environmental and population collapse are intertwined and pose a very real threat to the Chinese communist party, and I wish the authors had written about this.

    Semiconductors (and environmental concerns)

    On writing about the importance of semiconductors, they actually do write about environmental issues. This is when the really interesting part begins. They write about the importance of foundational chips, how the US should outmanoeuvre China here, and thus, leading us up to the extremely important critical minerals and rare earth elements (abbreviated REE, also called rare earths).

    Accessing these minerals is challenging, and doing it in an environmentally friendly way is even more so.

    It gladdens me to read how they propose the US should “develop new mining and refining capacity that meets higher labor and environmental standards”, and one way of competing could be to have taxes (in concert with allies and encouraging African and South American countries to follow suit) on “Chinese-processed minerals and the products that contain them”, and ban imported products “from a country that have comparable levels of effectiveness on labor and environment compared to laws in the United States.” Worker safety and sustainable mining are called for, all laudable efforts if realized. I wonder though, if American laws are enough?

    War with the West?

    Misconception and miscomprehension of the enemy is not solely an American problem. Russia has completely miscalculated Ukraine, the US and the EU. The takeover of Ukraine turned into a full-frontal war which has cost about 200.000 dead Russians and they still don’t dominate the four Ukrainian provinces Putin/Russia has annexed. As Alperovitch and Graff puts it:

    The leaders of nations are historically terrible at understand their adversaries’ thinking, in part because leaders – convinced of their own peaceful intentions but wary of the nefariousness of others – tend to underestimate how their own actions will be viewed by others while overestimating the aggression of foreign adversaries.

    Diplomatic relations are a necessity to avoid military confrontation, which can happen very easily. China and the US are more hostile today than in many years, and without diplomatic channels between their respective leadership can lead to complete disaster for everyone on Earth. Recalling nuclear confrontational approaches in the “early” days (from a Western perspective) of the Cold War, it took time to establish “rules” and procedures for avoiding total war between superpowers. The authors urge for diplomatic relations amid deterrence.

    An minor detail: Regarding “normal” cyberespionage, like the (Russian) SolarWinds attacks, this belongs to similar acts the US commits too: “Shame on us for letting it happen, rather than shame on them for trying.” The authors join Shapiro in this regard.

    Conclusion

    “We have to marshal all our resources” to deter China diplomatically, economically and militarily. That’s the simple conclusion of this book, simply because a war between the US and China would be extremely costly in human lives and to the world economy. It would be untenable and cause extreme damage to all of us. The US must therefore focus much of its attention on China, with a clear and outspoken strategy to deter China from ever claiming Taiwan or waging war on the US, without loosing Ukraine.

  • Book review: The Alignment Problem

    Book review: The Alignment Problem

    The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values. How to compress one of the toughest, most intellectually demanding issues of humanity into one book of about 300 pages? I certainly wouldn’t be up for the task. Brian Christian is. A computer scientist inclined on philosophy, and through this book (at least) on psychology too.

    Probably you’ve heard about reinforcement learning in conversations on AI. It originates from psychology and animal behaviourism, like so many other parts of the field of AI (neural networks and temporal differences are two others), while others touch philosophical issues and conundrums humans have pondered on for centuries. Brian Christian, like Johan Harri, travels the world to interview lots of people about how to get machines to understand and obey humans. 

    What’s it like to code artificial intelligence? Think of AI-programming as asking for wishes from a genie. How do you truly and literally articulate three questions for things (for instance, what is a thing or a question even, where does the thing or question begin and where does it end)? How can you ever be sure the provider (program) comprehends the three things precisely the same way as you do? 

    You wish for a long, healthy life. What is long? Stretched out, or with a lifespan beginning and ending clearly? Longevity as in an average human life now or 2.000 years ago, or 120 years in to the future? Long as a star? Long as a giraffe’s neck? What’s included in the word healthy? Not being obese? Not being lanky? Being muscular? Living healthy for 30 years and then suddenly die of an aneurysm? Or to live healthy for 85 years and the fade away during two decades? Does healthy mean you start to smoke, without any repercussions, and it thus causes you to die of a lung or heart disease you otherwise wouldn’t? Does it mean you can suffer from terrible diseases if you catch or cause them, but never have a cold or a light fever? Besides, what is life? (Should you rather be able to wish with your inner thoughts depicted to the receiver? Then what happens if you’re interrupted by other thoughts in those thoughts?)

    These are very simple examples of how hard it is to code, to express what you wish a program to execute. What you wish, you’re very unlikely to express in an exact manner to a machine because you can’t project every single detail to it: The alignment problem.

    Compared to plenty of writers on AI or code (perhaps except for Scott J. Shapiro) Christian really delves into deep issues here. He won’t let you simply read the book, but dives into details and present thoughts, then provoke you with delving deeper and then even deeper. He reasons on driving, for instance: Male drivers are generally worse than female drivers. Applying AI as a solution to this issue could mean male drivers will be targeted primarily, which means fewer targeted female drivers. Thus driving could be worse, since the female drivers then would in general be driving less safe than the remaining male drivers = worse traffic. Applying AI seems simple and straightforward, but very seldom is. Christian concludes that “alignment will be messy.”

    To program artificial intelligence, one also needs to understand politics, sociology and gender – social sciences – because what do words like “good”, “bad”, “accurate”, “female” really mean? Any word needs some context and what is that context, or those contexts? Christian mentions sociologists who can’t reduce models dichotomously, whereas that’s how computer scientists believe reality is perceived. They need to cooperate to adjust the programs to reality as best as they can, which may not always be feasible. As Shapiro writes, you simply can’t reduce reality this way. And messy as it is, you can’t turn the AI program neutral/blind either (just ask Google about the black Nazi soldier produced by Google Bard/Gemini.).

    The alignment problem is thorough. Christian immerses the reader into fields of temporal difference (TD) and sparsity in reinforcement learning, independent and identically distributed in (i.i.d.) supervised/unsupervised learning, redundant coding (like the discussion on gender above mentioned), simple models, saliency, multitask nets and a bunch of guys sitting around the table (BOGSAT).

    This book is a true achievement. This book is a gift to humanity. This is the one book on artificial intelligence to read.

    (If you’re disinclined to read the book, I recommend this podcast episode (though almost three hours long) instead. https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/brian-christian-the-alignment-problem/)

  • Evaluating gender among minorities in relation to the CHIPS and Science Act

    Recently we produced three papers during a course on policy analysis, one of which I wrote about the American legislation The CHIPS and Science Act (the CHIPS is the acronym Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors, and divided into to parts, one on chips and one on science), introduced in August of 2022.

    The last two points in the fact sheet from The White House concerns the gap in gender and minorities in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education)(bold text by me):

    • “… To ensure more people from all backgrounds and all regions and communities around the country, especially people from marginalized, under-served, and under-resourced communities, can benefit from and participate in STEM education and training opportunities, the CHIPS and Science Act authorizes new and expanded investments in STEM education and training from K-12 to community college, undergraduate and graduate education.”

    • “…including new initiatives to support Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and other minority-serving institutions, and other academic institutions providing opportunities to historically-underserved students and communities, primarily through the National Science Foundation (NSF). […] The legislation also gives agencies and institutions the mission and the tools to combat sexual and gender-based harassment in the sciences, a demonstrated barrier to participation in STEM for too many Americans.

    Furthermore, in the legislation itself, under Section 10321:

    • “The NSF shall issue undergraduate scholarships, postdoctoral awards, and other awards to address STEM workforce gaps, including for programs that recruit, retain, and advance students to a bachelor’s degree in a STEM discipline concurrent with a secondary school diploma.”

    A year later, The White House wrote in another fact sheet:

    • “At least 50 community colleges have already announced new or expanded semiconductor workforce programs.” 
    • “…student applications to full-time jobs posted by semiconductor companies were up 79% in 2022-2023.”

    Could these codified intentions actually mean something for STEM education and the semiconductor industry? Could the number of educations regarding semiconductors increase; the number of women (from minorities) enrolling in STEM education increase; and could the number of women graduating from STEM educations increase? Since this assignment was about evaluation/assessment, both formative and summative, I outlined a proposal on how to actually evaluate these efforts, this intervention in form of a very encompassing law, in which roughly $13 billion was directed towards “R&D and workforce development.”

    With statistics from the NSF, NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), Department of Energy and Department of Labour I would’ve designed a study to analyse whether the number of women actually increased. In addition to this I’d elaborated interviews, or the possibility for women to record or write a diary, about their experiences, why they chose to continue or stop studying. The study would’ve gathered statistics between 2017 and 2027, in part because graduation will take time when the effects of the legislation came into effect in 2023 at the earliest, and graduates will become a fact in 2025. Feedback from women could contribute to formative changes in the education or the direction of the legislation.

    Designing a study like this has been one of the best moments of the education so far. Partly due to being able to delve deeper into the factual legislation, partly because evaluations (however boring they might sound) can play a useful role in modern bureaucracy.