There's Nothing Artificial About Artificial Intelligence

I have long been of the opinion that discussion of when we will create an artificial intelligence is pointless because we clearly already have. The question is when we will be able to understand the intelligences we've already created.

Well, that opinion changed dramatically this morning, thanks to this episode of To The Best of Our Knowledge, which aired this morning while I was driving to work on KANW 89.1 FM in Albuquerque. You should listen to it. Really. Stop reading, follow the link and click "listen now." You can thank me after you get back.

So here's the revelation I had while I was listening to them talk about "intelligence" in plants. (I put that in quotes because it doesn't really fit the classical definition of intelligence, but I think the definition is wrong and if you've listened to the show you may agree with me). (And if you haven't listened to it yet, seriously, what are you doing down here? GO. Listen.) There's absolutely nothing artificial about what we've been calling artificial intelligence. Intelligence is so ubiquitous in nature, so central to the very existence of the world we live in, that for us to claim any ownership of intelligence is pure hubris in the way only humans seem to be guilty of it. Intelligence of some form, the ability to take in data and interact with outside stimuli, exists in any living thing. All we do is put together some things, mostly silicon, and add electricity. Intelligence is sure to follow. Do we control that intelligence? Sure, to some extent we do, in the same way we cultivate crops and train animals. Did we make it? Not in my book. It was there.

I was driving while I listened to this show, and couldn't help but notice the sheer volume of plant life I was driving past on my way to work. If you accept the notion of intelligence in those plants, and I most certainly do (and if you don't, maybe you haven't listened yet--why not? Do it now!), then I drove past more intelligence on my way to work than I'm likely to encounter while I'm at work. You probably have more intelligence within 100' of you right now than you can read in this blog post. So get out there and feel it. It's really awesome when you let it in.

recipe break

I made this for a solstice gathering and got a few requests for the recipe, which took me some time to attempt to write down. I haven't made it since writing it down, but I'm hopeful I transcribed my improvisation accurately:

Sweet Potato Black Bean Enchiladas

with a huge assist to Emily Sommer for the inspiration: http://www.penzeys.com/cgi-bin/penzeys/recipes/r-penzeysSweetPotatoBurritos.html

stuffing:

2 sweet potatoes or yams (the really deep purple ones are especially good)

1 can of black beans, drained and rinsed

½ cup mixed bell peppers (I use a frozen blend of green, yellow and red peppers)

½ cup chopped onions

2 tsp red chile powder

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp chipotle powder

1 Tbs olive oil

salt

sauce:

5 frozen green chiles

3 cloves garlic

1 Tbs arrowroot powder (or corn starch perhaps)

2 cups vegetable stock (I used chicken at solstice, but think vegetable would be better)

1 Tbs olive oil

salt

a dozen or so corn tortillas

lots of grated cheese

1. preheat oven to 425°
2. peel and dice sweet potatoes into ~1” cubes
3. toss sweet potatoes with olive oil in a roasting pan and roast until easily pierced with a fork (15 minutes?)
4. mix remainder of stuffing ingredients in a bowl, adding sweet potatoes when done
5. turn oven down to 350°
6. heat olive oil over medium heat in a skillet, add garlic and green chiles and saute for a few minutes, not so long that the garlic gets brown and crispy
7. mix the arrowroot powder into the vegetable stock and stir until dissolved, add to skillet slowly, stirring constantly, reduce heat to simmer
8. keep stirring until it thickens, then remove from heat
9. in the same roasting pan you used for the potatoes (or a different one if you like) pour about half of sauce in the bottom of the pan, then a single layer of tortillas, about half of the stuffing, then a bunch of cheese. Repeat one more layer.
10. Put in the oven for 15-20 minutes until cheese is melted and bubbly.

are free web services worth the cost?

An interesting experiment started on a whim the other day, ironically enough when I was in the process of posting a Tweet from Thom Yorke up on Facebook. The post from Mr. Yorke was about social networks and online shopping widening the divide between rich and poor, then I saw a post from Democracy Now hinting (I didn't read the link) that NSA spyware was being bundled into Windows and many computers bought online, and the combination led me to post a comment about why and then log off of Facebook indefinitely. I have used my gmail since then because it's the only personal email I have, but I haven't been on any social network per se and haven't used any of google's other services, including news and youtube. (Consequently, I'm writing this offline, which is another sub-experiment, although probably not an interesting one.) I don't expect this experiment to last forever, and in fact it is by definition over by the time you'll be reading this, but I have been interested in how my online and IRW activities have changed.

For one thing, if I were to really do this up completely, I'd have to find a real-world source for news. TV news isn't going to cut it and it's hard for me to listen to the radio during key news times (Morning Edition and All Things Considered), so I turned to newspaper websites (The New York Times and The Washington Post in particular), but it's clear both are tracking my actives and reading habits in pretty much the same way any social network does. The New York Times in particular gave me a message saying I'd already read 5 of the 10 free articles I was allowed per month, so I logged in using a free subscription I'd set up years ago. I could (and still do sometimes) also get a lot of news from either the NPR News app or TuneIn (where there are more times available for NPR programming), but again these apps are tracking and using my data. 

Really, I have gotten so used to the very activities which track my data and use it for someone else's profit that I don't remember what it's like not to. I think I got a login with the New York Times in 1995 or '96, I've been using a "free" yahoo email address since the early days of my.yahoo.com (late 90s?), signed up with gmail when you still needed an invite, have used google news as my primary first stop for news since about the same time, and have generally become more and more dependent on all these things as the years have gone by. (And that's not even considering the information any given ISP or network provider is likely to be gathering and using in some way.) It's kind of astounding to me when I think about how using a computer did not used to mean that computer was online. This was especially true in the days of dialup and I think the dividing line became completely blurred shortly after I got DSL service. All the rest, becoming a deep mine for data gathering sources all over, seemed to follow inevitably and I willingly, even enthusiastically, signed up for service after service. Thom Yorke has gently reminded me that in so doing I am part of the problem.

I have found in the past few days without any social networking and with limited use of "free" web services (email and newspapers) that I could eliminate these things altogether for a price (by paying for our own personal email server and a "dead tree" newspaper subscription), and it might even be worth the price; but I miss some of my Facebook friends and like it or not, Facebook has given me more than an illusion of connection with some of those people, it has given me a relationship we only had in theory before. (In theory, sure, we could email each other, make an occasional phone call even, but we never did.) I don't miss Twitter as much, but I know that's a fluctuating thing with me and I've been in a Facebook-heavy phase of that cycle lately. And I do like shopping around my news sources a bit depending on the story (e.g. Washington Post for inside-the-beltway stories, New York Times for art and culture, Hollywood Reporter or KCRW for "The" Business, etc) and that would be very expensive and/or inconvenient to do offline.

And then there's the business aspect of all this. The personal is professional has been my mantra of the past few years and social networking has certainly helped me to stay connected and stay personal with business contacts. Face-to-face networking is certainly something we need to re-emphasize in our business, but having the virtual network available has certainly helped us to stay in people's minds and that's a Good Thing in business. Our company's social networking pages also get more traffic than our web site and I believe that will be true for the indefinite future no matter how much money we pour into the web site. 

I will say, though, without equivocation that I've learned my life can be enriched by backing away from some of my online habits. A little time on social networks is sufficient to stay in touch, more time is basically put into finding rabbit holes which distract me from more important things available right in front of my face at home or work. These rabbit holes seem like important issues, sometimes political, sometimes spiritual, often seeming to further the cause of A Better World. In the end, though, my life and the world in general isn't any richer for the time I spent in those rabbit holes. At the same time, I have lost time with my son, my wife, a colleague, our books, bona fide marketing, face-to-face networking, etc….

You reading this proves I have concluded to keep using the "free" web services I've come to depend on for personal communication, information gathering, and business communication, too. (It is worth noting that Hear Kitty Studios still has its own mail servers and tends to use a private FTP space instead of "free" services for file transfers, and this is a very conscious choice we've made to keep our client communications and proprietary information as secure and safe as we can reasonably do.) I am resolving to keep an eye on my useage and try to stay on the convenience rather than distraction side of those activities. I also intend to keep an eye out for ways to phase out use of some of these services. I wish it was as easy as "free = bad, paid = good," but it's not that simple, so I'll keep reading privacy policies and terms of use and consider alternatives and whether it's worth it before I agree to something that makes me uneasy.

By the way, all the credit for this experiment doesn't belong to Thom Yorke and Democracy Now, some should go to Ray Bradburry and my mother-in-law Lou Edwards who gave me Fahrenheit 451 for Christmas. I can't believe I haven't read that before now in my life. If you haven't read that book and you have read to this point in this post, you need to forget what you're doing right now, log off, drive to a bookstore or library, buy or check it out, and read it voraciously. Enough said.

So, yes; I'm back on the social networks, but I think my relationship with them has changed and I hope to remember the lessons I've learned about myself and the digital world.