Evolution/Devolution of Artifical/Real Intelligence

I recently came across the following two articles and, rather fortuitously, ended up reading them in quick succession:

1. A fascinating account of journey of Demis Hassabis, the founder of Deep Mind (now Google's), towards the elusive and alluring goal of developing artificial general intelligence (AGI).

https://www.1843magazine.com/features/deepmind-and-google-the-battle-to-control-artificial-intelligence

2. A fascinating (albeit in an entirely different way!) about the surprisingly prevalent and growing group of people who feel vindicated in denying even elementary scientific facts such as "earth is round". For the record, I did not even know that I am a 'globetard' :(

https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/looking-for-life-on-a-flat-earth

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Nothing better highlights this strange conundrum of information age.  While we are on a quest to deconstruct and expand the fundamental core of intelligence at the disposal of human civilization, by actualizing it in agents presumably free of human limitations, we simultaneously grapple with our own stupidity and shun essentially everything rational. I wonder if this signals that it would be AHS (Average Human Stupidity), and not AGI, that will finally push us over the edge into The Singularity.

If an alien civilization were observing us, it would find this absolutely incredible!

Intelligence and creativity

"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination." (Albert Einstein)

Intelligence is a virtue -- believe me I know. I was one of those front bench kids who always did extremely well at school and were poster boys/girls for neighbors and relatives (at least as far as the societal notion of intelligence goes).  The reason I turned out (semi-)normal and without a bloated head, was because my parents had their own stellar academic records. So, at least within the confines of our home, there was nothing special about me, nor did I receive the expected glory talks or pats-on-the-back. I, therefore, clearly remember how the first real recognition from my parents came about.

In Indian schools, once we finish our tenth grade one has the liberty to choose subjects for further studies broadly categorized into three streams -- Science, Commerce and Humanities. This so-called liberty, unfortunately, is more of a hierarchy of intelligence itself with top students choosing science, followed by those studying Commerce, and a steep fall from prestige if you go and take up humanities.* Our school, being one of the more progressive ones at the time, had decided to not follow this hierarchy (at least not strictly!) and evaluate the 'aptitude' of students instead.** The idea was that this would help the students to make better informed choices and not just rely on their grades. For this purpose, all tenth grade students in my batch took IQ tests and aptitude tests at the end of school year, and parents of each student were invited to discuss the results with the school counselor.*** I still remember my mother being genuinely (and, to my annoyance, surprisingly!) pleased when she learnt that I had an IQ in the +2\sigma range of the average human IQ. Another thing which I remember was the aptitude chart which showed the student's interest in various lines of work. I squinted at the sheets lying in a pile and saw charts that looked like a doodle of Himalayan peaks. When the counselor pulled up my aptitude chart, it looked like an ECG of a dying man! --- a straight line with a tiny lonely blip near "administration", which immediately triggered the image of a gray-haired, middle-aged me fussing over office filing system in my mind.**** I quickly shoved it out of my sight as I did not want any unhappy distractions while I basked in my IQ glory.

Any way, I did take science in high school as I genuinely liked it by then. Plus, I was assured by my IQ tests that I was a natural at almost all the subjects, except for a little trouble with physics. I was still bothered by my non-existent aptitude for any occupation, but my counselor consoled me that maybe if I found something even mildly interesting, my aptitude-less brain would do well given my killer IQ! As it turned out, I ended up pursuing physics in college. It was more a process of elimination rather than selection at the time (just like most of my life-altering decisions!). Taxonomy had killed biology for me and I was at the end of my tether with organic chemistry (alkanes, alkenes, alkynes...seriously!). Also my mother, who has been a maths wizard since the age of three, thought pure maths would be too abstract for my lateral mind and I listened.

In spite of not having enough natural flair in the subject I chose, and being acutely aware of this conflict between aptitude and interest, I topped the university exams. And the more I learnt physics, the more I liked it and the better I got at it. This made me realize that the mysterious 'aptitude', after all, is not an inherent fixed quality, but a dynamic one that can be cultivated through interest. I eventually pursued research in quantum physics and currently I'm a university professor in the US. The reason for sharing this long-winded history, is the realization it has afforded me about the concept of intelligence. Even in the fields such as academic research that, by construction, seem most cerebral, the really successful and happy scientists are the ones who are the most creative. In fact, pursuing research is the single most important activity that has demolished the usual beliefs about intelligence I grew up with. Confronted by an unsolved problem, it does not really matter how fast can you solve equations or multiply numbers in your head, it is all about how much you enjoy thinking about different things or thinking things differently! And more often than not it is sheer doggedness of this creative pursuit, rather than photographic memory, that leads to interesting results!

This also ties in to a recent podcast I heard about 'Complexity and stupidity'. It was a conversation where one of my favorite commentators and authors Sam Harris talks to biologist David Krakauer about nature of human intelligence and stupidity. Krakauer, who was himself included among 50 smartest minds by Wired magazine, expounds on the concept of intelligence (or, lack of it = stupidity) and I quote from his interview below:

"...The example I like to give is Rubik’s cube, because it’s a beautiful little mental model, a metaphor. If I gave you a cube and asked you to solve it, and you just randomly manipulated it, since it has on the order of 10 quintillion solutions, which is a very large number, if you were immortal, you would eventually solve it. But it would take a lifetime of several universes to do so. That is random performance. Stupid performance is if you took just one face of the cube and manipulated that one face and rotated it forever. As everyone knows, if you did that, you would never solve the cube. It would be an infinite process that would never be resolved. That, in my definition, would be stupid. It is significantly worse than chance.

Now let’s take someone who has learned how to manipulate a cube and is familiar with various rules that allow you, from any initial configuration, to solve the cube in 20 minutes or less. That is intelligent behavior, significantly better than chance. This sounds a little counterintuitive, perhaps, until you realize that’s how we use the word in our daily lives. If I sat down with an extraordinary mathematician and I said, “I can’t solve that equation,” and he said, “Well, no, it’s easy. Here, this is what you do,” I’d look at it and I’d say, “Oh, yes, it is easy. You made that look easy.” That’s what we mean when we say someone is smart. They make things look easy. 

If, on the other hand, I sat down with someone who was incapable, and he just kept dividing by two, for whatever reason, I would say, “What on earth are you doing? What a stupid thing to do. You’ll never solve the problem that way.”

So that is what we mean by intelligence. It’s the thing we do that ensures that the problem is efficiently solved and in a way that makes it appear effortless. And stupidity is a set of rules that we use to ensure that the problem will be solved in longer than chance or never and is nevertheless pursued with alacrity and enthusiasm. ..."

I find Krakauer's definition illuminating for more than one reasons:
- First, it makes the elusive concept of intelligence, usually quantified by an absolute scaleless number called IQ, more concrete and accessible.
- Second, it shows that intelligence is something dynamic and diverse. It may involve ruminating about physics of the universe or solving a rubik's cube.
- Third, and most importantly, it really challenges the conventional view of intellectualism and makes intelligence indistinguishable from creativity. Because it is creativity which helps us solve problems in unforeseen and new ways.


So the next time you want to feel intelligent, go paint something, or dance to your favorite song. Who knew being intelligent could be so much fun!

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Footnotes:

* 99.9% of the times people, including you and your parents, would believe that you did not have the grades to 'get science' (pun intended). If you are one of the arty types and choose to inflict the ultimate misery of pursuing fine arts upon yourself, be assured to get ample solitude to brush up your doodling skills, when you would be hiding under the bed trying to ignore all the sympathetic "tcha-tchas" at family dinners.
** Not progressive enough to offer humanities though, since the administrators feared it would bring down the average performance of the school!
*** One of our favorite English teachers had volunteered to double up as a counselor. She must have had a degree in psychology or something because she was really good with students.
**** My parents had a more optimistic outlook and thought that I may want to become an IAS officer (powerful bureaucrats in Indian government).

Happy Pi Day!

Don't rush to your nearest bakery -- not yet any way!

We are talking about the beautifully enigmatic and irrational number aka pi. Why today? -- given the precision provided by the digits on our calendars, 3.14.16 is the closest you can get to this ever elusive number hermit! So in the spirit of full disclosure it is actually a 'rounded' pi day like the one shown on the right (yum!).  For a more appropriate homage, I enclose the one I spotted at the Stata Center@MIT* below!

Well, as it turns the geeking out with this day does not stop yet. It also happens to be birthday of the most famous physicist ever -- yes it is 137th birthday of Albert Einstein which makes this extra special! In addition, 137 has its own hall of fame in physics ---due to fine structure constant, which is recognized as one of the fundamental constants of nature, and which is very close to 1/137!

As you can see alpha seems to be having its own little party with other constants (including pi), such as e = charge of an electron, \hbar = h/(2 pi) = (reduced) Planck's constant, c = speed of light in vacuum and \epsilon_{0} = permittivity of the free space. One of the reasons which carves \alpha firmly on the throne of geeks (and greeks!**), is that it sets the natural coupling strength of matter (electron) with radiation (photon) in Quantum Electrodynamics***.

Now you maybe wondering why did nature choose something as unexpected as 1/137 in its manifestation -- if you have any clues, you just might be able to solve one of the longest standing puzzles in Physics!

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* It may just be a coincidence but MIT also hands out its decision for admissions today.
**being the first greek letter and all..
***The effective electric charge of the electron actually varies slightly with energy so the constant changes a bit depending on the energy scale at which you perform your experiment. So \alpha is not really a 'constant' as such, but hey it is pretty close and makes QED work so well, so we will let it be!

When science creates ripples!

Image courtesy: Caltech

Today LIGO team unveiled what is potentially one of the greatest results in modern physics  -- first detection of gravitational waves, also called GW150914*, created when two black holes collided a good 1.3 billion years ago**! Count the number of wow-inducing words in that one sentence alone -- it (usually) does not get better than this.


It is a really big moment for both MIT and Caltech, two of the leading members of LIGO team. Being at MIT, I can almost sense the contagious enthusiasm in air. Rainer Weiss, an MIT professor, traces back the LIGO journey in this Q&A. In his email to the MIT community this morning, president L. Rafael Reif sums it up most aptly: "The discovery we celebrate today embodies the paradox of fundamental science: that it is painstaking, rigorous and slow – and electrifying, revolutionary and catalytic."


Cockeyed optimism of scientists, as John Preskill from Caltech puts it, was essential for the success of this complex, ambitious and beautiful experiment. And now there is even more reason to continue with this die-hard optimism regarding the future*** of this effort. Kip Thorne, one of the original instigators of LIGO, stated in the live webcast that Advanced LIGO is operating at only one-third of its ultimate sensitivity, so when this interferometric window into the universe is fully opened -- we should have access to 27 times mores volume of the universe and see many such events in its eventful history!

First Higgs and now gravitational waves -- woohoo science!

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*Indexing the date of September 14, 2015 when LIGO detectors at Hanford and Livingston recorded the coincidence event signifying a GW signature.
** The technical details can be found in this paper by the collaboration that appeared on the Physical Review Letters website today.
*** There are plans to build a third LIGO-like gravitational wave detector in India, which should be operational by 2020.

My new web page

Blogger friends,

My professional web page is public now :).

https://sites.google.com/site/kamalarchana/

It is kind of a semi-beta version, in spite of the painfully-simple-to-use google site template (which works a lot like blogger unsurprisingly!). Still, I feel reasonably proud of myself in getting around to do it after all this time.

It seems to me that improving the search rank of a web page is an almost independent task from making it public --- which means that you should not assume that Google will show it up 'automatically' just because now you have fought that awkward feeling about going public with your site. I am still learning clever ways to improve search rank of my page, but my few efforts of registering it in the periodic web crawls of Google and submitting my sitemap for indexing have at least led to its appearance on page 2 of google search for my name. I am not sweating over it though since my google scholar page, that appears on page 1 for my name search, has a link to my web page and should help do the job at the cost of an extra click.

Comments welcome. 

Google News

No, I don't mean to suggest searching for news on Google; I am alluding to an eventful last week at Mountain View:

1. Google has gone sans serif. It recently changed the logo that appears on its famous unadorned search page*, a change that has been called the biggest update for Google in last 16 years --- and this is when Google recently rebranded all its services and subsidiaries under a common conglomerate called the Alphabet! The new logo has been touted as having a more "benevolent" design with particular friendliness towards mobile devices. See a detailed evolution of the ubiquitous colorful 6 letters, as heard from the horse's mouth itself, here.

2. In another news, Google's driverless cars are running into a unique, but inevitable, problem -- perfect robots meet imperfect humans! According to the company, the cars are too safe as they follow the book when it comes to traffic rules, without spontaneous adjustments such as the ones human drivers are used to doing. Last month when one of the robot cars came to a halt to allow right of way to a pedestrian, it was rear-ended by a car driven by a fallible human being! Compels me to paraphrase the current (perennial?) state of "human"-ity in words of Christopher Hitchens -- "..the search of utopia is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle." **

P.S. Interestingly this ties into an article that I shared in my earlier post Link Think, where Nicolas Carr (in NYT again) had written about the impossibility of machines replacing humans (ever!). Seems like, it is not overcoming human imperfections but rather replicating them, that turns out to be  most daunting after all!

3. In the recent issue of TIME magazine, I read about the 'most powerful woman on the internet' --YouTube's current CEO Susan Wojcicki. She goes a long way back with Google (Page and Brin started the company practically in her garage!) and, much unconventionally, has a non-technical background unlike the rest of Google's top brass. Apparently, this plays out as a major strength for her and helps her decide on YouTube content from a universal perspective and with mass appeal (amusingly, she sometimes first tests the user experience using her four kids as the guinea pigs!). Recommended reading***.

* It was developed by Marissa Meyer, one of the high power tech women in Silicon valley and current CEO/President of Yahoo! , during her time at Google as vice president of Google Search.
** I should clarify that I am favorably intrigued by this effort of Google. I totally can do with a robot chauffeur, or better still, an implicit one!
*** though behind a paywall

Link Think - Science/Technology

1. Nicholas Carr in New York Times, why with all their foibles and fallibility humans are not, and probably never will be, obsolete.

He notes "We should view computers as our partners, with complementary abilities, not as our replacements. What we’ll lose if we rush to curtail our involvement in difficult work are the versatility and wisdom that set us apart from machines."

2. Nature has released a special May issue discussing the prospects and challenges facing Indian science.

The article India by the Numbers includes a telling and instructive summary of statistics, such as "about 40% of Indian researchers work abroad" -- the highest percentage of brain drain than any other country in the world!

3.  Interesting three-part series of articles in Quanta Magazine on how quantum entanglement leads to space time geometry. It discusses one of the most mysteriously addictive equations I have come across, ER = EPR (sorry Podolsky!).

i. Entangled Wormholes

ii. Network Tapestry

iii. Quantum Geometry

Wired also featured a commentary about this series.

4. Ross Andersen in Aeon magazine has a long piece about current state of cosmology. He gives a detailed account of the recent BICEP2 saga where initial hopes of detection of gravitational waves were, quite literally, shattered to dust. Reading about the entire episode in detail made me think that demanding stringently objective standards of science is not equivalent to assuming that its practitioners are less prone to usual (and frankly, expected!) human prejudices and biases. This is especially true while practicing science in the contemporary times of hyper-hype and hyper-competitiveness. I, for one, would try to be more sympathetic not just to the cause of science but to that of scientists, who put in honest and sincere work with no deliberate intent of scientific misconduct, while struggling to win over all their prejudices and biases with varying success. We need to remind ourselves that scientists are human after all!

5. Singularity hub recently published a report that gives a synopsis of leading quantum computing (QC) efforts in the world right now. It especially highlights superconducting circuit based QC, my field of research. 

Blog about my favorite blogs

On the science side, I have found iflscience quite entertaining -- whose editor is Elise Andrew, creator of the hugely popular I fucking love science facebook page. Its articles are pretty accessible too and you don't need any formal background, but just a healthy interest in science. Quantum Pontiff and Quantum Frontiers (run by Caltech's Institute of Quantum Information and Matter) are also interesting but rather technical and focused mostly on quantum information processing, so some may not like it as much as I do.

For Mathematics, I simply adore John Baez's blog Azimuth. The description of the blog actually clarifies that the focus is broader covering Physics, Earth science, Biology and technology too, but personally I find his maths posts most appealing. One of the absolute gems I have read from him is this beautiful exposition on relation between symplectic and unitary structures (okay I digress..). It is really amazing and has profound implications across fields. I was awed into stupefaction for full two weeks during my Ph.D. when I understood and used it in my research.

For a life in academia, I like the blog from Xykademiqz the most, where a full professor in Physical sciences at a major US research university shares her experiences (some might know her from blogger as Academic jungle). Scientopia which is a community blog on science is also worth checking -- personally I do not visit it super-often, as its dominant focus and contributors seem to come from biology. But people who worry about NIH grants, ethics in medical research etc may find it more engaging.

On the social and financial impacts of economics in our lives, mathbabe Cathy O'Neil and very much opinionated Noah Smith take the cake. Mathababe also runs an advice column Aunt Pythia on saturdays where she answers nerdy to kinky questions with equal panache.

One of my absolutely favorite blogs in recent time is the bad advisor --- who gives the advice people "want" to hear. This example shows why I love her blog so much. Also this. She sometimes even has interludes of giving good advice, which can be actually useful for some one. Keep rocking bad advisor!

Plus, there always is goodreads to go and wander amidst my loyal and comforting friends (a.k.a books).

And for my occasional indulgence in urdu poetry, I follow urduwallahs (it has a few gems such as full text with translation of Kaifi Azmi's composition "Aurat" but they need to be searched for!). A collection of poetry by Faiz Ahmad Faiz along with full texts and translation can also be found at this webpage hosted by Columbia University.

Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?

I usually refrain from talking about women in science issues to avoid the risk of being stereotyped as yet another shrill feminist selling a sob tale about problems faced by women in the male-dominated scientific era. Over the years, however, I have unwillingly yet unmistakably realized the importance of this issue which, even if doesn't affect the lucky few in their immediate surroundings or future, leads to an undesirable and unhealthy skewness within the scientific culture and its practitioners, who "by construction" should be unbiased if nothing else.

Eileen Pollack in her excellent article in today's New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/why-are-there-still-so-few-women-in-science.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

articulates convincingly many such problems and concomitant challenges faced by women in scientific fields. She is a Yale alumni and her undergraduate major was Physics, both facts which bring the story quite close to home for me (though, unlike Eileen, I was a graduate student there and had a very pleasant experience overall!).  The article is a bit long but a very easy and engaging read.

One of the statements in Pollack's article which resonated with my experience more than the others was this:

...people’s biases stem from “repeated exposure to pervasive cultural stereotypes that portray women as less competent by simultaneously emphasizing their warmth and likability compared to men.”

This has actually manifested itself in a few varieties during my academic experience. Quite a few women scientists I know, who are very competitive in their fields, almost always tend to be slightly (and surprisingly!) apologetic about it. This subconscious or conscious feeling (hint: which is definitely not genetic or biological) necessarily forces them to "conform" in some other way and appear conciliatory in their personal interactions. Men, on the other hand, do not usually feel such inhibitions and even if they do it is a personal choice/trait not some social interaction protocol seemingly impressed upon by the community.

Link SING!

 What is a really really fun ways to talk about physics?  Answer: Music, as proved by the links below.

1. A cappella String theory, loops, renormalization (basically everything none of us quite understand).

2. A sonnet on Quantum Error Correction by Daniel Gottesman.

3. A poem on Quantum Cryptography by John Preskill. I liked it so much that I am putting it here.

Alice said to her friend Eve,

"Why do you practice to deceive?

You know I need to talk to Bob.

Without that I won't have a job.
 

"Bob can't know where my note has been.

He thinks that you are listening in.

He wonders if it's safe enough

For me to send him secret stuff.
 

"And Bob's right not to trust you, Eve,

With quantum tricks stuffed up your sleeve.

But he thinks we can freeze you out,

With quantum tricks we've learned about.
 

"With quantum states, what we achieve

Defeats whatever you conceive.

So even Bob has to believe

That you can’t hear us, can you Eve?"  

                                      (John Preskill)

You can "eve-sdrop" on some of Preskill's other verses here.

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Link Think

Hi bloggers,

I am starting a new feature where I am going to share interesting web-links. mostly related to Science. These may include news articles, popular physics essays or even blog pieces written by the vibrant community of scientist bloggers. Here is the first installment.

1. John Preskill's nice piece, where he summarizes the different viewpoints prevalent in the scientific communities on the "Firewall Paradox", recently put forward  by the AMPS team (the acronym draws from the initials of the four researchers involved this work --- Ahmed Almheiri, Donald Marolf, and James Sully, from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Dr. Polchinski of the KITP, Santa Barbara.) It boils down to a revisitation of the black hole information paradox, over which John Preskill had won a bet against Stephen Hawking in 2004. For an accessible commnetary, correct in essentials, see the New York times article here.

2. Scott Aaronson on NSA's recent claim about their groundbreaking cryptanalytic capabilities. He entertainingly alludes to the possibility of NSA acquiring a quantum computer from D-wave - a company of whose claims he is the self-proclaimed Chief Skeptic!

3. A slightly old, but really well written commentary in Quanta Magazine, on a recent theoretical breakthrough which shows how an untrusted or noisy quantum system may be employed for secure quantum key distribution.

Yay!

A paper on the project that I had been working on for almost three years got accepted today in a very decent journal. Super-relieved! And still in love with physics!