Author: Gypsy

So preoccupied with whether they could..

I will be completely frank here, AI is a terrifying thing.  Sure, some of the more harmless implementations are cool, but if you look down the road AI is on, you’ll surely see the problems.  It’s great to conceptualize and implement an app on your phone that will automate tedious phone calls (See Google Duplex).  But considering what else is emerging in technology it’s not hard to imagine what the future will bring.  I want to believe that everything will be used solely for the benefit of all humanity, but I realistically know that’s not going to be the case.

So, let’s paint the landscape.  AI can be classified in one of two buckets; Narrow, and General.  Narrow can be defined as a machine (or computer) producing human-like results or decisions in a small subset of tasks (e.g. image recognition).  General can be defined as a machine (or computer) producing human-like results or decisions in a greater set of tasks (e.g. autonomous interaction with the world).  To be clear most of the implications of AI that make it to the news are narrow.  Some examples; would be Siri, Google Assistant, and Cortana, these applications are good at listening to your voice and returning results that you are asking for.

By in large Narrow AI is mostly benign, until of course you start applying it to teach General AI.  Some other terms thrown around when talking about AI are Machine and Deep Learning.  Both terms are essentially a method to teach machines or computers how to make decisions on their own.  A third term that pops up is Big Data which is just an extremely large data set.  Developers and companies will use Big Data to teach Narrow AI.  You’ve probably seen the captcha images that ask you to select the portions of the image that have a specific object in it, these are usually used for machine learning to teach a Narrow AI.  If you feed a trillion images to a fledgling AI that do or do not have a cat in them, eventually the AI will be able to recognize any picture’s feline content.

Tin-Foil-Hat Warning.

Now, the scary part; We’ve been made comfortable with the fact that we’re identifying roads for self-driving vehicles, but what we haven’t even thought of is all the surveillance data collected by the NSA.  This is largely our behavioral information, and since it was collected in a method we would think of as unethical, it’s not a stretch to think that the data will be used in an unethical manner as well.

Then you’ve got the big names collecting an absurd amount of information on people.  Facebook, Google, Amazon etc.  These companies are using that data to build AI.  Unfortunately, these companies are in business to make money and fiscal partnerships are bound to happen.   The prompting of this particular post is just one of those partnerships; a partnership with Google and the Department of Defense (Project Maven).  The idea is to assist our unmanned drones better identify their targets.  What nobody is saying out loud is this is attaching an amount of fire power to AI.

Let’s move on to the truly terrifying; AI doesn’t have the conscience of a traditional human and will follow orders given to it so long as it is adhering to programming.  Meaning that an AI will act on instructions that a soldier simply will not.  Coupled with the people in control of the instructions may or may not have the best intentions in mind.  With both sides of the political argument throwing around collusion with an outside source, and some notable people of power having their data / information leaked or taken over.  The technology is cool, and I’m curious to see what we can achieve with it.  The problem is, of course, who’s driving it?

 

Know the Content

The landscape of the world today is vastly different from when I was growing up.  Having a viewport to the internet in your pocket has changed the game.  In my adolescent years the internet hadn’t really come of age, and for those that would argue, it’s access wasn’t nearly as ambiguous as it is now.  Technology in general is a requirement today, how to interface, operate, and fundamental concepts will dictate your personal and professional life.

With its prevalence we must do everything we can to make sure that our children have every advantage as they grow, which means introducing them to technology so that they can succeed in the world as we can only imagine it will be when they reach adulthood.  Being an IT professional means that I have an affinity for technology.  I used to say I am the purveyor of all things cool in the world of tech.  I’d like to think that I still am, though there are some boundaries to what I can obtain which leads me to make more careful considerations on what I purchase.

Pulling back to the parenting theme; We as parents have a role in our child’s life that is more impactful that we can fathom.  We are the ones responsible for the introduction of technology to our children, and with it the internet.  As powerful as it can be I think a base level of understanding needs to be in place before ever setting a child loose on the internet.  It can be a great learning opportunity, but it can also be the first step down a slippery slope or even downright dangerous.

Consider this; There are lots of things in the average home to drink.  You’ve got water, milk, juice, alcohol, etc.  Sure, you immediately dismiss alcohol as an option, but do you limit the amount of juice you give to your kid?  Milk?  Water?  What if you give them Juice too often?  It isn’t inherently bad, but have you seen a child deny water in favor of juice?  This is curating the content that your child consumes.  Basic interacting with the internet and technology is similar.  There needs to be a balance in place so that basic skills and learning techniques are still present.

With that analogy in place just how much internet are you willing to just blindly hand over to your child?  Let’s face it here, there’s some applications you can get for mobile that are educational, but they are the beginning of the avalanche.  How long before the application becomes boring?  Now on to Netflix, or YouTube, or any other of content delivery networks?  While trying to understand how I should introduce technology into my son’s life, I had to take a few more steps back to appreciate where my understanding of it came from.

Largely technology and the ambiguity of the internet have lead many to take it for granted.  It has become my realization that more and more people don’t understand where we came from.  What did we do before the smartphone?  What did we do before the internet was always on?  I really think that missing out on physically reading a book, writing things down on paper, or interacting face-to-face with someone is incredibly detrimental to a developing child.

I think it’s tough to appreciate an always on fast internet connection without knowing what it’s like to have to tie up a phone line for it.  It’s difficult to understand the pathways that have opened because we can transfer data across the globe in seconds rather than days.  This is not to say that I will subject my son to a decade of internet at the painfully slow 56k (or worse).  But I want him to know how to talk to people, how to read a book, and how to write.  Additionally, I want him to be able to learn at will and not rely on an internet connection.  If all goes according to plan the light I’ll have to tell him to turn off in the middle of the night will be a flashlight, not a smartphone or tablet.

What I am trying to convey here, is I want to give my son, at the very least, a Cliff’s Notes version of technology history before introducing him to all that the internet and technology has to offer, because I want him to understand how powerful of a tool it can be.

Choose Your Babysitter Wisely

Time to address the elephant in the room; Technology.  When is it applicable to hand over to your child and when should you misdirect with the toy truck? 

A good half of parenting is observation, both in watching the child and what other parents are doing.  Observation being something that I have always been good at.  Then picking apart someone’s actions from a sociological standpoint has always been something that interests me.  So, I tend to see the why of how someone reacts a lot quicker than most.  I think this is where my initial judge of character comes from. 

One of the biggest trends in parenting that I’ve seen today is when in a restaurant handing off the smartphone to keep the child entertained / quiet.  I’ve seen this happen with children ranging in ages from 2-well into their teens.  Admittedly the latter half of that tend to have their own smartphone.  While I can relate that it is a very easy way out, I’ve got to wonder if it’s more harm than help. 

I’ll set the stage for you.  Two parents and their child walk in to a restaurant.  They get seated and the kid is fidgety and inconsolable, one parent frantically pulls out their phone, unlocks it, opens an app and hands it over.  This is a desperate attempt to keep the kid quiet, it’s got an added side effect of the parents can now speak to each other unhindered by the interests of their child. 

How did we get here?  When did the smartphone become the replacement for the pacifier?  Well, it’s not a new trend.  Parents used to be able to turn on the television and plop their children in front of it for time to themselves.  There is an unfortunate downside; the parents have caved once on this, they will cave again and again.

Throughout a child’s developmental life, they begin everything with mimicry.  You never really appreciate just how much of this happens until you see it happen.  Hearing my son trying to repeat something I said while not consciously censoring my language was an eye-opener.  That’s not to say mimicry is only going to show you what you need to do differently, I also remember my son sitting in a high-chair with a spoon tapping the surface of his tray and then bringing the end of the spoon to his face.  My wife and I thought the behavior was odd until we pieced together that he was mimicking us eating.  But I’ve gotten off topic. 

When you realize the parroting is happening you really need to be more conscious of what you do in front of your child.  How often do you check your phone?  How often is it out in the open?  This is where you really need to lay the groundwork for what is acceptable, and bear in mind that if you want your child to follow the rules, you must adhere to them as well.  Otherwise, you will be fighting an uphill battle against a fundamental learning method; mimicry. 

The other side of this is what else will your child mimic?  Take our family in the restaurant from earlier; did they just open YouTube, or some other video service?  Do you think the child is going to mimic what they see there?  They absolutely will.  Maybe not with as much conviction as they parrot their parents, but it will happen.  Additionally, I must ask, does the child understand at this point what is morally and socially acceptable for them and what isn’t?  Does the child comprehend just how powerful the device is that they hold in their hands? 

This post is going to be at least a two-parter, on one hand to keep the length of the posts consistent, and to try and maintain a consistent train of thought.

Parenting: Git Gud Edition

Parenting is this super weird thing that cannot be likened to anything else.   Sure, there are other situations that are analogous, but nothing is completely the same.  You and, hopefully, your partner are responsible for turning this little uncoordinated, babbling, poop-factory into a productive member of society.  If all is done correctly you do this with as few nurtured mental issues as possible.  How to do this, and what are the best methods are all in the rub, as it were.  There’s countless blogs (oh, the irony), magazines, and other publications about what the current trends are to create the best human possible.  Through the eyes of a new parent this is all very daunting.  At the end of the day it all leaves you with a sense of inadequacy.

I’m sure we can all relate; our parents weren’t perfect.  My upbringing was no different, it took me quite a while to work through any lingering angst I felt for my parents.  Hindsight is always 20/20, and I’ve managed to work out most if not all the why’s.  My parents had to make some tough decisions, I may not have understood them at the time but now I understand.  To top it all off I don’t think my younger self would have fully comprehended the reasoning behind it all.  So here I am, putting together my very own C.S.I. episode about my life, trying to do my best to put all the pieces together, and come out with a better understanding.

I told you that to give you a preface to where all my future ‘Parenting’ posts are coming from.  I could go in to detail about my childhood, but I doubt that will ever make it here.

When my wife was pregnant with our first child my brain went haywire trying to culminate all the what-ifs, how’s and whys.  As we neared the third trimester I really settled down and was able to formulate more of a plan.  I got over the initial sticker shock of what this was going to do to us fiscally and began to think about how we as people operated and how we we’re going to work around being parents.

Like many new parents, I took to the internet to start reading about what to expect and how to handle it.  Spending many nights up past my bedtime scanning through headlines like ‘Top ten Parenting Tips’ and ‘How to raise your first child’.  I was bewildered with the sheer volume of the people putting forth their opinions on how to handle a child.  The problem with so many of these was that they were more focused on their ad revenue and less so on the actual content.  Then, the ‘A-Ha!’ moment happened.  These ad-laden sites were there because of analysis of searches, meaning that lots of people were searching for parenting tips.  Which means that no-one has the answers that I sought.

Armed with this I still looked, now I was looking at literature that the hospital had pointed us toward.  Thinking they should know better, right?  Nope, hospital pamphlets were chock full of recommendations that had absolutely no research to back them up.  So, now what was I to do?  I felt like I knew less about being a parent having read all the publications.  Then another moment of clarity hit; There is no one-size-fits-all guide.

Well, now what?  I had a few conversations with other parents, they didn’t have answers either.  It wasn’t until speaking with my Mother-In-Law who gave the best bit of advice I could have ever gotten.  “Instructions come with the package.”  To elaborate on that a little bit, “Instructions come with the package; You’ll figure out what language they’re in.”  And that’s it; the Rosetta Stone for parenting.  It has nothing to do with what some article tells you to do or what some check-out lane magazine says.  There aren’t answers to the questions, and that’s okay.

Moving forward it’s more about taking a more logical approach to what the child needs.  This became more apparent when nurses asked if we would like to test for Down’s Syndrome.  There was a small risk involved with the test which made me adjust the terms of the test.  Since the risk was a terminated pregnancy, I had to ask if there were any outcome of the test that would cause us to willingly terminate the pregnancy.  Since my wife and I are both reasonable human beings that answer was a very quick ‘No’ we opted to not take the test.

2 years down the road my son is mostly polite and thoughtful.  Understands sharing as much as a 2-year-old only child can and has developed into an awesome kid.  All attributed to my wife and I making good decisions in the developmental process.

Public Image

I get asked on the regular why I’m not on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other social media platform.  I usually just respond with some short response that terminates that rabbit hole of an explanation right then and there.  What am I saving these people that ask from?  This, this shit right here;

Reason number 1 why I don’t do social media; Public image.  Yeah, it sounds silly, but I tend to do dumb things.  I really don’t need these things showing up at inopportune times.  I especially don’t want to have to explain to my son why there is a traffic cone on my head in that picture, and that’s on the tame side of things.  I am 2 very different people on the internet, there is my troll gamer self that will set his Steam display name to something like Rectal Bleeding for the lulz, and there is my professional self, answering questions on IT forums and posting reviews etc.  It is incredibly rare that these two operate under the same name, or in the same place.  Here is an exception, since I will probably never reveal my name here.

Reason number 2 why I don’t do social media; I want more fulfilling relationships with people.  I don’t want to know about the amazing meal friend 1 had last week.  When I see them next I want them to tell me about it.  I want to be able to go to a social gathering and I hear from them what they have been up to since I saw them last.  People tend to interject at this point that they keep in touch with family that aren’t local to them through the platform, the counter-point is to ask if their phone can still make phone calls.

Reason number 3 why I don’t do social media; No more stress.  It’s downright silly how much effort people put in to keeping up with everything that is going on in the world.  I don’t think I put enough emphasis on this; It’s downright silly how much effort people put in to keeping up with everything going on in the world. That’ll have to do.  I’ve had to point out to people that the internet will still be there tomorrow, or in a couple hours.  You don’t get anything other than a hollow accomplishment for being up-to-date on your feed.  In my opinion it’s better to concentrate your attention on things that will be more rewarding in the long run.

Reason number 4 why I don’t do social media; Tin foil hats!  Yeah, I’m one of those people that believes that most social media platforms have roots in surveillance.  Could be government, could be corporations, could be that weird guy down the street that doesn’t go out during the day.  Either way, I don’t want to broadcast my life to them in an easy to consume manner.

Number 5; If I am the product, I am going to chose which store I am in.  “If a service is free, you are the product”  Over the majority of the past decade profitability through ad-revenue has gone from supplemental income to a legitimate business model.  As a firm believer in voting with my wallet or controlling where money goes, I tend to not support companies that I just plain don’t like.  This is why I tend to not go to WalMart.  Most social media platforms are free to the user because they get their revenue from advertisements, or someone that wants the data (see reason #4).  So, since I am going to be the product, I am going to chose where I am featured.

Personally I think that social media is responsible for a substantial amount of mental health issues in the world.  The culture is that people must read all their notifications to make sure they are up to date with all their friends and make sure they know everything that’s going on with their Aunt Tina in Kentucky even though all she posts is pictures of her McDonald’s Lunch daily.

Of course, I should address the elephant in the room here; I’m posting on a blog, which is in essence a form of social media.  Yep.  There’s a counter-point to everything I listed above.  Pretty much it all boils down to; While it may look like there is a target to my writing, I am doing this more for myself than anything else.