Saturday, May 28, 2011

AI

I consider myself to be privileged in some ways as I have been around at a time which has seen computers become mainstream and watched technology change the home and the world from the days where I played tennis on my ZX81 all the way to what we see today.

Now I am no guru at all.  I did study AI at university back in 1994.  At the time the technology did not match the dreams.  But times have moved on.  If you look back what you can see is a few trends.  All of the trends have one meta trend in common.  Abstraction.

Hardware performance grew and grew until you did not have to programme in machine code. The hardware coped with more and more of the functions you needed (from basic adders to the graphics cards which now do most of the complex work for you).

OS went the same way.  The OS was fairly basic at first and over time (and enabled by improvements at the hardware level) the OS has abstracted away from hardware control to something like Apple's tiger where the experience of the user is one that requires almost no technical knowledge at all.   Same for the UI.  You no longer operate a computer, you carry out tasks.  I am not sure if I could pick a time when this occurred but it was relatively recently.  It is the reason why Microsoft will ultimately go down if they do not catch up with this trend.

The internet went the same way.  From hard coded HTML all the way up to modern content management and various SAAS offerings like Facebook, Google etc etc.

So the trend will continue but there is only so much more that can be done.  Nobody operates a computer any more.

What is needed to progress now is real intelligence.  We now have platforms that basically allow the human to carryout the tasks they need to do but the common thing is that we are still alone.  The computer adds little to help us.  What is needed in the next leap forward is genuine intelligence.  Proactive help (not a little paperclip with a search tool linking to a forum).  This is hard.  The functionality in most apps is now well beyond the ability of the user.  The future of computers is not for AI to carry out the simple tasks but to get the computer to intelligently carry out the enhancements that you want.

What do I mean?  Well, take a simple office based process.  I want to create a doc and send it out.  Today, even if I try and use a template, I will be wrestling with the package and then have to try and distribute to a mail merge list via email.  Its hard.  But I know what the outcome I want is.  So intelligent systems will need to understand the outcome and carryout/support your attempts to achieve that outcome.    

The trouble with AI at the moment is that it is too focused on human replication.  Rather than trying to replicate human ability more focus should be put on making the computer systems intelligent.

20ms

I like the Visa ad played on Moneybox on radio 4.  Visa boasted that they process transactions in 20ms which is 7 times faster than their competition.  Well I'm convinced.  Who would want to have to wait for 0.14 seconds for a transaction to go through when they could wait 20ms with Visa.  If they could now tackle the queues for the checkouts where i have to wait on average 10 mins I would be very grateful.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Today in the news

It is not often that I bother to pick up a newspaper these days.   Maybe because I am becoming more and more allergic to the rubbish.  I am struggling to understand whether my disdain is due to either the incredible stupidity of the people in the news or the incredibly stupid coverage of a sensible story.  Either way the outcome is the same.

I did pick up Evening Standard today for some reason.  Old habit I think rather than desire to read it.  I skimmed through (only 4 stops on the tube) and managed to remind myself why I don't bother any more

News of a bomb threat in London seemed to bring out the worst in reporting today.  "The threat was for a bomb to explode in London today, but the exact time or place was not specified".  What a great line to put into a commuting paper.  Londoners have lived through so many bomb threats and real bombs that I doubt many really give a hoot any more.  As I read this I headed down into London Bridge tube without even a second thought.

My favorite story goes to page 2 and the TfL story.  "TfL pays £2 to Tube customers hit by disruption".  One assumed they did not mean in total, but each.  This was duly cleared up though in the article.
1700 passengers had to be led along darkened tunnels (their words) from stranded Jubilee line trains on April 19th.  I wondered whether they darkened the tunnels on purpose.    The complaint seems to be that most people only got £2 compensation.  Boo hoo.  Get over it or go live in the country.  Or Farnborough or in fact most other places in the country where you do not have the convenience of being able to travel between 2 streets which are virtually next to each other by tube.
The prize in this story goes to 'Susie Stonham, 35 who works in a photography studio'.   She is quoted as saying  "I had to spend more than £20 getting a taxi.  I'm glad that TfL acknowledged what happened by giving me compensation but it's not enough.  What I went through was my worst nightmare"

Really Susie love?  Get a life hon.  If your worst nightmare is getting stuck for a few hours on a broken down tube and being led to safety along a tunnel followed by a £20 taxi fare is your worst nightmare then you need to get out a bit more.  What about gang rape followed by torture and decapitation?  What about flesh eating disease?  Your whole family dying of dirty bomb radiation induced cancer?

Next on the list of 'why give these people air time' is Chris Huhne.  He and his family are going through a particularly difficult time due to divorce and he is now under investigation for asking his wife to put points from a speeding offence on her license.  Something is not quite right here.  Let me explain.

"Mr Huhne, 56, strongly denies that his now estranged wife Vicky Pryce, who he left for a bisexual aide, was wrongly named as the driver for a speeding offence so that he did not lose his license."

Apart from the oooo errr misses of what a bisexual aid is it seems a little odd that such a claim has been made.  It was also not clear who had made the claim against him.  If the accusation is true then how could that have occurred without her knowledge?  When you get a speeding offence they ask you to send in your license to be marked up with the points?  Did he send her license off without her knowing and open the mail on the way back?  How would she not notice?

This is a high risk story if it was leaked by her.  She has a high profile career in government and whatever is proved about what happened (nobody is denying the offence so the points went somewhere) there is going to be mud sticking to both parties.

Finally, the story about the footballers lover who is complaining in the press how unfair it is that she is named as the lover of a footballer who has the money and has put in place a super injunction.    She says "I know what I did was wrong but he's the one with the wife and children - he's the cheater".  A fact she was not aware of when she played her part in this episode?  It was all ok apparently when she thought he would leave the wife and kids to be with her.  So many levels of wrong I just can't be bothered to write about them

So I will refrain from picking up the ES again for a while.  Its a bit like drinking too much.  You say never again but it only lasts as long as the memory of the last hangover.  Picking up the ES turned out to be my worst nightmare.  Eh Susie dear!

Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Bet

Bored waiting for my last appointment I downloaded a new iPhone app.  Roulette.  Turns out to be quite a boring game when played without anything real at stake.  Not a surprise revelation.  But the bit that got me thinking was around my selection.  What drove me to pick the numbers I selected each time.

The first point that struck me was why I ever put more than one chip down.  I know there are well documented strategies for the game to maximise the chances and lowering wasted chips.  But I know about none of these strategies.

What appears to be happening is a complexity issue about odds and their interaction.  My betting is therefore linked to my ability to understand odds and nothing to do with the odds themselves.  I put down my first chip on a junction of 4 numbers.  I went to put down a second chip and suddenly it occurred to me, what does it mean to put down a second chip?

I put the first chip down largely at random.  Its a game of chance with one chip going down.  Let's pretend the odds of winning vs the reward are proportional.  In such a case there is no difference as to where you put your first chip.  It is when I put the second chip down that it becomes interesting.  Why would I place a second chip at all?  Given in a single chip bet I can get odds from anywhere from 50/50 (red/black, even/odd) all the way to the 1 in 36 (is this right) for a single number selection it appears I have a wide range of options.  In fact I can get odds of 1:1 by putting a chip on red and black but due to the green 0 I would eventually lose.  But let's ignore the 0 and green for now.

So the second chip down says that I do not actually believe the first one will win.  Its a strange thought.  I put down a chip anywhere and then a second one because there is a risk the first one will not come home.  All I am doing is altering the odds and returns.  But in fact if I wanted to alter my odds I could do so by changing the position of 1 chip (2 chips on single numbers or 1 chip on the border of 2 numbers would be the same thing).  If I wanted to get higher rewards from 2 chips then I could just put 2 chips on the same 2 number border.  I can see I may be confusing people by now.

What I am saying is that there is a wide range of odds available to a single ship bet that are not improved by a 2 chip bet.  Yet I would be staggered if I EVER saw (I have been to casinos) someone just put down one chip or 2 chips (or more) on the same place each spin.  We seem to be programmed to feel that putting chips down on multiple numbers is somehow increasing our chances.  All it does in increase the complexity of the calculations.    And I think this is the key.  I understand the odds of winning with one chip.  The odds of winning with 2 or 3 or 4 chips in different places is incalculable in my head. Psychologically this is interesting.  It says to me that in the presence of uncertainty I become and optimist.  In the absence of knowledge my brain tells me that my odds, in the case of uncertainty of reality, are actually greater than they are.

This has been stated before as to why people bet on the lottery (odds are so incomprehensible that people bet anyway) but I did not realise it until I thought thought through the roulette experience that it is because we are naturally optimistic.

What would drive such behaviours?  I suspect I will need to read up on various academic specialisms to get the right answer but I think there are probably some easy answers.

The first would be that as a species we live in constant incalculable situations.  If we were pessimistic in the presence of incalculable odds or uncertainty we would never get out of bed in the morning.  We could never function effectively.  As animals we would not have the mental rational capabilities to deal with abstracts like odds and even though we do now, we struggle.

We seem to deal with uncertainty optimistically in all aspects in our lives.  Only when we start to understand risk do we become pessimistic.    So when we play roulette, we place multiple bets because we FEEL better, we feel more lucky and optimistic because what we are doing is now incalculable and uncertain vs placing one chip bets only.

Apple rocks

The Imac finally died a week ago.  All backed up on the time machine so no real issue.  But it would not boot.  I tried everything but nothing would get me past the main startup screen before it shutdown on its own.  I tried every startup keyboard combination known on the web but nothing.

So I looked around.  A few Mac repairers with bad reviews so it was off to the Apple store in regent st.  They allow you to book a session at the genius bar.  I have to say I was a little nervous as there was no mention of cost.  Turns out it is free.  Rather than charging you for the investigation they sit with you for free and attempt to get your problem resolved.   Turns out the hard drive is dead.  They will be replacing it (out of warranty so at cost) but it seemed like a good deal.

The guy helping (name unpronounceable) was excellent.  No sales pitch to buy a new MAC (a problem with some of the Mac repair companies).  He actually stated what I already was thinking.  If all you do on your MAC is browse the web, watch videos, email etc then the machine you have will do fine and there is no point spending good money on a new one which won't do anything your existing one already does well.  Good advice.

I expect the MAC back in 5-10 days with a new hard drive in and then an evening of restoring the data from time machine.  Money well spent I think.