7:00 – 5:00 ASRC GOES

• Had a really good discussion in seminar about weight randomness and hyperparameter tuning
• Got  Will to show me the issue he’s having with the data. The first element of an item is being REPLACED INTO twice, and we’re not seeing the last one
• Chat with Aaron about the AI/ML weapons paper.
  • He gave me The ethics of algorithms: Mapping the debate to read
    • In information societies, operations, decisions and choices previously left to humans are increasingly delegated to algorithms, which may advise, if not decide, about how data should be interpreted and what actions should be taken as a result. More and more often, algorithms mediate social processes, business transactions, governmental decisions, and how we perceive, understand, and interact among ourselves and with the environment. Gaps between the design and operation of algorithms and our understanding of their ethical implications can have severe consequences affecting individuals as well as groups and whole societies. This paper makes three contributions to clarify the ethical importance of algorithmic mediation. It provides a prescriptive map to organise the debate. It reviews the current discussion of ethical aspects of algorithms. And it assesses the available literature in order to identify areas requiring further work to develop the ethics of algorithms.
  • An issue that we’re working through is when an inert object like a hammer becomes something that has a level of (for lack of a better term) agency imbued by the creator, which creates a mismatch in the user’s head as to what should happen. The more intelligent the system, the greater the opportunity for mismatch. My thinking was that Dourish, in  Where the Action Is had some insight (pg 109):
    • This aspect of Heidegger’s phenomenology is already known in HCI. It was one of the elements on which Winograd and Flores (1986) based their analysis of computational theories of cognition. In particular, they were concerned with Heidegger’s distinction between “ready-to-hand” (zuhanden) and “present-at-hand” (vorhanden). These are ways, Heidegger explains, that we encounter the world and act through it. As an example, consider the mouse connected to my computer. Much of the time, I act through the mouse; the mouse is an extension of my hand as I select objects, operate menus, and so forth. The mouse is, in Heidegger’s terms, ready-to-hand. Sometimes, however, such as when I reach the edge of the mousepad and cannot move the mouse further, my orientation toward the mouse changes. Now, I become conscious of the mouse mediating my action, precisely because of the fact that it has been interrupted. The mouse becomes the object of my attention as I pick it up and move it back to the center of the mousepad. When I act on the mouse in this way, being mindful of it as an object of my activity, the mouse is present-at-hand.
• Dissertation – working on Research Design. Turns out that I had done the pix but only had placeholder text.
• Left the evolver cooking last night. Hopefully results today, then break up the class and build the lazy version. Arrgh! Misspelled variable. Trying a short run to verify.
• That seems to work nicely:

• The mean improves from 57% to 68%, so that’s really nice. But notice also that the range from min to max on line 5 is between 100% and 20%. Wow.
• Here’s 50 generations. I need to record steps and best models. That’s next:

• Waikato meeting tonight. Chris is pretty much done. Suggested using word clouds to show group discussion markers