What is interesting about AI?

 

AI as a topic is everywhere, which makes me want to retreat from the conversation. At the same time, I feel that this is a titanic shift in technology. It will speed up development of autonomous universes that will exchange billions of tokens and burn through billions of dollars to iterate their way into chaos. There will also be really cool applications for small models, especially specialized models in the vein of speech to text. There will also be the terrible uses that will choke up the internet with trash, pushing people further into walled gardens. 

What is interesting about it? 

Architecture - the thing itself

Usage - how to use, what to use it for

Infrastructure/Pipeline - what runs the thing, and how do I get to the thing?

Psychology - What does it mean to people? How does usage affect us?

Taxonomy - Naming the components - to have a shared language

Ethical - Moral considerations, abuse potential, What does moral usage look like?

Can we take it back?

Why are we doing this? Do we fucking care? I keep telling myself that I'm only intrinsically motivated. What approval do I need? None, right?

Fuck you and fuck me. I feel some artificial desire to do more than watch the wind dance. I need to eat, fuck, and sleep in peace.
Shit.
I've probably dated myself with my expletives. I'm too old for this, but not old enough to quit. I guess I'm fucked. 

I look around, waiting for someone to step up. I don't want to be the asshole. It's fucking dust and tumbleweeds. Those who can help are corrupted, and everyone else has the fucking emerald glasses obscuring the decay and crust.

I'm a fucking hero, right? That's a good fucking lie. It feels like my moral compass is pointing north, but who fucking knows.

I like the idea of objective truth. 

It's trivial to edit the past. I can be wherever I wanted to be. 1984 doesn't have shit on today. There's not state sponsored bullshit, there's just you, me, profit, and sin. People were cute when they talked about late stage capitalism. You don't buy indulgences, you just edit them in.

Holding up a sign looks great on tickgram, but it is just showing that a State can pretend tolerance. Take the pat on the head of free speech while the machine marches on.
Maybe I'm a little bit bitter. Maybe a lot bitter. 

I guess it's time to take it back.

John Henry

I was looking through my obsidian notes and ran across the blurb below. I vaguely remember writing that out. I was very likely baked and/or tired. On the re-read, John Henry's quote after being captured really jumped out:

"Big secrets hurt everyone, little secrets save us."

I really feel this is true. Information wants to be free (as in freedom). 

I am not going to argue against operational security, or even IP in a lot of situations. It's a fucking nuanced issue.

We should only keep secrets as long as they are necessary. Try not to do or endorse things that are directly exploitative or destructive in nature, and accept that people make mistakes, or do not understand the consequences of their decisions or actions. Be open and empathetic.

Why do we need secrets?

We need secrets because people are assholes. We need secrets because people are afraid someone else, somewhere, is going to do something that will take away something we hold dear, like human rights. In the current state of software, or anything digital (from the web to your centrifuge or furnace) relies on secrets to maintain identity. We need secrets because individuals or groups will persecute those who think differently than they do.

What really sucks, is that the same folks who are working to undermine the little secrets are usually sitting on big secrets.

Here's your prompt:

John Henry as a cyberpunk story. Him against the AI's. his rule based systems and generated black box weapons against a borg-like attrition attack, like Russia in Ukraine. A US corporation was enlisted to track him down however possible, and they were itching to try their new adaptive penetration learning system (APLS (everyone calls it Alps, like the mountains, because that would have been a better acronym)).
They came at John Henry with everything they had. Alps learning to penetrate all systems until they had him cornered. When they brought him out he said. They can get at anything you store. "Big secrets hurt everyone, little secrets save us." He had referred to things like pass codes and primary keys as small secrets. It's up to interpretation what qualifies as a big secret. He was a big advocate of printed media and analog techniques. Use the tools of the digital age to build tools that help with our digital life, but also bleed into the analog world. He would advocate for public discussions about policy

It's OK

Suicide is taboo.

I feel the need to put in a disclaimer right here: I am not in immediate danger of committing suicide, and I in no way endorse anyone taking their own life.

Don't worry about me.

<start>
Suicide is freedom when there are no other avenues. It is illegal to commit suicide for the same reason that women are not allowed abortions. It is a move for those in power to make sure that they can have control.

Suicide is a privilege unique to humans, as far as I know. It is a privilege that is a byproduct of freedom. If you can do anything you want, then think hard about what it is you want. With privilege comes responsibility.

Choosing not to die is a right, but a right that can be overpowered by biology or action. Choosing not to die is hard sometimes. All of the things around are overwhelming, and there isn't a way to stop the rising tide inside.

Treat it like an acid trip. 

1. Find a safe place (if nothing feels safe, watch out for traffic)
2. Take a deep breath
   
3. Sit down on the ground. Cross-legged if you can
4. Close your eyes, you can't trust your senses or your thoughts necessarily. 

The best thing to do is overwhelm the processing part of the brain with direct sensory input. Rub your hands together, touch your face, rub the tops of your thighs.
Think about opening your eyes. 

If you feel ready, keep your eyes closed and listen hard to your surroundings.

Get a lay of the land by building a mental picture using your memory and what you can hear. 

Think about opening your eyes. If you are not ready, continue to breath, feeling your chest expand and push the air out with your diaphragm.

Think about opening your eyes. If you are ready, open your eyes and compare what you see to your mental expectation.
Really look around, but do it without judgement.  

Things are. 

Judgement and shame can hide what is right in front of us. 

You are ready to live.
If you disagree with the statement above, then follow the steps above once again. Maybe masturbate, but don't do it fully to orgasm. Just enough to dump some endorphins into your system.

You are ready to live.
If you disagree with the statement above, that is your right. I love you. You are worthy of living. I will share my oxygen and water with you as long as it works for both of us. You are not alone.

If you are ready to live, you need to know where you are. 

Get ready to think about your demons. If that thought starts the cycle again. Go back to step 1. Sit down, close your eyes, breathe, and feel.

Our demons are self-defined, and if we can't or don't want to face them, they will drive us. 

Get ready to think about your demons.

 If you feel safe, write them down. 

Giving symbols to the feelings that encompass guilt, shame, greed, lust, addiction, anything that stops us from doing what we feel is right. Some demons are external, and doubly bind us with physical and mental chains.

Understand that your demons are part of you, but do not define you.

Accept the reality of where you are Right Now. To be able to articulate where you want you go, you need to find your baseline and understand it.

This is not a one step process. I constantly struggle to love myself, to find value in what defines me.

We'll get there.

Seasoned Obstinant Laymen In Disguise

Stoned, Seriously, Simply, Silent, Studious, Seasoned

Obstinate, Obscure, Orphaned, Obedient, Observant, Old

Leaning, Lies, Learning, Lemmings, Louts, Liars

Independent, Invoking, Instead of, Invent, Inhale, In

Developers, Disguise, Doubt, Desire, Donuts, Decline

Single Responsibility Principle

Things do one thing. The thing is up to interpretation, and sometimes it only shows up when you have multiple uses of a thing, but only a subset are shared. That subset becomes a new thing that your original thing makes use of.

Open Closed Principle

Open to Expansion, Close to Modification. Once you find the atomic nature of your thing, lock it down, but make it available to be extended and inherited. If you have to change it all the time, there's a good chance that it's a business rule or isn't following the other principles.
 

Liskov Substitution Principle (They bent This into SOLID)

It's turtles all the way down. If you have a function that takes a parameter of a specific type. Anything that inherits that type anywhere in its hierarchy should be able to satisfy the function by standing in as that original type.
 

Interface Segregation Principle

Don't be burdened by upstream garbage. Only force clients to implement shit they use. You're always welcome to define your own interfaces at the client level and map to the public ones. Also don't go crazy. I remember learning to use some ESRI products and I remembered the interface stew that greeted me. Maybe it was great design and I was naive and looking for simplicity, but at the time it seemed like they did it specifically to tie features to paid version levels.
 

Dependency Inversion Principle

Depend on a representation of a thing, not on the implementation of a thing. That thing you need is a placeholder for any type of thing that fills the same need, and maybe someone will find a much better way to thing, and then you can use that.

Six Passive Circuit Elements

 I was watching a video from 7 years ago about memory resistors (memristors), and about using them to create synapse like circuits (Alex Nugent, Knowm). That got me thinking about memristors and how they are the 4th passive circuit element. 

I found the name, Leon Chua, (googled, and google gave me me a pdf of the article: Memristor: The Fourth Fundamental Passive Circuit Element)

So, my thought was that we don't really have a final four, we have six, but in pairs: memory resistor (memristor), memory capacitor(memcapir?), and memory inducer(memducer?).  I don't know how to type the nomenclature.. I know there is MathML and other syntax markers, and if I revisit this I'll mark it all up. So resistor R would have an equivalent memory based component, Rm. 

So the six elements would be R Rm, C Cm, I Im. The R value of the resistor and memrister at initial state would have the same R, measured in ohms. The Rm would probably need to have a known Min and Max (thinking of the analogies with resistors and their color coding. The resistor has known and marked physical properties, and thinking about what extra properties would want to be known for that component, and how they would be marked, I digress).

So we have a way of denoting a complex component with as a single symbol for abstraction. The more concrete example I've been thinking as I try to understand how it would works is ionic flow. Let's say we have a pipe, 4 cells in the pipe, high sodium concentration in water on one side (ratio of ionic concentration external, number 1(Rx1)), and high chloride concentration on the other (Rx2). Each of the cells in the pipe have eight ion channels (four input, four output(which is which would depend on the direction of the current)).

Anyway, the cell would only be able to take in four ions per time it takes for the ion to clear the channel, and it would only be able to hold on to a certain number of ions. Those internal ions are the memory, or buffer in the cell. If you had all + ions in memory (in the cell), and the inputs were all + , and the concentration on the outside of my outputs was -, then I would pass all four + ions and pick up another 4, and usually not take in any - ions. It's easier to imagine the polarity reversing making a difference if we had four cells in the pipe. All four cells have + ions. If the polarity reversed, and I had all + ions, that there would be a period of time where the ions mingled, so the resistance would go up sharply for the amount of time it took for the ions to revers direction. This would illustrate the memory (the ions inside the cell), has an effect of its resistance to the flow of ions from input to output. 

There's also some curve that shows a figure eight when measuring the capacitance and resistance when switching polarity. the figure eight, that crossing point, shows that there is a period of total resistance (no flow) when changing polarity.  

I don't know how the others would work well enough because I don't fully understand them. The memcapir would behave something like an electrical synapse where the capacitance and timing would be effected by the stored memory (its internal ions). The memducer would be an ion generator and/or distributor; it would hold a concentration of a particular ion, and so its flow would be dependent on its memory.

Cell:

Starting ions (4Na+)

Ion capacity (4 ions)

Number of input chanels

Number of output channels

Code

To those who are truly neutral. Choose to fight against oppression. Choose to be a samurai, but your master is the person next to you, and you are theirs. We are all equal partners in this. If you see yourself as a person, move forward, love life, and choose to do the best that you can without exploiting others or the environment. Be a net positive. If you find out that something you are doing is harmful, stop and find another way. Love yourself and everyone around you. Even the assholes. Assholes can’t thrive if you ignore them and actively resist if they try to oppress you. Choose defiance over slavery. Fuck the master.

The Meat Grinder

Make conditions as bad as possible to ensure that every participant has to exert themselves at or near maximum effort to stay alive. Survival of the fittest. Most of the time it is a by-product of a random or semi-random set of circumstances. Sometimes, as in the case of the US Army training and other like programs, it can be a directed outcome.

I want to live in the opposite of the meat grinder. Give everyone all that they want, and provide the tools to advance. We have to want to do more than smoke pot and browse the internet, and I think most of us do. It would be tempting to have people disappear into hedonism, but that feels much more humane than oppressing the people that depend on you.

The meat maker? The meat grower? Neither sound good
It's like unschooling for everyone. 

We have a house, or housing. We have enough to eat and we are safe. We have video games for those who need outlets for behavior that is abhorrent to the mean sensitivities of the group. We have counseling available (and mandatory if needed).

We have tools available, and automation to take care of repetitive tasks. The Cohen brothers would disagree with this notion, that any form of utopia would be rejected. That we need struggle to give ourselves meaning. We have the internal struggle! Anyone who has what they need and the ability to get what they want has this struggle. We want meaning. It /is/ the question(s) that drives us, and it's an evolving conversation: what is enough? what can I create? what can I commit to, to truly throw myself into. I need the question, the problem to solve.

I also like to dig holes, and I'd be happy to help dig a ditch, or help the neighbor fix a broken piece of furniture.

It probably isn't utopia, though it isn't a place. We just build what we can and take solace that we can fall back into soft arms when we fail, so commitment isn't as scary.

The cat died, people.

 biological computing but with a digital read. We can get more variability than silicon, less transitions between states. The image I was seeing was a slice of brain with a camera pointed at it. That's more a late night graphic accompanying the joke about how silly this idea is. I like the idea of the curves being smooth. Maybe that's the simpleton's guide to a quantum computer (I'm including myself in the simpleton category, and maybe it's a club of 1). It smooths out the rough edges every time you need to stop everything and get a value. Maybe that's why the cat dies. It wrecks everything to stop and get a measurement. Although, I'm a firm believer that the cat /is/ alive or dead; we just have a shitty clock.