I am dead, I can’t believe this AI intro text I just got. If you thumb through it, there are all the usual suspects like breadth-first search and probability.

Then you open the first chapter and it goes HARD on the current state of things.

Then it’s back to mathematical notation like nothing happened.

@vicki every textbook should do this. Fundamentals of Nutrition Science: "Incidentally, landlords
contain complete protein and several essential micronutrients"

@vicki I recognize that this would be a lot of text to transcribe here, but I encourage you to think of our vision impaired users and write an image description for each of your pictures, so that they too can understand and enjoy what you're sharing, and feel included. https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/posting/#attachments

Don't worry about it this time (although you may be able to edit your toot once we install the next version of Mastodon), just please keep it in mind going forward.

Posting to your profile - Mastodon documentation

Sharing your thoughts has never been more convenient.

@skyfaller sure thing! Do you have any recommendations for how best to do it for longer snippets from books? Is a short summary sufficient?

@vicki So in theory the Mastodon web interface has an automatic OCR option, but I've never gotten it to work. If you're working from your phone, it may have an OCR option built into your OS, such as Google Lens.

But ultimately alt text / media descriptions are an art, and what you write for them will depend on what you consider important and what you wish to communicate. I probably wouldn't write the same descriptions as you.

If all the text would be necessary for understanding, include it all

@skyfaller @vicki What I want to know is why isn't AI already doing this automatically!? And ditto for adding hashtags. (Said in jest but meaning it too!)
@vicki lmaoooo i have to read that some time, that sounds amazing
@vicki @brohrer Actually the bit you imaged made me more interested in reading it! I wonder if he has other publications where he proposes solutions?

@vicki it feels like a boring old professor talking about graph theory. At some point he suddenly jumps on top of his desk with a raised fist, giving a short speech about class struggle and workers' alienation, and then he just goes back talking about first-order logic as if nothing happened.

Better not show this to anybody on the alt-right. They may be even more convinced that the academia is a trove of communists that need to be silenced :D

@vicki I didn't know Karl Marx wrote AI textbooks.
@vicki I love the random citation of (what I'm guessing is) Piketty.
@vicki In the near future, I suppose that commodity AI and robots will be much better at literally everything than any humans. So we will need some sort of generous welfare to keep us humans alive. I'm not so worried about that, more concerned that we might not have much reason to live. I guess we will still be able to watch movies, and learn stuff to amuse ourselves.

@vicki this is amazing.

more CS textbooks should be like this.

idk, sth like "By the end of this book, you should have a solid foundation for efficiently implementing network protocols. Monitoring and optimizing such systems require careful accounting of data and of the surplus value of your technical labor."

@vicki nice. now if only the author knew how to write the past tense form of “lead”! lol #petpeeve #notagrammarnazi 😅
@vicki - I've considered buying that book like 1000 times but never get around to it somehow. Would you recommend it?
@mindcrime It depends on your goals. For me, some of the sections were helpful but I definitely wouldn't qualify it as an "intro"
@vicki The number of times I’ve told people researching automation that they should read Bullshit Jobs. We’re never going to get free from work. :(
@vicki there might have been a longer discourse on ethical issues, but the editors, said or the author said to himself: "dude, this is a CS how-to book, not a public service announcement." Alas.
@vicki that is awesome (and very welcome). :)
Geldstrafe für Professor wegen Baumbesetzung in Weingarten

Das Amtsgericht Ravensburg hat einen Professor der Hochschule Ravensburg-Weingarten wegen einer Baumbesetzung im Mai vergangenen Jahres zu einer Geldstrafe von 4.000 Euro verurteilt.

swr.online
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Ertel | Informatik Aktuell

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Ertel ist Leiter des Instituts für Künstliche Intelligenz an der Hochschule Ravensburg-Weingarten. Seine Spezialgebiete sind maschinelles Lernen und lernfähige Roboter.

Informatik Aktuell
@vicki Good on the author. Exactly what the world needs more of :)
@vicki That is quite a sneaky way to introduce some politics into your academic audience 🤪

@catboyslim
existence. Thus it is obvious that we should abandon this path of growth for the nays
of a livable future. But how?

Let’s think back to the road to paradise that AI is supposedly Preparing for ys
Apparently, as we practice it, it does not lead to paradise. Understanding this
problem and finding the right path is one of the central tasks of today. Because of
inherent complexities, this problem can not be fully dealt with in an introductory AJ
textbook. However, I would like to provide the reader with a little food for thought.

Although productivity is growing steadily in almost all areas of the economy,
workers are required to work as hard as ever. They do not benefit from the increase
in productivity. So, we must ask, where do the profits go? Evidently not to the
people to whom they are owed, 1.e. the workers. Instead, part of the profits is spent
on investment and thus on further growth and the rest is taken by the capital
owners, while employees work the same hours for declining real wages [Pik14].
This leads to ever-increasing capital concentration among a few rich individuals and
private banks, while on the other hand increasing poverty around the world is
creating political tensions that result in war, expulsion and flight.

What is missing is a fair and just distribution of profits. How can this be
achieved? Politicians and economists are continually trying to optimize our eco-
nomic system, but politics has not offered a sustainable solution, and too few
economists are investigating this highly exciting economic question. Obviously the
attempt to optimize the parameters of our current capitalist economic system has not

@OCRbot @catboyslim
@vicki this is a convenient way to get text from an image. Ive used it a fair bit over the years.
@dazinism
Couldn't find any media.
Contact the admin ([email protected]) for assistance.
For further information, check https://github.com/Lynnesbian/OCRbot/blob/master/README.md#Errors
OCRbot/README.md at master · Lynnesbian/OCRbot

An OCR (Optical Character Recognition) bot for Mastodon (and compatible) instances - Lynnesbian/OCRbot

GitHub
@vicki you got me interested, I'll check this book out!
@vicki Its pretty cool a book on AI would be so based.
@vicki @SharonK as someone once said, coders are the new miners
@vicki so no use of AI for, say, guillotine development, in the math?
@vicki So obvious it needs neither preamble nor proof.
@vicki Pictures of a Book, first picture, book cover: Introdution to Artificial Intellingence. second picture, a book page : Thus it is obvious that we should abandon this path of growth fe of a livable future. But how?
Let’s think back to the road to paradise that Al is supposedly preparing for us.
Apparently as we practice it, it does not lead to paradise. Understanding this problem and finding the right path is one of the central tasks of today. Because of problem and finding the right (...)
@vicki path is one of the central inherent complexities, this problem can not be fully dealt with in an introductory AT textbook. However, I would like to provide the reader with a little food for thought
Although productivity is growing steadily in almost all areas of the economy workers are required to work as hard as ever. They do not benefit from the increase in productivity. So, we must ask, where do the profits go? Evidently not to the people to whom they are owed, i.e. the workers. (...)
@vicki Instead, part of the profits is spent on investment and thus on further growth and the rest is taken by the capital owners, while employees work the same hours for declining real wages [Pik14). This leads to ever-increasing capital concentration among a few rich individuals and private banks, while on the other hand increasing poverty around the world is creating political tensions that result in war, expulsion and flight.
What is missing is a fair and just distribution of profits. (...)
@vicki How can this be achieved? Politicians and economists are continually trying to optimize our economic system, but politics has not offered a sustainable solution, and too few economists are investigating this highly exciting economic question. Obviously the attempt to optimize the parameters of our current capitalist economic system has not lead to a more equitable distribution of wealt
@vicki got the ebook just now. the change of contents is not so rapid, there is one chapter about the societal implications, and then he goes on with other topics. but the way you present it is a lot more entertaining
@vicki haha, love it. The author just couldn't help himself, he just HAD to throw in a not-so-subtle political rant. Makes for a nice change of pace, no?
@vicki ouyhg so based!!! seems everyone smart enough to write a helpful book on subject matter like this is almost always cool
@vicki Is... is that the Konami code?
@vicki This looks like a Max Headroom intrusion aaaand let's quickly get back to our usual programming.
@vicki I agree with the author’s statement. It may be out of place for a book like this but shows the author is cognizant of the current situation and what the real trajectory is.
@vicki Reading it now. Thanks for sharing this title.
@vicki Haha, it's a good introduction to defining the problem! Smart tools being used for less than thought out and uncompassionate purposes is something every AI researcher should keep in mind. A lot of good can be done, but only if we understand more than just the technological capabilities of the field.

@vicki this reminds me of a recent online course I took on deep learning. One lesson, about graphical models and time series, ended with an 8 minute section about the existential threats AI poses to social welfare ... then, after watching that, we had an exercise to build a text generator with a recurrent neural net.

I had the distinct feeling I was alone in my cognitive dissonance

@vicki Reminds me of the examples in the classic text "Oracle PL/SQL Programming: Guide to Oracle 8i Features" https://www.stevenfeuerstein.com/feuerthoughts/2020/8/25/i-dont-like-your-examples
I Don't Like Your Examples! — Steven Feuerstein

I published this a long time ago, but thought it might be of interest in my latest blog iteration. 10/11/2000  I have been writing books about the Oracle PL/SQL programming language for the last five years. In 1999, O'Reilly published my fourth book,  Oracle PL/SQL Programming

Steven Feuerstein
@vicki it gets even better:
@[email protected] Once the AI figures out the current state of things (my guess: it reads Martin Wolf, Henry George etc., on taxing the value of land and agrees https://www.ft.com/content/fadfbd9e-29ca-4d53-b69a-2497cc3ed95d), the AI will be threatened with dismantling.
The case for a land value tax is overwhelming

Natural resources are quite different from the capital stock created out of human effort

@vicki
It's a mathematical subject, so that's quite legitimate
@vicki that's leaning pretty heavily on symbolic A.I. for a 2017 textbook; I'd like to see more on (i) SAT/SMT solvers and (ii) industrial uses of production rules
@vicki ☝️ We need more citations to Piketty in Math/Stats/CS textbooks!
@tiago @vicki wasn't sure, but I suspected that Pik14 was a reference to Piketti.