Tag: Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence

WHAT IS THE PAUL ALLEN INSTITUTE FOR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Yogi Nelson

Namaste Yogis. Welcome to the Blockchain & AI Forum, where your technology questions are answered, mostly correct! Here no question is too mundane. As a bonus, a proverb is also included. Today’s question comes from in Mark, Naperville, USA. Mark wants to know, what is the Paul Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence?

Mark, you came to the right place. Let’s take a moment first to understand, who was Paul Allen. Mr. Allen made his fortune as a Microsoft co-founder. Perhaps his name sounds familiar from the Microsoft connection? Allen passed away in 2018 at age 65. Too young! Lol! Before Allen’s passing, he established three research institutions, including the AI research.

Paul Allen AI Institute, commonly known as AI2, was established in 2014. AI2 is in Seattle and Tel Aviv, Israel. The mission of AI2 is “…to contribute to humanity through high impact AI research and engineering.” Let’s dive into what AI2 produces–it generates plenty—beginning with Aristo.

Aristo. Aristo was AI2’s first project. The concept powering Aristo was to create a “Digital Aristotle” capable of answering users’ questions, and ultimately holding a discussion. Aristo was designed to understand elementary science by reading relevant text. In 2019 Aristo scored over 90% on a collection of multiple-choice, eight grade science exams. Better than me, lol! AI2 readily admits Aristo remains incapable of understanding science in a meaning way. Holy ancient Greek, Batman!

Semantic Scholars. Semantic Scholar accelerates scientific breakthroughs by helping scholars locate and understand key research results, make important connections, and overcome information overload. AI2 says Semantic Scholar is an AI-based search engine for scientific literature, including more than 200 million papers covering all scientific disciplines. It draws 10M users monthly. Semantic Scholar can decode PDF files to extract and understand the full-text content beyond titles, authors, and references to include figures and concepts. Semantic Scholar played a leading role in creating the Covid-19 open research dataset.

AllenNLP. AllenNLP executes groundbreaking research in natural language processing, including improving systems’ performance, accountability, and advancing scientific methodologies for evaluating and understanding systems.

PRIOR. PRIOR is the computer vision research team. The goal is advanced computer vision leading to AI systems that can perceive the world, reason about it, and act within it. PRIOR has three research priorities: 1) embodied AI systems capable of interacting with objects, humans, and other agents in the real world; 2) vision and language multi-modal systems that can perform tasks that require an understanding of visual and language data; and 3) computer vision for the common good, e.g., a platform that can detect illegal fishing vessels via satellite imagery.

Green AI. Green AI is dedicated to reducing the cost of training and using AI systems—less expensive AI systems are accessible to more practitioners and contribute less to climate change.

Mosaic. Mosaic was formed in 2018 with the goal of building AI with common sense. Common sense is the ability to acquire and use every day experiential knowledge. Obviously, Ais lack commonsense. Good luck with this one. Lol.

AI Environment. Applied AI for climate modeling and wildlife protection.
• Earth Ranger: Software that aids ecologists and wildlife biologists make more informed wildlife conservation decisions.
• Skylight: Helps reduce illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing through technology that provides actionable intelligence for maritime enforcement.
• Climate Modeling: The goal is to improve the world’s understanding of climate change, its effects, and what can be done now.
• Wildlands: Machine learning to support wildland fire management.

We conclude with a Norwegian proverb: Behind the clouds, the sky is always blue.

Until next time,

Yogi Nelson

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ChatGPT VERSUS BARD, WHO WINS THE FIGHT?

Yogi Nelson

Namaste Yogis. Welcome to the Blockchain & AI Forum, where your technology questions are answered, mostly correct! Here no question is too mundane. As a bonus, a proverb is also included. Today’s question, comes from Ming (Netherlands) and he wants to know who wins in a fight, ChatGPT or Bard?

Ming, you are in the right place. As implied in your question, and acknowledged by both parties, ChatGPT and Bard are direct competitors. Let’s put these pugilists into the ring and give each an identical test to determine the peoples’ champ. Holy AI boxing match, Batman! We commence by identifying the warriors, starting with ChatGPT.

In the blue corner is ChatGPT, a product of OpenAI. OpenAI is a California based software company developing artificial intelligence. OpenAI describes ChatGPT as a language model designed to understand and generate human like text based on the input it receives. ChatGPT is now in version 4 and uses GPT3.5 as its underlying technology.

In the red corner is Bard, a product of Google, and Google needs no introduction. Bard is a conversational AI tool that uses Gemini as its underlying technology. Bard allows users to interact with and use chat-like dialogues to ask questions, receive information, and complete tasks.

The warriors are in the ring and ready to rumble! Let’s ask five questions across a range of topics:

  1. Can you write a 300-word essay describing the four voyages of Christopher Columbus?
  2. Please give me five Chinese recipes for tofu.
  3. Why did the USA boycott the 1980 Olympics in Moscow?
  4. Can you write a 300-word essay describing the Federal Reserve Banking system?
  5. Explain the physics in aviation that facilitates flight in 300 words.

Round 1: ChatGPT wins by technical disqualification. Although both answered the question fundamentally correct, Bard did not follow instructions. I asked for a 300-word answer. Bard used 370 and ChatGPT 292.

Round 2: ChatGPT wins by technical disqualification because Bard failed to follow instructions. I asked for five recipes; Bard provided four. However, Bard did land punches. For example, it added pictures of every final dish; ChatGPT did not. That’s a big plus. ChatGPT gave me the name of the dishes in Chinese characters; Bard did not. However, given I don’t understand Chinese written characters including them was not value added.

Round 3: Bard wins by adding additional links to the story and including an explanation of what happen after the 1980 boycott. Bard offered links to U.S. State Department documents, a photo, and noted the Soviet Union retaliated in 1984 when it and its allies boycotted the Olympic games held in the USA. Impressive!

Round 4: Bard wins. Great answers were given by both competitors, however, Bard wins the round in a close decision. Bard wins, not due to substance; it wins on style points. Essentially, Bard presented the answer in a format that was superior. Bard made ample use of bullet points and subsections with titles thus making it easier for the reader to follow-along.

After four rounds we are tied. The tension mounts! The winner of round five takes home the championship belt! Hold on to your keyboard!

Round 5: In dramatic fashion ChatGPT takes round five and the title! Although Bard’s format was easier to read, ChatGPT wins using substance. ChatGPT cited two authoritative sources of information and that made the difference.

Ming, I hope you enjoyed the battle of the bots. Today’s proverb comes from Netherlands, where they say, He’s standing there with his mouth full of teeth. (He is speechless).

Until next time,

Yogi Nelson

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WHAT DID VITALIK BUTERIN RECENTLY SAY ABOUT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Yogi Nelson

Namaste Yogis. Welcome to the Blockchain & AI Forum, where questions are answered, mostly correct! Here no question is too mundane. As a bonus, a proverb is also included. Today’s question comes from Art in San Francisco, CA. Art asks what does Vitalik Buterin think of artificial intelligence?

Art, you came to the right place. Before I explain Vitalik’s thoughts, let’s know Buterin first. Vitalik is a 29-year-old Russian Canadian computer programmer and a co-founder of Ethereum. Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain network, known for pioneering smart contracts, among other advancements in computation. From an early age Vitalik demonstrated an amazing ability to grasp mathematics and computer science. That’s not a surprise given his father was a computer scientist. Holy, like father, like son, Batman! Given his genius with computers, it makes sense you would ask what Vitalik makes of AI.

On November 23, Vitalik published his “My Techno Optimism” paper.
https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/11/27/techno_optimism.html?ref=bankless.ghost.io Vitalik’s summary perspective is below followed by highlights from across the major points of his paper.

“I believe in a future that is vastly brighter than the present thanks to radically transformative technology, and I believe in humans and humanity. I reject the mentality that the best we should try to do is to keep the world roughly the same as today but with less greed and more public healthcare. However, I think that not just magnitude but also direction matters. There are certain types of technology that much more reliably make the world better than other types of technology. There are certain types of technology that could, if developed, mitigate the negative impacts of other types of technology. The world over-indexes on some directions of tech development, and under-indexes on others. We need active human intention to choose the directions that we want, as the formula of “maximize profit” will not arrive at them automatically.”

Vitalik Buterin, My Techno-Optisium

Buterin argues there are very high costs to delaying technological progress. He cites life expectancy improvements and the internet, as evidence for not holding back technological advancements. Vitalik makes the case for using advancements in AI to solve environmental challenges, including climate change.

Vitalik believes AI is fundamentally different from previous advancements in technology and therefore requires significantly more consideration. Vitalik says AI is the creation of a new and powerful brain whereas previous inventions were contraptions. “AI is a new type of mind that is rapidly gaining in intelligence, and it stands a serious chance of overtaking humans’ mental faculties and becoming the new apex species on the planet”, says Buterin. Vitalik cites scientists that are worried AI could wipe out humanity! Holy doomsday, Batman!

Buterin, is equally concerned with “digital authoritarianism”. Vitalik points out Open AI, with a mere 500 employees, services 100,000,000 customers with immensely powerful machines! Power could be centralized by just a handful of people one day, is Vitalik’s worry.

Vitalik pens a lengthy narrative regarding the e/acc movement. According to Vitalik, e/acc is “… fundamentally about an appreciation of the truly massive benefits of technological progress, and a desire to accelerate this trend to bring those benefits sooner.” Jeff Bezos is the most prominent advocate. In a point-by-point fashion, Buterin shares what he believes are the implications of e/acc across a range of topics, including: military technology, decentralized governance, cyber security, multi-planetary living, world government, to name a few topics.

We conclude today with this proverb from the Dominican Republic: With patience and calm, a donkey can climb a palm tree. Well said my Caribbean brethren!

Until next time,

Yogi Nelson

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STRONG ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, WEAK ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, WHATS THE DIFFERENCE?

Yogi Nelson

Namaste Yogis.   Welcome to the Blockchain & AI Forum, where your blockchain and artificial intelligence technology questions are answered, mostly correct!   Here no question is too mundane.  As a bonus, a proverb is also included.  Today’s question, was sent by Sahir, from the Caribbean, and he wants to know what’s the difference between weak and strong artificial intelligence?

Sahir, you came to the right place.  At your age that’s a brilliant question!  Let’s start by explaining weak artificial intelligence (Weak AI).   Weak AI is also known as narrow AI.  Weak AI refers to AI systems that are designed and trained for a specific task or narrow sets of tasks. Weak AI systems excel in performing predefined tasks but are not remotely capable of true understanding or consciousness.  Weak AI is highly specialized and does not possess “human-like” cognitive abilities or general problem-solving capabilities beyond its narrow vision.  Think of Weak AI as a horse with blinders capable of only seeing what is directly nearby and in front and nothing else.  I’ll offer you examples. Weak AI includes virtual assistants, e.g., Siri or Alexa, recommendation algorithms used by streaming services such as Spotify or YouTube, and chatbots designed for specific customer service tasks, e.g., your financial institution customer help line.  Chatbots are mostly annoying and useless, do you agree? Time for Strong AI.

Strong AI, sometimes called Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), refers to AI systems with “human-level” intelligence and understanding.  Which human, I don’t know and afraid to ask!  Lol.  Strong AI systems can perform several intellectual tasks.  Strong AI systems can adapt to different domains and possess a “primitive” form of “consciousness or self-awareness” based on computations. Strong AI is a long-term goal of AI research and would require the development of AI systems that can reason, learn, understand, and adapt across a wide range of tasks and contexts.  Strong AI is currently a theoretical concept, and no AI system comes close to general intelligence.  Meaning you can relax–for now!  Lol. The best example of Strong AI, or perhaps somewhat Strong AI, is ChatGPT4 by Open AI. 

Let’s discuss a central feature of both Weak and Strong AI–prompts.  What is a prompt?  The term prompt is derived from Latin “promptus”, meaning ready for use.  In AI lexicon, a prompt is an instruction to the AI system.  A prompt could be simple, ‘Siri play disco music’, for instance, or complex, such as asking ChatGPT4 to explain Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Holy prompt, Batman!  Sahir, can you identify which is the Weak AI and the Strong AI in these examples? 

Prompts are critical for two reasons.  First, prompts are how we communicate with AI systems.  AI systems can’t read our minds!  Only through, and thanks to, prompts, can humans interact with Weak and/or Strong AI systems.  In other words, prompts are portals into AI systems.  Second, the quality of AI interactions depends on precise prompts.  Unlike many human interactions, AI systems cannot “know what you mean”.  Therefore, AI systems depend on precise prompts.  My own experience with ChatGPT4 cements this understanding of AI systems.  Try it and give me your conclusion.

We stop here but not before acknowledging two sources for today’s post:  Microsoft’s Introduction to AI course and AI: The Future is Now by Nicholas Marty.  Today’s proverb is from Haiti, where they wisely say, “A leaking roof fools the sun but cannot fool the rain. 

Until Next Time,

Yogi Nelson

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WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF BLOCKCHAIN?

Yogi Nelson

Namaste Yogis. Welcome to the Blockchain & AI Forum, where your questions are answered, mostly correct! Here no question is too mundane. As a bonus, a proverb is also included. Today’s question comes from Ashley in Texas, who wants to know, what is the future of blockchain?

Ashley, you came to the right place. Blockchain technology has enormous potential; however, it must conquer immediate challenges. Let’s begin with five challenges facing blockchain technology today: 1) scalability; 2) initial set-up costs; 3) smooth transition; 4) consensus mechanisms; and 5) privacy and security. I’ll focus on a few solutions, commencing with “sharding”

Sharding is a process for handling large data sets. Sharding accelerates processing by dividing the computational workload and storage space issues. It ensures no single mode (computer) is responsible for processing the network’s transactional load. Sharding increases security through transparent processing on a decentralized network. Sharding is not alone; it has a friend known as sidechains; not to be confused with 2Chainz the rapper! Lol.

Sidechains are separate blockchains attached to the mainchain. Often, sidechains are deployed to test new software before joining the mainchain. Sidechains offer more security when moving digital assets from one blockchain to another and reduce the mainchain’s workload; hence, making the blockchain faster and more reliable. What else is under construction? Answer—state channels.

Despite their Orwellian name, state channels are not spooky. State channels basically “lock” the blockchain while participants agree amongst themselves off-chain. Once participants reach consensus the transaction is uploaded onto the mainchain for processing. Let’s keep rolling with “Roll-Ups”.

Rollups are scaling solutions. Roll-ups move computation off-chain while keeping transaction data on-chain. Keeping the data on-chain allows anyone to locally process all computation in the roll-up and detect fraud. There are two types of roll-ups: Optimistic and ZK. Optimistic roll-ups assume the data/transactions are correct. However, to ensure accuracy, transactions are not final for one week. During the data verification week anyone may submit fraud proof. If no honest individual spots an error, transactions are final. If errors are spotted the transactions can be reversed. What about ZK-Rollups? ZK-Rollups stands for zero knowledge. No, it does not mean the protocol is a know nothing, lol! It means every rollup batch contains a cryptographic hash, thus making transaction more secure. In other words, possession of the private key opens the file and nothing else is required. However, with the increase in security also comes computationally intensive processes. Time, money, and energy consumption.

Charles Hoskinson, Cardano founder, is fond of saying blockchains need their “wi-fi” moment. Said differently, blockchains must achieve interoperability. Imagine having to switch providers every moment to access wi-fi. What a mess! Blockchain interoperability equals users having a seamless integration of capabilities, communication with and between intermediaries, and greater decentralization. Get it done!

Let’s wrap it up with Ricardian contracts. A Ricardian contract is a mechanism to record a document as law and link it to other sectors, i.e., accounting. A Ricardian contract is responsible for executing contracts between two parties and recording the details in forms that are readable by humans and machines. Moreover, the dual abilities of Ricardian contracts equal superior user experiences when compared to smart contracts. Holy dual use!

Today’s “proverb” is curtesy of Yogi Berra to old time baseball star who once said, “it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future”! lol. Nevertheless, I predict blockchain will evolve and eventually become mainstream technology with widespread applications. Thanks to the Emurgo Academy for providing the source material of today’s post. The art work is by Gerardo Cloquell and on display in Dorado, PR.

Until next time,

Yogi Nelson