<div dir="auto">Dear all<div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I have always been an AI sceptic. However, recently I found myself involved in a medical diagnostic project using convolutional neural networks to automatically diagnose diabetic retinopathy. (In fact we are getting the machine to rank images in severity, rather than simply classify them)</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Convolutional neural networks represent a particular strategy to process image data in a way which is fractal oriented, using convolution processes derived from DSP. If you want to see it in action, look here: <a href="https://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/convnetjs/demo/mnist.html">https://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/convnetjs/demo/mnist.html</a></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">It's been remarkably successful at predicting the likely categories of data it hasn't seen before (a key feature of machine learning), after being programmed with redundancy of images (All this stuff works with redundancy). The Visual Geometry Group in Oxford created a particular model architecture called VGG16 which has been trained with thousands of images from the internet. When you play with it, it's a bit spooky - not just for what it gets rights, but how it gets things wrong in a way where we can say "I can see how it thinks that"</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">The tricky point is that nobody knows why it works. There are various theories. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">A more profound question is that if we think machine learning might help us in our pursuit of truth, with what theory do we ground that claim? What insight into the operation of machine learning might ground an insight into information and disinformation? </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Best wishes</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Mark</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, 10 Jan 2020, 07:49 Joseph Brenner, <<a href="mailto:joe.brenner@bluewin.ch">joe.brenner@bluewin.ch</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<u></u>
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<div lang="FR" link="blue" vlink="blue">
<div class="m_-5842176190349699515Section1">
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" color="navy" face="Lucida Sans Unicode"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Lucida Sans Unicode";color:navy">Dear
Friends and Colleagues,<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" color="navy" face="Lucida Sans Unicode"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Lucida Sans Unicode";color:navy"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" color="navy" face="Lucida Sans Unicode"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Lucida Sans Unicode";color:navy">I believe I am allowed to make comments ‘on my own’,
not as coordinator. “There will be recursion”.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" color="navy" face="Lucida Sans Unicode"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Lucida Sans Unicode";color:navy"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u><u></u><font size="2" color="navy" face="Lucida Sans Unicode"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Lucida Sans Unicode";color:navy">Barstow</span></font><u></u><u></u><font size="2" color="navy" face="Lucida Sans Unicode"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Lucida Sans Unicode";color:navy"> would seem to need all
the benefit of the presumption of innocence of any intention of disinformation.
Might FIS have a role to play in bringing our collective view in this matter to
<u></u><u></u>Barstow<u></u><u></u>’s
attention? In principle, if he is a scientist, he should be open to a critique.
In this connection I note the comments of both Terry and Mark, the latter
referring to my definition of an institution, the former to IS4SI.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" color="navy" face="Lucida Sans Unicode"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Lucida Sans Unicode";color:navy"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" color="navy" face="Lucida Sans Unicode"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Lucida Sans Unicode";color:navy">I hope that Terry is right that the AI tools of disinformation may
be used to combat it, but this will not be sufficient. For me, the source and
form of an ‘informational immune system’ may be such that it cannot
be ‘automated’. <i><span style="font-style:italic">In encryptiam
spes? </span></i> The problem is in ourselves, and secondarily in our current
economic system, and this is where the intellectual effort is also needed. The
corollary is that an ‘institutional response’, if we were to make
one, should not be cast in terms of truth, but of science and meaning. “Battling
over relativism and meaning” is an inevitable part of a responsible human
condition, but I still would rather do so from inside FIS, IS4SI, ICPI (<u></u><u></u>International<u></u> <u></u>Center<u></u><u></u> for the Philosophy of
Information) and IGSIS (Institute for a Global Sustainable Information Society)
than from inside . . . <i><span style="font-style:italic"> </span></i> <u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" color="navy" face="Lucida Sans Unicode"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Lucida Sans Unicode";color:navy"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" color="navy" face="Lucida Sans Unicode"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Lucida Sans Unicode";color:navy">Thank you and best wishes,<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" color="navy" face="Lucida Sans Unicode"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Lucida Sans Unicode";color:navy"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" color="navy" face="Lucida Sans Unicode"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Lucida Sans Unicode";color:navy">Joseph <u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" color="navy" face="Lucida Sans Unicode"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Lucida Sans Unicode";color:navy"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" color="navy" face="Lucida Sans Unicode"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Lucida Sans Unicode";color:navy"> <u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" color="navy" face="Arial"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<div>
<div class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt">
<hr size="2" width="100%" align="center">
</span></font></div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><font size="2" face="Tahoma"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:bold">From:</span></font></b><font size="2" face="Tahoma"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tahoma">
Fis [mailto:<u></u>fis<u></u>-<a href="mailto:bounces@listas.unizar.es" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">bounces@listas.unizar.es</a>]
<b><span style="font-weight:bold">On Behalf Of </span></b>Terrence W. DEACON<br>
<b><span style="font-weight:bold">Sent:</span></b> jeudi, 9 janvier 2020 19:14<br>
<b><span style="font-weight:bold">To:</span></b> Mark Johnson<br>
<b><span style="font-weight:bold">Cc:</span></b> <u></u>fis<u></u><br>
<b><span style="font-weight:bold">Subject:</span></b> Re: [Fis] misinformation,
a lecture</span></font><span lang="EN-US"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Dear colleagues,<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">I am glad that we're having this conversation. It is not just timely,
but urgent.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">The video that Stan posted of David Barstow's talk at the UC
Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy is chilling.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Please take the time to watch it.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Whatever else you want to quibble about with respect to the words
"truth" "reinforcement" "coherence" or whatever<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">the danger of not taking this problem seriously is monumental,
existential, and deserving our serious attention. <u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">It is the challenge of understanding referential error-correction as
opposed to the mere rectification of signal corruption.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">And although it is not merely an "academic" issue, it demands
serious intellectual effort by those of us who study the very nature of
information. But I fear that we are lagging behind in our theorizing and being
overwhelmed in the same way that journalists are being swamped by spin
factories and powerful demagogues. We are still arguing over the definitions of
information, battling over relativism and meaning, and still lack a shared
formal analysis of reference, interpretation, and informational causality. I
see some faint glimmer of hope in progress made in encryption and decryption
and in the way that blockchain systems help to provide a form of encrypted
transparency. So even as AI is making deep fakes possible and social media
enables disinformation to spread far more effectively than carefully vetted
information, it may also be possible to explore how these same tools might
be repurposed to provide a kind of informational immune system or automated
therapies to combat information pathogens and information cancers. IS4SI has a
role to play in this drama.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">— Terry<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 7:09 AM Mark Johnson <<a href="mailto:johnsonmwj1@gmail.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">johnsonmwj1@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
<blockquote style="border:none;border-left:solid #cccccc 1.0pt;padding:0cm 0cm 0cm 6.0pt;margin-left:4.8pt;margin-right:0cm">
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">"the truth needs reinforcement" is slightly chilling don't
you think? Isn't this an epistemological error?<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Does beauty need reinforcement? Or goodness?<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">So what is this? </span></font><span lang="EN-GB">An institution steps in
to defends the grounds for its continued viability and claim to be the arbiter <font color="navy"><span style="color:navy">o</span></font>f truth. </span>Its defense
is amplified as the uncertainty of its environment increases and its judgements
questioned. And its defense if itself (and "truth") increases
environmental uncertainty, as (among other things) other institutions defend
their competing versions of truth. <u></u><u></u></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Positive feedback isn't it?<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">What's lost is not truth, but coherence.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Mark<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">On Thu, 9 Jan 2020, 14:44 Stanley N Salthe, <<a href="mailto:ssalthe@binghamton.edu" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">ssalthe@binghamton.edu</a>>
wrote:<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
<blockquote style="border:none;border-left:solid #cccccc 1.0pt;padding:0cm 0cm 0cm 6.0pt;margin-left:4.8pt;margin-right:0cm">
<div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">STAN<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><a href="https://ucsd.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=35394" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">https://ucsd.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=35394</a><u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">_______________________________________________<br>
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</blockquote>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">_______________________________________________<br>
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</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><br clear="all">
<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">-- <u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Professor Terrence W. Deacon<br>
University of California, Berkeley<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
</div>
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</div>
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