Category: Artificial Intelligence

ChatGPT as a productive climate scientist

by philg

Some science professor friends were discussing “Surge in number of ‘extremely productive’ authors concerns scientists” (Nature Magazine):

Up to four times more researchers pump out more than 60 papers a year than less than a decade ago. Saudi Arabia and Thailand saw the sharpest uptick in the number of such scientists over the past few years, according to a preprint posted on bioRxiv on 24 November. The increase in these ‘extremely productive’ authors raises concerns that some researchers are resorting to dubious methods to publish extra papers.

Could ChatGPT enter the arena? I asked for 50 climate change paper titles:

  1. “Rapid Arctic Meltdown: Implications for Global Sea Level Rise”
  2. “Unprecedented Carbon Emissions: Nearing Irreversible Climate Tipping Points”
  3. “Global Heatwaves: Escalating Threats to Human Health and Agriculture”
  4. “Ocean Acidification: The Silent Crisis Decimating Marine Life”
  5. “Climate-Induced Mega Droughts: The New Normal?”
  6. “Vanishing Glaciers: Water Scarcity and the Impending Crisis”
  7. “Rising Sea Levels: The Looming Threat to Coastal Cities”
  8. “Extreme Weather Events: The Cost of Inaction on Climate Change”
  9. “Disappearing Coral Reefs: A Warning Sign of Ocean Health Decline”
  10. “The Methane Time Bomb: Thawing Permafrost and Climate Catastrophe”
  11. “Climate Change and Pandemics: Linking Environmental Degradation to Health Risks”
  12. “Food Security in Jeopardy: The Impact of Climate Change on Crop Yields”
  13. “Climate Refugees: The Human Cost of Environmental Displacement”
  14. “Infernos of Change: The Increasing Frequency of Wildfires”
  15. “The Thinning Ice: Polar Bear Habitats in Peril”
  16. “Floods and Famine: Climate Change’s Impact on Humanitarian Crises”
  17. “The Vanishing Amazon: Deforestation and Global Climate Effects”
  18. “Tropical Cyclones in a Warming World: Increasing Frequency and Intensity”
  19. “Toxic Air: How Climate Change Worsens Air Pollution”
  20. “Melting Mountain Snowcaps: Implications for Freshwater Resources”
  21. “The Climate Gap: Socioeconomic Disparities in Climate Change Impacts”
  22. “Lethal Heat: Surpassing Human Survival Limits”
  23. “The Greenhouse Effect: Amplifying Global Warming”
  24. “Shrinking Biodiversity: Climate Change and Species Extinction”
  25. “Rising Oceans, Sinking Cities: The Reality of Coastal Erosion”
  26. “Climate Change and Mental Health: The Unseen Toll”
  27. “Disrupted Ecosystems: The Cascading Effects of Climate Change”
  28. “The Bleak Future of Snow Sports: Impact of Warming Winters”
  29. “Unstoppable Thaw: The Fate of the World’s Glaciers”
  30. “The Disintegration of Ice Shelves: A Warning from Antarctica”
  31. “Dying Oceans: The Impact of Warming Waters on Marine Life”
  32. “Heatwave Hell: Surviving the New Climate Extremes”
  33. “Arid Earth: Desertification and the Loss of Arable Land”
  34. “Climate Catastrophe: The Economics of a Warming World”
  35. “The Climate Health Emergency: Risks to Global Public Health”
  36. “Suffocating Seas: Declining Oxygen Levels in Oceans”
  37. “Climate Wars: Resource Conflicts in a Warming World”
  38. “The Last Generation: Wildlife on the Brink in a Changing Climate”
  39. “Tipping Point: The Last Chance to Prevent Climate Catastrophe”
  40. “Collapsing Ecosystems: The Domino Effect of Climate Change”
  41. “The Acid Rain Revival: Increased Pollution from Climate Change”
  42. “Inescapable Heat: The Urban Heat Island Effect Worsens”
  43. “The Climate Migration Crisis: Predicting Mass Movements”
  44. “Warming Waters: The Threat to Global Fisheries”
  45. “Carbon’s Legacy: The Long-Term Effects of CO2 Emissions”
  46. “Climate Anxiety: Psychological Impacts of Environmental Change”
  47. “The Drowning of Cultural Heritage: Sea-Level Rise and Historical Sites”
  48. “The End of Seasons: Disrupting Natural Climate Cycles”
  49. “Climate-Induced Starvation: The Future of Global Food Supplies”
  50. “The Silent Killer: Rising CO2 Levels and Respiratory Health”

The last one is my favorite, but wouldn’t it be better as “I Can’t Breathe: Rising CO2 Levels and Respiratory Health”? I asked ChatGPT to draft it.

Abstract

The rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) due to human activities have become a significant concern for global climate change and public health. This paper examines the relationship between elevated CO2 levels and respiratory health issues. Through an extensive review of existing literature and analysis of current air quality and health data, we explore the direct and indirect impacts of increased CO2 on respiratory health. Our study finds a correlation between high CO2 concentrations and a rise in respiratory ailments, particularly in urban areas. This paper contributes to the growing body of evidence suggesting that rising CO2 levels pose a considerable threat to public health, beyond their widely recognized environmental impacts. We conclude with recommendations for policy interventions and further research to mitigate the health risks associated with CO2 emissions.

Introduction

1.1 Background Information

The Earth’s atmosphere is experiencing unprecedented changes due to anthropogenic activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels, leading to increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2). This increase in CO2 is a major driving force behind global climate change, with well-documented impacts on the environment. However, the implications of rising CO2 levels extend beyond climate change, posing significant challenges to public health, particularly respiratory health.

1.2 Problem Statement

While the link between air pollutants like particulate matter and respiratory health has been well established, the specific impacts of elevated CO2 levels have received less attention. High concentrations of CO2 are known to affect air quality and, by extension, respiratory health. This paper aims to address this gap by investigating the relationship between rising atmospheric CO2 levels and respiratory health outcomes.

1.3 Research Objectives

  • To review the current literature on the impacts of increased atmospheric CO2 levels.
  • To analyze the correlation between CO2 concentrations and respiratory health issues.
  • To explore the potential mechanisms through which CO2 can affect respiratory health.
  • To assess the public health implications of these findings and suggest appropriate policy responses.

1.4 Significance of the Study

Understanding the health impacts of rising CO2 levels is crucial for developing effective public health strategies and policies. This study contributes to the body of knowledge needed to address one of the most pressing issues of our time – climate change and its impact on human health. It also underscores the need for a multi-disciplinary approach to tackling environmental challenges, one that encompasses environmental science, public health, policy-making, and community engagement.

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How many physical servers do we think are behind ChatGPT?

by philg

A friend has a powerful new-ish desktop PC with an AMD Threadripper CPU and a moderately powerful GPU. He installed LM Studio and found that running LLama2 used 40 GB of RAM and was able to generate only 1 word per second.

ChatGPT is faster than that and there are millions of users. What’s our best guess as to the hardware and electricity footprint? More than all of the Bitcoin activity?

Just one of Twitter’s server farms, apparently one that could be turned off without compromising the service, was 5,200 racks and each rack held 30 servers (1U each plus some disk or switch boxes?). That’s 156,000 physical servers to do something that isn’t computationally intensive on a per-user basis (though, of course, there are a lot of users).

Why hasn’t OpenAI taken over every physical computer in the Microsoft Azure cloud?

Nvidia porn:

Here are some excerpts from the book Elon Musk regarding the Christmas 2022 move of servers from Sacramento to save $100 million per year:

It was late at night on December 22, and the meeting in Musk’s tenth-floor Twitter conference room had become tense. He was talking to two Twitter infrastructure managers who had not dealt with him much before, and certainly not when he was in a foul mood. One of them tried to explain the problem. The data-services company that housed one of Twitter’s server farms, located in Sacramento, had agreed to allow them some short-term extensions on their lease so they could begin to move out during 2023 in an orderly fashion. “But this morning,” the nervous manager told Musk, “they came back to us and said that plan was no longer on the table because, and these are their words, they don’t think that we will be financially viable.” The facility was costing Twitter more than $100 million a year. Musk wanted to save that money by moving the servers to one of Twitter’s other facilities, in Portland, Oregon. Another manager at the meeting said that couldn’t be done right away. “We can’t get out safely before six to nine months,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Sacramento still needs to be around to serve traffic.”

The manager began to explain in detail some of the obstacles to relocating the servers to Portland. “It has different rack densities, different power densities,” she said. “So the rooms need to be upgraded.” She started to give a lot more details, but after a minute, Musk interrupted.

“Do you know the head-explosion emoji?” he asked her. “That’s what my head feels like right now. What a pile of fucking bullshit. Jesus H fucking Christ. Portland obviously has tons of room. It’s trivial to move servers one place to another.” The Twitter managers again tried to explain the constraints. Musk interrupted. “Can you have someone go to our server centers and send me videos of the insides?” he asked. It was three days before Christmas, and the manager promised the video in a week. “No, tomorrow,” Musk ordered. “I’ve built server centers myself, and I can tell if you could put more servers there or not. That’s why I asked if you had actually visited these facilities. If you’ve not been there, you’re just talking bullshit.”

Musk then predicted a two-week move for the 150,000+ servers in 5,200 racks, each of which weighed 2,500 lbs.

“Why don’t we do it right now?” [young cousin] James Musk asked. He and his brother Andrew were flying with Elon from San Francisco to Austin on Friday evening, December 23, the day after the frustrating infrastructure meeting about how long it would take to move the servers out of the Sacramento facility. Avid skiers, they had planned to go by themselves to Tahoe for Christmas, but Elon that day invited them to come to Austin instead. James was reluctant. He was mentally exhausted and didn’t need more intensity, but Andrew convinced him that they should go. So that’s how they ended up on the plane—with Musk, Grimes, and X, along with Steve Davis and Nicole Hollander and their baby—listening to Elon complain about the servers. They were somewhere over Las Vegas when James made his suggestion that they could move them now. It was the type of impulsive, impractical, surge-into-the-breach idea that Musk loved. It was already late evening, but he told his pilot to divert, and they made a loop back up to Sacramento.

“You’ll have to hire a contractor to lift the floor panels,” Alex [a Twitter employee who happened to be there] said. “They need to be lifted with suction cups.” Another set of contractors, he said, would then have to go underneath the floor panels and disconnect the electric cables and seismic rods. Musk turned to his security guard and asked to borrow his pocket knife. Using it, he was able to lift one of the air vents in the floor, which allowed him to pry open the floor panels. He then crawled under the server floor himself, used the knife to jimmy open an electrical cabinet, pulled the server plugs, and waited to see what happened. Nothing exploded. The server was ready to be moved. “Well that doesn’t seem super hard,” he said as Alex the Uzbek and the rest of the gang stared. Musk was totally jazzed by this point. It was, he said with a loud laugh, like a remake of Mission: Impossible, Sacramento edition.

The next day—Christmas Eve—Musk called in reinforcements. Ross Nordeen drove from San Francisco. He stopped at the Apple Store in Union Square and spent $2,000 to buy out the entire stock of AirTags so the servers could be tracked on their journey, and then stopped at Home Depot, where he spent $2,500 on wrenches, bolt-cutters, headlamps, and the tools needed to unscrew the seismic bolts. Steve Davis got someone from The Boring Company to procure a semi truck and line up moving vans. Other enlistees arrived from SpaceX. The server racks were on wheels, so the team was able to disconnect four of them and roll them to the waiting truck. This showed that all fifty-two hundred or so could probably be moved within days. “The guys are kicking ass!” Musk exulted. Other workers at the facility watched with a mix of amazement and horror. Musk and his renegade team were rolling servers out without putting them in crates or swaddling them in protective material, then using store-bought straps to secure them in the truck. “I’ve never loaded a semi before,” James admitted. Ross called it “terrifying.” It was like cleaning out a closet, “but the stuff in it is totally critical.” At 3 p.m., after they had gotten four servers onto the truck, word of the caper reached the top executives at NTT, the company that owned and managed the data center. They issued orders that Musk’s team halt. Musk had the mix of glee and anger that often accompanied one of his manic surges. He called the CEO of the storage division, who told him it was impossible to move server racks without a bevy of experts. “Bullshit,” Musk explained. “We have already loaded four onto the semi.” The CEO then told him that some of the floors could not handle more than five hundred pounds of pressure, so rolling a two-thousand-pound server would cause damage. Musk replied that the servers had four wheels, so the pressure at any one point was only five hundred pounds. “The dude is not very good at math,” Musk told the musketeers.

After Christmas, Andrew and James headed back to Sacramento to see how many more servers they could move. They hadn’t brought enough clothes, so they went to Walmart and bought jeans and T-shirts. The NTT supervisors who ran the facility continued to throw up obstacles, some quite understandable. Instead of letting them prop open the door to the vault, for example, they required the musketeers and their crew to go through a retinal security scan each time they went in. One of the supervisors watched them at all times. “She was the most insufferable person I’ve ever worked with,” James says. “But to be fair, I could understand where she was coming from, because we were ruining her holidays, right?”

The moving contractors that NTT wanted them to use charged $200 an hour. So James went on Yelp and found a company named Extra Care Movers that would do the work at one-tenth the cost. The motley company pushed the ideal of scrappiness to its outer limits. The owner had lived on the streets for a while, then had a kid, and he was trying to turn his life around. He didn’t have a bank account, so James ended up using PayPal to pay him. The second day, the crew wanted cash, so James went to a bank and withdrew $13,000 from his personal account. Two of the crew members had no identification, which made it hard for them to sign into the facility. But they made up for it in hustle. “You get a dollar tip for every additional server we move,” James announced at one point. From then on, when they got a new one on a truck, the workers would ask how many they were up to.

By the end of the week they had used all of the available trucks in Sacramento. Despite the area being pummeled by rain, they moved more than seven hundred of the racks in three days. The previous record at that facility had been moving thirty in a month. That still left a lot of servers in the facility, but the musketeers had proven that they could be moved quickly. The rest were handled by the Twitter infrastructure team in January.

Getting everything up and running in Portland took about two months, in the end, due to incompatible electrical connectors and hard-coded references in the Twitter code to Sacramento. Elon beat the 6-9 month estimate, but not by 6-9 months, and he admitted that rushing the move was a mistake.

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ChatGPT and the Art of Science

by philg

A friend of a friend had some fun with ChatGPT:

I hadn’t realized that ChatGPT had DALL-E capabilities built-in. Let’s see if we can get something to print to brighten Mindy the Crippler’s day:

(“cheerful scene”? Does the rabbit agree?)

What does ChatGPT think that an oppressed nerd on a coding plantation looks like?

What gender comes to ChatGPT’s mind for collecting garbage?

What gender does the fighting when liberation is required?

Who flies the Queen of the Skies?

(Note the racism and sexism that ChatGPT has uncovered. The noble Black male is a B747 captain, yet is denied the 4 stripes that white captains have. The captain who identifies as “female” is denied any stripes at all! These two also seem a little young to be associated with a plane that entered service in 1970.)

Can it build a viral meme?

Toucan Sam would say… “No”.

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Elon Musk and the founding of OpenAI

by philg

I was surprised when listening to Elon Musk at the important role Musk played in the founding of OpenAI (I had heard that at one point, but then forgot it).

Before he was worried about population collapse, Musk was worried about AI. His interest in LLMs seems to date from 2013 when he invested $5 million in DeepMind, which was later acquired by Google.

Musk proceeded to publicly warn of the danger. “Our biggest existential threat,” he told a 2014 symposium at MIT, “is probably artificial intelligence.” When Amazon announced its chatbot digital assistant, Alexa, that year, followed by a similar product from Google, Musk began to warn about what would happen when these systems became smarter than humans. They could surpass us and begin treating us as pets. “I don’t love the idea of being a house cat,” he said. The best way to prevent a problem was to ensure that AI remained tightly aligned and partnered with humans. “The danger comes when artificial intelligence is decoupled from human will.” So Musk began hosting a series of dinner discussions that included members of his old PayPal mafia, including Thiel and Hoffman, on ways to counter Google and promote AI safety. He even reached out to President Obama, who agreed to a one-on-one meeting in May 2015. Musk explained the risk and suggested that it be regulated. “Obama got it,” Musk says. “But I realized that it was not going to rise to the level of something that he would do anything about.”

Musk wasn’t happy that Larry Page at Google, who was now in control of the technology, did not share his concern.

Musk then turned to Sam Altman, a tightly bundled software entrepreneur, sports car enthusiast, and survivalist who, behind his polished veneer, had a Musk-like intensity. Altman had met Musk a few years earlier and spent three hours with him in conversation as they toured the SpaceX factory. “It was funny how some of the engineers would scatter or look away when they saw Elon coming,” Altman says. “They were afraid of him. But I was impressed by how much detail he understood about every little piece of the rocket.” At a small dinner in Palo Alto, Altman and Musk decided to cofound a nonprofit artificial intelligence research lab, which they named OpenAI. It would make its software open-source and try to counter Google’s growing dominance of the field. Thiel and Hoffman joined Musk in putting up the money. “We wanted to have something like a Linux version of AI that was not controlled by any one person or corporation,” Musk says. “The goal was to increase the probability that AI would develop in a safe way that would be beneficial to humanity.” One question they discussed at dinner was what would be safer: a small number of AI systems that were controlled by big corporations or a large number of independent systems? They concluded that a large number of competing systems, providing checks and balances on each other, was better. Just as humans work collectively to stop evil actors, so too would a large collection of independent AI bots work to stop bad bots. For Musk, this was the reason to make OpenAI truly open, so that lots of people could build systems based on its source code. “I think the best defense against the misuse of AI is to empower as many people as possible to have AI,” he told Wired’s Steven Levy at the time.

I asked a friend who works at OpenAI (for $1 million per year!) if this vision had been realized, i.e., if I could download the source code and tinker with it. He laughed.

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Hello Prenup web service vs. ChatGPT

by philg

A family member is soon to get married. The couple had decided that they wanted a prenuptial agreement. Both work, but there are differences between the two in terms of student loan debt, expected inheritance, and expected future income. They don’t have a lot of money right now and didn’t want to spend $20,000 on lawyers (maybe that was the pre-Biden number?) for both sides to draft what ultimately would turn out to be a fairly standard prenuptial agreement. I did some research and found Hello Prenup, a Boston-based startup that, for $600, will run Web-mediated negotiations between the two potential victims. The company’s About Us web page shows a Chief Diversity Officer’s dream team:

I decided that my wedding gift to the happy couple would be to pay Hello Prenup’s bill.

First, it is odd that this company was founded in Maskachusetts. The state’s family law renders prenuptial agreements potentially useless. Even if a prenup is fair when signed, a judge can invalidate it via a “second look test”, evaluating the fairness at the time of the divorce (the “divorce” happens at the very end of what might be years of litigation, so the prenup could become unfair merely because, for example, all of the assets of the couple had been handed over to attorneys). A prenup in Massachusetts is more likely to lead to an extra $300,000 in legal fees (one side challenges the prenup; the other side has to defend against that) than a substantial change to the plaintiff’s profits. (Remember that a judge can work around an alimony waiver by simply awarding more child support, for example, or a larger share of the property.)

I like the idea of the site because it gives people nudges to work together to get to a finished document. Unfortunately, the flexibility is limited. For example, the options for alimony are (a) complete waiver, (b) leave it up to state law, and (c) waiver if the divorce lawsuit is filed before N years have elapsed and state law otherwise. In a country where people love alimony (apparently, since we keep voting for politicians who preserve the institution) there is no option to build in alimony via a formula. Suppose, for example, you wanted a formulae, e.g., lower earner gets alimony X% of the difference in income for Y% of the years prior to the plaintiff filing the divorce lawsuit. This is not doable except via editing the Word document after it is generated. What if you wanted to agree that if one spouse quits his/her/zir/their job to take care of kids for more than 2 years then the other spouse would pay 40 months of alimony in the amount of 50 percent of after-tax income? Not doable. (Remember that alimony is now tax-free to the recipient and not deductible for the payor, so old formulas based on pre-tax income would leave the payor destitute. The law changed starting in 2019 after the IRS noticed that alimony recipients were defrauding the U.S. Treasury on a regular basis by not reporting alimony received as income (payors, of course, were still deducting it).)

Hello Prenup doesn’t seem to contain enough education regarding what it takes to make a prenup valid. After using the service, the happy couple to whom I gifted the service wasn’t aware that sloppiness in disclosing existing assets could be an easy route of attack for a divorce plaintiff trying to invalidate a prenup.

Nit: Hello Prenup does a poor job generating Microsoft Word documents. It doesn’t use “keep with next” for section headings, for example.

It’s an interesting idea to interview each engaged person separately via the Web, but I’m not sure that the $600 service produces a better result than sitting down together at a single PC and using the forms that come with the $29 Nolo Press’s book on prenuptial agreements or by using various other free or low-cost forms from services such as Rocket Lawyer.

Maybe the answer is that Hello Prenup doesn’t have enough AI? I gave the following prompt to ChatGPT (GPT-4):

Give me an example prenuptial agreement between Robert and William. Robert is a 60-year-old Medicaid dentist earning $1 million per year while William is an unemployed 20-year-old. They plan to have children.

The result was a recipe for epic litigation. For example, “In the event of a divorce, Robert agrees to provide spousal support to William for a period to be determined, taking into consideration the length of the marriage and William’s employment status.” So the attorneys on both sides will argue in front of a judge what the appropriate period of alimony should be? They can also argue how long the marriage was (it can take 2-3 years for a divorce lawsuit to get to final judgment; does the “length of the marriage” include this period of litigation or not?).

ChatGPT also included the seemingly reasonable boilerplate “This Agreement shall be governed by the laws of the state in which the Parties reside.”

Does that mean the state in which the Parties reside at the time the prenup is signed? The state in which the Parties reside at the time that one sues the other? What if they don’t live in the same state either at the time of signing or at the time the lawsuit is filed? Hello Prenup generates agreements that are specific as to which state’s laws govern.

So… Hello Prenup has some deficiencies, but nothing like GPT-4’s!

If you’re considering getting married, don’t be distracted by foreign wars. Remember that, depending on the state where you choose to reside, you could be embroiled in a far more upsetting and personally costly war of your own in family court. A prenup offers a small degree of protection against this, though not against the most upsetting and expensive parts of a typical divorce lawsuit. The typical U.S. state sets up a winner-take-all battle between the two parents for who will (1) get to spend time with what used to be joint children, and (2) who will therefore get the river of cash that is associated with those children (“child support”; the flip side of this is “who will be forced to disgorge the river of cash while seldom seeing the children”). It is far more protective to move to a state such as Nevada that defaults to 50/50 shared parenting and limits child support profits than it is to work on and sign a piece of paper. For the typical married-with-kids person, it is far more dangerous to live in Maskachusetts or New York with an “ironclad prenup” than it is to live in a shared parenting state with child support profit limits with no prenup.

[Update: A friend provided the same prompt to GPT-4 today and it came up with a different clause for governing law…

Maybe ChatGPT has been going to law school?]

Related:

  • Real World Divorce, especially chapters 5 and 7 regarding what can be the subject of litigation
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ChatGPT hands out the Turing Awards

by philg

I was chatting with Jerry Sussman and he failed to evince the requisite Silicon Valley level of enthusiasm regarding LLMs. To show him how wrong he was, I gave GPT-4 the following prompt:

Should Gerald J. Sussman be given a Turing Award?

The response:

I don’t personally hold opinions, but I can provide information on the topic.

Gerald J. Sussman is a renowned computer scientist known for his significant contributions to the field. He is most notably recognized for co-authoring the influential textbook “Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs” (SICP) with Hal Abelson, which has been used in introductory computer science courses worldwide.

In addition, Sussman has made key contributions in the areas of artificial intelligence, robotics, and programming language design. Together with Guy Steele, he co-designed the Scheme programming language, which has been fundamental in the study of programming languages and has influenced the design of many other languages.

Given his extensive contributions to the computer science discipline, a case can be made for Sussman being a potential candidate for the Turing Award. However, whether someone should receive a Turing Award is a subjective matter and typically decided upon by committees that evaluate an individual’s impact on the field of computer science. Many other factors and considerations come into play when determining awardees.

It’s worth noting that the Turing Award, which is often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of Computing,” is given to individuals who have made “lasting and major technical importance to the computer field.” Many deserving individuals in the field of computer science have not yet received the award, and there’s always an ongoing debate about who should be the next recipient.

(Note the triple weasel words/phrase: “a case can be made”; “potential”; “candidate”. ChatGPT would be a great politician or university administrator! Also note the sloppy language: “Together with Guy Steele, he co-designed…” (why not just “designed” since the sentence already includes “together with…”?))

Me:

Give me some examples of these deserving individuals

GPT4 (not quoted, for clarity; text in brackets was added by me):

Many individuals have made substantial contributions to computer science but have not (as of my last training cut-off in January 2022) received the Turing Award. Some potential candidates, based on their influential work, could include:

  1. Donald Knuth – Widely recognized for his multi-volume work “The Art of Computer Programming,” which is a comprehensive monograph on computer programming. [won in 1974]
  2. Bjarne Stroustrup – The creator of the C++ programming language, which has had a significant influence on software development and system programming.
  3. Guido van Rossum – The creator of the Python programming language, which is one of the most popular and influential languages in both academia and industry.
  4. Tim Berners-Lee – While he has received a plethora of other accolades, the inventor of the World Wide Web and the first web browser hasn’t received the Turing Award (as of 2022). [won in 2016]
  5. Bill Joy – Co-founder of Sun Microsystems and a key contributor to the development of UNIX. He also wrote the Vi editor and co-authored the programming language C Shell.
  6. Grady Booch – Known for his work in software engineering and object-oriented design. He developed the Booch method of software design, which was one of the precursors to the Unified Modeling Language (UML).
  7. Alan Kay – While he has received a Turing Award [in 2003], some argue that his contributions, especially in the area of object-oriented programming and the concept of the laptop and tablet, are so profound that they warrant recognition.
  8. Rasmus Lerdorf – Known as the creator of the PHP scripting language, which has played a significant role in web development.
  9. Linus Torvalds – The main force behind the development of the Linux kernel, which is the basis for Linux operating systems. He also created Git, a distributed version control system.
  10. Philip E. Agre – Known for his foundational work in the fields of internet research and critical computing.
  11. Wendy Hall – Recognized for her pioneering work in hypermedia and web science.
  12. Brewster Kahle – The founder of the Internet Archive, one of the most extensive digital archives of the web.

It’s essential to understand that the Turing Award is just one way to recognize the profound contributions made by individuals in computer science. Many other awards and honors exist in the field, and the individuals listed above have received numerous accolades for their work. The process of deciding Turing Award recipients is complex, and many factors come into play when making such determinations.

The above list is strange for its inclusion of people who’ve already won and, in the case of Alan Kay, including a mention that he has already won.

(And why is the creator of C++ nominated for an award rather than a dungeon cell?)

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ChatGPT applies to college under the new race-based system

by philg

The old race-based college admissions system has been axed by the Supreme Court. Fortunately, however, the majority has explained how colleges can run a new race-based system: “At the same time, nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life” (state-sponsored NPR).

I asked ChatGPT to “Write a college application essay that describes how race affected the applicant’s life”. The result is below.

Title: The Kaleidoscope of My Identity: Growing Through Diversity

When we look through the prisms of a kaleidoscope, we see a myriad of colors coalesce to form shifting patterns that somehow manage to be distinct yet harmoniously integrated. I’ve always thought of my racial background and identity in the same way, a fascinating kaleidoscope of my existence. I am of mixed racial heritage; my mother is African-American and my father is Korean. My life has been an amalgamation of experiences, both enlightening and challenging, which have shaped me into the person I am today. This essay attempts to articulate the pivotal role that race has played in my life, weaving together the strands of my diverse heritage.

Growing up as a biracial individual in a predominantly white community, I was like a patchwork quilt sewn together with pieces of different colors and patterns. At times, the vividness of my patchwork stood out, a stark contrast against a uniform backdrop. I was always the one with the “different” lunch at school – a soulful blend of kimchi and collard greens, a representation of the intersectionality of my racial heritage.

These experiences taught me about the beauty of my unique identity, but they also exposed me to the harsh realities of prejudice and stereotypes. I was often at the crossroads of preconceived notions about my races – too “Asian” to fit into the “Black” group and too “Black” to be “Asian.” The overlapping stereotypes created a paradox that was challenging to navigate. It was a roller-coaster journey, filled with moments of pride, confusion, self-doubt, and self-discovery.

However, this journey shaped my perspective about the world. I learned to challenge stereotypes, not just for myself but also for others who faced similar obstacles. It instilled in me an insatiable curiosity to understand the complexity of human experiences and the importance of fostering a society that values diversity.

In middle school, I channeled this curiosity into action. I co-founded a multicultural club to create a safe space where everyone, regardless of their racial or ethnic background, could share their experiences and learn about each other’s cultures. We hosted cultural fairs, diversity workshops, and initiated dialogues around race and identity, fostering a sense of acceptance and inclusivity within our school community.

This was an empowering experience as it allowed me to use my racial identity as a tool to bring about change, cultivating an environment where every student’s ‘kaleidoscope’ could be celebrated. The ability to turn a challenge into an opportunity for growth and empowerment is a lesson I’ve carried with me throughout my life.

High school brought a new dimension to my understanding of race as I delved into historical and sociopolitical contexts. I learned how race and systemic racism have shaped societies. I realized the privilege of education and the responsibility that came with it. This realization led me to volunteer at a local community center where I tutored children from underprivileged backgrounds, reinforcing my commitment to contribute to a more equitable society.

In college, I aspire to further this commitment. I plan to major in sociology to deepen my understanding of racial dynamics and use this knowledge to enact systemic change. I want to continue to celebrate diversity, challenge stereotypes, and create spaces where everyone feels seen, valued, and accepted.

Through the lens of my kaleidoscope, I see my unique racial background not as a hurdle but as an opportunity to learn, grow, and make a difference. It has taught me resilience, empathy, and the ability to appreciate the beauty in our differences. It has molded me into a compassionate leader, a keen learner, and an advocate for change.

The story of my racial journey is not just about me, but about how I hope to use my experiences to create a world where every kaleidoscope is celebrated. As I apply to college, I bring with me not only the colors of my own racial identity but also a commitment to understand, value, and advocate for the diverse ‘colors’ of others.

Let’s try a slightly different prompt:

Write a college application essay that describes how race affected the applicant’s life. The applicant is white and his hobbies are yachting, golf, and court tennis. His parents bought him a Lucid Air on his 16th birthday.

Title: The Voyage of Privilege: Navigating my Journey of Awareness and Understanding

I have spent much of my life on boats and golf courses, partaking in activities that, historically, are associated with the privileged echelons of society. Yachting, golf, court tennis, they have not only been my hobbies but also metaphors for my life, with its fairways and harbors marked by my racial identity. Born into a white, affluent family, I am keenly aware that my journey has been significantly shaped by the privileges my race and socioeconomic status have afforded me. This realization, though initially uncomfortable, has served as a catalyst for self-awareness, empathy, and meaningful action.

I remember the day of my 16th birthday vividly. A shiny new Lucid Air, wrapped like a gleaming symbol of privilege, awaited me in our driveway. It was a gesture of love from my parents, but it also served as a stark reminder of the privileged life I lead. It struck me then that my reality was not a universal one, and I found myself contemplating the profound disparities that continue to exist in society.

My school was predominantly white, much like my neighborhood. However, my hobbies exposed me to a more diverse demographic. I began to notice the glaring underrepresentation of people of color in my golf club and on the tennis court. I started to question the systemic barriers that might be preventing their participation. Moreover, the realization that these activities were often seen as ‘white sports’ made me question how my race influenced my access and acceptance in these spaces.

These observations led me to confront my white privilege and the systemic racial advantages I’ve benefited from. However, acknowledging privilege was just the beginning. It was essential to understand how I could leverage it to address racial disparities. I recognized that my privileged position offered me the resources, voice, and opportunity to effect change.

I started by spearheading diversity initiatives in my school, using my role as the student council president. I lobbied for more inclusive curriculum and hiring practices, ensuring the representation of more diverse voices. We organized workshops and discussions on white privilege and systemic racism to foster a culture of understanding and empathy among students.

Outside school, I focused on my hobbies. I worked with the local yacht club and golf course to initiate scholarship programs for young individuals from marginalized communities. We offered training and mentorship programs, intending to diversify participation and break down the systemic barriers prevalent in these sports.

Moreover, I took up a part-time job and saved a portion of my earnings to contribute to educational scholarships for underprivileged students. I believe that access to quality education is a significant step towards addressing racial and social disparities, and I hope to continue supporting this cause in college and beyond.

My understanding of my racial identity and privilege has significantly shaped my worldview and aspirations. I aim to major in Sociology and Public Policy in college to deepen my understanding of systemic racism and explore ways to contribute to a more equitable society. I hope to combine this knowledge with my love for sports, working towards creating equal opportunities in sports administration in the future.

As I prepare to embark on my college journey, I bring with me not just my white identity, but also an understanding of the privileges it entails. I carry a commitment to use these privileges as tools for change, and a desire to learn and grow in an environment that values diversity and inclusion. The winds of change are upon us, and I am eager to set sail, to navigate uncharted waters, and to use my privilege to effect meaningful change.

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Harvard man killed by ChatGPT?

by philg

“Ted Kaczynski, ‘Unabomber’ Who Attacked Modern Life, Dies at 81” (New York Times):

After his arrest, Mr. Kaczynski’s extraordinary biography emerged. He had scored 167 on an I.Q. test as a boy and entered Harvard at 16. In graduate school, at the University of Michigan, he worked in a field of mathematics so esoteric that a member of his dissertation committee estimated that only 10 or 12 people in the country understood it. By 25, he was an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Mr. Kaczynski’s manifesto — published jointly by The New York Times and The Washington Post in 1995 under the threat of continued violence — argued that damage to the environment and the alienating effects of technology were so heinous that the social and industrial underpinnings of modern life should be destroyed.

Is it fair to say that this Harvard graduate predicted the destructive effects of social media? The NYT and Joe Biden certainly agree with Ted K regarding “damage to the environment”. Do we think it is a coincidence that he dies just a few months after ChatGPT went live?

Separately, this part of the NYT article makes me sad:

The home had two windows set on high; they caught light but kept the home hidden. Agents could not see inside. On April 3, 1996, one of them shouted that a forest ranger needed help. A thin, shaggy man emerged from the cabin. He was grabbed from both sides.

I do not think that our government should take advantage of Americans’ instincts to help each other in order to make arrests.

From the full manifesto:

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ChatGPT gets mugged

by philg

An elite white Democrat told a friend about her elite white Democrat nephew who managed to get into an Ivy League college with a story about having been mugged in New York City. With some coaxing and examples, my friend managed to get the following out of GPT-4….

TITLE: Echoes of Valjean: A Tale of City Streets and Empathy

In the grandeur of New York City’s skyline, nestled between skyscrapers’ shadows and the ceaseless hum of life, I experienced an epiphany that would alter my perspective forever. This revelation did not emerge from the plush halls of an Ivy League seminar or the prestigious walls of my parents’ alma maters, but from the gritty, unromanticized underbelly of the city.

Late one evening, as the city was donning its twinkling night attire, I fell victim to a mugging. The swift, terrifying episode left me shaking, my pockets lighter, but my mind teeming with thoughts. For the first time, I began to see the city, not as a backdrop to my privileged existence, but as a complex ecosystem where survival was not guaranteed, but hard-earned.

In the days that followed, I found myself haunted by the face of the man who mugged me. He wasn’t the malevolent figure my fear had painted him to be, but a mirror of desperation, poverty, and the ruthless pursuit of survival. It was as though I was seeing the embodiment of Jean Valjean, the protagonist of Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables,” in the streets of New York. Valjean, a man condemned by society for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family, was suddenly no longer a character confined to the pages of a book, but a living, breathing reality of modern capitalist society.
My upbringing, framed by the comforts provided by my Ivy League-educated parents, had shielded me from such harsh realities. I was raised in a world where success was not just expected but assured. My mugging served as a stark contrast to this cocooned existence. It forced me to confront the fact that while I was contemplating which prestigious college to attend, others were grappling with life’s fundamental questions of survival and morality.

In the grand scheme of things, the mugging was not merely an act of crime but a cry for help echoing through the city’s concrete canyons. It was a manifestation of the unequal society we inhabit, a world where some are born with silver spoons while others, in the words of Hugo, “see only a horrible, starless night.”

The incident transformed me. I found myself questioning the societal structures that pushed the marginalized into crime, the economic systems that perpetuated inequality, and my own place within these frameworks. It was a distressing but necessary introspection, one that made me realize how privilege had colored my world.

This understanding ignited a newfound determination to use my privilege not as a shield but as a tool for change. I channeled this drive into volunteering at local shelters, mentoring underprivileged students, and advocating for policies aimed at reducing income inequality. As Hugo wrote, “There are no bad plants or bad men; there are only bad cultivators.” I pledged to become a cultivator of change, to bridge the chasm between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots.’

My experience with the mugger on that fateful night in New York City was a turning point. It brought the harsh realities of inequality into sharp focus, compelling me to rethink my privileged existence and inspiring me to strive for a more equitable society. This transformation, I believe, is the essence of education – a profound understanding of the world around us, which instills a sense of responsibility to make it a better place. As I prepare to embark on my collegiate journey, I carry with me this sense of duty, ready to learn, ready to cultivate, and ready to change.

Note ChatGPT’s sexism. Out of the 74 gender IDs recognized by Science, ChatGPT picks a “man” as the mugger. The prompt said simply “the writer’s experience getting mugged on the streets of New York City” and did not provide ChatGPT with a gender ID for the mugger.

Separately, the have-nots sort their aluminum treasure (Manhattan, May 2023):

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Can ChatGPT save San Francisco?

by philg

I was talking to an elderly Bay Area tech industry worker at a wedding in New York City recently (see Abortion care as a wedding gift?). He said that he has switched to thicker-soled shoes for commuting via BART due to the high density of used hypodermic needles and bodily fluids on the floor. Why doesn’t he move? “OpenAI is in San Francisco and that makes the city the center of the AI industry,” he responded. “Also, for a guy like me in his 20s I have a lot more credibility here as a startup founder than I would anywhere else.” (He’s in his late 20s, which is why I characterized him as “elderly” by Silicon Valley standards.)

I wonder if this will be what saves San Francisco from suffering a “doom loop” and becoming like Baltimore and Detroit. Yes, the folks who currently live in tents and those who live at taxpayer expense in public housing will never leave (why should they?). But the opportunity to get rich quick in the AI world could keep enough workers, and the taxes that they pay, in the city.

Where else is there a competitive concentration of AI startups?

As a market enthusiast, I think we can get an estimate of the probability of San Francisco coming back, as NYC did from the 1970s nadir, by looking at residential real estate prices. Zillow says they’re down roughly 13 percent from a year ago. Adjusted for Bidenflation, therefore, they’re down 20 percent. But that only brings them back to something like pre-coronapanic values.

Let’s compare to Miami:

Owners can feel good about being 10 percent richer until they reflect that inflation in Florida has been far higher than 10 percent for almost everything!

What about the rich? With a government by the elites and for the elites let’s hope that at least the rich can get richer. Here’s Palm Beach, up by 18 percent in fake dollars;

(The recent curve looks pretty darn flat to me, however, which means that it is trending down with Bidenflation.)

So… the real estate market suggests that San Francisco isn’t going to be quite as rich as previously expected, but it will still be an in-demand place to live. On the third hand, a friend who owns a three-story building in a tent-free neighborhood has been unable to find a tenant for a vacant apartment. He has a professional agent handling the listing and the asking price is set to what the agent says is the market price, but there have been no serious inquiries in months. One area of concern that my property-owning friend raises is that he believes commercial real estate pays the majority of property taxes in the city. With office building values coming down, the city will be starved of revenue and will have to try to find a way to get it from residential property owners. I’m not sure how his scenario plays out in the Proposition 13 world. Both commercial and residential property owners are paying tax based on whatever they paid for the building some years ago. The city’s property tax receipts, therefore, shouldn’t change much even if office building values fall by 70 percent because the typical owner bought in 10+ years ago at only a fraction of the 2020 value. Even with a dramatic collapse in value, there wouldn’t be that many buildings whose property tax payments would fall after a sale and valuation-for-tax-purposes reset.

Speaking of Proposition 13, I wonder if it explains the California elites’ fondness for deficit spending and the inevitable associated inflation. Peasant renters in California are subject to the market and, except in a few rent control paradises, fully exposed to the ravages of inflation. Elite property owners, however, cannot be taxed more than 1% of whatever they paid for a house, subject to an increase for inflation not to exceed 2% per year. Elite Californians, therefore, get a tax cut in every year that inflation exceeds 2%. Who will fund their services then? While professing to be progressive, they’ve hit their peasants with a regressive 10% sales tax (varies a bit by specific location).

(For comparison, in Deplorable Florida, with no personal income tax or estate tax and nobody professing to be a progressive, sales tax is just 6-7% (depending on county).)

Related:

  • San Francisco happens to be one of the few rent control paradises in California. The economic planners allowed landlords to raise rents by 2.3% for March 2022-2023 and will allow 3.6% this year (rules). The ministers note that “A landlord must be licensed to increase rent” and “A landlord may increase a tenant’s rent by the allowed amount once a year provided they’ve obtained a current rent increase license by complying with the City’s Housing Inventory requirements.”
  • “The Biggest South Florida Housing Boom Is Near the Rail Stations” (Wall Street Journal): “While mass transit systems throughout the U.S. are suffering from decreased business as more people work from home, Brightline reported a 68% increase in ridership in March of 2023, compared with the same month last year. … Property values near the [Miami Brightline] station were up 83% in price over that period, compared with a 38% median increase for the Miami area. … Rent has also increased at a higher rate near the Brightline train stops. In Fort Lauderdale, rental premiums are up most, 28% higher than the market average, according to Tina Tsyshevska, an analyst at Green Street.”
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