I am learning to ride my bike without hands.
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On Dec. 12, 2022 Tyoma took his first steps!
12 декабря 2022 года Тёма сделал свои первые шаги!
In pursuit of learning the free and open GPU programming language, GLES2, I’ve written a particle simulation that attempts to simulate 8 billion particles, inspired by the number of people alive today.
More details: Democracy
In my pursuit of learning the free and open standard GPU programming language, GLES2, I’ve written the beginning of a small 3D grid-based physical simulation that includes water, dirt, sunlight, and hopefully in the future, growing plants.
See current details: Tree
I took the time over the past week to watch all 3 episodes, 6 hours, of Ken Burns’ PBS documentary on the Holocaust. Parallels were drawn between the United States’ expansion to the West as a white Christian peoples genocide of the native American peoples, which served as inspiration for Germany’s expansion to the East led by Hitler as a white Christian peoples genocide of Jewish and other peoples. The documentary points out that Hitler was inspired by eugenics and segregationist laws in the United States that were used to keep black people from integrating into society. According to Burns, the world watched and denied immigration to Jewish refugees before, during, and after the second world war, even after it was publicly known that over 6 million Jewish people had been murdered at industrial death camps across Europe. The documentary shows footage of United States citizens chanting “Build That Wall” to keep Jewish refugees out. The documentary shows footage of German citizens chanting “Make Germany Great Again” just before they organized the murder of the Jewish people while the world watched. It documents that not a single country in the world would allow significant immigration of Jewish refugees to escape the Holocaust. The point is made that antisemitism has not gone away since.
The documentary focuses on the Holocaust as an example of a larger trend. The current Unites States Republican party represents Anarcho-capitalist Libertarians whom have teamed up with Trump whom represents the White Christian Nationalists whom have the heterophobic Proud Boys that fight for them and whom stormed the United States capital, tried to implement authoritarian rule and throw out United States democracy on January 6th, 2021. This is not a Christian idea. This is not a Jewish idea. This is not a white or black idea. This is not a racial or religious idea. This is not a nationalist idea. This idea is about money. This idea is about capital. I am grateful to Ken Burns and PBS for creating and releasing this film at this appropriate time and making these analogies so apparent to such a broad audience. I highly recommend taking the time to watch this documentary.
Baby boy Artemiy “Artyom” “Tyoma” “Tyomushka” Morgan at 1 day old rocking out to his hearing test in the hospital. (Мальчик Артемий «Артем» «Тёма» «Тёмушка» Морган в 1 день раскачивается на слуховой тест в больнице.)
Born (Pождённый): Nov. 30, 2021 (Ноя 30, 2021)
Mom Nina Morgan and baby boy Artemiy “Artyom” “Tyoma” “Tyomushka” Morgan and dad Bo Morgan are all home, happy and healthy.
Мама Нина Морган и мальчик Артемий «Артем», «Тёма», «Тёмушка» Морган и папа Бо Морган все дома, счастливы и здоровы.
Today I’ve accepted a job developing Artificial Intelligence for Apple. Apple’s previously publicly disclosed description of the position follows:
Job Description: Siri Advanced Development, AI Project Lead
Job Summary
This position is for a technical, hands-on, senior project leader in AI projects and applications.
This position offers the right person a chance to play a central part in the next revolution in human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence. They’ll contribute to a product that is redefining computing. They’ll be part of a team that’s creating groundbreaking technology for large scale systems, using spoken language and artificial intelligence. They’ll work with the people who created the intelligent assistant that helps millions of people get things done. They’ll be working in the Siri Advanced Development team, at Apple.
The Siri Advanced Development team is looking for exceptional technical leaders with AI and machine learning skills to drive the definition and creation of new user experiences with Siri.
Key Qualifications
Advanced degree in CS, AI, or ML.
At least 10 years experience in inventing new categories of application and user experience.
Experience with a variety of languages and development environments and tools, including Java, Objective C, and Python.
Familiarity with Unix and Git is extremely important.
Able to work closely with software engineers, at an extremely detailed level.
Experience with User Experience design and evaluation (including interaction design and information design, but not necessarily graphical design).
Outstanding communication and presentation skills.
Must work well in a fast-moving, team-oriented, collaborative environment, and must be able to mentor and guide others.
Job Description
If hired, you will primarily be responsible for designing new categories of intelligent assistance, and for driving forward on the project that delivers on those designs. Your skills must cover both client-side concerns (user experience, etc) and server-side concerns (scalable AI ‘reasoning’ systems, etc).
To succeed in this role, you must be a strong visionary, architect, computer scientist, and user experience advocate. You must be willing and able to “jump in” to coding, as required. You need to be a creative problem solver and mentor who thrives in a fast-paced environment, working across teams and organizations. You must love creating an elegant user experience and tackling seemingly impossible problems.
You Want To Work For This Group
As part of the overall Siri group, Siri Advanced Development expands the technology and design envelope for new intelligent components and multi-modal user experiences at Apple. There is no more exciting place to be, at Apple, or anywhere else in the world.
Education
B.S in Computer Science.
Advanced degree (PhD preferred) in CS or AI.
Experience with basic and applied research in AI extremely helpful (authoring peer-reviewed journal articles).
I am honored to have guest lectured for Brian Kane‘s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Design class at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) on September 15th, 2016. My talk is titled “The Storytelling Machine”, which is a play on Marvin Minsky’s “The Emotion Machine” 6-layered cognitive architectural theory of mind.
Abstract: Why is AI such an ancient, romantic, and magical human story? What do humans need and want? I will present a story of Artificial Intelligence that emphasizes that the answers to these questions come down to what I will refer to as “a good story”. Taking these questions from the perspective of Marvin Minsky’s “Society of Mind” and “Emotion Machine” theories of mind, I present what I believe is a good story of human understanding of human thinking, which is a beautiful and intricately ornate, deep and powerful story of human goals and self-understanding. Stories can be seen as the fundamental unit of human thought. Storytelling and story understanding, being the foundation of human cognition, involving all aspects of human intelligence from the built-in reactive forms of interactions with the physical world, to learned habitual forms of thinking, to deliberate planned thinking processes that create plans toward goals, gives us a grounded mathematical basis in goal-oriented problem solving for understanding the myriad forms of clear emotions and social relationships that designers and artists are beginning to communicate through a computational medium to their audiences in a new interactive domain of computational storytelling. As these basic forms of artificial intelligence technology are developed and become successful start-ups in the business world, researchers and practitioners in education, medicine, and entertainment industries are beginning to build the top two layers of Marvin Minsky’s 6-layered theory of mind: (5) the self-reflective, and (6) the self-consciously reflective layers of human cognition.
I am honored to have given a keynote talk at the AI Startups Conference in San Francisco on May 25th, 2016. My talk is titled “A Cognitive Architectural Map of AI Startup Ideas.”
Talk Abstract: When you are thinking of what new type of AI algorithm will bring a greater range of human assistance, it helps to have a map of which types of human cognition have already been proposed as theories, engineered, implemented, and tested. Many researchers and practitioners in the field of AI specialize in one or two or three primary areas of focus, while not thinking as much about the various other related fields of study that as a whole, comprise human understanding of human cognition. Seeing the distribution of research in the cognitive sciences as a whole gives us an interesting view of what problems currently require solutions. For example, medicine is a strong human need so we are not surprised to see cognitive sciences related to medical disorders highly represented. Medicine may be the path to immortality, so might as well invest now. I think of Artificial Intelligence as a field that develops computational understanding of perceiving, thinking, learning, acting and associated processes. Where can the next intelligence boost come from? This is the age old question for any start-up: what will be the next great technology boom and how do we get out ahead of it? Humans exhibit a wide range of intelligences that are ripe for computational modelling.
Нина and I attended Marvin Minsky’s Remembrance this week at Stanford. I can’t thank Ted Selker and Henry Lieberman enough for organizing such a valuable event. There were many great stories shared by some of Marvin’s close friends. I had the honor of giving a two minute speech, which I’ve copied here:
Marvin was one of my imprimers, up there with my parents and my siblings. Because he didn’t like the idea of grades, he gave all of his students A’s when he started teaching, and MIT needed to tell him that was against the rules. Marvin didn’t care for thoughtless rules. I’ll tell you four things that Marvin said to me that changed my life.
- Don’t research something if many other people are already researching it. Become an expert in a new field.
- Breakthroughs are rarely made by groups of people. Breakthroughs are usually made by a single person working alone.
- I don’t like happiness. I want people to be very unhappy that they don’t understand things like cosmic string theory.
- I am a member of a gang. My gang values thinking and intelligence.
Marvin is sometimes described as a very negative person by those who didn’t know him. Marvin thought of goals as problems to solve. He thought of happiness as the absence of goals. When Marvin said that he didn’t like happiness with a mischievous glint in his eye, his listener was confused how a person could be so happy about unhappiness. Marvin believed in layers of problem solving. At one layer, he was debugging the minds of his listeners, while at a layer above, he was happily observing his own problem solving process. But even according to Marvin’s own reflective theory, adding one layer of reflective thought to any situation will always allow for that playful glint of happiness. Marvin was one of the most happily reflective individuals that I knew.
In a lecture, Marvin described himself as being a member of a gang. I’ve learned that members of Marvin’s gang are strong willed, independent, and stand up and recognize the value in a lonely intellect. At MIT, I studied under Marvin in a tough environment. Now, I am strong and happy, but there was a time when I was falling through the cracks at MIT and Marvin’s gang reached down, picked me up, and helped me to the finish line of my PhD. I’d like to thank Walter Bender, Henry Lieberman, Joe Paradiso, Gerry Sussman, Ted Selker, and Michael Cox for supporting me when I needed it. I see Marvin’s greatest legacy being in addition to his great technical achievements. I see his greatest legacy being his loving gang of family, friends, and colleagues.