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Author: Mark H

Information technologist, knowledge management expert, and writer. Academic background in knowledge management, social and natural sciences, information technologies, learning, educational technologies, and philosophy. Married with one adult child who's married and has a teenage daughter.
Request for topic categories hierarchies

Request for topic categories hierarchies

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BMAI members, I’m integrating a file-sharing capability into this site. For it and posts, I would like to implement a hierarchy of topical categories. A structured set of terms (taxonomy) will make it easier for us to categorize new content and find existing content. If you are aware of existing taxonomies we might borrow from, please provide links in comments to this post. I propose we start with a relatively high-level taxonomy of categories (limited to two or three levels) and…

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Future discussion topic recommendations

Future discussion topic recommendations

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Several of us met on Labor Day with the goal of identifying topics for at least five future monthly meetings. (Thanks, Dave N, for hosting!) Being the overachievers we are, we pushed beyond the goal. Following are the resulting topics, which will each have its own article on this site where we can begin organizing references for the discussion: sex-related influences on emotional memory gross and subtle brain differences (e.g., “walls of the third ventricle – sexual nuclei”) “Are there…

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Gender role bias in AI algorithms

Gender role bias in AI algorithms

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Should it surprise us that human biases find their way into human-designed AI algorithms trained using data sets of human artifacts? Machine-learning software trained on the datasets didn’t just mirror those biases, it amplified them. If a photo set generally associated women with cooking, software trained by studying those photos and their labels created an even stronger association. https://www.wired.com/story/machines-taught-by-photos-learn-a-sexist-view-of-women?mbid=nl_82117_p2&CNDID=24258719

‘Entangled’ consciousness app approaching release

‘Entangled’ consciousness app approaching release

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The Global Consciousness Project, Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS, for which I was once Hawaii state coordinator) and Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) are collaborating to release a smart phone app, Entangled, that aims to Monitor your mind’s influence on your physical environment Let you take part in large-scale consciousness experiments Support ongoing development of a”consciousness technology” platform for developers and artists Monitor global consciousness data in real-time Before you think I’ve gone off the deep end, let me explain that I…

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Giant neuron found encircling and intraconnecting mouse brain

Giant neuron found encircling and intraconnecting mouse brain

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A neuron that encircles the mouse brain emanates from the claustrum (an on/off switch for awareness) and has dense links with both brain hemispheres. Scientists including Francis Crick and Christoph Koch have speculated that the claustrum may play a role in enabling conscious thought. https://www.sciencealert.com/a-giant-neuron-has-been-found-wrapped-around-the-entire-circumference-of-the-brain  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1569501/ (Crick and Koch academic article) We’ve frequently discussed how self-aware consciousness likely arises not from any single brain structure or signal, but from complex, recursive (reentrant), synchronized signaling among many structures organized into functional regions. (Did I get…

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Embodied consciousness and the Flow Genome Project

Embodied consciousness and the Flow Genome Project

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In line with our July joint meeting with the NM Tech Council, I’m reading a fascinating book (Stealing Fire) on the variety of ways humans can experience states of flow (optimal states of consciousness and performance). The authors, Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal, explain the significance of flow and introduce their Flow Dojo concept in the videos linked below. Applying methods for achieving flow is often categorized in the consciousness hacking movement, also called brain hacking. What is Flow (6+ minutes) The Flow Dojo (4+ minutes)…

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Computer metaphor not accurate for brain’s embodied cognition

Computer metaphor not accurate for brain’s embodied cognition

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It’s common for brain functions to be described in terms of digital computing, but this metaphor does not hold up in brain research. Unlike computers, in which hardware and software are separate, organic brains’ structures embody memories and brain functions. Form and function are entangled. Rather than finding brains to work like computers, we are beginning to design computers–artificial intelligence systems–to work more like brains.  https://www.wired.com/story/tech-metaphors-are-holding-back-brain-research/ 

Should AI agents’ voice interactions be more like our own? What effects should we anticipate?

Should AI agents’ voice interactions be more like our own? What effects should we anticipate?

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An article at Wired.com considers the pros and cons of making the voice interactions of AI assistants more humanlike. The assumption that more human-like speech from AIs is naturally better may prove as incorrect as the belief that the desktop metaphor was the best way to make humans more proficient in using computers. When designing the interfaces between humans and machines, should we minimize the demands placed on users to learn more about the system they’re interacting with? That seems…

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