Rutabagas ( ‘swede’) and Artificial Intelligence

Recent intelligence suggests that rutabagas (‘swede’ or ‘turnip’ to some) may be on the war path. But don’t worry, the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is standing by to defend you.

The government forces have been accumulating heavy artillery to counter any rutabaga threat. According to the Wall Street Journal, between 2004 and 2015, APHIS spent $4.8 million buying shotguns, rifles, night vision goggles, propane cannons, liquid explosives, pyro supplies, buckshot, drones, infrared scopes and other gear to counter any turnip insurrection.

swede

So, no need to fear getting bowled over by a horde of unruly rutabagas. None at all. Moreover, APHIS is just one of many government agencies that look after your security and safety. If you could count them all, whatever the number is, it would probably increase the next day. And as to the number of armed officers in that multitude of government officials, the Daily Wire claims that “the arming of federal government employees shows the number of non-Defense Department federal officers carrying firearms (200,000) now exceeds the number of U.S. Marines (182,000).”

Clearly, the arts of counter-intelligence, counter-insurrection planning, and all other counter-activities must be honed and expanded each day and that includes being fully weaponized with anything that Mrs. Colt, Ruger, Smith, Wesson and their brethren may have to offer. I’m sure you realize the level and significance of the threats. A simple color scheme just doesn’t do justice to the modern multi-faceted levels of potential activists, eco-warriors, fanatics, insurgents, lunatics, rebels, and other assorted do-no-gooders.

Indeed, there appears to be an infinite variety of potential threats from all sides. Just look at the latest news revelations about cyber-hacks that exposed the vulnerability of the whole internet system with having millions of connected “smart” devices. Can you imagine, that could possibly enable “smart” turnips to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to worm their nasty ways into your easy-going conscience or even to plan an open attack.

I think that proves my point: AI is going to be the next great wave for a while.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI is up and coming, just look at the number of articles mentioning AI in the news lately.  One reason, as I surmise, is Stephen Hawking’s thought (and fear) that AI-learning-robots may overtake human spirit and control society in the future. Surely, a frightening thought. The Machine Intelligence Research Institute claims to do “foundational mathematical research to ensure smarter-than-human artificial intelligence has a positive impact.”

Of course, AI isn’t all that new, just the recent proliferation of news items about its great promise. Among such promises are not just autonomous cars and refrigerators that can call the next drone-enabled delivery service to place an order of your favorite food items for delivery to your front door. Now we also learn that “intelligent” electronic humanoid sex robots and ‘teledildonics’ are in the offing. Both are the subjects of a conference to be held in next month in London. This could just lead to the kibosh of the world’s oldest trade.

On a more serious angle, AI is used by a multitude of private and public computer programs that can enable you to do a lot of things in a hurry. For example, your cell phone texting algorithms will give you a selection of common words to go with the letters which you type in, some of those suggestions are certainly helpful in completing a sentence but others make you wonder whether you are on the same planet. My experience with such auto-complete software is that they are useful only with common simple words in very short sentences.

Auto-Complete Software

An interesting example of the total nonsense that such auto-complete programs can produce is shown by the Christian Science Monitor in a post on “Nuclear physics conference accepts nonsensical ‘autocomplete’ study.” Just use a few of the current scientific buzzwords in a random combination and hit the auto-complete command. The program may write an abstract or a whole publication in a few seconds. The jumble-mumble is indecipherable nonsense but may sound highly intellectual to some readers.

Some of the AI text-checking programs are useful for flagging obvious errors like two identical words in a row but even the best spell- and grammar-checking utilities cannot differentiate between the correct and false uses of “there” and “their” and similar types of words with different meaning but nearly identical sounds when spoken. This problem is most apparent with texts that are created via speech recognition programs.

Undoubtedly, all these AI-based programs are slowly improving in their performance but we are still far-far away from perfection when it comes to interaction with the human mind. In contrast, when it comes to well-defined mathematical equations, AI can produce astounding results. I’ve used such algorithms myself already for two decades in my scientific work that led me to identify significant errors in widely used public databases. This exemplifies one of the most important conditions in using any AI-based system: the training dataset has to be correct—absolutely.

The best algorithm can produce useful results only when trained with reliable input. If that is not the case, then the old GIGO adage applies.

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Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser — Bio and Archives

Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser is author of CONVENIENT MYTHS, the green revolution – perceptions, politics, and facts convenientmyths.com

Dr. Kaiser can be reached at: [email protected]

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