CBO and the Next Ten Years

It is worth a look at the CBO report on the next ten years.

The Three Body Problem: Or Could AI Get us to the Moon and Back?

I have been considering the whole issue of AI. You see I have been looking at this for about fifty plus years now. In fact, when I arrived at Warner in 1980 or so, my boss, Gus Hauser, sent me a note I believe the third day to ask to report to him on AI. I knew Patrick Winston at MIT, he had published a book on AI from his perspective, but I also know Minsky, Papert and others, so I had been at the AI watering hole. To me AI was just the name of a watering hole, not a thing unto itself. Thus Gus got my opinion. Skip ahead to 1986 and as the new Executive Director of Research at NYNEX, now Verizon, I was being pressured to develop a whole area in Neural Networks. I knew this area well, but I was also assured that the then current computer systems were inadequate.

You see, back in 1971 I had a brief sabbatical at Bell Labs trying to track Soviet subs. Massive data focused on pattern recognition. I tried larges scale data and deep learning algorithms. Did not work well. Fundamental problems existed in even gathering the data but that fact did nt skink in, it may have hampered their contract. Thank God the Soviets never attacked.

Now back in the mid-60s I spent time at the MIT Instrumentation Lab, working on guidance and navigation systems for Apollo and other projects. That is when I became enamored by the three body problem. The force on a three bodies and the resultant sets of equation can be determined as follows:

 and likewise for the other two accelerations. From the solutions of these three calculations we can determine the dynamics of a spacecraft going between the earth and the moon. Now these equations are a result of two of Newton's laws of gravity; (i) force mass and acceleration, and (ii) force, mass and distance.

Now let us consider how Newton may have approached this problem using massive amounts of data and neural networks. Namely let us assume Newton could not think but he was a great coder. So Newton sees this apple fall from the tree and he thinks that there may be something here he could use to predict lots of other things, such as the trajectory of a cannon used in battle. So Newton goes out and collects tons of data.

For example, since he has no underlying theory he must just collect whatever he can. He is interested in such things as inputs and outputs of this neural network so he must a priori define these elements. This is the first step. But, and this is critical, he can only measure what he can define and what he can measure with the tools available to him.

So Newton sits under the apple tree and gets hit on the head with a falling apple. He then wants to know why the apple fell and how fast it was going when it hits his head.

So what results would Newton like to get as the output of his neural network? They may be:

Speed of the apple when it hits his head

Time it takes to fall

Distance it fell from the branch

We of course must assume he has the tools to measure these things. But he does measure them and most likely with errors.

Also what inputs would Newton want to consider in his neural network as drivers of his outputs for which his neural network will determine from tons of data? They may be:

Temperature

Day of the week

Time of day

Color of his shoes

Species of tree

Amount of sunlight

Height of branch

Species of apple

Diameter of apple.

Weight of apple

Volume of the apple

Location of tree

Age of the tree

Latitude

Longitude

Angle of the sun

Color of the dress the Queen wore that day

and of course the list goes on. You see he has no idea what is driving his result so he just gathers tons of stuff he can measure just in case. Lacking a model he fills his network with "stuff" .

So now Newton goes out and spends days and weeks under apple trees, he recruits many others, under order of the King, to also sit under apple trees, and after a while half of England is sitting under apple trees measuring the stuff Newton wants to get. Tons of data, massive amounts of data arrive.

Alas Newton can enter this into his neural network and let it grind away. So what is the result? Does he get the equation? No, not at all, he now has a big machine that requires your to enter tons of data to determine the speed of the apple when it hist your head under a specific tree, falling from a specific height. Is there some equation? Nope! Just the machine. Did we solve the three body problem, not even close.

Now back to the three body problem. In my Apollo days we had a computer with 64K memory, yes computer geeks, 64K, not Meg, not Gig, not Tera, K. That meant we had to think "smart" and not "hard". We needed to viscerally understand that three body problem, when and where and how much to fire the rockets for return.

Now let us move this to health care, say cancer diagnosis, prognosis and treatment. We now move to the current date where we are trying to diagnose say a thyroid tumor. They come in several varieties, papillary, follicular, medullary, and others. Now each of those have some sub classes. Our output is three stages; diagnosis (what type), prognosis (knowing what type what is an outcome), and treatment (knowing the first two what should we do). Thus one can consider a three output system, and some of the outputs having a multiplicity of subtypes.

The input is now what we can measure, what we have tools to measure. That is an important fact to remember since as we progress in knowledge and in tools what we can measure today may be a small amount of what can be done in a decade. There is no underlying physical laws to enforce, just tons of data and hopefully an answer.

Now consider an alternative approach. Suppose as, first with Newton, we had his laws. Then all we need is to find k, and solve the complicated set of equations. That value could readily be found by a some what dumb neural net. That is called a system identifies. Been there done that. But we could use a well know system presentation of cancers, one where we identify a measure, call it n(x,t), where n is an Nx1 vector where each element is the local concentration of a cell of a specific genetic composition, say a melanocyte with BRAF V600, or RAS, or N-cadherin and all possibilities thereof. In fact here we have possibly hundreds of genetic profiles, starting with the most benign and to the most malignant. n(x,t) may be a 1000x1 vector, and it is a function of time and space.

Now we ask how does this state, genetic state if you will, change in time, and on average. Well we have demonstrated the following. The rate of change is equal to a diffusion state, a flow state, and a growth state. This is a fundamental law of any organic system. This is Newton's law for cells. We show this below and have presented it elsewhere.

Now if we were to collect massive amounts of data we could determine a, b, c as above and then it could lead us to diagnosis, prognosis and treatment. It becomes a system identification and in turn optimal control problem, namely identifying the offending gene progressions and identifying where and when to stop that process.

Thus AI should be more than blind data churning. For it may have led Newton to a law dominated by the color of the Queen's hats and not a function of the product of masses. AI, to properly work, must have a set of underlying verifiable paradigms, models, which need further specificity. It should not just be a black box which tells us nothing about reality.

And the Economists Keep Rolling On!

The Worthwhile Canadian Initiative site lay forth the most obfuscated discussion of carbon tax ever. Some of the folks there are not bad but there is not an engineer in the batch. Folks, it is a technology problem, not an economics problem. Tax Cancer, Tax War, Tax Poverty, just keep using your tax "hammer" and all we do is annoy people and enrich the politicians.

This problem is readily solved with technology. We solved yellow fever and so too can we solve this.

God, let us pray that the economists somehow disappear. Please dear Lord!

And in a Technology Review article, hardly a technology rich rag in my opinion, an author risks being ostracized by stating:
 
That suggests the entire nation should run on wind, solar, and maybe some geothermal electricity. It’s an absurd strategy for rapidly and affordably reaching the low-to-no-carbon energy system required to limit the threat of climate change. Everything we know from recent research indicates that nuclear, carbon capture, and hydropower are essential, and that carbon pricing could be among the most powerful tools for driving the transformation.

At least this is a start.

Happy 100th!

Today would have been my father's 100th birthday. He left me with such pearls of wisdom as "Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance" Such advice saved me many times. He also left me with: "Don't "who" me, I don't see any feathers on your a.."

Born in Brooklyn, mother dies at young age and all seven children were sent to Mt Loretto orphanage, then released after ten years and schooled on Staten Island, off to the Navy for WW II, then NYC Police and then his own business. Never would have started my own companies if I had not have seen him succeed.

So Happy 100!

If All You Have is a Hammer....

Here they go again: (supported by those Harvard folks)

I. A carbon tax offers the most cost-effective lever to reduce carbon emissions at the scale and speed that is necessary. By correcting a well-known market failure, a carbon tax will send a powerful price signal that harnesses the invisible hand of the marketplace to steer economic actors towards a low-carbon future. II. A carbon tax should increase every year until emissions reductions goals are met and be revenue neutral to avoid debates over the size of government. A consistently rising carbon price will encourage technological innovation and large-scale infrastructure development. It will also accelerate the diffusion of carbon-efficient goods and services. III. A sufficiently robust and gradually rising carbon tax will replace the need for various carbon regulations that are less efficient. Substituting a price signal for cumbersome regulations will promote economic growth and provide the regulatory certainty companies need for long- term investment in clean-energy alternatives. IV. To prevent carbon leakage and to protect U.S. competitiveness, a border carbon adjustment system should be established. This system would enhance the competitiveness of American firms that are more energy-efficient than their global competitors. It would also create an incentive for other nations to adopt similar carbon pricing. V. To maximize the fairness and political viability of a rising carbon tax, all the revenue should be returned directly to U.S. citizens through equal lump-sum rebates. The majority of American families, including the most vulnerable, will benefit financially by receiving more in “carbon dividends” than they pay in increased energy prices.

Now just think.

I. There is no real evidence that taxing reduces anything. Especially if demand is inelastic. Please consider your cleaning staff dear Harvard. There is a great deal of evidence that technology solves this problem. Again, not something any economist seems to grasp.

II. So keep taxing until we drive down the poor folks who cannot afford it. Truly beastly.

III Now you folks are talking about our Government. They never saw anything they cannot regulate. Starting with the Whiskey Rebellion!

IV I thought these folks were against tariffs. Enough said here.

V The Government giving back! What iota of evidence do we have here. At best it is income redistribution.

And my poor grandson is studying economics! This whole proposal makes no sense, at least from a real world perspective.

The Chinese will solve this while we are taxing our civilization out of existence. Where is Marx when we need him?

Now imagine if we applied this theory to say cancer. Cancer is bad. We want to eradicate cancer. So tax every person who gets cancer, if they get sicker, raise the taxes, if they die, confiscate all they have left.

Will that cure cancer? What do you think. Remember, do not ask an economist! 

And one more thing, the above Manifesto reminds me of the many that were produced by the Marxists during the turn of the last century. Guess some folks never learn.

Microsoft At It Again?

It seems that whoever is running Microsoft really must hate the customers, in my opinion. The most recent disaster is the Windows 10 KB4023057 download. You see this was done several months ago but the wizards at Microsoft tried again and the result is failures to update.

One of the web sites discussing this notes:

It looks like Windows 10 KB4023057 has been re-released and the update appears to be causing unexpected issues on some machines. We have come across some isolated reports from Twitter and Reddit which revealed that Windows 10 KB4023057 installation fails. A thread on Reddit claims that the system downloaded the update but the installation of KB4023057 failed with error 0x80070643....“Windows Update just tried (and failed) to install a “KB4023057″ update just now. I’m wondering, what on earth does it do? I can’t seem to find a post on the official Microsoft website about it, and any news articles I find of it (from MONTHS ago) talk about it messing with files in the user directory and network settings,” the Redditor explained.

Just think how many billions of hours are wasted remedying  Microsoft's blunders. They have no shame, no credibility, in my opinion. It really in my opinion calls for a legal action of some type. So far Android has never been such a mess.

Intellectual Dissonance

Let us for the sake of argument make the following assumptions.

1. CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing
2. Increased CO2 will raise temperatures
3. Increased temperatures will have detrimental effects on life on the planet
4. The fundamental, principal and primary cause of increased CO2 is human use of fossil fuels

Now that I believe is the general argument. The problem then is; how do we mitigate the detrimental effects? One guesses that it is simply the reduction of human actions resulting in the emission of CO2 if one accepts the above.

Thus how does one reduce CO2 emissions? There are two ways:

1. Reduce use of fossil fuels and the like which emit them.
2. Capture and isolate the CO2 emitted by fossil fuels so they do not enter the atmosphere

Namely the classic law of nature:

Input-Output=Net Accumulation

If we want no or negative accumulation then we need less input, namely fossil fuel usage, OR more output, which is CO2 extraction by technical means. Somehow the second step is forgotten.

Now how does one accomplish a reduction in Output? If one is an economist or politician you tax it. The old phrase is; "if all you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail" So tax it. That my friends just means more "food" to the monster.

The second approach is; how does one accomplish Output? Simply, one uses the mass technical means available to us. Send a man, person, to the moon, no problem. Extract CO2, well we already have dozens of ways. So why not just do it? No taxes from this approach.

Now Nature has a piece which states:

Imposing a cost on carbon is the most economically efficient way to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and keep global temperatures within the targets of the Paris climate agreement. If heavy emitters must pay the most, they will shift to cleaner practices. Many jurisdictions have introduced carbon taxes (including Chile, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden) and emissions-trading schemes (such as those in California, the European Union, Quebec, Ontario and South Korea). About 20% of global greenhouse-gas emissions are covered, or soon will be. But almost half of those are still priced below US$10 per tonne of carbon dioxide — too low to make a dent in global emissions. A worldwide carbon-pricing system would speed up emissions cuts and prevent carbon-intensive industries from relocating to avoid charges. It would ensure that carbon pricing is effective and emissions are reduced at the lowest possible cost. 

Now the principal author is allegedly an assistant professor of economics. Remember the hammer metaphor. Why in the good Lord's name in a science journal do we have this unopposed view. Tax not Technology! No wonder the French are in revolt.

Yikes, Another Global Calamity

Nature reports on the ever more faster moving magnetic North Pole. They note:

Second, the motion of the north magnetic pole made the problem worse. The pole wanders in unpredictable ways that have fascinated explorers and scientists since James Clark Ross first measured it in 1831 in the Canadian Arctic. In the mid-1990s it picked up speed, from around 15 kilometres per year to around 55 kilometres per year. By 2001, it had entered the Arctic Ocean — where, in 2007, a team including Chulliat landed an aeroplane on the sea ice in an attempt to locate the pole. In 2018, the pole crossed the International Date Line into the Eastern Hemisphere. It is currently making a beeline for Siberia.

Now the German Press notes a bit of excitement:

By 2018, scientists at US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the British Geological Survey realized they needed to release an updated WMM because it had become "so inaccurate that it was about to exceed the acceptable limit for navigational errors." The wandering pole is driven by unpredictable changes in liquid iron inside the Earth. Due to the US government shutdown, scientists have been unable to release the updated WMM. Instead, they have pushed back the date to January 30, hoping that the government will be running by then. But it's unclear if that will be the case.

The issue is that GPS is independent of the magnetic pole so who cares and second a shift in the pole has  real issues not yet discussed, such as the flipping of the Pole to the South. Global Warming anyone?

Rosa Redux

A hundred years ago today Rosa Luxemburg was killed in Germany. The Spartacists had finally met the incipient German militarists in the beginning of the Revolution of 1918-1919.

It is interesting to review their demands (see Waldman, The Spartacist Uprising, Marquette, 1958):

Immediate release of all persons who because of their fight for the interests of the proletariat are suffering in prisons and jails, in protective custody or serving a sentence
Immediate abrogation of the state of siege.
Immediate cancellation of the compulsory labor law.
 
Beyond these, the proletariat must request:

Annulment of all war loans without compensation.
Expropriation of the entire bank capital, mines and foundries; substantial reduction of working hours, establishment of minimum wages.
Expropriation of all large estates and middle-sized estates. Transfer of the direction of production to the delegates of agricultural workers and small farmers.

Decisive changes in military affairs, such as:

a. Granting to soldiers the right of free association and assembly for matters pertaining to official and non-official business.
b. Abrogation of the right of military superiors to discipline subordinates; discipline will be maintained by soldier delegates.
c. Abrogation of courts-martial.
d. Transfer of military superiors by majority decision of the subordinates.
 
Transfer of the distribution of food to representatives of the
workers.
 
Abolition of individual states and dynasties.

Just some thoughts if one can read this in the context of today's political fights.

Born In/On Staten Island

The NY Times announces this week's new program, "Made In Staten Island". I give up on prepositions. But the point is that having mastered some six languages a bit, plus classic Latin and little classic Greek, words count. Ask a good contract lawyer or divorce lawyer. Slip up on a preposition and you have big problems.

Now I was born "on" Staten Island, above ground in a hospital, so I was told. In my early years I spent time at the Pro Seminary for Franciscans on Todt Hill, now owned by some other religious organization. But being there, and St Francis was Italian just to remind folks, we saw a great many come and go. On Todt Hill, "death" hill in Dutch, we also had a lot of neighbors akin to what is alleged in this series, yet they were often older, family oriented, both types of families, and their children were often sent to the best schools. The worker bees, my phrase not theirs, were often in Brooklyn. Back then there was no bridge, and any escape route was via New Jersey.

But on Staten Island then it was bi-lingual, English and Italian. Sunday Mass was in English and another in Italian. But to my surprise decades later, my Italian was not Florentine, it was Sicilian. Accent, phrases and the like.

As for crimes, I was a Lifeguard in charge of the Ocean Breeze area, and once a week some dead body would wash ashore having been dropped off the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn. There was no crime on Staten Island, back then folks were careful of where they lived.

But it should be interesting to see how they present my old home town. It certainly was not Kansas.

Privacy?

Despite the allegations to the contrary, there is no Constitutional Right of Privacy. There are laws, but no right. A while back I wrote a paper on Privacy in the Internet Environment, in 2002, before the issues had become red hot. At the time no one seemed interested. I presented to colleagues in the White House Staff on one hand and to my Russian partners on the other hand. The Russians were interested. But that was almost two decades ago.

Now the EFF, an excellent organization that all should defend, has noted the following:

The U.S. government sends a lot of emails. Like any large, modern organization, it wants to “optimize” for “user engagement” using “analytics” and “big data.” In practice, that means tracking the people it communicates with—secretly, thoroughly, and often, insecurely....Every time I open this email, my device sends Granicus my email address and a unique identifier for the email that I opened. Granicus knows exactly who I am, which email I’m reading, and when I opened it—and potentially, so might a network observer...The email also uses link shimming, the practice of obfuscating URLs in emails for tracking purposes, to track which links you click on. (Link shimming, and link tracking more generally, is commonly used on the web by search engines and social media companies.) Take a look at a sample link from the newsletter....The practice of link shimming poses a subtle security risk as well: it makes users more susceptible to phishing. If users are led to click links that look like garbage, they are much more likely to be duped into clicking links from less-than-reputable sources. 91% of cyber attacks start with a phishing email, including many attacks on the government itself. That means that training users to trust insecure, illegible links to unrecognizable domains is a serious problem.

So now we have the Government, and everyone else tracking such things as if you opened it, read it, printed it, and who you may have sent it to. All done on an open insecure transmission which not only gives the Government the information but anyone else who may try to get it.

At some time there should be some conversation regarding privacy, a real one, please!