You don’t have to read it, but you just might learn something.
Leading Thought
Prime
These Women Tried to Warn Us About AI
Interesting to see Rolling Stone reporting on the problems with AI and, like other articles, citing the paper On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? from Timnit Gebru (former co-lead of Google’s ethical AI team) et. al. While it is an interesting side note to talk about the creators of much existing AI systems, and their now we are on the brink of destruction rhetoric, this is no where near the threat that we need to be worried about from AI. This article gets it right focusing on the nearer-term threat to anyone who is not a straight White male.
It is no secret that many things in our society are based on studies around White men. From drugs, to photography, and now AI, alarm bells have been ringing for some time about the negative impact on everyone else. We’ve seen it in facial recognition misidentifying people of color, in camera software not being able to focus on darker skinned people without excessive lighting, and with drug therapies – or just general drug research – being centered on white males. This is the true near-term threat we face from AI systems: bias built-in because the data these systems are trained on is itself the product of years of biased information.
Also in question is how companies are getting their training data. While I posted an article about the damage being done to people who filter and tag training data (Exclusive: OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour to Make ChatGPT Less Toxic), more surprising, if not unexpected, is the there is no such thing as a free lunch reminder of Google Books digitization project. What from the outside may have seemed to be an altruistic endeavor, of course was likely only a cover for creating vast amounts of training data for their AI systems.
Once again, no matter which side of the AI debate you think you fall on, this is an important article everyone should read.
Ninety-nine percent of Fortune 500 companies use automated tools in their hiring process, which can lead to problems when résumé scanners, chatbots, and one-way video interviews introduce bias. A now-defunct AI recruiting tool created by Amazon taught itself male candidates were preferable, after being trained on mostly male résumés. Biased data can have widespread effects that touch the lives of real people.
Worried about the rise of AI? Here is the research you should know about.
Good read here beginning with the four fallacies of artificial intelligence.The author takes a dive into what AI truly is, and why even the idea of stochastic parrots is flawed. Included are some additional looks at the work that has been done to expose the problems with AI – specially as used in making decisions about human beings – and a bit about the solutions to overcome them. The problem, as the author points out, is that the solutions are problematic in and of themselves.
While this is a fairly lengthy read, it is definitely worth the time to read it simply because the author does a great job of looking at the minutiae and explaining in plain and simple terms.
By first claiming to be non-profit, Open AI justified scraping lots of data from the internet and by later taking in investment, they got financing to turn that data in to massive potential profits. Similarly, Stability AI fund another non-profit organisation (LAION) to scrape image and text data for their models.
IBM’s evolution: embracing Design Thinking for a user-centric future
Design Thinking is a way of solving user problems by empathizing with them – truly placing one’s self in the shoes of the user – to understand what they really need. This not only leads to better product design but more accessible design.
This is a good look at how IBM realized the importance of the customer and went all in on design thinking, creating first one Design Studio that brought together designers, engineers, and stakeholders, to now having dozens across the world. The collaboration and empowerment of teams to experiment and evolve designs has lead IBM to receive multiple design awards.
If you are in the business of building products for a client – and aren’t we all, really – then this should be an article you read. If for no other reason, read it to understand how design thinking leads to more inclusive products which, in general, make life better for everyone.
With empathy-driven research and usability testing, IBM’s designers embarked on immersive journeys into the minds and hearts of their customers, including those with diverse needs and disabilities. The result was not only aesthetically pleasing products but also experiences that left a lasting impression on all users, regardless of their abilities.
I think, therefore I YAML
Interesting thoughts here on Developer Relations, what and why it is. Using the paradigm of philosophers and scientists – those that generate ideas, and those that test them – the author paints a good picture of the role. If you’ve been curious about developer relations as a career, or just want to better understand, this is worth a look.
And of course, just like every Scientist is a Philosopher, every Engineer is a DevReller, when they attune their perception toward users and communities.
Coming Soon
C# Corner Annual Conference 2023
(October 09-14 | Delhi NCR)
While this conference is in India (not sure if there will be a virtual option or not), I wanted to bring attention to it because this kid I used to work with, Joe Guadagno, will be speaking here. If you are a c# Dev and are going to be in India, or know someone in India who is a C# Dev, give this look. If a virtual option comes up, I’ll update the link.
Humble Bundles
CompTIA and Cisco Cert Prep Book Bundle
New offering from Humble Bundle benefitting charity:water – and, if you don’t know it’s there, there is an Adjust Donation button that will let you give more of the take to charity! For a minimum donation of $25 you get 12 titles, including:
- CompTIA Network+ N10-008 Certification Guide - Second Edition
- Cisco Certified CyberOps Associate 200-201 Certification Guide
- CompTIA Server+ Certification Guide
- CompTIA Security+ Certification Guide
- CompTIA Linux+ Certification Guide
- And more!
Math for Programmers 2023 Book Bundle
New offering from Humble Bundle benefitting Trees, Water & People – and, if you don’t know it’s there, there is an Adjust Donation button that will let you give more of the take to charity! For a minimum donation of $25 you get 21 titles, including:
- Grokking Functional Programming
- Math for Programmers 1E
- Secret Key Cryptography
- Real-World Cryptography
- Grokking AI Algorithms
- And more!
Microsoft Press Exam Ref Certification MEGA Book Bundle
New offering from Humble Bundle benefitting Women Who Code – and, if you don’t know it’s there, there is an Adjust Donation button that will let you give more of the take to charity! For a minimum donation of $25 you get 20 titles, including:
- Exam Ref SC-100 Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect
- Exam Ref AZ-900 Microsoft Azure Fundamentals 3rd Edition
- Exam Ref AZ-500 Microsoft Azure Security Technologies 2nd Edition
- Exam Ref SC-900 Microsoft Security, Compliance, and Identity Fundamentals
- Exam Ref SC-200 Microsoft Security Operations Analyst
- And more!
Project Managers Toolkit Software Bundle
New offering from Humble Bundle benefitting Alzheimers Research UK – and, if you don’t know it’s there, there is an Adjust Donation button that will let you give more of the take to charity! For a minimum donation of $25 you get 30 Pluralsight courses, including:
- Product Management Crash Course and Trello Fundamentals
- Kanban for Software Project Management
- Agile Retrospective: Continuous Improvement and Kaizen with Scrum
- Lean Management: Just-In-Time Training and Certification
- The Complete Project Management Fundamentals Course
- And more!
DE&I
The crisis of missing Black women in America is not a hoax
The idea of anyone going missing is terrifying. It conjures up thoughts of what if that was my…? . But the reality is that the vast majority of missing persons reporting – at least reporting that captures major headlines – is about white women. Not men, and generally not people of color. This opinion piece is a good reminder that we need to do better about raising awareness on all the people who go missing every year, not just those who fit a particular image.
According to The Grio, Black women make up 13 percent of the population nationwide but account for 35 percent of all missing women.
DevOps
DevOpsDays Chicago 2023
Recordings of the two days of live streams. Schedule can be found here.
Infosec
NYPD is monitoring Telegram amid concerns racially motivated extremists are plotting to use new hacking device called Flipper Zero to attack energy grids
Racially and Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism (REMVE) has been on the rise for some time, from mass shooters, to (potentially) the attack on the power grid in North Carolina. Now, the NYPD counterterrorism unit is raising awareness that a ‘tool designed for researchers…to detect and highlight outdated hardware’ called the Flipper Zero may be used by REMVEs to attempt a breach of infrastructure.
While the chances of this happening should be low, the bigger worry about a tool like this is its ability to brute-force attack gates and hotel room doors (this is a nice post about Portable Door Locks (PDLs) to help defeat such tactics). The more you know…
In February 2022, three ‘white supremacists’ were arrested for planning to attack power grids in an attempt to stoke racial division. Their ploy involved fentanyl-filled suicide necklaces and assault rifles.
Teams
Motivating Employees from Different Generations
Do you know the differences in how Baby Boomers think from Gen Z? What about X and the Millenials? While any post like this will necessarily use stereotypes, there is some validity in the observations. Worth a read if for nothing else to give you a starting point, or maybe new tactics, on working with and motivating the people you work with.