In the late 60s and early 70s I had a small student office in the Linguistic Department at the University of Texas at Austin. That’s where I wrote my dissertation on the development of nasal vowels.
Next to me was the office of Jeffrey Elman, a fellow graduate student. I knew that he was working on something called “neural networks”, known also as “connection machines,” a field that was not taught in the department or anywhere at UT as far as I am aware.
Skeptical of received linguistic theory, I felt that Jeffrey was on a path leading to the understanding of language while I was not. Having fried my brain by majoring in philosophy as an undergraduate, I avoided semantics and even syntax (with all of Chomsky’s transformation rules) and huddled down at the phonological level (I didn’t have enough math to go all the way down to the phonetic level).
The video begins by describing the state of neural nets when I was still in graduate school and follows their development up to the present day. Each step is clearly explained and exciting to listen to even though I don’t have the mathematical language needed to read the papers that they’re based on.
Jeffrey’s contribution comes early on. I find his work amazing because his machine learned to identify word boundaries from streams of letters (e.g.,sentenceswithnospacesbetweenwords), something that we linguists could imagine no way to do.
I was even more excited when researchers introduced the idea of attention as a way to reduce the need for temporary memory. They might be using this word metaphorically but I suspect that the concept is surprisingly close to that of human attention. This is exciting because attention seems to be a fundamental component of what we mean by consciousness.
So why do I feel illiterate? Because I can’t read articles on neural networks, which are written in mathematical notation. After receiving my PhD I finally studied calculus and loved it as I prepared to study computer science. As a graduate student in UNC-CH’s computer science department, I wasn’t allowed to substitute a useless required math course used to subsidize professors who didn’t understand computers with two math courses that would have helped me understand neural networks.
A friend of mine sent me this link to an article by Albert Burneko, who tried, not entirely successfully, to mock Elon Musk.
Musk may be a high-functioning autistic (as he said on SNL) anti-semitic rightwing asshat, but the same week that he was being interviewed by Sorkin, he was finalizing a multi-billion dollar deal with Amazon to use his rockets.
Burneko derides the explosion of the SpaceX Starship but ignores the historic goal that Musk is shooting for here: as wikipedia says,
Starship is a two-stage super heavy lift launch vehicle and spacecraft under development by SpaceX. It is the heaviest, tallest and most powerful space launch vehicle to have flown. Starship is intended to be fully reusable, which means both stages will be recovered after a mission and reused.
Largest spacecraft ever? Reusable? C’mon! Of course early tries are going to “fail”. His second launch was already better than the first. We should want him to succeed.
How about Starlink? It’s record in the Ukraine war is not perfect, but Ukranie clearly needs it, and I want them to beat the crap out of Putin’s empire.
I dislike Musk for his politics and especially for sponsoring Max Verstappen, another asshole.
But I love the idea of destroying Twitter, which I strongly dislike, and admire his rockets, which can actually land like Flash Gordon’s did.
Albert Burneko can make all the fun he wants of the Boring Machine project, but we should all hope that it works because it could transform our planet in a good way by moving transportation underground.
And, given that it’s kind of important that we move away from fossil fuel transportation, I think we can arguably say that Musk has done more to moving towards electric vehicles than just about anybody else. Who cares about his ugly truck? It’s his thousands of charging stations that will soon charge almost all EVs that is his real ongoing contribution, no matter what happens to Tesla vehicles.
IMNSHO what I’ve written here is more interesting and far more informative than Burneko’s article.
In honor of the great god, Ganesh, who hates mice, I had to eat a mouse so that Ganesh would bless my brother Rich, who will be having surgery in two days to repair his shoulder.
It Really is a Fascist Flag (at least to some Americans)
Even in elementary school, I found it strange to pledge allegiance to a flag. Being loyal to my country, fine, but a piece of cloth?
I’m also old enough to remember standing in our schoolyard and being told to add under God to the pledge. Even at that young age I knew it was un-American to mix religion with politics, so when the school principal said that the phrase was not required, I took that to heart and didn’t and don’t say it. Not having to say ‘under God’ makes me proud to be an American.
Since moving to North Carolina 40 years ago, I’ve learned much about our Civil War, when Southern states went to war against the part of the country that bore the American flag.
I’m glad that the Confederate battle flag is not as common here as when we moved here, but I’m puzzled when I see our fascists bearing the American flag, as, for example, when they invaded the Capital of the United States.
Now after seeing their rebel flag, I realize that when they see the American flag, they really see this:
It’s rare that jokes and cartoons make me laugh out loud, but this story from The Metropolitan Diary, one of my favorite features of the New York Times, made me laugh.
