Monday, July 15, 2019

Algorithm: Origins of Artificial Intelligence in Islamic Golden Age

When Gmail completes your sentences or Netflix offers you recommendations for movies to watch, do you wonder where it all came from? Do you know how airplanes fly or autonomous vehicles drive on auto-pilot? What algorithms are used to make it happen? Who made these possible? Where did the word "algorithm" come from? Have you heard of Mohammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi?

Al-Khwarizmi:

The word algorithm comes from Muhammad al-Khwarizmi, the name of a Muslim mathematician and scientist who developed the concept of algorithms. He was appointed the head of the House of Wisdom (Darul Hikma) in Baghdad in 820 AD. He is also credited with the invention of Algebra (hisab al-jabr). Darul Hikma, also known as the Grand Library of Baghdad, was a major public academy and intellectual center in Baghdad during the Abbasid rule.


The House of Wisdom was founded by Caliph Haroon al-Rashid in the late 8th century that later turned into a public academy during the reign of Al-Ma'moon. It was destroyed by the Mongols in the Siege of Baghdad in 1258, leaving very little archaeological evidence.

AI Algorithms:

An algorithm is a step-by-step procedure developed for accomplishing specific tasks. In artificial intelligence (AI), algorithms help  accomplish tasks that used to require human judgment —such as flying airplanes, driving vehicles, composing emails and making recommendations for books and movies. High-powered computers help execute these algorithms at high speeds.

Social media platforms like Facebook and Google have long used AI algorithms relying on user profile data to help advertisers target potential customers.  Now, under tremendous pressure from governments and civil society, the companies operating social media platforms are attempting to use AI algorithms for censoring hate speech.

Such algorithms are designed to be self-learning. They are trained by feeding lots data and examples selected by humans to help their ability to make judgements. Success rate of these algorithms improves with more data over time.


Artificial Intelligence Applications

Muslim Contributions to Math and Science:

A recent Twitter poll by Texas-based American journalist Wes Trueblood III asked the question: “Should schools in America be forced to teach Arabic numerals as a part of their curriculum?” He was shocked to see that 90% of respondents said "No".  It was obvious that they did not know the fact that Arabic numerals are already taught in American schools because all mathematics today is based on Arabic numerals. And without mathematics, there can be no STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).

Most people today are unaware of how much the Islamic civilization has contributed to mathematics, science and technology.  Dick Teresi, author of 'Lost Discoveries', says it is partly attributable to the reluctance of the western scientists to acknowledge the work of Muslim scientists. The claim of Muslims as being mere "conduits" of knowledge has been rejected by Dick Teresi. Says Teresi, "Clearly, the Arabs served as a conduit, but the math laid on the doorstep of Renaissance Europe cannot be attributed solely to ancient Greece. It incorporates the accomplishments of Sumer, Babylonia, Egypt, India, China and the far reaches of the Medieval Islamic world.

Teresi describes the work done by Copernicus. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, a Persian Muslim astronomer and mathematician, developed at least one of Copernicus's theorems, now called The Tusi Couple, three hundred years before Copernicus. Copernicus used the theorem without offering any proof or giving credit to al-Tusi. This was pointed out by Kepler, who looked at Copernicus's work before he developed his own elliptical orbits idea.

A second theorem found in Copernican system, called Urdi lemma, was developed by another Muslim scientist Mu'ayyad al-Din al-Urdi, in 1250. Again, Copernicus neither offered proof nor gave credit to al-Urdi. Columbia University's George Saliba believes Copernicus didn't credit him because Muslims were not popular in 16th century Europe, not unlike the situation today.

Tipler completely ignores the great contribution of another giant of science from the Islamic world, Ibn Haitham (Alhazen), who developed the "Scientific Method". Alhazen is also considered the father of modern optics. The ancient Greeks thought our eyes emitted rays, like a laser, which enabled us to see. The first person to explain that light enters the eye, rather than leaving it, was Ibn al-Haitham. He invented the first pin-hole camera after noticing the way light came through a hole in window shutters. The smaller the hole, the better the picture, he worked out, and set up the first Camera Obscura (from the Arab word qamara for a dark or private room). He is also credited with being the first man to shift physics from a philosophical activity to an experimental one.

The fountain pen was invented for the Sultan of Egypt in 953 after he demanded a pen which would not stain his hands or clothes. It held ink in a reservoir and, as with modern pens, fed ink to the nib by a combination of gravity and capillary action.

The algebra as we know today came from the Muslim world. Al Khwarizmi wrote the first book on algebra. The term "algebra" was first used by him. Al Khwarizmi was born about 790 in Baghdad, Iraq, and died about 850.

The word for "Algebra" comes from the Arabic word for "al-jabr" which means "restoration of balance" in both sides of an equation. Algebra was based on previous work from Greeks, Alexandrians in Egypt, and Hindus who had preserved the work from ancient Egyptians and Babylonians.

In the ninth century, al-Khwarizmi wrote one of the first Arabic algebras with both proofs and examples. Because of his work, he is called "the Father of Algebra." Al-Khwarizmi was a Persian born in the eighth century. He converted (changed) Babylonian and Hindu numerals into a workable system that almost anyone could use. He gave the name to his math as "al-jabr" which we know as "algebra".

A Latin translation of al-Khwarizmi's book on algebra appeared in Europe in the 12th century. In the early 13th century the new algebra appeared in the writings of the famous Italian mathematician, Leonardo Fibonacci. So, algebra was brought into Europe from ancient Babylon, Egypt and India by the Arabs and then into Italy.

In his 1864 book "The History of the Intellectual Development of Europe", English-born American scientist J.W. Draper wrote that “I have to deplore the systematic manner in which the literature of Europe has contrived to put out of sight our scientific obligations to the Mohammedans. Surely they can not be much longer hidden. Injustice founded on religious rancor and national conceit cannot be perpetuated forever".

University of Al Quaraouiyine:

University of Al Quaraouiyine (also spelled al karaouine) was founded by Fatima Al Fihri in 859 CE in Fez, Morocco. It is believed to be the world's oldest continuously operating university.

Al-Fihri, born in Kairouan (Qayrawan) in what is now Tunisia, was a well-educated daughter of a wealthy merchant. Her family migrated to Fez where she started the world's oldest continuously operating university named after her place of birth.

The University started as a madrassa affiliated with a mosque. It had the basic infrastructure and systems associated with modern universities. It had a formal curriculum, administered examinations and awarded degrees. It became part of the foundation of the glory days of the Islamic Civilization.

The University currently has staff and faculty of over 1000 and it has over 8000 students enrolled. The list of its most distinguished alumni includes Ibn Khaldun, widely regarded as the forerunner of the modern disciplines of historiography, sociology, economics, and demography. Other notable alumni are Jewish philosopher Maimonides,  Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and Muslim geographer Mohammad Al-Idrisi.

The world's second oldest continuously operating university is Al Azhar in Cairo, Egypt established in 970 CE.

Universities in Europe:

University of Bologna, the oldest university in Europe, was established in 1088 CE, more than two centuries after  University of Al Quaraouiyine was founded by Fatima Al-Fihri in Fez, Morocco.

Then came Oxford University in 1096, Salamanca University in 1134, Paris University in 1160 and Cambridge University in 1209.

Brigham Young University (BYU) history professor Glenn Cooper has traced the concept of receiving a degree to Islam and is associated with completing a set curriculum. The ceremonial cap and gown used in graduation ceremonies is also a legacy of Islamic tradition.

Rise and Fall of Islamic Civilization:

Where did star names like Ain ( عين),  Betelgeuse (إبط الجوزاء ) and Cursa ( الكرسي) come from? Who named Californium and Berkelium elements of the periodic table?  Famous American scientist Dr.Neil deGrasse Tyson answered these and other questions in some recent video presentations.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, and science communicator, according to Wikipedia. Since 1996, he has been the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City.

What Dr. Tyson describes as "naming rights" simply means that those who discover new things get to name them. Californians got the naming rights to some of the elements of the periodic table  while the Arabs got to name vast majority of the stars in the Cosmos. In modern western astronomy, most of the accepted star names are Arabic, a few are Greek and some are of unknown origin.

Continuing on the naming rights theme, Dr. Tyson also describes the Islamic origins of Arabic numerals, Algebra, Algorithm, Alchemy and Alcohol as products of the Islamic Golden Age of Science in 800 to 1100 AD.

The lesson Dr. Tyson draws from the rise and fall of Muslims is as follows: Islamic civilization remained dominant in sciences and mathematics as long as Muslims practiced Ijtihad to ask questions and find answers to questions. What led to their decline was Taqlid, the unquestioning faith in Revelation.

Dr. Tyson credits the great Muslim philosopher Alhazen (Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham 965-1040 AD) with inventing the modern scientific method. Alhazen questioned everything, especially the things everyone took for granted, says Dr. Tyson. Alhazen's work was lavishly funded by the Muslim Caliphs. All of it changed when Imam Al Ghazali, or Algazel, a highly influential Islamic scholar of his time, succeeded in persuading Muslims to accept Taqlid that triggered rapid decline of the Islamic world.

Dr. Tyson has used the example of the great Islamic Civilization's decline to warn Americans against repeating it. He has particularly targeted those in America who denounce Darwin's theory of evolution or reject the validity of climate science.

World Changing Inventions/Discoveries:

While the concept of universities has had the biggest impact on the world, there are several other innovations and-or discoveries by Muslims that have changed the world. A short list includes coffee, Algebra, marching band and camera. Here is a video about the top 5 Muslim inventions that changed the world:

https://youtu.be/CC6CkdsuN-k




Related Links:

Haq's Musings

South Asia Investor Review

Rise and Fall of the Islamic Civilization

Artificial Intelligence in Pakistan

Pakistani Woman Leads Global Gender Parity Campaign

Muslims Have Few Nobel Prizes

Ibn Khaldun: The Father of Modern Social Sciences

Obama Speaks to the Muslim World

Lost Discoveries by Dick Teresi

Physics of Christianity by Frank Tipler

What is Not Taught in School

How Islamic Inventors Changed the World

Jinnah's Pakistan Booms Amidst Doom and Gloom

31 comments:

Imran Q. said...

Algebra’s father was Jabir bin Hayyan, hence AlJabr...

also, we all write about the golden age, we need to look at what made these minds to innovate, they truly thought outside the box with very little to no knowledge.. The scientific findings put out by these were phenomenal.. it’ll be very interesting to find what conditions and circumstances leds to such findings

Riaz Haq said...

Imran: " it’ll be very interesting to find what conditions and circumstances leds to such findings"


You'll find it if you read the entire post. Here's the relevant discussion:


The lesson Dr. Tyson draws from the rise and fall of Muslims is as follows: Islamic civilization remained dominant in sciences and mathematics as long as Muslims practiced Ijtihad to ask questions and find answers to questions. What led to their decline was Taqlid, the unquestioning faith in Revelation.

Dr. Tyson credits the great Muslim philosopher Alhazen (Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham 965-1040 AD) with inventing the modern scientific method. Alhazen questioned everything, especially the things everyone took for granted, says Dr. Tyson. Alhazen's work was lavishly funded by the Muslim Caliphs. All of it changed when Imam Al Ghazali, or Algazel, a highly influential Islamic scholar of his time, succeeded in persuading Muslims to accept Taqlid that triggered rapid decline of the Islamic world.

Dr. Tyson has used the example of the great Islamic Civilization's decline to warn Americans against repeating it. He has particularly targeted those in America who denounce Darwin's theory of evolution or reject the validity of climate science.

Unknown said...

With due respect to Imran the word Algebra was derived from Al Khwarzmi's famous book, The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing (Arabic: الكتاب المختصر في حساب الجبر والمقابلة‎ al-Kitāb al-mukhtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-jabr wal-muqābala)that was a textbook of mathematics in European universities until the sixteenth century. He came up with a solution of quadric equation to answer the questions posed by muslim inheritance laws requiring a piece of square land to be equally distributed between two heirs of deceased.

Ahmad F. said...

AI was invented by the Muslims because they came up with algorithms and algebra but, alas, Google came centuries later. And it was not born in the Muslim world.

What happened? Why did the golden age end a millennium ago? When will the rebirth take place?

Why are we obsessed with blasting our minorities? Who honors Abdus Salam? Who honors the Princeton professor? Not the Muslim world.

These are the Dark Ages of Islam. Who do we blame consistently: The West. Israel. India. British Imperialists?

How long will this blame game continue? As long as we keep on blasting those who call for introspection, self-assessment and critical analysis as traitors and self-loathing Muslims.

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Ismael M. said...

Ahmed Bhai,

Everything that you stated is correct. It’s more of us as Muslims knowing our place and contribution in history. This is often whitewashed and omitted in Western media. All the colonialists went through great pains and effort to eradicate the proud history of the lands they conquered. That way, they presented themselves as superior.

I was at the Rijksmuseum In Amsterdam recently and all their paintings depicted the locals in a cowering, subservient manner, while the conquerors sat gleaming and valiant on their proud steeds.

The brutality and cruelty of the colonialists took an immense toll on societies, some of which still have not recovered.

It’s all about dignity and pride.

And yes, the golden age was a long time ago, and Muslims need to rise to the challenge.

The Greeks and Italians also lost their golden age a long time ago. They ruled vast civilizations but not anymore.

Riaz Haq said...

I had several objectives in mind when I wrote this post:

1. To rebut the widespread propaganda in the West and elsewhere that Islam and Muslims have given us nothing but hatred and violence. Even some Muslims have fallen for it.

2. To respond to many among Muslims and non Muslims that the Islamic faith itself stands in the way of Muslims’ progress.

3. Highlight Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson’s comparison of what happened to Muslims with those in America today who reject Darwin and deny climate change.

I have done it by listing Muslim contributions to a our modern civilization ranging from numbers to many everyday objects like fountain pen and camera to fields of study like mathematics, physics, computer science and the very idea of modern university education. Even the ceremonial cap and gown and degrees awarded at graduation ceremonies are a legacy of the Islamic Golden Age

Riaz Haq said...

The triumph of traditionalism
Usama Hasan

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/nov/27/islam-science-ghazali

There are many reasons for the decline of Islamic science, but much of the blame can be laid at al-Ghazali's door

The question: Can Islam be reconciled with science?
The decline of science in the Islamic world over the last 1,000 years is probably due to a complex interplay of different factors: theological, political and economic. On the latter point, George Saliba has suggested that the discovery of a sailing route around the Cape of Good Hope was significant, as merchants travelling from Europe to Persia, India or the Far East no longer had to pay taxes to the Mediterranean-based sultans and caliphs: scientific research has usually required generous funding via royal patronage throughout history.

But the most decisive factor, at least in Sunni Islam, has been the dominance of traditionalism over rationalism, with religion remaining deeply sceptical of natural philosophy, the forerunner to the modern natural sciences. (Shia Islam has retained a strongly rationalist, or Mutazilite, and philosophical character.)


The 11th-century theologian al-Ghazali epitomised the traditionalist Ashari school that came to dominate Sunni Islam. His Incoherence of the Philosophers attacked philosophy on 20 counts of heresy. These included the idea that nature had its own, internally-consistent laws and ways of operating – this was heretical because only God is truly independent, and nature must be dependent on God. The theologians missed an obvious mystical solution: nature reflects the names of God, so for example, the beauty and precision of natural, scientific laws reflects the divine names of God as the Beautiful and the Determiner.

The Asharis also denied causality, or the principle of cause and effect, even though their position negates free will and personal responsibility. If I were to punch you in the face, I could argue that God and his angels had actually broken your nose: it was purely a coincidence that my fist was nearby, and any imagined connection between my punch and your injury was just an illusion!

The Asharis were trying to justify miracles, such as that of Abraham remaining unharmed when thrown into a large fire. Fire burned objects, they reasoned, not because of an innate burning quality but because God created this quality in fire at every instant. If God willed, he could suspend the burning action of fire, as he did to save Abraham. al-Ghazali extended this reasoning to other familiar situations: "Water does not quench thirst, bread does not satisfy hunger and medicine does not cure illness" – it is always God who mediates what we think is cause and effect.

The 12th-century philosopher-jurist Ibn Rushd (Averroes), who believed fully in the harmony of religion and philosophy, wrote a vehement point-by-point rebuttal of al-Ghazali entitled The Incoherence of the Incoherence. In it, he described al-Ghazali's above-mentioned arguments as "sophistry … very objectionable, and contrary to common sense." Averroes argued that God creates things with innate qualities so that water, bread and medicine do have effects via their intrinsic nature.

Ironically, the Islamic world largely ignored Averroes in favour of al-Ghazali, whilst the former had a profound influence upon the Christian west. A further irony is that centuries later, Hume also thought about miracles, very differently to al-Ghazali, but wrote that reason and empirical observation could not prove causality.

Amjad M. said...

Thank you for a very informative article.

I remember from Publishing days (in my father's business) there was a huge demand for Ilya zul Aloom by Ghazali but anybody hardly asked for Ibne Rushd A K A Avveros' book.
My own father was heavily influenced by Imam Ghazaali. I did not know the reality till I watched Cosmos by Neil Tyson. He is very complimentary of Islamic contributions to science including astronomy. He also says that modern space program draws many fundamentals from Islamic contribution of the Golden Era.

From your article Ghazali's God is a one big Micro Manager. There was a common saying in Pakistan that Uss ki marzi kay baghair patta bhi nahin hil sakta. That goes contrary to the philosophy the He created the Universe and put things in motion for Nature to take its course.

Interesting conversation.

Riaz Haq said...

Amjad: " From your article Ghazali's God is a one big Micro Manager"


Mutazilites were rationalist in the Abbasid era during the Golden Age of Islam. They were backed by Caliph Haroon Rashid. Ghazali destroyed the Mutazilite movement triggering the decline of Islamic Golden Age.

More recently in South Asian history, the mullahs of JUH who attacked Sir Syed Ahmad Khan denounced him by comparing him to Mutazilites

Ravi said...

The Arabic numerals were not invented by Arabs. They were invented by Hindus.

Aman Goel said...

Muslims came up with algorithms and aljebra while Hindus with digit numeral system and initial geometry & trigonometry. Every civilization had its own contribution.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numerals

Riaz Haq said...

Dr #Mahathir Mohammad wants ‘#Turkey , #Malaysia , #Pakistan to lead #Muslim renaissance'

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/economy/turkey-malaysia-pakistan-to-lead-muslim-renaissance/1542366

Experts have welcomed visiting Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's statement that Turkey, Malaysia and Pakistan can pave the way forward for development in the Muslim world.

"The Islamic world needs a renaissance," said Huseyin Bagci, an expert in International relations at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara.

“And Prime Minister Mahathir made a right point that these countries at least start new projects which make Muslim world compatible and competitive in Islamic sciences, technology, defense, etc.,” Bagci said.

The Malaysian premier arrived in the Turkish capital Ankara on Wednesday evening to kick off his four-day official visit.

Corroborating words of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that solidarity among Turkey, Malaysia and Pakistan “is necessary for the unity of the Islamic world”, Mahathir told reporters at a joint news conference Thursday that it is crucial to relieve the Muslim Ummah from being subjugated by others.

"That is why I proposed that three Muslim countries should work together. At least these three [Turkey, Malaysia and Pakistan]. So that we can speak with a louder voice in terms of many areas; defense, for example,” the Malaysian premier said.

Bagci agreed saying the three countries have common values in democracy, human rights and free press.

“People relatively feel free,” he said, adding: “[However], there is stagnation in Islamic world… there can be kingdoms like in the U.K. but governments come and go which is not the case in most of the Muslim world.”

He noted that Turkey, Malaysia and Pakistan stand out from the Arab world.

“It is interesting that why Prime Minister Mahathir did not mention any Arab country,” Bagci said, referring to their dismal track record in upholding human rights.

Notably, Turkey, Pakistan and Malaysia are among the founders of the Muslim-majority D-8 group that seeks to establish strategic relations, increased trade, and more cooperation among its members. However, the group is yet to realize its potential.

On the apparent failure of D-8, Bagci blamed “too much divisions, corruption and stagnation in Islamic world”.

“The new mechanism which Mahathir has suggested can bring together even Afghanistan and central Asian states,” he said.

Professor Sami A. Al-Arian, director of Istanbul-based Center for Islam and Global Affairs, described the ongoing visit as “historic”.

“This visit by Prime Minister Mahathir to Turkey to meet President Erdogan is historic, as the two leaders have been repeatedly and frequently democratically elected by their people,” Al-Arian said.

He said that these leaders have demonstrated over the years "political stability and economic dynamism”.

According to Al-Arian, Mahathir's visit comes at a time when the economic and political challenges faced by the two governments are “enormous in light of the looming global economic uncertainty as well as the geopolitical shifts across the Middle East because of the U.S. trade war with China, and other regional problems”.

“The U.S. sanctions against Iran and the latest tension with Turkey with regard to the S-400 air defense system, have resulted in having other regional powers, such as Turkey and Malaysia, to come closer together to restructure their relations in order to stand up to the pressure being applied against their economy and security,” he added.

Riaz Haq said...

Medieval Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun quoted on tax theory by two US Presidents: Kennedy and Reagan

http://faculty.georgetown.edu/imo3/ibn.htm

Ibn Khaldun was the first major contributor to tax theory in history. He is the philosopher who shaped the minds of several rulers throughout history. More recently his impact was evident on John F. Kennedy and later on Ronald Reagan. "Our true choice is not between tax reduction on the one hand and avoidance of large federal deficits on the other. An economy stilled by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenue to balance the budget, just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits." John F. Kennedy said that back in 1962, when he was asking for a tax decrease, a cut in tax rates across the board. But when John Kennedy said those words, he was echoing the words of Ibn Khaldun, a Muslim philosopher back in the fourteenth century, who said the following: "At the beginning of the dynasty taxation yields large revenues from small assessments. At the end of the dynasty taxation yields small revenue from large assessments….This is why we had to have the tax program as well as the budget cuts, because budget cuts, yes, would reduce government spending."

According to Ibn Khaldun, tax revenues of the ruling dynasty increase because of business prosperity, which flourishes with easy, not excessive taxes. He was therefore the first in history to lay the foundation of a theory for the optimum rate of taxation, a theory which has even affected contemporary leading advocates of supply-side economics such as Arthur Laffer and others. The well-known Laffer curve is nothing but a graphical presentation of the theory of taxation developed by Ibn Khaldun in the fourteenth century.34

"When tax assessments and imposts upon the subjects are low, the latter have the energy and desire to do things. Cultural enterprises grow and increase, because the low taxes bring satisfaction. When cultural enterprises grow, the number of individual imposts and assessments mount. In consequence, the tax revenue, which is the sum total of the individual assessments, increases";35 whereas with large tax assessments, incomes and profits are adversely affected, resulting, in the final analysis, in a decline in tax revenue. Ibn Khaldun made a strong case against any government attempt to confiscate or otherwise affect private property. Governments' arbitrary interferences in man's property result in loss of incentives, which could eventually lead to a weakening of the state. Expropriation is self-defeating for any government because it is a form of oppression, and oppression ruins society.

https://youtu.be/6ONWZc_fFPk

Riaz Haq said...

First steam turbine was invented by a #Muslim #inventor Taqi al-Din in #Egypt during #Ottoman rule in 1551, more than a century before Thomas Newcombe and James Watt invented the steam engine. https://www.thomasnet.com/articles/custom-manufacturing-fabricating/steam-engine-history/

Steam engine history dates back to the 1st century AD when the “aeolipile” was described by the Hero of Alexandria for the first time. More than 1500 years later, the primitive forms of turbines driven by the power of steam were explained by Taqi al-Din in 1551 as well as Giovanni Branca in 1629. These were either small steam jacks or escapement devices. They were mainly used by inventors to demonstrate that steam power engineering shouldn’t be underestimated.

-----------------------

Thomas Savery: A biography of Thomas Savery with information about his engine.
Steam Engine Development: The article highlights the steam engine development covering Savery’s contributions and the atmospheric engines.
Low-Pressure Engines
The high consumption of coal which was common in Newcomen’s steam engine was reduced through innovations in engine design by James Watt. The low pressure engine’s cylinder contained heat insulation, a separate condenser, and a pumping out mechanism for condensed water. In this manner, the low pressure engine was successful in reducing fuel consumption by more than 50%.

Watt’s Low-Pressure Steam Engine: The Deutsches Museum offers some information on this early engineering marvel.
Thomas Newcomen Steam Engine
In 1712, Thomas Newcomen invented an effective and practical steam engine. The steam engine designed by him consisted of a piston or a cylinder that moved a huge piece of wood to drive the water pump. The engine did not use steam pressure to exert any pressure on the piston but it was the wooden beam that was heavier towards the main pump. It was gravity that pulled down the pump side of the wooden piece. The Newcomen beam engine remained in use for more than 50 years but they turned out to be inefficient as a lot of energy was required for the engine to run effectively. The cylinder was required to be heated as well as cooled every time, which used up most of its energy causing a huge amount of wastage.

Newcomen’s Steam Engine: The BBC provides information on the steam engine by this man with an illustration.
Thomas Newcomen’s Steam Engine: Come here to learn all about the steam engine created by Thomas Newcomen.
Ivan Polzunov and the First Two-Cylinder Steam Engine
Ivan Polzunov was a Russian inventor who in 1766 built the first steam engine in his country and the first two-cylinder engine in the world. Polzunov’s two-cylinder steam engine was more powerful than the English atmospheric engines. It had a power rating of 24 kw. Polzunov’s model of a two-cylinder steam engine is presently displayed the Barnaul Museum.

Ivan Polzunov: The article provides information on how this Russian scientist built the two-cylinder steam engine.
Two-Cylinder Steam Engine: Here’s a picture of a two-cylinder steam engine from the 1880s.
James Watt-Improved Steam Engine
Finally, it was James Watt who revolutionized the steam engine by making use of a separate condenser in the original design. He came up with a separate condenser in 1765.

Bahramji S. said...

Both Islam and Christianity have stifled scientific progress. It is only when Europe started to question the prevailing doctrine of the Catholic Church that scientific progress became possible.
If Islam was the reason for the scientific progress then the Arab nations would be the most scientifically advanced people BUT THEY ARE NOT and in fact are among the most backward.
It is the Persian culture upon which Islam was superimposed that was the basis of the soil called golden age of Islam BUT it was not the Golden Age of Persia.
The Golden Age of Persia was under Cyrus the Great and that is recognized by the UN which has ensconced a replica of the Cyrus cylinder within its premises.
The Persian Empire was at its Zenith during the reigns of the Zoroastrian Emperors Cyrus the Great and Darius the Great but never under Islam which sucked the strength and wisdom of the Persians and is still doing so and some ignorant Muslims are giving credit to Islam for the scientific achievements by Persia and not Arabia.
It is culture and not religion that stimulates, sustains and fosters science.
Historically, the Islamic culture of the Arabs has not contributed anything to scientific knowledge and has yet not done so and most likely never will.

Anwar K. said...

Barham ji: It is sad that you have still not gotten educated on this subject and continue to stumble about in the darkness of your ignorance. I asked this question before and did not get an answer from you.
Can you name one, just one name of pre Islamic well known Persian scientist in ANY field. I am not saying that Persian Empire was not a powerful empire for several centuries but it simply failed to produce a single world class scholar / scientist in almost 700 years of its existence. Here are names of some great Persian scholars who flourished under the true light of a man inspiring religion;

1. AVICENNA, or Abu Ali Sina. The greatest medieval physician ( he was also an astronomer, mathematician and religious scholar). His book “ the Canon of Medicine “
Was the standard Text book of Medicine all over the world till the mid 17!th century. He was the inventor of Quarantine which has saved millions of lives over the last 10 centuries.

2. AL BAIRUNI: the greatest mathematician and astronomer of his time and writer of the first authentic history of India ( he was a courtesan of the great Mahmud of Ghazni ) who mastered Sanskrit. His book “ Tarikh al Hind ( History of India ) is still a reference book on this subject. The main impetus for astronomy in the Islamic Golden Era was the need to find the proper direction of the niche in the mosques to orientate the direction to Mecca.

ALKHAWARZIMI: The inventor of Algebra. Al-Khwarizmi invented Algebra in order to solve more and more complex fractions in order to distribute inheritances according to the Qur’anic rules.

Rumi: The greatest Sufi poet who has been the most popular poet in America for the last 15 years.

Al Ghazali: one of the greatest religious mind of ALL times. Thomas Aquila’s plagiarized him wholesale without giving him any credit.

So just name one great scientist of pre Islamic Persia.
I am a very eager student for everything under the sun.

Khwaja A. said...

You should also know that Aristotle and his students ( so did ancient Indians ) that the Universe was permanent / eternal ??? Quran said no that it started with the Big Bang( Q 21:30 ) and was expanding ( Q 51:47 ) and it will end in the Great Crunch ( Q 21:104 ) in the end. Show us these three facts claimed in the Greek / Indian / Chinese history.

Aristotle and the Greeks had some other wrong notions which did not find its place in the Quran which appeared in the least developed part of the then extant world.

BTW, I never used the term Islamic Science EVER.
I gave the reasons for the development of Algebra by Al Khwarzimi and Adtronomy by Alberuni which is rooted in Qur’anic exhortations repeatedly. Same is true for Prof Salam’s earth shaking discoveries, ( pun intended ).


Why these greats like Avicenna, Albairuni and AlKhwarizm were not produced before the Quran started the spark of intellectual stimulation in its followers. The spark for Algebra was primarily calculating the inheritance for children, wife and sometimes parents. This was a novel idea NEVER encountered by humanity in history. As noted, the stimulus for astronomy was calculation of Qibla in far away lands where Muslims were living after freeing themselves from jahalat and pagan worship torture.

Riaz Haq said...

1000 Years Before #Darwin, #Islamic Scholars Wrote About Natural Selection. "Al-Jahiz appears to have had not just evolutionary ideas, but many ideas that could be said to be related specifically to the process of evolution by natural selection” https://www.vice.com/en/article/ep4ykn/a-thousand-years-before-darwin-islamic-scholars-were-writing-about-natural-selection via @vice

In the summer of 1837, Charles Darwin drew a rudimentary sketch in his notebook, lines of ink that branched out from another. This tree-like doodle would come to represent his theory of evolution by natural selection, a way to visualize how plants and animals adapt in response to their environments. On the top of the page, Darwin scrawled the words, "I think."

When many students are taught about evolution they learn about Darwin, how he observed bird beaks on the Galápagos Islands, and pieced together one of history's most significant biological puzzles.

But this narrative, focusing on a singular person's "I think," omits a long history of humans contemplating how organisms change over time. Evolutionary musings have existed before Darwin, and some professors and museums are now striving to include that neglected history in curriculums and exhibitions.

Recently, New York University professor James Higham tweeted about how he updated the lectures of his class on primate behavioral ecology, geared to upper-level undergraduates. They now "properly acknowledge Islamic scholarship in this area—especially that of Al-Jahiz (781-869 CE)," Higham wrote. "It seems clear that something like evolution by natural selection was proposed a thousand years before Darwin/Wallace." (The naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace independently proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection around the same time as Darwin.)

Higham told VICE News he wasn’t taught about Al-Jahiz in his own training; he knew of Al-Jahiz vaguely as a theologian, writer, and scholar, but not a biologist.

“I was struck by the extent to which Al-Jahiz appears to have had not just evolutionary ideas, but many ideas that could be said to be related specifically to the process of evolution by natural selection,” Higham said in an email. “This seems to have included ideas such as competition over finite resources, adaptation in response to the environment, and speciation over time as an outcome.”

Riaz Haq said...

ایک طنزیہ کالم - “سعودی عرب نے پاکستان سے 1400 سال کی مستعار تاریخ واپس مانگ لی” پاکستان نے 700 سال ترکی سے لے لئے ہیں باقی کی تلاش جاری ہے



@HarrisRichard77
Replying to
@husainhaqqani
Of course, you will find anything that ridicules or disparages Pakistan and it’s people amusing.

Ever commented on why the Americans & the British eulogise Greek and Roman history, culture & literature!

I guess not, because then u would have to learn perspective.

https://twitter.com/HarrisRichard77/status/1340338989295923200?s=20

Riaz Haq said...

#EU Proposes Strict Rules for Use Of #ArtificialIntelligence (#AI) in a range of activities, from self-driving cars to hiring decisions, bank lending, school enrollment selections and the scoring of exams. #Europe #Technology #Regulations #Ethics https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/16/business/artificial-intelligence-regulation.html?smid=tw-share


The regulations would have far-reaching implications for tech firms like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft, which have poured resources into developing the technology.

The European Union unveiled strict regulations on Wednesday to govern the use of artificial intelligence, a first-of-its-kind policy that outlines how companies and governments can use a technology seen as one of the most significant, but ethically fraught, scientific breakthroughs in recent memory.

The draft rules would set limits around the use of artificial intelligence in a range of activities, from self-driving cars to hiring decisions, bank lending, school enrollment selections and the scoring of exams. It would also cover the use of artificial intelligence by law enforcement and court systems — areas considered “high risk” because they could threaten people’s safety or fundamental rights.

Some uses would be banned altogether, including live facial recognition in public spaces, though there would be several exemptions for national security and other purposes.

The 108-page policy is an attempt to regulate an emerging technology before it becomes mainstream. The rules have far-reaching implications for major technology companies that have poured resources into developing artificial intelligence, including Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft, but also scores of other companies that use the software to develop medicine, underwrite insurance policies and judge credit worthiness. Governments have used versions of the technology in criminal justice and the allocation of public services like income support.

Ahmed said...

Dear Imran Bhai

I am sorry to say but thier is no clear information or evidence available from historical sources which could prove that Algebra was invented by any Muslim Mathematician or Muslim Scholar . Muslim Mathematician and Scholar Musa Al -Khawarizmi did in fact contribute to Algebra but Algebra existed even before Muslims started to work on it .Greeks and Roman Scholars and Mathematicians were already working on it before Muslims started to contribute in Algebra .

Ahmed said...

Dear Sir

Thank you so much for sharing such useful information about Muslim Scholars and Scientists of medivial times .

I really appreciate it.

Regards

Ahmed said...

Bahramji

It is not actually Islam which has contributed to the field of Science and Mathematics but it is actually Muslims of medivial times who greatly and intellectually contributed to these branches of knowledge .

Yes it is true that most of the Scholars ,Mathematicians and Scientists during medivial times who contributed in their respective fields were Persians but pls note that their religion was Islam and they were muslims .

Unfortunately you are suffering from a serious misunderstanding ,you think that Islam is a religion which is limited or confined to a geographic location ,as Prophet Muhammad (pbuh ) who was basically an Arab was sent as a Prophet to the Arab people on the Arab land ,so you think the followers of Islam will only be Arabs.

Pls note that Islam is a Universal religion which surpasses and is beyond any geographic areas ,ethnic background of people and also it is beyond racism whether it is religious racism or color racism .

Islam is a religion which encourages equality and brotherhood amongst people .

Although Qur'an (Final Revelation of God) was revealed on Prophet Muhammad (pbuh ) and it was revealed in Arabic language so that Prophet Muhammad (pbuh ) could communicate this message of God to Arabs ,but the message of Islam is not just for Arabs ,it is for entire mankind .

The message of Islam is a universal message .

So any person whether belonging to any ethnic group,nationality or religion can embrace Islam and become Muslim. So Islam is not just limited or confined to Arabs .


So majority of the Persians accepted Islam and became Muslims 1000s of years ago.


2ndly if you really think that it was not Islam which became a driving force for these converted persian Muslims when they contributed in different branches of knowledge ,then why don't we hear or read about any Persian Scientist or Mathematician who came before Islam was chosen by Persians ? Pls note that Iranians (Persians ) are very old people ,they are ancient people with old History .

My other question is that if you really think that Islam should not be given credit for having influence over the Science and Mathematics ,then why many Western authors and Historians have written books in which they have praised and appreciated the works of Muslim Scholars and Scientists of medivial times ? Why don't these Western authors or historians praise and appreciate the works of ancient Hindus or Indians ?

Riaz Haq said...

Does the advent of machine learning mean the classic methodology of hypothesise, predict and test has had its day?

by Laura Spinney

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/09/are-we-witnessing-the-dawn-of-post-theory-science


Isaac Newton apocryphally discovered his second law – the one about gravity – after an apple fell on his head. Much experimentation and data analysis later, he realised there was a fundamental relationship between force, mass and acceleration. He formulated a theory to describe that relationship – one that could be expressed as an equation, F=ma – and used it to predict the behaviour of objects other than apples. His predictions turned out to be right (if not always precise enough for those who came later).

Contrast how science is increasingly done today. Facebook’s machine learning tools predict your preferences better than any psychologist. AlphaFold, a program built by DeepMind, has produced the most accurate predictions yet of protein structures based on the amino acids they contain. Both are completely silent on why they work: why you prefer this or that information; why this sequence generates that structure.

You can’t lift a curtain and peer into the mechanism. They offer up no explanation, no set of rules for converting this into that – no theory, in a word. They just work and do so well. We witness the social effects of Facebook’s predictions daily. AlphaFold has yet to make its impact felt, but many are convinced it will change medicine.

Somewhere between Newton and Mark Zuckerberg, theory took a back seat. In 2008, Chris Anderson, the then editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, predicted its demise. So much data had accumulated, he argued, and computers were already so much better than us at finding relationships within it, that our theories were being exposed for what they were – oversimplifications of reality. Soon, the old scientific method – hypothesise, predict, test – would be relegated to the dustbin of history. We’d stop looking for the causes of things and be satisfied with correlations.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can say that what Anderson saw is true (he wasn’t alone). The complexity that this wealth of data has revealed to us cannot be captured by theory as traditionally understood. “We have leapfrogged over our ability to even write the theories that are going to be useful for description,” says computational neuroscientist Peter Dayan, director of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany. “We don’t even know what they would look like.”

But Anderson’s prediction of the end of theory looks to have been premature – or maybe his thesis was itself an oversimplification. There are several reasons why theory refuses to die, despite the successes of such theory-free prediction engines as Facebook and AlphaFold. All are illuminating, because they force us to ask: what’s the best way to acquire knowledge and where does science go from here?

The first reason is that we’ve realised that artificial intelligences (AIs), particularly a form of machine learning called neural networks, which learn from data without having to be fed explicit instructions, are themselves fallible. Think of the prejudice that has been documented in Google’s search engines and Amazon’s hiring tools.

The second is that humans turn out to be deeply uncomfortable with theory-free science. We don’t like dealing with a black box – we want to know why.

And third, there may still be plenty of theory of the traditional kind – that is, graspable by humans – that usefully explains much but has yet to be uncovered.

----------

In 2022, therefore, there is almost no stage of the scientific process where AI hasn’t left its footprint. And the more we draw it into our quest for knowledge, the more it changes that quest. We’ll have to learn to live with that, but we can reassure ourselves about one thing: we’re still asking the questions. As Pablo Picasso put it in the 1960s, “computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”

Riaz Haq said...

In Hasidic Enclaves, Failing Private Schools Flush With Public Money
New York’s Hasidic Jewish religious schools have benefited from $1 billion in government funding in the last four years but are unaccountable to outside oversight.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/11/nyregion/hasidic-yeshivas-schools-new-york.html


The Hasidic Jewish community has long operated one of New York’s largest private schools on its own terms, resisting any outside scrutiny of how its students are faring.

But in 2019, the school, the Central United Talmudical Academy, agreed to give state standardized tests in reading and math to more than 1,000 students.

Every one of them failed.

Students at nearly a dozen other schools run by the Hasidic community recorded similarly dismal outcomes that year, a pattern that under ordinary circumstances would signal an education system in crisis. But where other schools might be struggling because of underfunding or mismanagement, these schools are different. They are failing by design.

The leaders of New York’s Hasidic community have built scores of private schools to educate children in Jewish law, prayer and tradition — and to wall them off from the secular world. Offering little English and math, and virtually no science or history, they drill students relentlessly, sometimes brutally, during hours of religious lessons conducted in Yiddish.

The result, a New York Times investigation has found, is that generations of children have been systematically denied a basic education, trapping many of them in a cycle of joblessness and dependency.

Segregated by gender, the Hasidic system fails most starkly in its more than 100 schools for boys. Spread across Brooklyn and the lower Hudson Valley, the schools turn out thousands of students each year who are unprepared to navigate the outside world, helping to push poverty rates in Hasidic neighborhoods to some of the highest in New York.

The schools appear to be operating in violation of state laws that guarantee children an adequate education. Even so, The Times found, the Hasidic boys’ schools have found ways of tapping into enormous sums of government money, collecting more than $1 billion in the past four years alone.

Warned about the problems over the years, city and state officials have avoided taking action, bowing to the influence of Hasidic leaders who push their followers to vote as a bloc and have made safeguarding the schools their top political priority.

“I don’t know how to put into words how frustrating it is,” said Moishy Klein, who recently left the community after realizing it had not taught him basic grammar, let alone the skills needed to find a decent job. “I thought, ‘It’s crazy that I’m literally not learning anything. It’s crazy that I’m 20 years old, I don’t know any higher order math, never learned any science.’”

To examine the Hasidic schools, The Times reviewed thousands of pages of public records, translated dozens of Yiddish-language documents and interviewed more than 275 people, including current and former students, teachers, administrators and regulators.

The review provided a rare look inside a group of schools that is keeping some 50,000 boys from learning a broad array of secular subjects.

The students in the boys' schools are not simply falling behind. They are suffering from levels of educational deprivation not seen anywhere else in New York, The Times found. Only nine schools in the state had less than 1 percent of students testing at grade level in 2019, the last year for which full data was available. All of them were Hasidic boys’ schools.


Riaz Haq said...

What is ChatGPT? The AI chatbot talked up as a potential Google killer
After all, the AI chatbot seems to be slaying a great deal of search engine responses.

https://interestingengineering.com/science/chatgpt-ai-chatbot-google-killer

ChatGPT is the latest and most impressive artificially intelligent chatbot yet. It was released two weeks ago, and in just five days hit a million users. It’s being used so much that its servers have reached capacity several times.

OpenAI, the company that developed it, is already being discussed as a potential Google slayer. Why look up something on a search engine when ChatGPT can write a whole paragraph explaining the answer? (There’s even a Chrome extension that lets you do both, side by side.)

But what if we never know the secret sauce behind ChatGPT’s capabilities?

The chatbot takes advantage of a number of technical advances published in the open scientific literature in the past couple of decades. But any innovations unique to it are secret. OpenAI could well be trying to build a technical and business moat to keep others out.

What it can (and can’t do)
ChatGPT is very capable. Want a haiku on chatbots? Sure.

How about a joke about chatbots? No problem.

ChatGPT can do many other tricks. It can write computer code to a user’s specifications, draft business letters or rental contracts, compose homework essays and even pass university exams.

Just as important is what ChatGPT can’t do. For instance, it struggles to distinguish between truth and falsehood. It is also often a persuasive liar.

ChatGPT is a bit like autocomplete on your phone. Your phone is trained on a dictionary of words so it completes words. ChatGPT is trained on pretty much all of the web, and can therefore complete whole sentences – or even whole paragraphs.

However, it doesn’t understand what it’s saying, just what words are most likely to come next.

Open only by name
In the past, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have been accompanied by peer-reviewed literature.

In 2018, for example, when the Google Brain team developed the BERT neural network on which most natural language processing systems are now based (and we suspect ChatGPT is too), the methods were published in peer-reviewed scientific papers, and the code was open-sourced.

And in 2021, DeepMind’s AlphaFold 2, a protein-folding software, was Science’s Breakthrough of the Year. The software and its results were open-sourced so scientists everywhere could use them to advance biology and medicine.

Following the release of ChatGPT, we have only a short blog post describing how it works. There has been no hint of an accompanying scientific publication, or that the code will be open-sourced.

To understand why ChatGPT could be kept secret, you have to understand a little about the company behind it.

OpenAI is perhaps one of the oddest companies to emerge from Silicon Valley. It was set up as a non-profit in 2015 to promote and develop “friendly” AI in a way that “benefits humanity as a whole”. Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and other leading tech figures pledged US$1 billion (dollars) towards its goals.

Their thinking was we couldn’t trust for-profit companies to develop increasingly capable AI that aligned with humanity’s prosperity. AI therefore needed to be developed by a non-profit and, as the name suggested, in an open way.

In 2019 OpenAI transitioned into a capped for-profit company (with investors limited to a maximum return of 100 times their investment) and took a US$1 billion(dollars) investment from Microsoft so it could scale and compete with the tech giants.

It seems money got in the way of OpenAI’s initial plans for openness.

Profiting from users
On top of this, OpenAI appears to be using feedback from users to filter out the fake answers ChatGPT hallucinates.

According to its blog, OpenAI initially used reinforcement learning in ChatGPT to downrank fake and/or problematic answers using a costly hand-constructed training set.

Riaz Haq said...

The ChatGPT King Isn’t Worried, but He Knows You Might Be

https://www.opindia.com/2023/02/chahat-fateh-ali-khan-the-latest-viral-sensation-from-poverty-stricken-pakistan-taher-shah-mankind-angel/


By Cade Metz

Sam Altman sees the pros and cons of totally changing the world as we know it. And if he does make human intelligence useless, he has a plan to fix it.

I first met Sam Altman in the summer of 2019, days after Microsoft agreed to invest $1 billion in his three-year-old start-up, OpenAI. At his suggestion, we had dinner at a small, decidedly modern restaurant not far from his home in San Francisco.

Halfway through the meal, he held up his iPhone so I could see the contract he had spent the last several months negotiating with one of the world’s largest tech companies. It said Microsoft’s billion-dollar investment would help OpenAI build what was called artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., a machine that could do anything the human brain could do.

Later, as Mr. Altman sipped a sweet wine in lieu of dessert, he compared his company to the Manhattan Project. As if he were chatting about tomorrow’s weather forecast, he said the U.S. effort to build an atomic bomb during the Second World War had been a “project on the scale of OpenAI — the level of ambition we aspire to.”

He believed A.G.I. would bring the world prosperity and wealth like no one had ever seen. He also worried that the technologies his company was building could cause serious harm — spreading disinformation, undercutting the job market. Or even destroying the world as we know it.


---------------

Mr. Altman argues that rather than developing and testing the technology entirely behind closed doors before releasing it in full, it is safer to gradually share it so everyone can better understand risks and how to handle them.

He told me that it would be a “very slow takeoff.”

When I asked Mr. Altman if a machine that could do anything the human brain could do would eventually drive the price of human labor to zero, he demurred. He said he could not imagine a world where human intelligence was useless.

If he’s wrong, he thinks he can make it up to humanity.

He rebuilt OpenAI as what he called a capped-profit company. This allowed him to pursue billions of dollars in financing by promising a profit to investors like Microsoft. But these profits are capped, and any additional revenue will be pumped back into the OpenAI nonprofit that was founded back in 2015.

His grand idea is that OpenAI will capture much of the world’s wealth through the creation of A.G.I. and then redistribute this wealth to the people. In Napa, as we sat chatting beside the lake at the heart of his ranch, he tossed out several figures — $100 billion, $1 trillion, $100 trillion.

If A.G.I. does create all that wealth, he is not sure how the company will redistribute it. Money could mean something very different in this new world.

But as he once told me: “I feel like the A.G.I. can help with that.”

Riaz Haq said...

The Godfather of #AI Leaves #Google, Warns of #Danger Ahead. “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things”. Google bought a company started by Dr. Hinton that led to creation #ChatGPT & Google #Bard. #technology
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/01/technology/ai-google-chatbot-engineer-quits-hinton.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare


In the 1980s, Dr. Hinton was a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, but left the university for Canada because he said he was reluctant to take Pentagon funding. At the time, most A.I. research in the United States was funded by the Defense Department. Dr. Hinton is deeply opposed to the use of artificial intelligence on the battlefield — what he calls “robot soldiers.”

In 2012, Dr. Hinton and two of his students in Toronto, Ilya Sutskever and Alex Krishevsky, built a neural network that could analyze thousands of photos and teach itself to identify common objects, such as flowers, dogs and cars.


Google spent $44 million to acquire a company started by Dr. Hinton and his two students. And their system led to the creation of increasingly powerful technologies, including new chatbots like ChatGPT and Google Bard. Mr. Sutskever went on to become chief scientist at OpenAI. In 2018, Dr. Hinton and two other longtime collaborators received the Turing Award, often called “the Nobel Prize of computing,” for their work on neural networks.

Around the same time, Google, OpenAI and other companies began building neural networks that learned from huge amounts of digital text. Dr. Hinton thought it was a powerful way for machines to understand and generate language, but it was inferior to the way humans handled language.

Then, last year, as Google and OpenAI built systems using much larger amounts of data, his view changed. He still believed the systems were inferior to the human brain in some ways but he thought they were eclipsing human intelligence in others. “Maybe what is going on in these systems,” he said, “is actually a lot better than what is going on in the brain.”

As companies improve their A.I. systems, he believes, they become increasingly dangerous. “Look at how it was five years ago and how it is now,” he said of A.I. technology. “Take the difference and propagate it forwards. That’s scary.”

Until last year, he said, Google acted as a “proper steward” for the technology, careful not to release something that might cause harm. But now that Microsoft has augmented its Bing search engine with a chatbot — challenging Google’s core business — Google is racing to deploy the same kind of technology. The tech giants are locked in a competition that might be impossible to stop, Dr. Hinton said.

His immediate concern is that the internet will be flooded with false photos, videos and text, and the average person will “not be able to know what is true anymore.”

He is also worried that A.I. technologies will in time upend the job market. Today, chatbots like ChatGPT tend to complement human workers, but they could replace paralegals, personal assistants, translators and others who handle rote tasks. “It takes away the drudge work,” he said. “It might take away more than that.”

Down the road, he is worried that future versions of the technology pose a threat to humanity because they often learn unexpected behavior from the vast amounts of data they analyze. This becomes an issue, he said, as individuals and companies allow A.I. systems not only to generate their own computer code but actually run that code on their own. And he fears a day when truly autonomous weapons — those killer robots — become reality.

“The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that,” he said. “But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that.”

Riaz Haq said...

Ethnic Appropriation? ChatGPT Creator Mira Murati is an Albanian American, Not Indian American as Reported by Indian Media - American Kahani


https://americankahani.com/business/ethnic-appropriation-chatgpt-creator-mira-murati-is-an-albanian-american-not-indian-american-as-reported-by-indian-media/


What’s in a name? A slippery slope, if one were to go by the way some in the Indian media went to town claiming Mira Murati, Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, is an Indian American.

She is not. She is an American of Albanian origin. Although there is almost no biographical information available online, most websites identify her as an Albanian, including Albanian websites. One of them claims that the 1987-born technologist was born in Vlora, Albania.

ChatGPT has had a sensational debut last year because of its potential applications. As Cnet.com says, “this artificial intelligence bot can answer questions, write essays and program computers.”

The Indian media reports, however, widely quoted Murati’s recent interview with Time magazine where she expressed her concerns over its misuse, mainly using it as a peg to claim that she is an Indian American. Several leading newspapers published an Indian agency report that misreported Murati’s ethnicity.

One Indian blogger who runs “Biography Reader” even went on to claim that “she was born in a middle-class Hindu family. Her father’s name is Mr. Murati. Her mother’s name is Mrs. Murati.”

---------------

Inside OpenAI, the Architect of ChatGPT | The Circuit

https://youtu.be/p9Q5a1Vn-Hk

--------------

Mustafa Suleyman (Syrian Muslim): the Liberal Activist Ensuring Google DeepMind Benefits All of Humanity



https://www.businessinsider.com/mustafa-suleyman-the-lefty-activist-ensuring-google-deepmind-benefits-all-of-humanity-2017-12


Mustafa Suleyman is one of the three cofounders of DeepMind, an artificial intelligence (AI) lab in London that was acquired by Google in 2014 for a reported £400 million — the search giant's largest acquisition in Europe to date.

Listen to a few of Suleyman's talks on YouTube and you'll quickly realise that he's a left-leaning activist who wants to make the world a better place for everyone as opposed to an elite few. He differs from many of today's tech founders in that he genuinely seems to care about the welfare of everyone on the planet.

The 35-year-old — affectionately known as "Moose" internally at DeepMind and among his friends — lives in Peckham, South London, with his artist fiancée. He can often be seen on Twittermaking his thoughts known on issues like homelessness, diversity, and inequality, and also once retweeted Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

DeepMind may be owned by one of the largest companies in the world but Suleyman strongly believes capitalism is failing society in a number of areas. He explained this during a talk at a Google event in 2017.

Riaz Haq said...

Evolution of AI’s Significance in Pakistan

https://cscr.pk/explore/themes/politics-governance/pakistans-draft-national-ai-policy-is-a-hodgepodge-of-technospeak/

The hype around Artificial Intelligence (AI) has increased over the past decade, but in Pakistan, this began gaining momentum around 2017 onward. It began with a few opinion pieces in institutional publications calling for the securitisation of AI against “hybrid war” to proper governmental initiatives by two different political governments. Near the very end of its tenure in mid-2018, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) government led then by Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, inaugurated a National Centre for Artificial Intelligence (NCAI) at the National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST), followed by a Rs 1.1bn budgetary allocation for select universities (mostly in Punjab and Islamabad, one in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Sindh each); most importantly, NUST was declared as the headquarters from where these research and development (R&D) efforts on AI would be coordinated.

A month later (May 2018), the succeeding federal government of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), led by then Prime Minister Imran Khan, approved the Digital Pakistan Policy. This was the first high-level government policy to lay out a plan to set up innovation centres in different thematic areas across the provincial capitals and minor/auxiliary cities, which included AI as a special focus area. The year concluded with the President of Pakistan Dr Arif Alvi, himself a former PTI leader, ambitiously declaring his own Presidential Initiative for Artificial Intelligence & Computing (PIAIC).

On the practical side, it is a rudderless policy driven more by utopian ideals instead of factual appreciation of strengths and weaknesses.

Two years later (during the PTI government) in 2020, Pakistan Air Force (PAF) took the lead in setting up a Centre of Artificial Intelligence and Computing (CENTAIC). The next year (2021), PAF also inaugurated a Cyber Security Academy within Air University, during which the Air Force’s C4I lead also announced the intent to set up an Air Force Cyber Command.

Shortly after the deposition of the PTI government by the incumbent Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) alliance in the first half of 2022, the budget was approved to set up a Sino-Pak Centre for Artificial Intelligence (SPCAI) at the Pak-Austria Fachhochschule: Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology (PAF-IAST) in Haripur, which purportedly collaborates through linkages with academia and industries in Austria and China. Also, in the same year, the Pakistan Army announced the inauguration of its Cyber Command, which reportedly consists of two divisions, one of which (the Army Centre of Emerging Technologies) is reasonably believed to include AI in its focus areas.

The incumbent PDM government, through the Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives, had reportedly constituted a 15-member National Task Force (NTF) on Artificial Intelligence with the purported objective of supporting national development, even before the draft policy was published. The dichotomy is mind-boggling since MoITT has the primary mandate of supervising ICT-related initiatives.

Ignoring the Elephants in the Room

The authors of the draft National AI Policy are surprisingly oblivious or intentionally ignorant of major obstacles to its proper appreciation and implementation (adoption).

Riaz Haq said...

Turkish-American artist Refik Anadol using AI for art.


https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5535


What would a machine dream about after seeing the collection of The Museum of Modern Art? For Unsupervised, artist Refik Anadol (b. 1985) uses artificial intelligence to interpret and transform more than 200 years of art at MoMA. Known for his groundbreaking media works and public installations, Anadol has created digital artworks that unfold in real time, continuously generating new and otherworldly forms that envelop viewers in a large-scale installation.

Unsupervised is a meditation on technology, creativity, and modern art. Anadol trained a sophisticated machine-learning model to interpret the publicly available data of MoMA’s collection. As the model “walks” through its conception of this vast range of works, it reimagines the history of modern art and dreams about what might have been—and what might be to come. In turn, Anadol incorporates site-specific input from the environment of the Museum’s Gund Lobby—changes in light, movement, acoustics, and the weather outside—to affect the continuously shifting imagery and sound.

AI is often used to classify, process, and generate realistic representations of the world. In contrast, Unsupervised is visionary: it explores fantasy, hallucination, and irrationality, creating an alternate understanding of art-making itself. The installation is based on works that are encoded on the blockchain, a distributed digital ledger, which stands as a public record of Anadol’s art. “I am trying to find ways to connect memories with the future,” the artist has said, “and to make the invisible visible.”

Organized by Michelle Kuo, The Marlene Hess Curator of Painting and Sculpture, and Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of Architecture and Design and Director of Research and Development, with Lydia Mullin, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture.

With thanks to Refik Anadol Studio (Alex Morozov, Carrie He, Christian Burke, Daniel Seungmin Lee, Dave Hunt, Efsun Erkılıç, Imaginary Friends, Kerim Karaoglu, Linda Berke, Mert Cobanov, Pelin Kivrak, Ho Man Leung, Kyle McLean, Nidhi Parsana, Raman K. Mustafa, Rishabh Chakrabarty, Simon Burke, Toby Heinemann, Yufan Xie), Casey Reas, Sean Moss-Pultz, and Michael Nguyễn.

Visitors to Refik Anadol: Unsupervised have an opportunity to commemorate their experience with a free, blockchain-based memento, available via QR code on the second floor outside the Marron Atrium. Please note that mementos are being minted in limited editions of 5,000.