The exciting news about the level of intelligence demonstrated by AI systems is that they are approaching qualitatively new capabilities of learning, planning, and reasoning that are human and above in some respects. As the number of neurons and connections grows beyond 10s of billions, new capabilities have emerged.  Humans think with neurons in a soup that is blood free.  That soup is part of what makes us able to think the way that we do.  Neurotransmitters, hormones and many other chemicals are part of how we think and feel. So synapses and their connectivity are critical but the electrical signal is only one dimension of thought.

Our present push to build intelligent machines does seem to use specialized neural structures (mathematically) such as deep neural networks and the transformer architecture, for example. Humans have the amygdala, cortex, hypothalamus, etc. and each is a complex, specialized thinking system.  Our present math has some analogs to these functions however they are primitive.  Even primitive agi is exciting and powerful though barren of the emotional so far, as I can tell.

 These simple structures can produce a certain type of intelligence that is very useful and powerful however there are also specializations developing "under the hood" as we see papers talking about "mixture of experts", prompt pre-processing layers, output "safety",  and the various stages of GPT models (embedding, transformers, DNN, whatever).   

Back in the 1990's this idea, that biochemistry and electronics are both involved in thinking and intelligence was put forward by a Finnish Researcher and others.  The 1960s confirmed this combination :-).

Hype and media excitement make AGI the new buzz word replacing "green" as the marketer's target to make meaningless. 

As the capabilities of the AGI systems grow, the need to have "safety" is more important and urgent.  The human safety system includes fear, nurturing, prediction, socialization, and so much more, features yet to be added to the so-called AGI.

I'm excited to work with these new LLM models and looking forward to the Nvidia GTC conference later this month.  I've studied neural networks since 1991 and only recently has it impressed and excited me.  We had fuzzy logic, didn't go anywhere until recently, we had neural network math, but it was pathetic. The hardware was pathetic,  

Later we had "expert systems" that were not expert but that did generate study of how to extract expert knowledge from people and knowledge of the stages of expert development. 

When deep neural networks began to do object recognition well, I was excited to do video processing and image work and that has only become more powerful.  Audio processing is now becoming integrated into the LLM,  

For me, it was fun to ask ChatGPT to write some python code that would take sound samples from a recording and make audio spectrum plots that could later be used to in a recognition task.  It did it in a few minutes and then it took me an hour to make it work in my system however then I have a tool that I can use as a component in a workflow!  

The coupling of the LLM to code generation is wonderful for me since I write code but am not a coding expert and use it to accomplish a task, often hardware and software integration, whatever.  I can read python and several languages like C++, SQL, Javascript, PHP, Perl, Fortran and so on but I only know enough to get by, then it fades from lack of use.  Having a coding assistant that can also help debug is wonderful. 

I was able to give ChatGPT an error message that I saw when I ran some of it's code, and it told me how to debug in a conversation that eventually made it run.  I learned from the interaction and produced usable code.

 

Rural internet and energy divide grows

The divide between the urban and the rural is growing in California contrary to what folks might believe if they get their news only from the usual suspects.

I recently visited some friends who live in rural northern California and Oregon, and many of them still only have DIAL-UP internet access at home!
 Many have satellite TV, a few have asymmetric internet (dial up in the upload, satellite in the download direction). Many still must go to a library (and many have closed or have short hours) or to a Starbucks to obtain a few minutes or hours of decent speed wifi internet access. The build-outs by the cable and "phone" companies in many of these areas have stopped.

Although internet via peer-to-peer wifi-relay or WiMax technology could improve the situation significantly, there are no active programs analogous to the rural electrification program in place that have a prospect of changing this situation in the foreseeable future. The extension of high speed internet to the families living at the ends of the grid seems to have stopped or slowed to a crawl.

There is amazing ingenuity in how folks get their digital fix -- as you would expect, mobile devices are a common response--less capital required, less capacity ceeded to individuals and more ability to dispense media to the masses without much interactivity......However even mobile systems have limited reach in the many valleys of this region.

So urban areas strengthen the pull economically, along with dendrites that extend along the fiber tendrils connecting them. Meanwhile a culture that still reads at night, a culture that grows their salad greens and heat their places with wood. There are islands where affluence attracts connectivity, however these are more like spots on the landscape. Their "poverty" isn't really poverty in the sense that I've seen in the middle east, but the divide is growing and not shrinking from my observations.

A recent op-ed in the New York Times discusses how the writer thinks the gap can be closed, offering the idea that government subsidy, regulations not written by the giant corporations that set an open playing field could unleash this development. I don't see any way that the political process at the FCC will get out from under the corporate Thrall that keeps competition from encroaching on the stranglehold that the big providers like Verizon, ATT&T, Comcast and Time Warner enjoy. You can read more from Susan Crawford in the New York Times here : How to Get America Online.

Until and unless internet access is regulated in the public interest, and the federal government launches a program to push high speed internet access to the small towns and villages across our rural landscape, this divide will grow. We need fiber connectivity that covers the same territory as the electric grid. This would unleash an economic potential that could drive millions of jobs, relieve pressure on the cities and suburbs, and open the way to extend wireless internet to the rest of the country.

A counterpoint to the situation with respect to internet connectivity is the use of sustainable energy in rural California.

 These areas use wood for heat and that is sustainable to a point. Unfortunately the stoves that are used often emit significant particulate material and that degrades air quality and produces green house warming from the tiny black carbon produced. It is also the case that better, low particulate emitting stoves would help reduce the greenhouse effect of wood heating. Presently there are non-profit initiatives to provide better stoves to third world people, but we also need to address this problem at home.

You find a lot of solar power here, and it's use is growing as the cost per watt falls and inverters and battery systems become more available. Wind energy is used, but the high capital requirements and maintenance are a barrier to widespread use.

Flywheel systems would be a huge help, but are presently too expensive. Flywheel electric batteries would allow the efficient storage of energy from sources that produce energy in peaks that don't align in time with the loads such as wind and solar. To be useful, flywheel energy storage systems must be produced as a simple commodity box at low cost. I think that this technology would be a wonderful addition to the rural lifestyle. It could replace or supplement the use of lead-acid battery systems that are now in wide use, improving the efficiency.

Sustainable energy can grow without the central connectivity that is required for the internet, however as these power islands grow and seek to connect to the existing power grid, there are significant safety and system stability issues that must be addressed by regulators. If the regulators such as the PUC do not require utilities to support the growth of rural sustainable power, we'll see a constraint on this important energy source similar to what happened when the thousands of ISP (internet service providers) were crushed by the few surviving giants. Indeed PG&E has already spent tens of millions to try to stop the development of county sized sustainable energy independent energy systems. Big utilities face costs to support the development of rural energy systems that must at this time be subsidized by the rest of the rate payers.

The reason that the rest of the system must support rural sustainable energy is that it is one of the key actions that can shift us from the fossil fuel greenhouse gas producing system toward a real environmentally sustainable economy. IF the environmental costs are figured into the energy system cost, Solar and Wind are very cost effective, however whenever the big utilities can externalize their costs and take advantage of subsidy from the ratepayers for carbon intensive power, there is no incentive for change. Big utility companies respond to the regulatory environment created by policy and law, so that is a key to nourishing the growth of sustainable rural power systems.


So while there are some improvements in rural broadband, the gap continues to grow, and the economic and educational negative effects are impacting the thousands of rural communities. The pull for the young and the skilled to leave for cities continues, even as a counter flow trickles out from the cities. If we put into place programs that improve connectivity, the viability of our rural communities will be strengthened and the cultural integration can grow. Rather than seeing forest as a resource to be exploited, we can look between the trees to see the people living in the forest as the resource that is to be cherished.

Bruce
bruce.bagnoli@gmail.com

The recent partial solar eclipse drew people to gather together on 4th street in San Rafael to observe this amazing phenomenon just as people have done for millennia.   Some people brought improvised astronomical instruments that displayed the eclipse on a card so that we could watch as the moon coverd some 80% of the sun. 

One fellow put a pinhole over some binoculars, mounted them on a tripod and set it up in front of the Smith Theater.  Crowds gathered, people took pictures with their cell phones, they talked and met each other. The police drove by to see what the fuss was about. 

As the eclipse went to maximum, it was dinner time.  Sharon and I were preparing for my departure for work in Saudi Arabia so we went across the street to eat at the Falafal Hut, the only middle eastern restaurant in San Rafael.  We could see the crowds dwindling as the sun escaped the moon.

After dinner we went home and downloaded the video that we made with our cell phones, along with some stills.  With our cell phones we find that making video is something that we do routinely now, even though the quality isn't all that great, it is the tool that you always have at hand so we use it.  The video that we get is actually good enough to use for our cable show if we run it through a video editing program, doing minimal corrections and editing for the story.

Now I'm cutting a short segment for our next Marinations program using the footage from the May Eclipse.
 

Marinations 27 China Camp - Frank Quan

Marinations 28 Frank Quan Interview

First  cable cast on Marin 26 Septermber 15, 2011

This video is unavailable at the moment as the State Park system has ordered it's removal due to a free speech issue.  Until it is resolved, we removed the video since we have no funding to contest this order in court. Since this video was produced as an act of free speech by an individual with no commercial or other institutional support in support of the State Park system receiving continued funding, it is hard to understand their arbitrary order to remove the video from this little blog.

We thought that the interview with Frank Quan not only told an important story about the State Park and California History, but also brought out important information about the declining health of the San Francisco Bay estuary and it's fishery.

We hope to allow Frank to tell his story here in the future.

In the mean time, scientific information about the estuary and it's challenges due to continued climate heating can be found in this journal article:

Projected Evolution of California's San Francisco Bay-Delta-River System in a Century of Climate Change

James E. Cloern^1*, Noah Knowles¹, Larry R. Brown², Daniel Cayan³, Michael D. Dettinger³, Tara L. Morgan², David H. Schoellhamer², Mark T. Stacey⁴, Mick van der Wegen⁵, R. Wayne Wagner⁴, Alan D. Jassby⁶

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0024465
 This article takes a lot of words to say what Frank Quan told in his short interview, but they are both in alignment with the facts about salinity, turbidity and the changes to the life in the ecosystem.

Marinations goes to China Camp to interview Frank Quan, the last in a line of Chinese Americans who fished for Shrimp in the San Pablo Bay (North of San Francisco) as he tells of the history of this small village, and the decline in the health of the ecosystem. This unique California State Park is threatened by budget cuts, but one of the greatest treasures isn't the land, it is Frank Quan. His family still runs the little store, and he still takes out the fishing boat though the fishery is depleted.

Marinations 22 Poetry Multimedia Montage and Conversation with Anna Halprin

Click to Play

An interview with master choreographer and teacher Anna Halprin following a screening of the documentary "Breath Made Visible" at the Smith Film Center in San Rafael conducted by host Sharon Skolnick-Bagnoli is the first segment. Later a Multimedia piece featuring ; poetry and Marin images by Sharon Skolnick-Bagnoli with music by Jerry Green will delight your senses and lift your mind.

Tags: anna halprin, breath made visible, dance, jerry green, sharon skolnick-bagnoli, marinations, marin

Tragedy of the Commons, Marin Style

The recent announcement by Tom Peters, President of the Marin Community Foundation that they will withdraw support for the Marin Youth Center is a tragic move at this time of economic hardship, removing a commons that was an important beacon of light to our young people. The Marin Community Foundation should add programs such as a job training program to this vibrant center, not shut it down

You'll find more in this Marin Independent Journal article by Jessica Bernstein-Wax  Marin Youth Center in San Rafael closing this month

Closing the Marin Youth Center is a tragedy, and will hurt the youth of Marin. I've seen first hand the work that they do to provide a drug free, alcohol free safe place for young people. They provide programs in media education that are a model for the Bay Area. With the MYC closed, where are young people going to go? Jobs are scarce, After School programs were cut back, but gangs are expanding. The "jobs" program sounds nice, but doesn't need to displace this outstanding program for Marin young people. The MYC also provides important health education to a vulnerable population. The Marin Foundation board should reconsider this ill advised move and keep this vital program - it supports the best amongst us and provides a healthy alternative for vulnerable youth. 

As the Michael Eisenmenger, Executive Director of the Community Media Center of Marin said recently: 

The staff who have fostered the center are truly talented youth facilitators and their departure will be another great loss to the Marin youth and nonprofit community. The youth culinary program was running full steam and it was a marvel to see that youth-run cafe in action - yet another sad loss.

City leaders should be alarmed and concerned at this development. Marin as a whole offers it's youth few creative outlets and virtually no gathering spaces like the MYC that they can call their own. I fear the shortsightedness of this decision will soon be evident in the streets of Marin as youth are dispersed and fragmented in aimless abandon.  In a few short years, city and county leaders will be citing the need for 'youth at risk' programs and  . . . the need for another youth center.

We are thrilled the computer clubhouse survived this wave of cuts - and CMCM will continue to offer our support to that extraordinary program - and to the youth of Marin. We just wish the center as a whole could remain intact - it really is irreplaceable.