#breazeale

[rootsinthefuture]

“In 2035, in the living room of a typical Western family, a daily scene unfolds that seems straight out of a science fiction novel: among the toys scattered on the carpet, a humanoid-looking robot sits next to Tommaso, a four-year-old boy. The robot, named HERA (Home Empathetic Robotic Assistant), is a psychodroid, programmed not only to assist with household chores but also to interact with family members in an empathetic and intuitive manner. HERA's presence in the family's daily life has become as normal as that once attributed to televisions or smartphones. However, unlike the latter, HERA has the ability to actively participate in education and play, becoming both a babysitter and a friend to Tommaso.”

Robots like HERA do not yet exist, but the interaction between children and robots is a subject of study in various fields of pedagogy and social robotics. According to research conducted by Breazeal, Harris, De Steno, and Kory,(1) children treat anthropomorphic robots as genuine sources of information, similarly to human interlocutors. From as young as three years old, children not only receive and retain information imparted by robots, but they also actively seek them out as informants. This phenomenon is particularly evident in robots that exhibit a rich range of non-verbal cues, such as glances, gestures, and facial expressions, indicating responsiveness and interactivity.

(Electronic Mentors: Pedagogy in the Age of Empathetic Robotics)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D9SVDK4B

[mariacallous]

Look at almost any recent major news story from Russia, and you’ll find the Federal Security Service, better known as the FSB. Having failed to prevent the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack in Moscow last month, the agency has played a major role in arresting and apparently torturing the suspected perpetrators. It was FSB agents who arrested Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on espionage charges just over a year ago. And the FSB has been heavily involved in enforcing Russia’s crackdowns on dissent and LGBTQ+ rights.

At the same time, the FSB is inextricably linked to Moscow’s war against Ukraine. After years of carrying out subversive activities there, it provided Putin with key (though apparently misleading) intel that led him to launch his full-scale invasion in 2022. Since then, its agents have facilitated the deportation of Ukrainian children, tortured an untold number of Ukrainian civilians in so-called “torture chambers,” and tried to plant former ISIS members in Ukrainian battalions.

And let’s not forget that Putin himself was shaped by his career in the FSB’s predecessor agency, the Soviet-era KGB. Putin’s rise to power was defined by his image as a strong man who could ensure security and stability. Since assuming the presidency, he’s given himself direct authority over the FSB and steadily expanded its ability to surveil and repress Russian citizens.

To learn about the Russian FSB’s evolution over the last three decades, its operations in Russia and beyond, and its possible future after Putin, Meduza in English senior news editor Sam Breazeale spoke to Dr. Kevin Riehle, an expert in foreign intelligence services and the author of The Russian FSB: A Concise History of the Federal Security Service.

Timestamps for this episode:

(3:13) Decoding the FSB: Structure, mission, and operations

(5:58) The evolution of Russian national security: From KGB to FSB

(14:36) Corruption and ideology: The FSB’s internal struggle

(23:31) The FSB’s foreign reach and domestic repression

(38:49) The agency’s post-Putin future

[thenuclearmallard]

‘Everyone knew it was coming’A dispatch from Russia's Republic of Buryatia, where mobilization is already underway

12:11 pm, September 22, 2022

Source: People of the Baikal

Storyby People of the Baikal. Abridged translation by Sam Breazeale.

According to available data, the Republic of Buryatia has been losingsoldiers at a higher rate than almost any other region of Russia since the start of the war against Ukraine. An analysis from the independent outlet Mediazona suggests that’s no coincidence: Buryatia residents, roughly 30 percent of whom are ethnic Buryats, make well belowRussia’s median salary on average, which has been a reliable predictor that a given region will have high losses in this war. Vladimir Putin’s September 21 mobilization announcementlooks unlikely to reverse the pattern: conscription-eligible Buryatia regions began receiving draft orders that same day. A new report from local outlet People of the Baikal describeshow the men were picked up from their homes early the following morning and taken to the military commissariat’s assembly point in the regional capital, Ulan-Ude. With permission, Meduza is publishing a lightly abridged translation of the story.

On Shumyatsky Street (Editor’s note: in Ulan-Ude, the capital of Buryatia), an elderly woman in a woolen headscarf holds a plastic bag containing five cartons of Peter the Great cigarettes. She’s waiting for her son-in-law to be brought to the recruitment center. Last night, the 35-year-old was served a military summons in his home district of Barguzinsky, and he should be arriving in Ulan-Ude soon.

“I have three sons who are there already,” the woman says quietly. “Now they’re taking my son-in-law. They all want to fight. All of them. Men have something wrong with their heads.”

The woman’s phone rings and she answers. First she's calm, then she breaks into a shout: “Pasha, are you here? Yes, I brought the cigarettes. Tell everyone there that you have four kids, you hear me? Tell them all! Maybe they’ll release you.”

Buses of conscripts have been arriving in Ulan-Ude since the morning. The men are brought to the Military Commissariat of the Republic of Buryatia’s assembly point on Shumyatsky Street, a large, fenced-in territory directly adjacent to a tall apartment building. Just a 10-minute walk from here is the city’s archery hall, where memorial services for soldiers killed in Ukraine are held.

TUVANS IN THE WAR‘They’re mostly after loans’Tuvans, trying to scramble out of poverty, are dying in a foreign war

11 days ago

The first conscripts to arrive are from the Tunkinsky district. According to a local government official, 130 people were picked upfrom the district, which has a population of about 20,700 residents. The entire Republic of Buryatia has about 980,000 people, and about 6 to 7 thousand of them are eligible for the draft.

According to a local government official who asked to remain anonymous, none of the people who have been conscripted so far have objected or complained. “Everyone knew mobilization was coming, and everyone was internally prepared for [the conscription authorities] to come for them,” he said.

It takes about 6–7 hours to reach Ulan-Ude from the Tunkinsky district. On the bus ride, the conscripts are given a lunch of buuz, a type of steamed dumpling popular in the region. “Each person ate 10 of them,” said one woman in a messaging group for soldiers' wives in the district. Members of the group have already begun collecting money for things like cigarettes and warm hats for the future soldiers. They’ve also discussed giving their husband bags of sacred sand from the Burkhan Baabai datsan, a Buddhist monastery in the district.

The Tunkinsky district residents arrive in two white Ford vans and two yellow school buses. When the vehicles stop in front of the gates of the assembly point, the conscripts — almost all in camouflage military uniforms — get out for a smoke break. Many of them are carrying bags packed by their wives or mothers.

People of the Baikal

“I’m 45 years old. I served a thousand years ago, and I wasn’t sent to a single hot zone,” says one heavyset, unshaven man. “But hey, I guess it’s my turn to do some shooting.” After the men finish their cigarettes and return to the buses, they’re driven through the gates to the assembly point. One of them shakes his fist and sings an upbeat song in a minor key as he waits for the others.

Ten minutes later, another batch of conscripts shows up, this time from the Yeravninsky district. Then buses arrive from the Zaigrayevsky, Kurumkansky, and Barguzinsky districts. Sergey, who hails from the Yeravninsky district, steps out of his bus with a bottle of cheap beer. He stands there for a moment in his plaid shirt and puffer vest, wobbling and smiling at a group of Kurumkansky residents. They stand in a circle, drinking vodka straight from the bottle. “Hey, come film me,” he says, waving his arm. “I think our country, or Buryatia, will crush old China — I mean, uh, Ukraine.”

Sergey is 49 years old. He served in the army once, but that was “a long time ago.” He has a wife and two daughters, the youngest of whom just entered the first grade. He says he’s not afraid of death. “Though I did tell my wife goodbye, and my daughters, too,” he adds, tears welling in his eyes. “But here we are: I’m headed to the front.”

All of the men being mobilized from Buryatia will be sent to either Chita, a city in Russia’s Zabaykalsky Krai, or Blagoveshchensk, in the Amur region, for training. From there, they’ll go to Ukraine.

[mit]

MIT roboticist Cynthia Breazeal had worked with designers at Mattel to ensure that Robotics Engineer Barbie was both realistic and inspirational. #Barbie has been a STEM career role model for many decades; among other things, she’s been an astronaut a number of times, starting in 1965!

[party-slug]

If Wilder and Usyk were to fight how do you see it going?

short answer: usyk by very wide decision, or 11th/12th round tko.

sounds a little crazy at first, but if you think about it there are two ways to beat wilder. there is of course the fury way which works great if you are big and can handle his right hand/dont mind taking some punishment to dish it out. obviously that isnt what usyk is gonna try if they fight, and he doesnt need to because there exists a lesser known second option. if you go back to wilders olympic days, you will notice he lost to a fella named clemente russo in 2008(also worth pointing out that usyk actually beat him at the 2012 olympics to win the gold at HW). i would say its also worth noting that russo is smaller than usyk but was able to use his footwork to beat wilder up on the inside and force him to fight off the back foot, which prevented him from throwing the right, which is basically the only thing wilder knows how to do. this is the exact kind of boxer wilder has been protected from his entire pro career. even if you discount his opponent's exceptionally low rankings and look strictly at their styles, they are almost without exception flat footed sluggers who only know how to come forward. it sounds harsh, but you would have a tough time convincing me wilder has exhibited any real growth as a boxer since his loss to russo. he kinda jabbed against (i think) breazeale, and it looked like he learned some rudimentary foot work in wilder/fury 3, but that went out the window after the first round. his footwork is still extremely limited, hes never really learned how string punch combinations together, and historically speaking his ability to use the jab is pretty much non existent. he has an abundance of heart, but unless he can seriously touch usyk(which i doubt), it wont be enough to get it done.

[sunaleisocial]

First AI + Education Summit is an international push for “AI fluency”

New Post has been published on https://sunalei.org/news/first-ai-education-summit-is-an-international-push-for-ai-fluency/

First AI + Education Summit is an international push for “AI fluency”

This summer, 350 participants came to MIT to dive into a question that is, so far, outpacing answers: How can education still create opportunities for all when digital literacy is no longer enough — a world in which students now need to have AI fluency?

The AI + Education Summit was hosted by the MIT RAISE Initiative (Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with speakers from the App Inventor Foundation, the Mayor’s Office of the City of Boston, the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, and more. Highlights included an onsite “Hack the Climate” hackathon, where teams of beginner and experienced MIT App Inventor users had a single day to develop an app for fighting climate change.

In opening remarks, RAISE principal investigators Eric Klopfer, Hal Abelson, and Cynthia Breazeal emphasized what new goals for AI fluency look like. “Education is not just about learning facts,” Klopfer said. “Education is a whole developmental process. And we need to think about how we support teachers in being more effective. Teachers must be part of the AI conversation.” Abelson highlighted the empowerment aspect of computational action, namely its immediate impact, that “what’s different than in the decades of people teaching about computers [is] what kids can do right now.” And Breazeal, director of the RAISE Initiative, touched upon AI-supported learning, including the imperative to use technology like classroom robot companions as something supplementary to what students and teachers can do together, not as a replacement for one another. Or as Breazeal underlined in her talk: “We really want people to understand, in an appropriate way, how AI works and how to design it responsibly. We want to make sure that people have an informed voice of how AI should be integrated into society. And we want to empower all kinds of people around the world to be able to use AI, harness AI, to solve the important problems of their communities.”

Play video

MIT AI + Education Summit 2024: Welcome Remarks by MIT RAISE Leaders, Abelson, Breazeal, and Klopfer Video: MIT Open Learning

The summit featured the invited winners of the Global AI Hackathon. Prizes were awarded for apps in two tracks: climate and sustainability, and health and wellness. Winning projects addressed issues like sign-language-to-audio translation, moving object detection for the vision impaired, empathy practice using interactions with AI characters, and personal health checks using tongue images. Attendees also participated in hands-on demos for MIT App Inventor, a “playground” for the Personal Robots Group’s social robots, and an educator professional development session on responsible AI.

By convening people of so many ages, professional backgrounds, and geographies, organizers were able to foreground a unique mix of ideas for participants to take back home. Conference papers included real-world case studies of implementing AI in school settings, such as extracurricular clubs, considerations for student data security, and large-scale experiments in the United Arab Emirates and India. And plenary speakers tackled funding AI in education, state government’s role in supporting its adoption, and — in the summit’s keynote speech by Microsoft’s principal director of AI and machine learning engineering Francesca Lazzeri — the opportunities and challenges of the use of generative AI in education. Lazzeri discussed the development of tool kits that enact safeguards around principles like fairness, security, and transparency. “I truly believe that learning generative AI is not just about computer science students,” Lazzeri said. “It’s about all of us.”

Trailblazing AI education from MIT

Critical to early AI education has been the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, a longtime collaborator that helped MIT deploy computational action and project-based learning years before AI was even a widespread pedagogical challenge. A summit panel discussed the history of its CoolThink project, which brought such learning to grades 4-6 in 32 Hong Kong schools in an initial pilot and then met the ambitious goal of bringing it to over 200 Hong Kong schools. On the panel, CoolThink director Daniel Lai said that the trust, MIT, Education University of Hong Kong, and the City University of Hong Kong did not want to add a burden to teachers and students of another curriculum outside of school. Instead, they wanted “to mainstream it into our educational system so that every child would have equal opportunity to access these skills and knowledge.”

MIT worked as a collaborator from CoolThink’s start in 2016. Professor and App Inventor founder Hal Abelson helped Lai get the project off the ground. Several summit attendees and former MIT research staff members were leaders in the project development. Educational technologist Josh Sheldon directed the MIT team’s work on the CoolThink curriculum and teacher professional development. Karen Lang, then App Inventor’s education and business development manager, was the main curriculum developer for the initial phase of CoolThink, writing the lessons and accompanying tutorials and worksheets for the three levels in the curriculum, with editing assistance from the Hong Kong education team. And Mike Tissenbaum, now a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, led the development of the project’s research design and theoretical grounding. Among other key tasks, they ran the initial teacher training for the first two cohorts of Hong Kong teachers, consisting of sessions totaling 40 hours with about 40 teachers each.

The ethical demands of today’s AI “funhouse mirror”

Daniel Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, delivered the closing keynote. He described the current state of AI as a “funhouse mirror” that “distorts the world around us” and framed it as yet another technology that has presented humans with ethical demands to find its positive, empowering uses that complement our intelligence but also to mitigate its risks. 

“One of the areas I’m most excited about personally,” Huttenlocher said, “is people learning from AI,” with AI discovering solutions that people had not yet come upon on their own. As so much of the summit demonstrated, AI and education is something that must happen in collaboration. “[AI] is not human intellect. This is not human judgment. This is something different.”

[jcmarchi]

First AI + Education Summit is an international push for “AI fluency”

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/first-ai-education-summit-is-an-international-push-for-ai-fluency/

First AI + Education Summit is an international push for “AI fluency”

This summer, 350 participants came to MIT to dive into a question that is, so far, outpacing answers: How can education still create opportunities for all when digital literacy is no longer enough — a world in which students now need to have AI fluency?

The AI + Education Summit was hosted by the MIT RAISE Initiative (Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with speakers from the App Inventor Foundation, the Mayor’s Office of the City of Boston, the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, and more. Highlights included an onsite “Hack the Climate” hackathon, where teams of beginner and experienced MIT App Inventor users had a single day to develop an app for fighting climate change.

In opening remarks, RAISE principal investigators Eric Klopfer, Hal Abelson, and Cynthia Breazeal emphasized what new goals for AI fluency look like. “Education is not just about learning facts,” Klopfer said. “Education is a whole developmental process. And we need to think about how we support teachers in being more effective. Teachers must be part of the AI conversation.” Abelson highlighted the empowerment aspect of computational action, namely its immediate impact, that “what’s different than in the decades of people teaching about computers [is] what kids can do right now.” And Breazeal, director of the RAISE Initiative, touched upon AI-supported learning, including the imperative to use technology like classroom robot companions as something supplementary to what students and teachers can do together, not as a replacement for one another. Or as Breazeal underlined in her talk: “We really want people to understand, in an appropriate way, how AI works and how to design it responsibly. We want to make sure that people have an informed voice of how AI should be integrated into society. And we want to empower all kinds of people around the world to be able to use AI, harness AI, to solve the important problems of their communities.”

Play video

MIT AI + Education Summit 2024: Welcome Remarks by MIT RAISE Leaders, Abelson, Breazeal, and Klopfer Video: MIT Open Learning

The summit featured the invited winners of the Global AI Hackathon. Prizes were awarded for apps in two tracks: climate and sustainability, and health and wellness. Winning projects addressed issues like sign-language-to-audio translation, moving object detection for the vision impaired, empathy practice using interactions with AI characters, and personal health checks using tongue images. Attendees also participated in hands-on demos for MIT App Inventor, a “playground” for the Personal Robots Group’s social robots, and an educator professional development session on responsible AI.

By convening people of so many ages, professional backgrounds, and geographies, organizers were able to foreground a unique mix of ideas for participants to take back home. Conference papers included real-world case studies of implementing AI in school settings, such as extracurricular clubs, considerations for student data security, and large-scale experiments in the United Arab Emirates and India. And plenary speakers tackled funding AI in education, state government’s role in supporting its adoption, and — in the summit’s keynote speech by Microsoft’s principal director of AI and machine learning engineering Francesca Lazzeri — the opportunities and challenges of the use of generative AI in education. Lazzeri discussed the development of tool kits that enact safeguards around principles like fairness, security, and transparency. “I truly believe that learning generative AI is not just about computer science students,” Lazzeri said. “It’s about all of us.”

Trailblazing AI education from MIT

Critical to early AI education has been the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, a longtime collaborator that helped MIT deploy computational action and project-based learning years before AI was even a widespread pedagogical challenge. A summit panel discussed the history of its CoolThink project, which brought such learning to grades 4-6 in 32 Hong Kong schools in an initial pilot and then met the ambitious goal of bringing it to over 200 Hong Kong schools. On the panel, CoolThink director Daniel Lai said that the trust, MIT, Education University of Hong Kong, and the City University of Hong Kong did not want to add a burden to teachers and students of another curriculum outside of school. Instead, they wanted “to mainstream it into our educational system so that every child would have equal opportunity to access these skills and knowledge.”

MIT worked as a collaborator from CoolThink’s start in 2016. Professor and App Inventor founder Hal Abelson helped Lai get the project off the ground. Several summit attendees and former MIT research staff members were leaders in the project development. Educational technologist Josh Sheldon directed the MIT team’s work on the CoolThink curriculum and teacher professional development. Karen Lang, then App Inventor’s education and business development manager, was the main curriculum developer for the initial phase of CoolThink, writing the lessons and accompanying tutorials and worksheets for the three levels in the curriculum, with editing assistance from the Hong Kong education team. And Mike Tissenbaum, now a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, led the development of the project’s research design and theoretical grounding. Among other key tasks, they ran the initial teacher training for the first two cohorts of Hong Kong teachers, consisting of sessions totaling 40 hours with about 40 teachers each.

The ethical demands of today’s AI “funhouse mirror”

Daniel Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, delivered the closing keynote. He described the current state of AI as a “funhouse mirror” that “distorts the world around us” and framed it as yet another technology that has presented humans with ethical demands to find its positive, empowering uses that complement our intelligence but also to mitigate its risks. 

“One of the areas I’m most excited about personally,” Huttenlocher said, “is people learning from AI,” with AI discovering solutions that people had not yet come upon on their own. As so much of the summit demonstrated, AI and education is something that must happen in collaboration. “[AI] is not human intellect. This is not human judgment. This is something different.”

[mirandamckenni1]

AI is Making Us Less Human Ground News Holiday Sale: Compare news coverage. Spot media bias. Join Ground News today to get 40% off unlimited access: https://ift.tt/Arvugn4. Sale ends December 31. - From police robots to AI avatars, the tech industry uses human empathy as a tool for evil. - Filmed & edited by me :) Set design & camera by Vic Mongiovi AI & robotics consultation from David Marino & Charlie Gauthier Voiceover recordings by: Stushi: https://www.youtube.com/@stushi Carmilla Morrell: https://ift.tt/4cbmYSF Lola Sebastian: https://ift.tt/y1BpnOm Foreign Man in a Foreign Land: https://ift.tt/8DBHYZo – Support the channel on Patreon: https://ift.tt/Y9SJx14 Twitter: https://twitter.com/lily_lxndr Instagram: https://ift.tt/ab746TU Letterboxd: https://ift.tt/TxLNSDs - Sources: Tech fair robot scandal https://ift.tt/pEfeuGK Kamil Mamak, "Should Violence Against Robots be Banned?" Kate Darling, "'Who's Johnny?': Anthropomorphic Framing in Human-Robot Interaction, Integration, and Policy" Mads Bering Christiansen, Ahmad Rafsanjani, and Jonas Jørgensen, "“It Brings the Good Vibes”: Exploring Biomorphic Aesthetics in the Design of Soft Personal Robots" Kate Darling, Palash Nandy, and Cynthia Breazeal, "Empathic concern and the effect of stories in human-robot interaction" Dr. Cherie Lacey and Dr. Catherine Caudwell, "Cuteness as a Dark Pattern in Home Robots" Adobe Podcast https://ift.tt/WaQO3Ng Anat Perry, "AI will never convey the essence of human empathy" Luisa Damiano, Paul Dumouchel, and Hagen Lehmann, "Artificial Empathy: An Interdisciplinary Investigation" Adrienn Ujhelyi, Flora Almosdi, and Alexandra Fodor, "Would You Pass the Turing Test? Influencing Factors of the Turing Decision" Jonas Ivarsson and Oskar Lindwall, "Suspicious Minds: the Problem of Trust and Conversational Agents" HeyGen https://heygen.com Affective computing market (U.S. only - unsure how large the global market is!) https://ift.tt/MF4xSyz Ted Chiang, "Liking What You See: A Documentary" (from the short story collection "Stories of Your Life and Others") Daniel Immerwahr, "What the Doomsayers Get Wrong About Deepfakes" https://ift.tt/ZDnb0aO" – Media used: The Iron Giant (1999) Wall-E (2008) Her (2013) Blade Runner (1982) Ex Machina (2014) Air Doll (2009) Links to all YouTube videos used here: https://ift.tt/YAv3XeR via YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvGOA34z22E

[thatswhatshedoes]

Meet These Incredible Women Advancing A.I. Research

Forbes' Mariya Yao introduces over 20 leading women behind #AI research -- featuring Coursera's Daphne Koller, Jiboro Bot's Cynthia Breazeal, Harvard professor Latanya Sweeney, and more: "We all have a responsibility to make sure everyone - including companies, governments and researchers - develop AI with diversity in mind.”

[rootsinthefuture]

“In 2035, in the living room of a typical Western family, a daily scene unfolds that seems straight out of a science fiction novel: among the toys scattered on the carpet, a humanoid-looking robot sits next to Tommaso, a four-year-old boy. The robot, named HERA (Home Empathetic Robotic Assistant), is a psychodroid, programmed not only to assist with household chores but also to interact with family members in an empathetic and intuitive manner. HERA's presence in the family's daily life has become as normal as that once attributed to televisions or smartphones. However, unlike the latter, HERA has the ability to actively participate in education and play, becoming both a babysitter and a friend to Tommaso.”

Robots like HERA do not yet exist, but the interaction between children and robots is a subject of study in various fields of pedagogy and social robotics. According to research conducted by Breazeal, Harris, De Steno,and Kory,(1) children treat anthropomorphic robots as genuine sources of information, similarly to human interlocutors. From as young as three years old, children not only receive and retain information imparted by robots, but they also actively seek them out as informants. This phenomenon is particularly evident in robots that exhibit a rich range of non-verbal cues, such as glances, gestures, and facial expressions, indicating responsiveness and interactivity.

HERA's ability to display empathy is no accident; it is the result of sophisticatedprogramming aimed at emulating human non-verbal contingency. This aspect is crucial because children, as suggested by Breazeal and colleagues' research, prefer interactions with those who show a greater ability to respond appropriately and promptly to their communicative signals. HERA's artificial empathy allows it not only to understand and respond to Tommaso's emotions but also to anticipate his needs, learning from his daily behaviors. HERA's role extends beyond mere supervision. It is an educational tool that stimulates Tommaso's curiosity, proposing educational games and activities that encourage learning through play. Its presence encourages the child to question how things work, promoting a type of active and participatory learning that was less accessible with previous technological means.

As technology advances rapidly towards the imaginary reality of HERA(2), numerous advantages emerge, but also serious ethical issues(3).

The dependence on robotic assistants for the companionship and education of children could have negative effects on the development of

their social skills and make them excessively reliant on robots for various aspects of their lives. Spending too much time with a robot like HERA could limit fundamental human interactions essential for their emotional

and interpersonal development, leading to potential difficulties in forming real relationships and handling complex social situations. Therefore, it is essential that educators and technologists collaborate to create guidelines that balance the beneficial use of such technologies with the necessary interpersonal and emotional development of children, thus preventing the risks associated with excessive dependence on robots.

A crucial aspect to consider is the physical safety of children. Robots designed to interact with young children must be equipped with rigorous safety protocols to prevent physical harm. This includes implementing advanced sensors to avoid collisions and sophisticated algorithms to detect potentially dangerous situations. For example, according to the research of Tanaka et al. (2007), the inclusion of proximity sensors and the ability to quickly recognize and react to sudden movements are essential to ensure that robots can operate safely in home environments where children play freely. Additionally, the design of robots must take into account the physical characteristics of children, meaning avoiding sharp corners, toxic materials, and easily detachable components that could pose a choking hazard.

A study conducted by Sharkey et al. (2010) emphasizes the importance of rigorous and continuous testing of robots in real environments to ensure that any potential risks are identified and mitigated.

Psychological safety is another critical aspect. Robots must be designed to support, not overshadow, children's autonomy. This means that robots should be programmed to encourage children to explore and learn independently rather than becoming a unique and constant point of reference. As psychologist Goleman (2006) suggests, it is crucial for children to develop the ability to self-regulate and manage their own emotions without overly relying on constant external support.

Stuart J. Russell's research on AI alignment(4) is particularly relevant in his context. Russell emphasizes the importance of developing artificial intelligences that understand and respect human objectives, avoiding behaviors that could be harmful or unintended. In the case of robots like HERA, this translates into the need to program robots so that they not only respond to children's immediate needs but also promote their long-term development in a safe and healthy manner.

In previous chapters, we explored a near future where the convergence of technological acceleration and consequent economic accessibility could lead to the widespread adoption of humanoid robots in our homes. This transformation, far from being a mere futuristic hypothesis, is shaping up as an increasingly tangible trajectory that will radically redefine the concepts of "home" and "family."

Humanoid robots, initially conceived as simple domestic aids, could quickly evolve into complex entities integrated into the family fabric.

These active and interactive presences could soon occupy a central place in our lives, especially in those of our children. The idea that intelligent robots could become a constant presence in children's lives raises a myriad of ethical, psychological, and educational issues that we cannot afford to ignore.

This technological evolution fits into an already complex and problematic social context regarding parenting. On the one hand, the introduction of domestic robots could potentially free up valuable time for parents, offering them greater opportunities to interact meaningfully with their children. On the other hand, we must consider current trends in parenting, which paint a worrying picture. Recent studies(5) highlight a growing neglect by parents, often overwhelmed by work and sometimes immature, regarding their children's needs. This neglect manifests in various ways, including the excessive use of electronic devices in the presence of children. According to a survey reported by Psychology Today, which involved six thousand children between the ages of eight and thirteen, 32% reported feeling "unimportant" when their parents used cell phones, and over half said their parents spent too much time on devices. This behavior can significantly damage children's social and emotional development, depriving them of important face-to-face interactions and the necessary parental attention.

Moreover, the phenomenon of parental burnout is emerging as an increasingly widespread issue. Characterized by physical and emotional exhaustion, burnout often leads to emotional distancing and a loss of satisfaction in the parental role. This condition, exacerbated by factors such as work-family conflict, financial insecurity, and lack of social support, not only affects the mental and physical health of parents but also impacts children, leading to increased anger, neglect, and in the most severe cases, violence from parents.

In this complex context, the introduction of intelligent robots into families presents both opportunities and challenges. On the one hand, these robots could lighten parents' domestic workload, potentially freeing up time and energy for more meaningful interaction with their children.

From: Electronic Mentors: Pedagogy in the Age of Empathetic Robotics

[mariacallous]

According to Russia’s propaganda outlets, one of the goals of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine is to fight back against the "sexual permissiveness" and “moral decay of the West." Since the war began, Russian politicians and pro-government news net have flooded the airwaves with stories about the “depravity” of the Ukrainian army, repeatedly equated homosexuality with pedophilia, and presented Russian troops as heroes fighting for “traditional values.” But however absurd this rhetoric may be, it’s not new or unique: throughout history, these same ideas have repeatedly arisen in a variety of dictatorships, from Hitler’s Germany and Stalin's Russia to Gambia and Uganda in the 21st century. Meduza explains why authoritarians on both the right and the left can be counted on to persecute LGBT+ people.

Do we really want kids in Russia to have Parent No. 1 and Parent No. 2? Have we lost our minds? Do we really want our kids to have it drilled into their heads that there are more genders than sexes? Do we really want our schools to hammer perversions into their heads that lead to degradation and extinction?

So went one of Vladimir Putin’s numerous digressions during his speech at the signing ceremony for the treaties on Russia annexing four partially-occupied Ukrainian territories last month.

In recent years, the Russian president’s rhetoric surrounding LGBT people has gotten crueler and more intense. In 2014, for example, after signing the law banning “gay propaganda” among minors in Russia, Putin pointed out that “non-traditional relationships” themselves were still legal in Russia, denying accusations from human rights groups that the new law was discriminatory. On the other hand, in the same speech, he went on to name “homosexualism” and “pedophilia” as part of the same list, implying a similarity or connection between them. Even earlier, in 2013, he said that “in Euro-Atlantic countries, moral principles and traditional identity are being denied. [Those countries] are implementing policies that put multi-children families on the same level as same-sex partnership, and faith in God on the same level as faith in Satan.”

In addition to maligning LGBT+ people, Putin has told bogus stories about how, in Western countries, “there’s serious talk of registering parties that aim to promote pedophilia.” The party he was likely referring to was created in the Netherlands in 2006 and only had three members. It disbanded in 2010 after widespread public outrage.

Nonetheless, while Putin used to at least pretend that LGBT+ people have the same rights in Russia as everybody else (apart from the “propaganda” law), he now speaks about them as a force to be fought against. Moreover, in his annexation speech, Putin effectively said that one of the goals of Russia’s Ukraine invasion is to prevent the normalization in Russia of all sexualities not sanctioned by the state.

Meanwhile, for Putin and his propagandists, the idea that there are more than two genders has gone from a “perversion” to an “existential threat to the country and its people.” In Russian state discourse, homosexuality has rapidly became as inherent a characteristic of Russia’s enemies as their “commitment to Nazi or fascist ideas." On October 1, for example, pro-Kremlin film actor and Russian State Duma deputy Dmitry Pevtsov claimed Russian troops are fighting for “families to consist of a mom, a dad, and children — not some guy, some other guy, and some other who-knows-what.” And on a Russian talk show in May, he said that “militant faggots have become the main defenders of Ukrainian values.”

The Russian authorities’ rhetoric surrounding gender and sexuality bears a remarkable resemblance to that of numerous other totalitarian, authoritarian, and dictatorial regimes. To gain insight into why this form of intolerance consistently plays an integral role in how dictators maintain power, Meduza turned to history.

The Nazis simultaneously despised and feared LGBT people

The idea of a government-recognized union between one man and one woman as the only permissible kind of romantic relationship is one of the fundamental principles of most fascist regimes. What's more, both members of the relationship must understand their gender in a way that “matches” their sex characteristics; most fascist governments have considered cross-dressing and being transgender just as “deviant” as sex between two men, for example. It’s no accident that in Vichy France, the state motto was changed from Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood) to Travail, Famille, Patrie (Work, Family, Homeland).

In the Third Reich, LGBT+ people faced mass persecution and were declared a threat to the welfare of the state and of the people. In the minds of Nazi propagandists, gay people were the antithesis of everything Aryan patriots were supposed to embody: asceticism, masculinity, and a willingness to forego pleasure and entertainment to devote oneself to the homeland and the Führer.

Sexual “perversion” in Hitler’s Germany was seen as a remnant of the decadence and hedonism of the Weimar Republic. The Nazis sought to cut all ties with their predecessor state and tightened legislation criminalizing sexual relations between men. Beginning in 1933, when the National Socialist Party came to power and Hitler’s dictatorship was established, prosecution for homosexuality no longer required even physical evidence — it was enough to bring a witness statement from a “law-abiding citizen” who claimed to have seen a suspect look too intensely at another man.

Like in many dictatorships, the image of LGBT+ people that the Nazis pushed was based on two contradictory premises. The first was that LGBT+ people were weak, pathetic, sick people who didn’t deserve to be a part of society. The second was that homosexuality was passed down like a deadly virus and could destroy German society from within if the proper measures weren’t taken to defeat it.

Thus, on one hand, LGBT people were cast as subhumans who deserved contempt, while on the other hand, they were accused of being some of the most dangerous and insidious enemies of the state. The propaganda failed to explain how a group so weak could simultaneously be so powerful.

“In nazi propaganda, homosexuals were generally portrayed as soft, cowardly, cringing, and untrustworthy creatures,” Dutch historian Harry Oosterhuis has written. “[But] in Hitler's and Himmler's view they nonetheless appeared to possess an imperious character and to have at their disposal special intuitions and aptitudes which were withheld from 'normal' men. They were capable of strongly organizing in secret and thereupon making a grab for power.”

In the 12 years the Third Reich existed, according to historians’ estimates, about 100,000 men were arrested for allegedly engaging in “unnatural sexual acts.” Out of the 53,400 men convicted, between 5,000 and 15,000 were sent to concentration camps. The rest were given prison sentences or forced to undergo “treatment.” Persecution against LGBT+ people also got worse as time went on: from January 1933 to June 1935, about 4,000 men were charged for “unnatural sexual acts,” while from June 1935 to June 1938, the number rose to at least 40,000.

Communist regimes were no friendlier

In 1934, an openly gay Scottish journalist and communist named Harry Whyte wrote an open letter to Joseph Stalin. He wanted to explain to the Soviet leader why, in his view, “a homosexual [can be] considered someone worthy of membership in the Communist Party.” At the time, Whyte had been living in the USSR for several years, working as a writer for the English-language Soviet propaganda outlet the Moscow Daily News. Quoting letters written by Marx and Engels, as well as Stalin's own speeches, Whyte criticized the way gay men were treated under capitalism and fascism. He said that even when he had visited Soviet psychiatrists and asked them to “cure” him, they had admitted this might be impossible. He went on to liken the fight for gay rights to the struggle for women's rights.

Whyte expected Stalin to be receptive to his arguments — and to take a kinder view of gay men than that of the British authorities. Instead, the dictator’s response was brief and hostile: “An idiot and a degenerate.”

Shortly after, Harry Whyte left the Soviet Union and was kicked out of the Communist party — but not before Maxim Gorky published a response to his letter in the Soviet newspaper Pravda. “In a country where the proletariat manages courageously and successfully,” Gorky wrote, “homosexuality, which corrupts young people, is recognized as socially criminal and is punished.”

Despite universal equality officially serving as one of the principal ideals of communist and socialist regimes, LGBT people in the Soviet Union found themselves in similar circumstances to those of queer people in fascist dictatorships. The decade that followed the relatively free 1920s was marked by the passage of legislation even more reactionary and repressive than that of the Russian Empire. Like the Nazis, Soviet leaders viewed LGBT+ people with both contempt and fear. In official discourse, gay people were depicted as untrustworthy figures predisposed to deception and betrayal.

The year before Whyte’s letter, the USSR’s Central Executive Committee criminalized “sodomy," making voluntary sex between two men punishable by up to five years in prison.

However, unlike in fascist regimes, where persecution against gay and trans people took place primarily among the general population, "sodomy" allegations in the Soviet Union were frequently used as a pretext for political purges. Facing a “sodomy” charge under Stalin's government was tantamount to being accused of treason.

Over the next 60 years, about 60,000 people were convicted of “sodomy.” Having these charges on one’s record often made it impossible to find work or enroll in university.

Fidel Castro’s Cuba was another communist state in which LGBT+ people faced brutal repressions. For decades after Castro's rise to power in 1959, LGBT+ people were sent to labor camps and forced to publicly renounce their “criminal predilections.” Police arrested men whose behavior they deemed “feminine” or who dressed “like a hippy.” To extract confessions from gay men, investigators would wrap them in barbed wire or bury them up to their neck and deprive them of food and water.

Castro normalized and encouraged homophobia among the public as well. Like current Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, the Cuban dictator held that “there are no homosexuals in this country.”

The masculinity cult

Nina Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs at The New School and the granddaughter of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, has attributed authoritarian leaders’ consistent persecution of LGBT+ people to their constant need to emphasize their own strength. The image of a man as the embodiment of masculinity, she writes, is connected in these leaders’ minds with the “natural order of things,” the violation of which poses an immediate threat to their continued power. For dictators and their devotees, queer people provoke not just disgust and confusion but also fear, because they represent an “alternative” order.

Under totalitarianism, homophobic discourse is usually predicated on the idea that if same-sex relationships or non-binary gender identities are normalized, there will be no place for “normal” people in the “new” world. Despite the fact that it’s LGBT+ people who have consistently faced persecution under fascist and communist regimes, dictators promote the idea that queer people are the ones who pose a danger to others. As Khrushcheva wrote in a 2021 column:

These leaders' reliance on “hegemonic masculinity” – the idea that men should be strong, tough, and dominant – to bolster their position should not be surprising. Authoritarian states are fundamentally weak, and dictators are fundamentally insecure. So, they constantly attempt to project strength.

But in today's fast-changing world, ordinary people are feeling insecure, too – especially those who think their traditionally “dominant” positions are being eroded. That makes them eager to embrace strongmen who promise a return to the order and predictability of a more socially rigid past. In other words, people are afraid of change, and think they need macho leaders and patriarchal rules to protect them.

The first order of business for authoritarian leaders seeking to scapegoat queer people is to convince the population that minority sexualities are dangerous. To that end, they usually claim that there’s a correlation between the sexuality or gender identity they disapprove of and some imagined negative trait. For example, authorities might claim that LGBT+ people are incapable of engaging in patriotism or living in society without imposing their “deviant” predilections on “normal” people.

To stir up homophobic sentiment among the public, propagandists try to convince the heterosexual and cisgender majority that LGBT+ people’s worldviews and psyches make them something akin to invaders from another planet. This is because it’s much easier for people to hate “aliens” than to hate people who have everything in common with the majority except their sexuality.

Leaders in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes frequently claim that LGBT+ people are a threat to demography, depicting homosexuality or nonbinary gender identities as a virus that can be passed from person to person. State propaganda traditionally seeks to scare people by asserting that the “spread” of homosexuality will lead to a decline in birthrates — and ultimately to extinction. But this is a fantasy: nothing remotely close to this has been observed in any democratic country where same-sex relationships are legal and socially acceptable.

One of the world’s most well-known homophobic leaders was Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s prime minister from 1987 to 2017. When trying to justify his repressive policies against LGBT+ people, Mugabe often presented the same arguments Vladimir Putin has begun using in recent years: that gay people are “harmful” and “unnatural,” and that their supporters are either “idiots” or “Satanists.”

In the years since Mugabe’s rule came to an end, Zimbabwe has seen the opening of its first health clinics for gay and bisexual men — a step lauded by the local LGBT+ community as a “historic victory.” In other African dictatorships such as Uganda, however, state-sanctioned homophobia continues to thrive.

After inculcating homophobia among the public, dictators themselves usually shape their own public image around stereotypes of masculinity, contrasting themselves with people who don’t fit into their “traditional” conceptions of manhood. And because citizens’ primary responsibility in authoritarian regimes is to buttress the state, LGBT+ people are stigmatized and demonized for not fitting into the model of the “classic” family and for showing their individuality — something authoritarian governments strive to suppress. 

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We had a lot of fun at Boogie on the Bridge 2023! It was a totally excellent time with lots of great music, great food, and great friends! The motorcycle rally was amazing and there was never a dull moment at this wonderful event! Proceeds of this event went to amazing causes of Maryville/Alcoa Animal Shelter and The Jeff Breazeale Foundation. Thank you so much for the wonderful time!

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My favorite books in Feb-2023 - #23 Architects of Intelligence: The truth about AI from the people building it – November 23, 2018 by Martin Ford (Author) Bestselling author Martin Ford talks to a hall-of-fame list of the world's top AI experts, delving into the future of AI, its impact on society and the issues we should be genuinely concerned about as the field advances. This is the hardcover edition of the book. Key Features: Interviews with AI leaders and practitioners A snapshot of the current state of AI, where it is headed and how it will impact society Voices from across AI and the scientific community Book Description: How will AI evolve and what major innovations are on the horizon? What will its impact be on the job market, economy, and society? What is the path toward human-level machine intelligence? What should we be concerned about as artificial intelligence advances? Architects of Intelligence contains a series of in-depth, one-to-one interviews where New York Times bestselling author, Martin Ford, uncovers the truth behind these questions from some of the brightest minds in the Artificial Intelligence community. Martin has wide-ranging conversations with twenty-three of the world's foremost researchers and entrepreneurs working in AI and robotics: Demis Hassabis (DeepMind), Ray Kurzweil (Google), Geoffrey Hinton (Univ. of Toronto and Google), Rodney Brooks (Rethink Robotics), Yann LeCun (Facebook) , Fei-Fei Li (Stanford and Google), Yoshua Bengio (Univ. of Montreal), Andrew Ng (AI Fund), Daphne Koller (Stanford), Stuart Russell (UC Berkeley), Nick Bostrom (Univ. of Oxford), Barbara Grosz (Harvard), David Ferrucci (Elemental Cognition), James Manyika (McKinsey), Judea Pearl (UCLA), Josh Tenenbaum (MIT), Rana el Kaliouby (Affectiva), Daniela Rus (MIT), Jeff Dean (Google), Cynthia Breazeal (MIT), Oren Etzioni (Allen Institute for AI), Gary Marcus (NYU), and Bryan Johnson (Kernel). Martin Ford is a prominent futurist, and author of Financial Times Business Book of the Year, Rise of the Robots. He speaks at conferences and companies around the world on what AI and automation might mean for the future. This is the hardcover edition of the book. What You Will Learn: The state of modern AI How AI will evolve and the breakthroughs we can expect Insights into the minds of AI founders and leaders How and when we will achieve human-level AI The impact and risks associated with AI and its impact on society and the economy Who this book is for: Anybody with an interest in artificial intelligence and the role it will play in the future of human life and work will find this a fascinating read. The discussions here are not only of interest to scientists and technologists, but to the wider reading public. About the Author Martin Ford is a futurist and the author of two books: The New York Times Bestselling Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future (winner of the 2015 Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award and translated into more than 20 languages) and The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future, as well as the founder of a Silicon Valley-based software development firm. His TED Talk on the impact of AI and robotics on the economy and society, given on the main stage at the 2017 TED Conference, has been viewed more than 2 million times. Martin is also the consulting artificial intelligence expert for the new "Rise of the Robots Index" from Societe Generale, underlying the Lyxor Robotics & AI ETF, which is focused specifically on investing in companies that will be significant participants in the AI and robotics revolution. He holds a computer engineering degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a graduate business degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has written about future technology and its implications for publications including The New York Times, Fortune, Forbes, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, The Guardian, and The Financial Times. He has also appeared on numerous radio and television shows, including NPR, CNBC, CNN, MSNBC and PBS. Martin is a frequent keynote speaker on the subject of accelerating progress in robotics and artificial intelligence-and what these advances mean for the economy, job market and society of the future. Martin continues to focus on entrepreneurship and is actively engaged as a board member and investor at Genesis Systems, a startup company that has developed a revolutionary atmospheric water generation (AWG) technology. Genesis will soon deploy automated, self-powered systems that will generate water directly from the air at industrial scale in the world's most arid regions.