#paraphrased from a conversation with a friend back home on thursday | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mikeyhatesit113 · 4 years ago

Text

forever and never: Chapter 2

“You know you almost got shot last night?”

My dad’s voice on the other end of the phone was stern and serious.

“Come again?” I asked.

“You came in late last night, and she was scared out of her mind. If you would have taken one step towards our bedroom, she would have shot you.”

My dad was referring to his new girlfriend, Tammy. I was utterly confused.

“I was just hanging out with my friends, and I come in that late every night. She knows that. I thought I was being super quiet,” I said.

“Well you were making plenty of noise. She was scared out of her mind. Be more quiet next time,” my dad demanded.

Wait…can we rewind to the ‘she almost shot me’ part, and question why you’re continuing to let her hold your handgun at night?

This conversation was just an annexation of the crumbling home life I was experiencing at the time. I had spent 7 long years of growing up under my grandparents’ roof, as I always understood that my over-the-road trucker father could not afford a place of his own.

Or so I thought.

However, my dad had recently met a new woman and less than 1 month later, he rented a townhouse so they could live together. I had to follow him, of course.

Not that I wanted to go. I loved living at my grandparents’ house, but I was 19 years old and with my dad finally moving out, I had no choice but to go with him.

I hated that townhouse. A sheet of tin foil is thicker than those walls were. On top of it all, his new girlfriend clearly didn’t like that I was living there and occupying a room at Castle Paper Walls. She wanted the townhouse for only her, my dad, and her two children that she had part-time custody of. Without me there, think of the space she could have had!

So much room for activities!

Everything I did around that house became an issue, including taking a Mountain Dew out of the refrigerator. I wasn’t welcome to them, as I was not involved in the original “4 for $12” purchase.

My dad wasn’t the most secure guy either, for a man who just locked in a 12 month lease with a complete stranger. He called me one day and told me, “If Tammy ever romantically approaches you when I’m not around, please tell me.”

Wait...so what are we doing? Is this real life?

My escape from the turmoil at home was going to work and having a good time.

Janie and the fellow staff members would listen to the stories of my everyday struggles with family members and odd friends. They were the perfect audience, and their laughter helped me look at my life as the slap-stick comedy it was turning out to be.

I tried to spend as much time as I could away from ‘home’, which is why on the night of November 1st, 2007, I was walking alone in a dark parking lot.

It was a cool, autumn night, and I deemed it a good opportunity to get some fresh air.

That’s when my phone unexpectedly sprung to life, the bright screen lighting up the night around me.

It was a text message.

As it was after 9 on a Thursday, I couldn’t imagine who would be contacting me at that time of night.

I looked down and squinted my eyes at my bright screen.

It was a text.

From Janie.

And then another text.

And then another one.

Followed by another one.

And these weren’t just short texts with simple greetings. They were lengthy messages with lots of information.

Had something happened with work?

I started reading the first text, and something happened inside of me.

I don’t know if my heart sunk, or if it skipped a beat, but there was a reaction nonetheless to such an unexpected statement.

“I don’t know how to say this, but I have fallen for you.”

I couldn’t quite comprehend what I was reading, but then the texts kept coming.

To paraphrase,

“I have feelings for you.”

“I’ve been feeling this way for a while now.”

“I’m not happy in my marriage.”

“I know there’s an age gap between us, but my parents are even further apart in age, and they’re totally happy together.”

I stared at my phone screen, unable to fully process what I was reading.

Was this some kind of joke?

Seriously…I assumed she was probably surrounded by people and they were all laughing and high-fiving, waiting for my response.

This just wasn’t possible. I was at her house less than a month before, talking to her husband, Jay, in their kitchen. I liked Jay. I was almost certain the feeling was mutual.

And every time I had been to their home, I sensed no discontent.

No tension. No passive aggressive comments.

Nothing.

They truly came off like the perfect American family.

However, that perfect perception was a stark contrast to the information that was spewing onto my phone screen.

Just me and my phone, alone in this dark parking lot, shouldering this sudden burden.

I am a firm believer that life gives us critical tests at crucial times, where the choices we make define our character, and dictate the events that follow.

This was one of those tests. Tied with a bow.

I put my phone back in my pocket and continued walking. I did not respond, because I just didn’t know what to say.

My phone lit up again.

“Please say something, Michael.”

I continued walking, placing one foot in front of the other while my head spun.

As far as I was concerned, I had two options. For starters, my employment at the daycare center had been plunged into serious jeopardy. The center’s director had just professed her “love” for me, so my employment status was irrevocably altered, if not terminated altogether.

But still, I had 2 options.

1. Tell her that she misread everything about our friendship, wish her well, and never return to a place that paid only $7 an hour.

2. Attempt to talk her off the ledge, assist her in rectifying her obvious confusion, and pretend that we could just be friends after such a conversation. Also, continue earning only $7 an hour.

Eventually, I had arrived back home. My father’s girlfriend had since gone to bed, and I sat in the dark living room alone.

I picked up my phone.

“Hey,” I began, my brain struggling more than my fingers to find the right words. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’m confused by all of this.”

“Can you come over here? I’m at Sheila’s house,” she wrote back.

“It’s late, and I don’t know if that’s a good idea. We can talk tomorrow?” I offered.

I knew the last thing in the world to be considered a “good idea�� would have been to go over there and talk in person. This thing needed to simmer for a while.

“Can you please come over here? I feel like we need to talk about this tonight,” she pleaded.

“Um…”

This was my friend asking this of me. Technically my boss, which added a complete new dimension altogether.

“Please?” she begged.

This was the kind of decision in life that truly separates the men from the boys.

Wise men from fools.

She wasn’t in danger. She wasn’t stranded anywhere. She wasn’t in jeopardy.

By all accounts, I should have ignored her text messages, went to work the next day, and let her, and her only, share the awkward exchanges and glances.

The problem was, I wasn’t a man. And though I wasn’t seduced, not even in the least, I wasn’t thinking like a real man needed to.

I grabbed my car keys.

I wonder how my life would have turned out if I wouldn’t have left the townhouse that night. I wonder who I’d be today, and where I’d be now, if I hadn’t given in.

But as my car traveled along those back roads that night, it seemed that the future was the furthest thing from my mind.

20 minutes later, my car pulled into Sheila’s gravel driveway. I got out of my car and entered her backyard, where Sheila greeted me. “She’s inside,” said Sheila with a curious expression. It appeared as if she wanted to start laughing. It appeared that she knew how preposterous the situation was, but the beer in her hand was stopping her from addressing it in any type of appropriate way.

As I stated earlier, she was the owner of the entire daycare center. This was not only an inevitable professional mess, but it was also a personal one, as she and her husband had always been close with Janie and Jay.

Unfortunately, everyone’s adult mind-set, mine included, had taken a holiday that night.

I entered the house and did not immediately see Janie. I stood there awkwardly, questioning myself silently if I was doing the right thing. Should I leave?

Within seconds, Janie appeared through the doorway, also holding a beer. I was surprised, as I did not think that she had been drinking when she spilled her heart out to me. I thought it came from a personal place during an honest moment of clarity.

I was mistaken.

We made small talk before agreeing to go upstairs to Sheila’s daughter’s room to talk in privacy.

We entered the room and closed the door behind us. Janie sat down on the floor beside the bed, arms wrapped around her knees like a confused teenager who wasn’t sure who to take to prom. She took another sip of beer, smirking at how uncomfortable this was.

“So…what is going on?” I asked, standing at the other end of the room.

On cue, Janie launched into how she was unhappy in her marriage, and that she only stayed in it because she felt like she had to. If she even thought about divorcing Jay, her family would most definitely shun and disown her. She claimed that she had gotten married too young, but after Jay went into the military, they could only coexist due to the periods of time apart while Jay was on deployment.

Then she divulged that she had been unfaithful to Jay multiple times before. She claimed that she had slept with an old high school boyfriend when Jay went off to boot camp, and years later, she had an affair with one of Jay’s superiors in the military.

“After we had slept together, Jay and I were at a social event, and he introduced me to one of his superior officers. I looked at the guy and realized it was the same guy I had just slept with,” she recalled.

Then she smirked. “Boy, that was awkward when our eyes met.”

She also attempted to justify her extramarital adventures by speculating that Jay had cheated on her while he was overseas.

I listened to her words, but instead of seeing the raw irony sitting right in front of me, I could only confirm that she was indeed unhappy in her marriage.

I viewed her cheating as a simple result of her feeling trapped and unhappy for years. I mean, what kind of family would force a woman to stay in a marriage she didn’t want to be in? Did they not care about her happiness?

She also claimed that Jay had become verbally abusive to her and treated her poorly. She claimed that she often felt like he chose drinking over spending time with her.

Her long story weaved and wove its way back around to meeting me, and how she felt happy when she was with me.

To this day, I still don’t know why. I was 19 and care-free, but that was truly because I had little to nothing to care about.

My car was 13 years old. I lived at home with my dad and his girlfriend. My only bills were car insurance and cell phone. I wasn’t going to college, and I wasn’t pursuing anything long term.

This was a stark contrast to Jay, who had served in the military, was a great provider and father, had a really nice job, and had skills that could cement a future for her children. Plus, her family loved him.

But this enigma over the cause for her attraction to me also served as a curse, because it made me think that with having so little to offer her, maybe it was true love after all?

In any regard, I told her that she needed to figure some things out before anything else could happen. I didn’t drive to Shelli’s house that night to become a homewrecker, and I wasn’t about to get involved in a marriage that wasn’t mine.

I told her that I liked Jay, I respected her marriage and family, and the time wasn’t right for me to get involved.

God strike me dead if I’m lying about that. That’s exactly what I told her. Ask her.

But this is where I went wrong.

Janie had been drinking, and as it was now well after midnight, she was in no condition to drive.

I recommended that she lay down and sleep it off, and she asked me to stay with her.

I agreed.

For the second time that night, I sealed my fate.

She laid down on the bed, and I laid down on the opposite side.

Clothes were on. We weren’t touching, and we weren’t cuddling.

With Jay at home with her children, I was intent on not letting this night go any further. There was too much on the line.

God strike me dead if I’m lying about that, too.

The bright blue numbers from Shelli’s daughter’s alarm clock lit up the room as if dawn was already on the horizon, but the 12:13 on its face indicated otherwise.

I closed my eyes, willing sleep to come, but Janie reached out and pulled me toward her. I tried to scooch away, insisting that she go to sleep, and she relented.

But a moment later, she pulled me close to her again.

I should have left. But I didn’t.

I once again insisted that she get some sleep, but she wasn’t having any of it. I smelled the beer on her breath as she tried pulling my head towards her, searching for a kiss.

It was a kiss I did not want, but I felt my resolve slowly eroding.

But I was intent. This could not happen. This wasn’t right. It just wasn’t.

I resisted, but another advance immediately came. Janie forced her face towards mine, her lips finding my lips in the pale darkness.

It was a kiss I did not want, but it was a kiss I suddenly returned.

A betrayal of people I knew. A betrayal of myself. A betrayal of all that I thought I believed.

I kissed her back, and you might as well say that my innocence died right there in the blue glow of that alarm clock.

We did not have sex.

Somehow, she fell asleep and so did I, and we both woke up around 4am.

In silence, we both grabbed our things and left Shelli’s house, going to our cars without saying anything to each other except mumbling a brief farewell.

We were retreating back to our own separate worlds. She was going home to her sleeping family, and I was going home to possibly get shot by a paranoid woman with a handgun.

This wasn’t the movies.

There was no kiss goodbye. No alibi. No soap opera-worthy speeches.

I got inside my car and the engine roared to life in the cold, crisp dark. The sun had not yet risen, allowing us to still move under the cover of darkness.

Our own personal twilight, where things are easily hidden in the absence of light.

But the sun would rise in a few short hours, and it would shed a light upon what we had done, and who we had become overnight.

I would awake that next morning in a bright, sunny room with the smell of her perfume still on my shirt.

An intoxicating memory of the night before. And the dawning of a new universe that I was now wide awake in.

And that’s not always a good thing.

In my case, it sure as hell wasn’t.

Buckle up.

“Why don't you just... Sleep up, sleep up? You can call me in the morning when you’re feeling all blue-like Leave us, leave us In the past Took our love and you put it in a noose, so Why should I forgive you? You’re the reason I choose Feelings, feelings Feelings over everybody else I knew.”

Thousand Below “171 Xo”

NOTE: Though this is my side of the story, including my own personal recollections and opinions, the reader should not consider this note anything other than a work of literature. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

#marriage #divorce #breakups #relationships #relationship advice #dating #trust issues #depression #motivation

0 notes

gdmli · 5 years ago

Text

Social Capital: When a Diversity & Inclusion Lesson Turns into a Painful Gut-Check

By Laura Miller, CLP Class of 2020

It took me a week to sit down and write this blog.

I thought about writing it every day, usually multiple times. Even sat down a handful of times to do it, too. Pulled up my OneNote, opened a page, typed a title…and then? Nothing. Too many words in my head and nothing I could make sense of to put on paper.

And there are a lot of good reasons I was able to use as excuses for my hesitation. Our Social Capital class last Thursday was rich with new information and tools and stories and challenges. Somehow, it managed to be simultaneously energizing and completely draining, and through my conversations with our classmates I know I wasn't alone in that feeling. I got home and I was shattered. Absolutely, without a doubt, in pieces. And the thing is…as I walked into our classroom at Principal last Thursday morning, I knew it was going to be a difficult day. I was ready for it! Diversity and Inclusion in our communities and organizations is always a source of difficult discussion if you give it the weight and consideration it deserves. I thought I knew what to expect, I just didn't expect to walk away as deeply and profoundly moved as I was.

But the real, true, radically honest reason why I couldn't make sense of my reaction? Why I couldn't just sit down, type, and post? I just didn't want to confront the shift this class was already forcing me to make mentally and emotionally when it came to an issue I've always been passionate about. I didn’t want to admit that I’ve known for awhile that I wasn’t doing enough.

"I'm an ally!" I screamed in my mind. "I've always pushed for inclusion! I've always been an advocate! I've pushed back and spoken up when I've encountered sexism/racism/classism/homophobia! Whether it was directed at me or at others! Even when it was hard! Even when it hurt my career!" And the deal is - all of that is true. But you know what? It's just not enough for us to be reactive. Reaction is part of the game, unfortunately. Speaking up for yourself, speaking out with others…all of that is an important part of creating a more diverse, inclusive, and cohesive community, if even it has to be reactionary. But as I walked to my car on Thursday night, I was already starting to acknowledge that by focusing only on being reactive, I was part of the problem…and I didn't like that. And I didn't want to hear it from myself. And honestly? That kicked off some serious soul-searching that I know I'll be doing for the long-term.

Diversity is often treated like a buzzword in the exact spaces where it needs to be given the largest platforms. Inclusion? That's a concept that many don't even think they need to lend time to. And those of us who are more sensitive to the need for that dialogue, and the positive change that can follow, often get tired. And frustrated. Or we worry about "rocking the boat" just a little too much. We'll speak up when we hear or see something we know to be wrong, but I think many of us stop there. We pat ourselves on the back, and say "I did something good today. And now I'm tired. There are better, smarter people that me to solve the problem…and when they do, I'll support them."

Maybe this doesn't ring true with you. Maybe you're a Diversity and Inclusion rockstar. Maybe you've started a diversity initiative at your company, maybe you've proposed a practice of blind hiring…maybe you've even built a career around starting the tough conversations and doing the right thing. If that's the case? I admire you. Please, PLEASE teach me your ways. And tell me how you keep fighting the good fight and pushing those around you to fight at your side, all without becoming exhausted and frustrated and emotionally depleted as a result. I want all of your secrets.

But I know there's no secret. No silver bullet here. I'm sure the people who fight the good fight have hundreds of days in their history where they've felt like they've given too much of themselves, even as they ring out a few more drops of progress. I heard many of those stories in class last week. I could hear the frustration in our voices, and the confusion, too. I heard so many confused voices from people like me, who were realizing that there was so much more we could have been doing all this time.

My ah-ha moments started early on the day of our Social Capital Class. Miriam Lewis, Principal's Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer kicked things off, welcoming us to Principal, who generously donated our space for the day, as well as much of their employees' time. I was already floored. Principal has a Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer? They have a C-Suite role…for Diversity? They have a whole team for it? Honestly, that was such awe-inspiring information to me that it took a few moments to process and recover. (I've since done a bit of research…about 20% of Fortune 500 companies employ Chief Diversity Officers. That's a great number. Amazing, really. But hey, let's try to make it 100%).

When I was done being impressed by Principal having that degree of dedication to their Diversity & Inclusion program, I immediately transitioned to being impressed by Miriam Lewis as both a person and a professional. She's forged her career around creating opportunities to have open, honest conversations about tough subjects…and then pushing for and encouraging positive change. I want to be her when I grow up. And as she introduced her team and the work they do, she said something very simple that has been bouncing around in my head for days…

"Most companies start with diversity and believe inclusion will follow, but that's not the case. If you start with inclusion, focusing on creating an inclusive environment, diversity will always follow" - Miriam Lewis

I think I've paraphrased that idea a dozen times to coworkers and friends since I heard it. It takes something that many organizations seem confused or overwhelmed by, and makes it seem simple.

Miriam also validated something I've said for a long time (and don't we all love validation?) - by creating more diverse and inclusive organizations, we create more opportunities for organizational growth. Want to grow your customer base? Want to create a more diverse book of business? Start at home. If your organization isn't diverse and inclusive, how can you expect to attract more diverse clientele? If the conversation about doing the right thing isn't enough for a business to make a change, the bottom line will always do the talking for you.

I was inspired! I was going to effect positive change! I was going to take her approach and turn it into something that could inspire the world around me to move in the right direction! And that optimistic, simple inspiration kept ringing in my mind as we worked through our Design Thinking lesson (which my classmate Deidra will discuss with you in another post). I kept relating that content back to creating more inclusive ideas and projects in my daily life. Design Thinking is all about starting with the person, not the idea - and so is inclusivity. My big misstep? I was still technically thinking about the idea of inclusivity, not the actual people. I wasn't even thinking about myself, and what I needed to be included in the design, let alone others.

Ohhhh but don't you worry. That changed quickly. You knew I had to get to the source of my mental and emotional turmoil at some point, right?

Our afternoon was spent challenging our perceptions of diversity and inclusion in the Des Moines community - at work and at play. I was immediately captivated by our first afternoon presenter, Izaah JB Knox, the Executive Director of Urban Dreams. Urban Dreams is a long-time fixture in Des Moines, and is an important program that helps to break down barriers for underserved and underrepresented populations. And wow…did Izaah hit me hard, right off the bat, with some data about those populations.

As a vocal cheerleader for the awesome things I see in Des Moines, I'm often the first to spout off about of the "Best Of" lists we fall on. Those lists are even a huge part of why I eventually boomeranged back to the Des Moines area after several years away! But I had no idea about the lists that we're at the bottom of: lists that relate to how safe minorities are in our communities, how much opportunity underserved populations feel, access to affordable housing, and more. It was all eye-opening for me, and deeply upsetting. This, I would find, was going to be a theme for me for the next few hours.

We then moved into our final activities and sessions: The American Dream Game, Discovering Your Unconscious Bias with Claudia Schabel, and a Social Awareness & Intersectionality discussion with Daniel Hoffman-Zinnel. The American Dream Game is something I truly believe that every group working towards progress and equality should participate in. It's hard to think of it as a "game", since the subject matter is heavy, and the conversation it inspires is even heavier. The activity "focuses on empathy for others and the potential challenges others may face each day", and forces participants to have an honest dialogue about the challenge you face as an individual, while confronting the things you don't know about the challenges faced by others in the room. I cried when I heard someone's story about their challenges, I cried when I had to be honest about challenges I myself had faced. I don't know when I suddenly became a person who cries easily, but the honestly and bravery that came out of my class during this activity was worth my being branded as A Crier (really, I need to emphasize this…the capitalization is necessary based on how much I cried. It was…not pretty).

I won't share the stories that changed my heart in the American Dream game. And I won't share the stories that did the same during our Unconscious Bias and Social Awareness & Intersectionality discussions. Those conversations were difficult, and honest, and private…just for us, as we all grow and change and open our eyes just a bit wider each day with each other's support. I will share that I saw a shift in our class. It was visible; we should have taken a picture of everyone's posture before, during, and after the class. But mostly, you could hear it; our voices changed. The way we spoke to one another changed. The way we spoke about one another changed. It was tangible how much our ways of thinking were changed.

I walked away hoping that it all stuck, not just for me but for everyone in that room. I wasn't sure that it would. Sometimes it's easier to push the tough conversations to the back of our minds. To pat ourselves on the back for just opening up. To tell ourselves "I'm an ally! I speak up for what's right! Even when it's hard! I do good things!". But today, a week after I was worried that the lessons we learned in that room may not stick…I'm not worried anymore. There's no way that I'm the only person that walked out of that room feeling that way. There's no way I'm the only person from our class who hasn't been able to stop thinking about the lessons we all learned. Most importantly, there's no way that I'm the only person who has not just been inspired to act, but truly feels called to do it.

Like I said earlier: reacting is great. But acting is better. Having a plan of action? That’s best.

So my challenge to all of you is this: be radically honest, be realistic, be hopeful, and above all else…be someone who acts. Be someone who has an action plan. I do! We can all listen to each other a little bit more, push through our frustration, and work together to make Des Moines the most Diverse & Inclusive place it can be. We can take the lessons we learned today back to our offices, our families, our friends. We have infinite ways that we can effect positive change.

Just.

Have.

To.

Act.

0 notes

samanthasroberts · 6 years ago

Text

Google’s AI ambitions show promise – ‘if it doesn’t kill us’

Googles path to developing machine-learning tools illustrates the stark challenge that tech companies face in trying to make machines act like humans

Machines may yet take over the world, but first they must learn to recognize your dog.

To hear Google executives tell it at their annual developer conference this week, the technology industry is on the cusp of an artificial intelligence, or AI, revolution. Computers, without guidance, will be able to spot disease, engage humans in conversation and creatively outsmart world champions in competition. Such breakthroughs in machine learning have been the stuff of science fiction since Stanley Kubricks 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Im incredibly excited about the progress were making, CEO Sundar Pichai told a crowd of 7,000 developers at Google I/O from an outdoor concert stage. Humans can achieve a lot more with the support of AI assisting them.

For better and worse, the companys near-term plans for the technology are more Office Space than Terminator. Think smartphones that can recognize pets in photos, appropriately respond to text messages, and find a window in your schedule where you should probably go to the gym. Googlers repeatedly boasted about how its computers could now automatically tag all of someones pictures with a pet.

Mario Klingemann, a self-described code artist, said he is using Googles machine-learning tools to have his computer make art for him by sorting through pictures on his computer and combining them to form new images.

All I have to do is sit back and let whatever it has created pass by and decide if I like it or not, Klingemann told the audience on Thursday night. In one of his pieces, called Run, Hipster. Run, Googles software had attached some fashionable leather boots to a hip bone.

It may seem like the latest example where Silicon Valley talks about changing society yet gives the world productivity apps. But it also illustrates the stark challenge that technology companies face in trying to make machines act like humans.

Itll be really, really small things that are just a bit more intuitive, said Patrick Fuentes, 34, a mobile developer for Nerdery in Minneapolis. He considered autocorrect on touchscreen keyboards a modern victory for machine learning. Referring to Skynet, the malicious computer network that turns against the human race in Terminator, Fuentes said: Were not there yet.

Mario Queiroz introduces Google Home during the Google I/O 2016 developers conference. Photograph: Stephen Lam/Reuters

Google is considered the sectors leader in artificial intelligence after it began pouring resources into the area about four years ago. During a three-day conference that took on the vibe of a music festival with outdoor merchandise and beer vendors, Pichai made clear he sees machine learning as his companys future.

He unveiled the new Google Assistant, a disembodied voice that will help users decide what movie to see, keep up with email, and control lights and music at home. After showing how Googles machines can now recognize many dogs, he explained how he wants to use the same image recognition technology to spot damage to the eyes caused by diabetes. He boasted that Googles AI software, AlphaGo, showed creativity when it beat a world champion at Go, the Korean board game considered more difficult than chess.

This might seem like an odd push for a firm that makes its money from cataloging the web and showing people ads. But the focus is part of a broader transition in the technology sector from helping consumers explore unlimited options online to telling them the best choice.

For instance, several developers gave the example of a smarter ways to predict what people are looking for online given their past interests.

If this guy likes sports and, I dont know, drinks, you should give him these suggestions, said Mikhail Ivashchenko, the chief technology officer of BeSmart in Kyrgyzstan. It will know exactly what youre looking for.

Unprompted, Ivashchenko said, its not quite Skynet. His nearby friend, David Renton, a recent computer science graduate from Galway, Ireland, then mused how it would be awesome if Google could eventually develop a Skynet equivalent. Think of the applications if it doesnt kill us, Renton said.

John Giannandrea, a Google vice-president of engineering who focuses on machine intelligence, said he wont declare victory until Googles software can read a text and naturally paraphrase it. Another challenge is that even the smartest machines these days have trouble transferring their knowledge from one activity to another.

For instance, AlphaGo, Googles software from the Go competition, wouldnt be able to apply its accumulated skills to chess or tic-tac-toe.

Still, Giannandrea said its hard not to get excited by recent gains in teaching computers how to recognize patterns in images.

The field is getting a little bit overhyped because of the progress were seeing, he said. Things that are hard for people to do we can teach computers to do. Things that are easy for people are hard for computers.

Of course, delegating even small decisions to machines has caused a flurry of discussions about the ethics of artificial intelligence. Several technology leaders, including Steven Hawking and Elon Musk, have called for more research on the social impact of artificial intelligence.

For instance, Klingemann, the code artist, said he is already contemplating whether he needs to change his title.

I have become more of a curator than a creator, he said.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/googles-ai-ambitions-show-promise-if-it-doesnt-kill-us/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/googles-ai-ambitions-show-promise-if-it-doesnt-kill-us/

0 notes

allofbeercom · 6 years ago

Text

Google’s AI ambitions show promise – ‘if it doesn’t kill us’

Googles path to developing machine-learning tools illustrates the stark challenge that tech companies face in trying to make machines act like humans

Machines may yet take over the world, but first they must learn to recognize your dog.

Mario Queiroz introduces Google Home during the Google I/O 2016 developers conference. Photograph: Stephen Lam/Reuters

For instance, several developers gave the example of a smarter ways to predict what people are looking for online given their past interests.

For instance, AlphaGo, Googles software from the Go competition, wouldnt be able to apply its accumulated skills to chess or tic-tac-toe.

Still, Giannandrea said its hard not to get excited by recent gains in teaching computers how to recognize patterns in images.

For instance, Klingemann, the code artist, said he is already contemplating whether he needs to change his title.

I have become more of a curator than a creator, he said.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/googles-ai-ambitions-show-promise-if-it-doesnt-kill-us/

0 notes

hellofastestnewsfan · 6 years ago

Link

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa—Demographically and economically, Iowa isn’t actually that representative of the country as a whole. But even as the demographics and economics make it less like the rest of America, Iowa’s absurdly outsize role in picking the leader of the free world remains.

Enter two candidates, in the space of 48 hours, who both see the state as crucial: two women, two senators, two former local prosecutors, two people who had breakout moments during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings last fall, two presidential hopefuls on their second trips to Iowa since launching their campaigns.

[Read: Amy Klobuchar for president?]

Amy Klobuchar and Kamala Harris need the same thing, but they need it for opposite reasons.

Literally dozens more Democrats are in or circling the race. But the dynamics between these two, both doing well in early polls, contrast familiar Midwest pragmatism with diverse Left Coast progressivism. And most important for the ultra-energized voters here: Who is best to beat Donald Trump?

[Read: Kamala Harris’s campaign strategy—don’t pick a lane]

For Klobuchar, Iowa is her neighbor to the south—“We can see it from our porch in Minnesota” is the line she uses—conveniently located in geography and order on the primary calendar. A win in the Iowa caucuses could validate her pitch that the 2020 election is calling out for someone who can link the years her grandfather spent working in a mine to the “grit” to stand in a snowstorm for her own campaign announcement two weeks ago, and connect a purported hard-nosed pragmatism to years of big wins in her home state. For Harris, the state is the essential test of whether the parts of the country far from the square in Oakland where 22,000 stood in the streets for her announcement rally last month are really ready for a half-Jamaican, half-Indian woman from California who speaks bluntly about what’s gone wrong with America.

On Thursday night, Klobuchar was at the United Auto Workers hall, the featured guest at the Ankeny County Democrats annual dinner. On Saturday night, Harris was on the other side of town at the United Steelworkers hall, keynoting the Iowa Democratic Party Black Caucus. Klobuchar, as she always does, built her speech up to a quote from Walter Mondale, talking about Jimmy Carter’s presidency: “We told the truth, we obeyed the law, we kept the peace.” Harris, as is her custom, progressed to a paraphrase of Coretta Scott King: “The fight for justice and the fight for civil rights must be fought and won with each generation.”

Afterward, I asked Klobuchar what she thought being a senator from Minnesota, compared with being a senator from California, would mean to Iowa.

“It means that for me, going south for the winter is going to Iowa. It’s easier to get here,” she said. “It’s important to have a lot of people running, but I am a candidate from the heartland, and it’s an important part of our path to success in the general election.”

[Graeme Wood: The two Amy Klobuchars]

Was she arguing that senators from the coasts—not just Harris, but Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Kirsten Gillibrand—wouldn’t be able to win?

“Senators from the coast have won in the heartland in the past. So I don’t think it’s that. It’s that my No. 1 request was to be on the Agriculture Committee. I served on that committee for 12 years. I’ve played a major role in getting the farm bill passed,” she said. “I know these issues here.”

Klobuchar likes talking about herself as an underdog, and structurally that’s how she started a campaign that many people thought she wasn’t actually going to go through with. She’s short on campaign staff, here and nationally, and arrived with just one person on her payroll and a handful of others who’d come in as volunteers. She had a surge of online fundraising after she announced, but aides have acknowledged in conversations with others that money is going to be a scramble and that her best hope is to scrape by enough to make it through Iowa, and then count on an explosion of interest if she wins to carry her over.

And so she lays it on thick, talking about the two states’ main agricultural exports, or how they both put a premium on butter-carving contests. On the list of ways the states are similar that she read from on Thursday evening: “You have the world-famous matchstick museum, and we have the only museum in the world devoted to Spam—or, as we call it, the ‘Guggen-ham.’”

But her main argument is that the country needs a pragmatic president, and that starts with making a pragmatic argument for why she should be the nominee.

“We need to win. So here’s my deal: I have won every single congressional district in the state of Minnesota, including Michele Bachmann’s, three times,” Klobuchar said, referring to the former congresswoman and 2012 Republican presidential candidate who helped popularize Tea Party politics in the run-up to a campaign that got much more attention than actual votes. With Democrats nationally nervous that Minnesota is in danger of slipping away—in a shocker, it had the smallest margin of any state Hillary Clinton won in 2016, and Trump’s campaign has been public about Minnesota being at the top of its 2020 target list—Klobuchar leaned in.

“He has said to me several times, ‘I would have won Minnesota if I went back there again,’” she said, attempting a Trump impression that leans more on making the president sound dumb than making him sound like he’s from Queens, New York.

Harris landed here after two weeks of a sublimated freak-out, churned by Republican websites, that all tracked back to her being black. Just a sampling of the stirred-up controversies: Is she black enough? What does it mean that her husband is not black, but Jewish? How does she use hot sauce? What were the circumstances when she smoked pot? How extensive and authentic is her knowledge of rap music? Did she really order chicken and waffles at a famous soul-food restaurant?

[Jemele Hill: Kamala Harris’s blackness isn’t up for debate]

Harris had only briefly passed through Iowa since making her candidacy official, popping in to do a CNN town hall on her way back to Washington after the Oakland kickoff rally. But the state is key for her too: She wants a top finish here next February that would solidify her as a front-runner and give her the momentum going into a four-week blitz around the country in which most of the delegates will be awarded. Her expectation is that there wouldn’t be enough time or money for even the best political organization to keep up with her if she racked up enough early wins to create the momentum and a sense of inevitability.

This second trip was a full weekend of town halls and local Democratic events that she kicked off by greeting Asians and Latinos at the state capitol. She was trailed everywhere by the cameras and the staff entourage that mark a candidate being thought of as a front-runner.

Already in two weeks as a candidate, Klobuchar has started wearing creases into some of the lines she keeps using. Harris, meanwhile, has been delivering the same stump speech almost verbatim since hitting the midterm trail (including here in Iowa) in October, telling the same jokes, as if each time an ad lib has just come to her, like when she mocks smooth-talking candidates for sprinkling “lovely dust.” Beyond the performance skills as a candidate that Harris is demonstrating as she continues to introduce herself to voters who’ve never seen her in person before, she notably does not vary the speech much, no matter who’s in the crowd. Some bits get cycled in more frequently when she’s in front of minority audiences, like when she hammers the wage gap for black and Latino women, or mentions the radically higher mortality rate for new mothers, but nearly every audience hears her talk about Russian interference, just like nearly every audience hears her say that parents of 12-year-old black boys shouldn’t have to sit down with their sons and have “the talk” about how police are more likely to harass them because of the color of their skin.

Everywhere, Harris keeps to her “Let’s speak some truths,” rhetorical spine, and every time, it builds up to the same one: the truth that there is more that unites Americans than divides them, despite the efforts of Trump.

“Part of our strength as a nation is we are aspirational,” she said in her opening remarks at her town hall on Saturday afternoon. “Part of our strength is we will always fight to get to that place. Let’s hold on to our nature.”

It’s a call to unite behind her, and to believe that others will unite behind her, specifically because she is different and can piece a broken nation back together.

Maybe it was that the town hall was on a college campus in Ankeny, or that no one had to pay for a seat, or maybe that Harris is already being treated as a political celebrity, but the crowd was not only bigger—it was younger and significantly more diverse. By Saturday night, when she drove through a blizzard from a soup dinner in Ames to make it to the United Steelworkers hall for the Black Caucus event in West Des Moines, the crowd wasn’t as big as Klobuchar’s sold-out dinner two nights earlier. But those in attendance responded more enthusiastically to having Harris in the room.

Based on the questions they’re getting and the conversations they’re having while shaking hands in the crowds, Klobuchar is still being treated as an interesting person voters want to get to know, while Harris is being looked at as someone people are trying to squint at and see as a nominee.

That’s how Klobuchar and Harris are putting themselves out there as well.

“I have grit,” Klobuchar said on Thursday night. “And I have friends and I have great neighbors in Iowa. And I have every reason to believe I can do this.”

“I intend to spend a lot of time in Iowa,” Harris said on Saturday afternoon, doing her best to project strength. “I intend to win.”

from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2tAiRqC

#Blogger

0 notes

caredogstips · 7 years ago

Text

Google’s AI ambitions show promise- ‘if it doesn’t kill us’

Googles path to developing machine-learning tools illustrates the stark challenge that tech companies face in trying to make machines act like humans

Machines may yet take over the world, but first they must learn to recognize your dog.

Mario Queiroz introduces Google Home during the Google I/O 2016 developers conference. Photograph: Stephen Lam/Reuters

For instance, several developers gave the example of a smarter ways to predict what people are looking for online given their past interests.

For instance, AlphaGo, Googles software from the Go competition, wouldnt be able to apply its accumulated skills to chess or tic-tac-toe.

Still, Giannandrea said its hard not to get excited by recent gains in teaching computers how to recognize patterns in images.

For instance, Klingemann, the code artist, said he is already contemplating whether he needs to change his title.

I have become more of a curator than a creator, he said.