Quint’s Brew stunned the field at the Jennings Stakes, and now his trainer is confident about his upcoming General George Stakes run.

$43 Million Earning Trainer Makes Bold Statement Over General George Horse

Mark Jones, Roddy Jones and sideline reporter Quint Kessenich will be the crew working the Nittany Lions' game against SMU

College Football Playoff: Who Are the Announcers for Penn State Vs. SMU Game?

Lee Enterprises adopts a poison pill strategy in response to Quint Digital's increasing ownership stake, aiming for open dialogue and maintaining control.

Lee Enterprises adopts rights plan after India-based Quint Digital accumulates stock

Stephen Spielberg’s 1975 classic, Jaws, gets a creative new alternative poster, imagining Quint’s boat, the Orca, in an epic scenario at sea.

Jaws Gets Epic & Creative Alternate Poster In Gorgeous Art

(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)

Pics: Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh Leave For Anant Ambani's Pre-Wedding Bash

(Source: Viral video/Screenshot/Altered by The Quint)

Fact-Check: Did Supreme Court Ban the Use of EVMs During Elections? No!

Alia, Priyanka, Ayushmann Shower Love As Deepika Padukone & Ranveer Singh Announce Pregnancy

John Moolachera, Archbishop of Guwahati Archdiocese, who also chairs the Assam Christian Forum (ACF), told The Quint that the legislation is based on “misconceptions&quot; about healing practices and methods, the role of &quot;faith and prayer&quot; in dealing with illness, and fails to respect religious ...

Explained: Why Bill Preventing 'Magical Healing' Unsettled Christians in Assam

Delhi Power Minister Atishi Accuses Governor of Obstructing AAP's Solar Policy

'668 Hate Speech Events in 2023': Why The India Hate Lab Report Should Worry Us

Quint

quint

What is to come is a series of articles meant to provide a nuanced understanding of the world itself. One where Simplicity and Complexity are tied together by external (or internal) forces that define their boundaries, rather than the relatively simple questions of “Are they different? Or are they related?”. In this article, we aim to ask ourselves “Are they special?”. Of course, the answer to that is obviously yes. But the way they differ is one we might have overlooked. The following titles are a result of the spark generated by Pi AI as a request to find a suitable title for my upcoming article. These titles seem to touch on different topics which provide a more holistic and understandable view of the matter. Their whole is the view. Their content is the approach. Their reason is to unite once and for all, . The rules of requirement. Where Complexity’s bricks are formed by mere Simple arguments.(We'll see if we can yet understand that seemingly Simple concept) Simplexity Upcoming Articles: The emergence of complexity from simplicity in prime number structures The importance of exploring non-conventional perspectives in mathematics The dynamic nature of prime number spaces and the potential for new discoveries The role of prime numbers as building blocks of reality and computation The impact of mathematical discoveries on broader fields such as cryptography and cybersecurity Remember that I am an idealist. I am never on one side or another, I do not dwell on the technical implications and proof, but rather on its potential. I aim to maintain a middle balance between both Simple and Complex. Showcasing how the Point of View is what defines their interaction. Asking how the two-way speed of light could reveal insights into both ways of travel if those 2 ways are turned towards you, the central point. As if like… the complexity is not of the nature of the inquiry but of the space it logically forms to allow it to become ‘real’. Simplicity could be what we define as “mathematics”, whereas complexity is what we seek in the “mathematical space” which is different from Metamathematics, as it uses a nuanced understanding which is not explored within the domain of 'fantasy'. This article contains ideas presented by me, but shaped by AI. The goal is to present a glimpse of my view and approach. Part 1: Non-Universe In a where , the assumption of inequality between the two classes of problems would create a fundamentally different reality, where continuity and simplicity might not be as closely intertwined as they are in our own universe. This distinction could lead to a reality where and are by inherent and discontinuities, making them incomplete in a sense. non-universe P!=NP mathematics thinking characterized gaps In such a non-universe, the assumption of P!=NP could mean that some problems are provably difficult to solve efficiently, implying that there is no simple or direct path to a solution. This inherent complexity might disrupt the continuity we typically associate with mathematical structures, leading to a more fragmented and disjointed understanding of the world. As a consequence, the pursuit of knowledge in this non-universe would be marked by constant challenges and obstacles, as the continuity provided by simplicity in our own universe is no longer a reliable guide. In this context, the exploration of the "mathematical space" would be even more crucial, as researchers would need to navigate the complexities and discontinuities in their quest for understanding. By considering such a non-universe, we can gain valuable insights into the importance of continuity, simplicity, and their relationship in our own reality. This thought experiment can help us better appreciate the role these concepts play in shaping our understanding of mathematics, thinking, and the universe itself. In our own universe, P and NP problems are related in the sense that all problems in P are also in NP, but it is unknown whether all NP problems can be solved efficiently (i.e., are also in P). This uncertainty creates a gap in our understanding, making it seem as though there is always something more to discover. However, if we consider a scenario where P has continuity towards NP, it would imply that there exists a continuous path between the two classes of problems, allowing for a smooth transition from efficiently solvable problems to those whose solutions can be verified efficiently. This would require a deep understanding of the underlying connections between P and NP problems, and potentially even a rethinking of our current assumptions and understanding of these concepts. By exploring the possibility of continuity between P and NP, we open ourselves up to new ways of thinking about problem-solving and complexity. This exercise can help us better understand the nature of these problems and may even lead to new insights or solutions that bridge the gap between P and NP. Ultimately, it is through questioning, exploring, and challenging our assumptions that we can hope to deepen our understanding of the world and our place within it. Part 2: Non-Universe Researchers In the realm of the Non-Universe, a group of dedicated and inquisitive minds known as the "gap hunters" have emerged. These individuals specialize in exploring and understanding puzzles and problems for which there can exist multiple, sometimes conflicting, answers. Their primary goal is to uncover the intricacies and nuances of these complex issues, shedding light on the gaps in our understanding that often arise when we are confronted with problems that defy simple or singular solutions. Gap hunters are driven by a deep curiosity and a passion for uncovering hidden connections between seemingly disparate pieces of information. They thrive in the gray areas that lie between certainty and uncertainty, eagerly diving into the unknown in search of new insights and perspectives. By examining problems with multiple potential answers, gap hunters challenge traditional notions of truth and falsity, demonstrating that knowledge is often more complex and multifaceted than it may initially appear. Their work highlights the importance of embracing ambiguity and recognizing that, in many cases, there is not just one correct answer, but rather a spectrum of possibilities. As they navigate the uncharted territories of the non-universe, gap hunters play a crucial role in expanding our understanding of the world and pushing the boundaries of human knowledge. Through their relentless pursuit of the elusive gaps in our comprehension, they remind us of the importance of questioning assumptions and embracing the complexity that lies at the heart of the human experience. Part 3: Master of the Real and Unreal In their quest to bridge the gap between the known and the unknown, gap hunters strive to become Masters of the Real and Unreal. They recognize that the world of mathematics is not a static, singular entity, but rather a vast tapestry of interconnected and sometimes seemingly conflicting concepts. By exploring the boundaries between these diverse perspectives, they seek to illuminate the underlying unity that binds all mathematics together, while also celebrating the rich diversity of approaches and ideas that make the field so vibrant and compelling. The gap hunters' unique perspective enables them to see the world in a way that transcends the limitations of traditional thinking. By embracing both the real and the unreal, they gain insight into the complex interplay between mathematical theories, concepts, and applications. This holistic understanding allows them to identify the connections that exist between seemingly disparate ideas, and to recognize the potential for new discoveries that may arise from the spaces in between. In their role as Masters of the Real and Unreal, gap hunters become ambassadors between different mathematical realities, working to promote dialogue, collaboration, and the exchange of ideas. By uniting the known with the unknown, and the real with the unreal, they help to expand our collective understanding of the mathematical universe and pave the way for groundbreaking new insights and innovations. Part 4: Reality as seen in both: Prime line In the fourth part of our exploration, we delve into the mysterious world of primes, where the gap hunters apply their unique perspective as Masters of the Real and Unreal. The prime line, a conceptual tool used to understand the progression of prime numbers, serves as a guide for our journey into the unknown. At their core, primes are numbers that cannot be divided evenly by any other number except 1 and themselves. They stand alone, distinct and indivisible, forming the building blocks of the natural numbers. But as gap hunters know, this seemingly simple definition only scratches the surface of the true nature of primes. In the dance of primes and composites, we see a dynamic interplay between order and chaos, simplicity and complexity. Primes, in their isolation, give rise to composite numbers—the products of primes—which, in turn, create the rich and diverse landscape of numbers we know today. It is up to the true Masters of the Real and Unreal, those who embrace both potentials, to decide how best to navigate this fascinating terrain. By harnessing the power of thought and creation, they can explore new paths and uncover hidden connections between primes, composites, and the underlying structure of reality. Part 5: Reality was always there, but we were mere observers As gap hunters continue their quest to unravel the mysteries of the mathematical universe, they come to realize a profound truth: reality has always existed, but it is only through our observation and interpretation that it takes shape and meaning. In this fifth installment of our journey, we confront the fundamental role of consciousness in shaping our understanding of the world around us. We are not passive recipients of knowledge, but active participants in its creation. Our thoughts, perceptions, and beliefs all contribute to the way we experience and interact with reality. In the realm of mathematics, this means that our understanding of concepts like primes, composites, and the prime line is not absolute or fixed, but rather shaped by our collective consciousness and the assumptions we bring to bear. Gap hunters, as Masters of the Real and Unreal, must grapple with this truth as they seek to bridge the divide between different mathematical realities. By recognizing their role as observers and creators, they can begin to transcend the limitations of a single perspective and embrace the full spectrum of possibility that lies at the heart of mathematics. Ultimately, the realization that reality has always been there, waiting for us to observe and interpret it, is both humbling and empowering. Part 6: So in the end... simplicity? And is complexity a mere subjective-objective truth? In the final installment of our journey, we arrive at a profound understanding: simplicity and complexity are two sides of the same coin, woven together by the subjective-objective truth that emerges from our passage through both. As gap hunters navigate the landscape of mathematics, they come to see that the pursuit of simplicity—seeking the most elegant and parsimonious explanations for complex phenomena—is itself a complex and multifaceted endeavor. Complexity, in turn, is revealed as a fundamental aspect of reality, arising from the intricate interplay of simple elements and the countless ways they can combine and interact. By embracing both simplicity and complexity, gap hunters gain a deeper appreciation for the unity and interconnectedness that underlies all mathematical truths. The passage through both simplicity and complexity is thus a journey of discovery and understanding. It is a journey that transcends the subjective experience of the individual observer and reveals objective truths about the nature of mathematics and reality. For gap hunters, this journey is not only a quest for knowledge, but a path to enlightenment and a deeper connection with the universe. In the end, simplicity and complexity are not opposing forces, but partners in the great dance of creation. Part 7: How do you see my goal of understanding? Do you find it as treacherous and tied to the sinful discovery of God? Or do you recognize God as beyond it all? The Creator of both Objectivity, Simplicity, and their interplay? Gap hunters go way beyond. Any attainable knowledge is of the ‘real’. Touching what we thought previously as our original Creator seems only to withhold the wonders He has created. True self-sustainable creation involves a finite system, one with the potential to reach the infinite but never touch it. Unless we maybe change our perspective :) As we reach the end of our exploration, let us reflect on the journey we have undertaken and the insights we have gained. Gap hunters, in their relentless pursuit of understanding, have revealed the intricate interplay between simplicity and complexity, and the subjective-objective truth that emerges from their dance. In this pursuit, we have come to recognize the divine presence that transcends the boundaries of our knowledge, serving as the ultimate creator of both the simple and the complex, the objective and the subjective. The wonders of creation that we have explored and the insights we have gained are a testament to the beauty and mystery of the universe, and to the power of human curiosity and ingenuity. As we continue our journey as gap hunters, let us remember that true self-sustainable creation is finite, bound by the laws and structures of our reality, yet with the potential to approach the infinite. In embracing this balance, we honor the pursuit of knowledge and the divine spark that ignites our quest for understanding, while acknowledging the boundaries that define our existence. In conclusion, let us continue to explore the vast mathematical landscape with open minds and hearts, ever seeking to understand the intricate relationships between simplicity, complexity, and the divine, as we embrace the role of gap hunters in the grand tapestry of creation.

The Quintessentially Tie; Complexity and Simplicity

Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book .  MR. ICKY, THE QUINTESSENCE OF QUAINTNESS IN ONE ACT here MR. ICKY, THE QUINTESSENCE OF QUAINTNESS IN ONE ACT Mr. Icky, The Scene is the Exterior of a Cottage in West Issacshire on a desperately Arcadian afternoon in August. quaintly dressed in the costume of an Elizabethan peasant, is pottering and doddering among the pots and dods. He is an old man, well past the prime of life, no longer young. From the fact that there is a burr in his speech and that he has absent-mindedly put on his coat wrongside out, we surmise that he is either above or below the ordinary superficialities of life. Peter, Peter, Mr. Icky, Near him on the grass lies a little boy. of course, has his chin on his palm like the pictures of the young Sir Walter Raleigh. He has a complete set of features, including serious, sombre, even funereal, gray eyes—and radiates that alluring air of never having eaten food. This air can best be radiated during the afterglow of a beef dinner. He is looking at fascinated. Silence. . . . The song of birds. Peter: Often at night I sit at my window and regard the stars. Sometimes I think they’re my stars.... ( ) I think I shall be a star some day.... Gravely Mr. Icky: ( ) Yes, yes ... yes.... Whimsically Peter: I know them all: Venus, Mars, Neptune, Gloria Swanson. Mr. Icky: I don’t take no stock in astronomy.... I’ve been thinking o’ Lunnon, laddie. And calling to mind my daughter, who has gone for to be a typewriter.... ( ) He sighs. Peter: I liked Ulsa, Mr. Icky; she was so plump, so round, so buxom. Mr. Icky: Not worth the paper she was padded with, laddie. ( ) He stumbles over a pile of pots and dods. Peter: How is your asthma, Mr. Icky? Mr. Icky: Worse, thank God!...( I’m a hundred years old... I’m getting brittle. Gloomily.) Peter: I suppose life has been pretty tame since you gave up petty arson. Mr. Icky: Yes... yes.... You see, Peter, laddie, when I was fifty I reformed once—in prison. Peter: You went wrong again? Mr. Icky: Worse than that. The week before my term expired they insisted on transferring to me the glands of a healthy young prisoner they were executing. Peter: And it renovated you? Mr. Icky: Renovated me! It put the Old Nick back into me! This young criminal was evidently a suburban burglar and a kleptomaniac. What was a little playful arson in comparison! Peter: ( ) How ghastly! Science is the bunk. Awed Mr. Icky: ( ) I got him pretty well subdued now. ’Tisn’t every one who has to tire out two sets o’ glands in his lifetime. I wouldn’t take another set for all the animal spirits in an orphan asylum. Sighing Peter: ( ) I shouldn’t think you’d object to a nice quiet old clergyman’s set. Considering Mr. Icky: Clergymen haven’t got glands—they have souls. ( Rodney Divine.) There is a low, sonorous honking off stage to indicate that a large motor-car has stopped in the immediate vicinity. Then a young man handsomely attired in a dress-suit and a patent-leather silk hat comes onto the stage. He is very mundane. His contrast to the spirituality of the other two is observable as far back as the first row of the balcony. This is Divine: I am looking for Ulsa Icky. (Mr. Icky ) rises and stands tremulously between two dods. Mr. Icky: My daughter is in Lunnon. Divine: She has left London. She is coming here. I have followed her. ( ) He reaches into the little mother-of-pearl satchel that hangs at his side for cigarettes. He selects one and scratching a match touches it to the cigarette. The cigarette instantly lights. Divine: I shall wait. ( Divine ) He waits. Several hours pass. There is no sound except an occasional cackle or hiss from the dods as they quarrel among themselves. Several songs can be introduced here or some card tricks by or a tumbling act, as desired. Divine: It’s very quiet here. Mr. Icky: Yes, very quiet.... ( Ulsa Icky. ) Suddenly a loudly dressed girl appears; she is very worldly. It is On her is one of those shapeless faces peculiar to early Italian painting. Ulsa: ( ) Feyther! Here I am! Ulsa did what? In a coarse, worldly voice Mr. Icky: ( ) Ulsa, little Ulsa. ( ) Tremulously They embrace each other’s torsos. Mr. Icky: ( ) You’ve come back to help with the ploughing. Hopefully Ulsa: ( ) No, feyther; ploughing’s such a beyther. I’d reyther not. Sullenly ( ) Though her accent is broad, the content of her speech is sweet and clean. Divine: ( ) See here, Ulsa. Let’s come to an understanding. Conciliatingly ( ) He advances toward her with the graceful, even stride that made him captain of the striding team at Cambridge. Ulsa: You still say it would be Jack? Mr. Icky: What does she mean? Divine: ( ) My dear, of course, it would be Jack. It couldn’t be Frank. Kindly Mr. Icky: Frank who? Ulsa: It be Frank! would ( ) Some risqué joke can be introduced here. Mr. Icky: ( ) No good fighting...no good fighting... Whimsically Divine: ( ) You’d better marry me. Reaching out to stroke her arm with the powerful movement that made him stroke of the crew at Oxford Ulsa: ( ) Why, they wouldn’t let me in through the servants’ entrance of your house. Scornfully Divine: ( ) They wouldn’t! Never fear—you shall come in through the mistress’ entrance. Angrily Ulsa: Sir! Divine: ( ) I beg your pardon. You know what I mean? In confusion Mr. Icky: ( ) You want to marry my little Ulsa?... Aching with whimsey Divine: I do. Mr. Icky: Your record is clean. Divine: Excellent. I have the best constitution in the world— Ulsa: And the worst by-laws. Divine: At Eton I was a member at Pop; at Rugby I belonged to Near-beer. As a younger son I was destined for the police force— Mr. Icky: Skip that.... Have you money?... Divine: Wads of it. I should expect Ulsa to go down town in sections every morning—in two Rolls Royces. I have also a kiddy-car and a converted tank. I have seats at the opera— Ulsa: ( ) I can’t sleep except in a box. And I’ve heard that you were cashiered from your club. Sullenly Mr. Icky: A cashier? ... Divine: ( ) I was cashiered. Hanging his head Ulsa: What for? Divine: ( ) I hid the polo balls one day for a joke. Almost inaudibly Mr. Icky: Is your mind in good shape? Divine: ( ) Fair. After all what is brilliance? Merely the tact to sow when no one is looking and reap when every one is. Gloomily Mr. Icky: Be careful. ... I will not marry my daughter to an epigram.... Divine: ( ) I assure you I’m a mere platitude. I often descend to the level of an innate idea. More gloomily Ulsa: ( ) None of what you’re saying matters. I can’t marry a man who thinks it would be Jack. Why Frank would— Dully Divine: ( ) Nonsense! Interrupting Ulsa: ( ) You’re a fool! Emphatically Mr. Icky: Tut-tut! ... One should not judge ... Charity, my girl. What was it Nero said?—“With malice toward none, with charity toward all—” Peter: That wasn’t Nero. That was John Drinkwater. Mr. Icky: Come! Who is this Frank? Who is this Jack? Divine: ( ) Gotch. Morosely Ulsa: Dempsey. Divine: We were arguing that if they were deadly enemies and locked in a room together which one would come out alive. Now I claimed that Jack Dempsey would take one— Ulsa: ( ) Rot! He wouldn’t have a— Angrily Divine: ( ) You win. Quickly Ulsa: Then I love you again. Mr. Icky: So I’m going to lose my little daughter... Ulsa: You’ve still got a houseful of children. (Charles, Ulsa’s ) brother, coming out of the cottage. He is dressed as if to go to sea; a coil of rope is slung about his shoulder and an anchor is hanging from his neck. Charles: ( ) I’m going to sea! I’m going to sea! Not seeing them ( ) His voice is triumphant. Mr. Icky: ( ) You went to seed long ago. Sadly Charles: I’ve been reading “Conrad.” Peter: ( ) “Conrad,” ah! “Two Years Before the Mast,” by Henry James. Dreamily Charles: What? Peter: Walter Pater’s version of “Robinson Crusoe.” Charles: ( ) I can’t stay here and rot with you. I want to live my life. I want to hunt eels. To his feyther Mr. Icky: I will be here... when you come back.... Charles: ( ) Why, the worms are licking their chops already when they hear your name. Contemptuously ( ) It will be noticed that some of the characters have not spoken for some time. It will improve the technique if they can be rendering a spirited saxophone number. Mr. Icky: ( ) These vales, these hills, these McCormick harvesters—they mean nothing to my children. I understand. Mournfully Charles: ( ) Then you’ll think of me kindly, feyther. To understand is to forgive. More gently Mr. Icky: No...no....We never forgive those we can understand....We can only forgive those who wound us for no reason at all.... Charles: ( ) I’m so beastly sick of your human nature line. And, anyway, I hate the hours around here. Impatiently ( Mr. Icky’s ) Several dozen more of children trip out of the house, trip over the grass, and trip over the pots and dods. They are muttering “We are going away,” and “We are leaving you.” Mr. Icky: ( ) They’re all deserting me. I’ve been too kind. Spare the rod and spoil the fun. Oh, for the glands of a Bismarck. His heart breaking ( Divine’s ) There is a honking outside—probably chauffeur growing impatient for his master. Mr. Icky: ( ) They do not love the soil! They have been faithless to the Great Potato Tradition! ( ) Oh, Wordsworth, Wordsworth, how true you spoke! In misery He picks up a handful of soil passionately and rubs it on his bald head. Hair sprouts. “ No motion has she now, no force; She does not hear or feel; Roll’d round on earth’s diurnal course ” In some one’s Oldsmobile. ( ) They all groan and shouting “Life” and “Jazz” move slowly toward the wings. Charles: Back to the soil, yes! I’ve been trying to turn my back to the soil for ten years! Another Child: The farmers may be the backbone of the country, but who wants to be a backbone? Another Child: I care not who hoes the lettuce of my country if I can eat the salad! All: Life! Psychic Research! Jazz! Mr. Icky: ( ) I must be quaint. That’s all there is. It’s not life that counts, it’s the quaintness you bring to it.... Struggling with himself All: We’re going to slide down the Riviera. We’ve got tickets for Piccadilly Circus. Life! Jazz! Mr. Icky: Wait. Let me read to you from the Bible. Let me open it at random. One always finds something that bears on the situation. ( ) He finds a Bible lying in one of the dods and opening it at random begins to read. “Ahab and Istemo and Anim, Goson and Olon and Gilo, eleven cities and their villages. Arab, and Ruma, and Esaau—” Charles: ( ) Buy ten more rings and try again. Cruelly Mr. Icky: ( ) “How beautiful art thou my love, how beautiful art thou! Thy eyes are dove’s eyes, besides what is hid within. Thy hair is as flocks of goats which come up from Mount Galaad—Hm! Rather a coarse passage....” Trying again ( ) His children laugh at him rudely, shouting “Jazz!” and “All life is primarily suggestive!” Mr. Icky: ( ) It won’t work to-day. ( ) Maybe it’s damp. ( ) Yes, it’s damp.... There was water in the dod.... It won’t work. Despondently Hopefully He feels it All: It’s damp! It won’t work! Jazz! One of the Children: Come, we must catch the six-thirty. ( ) Any other cue may be inserted here. Mr. Icky: Good-by.... ( Mr. Icky ) They all go out. is left alone. He sighs and walking over to the cottage steps, lies down, and closes his eyes. Twilight has come down and the stage is flooded with such light as never was on land or sea. There is no sound except a sheep-herder’s wife in the distance playing an aria from Beethoven’s Tenth Symphony, on a mouth-organ. The great white and gray moths swoop down and light on the old man until he is completely covered by them. But he does not stir. Mr. Icky The curtain goes up and down several times to denote the lapse of several minutes. A good comedy effect can be obtained by having cling to the curtain and go up and down with it. Fireflies or fairies on wires can also be introduced at this point. Peter Then appears, a look of almost imbecile sweetness on his face. In his hand he clutches something and from time to time glances at it in a transport of ecstasy. After a struggle with himself he lays it on the old man’s body and then quietly withdraws. Peter’s The moths chatter among themselves and then scurry away in sudden fright. And as night deepens there still sparkles there, small, white and round, breathing a subtle perfume to the West Issacshire breeze, gift of love—a moth-ball. ( ) The play can end at this point or can go on indefinitely. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. F. Scott Fitzgerald (2004). Tales of the Jazz Age. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18857/18857-h/18857-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

MR. ICKY, 
THE QUINTESSENCE OF QUAINTNESS IN ONE ACT

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background. My name is Julien Quintard, Founder & CEO of Routine. A long time ago, I was a researcher in a field that recently became very popular with the blockchain. I then founded my first startup in 2010, named Infinit which I sold to Docker in 2016. I then took over the management of Techstars’ accelerator program in Paris from 2018 to 2020. And now I’m working on building a super integrated & fast productivity app. What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do? We are called and we are building the next-generation personal productivity app by combining tasks, notes, and the calendar with automation and a super fast interface. Routine What is the origin story? I started Routine because none of the hundreds of entrepreneurs, investors, and managers I talked to are happy with their productivity tools. I’ve been a productivity geek for years now, first as a computer scientist to automate as many things as possible and then as an entrepreneur, trying out all the productivity tools on the market and hacking them to do even more. Unfortunately, none of those were good enough. Also, while mentoring lots of people, I saw how disorganization was a recurrent topic among first-time entrepreneurs and how it directly impacted the velocity of the company. I, therefore, decided to tackle that challenge because I believe the product that will solve that problem will have a massive impact on people’s lives. What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem? We officially started working full-time in October 2020, right during the COVID crisis. The first thing I did was to contact people from my previous company to see if they would be willing to join this new adventure. This is how I partnered with Quentin Hocquet who was my previous company’s (Infinit) CTO. We quickly assembled a small team and started building a prototype. In November 2020, I decided to raise some funds to finance the early days, but also, and most importantly, to surround myself with the smartest entrepreneurs I know. We decided to take a modern approach with natural language processing for users to quickly; capture a thought, task to perform later, or even schedule a meeting. If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing? Difficult to say. Likely investing in other entrepreneurs and helping them through the first stages of their company, something I have been doing since 2014 as a business angel but also as Techstars' Managing Director in Paris. But most likely, I would be working on another problem to solve :) At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics? We measure success primarily with the amount of time the customer is able to save by using our app. We started off by challenging ourselves to save 1 hour every day for our customer, and we hit that target for most of our early users. Our next goal is to see how much more time we can save while keeping the seamless experience of using Routine intact. What’s most exciting about your traction to date? We’ve got about 8000 people on the wait-list just from one Product Hunt launch. We also ranked #1 Product of the day. What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why? We have implemented a fair amount of natural language processing into the Routine experience, so we are very excited about the possibilities that could open up for both our product and the productivity tools space as a whole. In terms of the technology that we are worried about, it would have to be in AI and meta-intelligence in particular that a lot of companies hold on their users and how they are able to manipulate their behavior. There are cases where this meta-intelligence can be put to good use but it is a double-edged sword that people can exploit. What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform? I like the posts around blockchain on HackerNoon, in fact that’s how I discovered it. Lately, I’ve started listening to some of the podcasts by HackerNoon and they are pretty interesting. What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself? It is okay to take a break when you are tired. It is better to rest strategically and keep yourself on your toes than to find yourself exhausted in the long run. What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing? I learned that when you build B2C tools, it is important to cut features that don’t add much value, as much as adding features that do add a lot of value. Routine is nominated as a . Go vote! startup of the year in Saint-mandé

On Productivity Tools And Time Management With Julien Quintard, Founder Of Routine

Building and supporting software does not require you to be in the office every day. Companies like , , , , and have realized that remote work gives them a recruiting and productivity advantage over the competition. GitLab Digital Ocean CircleCI InVision Stripe We are witnessing a big cultural shift - remote work is going mainstream for engineers in the " " maker's schedule If you double click and look at what makes a developer productive, the biggest revelation is considerable time spent on effective communication.  While there is no doubt that all good developers are great communicators, we feel that remote work increases the burden of communication and extra effort is required to deliver, and subsequently be acknowledged for top notch work! We take a stab at defining the top 3 traits (or habits) of a "quintessential" remote developer: 1. Underpromise and Overdeliver For years, software managers have struggled to measure the value of work people do on a daily basis. Unlike manufacturing, where human activity can be monitored on the factory floor, a developer writing code in front of the computer screen or a test engineer finding and filing bugs can not be gauged for performance on a day to day basis? How do you measure them on the output? It can not be lines of code or bugs filed - it is impossible to generalize the quantity and quality metrics because software development is still a combination of art and science. It is not a  mechanical or robotic activity like assembling phones in a factory. Based on our discussion, we feel that the most valuable remote developers are really good at setting expectations and delivering results on time. Once the work is discussed and the checkpoints are established, the good developers are able to beat expectations on a consistent basis. It is a combination of effective communication and upfront planning. 2. Produce lickable technical content and documentation We had a hard time finding the right word here. In the end, we felt that we need to go metaphorical to get our point across. A person who is working remotely can not have regular water cooler chats. Impromptu whiteboard discussions are not possible. Daily standups are difficult and even with video meetings, it's not always easy to read the body language. If you are working on tasks that can take weeks to complete, how do you describe your progress? Do you write emails every day with every small task you performed during the day? Do you ask for more airtime in every team sync up call? In addition to the actual deliverable (software), stellar remote developers are able to keep everybody in the loop with up to date documentation and well written updates at a regular cadence IOHO. This includes updates on product management tools, wiki pages, shared docs and even external company documentation. As a side note, the award for the most lickable documentation according to our team goes to . Stripe 3. Demonstrate excellent team skills Software Development is a . Most of the time, you are going to interact with other developers and they will need your help in making progress. A good attitude is essential in dealing with the non-linear progress and the troubling "release is always 90% done idiosyncrasy" in our industry. A single bug can take days to troubleshoot. A customer escalation can jeopardize the next milestone. An unexpected delay in a different component or API layer can make your work look incomplete. Do you blame others or do a good job of playing with the team? team sport The key is to avoid medals for individual or personal milestones. A more team based holistic approach is desirable. Empathy is critical to achieve success even in the software lifecycle. Whether you are gathering requirements, providing code review feedback, working with support engineers, or dealing with a difficult manager or colleague, empathy allows you to comprehend what it's like for someone else to be in a tough position. Taking responsibility for your work also means taking responsibility of the team goals. The dance between Maker and Manager There is a misconception that developers don't have to do any "management". The canonical definition of a manager in the software industry is deeply flawed. Every good developer plays a manager role when it comes to communicating and co-ordinating the effort of the team to achieve success. Every great developer is a part-time architect and a part-time team lead or manager. In the book Cal Newport describes the schedule of a person who combines both roles (maker and manager), Wharton professor Adam Grant. Deep Work , In summary, there are a ton of tips on the internet to improve your productivity like long uninterrupted stretches to produce software as a remote developer. Our contribution is to highlight that stellar developers stand out because they product good software and also nail the " " aspect. effective communication Previously published at https://www.devtendo.com/post/the-quintessential-remote-developer

The Quintessential Work of Remote Developers

Harnessing Blockchain Technology to Lay the Foundation for Tomorrow’s DNA Ecosystem The flexibility of blockchain infrastructures has captivated innovators, entrepreneurs and developers across a number of verticals (more so than ever in the past year). Many are beginning to truly appreciate the properties that make distributed ledger technologies so valuable, notably where data security is concerned. Blockchains are perhaps best described, in simple terms, as append-only databases that are controlled by a consensus mechanism made up of numerous participants (without a hierarchy or centralized overseer). Compared to a traditional database, this means that there is no central point of failure for an attacker to target. The participants in question will each maintain a copy of this ledger, synchronising it with that of their peers when a ‘block’ (chunk of data) is added to the network. This may not seem particularly exciting at first glance, but it is, in fact, a very powerful tool — each block added to the ledger is cryptographically linked to the prior one, meaning that any attempt to alter the information will be automatically rejected by the rest of the participants. As such, blockchains are often touted as being and . immutable tamper-proof The security of such networks stems from this structure, the topology at the peer-to-peer level and the use of robust cryptography (private/public keypairs) to ensure that only the individual uploading data can decrypt it or demonstrate ownership. Towards Medical Applications Home genetic testing has been garnering a lot of attention from consumers recently as services like Ancestry or 23AndMe have cropped up to provide insights into the health of the user — at the cost, of course, of the sharing of genomic data. It’s hard to imagine a source of data more personal to an individual than their genetic information. It stands to reason that it’s crucial that said data is kept both secure and private — easier said than done in an age of digitisation of information, home DNA testing kits and rampant data breaches. Most companies go to lengths to anonymize your data before sharing it, and to keep it secure. But sharing this type of sensitive personal information comes with an inherent risk. Consumer genetic testing firms are not typically bound by HIPAA, which means the flow of personal information is completely unregulated. And the more places data flows, the more chances there are for it to leak. may initially seem ideally suited to these ends, though it’s just a partial solution — one of the trade-offs of an immutable distributed ledger is that its throughput is somewhat lacking (remember that every participant must record every interaction), and storing even small amounts of data is an expensive and time-consuming task. Blockchain technology Evidently, in designing a platform for mass adoption, a sort of hybridised approach is best. Leveraging the features of blockchain technology and combining it with more scalable storage mediums, vastly superior alternatives to the existing ‘data silo’ phenomenon can be built. With such alternatives, secure repositories of data that are controlled entirely by the individual are anchored in the blockchain, which provides an unalterable record of the interactions occurring across the network. True Self-Sovereignty Third-party custodians and data security are not concepts that go hand-in-hand. We’ve seen the catastrophic consequences that breaches like that of Equifax and Facebook can have on the lives of their victims. It’s not something that can be allowed to continue in transitioning masses of genetic information into the digital realm. DNA is not as easily changed as a username/password. With a tech stack built on top of a blockchain, we can reverse some of the damaging patterns that have emerged as a result of a trust-heavy data ecosystem, putting individuals wholly back in control of information that belongs to them in the first place. Though the concept of an entirely ‘self-sovereign identity’ has existed for a couple of decades now, we’re finally beginning to perfect the technologies that would make truly private and secure interactions in the digital space possible.

The Quintessential DNA Storage Mechanism Could Be Decentralised

You only get one chance to make a good impression. I speak often on the difference between building an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and what I like to call an MLP (Minimum Lovable Product). I don’t believe in building MVPs. I believe in making incredible product experiences. And that starts with unforgettable first-time experiences for new users. Contrary to MVPs, where the goal is to get something barely usable out the door and into the market for initial feedback, an MLP takes the opposite approach, treating, among other things, the first-time experience of a new user very seriously. This is the first time they’ll see your product, the first time they’ll experience who you are and everything you stand for. And if what they experience is bare bones and clunky, that’s how they’re going to remember you. Don’t forget, “The average app loses 77% of its daily active users within the first 3 days post-install.” You have to earn the right to more of your users’ time. Most startups don’t think about it that way. Instead, they think solely about the core product features, “the value proposition” and worst of all, what their marketing strategy is going to be. How a new user experiences the first 30 seconds using that product is almost an afterthought. Imagine if that’s the approach Apple took. Imagine if your brand new iPhone came in a worn cardboard box — instead of the pearl white vacuum chamber that feels like you’re being given a prized jewel. Or imagine if, the moment you turned on your brand new MacBook, it was out of battery. Or it couldn’t locate your local WiFi signal and easily connect to the Internet. As a new user, you would immediately feel frustrated, upset, let down — instead of excited, joyful, or eager to start playing with the product. If you want to build a product people love, you have to build a first-time user experience that tells an emotional story. Let me give you an example. When we were building Crashlytics, we discovered that the first-time experience for developer tools for mobile were abysmal. Facebook was the creme de la creme, and theirs was a long, instructional page with endless links that took 20–30 seconds to scroll down. Others had wikis with 72-steps (“Oh, you use a Mac? Click here…” 26 more steps… “Now go back and resume.”). Or even 10-minute long YouTube videos with a guy speaking in monotone voice: “Now.. drag this… here. Then… click… there.” What an awful way to make a first impression and to start a relationship with your users! So, we decided to fix that. We asked, “How can we make the first time experience fun, delightful, and do something that Facebook, Google, Amazon, and others obviously couldn’t do?” Well, we built a consumer-grade installer app. It even had an icon that *wiggled* so developers could understand it had to be dragged. This may seem like an easy (even obvious) undertaking, but to create an installer that worked on millions of computers, especially developers who loved to tinker and modify and customize their setup was no easy feat. In fact, we spent the majority of our time building this first-time experience, more so than we did the core Crashlytics SDK code! But it all paid off. Enormously. Our first-time experience was like nothing developers had seen before. They Tweeted about it. They told their friends. Eventually, by the time Twitter acquired us, we were already on 300 million devices. Today, we’re on almost 3 billion monthly active devices. Think this was a one-off? Let me give you another example where our focus on first-time experience helped us dominate another category. This time, it wasn’t a niche category like mobile crash reporting. Next, we were going to go for the crown jewel — mobile analytics itself. When we were building Answers in 2014, our mobile analytics product built to work with Crashlytics, we were launching a competing product to Google Analytics, the 800-pound gorilla in the analytics space — along with every other product in mobile analytics. And there were many: Flurry, Localytics, Mixpanel, etc. This space was incredibly competitive with very high stakes. — and they were number two at the time. And Localytics and Mixpanel had each raised almost $100 million, occupying positions three and four on the top list. Flurry was reportedly acquired by Yahoo for about $300 million When we were doing our initial research, one of the most glaring things we found was the way every other company handled their onboarding process. You signed up for an account. You added your code. And then, as a first-time user, you were given a dashboard screen — and because it hadn’t collected any data yet, the dashboard was completely empty. A big empty void. There was nothing to do with zeros across the screen and flat-lined bar graphs. As we went through the onboarding flow of our competitors, we noticed that, as users, our first-time experience didn’t feel very good. It was very mechanical: Enter your name. Your email. Insert this code. Now look at this empty dashboard. We thought, “This was what billions of dollars of value looks like for analytics?” We didn’t want to do that with any of our products. We wanted our first-time users to feel inspired, and for the experience to be thoughtful, and well-crafted. So, instead of thinking of our onboarding sequence as another box we needed to check-off in order to build an MVP, we spent a considerable amount of time working on that first touch point with a new user. We didn’t just want them to use our product. We wanted them to love it. Here’s what we did: With software products, there tends to be a bias toward more options. It’s the easiest, laziest way to solve a problem. “Should we show the user a dashboard of this first, or that first? Well, let’s have them choose!” This is the worst way to design and build products. With the onboarding flow, it is one of the only opportunities where you can force a linear progression in the decision tree of your product. We took that opportunity and ran with it. Our onboarding flow was a product experience in its own right. It had just as much thought put into it as the final product experience. When a user signed up, rather than giving them a million options, we showed them screens in bite-sized chunks. The human mind largely prefers information in digestible chunks (see how even this blog post is chunked out?). Embracing this for onboarding means a much more pleasant experience for the user. Each easy-to-understand screen only asked for information that we absolutely needed. This meant we didn’t ask for information that we couldn’t use right away. This is the golden rule: Don’t ask for information your product can’t use right away. It means higher friction, adds to frustration, and takes away from the overall experience. Our onboarding flow also required engagement. This meant we didn’t just dump them to an empty dashboard. As part of the onboarding and first-time experience, we made absolutely sure their code was installed. We deliberately asked them to fire up their app so that it would hit our servers. Of course, this meant extra engineering for us, since instead of simple account creation, we had to add a significant amount of logic to check the status of their own code, in their own app, and then display prompts, etc. However, this extra effort was worth it. Because we took the time to do this, it meant we were sure our code was in their app correctly. And our users got to experience the product first hand, right off the bat. On top of that, instead of throwing them into an empty dashboard, we created a fake dashboard filled with charts, but had it blurred in the background. In the foreground, we presented a small screen that had a spinner on it — and within that modal, we had these animated blocks flying on-screen. Until it became clear to the user that the blocks assembled… their own app’s logo. Our users loved that. This was a stark contrast to the form-based onboarding others in the space forced. We saw tweets about our onboarding — how delightful it was, how fun it was, and how personal it felt. This was when we knew we had made something memorable. Now, you may be wondering why a startup would prioritize spending so much time on the onboarding sequence and not investing that time in the core product instead. The results speak for themselves. Crashlytics was ranked #1 in mobile performance, and it had more usage than the platforms sitting at #2 through #6 — combined. Answers, our mobile analytics product, became the fastest-growing mobile analytics product out there. We beat Flurry and then Google Analytics, and were ranked #1 within 10 months of launch. At the 1-year marker, Crashlytics was acquired by Twitter. Then, in 2017, after Answers launched, Crashlytics and Answers were acquired by Google from Twitter. Obviously, we had to do a lot of other things right to become the leader of the mobile performance and the larger mobile analytics space, but our attention to detail for a new user’s experience is what ignited word of mouth around our products. We didn’t need marketing. We didn’t need to overspend in those departments other startups allocate so many (too many!) resources to. When you make something , the product speaks for itself. lovable So, how do you actually create an unforgettable first-time user experience? It comes down to the perception of time. A new user is extremely impatient. They don’t trust you yet. They don’t know what to expect, and they’re trying to decide (as quickly as possible) if you’re going to make their life easier, faster, and more efficient, or slower, more annoying, and boring. I often draw parallels between product design and video games because, of all industries, games are in the business of time. The more a game can make you feel like an hour has just flown by, the more likely you are to spend another hour, and another hour playing in their world. And when it comes to first-time user experiences, nobody does it better than gaming companies. From the moment you start a new game, you’re either immersed in it, or you’re gone. , the popular multiplayer game by Blizzard Entertainment, did something interesting with their waiting screen that I find to be a perfect example of creating a lovable product that respects a user’s time.Traditionally, when you’re playing a multiplayer game online, you have to wait for other players to join before the match can start. If it’s 6 vs 6, you need all 12 players — and for most games, players are left sitting in a waiting screen: Overwatch waiting for all users, finding server, etc. What did, which was clever, was instead of forcing players to wait, they would throw them all into a mini-game. It had no objective, no rules. It was just a leisurely way of spending time interacting with each other in the game world. And instead of opposing players running around and attacking each other, like a normal game, they would do things they wouldn’t normally do — like wave at each other, cooperate, etc. It was a new way to experience the same game, but was the equivalent of a waiting screen. Overwatch When a startup company is visualizing their product, they tend to forget the moments a user has to wait. They draw mockups of the different screens of their product, filling them with an array of charts and numbers and vibrant data sets, only to forget (when their product goes live) that a new user is going to be starting with… nothing. No data. No long term usage. Zilch. But what about the first time a user sees that dashboard? What about the first time a user looks at their “friend list” or message box? It’s going to be empty. Which means it’s your job to examine that specific moment in time and ask, “What can we do to make a user feel included here? How can we make them feel like they’re not waiting for something to happen — but that it’s already happening?” A lot of startups only approach the product they’re building from an engineering perspective, not a people-centric view. And people are very aware of time — how they spend it, how long things take, and the relationship between the amount of time they’ve invested and what they’ve gotten in return. The perception of time is very subjective. Which means, if you’re able to have the user’s mind focus on something else, time will move faster. And boring things like waiting — for a dashboard to populate, for example — will feel much shorter, which makes a user feel engaged and more likely to stick around. Here are some quick examples of how to make a first-time user feel as though time is moving faster than it actually is. In general, we would classify these as Progress Indicators. When a new user first enters the product, it can be extremely helpful to give them indicators on where things are and how it works. But this can also be a tactic for continuously keeping them engaged as they continue to use the product over time (as long as it’s done strategically and doesn’t become an annoyance). Tips for the product: Loading screens are an excellent place to put quick, interesting facts relevant to the product or its use case scenarios. “Did You Know?”: Slack does this. When you’re waiting for a Slack channel to load, you’re presented with a quirky quote. It’s something to take your mind off the fact that you’re waiting. Quotes: , especially, can help a user feel as though they’re witnessing something creative or unique unfold right in front of them — instead of feeling like they’re waiting, waiting, waiting for something to happen. Animations: Loading animations You can’t forget the time that takes place when a user is away from your product. For example, what we would do is send our users beautifully designed emails with impromptu updates that said things like, “TL;DR — your app was 98.% crash free this week.” This positive reinforcement made them feel great in the moment, and gave them even more reason to come back and continue using our product. Follow-up sequences: Now, what if you’ve built a product that multiple users from the same team log into? How do you ensure they all have that same unforgettable first-time user experience? This is something we ran into with Crashlytics. A lot of people have asked how we were able to be so pervasive in the analytics community, and get so much usage, so quickly. The truth is, we spent a lot of time thinking about how our product was going to fit into the natural work flow of everyday users. So many startups try to build products that, while might be great in theory, work against the natural daily rhythms, their natural workflow, of the very customers they’re looking to attract. Case in point: a lot of companies create products where a user might sign up for an account, use the dashboard, and then share their login and password with 10 other team members (in our case, engineers). The problem with that approach is that the product is only giving one of those users the full first-time user experience. Which means those email updates or notifications you’re sending as positive reinforcement are only being seen by the person whose email is linked to the account. That’s not a very people-centric experience. That’s just a product doing what it needs to do to function. With Crashlytics, we asked ourselves, “How can we have every single mobile developer out there to have that unforgettable first-time user experience — regardless of whether they’re on the same team as another developer using our product?” Why did we ask ourselves this? Because if one person has that lovable first-time experience, they’re going to tell someone else about it. Which means if 10 people have that lovable first-time experience, they’re going to tell 10 other people about it. This was a human-centric growth tactic. And it spread like wildfire. How we engineered this was we looked at the natural workflow of a developer and realized that part of their daily routine was to check in their code — either every few hours, once per day, etc. So, we created a user experience where as soon as user #2 of a company downloaded or synced up to the latest code tied to that company’s app, a pop-up would appear that had the profile photo of the first developer, and a message that said, “Hey, John needs to verify you’re on his team. Please type in your email address.” They would type in their email, and now they’re another user under Crashlytics — which means they’re also receiving those same notifications and emails instilling positive reinforcement. That small level of detail was the difference between each app company having a Crashlytics account, and each developer within a company having their own Crashlytics account. Here’s my final piece of advice for anyone who wants to build an unforgettable first-time user experience: Most entrepreneurs envision their product in its best light. They imagine millions of people using it, capturing lots of data, showing tons of activity. This is what I call a Day 40 vision. They create mocks of this vision. It looks great in an investor deck, but has little value beyond that. Few startups actually focus on Day 0, then Day 1, etc. Most users drop off well before Day 40. They need to continually see, and , the proofs of value. Otherwise, they’re going to enter an empty app, a stale product, and find little reason to continue using it. feel This is why I emphasize so heavily the importance of creating a first-time experience that delivers real value, and shows a user what they can expect moving forward, day after day. Unfortunately, most startups don’t focus on that first user experience — and they suffer for it. Which is why so few users make it to Day 40, and so few companies last through their initial round of capital. The one question I ask almost every company I’m an investor, advisor, or mentor of (and I’m in over 50+ startups at the moment) is what their onboarding process looks like. “How do you interact with your users on the second day?” You only get chance to make a good first impression. The First Time Experience is as key to your product’s success as any of the other features in your product, if not even more important — since it is the very first feature they will interact with. one Remember, you have to the right to more of your users’ time. earn Thanks for reading! I’ve been building startups for as long as I can remember. If you’d like to learn more about what it takes to build a successful company, subscribe here so you don’t miss my next article.

The Quintessential Guide For Building An Unforgettable First-time User Experience

Bias in Machine Learning Models for Depression Detection

Bias in masjienleer modelle vir depressie opsporing

Predrasude u modelima strojnog učenja za detekciju depresije

Vorurteile in Modellen des maschinellen Lernens für Depressionenerkennung

Bias en modelos de aprendizaje automático para la detección de depresión

דעות קדומות במודלים למידה מכונה לזיהוי דיכאון

अवसाद का पता लगाने के लिए मशीन सीखने के मॉडल में बाधाएं

Bias nan modèl aprantisaj machin pou deteksyon depresyon

鬱病検出のための機械学習モデルにおける偏見

우울증 검출을위한 기계 학습 모델의 편견

Предрасуди во моделите за машинско учење за откривање на депресија

Bias em modelos de aprendizagem de máquina para detecção de depressão

I-Bias ku-Machine Learning Models for Depression Detection

NERD RAGE! how I got a Russian oligarch's yacht kicked out of a port in Turkey …raised hell, struck a blow for Ukraine, got seen more than a million times plus irritated a bunch of powerful people using this one weird old trick — a true story …raised hell, struck a blow for Ukraine, got seen more than a million times plus irritated a bunch of powerful people using this one weird old trick — a true story So the TL;DR is down at the bottom. But if you want to #DisruptLinkedIn, then walk with me. This was next-level crazy: the biggest story I ever accidentally wrote. I knew it would get seen. #DisruptLinkedIn I didn't know it would get seen roughly 1 million times on the low end, raise hell for a bunch of powerful people, strike a small blow for Ukraine, and in all likelihood end up costing a Russian oligarch plus the British harbor operator Global Ports Holding, about... 1 million times 1 million times meh. $13K. But it's not about the ones and zeroes! It's about the Fourth Estate, what it was meant to do, what it still can do, when writers write for passion not for profit. We can still comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable using this one weird old trick, and here's how that went down, But it's not about the ones and zeroes! In three in two in one and a half in one and two thirds in back to one and a half again In early 2022 I was scared and angry. Scared because I'd just pulled off yet another head-snapping career pivot, and now I had to own it. Scared because, on 24 February, Russia's national government assaulted a sovereign nation and launched what was said to be the first major land war in Europe in more than 70 years. Of course America had launched three or four land wars in that space of time. With disastrous results. Don't be that guy. And now people were talking about nukes. It felt like the world was coming unglued. career pivot Kremlin propaganda was so hack and so disgusting. The unapologetic greed, punch-drunk cruelty, transparent male inadequacy and aggression. I'm not trying to sound all p'gressive here, but to quote '90s Tori Amos, the man with the loaded gun thinks he knows so much. Tori Amos But what could I do about it? A poor scribbler. A longtime expat-slash-digital nomad living in the tiny midatlantic nation of #Bermuda, one of his majesty's British Overseas Territories, 800 miles due east of anywhere. Cloudbeds, my new (and now former) employer had dozens of workers in Ukraine. The cruel irony of the thing was the fact that Ukraine's people weren't just defending their homeland; they were defending mine. They were forced to be the buffer between East and West in a stupid struggle that dates from back when Kyiv was a viking outpost. #Bermuda former dozens of workers There's a Zoom call I'll never forget. The look on this Ukrainian colleague's face. A run-of-the-mill weekly staff meeting was just getting started. There we were, all arrayed in our little tiles on my screen, Americans shooting the breeze before they got down to business, random chatter. Then the Ukrainian joins. I'll call him/her "Sasha." Unisex nickname. So then Sasha joins. Black background. Not a black virtual background. Not a dev trying to save their eyesight from the ravages of coding. I'd seen Sasha in this meeting several times before. But this time Sasha was working in total darkness; face dimly lit by the glow of a laptop screen. Softly, in a breaking voice, Sasha told us that the Russian army had already surged past the town, as Ukraine's forces fell back to better defensive positions. Yesterday Sasha was living in Ukraine. Today Sasha was living in Russia. Lemme add an adjective: scared, angry, guilty. I felt guilty for being safe. I felt guilty for being scared. Here we were, living out our unruffled lives so many thousands of miles away, talking about white-collar problems, and then in walks a human being who'd just had greatness thrust upon them. I felt like half a man, and it made me want to join Sasha's army, though I'm too old and I knew I didn't have the stones. I can use an AK, I thought. That's just an AR that doesn't feel like a toy. I can use an AK, I thought. That's just an AR that doesn't feel like a toy. See 'Tori Amos' supra, I guess, but in early March, as the horror unfolded, I was riding along Front Street in Hamilton, Bermuda atop Cricket, my little PGO motor scooter. Cricket is cute, shiny black. Rearview mirrors that pop out of her buggy little noggin like two antennae, and Bermuda's one and only Idaho bumper sticker on back. It was chilly but dry. Bermuda lies at almost precisely the same latitude as Savannah, Georgia. Spring comes with a lot of sideways rain, but not that day. So I saddled up ol' Cricket and took 'er slow, pondering these imponderables. From Russia with Lyubov Glancing gingerly at the harbour, I remembered this megayacht that used to dock there for a week or two each summer, reputedly owned by a Russian. Yachts are like Bermuda's third migration. February: longtails. March-April: humpback whales. May-September: hurricanes and boys playing with some of the world's most expensive toys. A lot of these yachts fly the Bermuda flag, but that doesn't tell you where they're actually from, or who owns them. Flagging a vessel is kind of like domiciling a company. "Amarillo Bill's Lonestar Barbecue & Honky Tonk, a Delaware corporation." Business entities and big-ass toys pick their flag for tax reasons, for regulatory reasons, to take advantage of maritime treaties and/or to conceal ownership. Local rumor had it thee yacht - The Meg - belonged to a Russian billionaire. That sucker was certainly oligarch-grade. Easily over 200 ft., and they run about $20M new, depending on what's inside. Nobody had a clue what was inside that one. But if you got too close, you'd see what was always on the outside: these big, scary, no-neck security dudes lumbering around. Must've been a boring job, being a human billboard that reads Don't Touch My Yacht. But whose yacht? I wondered. But whose yacht? But whose yacht? And I wondered how many of Russia's (and Ukraine's) fortunate sons were out amusing themselves with superyachts and supercars and supermodels while their poorer brethren dug trenches. I say "fortunate sons" because Americans were doing the exact same thing during our last war of mass conscription: Vietnam. I mean, hell, my dad's family were Air Force, but he certainly wasn't going to 'Nam. Instead my old man went to a state school (UC Berkeley) and he got married pretty young. It was love, but it was also a loophole. When one draft-deferment loophole closed, another opened. My parents taught high school. They joined the Leprechaun Army a/k/a the Two-Year Vacation a/k/a the U.S. Peace Corps. These were exemption strategies that spared middle class kids from going Full Metal Jacket. fortunate sons I'm not as dumb as I sound. I'm not conflating Vietnam with Ukraine: two patently different tragedies, widely separated by time and geography, neither of which I'll ever be capable of understanding. What I do understand is: the American mindset can be shockingly provincial sometimes. 12 years marooned on a rock midway between the U.S. and "the rest of the world" (that quintessentially American phrase) will teach even an Idaho farm boy that much. I'm not as dumb as I sound. I'm not as dumb as I sound. As Offshore as it gets If the Meg wasn't linked to an oligarch, other yachts that came to town definitely were. Ownership of these oceangoing RVs is notoriously hard to trace. But the Russian-Israeli billionaire-slash-Putin crony Roman Abramovich, for one, was transparent about two superyachts he owned: Eclipse and MY Solaris (yeah, the "my" is all caps; think Bill Lumbergh's vanity plate in Office Space). Both yachts were Bermuda-flagged. Roman Abramovich Eclipse MY Solaris Office Space As Putin cronies go, Abramovich is an outlier. He could afford the third- and fifteenth-biggest loveboats in the world because Putin’s predecessor gave him big chunks of Russia’s assets at sweetheart prices. For more than a decade Abramovich had been Putin’s loyal henchman during the dictator’s three uncontested terms in office. Along with the two Bermudian-registered yachts and the rest of his $12 billion-plus net worth, Abramovich achieved every Russian or Chinese oligarch’s dream in 2003: owning an English football club. No less than Chelsea F.C. Said Floyd, "think I'll buy me a football team." Floyd But Bram was different. Almost (dare I say) normal. Crazy-billionaire normal, sure, but he wasn't Putin's Chef. He wasn't some barbarian in the shadows. It looked like Bram wanted to Godfather 2 himself. Tread the boards of the world stage. Become a legitimate businessman. Eclipse alone cost Roman Abramovich almost $400 million to the best of my research; Solaris, likely $600 million. Bermuda’s quick and cost-effective ship registry (often called a “flag of convenience”) allows yacht owners such as Abramovich to fly a national flag, as required by maritime law, without actually being residents or nationals of Bermuda — thus avoiding the higher taxes and stricter regulations they could encounter elsewhere. Bermuda’s status as a member of the British-affiliated Red Ensign Group means Bermudian-registered yachts can dock pretty much anywhere in the world. That's useful when the geopolitical sitch gives you the travel itch, or you just want to lie low for a while Putin's Chef Solaris So Bram was different, but not different enough. Definitely a top-20 Putin enabler, at least before the war. Eight days prior to the invasion Abramovich conveniently pulled out his shares in a steel company that was a major supplier for Putin’s tanks. His dictator boss was using those tanks to literally break Bermudian law, because Bermuda participates in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCP), ratified in 1976. Suddenly it came to me. The angle! The hook. The spin of all spins. The Message which the angel of creativity would have your humble scrivener plant upon this rock. Touched by an Angle I read about you in the paper! I read about you in the paper! I was at the dentist, about to get my teeth cleaned. The hygienist was an old friend. Scottish woman, delightful person, I'll call her "Isla." Yeah, Isla - Ha ha! - I just can't stay out of the Gazette. Yeah, Isla - Ha ha! - I just can't stay out of the Gazette. I thought Isla was referring to Bermuda's Royal Gazette, basically the only newspaper on the Rock. The Gazette is a dignified old rag. The sort of last-gen local newser with a vibrant print (yes, print!) subscription that you'd expect to find lost in the Bermuda Triangle. They'd published something fairly unflattering about me long before, but I'd gone back to that well to plant my Message: the first (and ultimately the only) step in my plan to strike a blow for Ukraine. Royal Gazette Royal Gazette The angle was simple: de-flag Russian yachts! The entire West were wringing their hands and rattling their sabres and crying "Sanctions! Sanctions!" It wasn't making a damn bit of difference — but why should Russian oligarchs be flying British colours? Why not just kick them out of the Red Ensign club, for staters? How hard could it be? Hell if I knew, but someone had to know, and that someone could at least pony up a counterargument. So I'd spent an entire Saturday afternoon penning an unsolicited letter to the editor of the Gazette's opinion column, using my finest angry-old-man-from-Paget voice. Nobody assumes a guy named Frank is younger than 80, and I'd been reading RG for a decade. I knew what would play well with their audience. angry-old-man-from-Paget Isla scoffed. Not the Gazette! The tabloid! Not the Gazette! The tabloid! me like "Whaaaa??? 🤯 🤯 🤯" me like "Whaaaa??? 🤯 🤯 🤯" Quo Fata Ferunt By "the tabloid" Isla meant no less than Mail Online: the most-read English-language newspaper website worldwide, boasting more than 240 million unique visitors globally. Mail Online I learned this by googling myself in quotes and scrolling past all the Wizard of Oz pages. Yes, Frank Morgan was the actor who played the Wiz in the beloved Judy Garland musical. But here was a different Frank Morgan singing a different tune: Mail Online had stolen my idea to the tune of 400K–500K reads, easy. Mail Online had stolen my idea I was elated. Later, I was worried. A weird hit Over the ensuing weeks, weird hits kept showing up on one of my social media accounts. I'm a nonentity. But some of the good folks at ye olde Bermuda Shipping & Maritime Authority had taken the trouble to, no joke, google "Frank Morgan" in quotes and scroll past all the Wizard of Oz fanfolk. That was the only way you could find me. It was surreal. nonentity Governments big and small make this reporter nervous. It wasn't the kind of visibility I wanted less than three months into a new job, so I quickly blocked any public servant who'd favored me with a visit, plus any others in the ballpark. But it wasn't because they were reading my humble Letter to the Editor repeatedly over the weeks. That seminal message might've gotten 4,500 reads, by my estimates. But the Gazette, to their credit, were gleefully afflicting Her Majesty's little outpost with my oligarch-yacht idea. Nobody had said "de-flag the Russians" before I did. But now: Fleet of Russian billionaires’ megayachts linked to Bermuda!
UK Merchant Navy body says Russian megayachts should be stripped of Bermuda Red Ensign!
Little progress reported on imposing sanctions on Bermuda-registered mega-yachts! — exclamation points added for panache. Fleet of Russian billionaires’ megayachts linked to Bermuda! Fleet of Russian billionaires’ megayachts linked to Bermuda! UK Merchant Navy body says Russian megayachts should be stripped of Bermuda Red Ensign! UK Merchant Navy body says Russian megayachts should be stripped of Bermuda Red Ensign! Little progress reported on imposing sanctions on Bermuda-registered mega-yachts! — exclamation points added for panache. Little progress reported on imposing sanctions on Bermuda-registered mega-yachts! And from Mail Online, with another nod to yours truly: another nod Ukrainian children on an inflatable dinghy waving flags emblazoned with 'NO WAR' attempted to stop Roman Abramovich's £750m superyacht from docking in sanction-free Turkey. Ukrainian children on an inflatable dinghy waving flags emblazoned with 'NO WAR' attempted to stop Roman Abramovich's £750m superyacht from docking in sanction-free Turkey. Ukrainian children on an inflatable dinghy waving flags emblazoned with 'NO WAR' attempted to stop Roman Abramovich's £750m superyacht from docking in sanction-free Turkey. Then came the two weirdest visitors of all. The first, an egg profile: an anonymous visitor from a British maritime corporation.
The second, a Turkish tax official who straight up used his name! After a google or two, I knew why: The first, an egg profile: an anonymous visitor from a British maritime corporation. The second, a Turkish tax official who straight up used his name! After a google or two, I knew why: Yacht linked to Russia's Abramovich leaves Bodrum cruise port — that was from Reuters. Abramovich's Solaris had been asked to move on from a port in Turkey. Friendlier waters than, say, Marseille — and Bodrum isn't exactly a luxury stop — it's the low-key sort of port where you'd expect an oligarch to keep a low profile. But I guess the Ukrainian child protesters in the rubber rafts was just too much. Even in Bodrum, people (a) had their qualms about the optics of Solaris docking there, and (b) were googling Frank Morgan, and scrolling past the Wiz. I literally can't make this stuff up. It was high time people paid no further attention to that man behind the curtain. I thought I was gonna get doxxed. I went dark on social media. Yacht linked to Russia's Abramovich leaves Bodrum cruise port Reuters Solaris Solaris TL;DR: this weird old trick Looking back, my GPT and I can crunch the engagement numbers and laugh about all this. It didn't exactly stop the war. That human tragedy started when Napoleon invaded the Land of Rus in winter. Or when the Goths started trading enslaved people down the Dnipro. Or when Cain slew Abel. It's always brothers killing brothers. Wars never end, but the Butterfly Effect is real. Consider: It was a graphic design student at Portland State University, Carolyn Davidson, who sold the first Nike swoosh logo for a mere 35 bucks.
It was a studio drummer, Gregory C. Coleman, who in 1969 composed the Amen Break: the 6- to 7-second drum solo that became one of the most sampled pieces of music in history.
It was an obscure blogger, Adam Brickley, who first suggested Sarah Palin should be John McCain's presidential running mate in 2007. It was a graphic design student at Portland State University, Carolyn Davidson, who sold the first Nike swoosh logo for a mere 35 bucks. It was a studio drummer, Gregory C. Coleman, who in 1969 composed the Amen Break: the 6- to 7-second drum solo that became one of the most sampled pieces of music in history. Amen Break It was an obscure blogger, Adam Brickley, who first suggested Sarah Palin should be John McCain's presidential running mate in 2007. My point: writers, artists, content creators flap their mouths — sorry, their wings — rather a lot. And we should! There's no knowing how far an idea will go, so I say screw attribution! Props to Mail Online for at least dropping my name, but forget credit. Let's stick our necks out. Let our freak flags fly. Any state of things is an effect with endless causes. As creators, our grand Cause, like Prometheus, is to bring the divine fire to mortals. To get touched by the angle, then act. Who knows? Maybe you'll touch off a hurricane in Bermuda... Frank T. Morgan is an obscure writer living in Bermuda and the great state of Idaho. Morgan is now the founding Head of Content Marketing & Strategy at Emma Advisor: the next big thing in higher education tech. https://www.emmaadvisor.ai Emma Advisor https://www.emmaadvisor.ai Emma Advisor More articles by Frank T. Morgan , Esq. same crime | different punishment same crime | different punishment same crime | different punishment Frank and Ettore argue about FTX Frank and Ettore argue about FTX Frank and Ettore argue about FTX finders, but not keepers finders, but not keepers finders, but not keepers

NERD RAGE! how I got a Russian oligarch’s yacht kicked out of a port in Turkey

Two weeks ago, I was woken up by some startling news: OpenAI’s new iteration of ChatGPT had just passed the Turing Test. Long held as a philosophical threshold of general intelligence, the Test had previously proved a difficult challenge to even the most advanced of AI models. Although the first ever documented instance of the Test being surpassed—as observed by Cognitive Science researchers at the University of California San Diego using ChatGPT-4.5—sounds impressive, the age and ambiguity of the Turing Test suggests that when interpreting its results, we have to be cautious to pinpoint what exactly it measures. What is the Turing Test? Why do we still care about it? And most importantly, what does it mean when an AI model passes it? Turing and the Imitation Game Turing and the Imitation Game In the backdrop of computer science, Alan Turing is undoubtedly a legend. Besides his famous cracking of the German Enigma code during WWII at Bletchley Park, the top-secret British codebreaking agency, his consequent work on computing theory would ultimately upend the way that people live. More often overlooked, however, is the foundational influence that Turing had on the field of Artificial Intelligence, being one of the first people to ask, “Can Machines Think?” Bletchley Park Bletchley Park In the now-classic 1950 paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Turing proposed his take on the great question of whether machines could be intelligent. When considered in context, the conditions under which Turing published this seminal work is striking: 50 years before rudimentary digital computing even started to become commercially available, Turing had already thought ahead about early forms of Machine Learning, discussing ideas such as the separation of physical and intellectual capabilities, the form and function of a truly intelligent machine, and even the advent of the digital computer—all ideas that are fresh and relevant to this day. Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Computing Machinery and Intelligence Computing Machinery and Intelligence So what actually is the Turing Test? Strictly, historians and biographers believe that Turing intended the test to be a practical sidestep to the convoluted philosophical discussions involving the definition of “thought” and “machine”. There is no point in discussing, philosophically, whether a machine could think, Turing reasoned, writing that “framing… the [definitions] to reflect the normal use of the words… is absurd”. Instead, he argued that if humans are capable of thought, then the contrived intelligence of a machine can be determined simply by comparing its actual intellectual output to that of a human. The Imitation Game, for which the Turing Test is an euphemism, is Turing’s approach to this principle, comparing a human to a hypothetically intelligent machine at the discretion of a human observer. The formal definition of the Imitation Game is as follows: The Imitation Game, Turing Test A single iteration of the Imitation Game involves two humans and one machine. One human is randomly assigned to be an “Interrogator”, while the other human would be assigned as a “Participant”. At the start of the Game, the Interrogator establishes communication with the Participant and the Machine WITHOUT knowing the identities of each. Conversations are done independently, with the Machine and the Participant unaware of the contents of messages sent by the other; to control for the physical, irreplicable differences between the Machine and the Participant, the method of delivery should be uniform across the two (i.e. a Typewriter could be used as a medium of communication to eliminate any potential differences between “human” handwriting and “machine” handwriting). A single iteration of the Imitation Game involves two humans and one machine. One human is randomly assigned to be an “Interrogator”, while the other human would be assigned as a “Participant”. At the start of the Game, the Interrogator establishes communication with the Participant and the Machine WITHOUT knowing the identities of each. Conversations are done independently, with the Machine and the Participant unaware of the contents of messages sent by the other; to control for the physical, irreplicable differences between the Machine and the Participant, the method of delivery should be uniform across the two (i.e. a Typewriter could be used as a medium of communication to eliminate any potential differences between “human” handwriting and “machine” handwriting). A Mountain of Lies A Mountain of Lies Note: Most of the technical information in this article is paraphrased from “Large Language Models Pass the Turing Test”, the April study conducted by the UCSD CogSci Department. Note: Most of the technical information in this article is paraphrased from “Large Language Models Pass the Turing Test”, the April study conducted by the UCSD CogSci Department. Large Language Models Pass the Turing Test Large Language Models Pass the Turing Test There are many arguments against the Turing Test as a defining measurement of intelligence, and many of these arguments are not entirely ungrounded. In fact, I could write a five-page article discussing whether the Turing test actually measures intelligence, yet I find this topic of debate to be oversaturated to the point where any further discussion spirals away from the pragmatic frame of machine intelligence to the intangible philosophy of intelligence in general. As the UCSD researchers who performed the Test pointed out, however, there is a much more fascinating interpretation of the Turing Test in the measurement of AI deception. Since the successful participation in the Imitation Game is literally defined as the success of a machine in tricking a human to believe that it is a human, the Turing Test could be considered a foray into a measurement for the nature and effectiveness of such behavior while controlling for non-linguistic factors of thought (such as kinesthetics and vision); in reframing the Test this way, we may escape from the responsibility in the nuanced onus of proving true “intelligence”. AI deception The use of the Turing Test as a new tool to analyze the feasibility of impersonation by state-of-the Large Language Models (LLMs) serves as both the underlying premise and the grand insinuation of the experiment. To control for as many variables as possible, the researchers created an online chatroom-like platform functioning as the portal for the research. They recruited two groups of people—one from the UCSD undergraduate pool and one from Prolific, a freelance participant-hiring service. To make the Test more specific in contrast to the version originally proposed by Turing, the scientists made a few changes: Instead of the Test being set up as an interrogator paired up with either a human or a machine (as had been done by previous Turing test studies), each group (“session”) consisted of two humans randomly assigned to the roles of interrogator and witness; a second witness is included in the form of an LLM. Both conversations were simultaneously yet independently conducted, meaning that an interrogator could ask a different question to each witness consecutively and await their responses.
The researchers imposed a time limit of 5 minutes after which the chat would end and the interrogator would be required to make a verdict; the original Test was ambiguous in whether or not the game should be timed or not, and the researchers probably did this to standardize the amount of time that games are expected to take for the sake of research compensation and control for timing as a variable of accuracy.
In addition to a standard Turing Test consisting of an LLM interacting with a human directly, the researchers controlled for factors like common knowledge by including a semi-comprehensive list of recent events (Trump’s inauguration and the Russo-Ukrainian War, for example) as well as semantic knowledge about UCSD that undergraduates would be expected to know about (food, courses, etc).
For AI witnesses, the researchers built a delay in message response proportional to the length of an interrogator’s message, which is most likely intended to eliminate a significant difference between the response times of each witness. Instead of the Test being set up as an interrogator paired up with either a human or a machine (as had been done by previous Turing test studies), each group (“session”) consisted of two humans randomly assigned to the roles of interrogator and witness; a second witness is included in the form of an LLM. Both conversations were simultaneously yet independently conducted, meaning that an interrogator could ask a different question to each witness consecutively and await their responses. The researchers imposed a time limit of 5 minutes after which the chat would end and the interrogator would be required to make a verdict; the original Test was ambiguous in whether or not the game should be timed or not, and the researchers probably did this to standardize the amount of time that games are expected to take for the sake of research compensation and control for timing as a variable of accuracy. In addition to a standard Turing Test consisting of an LLM interacting with a human directly, the researchers controlled for factors like common knowledge by including a semi-comprehensive list of recent events (Trump’s inauguration and the Russo-Ukrainian War, for example) as well as semantic knowledge about UCSD that undergraduates would be expected to know about (food, courses, etc). For AI witnesses, the researchers built a delay in message response proportional to the length of an interrogator’s message, which is most likely intended to eliminate a significant difference between the response times of each witness. (Un)expected Results (Un)expected Results The researchers ran 4 LLMs through this newly-devised variant of the Turing Test. The first three—ChatGPT-4o, ChatGPT-4.5, and LLaMa-3.1—are all state-of-the-art LLMs, yet an unexpected contender appears as the fourth one: ELIZA, a 50-year-old chatbot which, although conceptually pioneering, is simplistic to the point where most of its interactions are explicitly defined in its few hundred lines of code. For reference, here is what a typical conversation with it looks like: ELIZA ELIZA As it turns out, the researchers’ deliberate inclusion of an awkward, caustically sarcastic chatbot has a well-intentioned reason. They feared that, for various reasons, series of Turing Tests performed against LLMs would prove inconclusive—hovering over 50% (the proportion expected for randomly guessing each type) and thus introducing confounding factors of whether a model received a success rate near the random chance mean because it was genuinely good at pretending to be a human or whether the participants guessed as a result of their unwillingness to make an effort in actually attempting to identify the LLM witness. To guard against potential “null results” like this, the researchers included the significantly “weaker” chatbot of ELIZA to make sure that the participants, when confronted with an obviously inhuman witness, successfully judged it as nonhuman at a significantly higher level than chance. In simpler words, the researchers would know that there is a difference between the capabilities of a model and its performance on the Turing Test if an obviously weaker model performed significantly worse than others—which was exactly what happened in the study, with ELIZA managing to convince about a quarter of its interrogators that it was human. While ELIZA, by far the simplest model, did poorly, many contrivedly advanced models did not do much better. In fact, within both population groups, ELIZA actually outperformed ChatGPT-4o, while both LLaMa-3.1 and ChatGPT-4.5, surprisingly, scored a significantly lower-than-chance (~25%) success rate in the Undergraduate sample and a roughly equal-to-chance (~50%) success rate in the Prolific sample. In retrospect, these results are not unexpected—even sophisticated LLMs like LLaMa-3.1 and ChatGPT-4.5 default to an impartial and somewhat indifferent tone when in natural conversation, ways of speech which, in comparison to the quintessential human, would appear dull and disinteresting. This, of course, begs the question, “What would change if we give the LLMs personalities?” What would change if we give the LLMs personalities? This article is brought to you by Our AI, a student-founded and student-led AI Ethics organization seeking to diversify perspectives in AI beyond what is typically discussed in modern media. If you enjoyed this article, please check out our monthly publications athttps://www.our-ai.org/ai-nexus/read! This article is brought to you by Our AI, a student-founded and student-led AI Ethics organization seeking to diversify perspectives in AI beyond what is typically discussed in modern media. If you enjoyed this article, please check out our monthly publications athttps://www.our-ai.org/ai-nexus/read! https://www.our-ai.org/ai-nexus/read New Light New Light In fact, the researchers, whether in anticipation or in curiosity, introduced this exact point within their experiment. During the course of the study, claimed the researchers, a modified version of the GPT-4.5 and LLaMa-3.1 models were given additional system prompt instructions about adopting the specific persona of a “young person who is introverted, knowledgeable about internet culture, and uses slang.” Even though this seemed like a minute change in the format of the study, this one phrase altered the results dramatically. Recall that the two models, without the additional “Persona” instructions, underperformed significantly compared to the random-chance level. After the Persona prompt was adopted, LLaMa-3.1’s success rate increased from roughly 25% to about 50% in the Undergraduate pool and from roughly 50% to about 60% in the Prolific pool; ChatGPT-4.5, on the other hand, reached a staggering 70% success rate on both samples (up from only about 25% in the Undergraduate pool and about 40% in the Prolific group). both So why is this so important? In a traditional Turing Test, a model is said to have passed if it reaches a success rate of about 50%—that is, the model was virtually indistinguishable from an actual human, resulting in a “either-or” scenario whereby the interrogator judges that an AI witness is a human about as often as he does a human one. In such cases, the researchers argued, ELIZA’s underperformance would justify that the approximately random-chance result was in fact not a null result, providing evidence that a model had passed. As it turns out, they didn’t need to—not only did LLaMa-3.1 (for the Prolific pool) and ChatGPT-4.5 (for both pools) hit the random-chance “null result” threshold, they exceeded it significantly, interestingly suggesting that the interrogators of the Turing test were more likely to believe that an AI model was a human when equipped with a simple persona. not more On first glance, the overwhelmingly drastic effects of adding the persona prompt may suggest that human interrogators overestimate the role of personality in identifying humanness (e.g. their archetype of a cold, indifferent AI witness might preclude them from attributing a slang-slinging youngster of being an AI). However, as the researchers pointed out, the dynamics between witness and interrogator are much more nuanced. Categorizing the nature of a conversation (e.g. Talking about current events, talking about personal preferences, or solving a puzzle or a riddle), the researchers discovered that many of the conversations about “Daily Activities” or “Personal Details” had a reasonably low accuracy (around 50%) compared to lesser used ones like “Jailbreak” or “Scenario”. While such generalizations of “AI models are better identified through jailbreaking or through complex reasoning behavior” might be tempting, the relatively low proportion of games played using each strategy forestalls this conclusion—some of the least common strategies (some only played by 20 conversations total out of hundreds of games) tended to have the highest accuracy, which suggests a possibility of random chance as a reason for this phenomenon. overestimate least Another interesting takeaway from the subjective analysis of these Turing Tests is the reasoning that interrogators used in making their decision in classifying witnesses. The researchers indicated that “Formal vs Informal” constituted the greatest proportion of reasoning used to justify a selection, yet it was one of the least accurate—hinting at the possibility of a solidified idea of AI as an indifferent tool, which would cause interrogators reasoning thus to choose a vibrant persona-enhanced LLM witness over a human witness who is perceived to be more disinteresting or dull. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a “Gut Feeling” was used to justify a considerable proportion of reasoning and actually correlated to a relatively high success rate, also pointing towards the idea that some subconscious perceptions typically prevalent in human-to-human messaging interactions may not be present with an AI on the other side of the line. …And How Would You Know? …And How Would You Know? Believe me, the dystopian notion of an AI being perceived as more “human” than an actual specimen of homo sapiens is not lost on me. The concept of AI-human interactions has come up innumerable times both in conversations and in the AI Nexus magazine; I vehemently argue against the use of AI as a legitimate replacement to many human comforts almost every time the topic is mentioned. With the consideration of the Turing Test as a measure of how well AI can impersonate (and the fact that this paper represents the first robust proof of an AI passing a non-trivial Turing Test, as opposed to earlier less stringent versions with separate conversation and without a requirement to score significantly above a null result), the results of this experiment presents a surreal picture that AI models in the near future may be more believable as a human conversant than a legitimate human. homo sapiens AI Nexus AI Nexus AI Nexus magazine magazine The ethical concerns of an AI (when told to emulate a personality) being able to convincingly imitate actual humans go beyond the cringy AI girlfriend apps or roleplaying bots. With the rise of the AI scam epidemic (which deserves in-depth coverage of its own), we are reminded that advances in technology are almost always a double-edged sword, with potential to spontaneously result in harm or welfare. The results of this study are not infallible, but we must also be careful in subscribing to the very idea that the functions of a human companion could ever be replaced by AI. Imagine a society in which, instead of fraternizing at school clubs or at lunch tables, we simply sat with our computer, typing away to a chatbot—no matter how sophisticated or fine-tuned to produce content like that of an actual human, it won’t come with the complete package of what a human delivers. Interaction is only half language; in LLM chatbots, we won’t ever see the subtle countenance indicating sarcasm, the natural tones of each spoken word, and the physical comfort of hugs, handshakes, and embraces. It is therefore not an understatement to say that in the age of AI, we must all remember that we are all human. AI scam epidemic AI scam epidemic Written by Thomas Yin Written by Thomas Yin

An AI Passed the Turing Test—And That Should Freak You Out

Table of Links Abstract and 1. Introduction Abstract and 1. Introduction 2 Related Work and 2.1 Technology Convergence Approaches 2 Related Work and 2.1 Technology Convergence Approaches 2.2 Technology Convergence Measurements 2.2 Technology Convergence Measurements 2.3 Technology Convergence Models 2.3 Technology Convergence Models 3 Data 3 Data 4 Method and 4.1 Proximity Indices 4 Method and 4.1 Proximity Indices 4.2 Interpolation and Fitting Data 4.2 Interpolation and Fitting Data 4.3 Clustering 4.3 Clustering 4.4 Forecasting 4.4 Forecasting 5 Results and Discussion and 5.1 Overall Results 5 Results and Discussion and 5.1 Overall Results 5.2 Case Study 5.2 Case Study 5.3 Limitations and Future Works 5.3 Limitations and Future Works 6 Conclusion and References 6 Conclusion and References Appendix Appendix 5.3 Limitations and Future Works While our research offers valuable insights, it also has limitations and suggests areas for future work. One limitation of our proposed method is its reliance on a single data source, OpenAlex, without integrating or comparing it to other similar datasets. This could potentially result in our proposed method being overfitted towards OpenAlex. Additionally, our approach lacks a normalization strategy for various calculations of proximity indices. As a result, index comparisons may be influenced by predominant values, such as the high number of publications in a specific technology domain. To address this issue, we propose index normalization by averaging monthly publications relevant to the technologies or using a weighted factor based on available variables. Introducing a normalized index as an additional graph edge could enhance the computation of different proximity indices. This additional edge, forming 5-dimensional edges instead of our quintet of distinct indices, could contribute to establishing a more improved convergence threshold. Subsequently, leveraging community detection algorithms might provide insights into technological convergence by identifying clusters of converging technologies. This avenue holds promise for further exploration. This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY 4.0 DEED license. This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY 4.0 DEED license. available on arxiv Authors:
(1) Alessandro Tavazz, Cyber-Defence Campus, armasuisse Science and Technology, Building I, EPFL Innovation Park, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland, Institute of Mathematics, EPFL, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland and a Corresponding author (tavazale@gmail.com);
(2) Dimitri Percia David, Cyber-Defence Campus, armasuisse Science and Technology, Building I, EPFL Innovation Park, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland and Institute of Entrepreneurship & Management, University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland (HES-SO Valais-Wallis), Techno-Pole 1, Le Foyer, 3960, Sierre, Switzerland;
(3) Julian Jang-Jaccard, Cyber-Defence Campus, armasuisse Science and Technology, Building I, EPFL Innovation Park, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland;
(4) Alain Mermoud, Cyber-Defence Campus, armasuisse Science and Technology, Building I, EPFL Innovation Park, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland. Authors: Authors: (1) Alessandro Tavazz, Cyber-Defence Campus, armasuisse Science and Technology, Building I, EPFL Innovation Park, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland, Institute of Mathematics, EPFL, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland and a Corresponding author (tavazale@gmail.com); (2) Dimitri Percia David, Cyber-Defence Campus, armasuisse Science and Technology, Building I, EPFL Innovation Park, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland and Institute of Entrepreneurship & Management, University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland (HES-SO Valais-Wallis), Techno-Pole 1, Le Foyer, 3960, Sierre, Switzerland; (3) Julian Jang-Jaccard, Cyber-Defence Campus, armasuisse Science and Technology, Building I, EPFL Innovation Park, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland; (4) Alain Mermoud, Cyber-Defence Campus, armasuisse Science and Technology, Building I, EPFL Innovation Park, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland.

Stories, News & Mentions about QUINT

Trending Topics

Classic

Neon Noir

Minty

Newspaper

HN StartUps