I've been a software developer for almost 30 years and I can certainly attest that incompetent management is one of the leading causes of project failures and management is almost always a limiting factor on the success or potential of projects. Unnecessary constraints and top-down decisions with a lack of understanding is what it seems to be, in my experience. I don't think that is only about software projects, though. I think it's endemic in business... probably more so in larger organizations.
Sometimes it can also be dirty business. Once I was even blamed by my manager after successfully doing everything he asked me to do, all the while lightly noting that I didn't think it was going to work the way he suggested it would. Later I heard that toward the end, he was making me look incompetent in meetings I did not attend. In private, he gave me all kinds of praise and even when he let me go, said he'd be a strong reference for me.
At best, he's a typical corp hopper.. exchanges long term interests for quick profits. At worse, this is somebody who's going to do the bidding of Tesla's competitors and ruin the company.
The real question is -- how much damage can he do to Tesla Motors before Musk can return, in 3 years.. This seems similar to Steve Jobs being kicked out of Apple for a long time... then Apple revived when he returned, just before otherwise inevitable bankruptcy. The difference is that Musk still has a major role in the company.
I don't like to be conspiratorial but the evidence for an anti-Tesla Motors conspiracy is pretty abundant. The bad reviews started coming out in earnest, just after reaching goals on time in terms of production.
Government constraints are often the reason for limited success, even if government funding may also be a catalyst to success. Look at how the Air Force constraints on the Shuttle limited it's potential.. And the Russian government's demanding of their own space shuttle curtailed the development of a truly more useful and affordable space launch system.
The mere act of allowing commercial space launch in the United States is what brought about a flurry of new space launch systems at dramatically reduced cost. The safety of these systems is likely to follow, in time.. as it did for aircraft.
However--the success of the BFR and the BFS depends heavily on focused engineering goals. So long as they have sufficient funding, I am glad they dodged this bullet of additional design constraints. Work seems to be progressing quickly. The primary risks seem to be loss of investor confidence but investors are well aware that they need to be tolerant of a number of failures before success arrives.
A good deal more profit awaits once the BFS is proven for deep space missions. Imagine chartering a flight to mine or capture just one asteroid rich in platinum... or even just a full load of water ice for sale to other space ventures?
Crazy was necessary to accomplish so many of the things Musk has accomplished. I love crazy engineers, so long as their engineering is sound (as Tesla and SpaceX have proven themselves). Without crazy engineers, we'd all be humping and throwing rocks at each other in the forests of Africa. It never ceases to amaze me how so many people are so defensive of keeping the future the same as the past.
And science receives so much funding and privilege over engineering. Scientists are skeptical by trade. Engineers are optimistic by trade. They are ying and yang. However, the engineer leads the way forward. The scientist just improves the engineer's ability to move faster and with fewer bumps... less crudely.
While we certainly need freedom and protection against powerful interests, we also need technologies for offensive and defensive, including true military, use.
Russia, China, and various others exist that are not our friends. The consistently seek advantageous against us. We cannot pretend that we are not in a game of conquest when others around us most certainly are. That is just a fact.
The NSA has long and very publicly revealed that such chips exist. It's very odd for Apple to claim they've never heard of such things. That reduces Apple's credibility. However, you'd think Apple would know if they requested an FBI investigation. That reduces Bloomberg's credibility.
This is strange. We need a thorough investigation of this story's sources. We also need to educate Apple.
Grant oriented and government laboratories have not been very efficient at developing vaccines or drugs for treatments, generally.
The commercial incentives have spurred corruption (fake science journals, etc) and absurd pricing but it has proven to be more efficient, overall, at coming up with drugs that work.. even if they actively suppress vaccines and cures.
I wonder, would bounties work better? Would government buying out these drug patents work better? The prices would need to be very high but the results could be well worth it.
I think we should do two things: (1) Offer bounties for cures and vaccines of the most critical ailments (affecting most people and/or cause the most suffering); then make the patents generically available to commoditize them to lowest production prices. Being as those bounties would need to be very high (multi-billion dollars), these would have to be for a limited number of ailments. (2) Invest heavily in technologies that can speed up and reduce costs of research and development of new vaccines and treatments. This will include AI, automation, or anything that helps.. even if it's purely methodological.
Otherwise, allow the industry to work as it does.. filling in the gaps as best it can.
I have experimented with the idea of Reputational Identities for sought and offered things over a mesh network (calling it, BigMesh). I think it works really well. The gist of it is:
Every entity has an ID through which it/they can post things offered and/or things sought to the mesh. These may be blog articles, tutorials, products, services, or whatever. Each are descripted by a tree of details, such as: Sought: article( topic:"robots" or "artificial intelligence"; price: $0 ); quality > 15
The mesh will return the matches or number of matches and you may either narrow down your criteria or opt to transact (such as, getting the article or buying something or selling something or whatever it is). After the transaction has completed and from that time onward, each party to it may complement each other.
A complement is made by assigning a percentage of one's General Reputation (GR) to a Specific Reputation (SR) of the other. One's GR is the sum of acquired SRs. So, your complements to others are worth more based on the complements you've received from others. It's that simple, really. So you may, for example, reduce the number of matching articles you want to find by increasing the required quality reputation of its offerer.. Or find more unique ideas by requiring a higher reputation for uniqueness. An SR (Specific Reputation) may be any single word.
A few notes:
1. Making a large number of IDs and having them transact with each other to artificially inflate their reputations will not work, as until each received reputation from another that actually has some, it can only complement a percentage of zero GR. 2. As one performs increasingly more transactions and one's GR grows, the number of others one has complemented also grows, thereby dividing up the large GR such that a single complement isn't going to offer too much, unless it really is believed to be deserved by the complementer. If one has earned it, it is proper that one may also give it. If everything thinks great of Joey and Joey thinks great of Sally then Sally is likely to be a great person. 3. If one's later assessment of a transaction changes, he/she may revised the complement. This is important because sometimes things appear to be more or less than you realize they are, later in time. Being able to revise one's past complements incentivised being true to each other.
I have a whole technical design for this BigMesh network and some crude code. It uses UDP sockets and most is managed by "Agencies" that float between Hosting Nodes (Node.js VMs), establishing encryption passwords between every two, individually. A Hosting Node is actually a class of Agency that provides outside resources, including network, memory, and processing time -- at a minimum. Agents are specifically coded services that are employed within Agencies or may be called remotely. So it acts like a microservices framework except that the microservices (Agents) may move closer to where needed for reasons, such as better performance. Every Agency and Agent will have its own reputational ID, to protect from bad actors. A Host Node is repayed for providing its resources to the mesh in exchange for "promises" of resources from the mesh, later. These promises are also kept with a ledger assigned to each identity and act like a kind of currency..... but with real useful value.
I've been continuously revising a mesh network design. There are two layers: hosts and map servers.
Host's provide:
* Sandbox in which to run Map Servers, each of which may have: * Ability to swap self with another Map Server, at will * Network Connectivity * Memory * Processing Time * Optional Resources -- extensible but examples include persistent data storage, user interfacing services, etc.
Each Host will earn "promises" for the resources it provides to others. The promises are a form of currency, redeemable for any services. The main idea is that if a human connects his/her computer to the mesh, he/she can allocate how many resources are made available to others. The more resources others use of his/hers, the more that person (or his/her host) may use from others. These promises may be used, however, for any kind of purchases. So in effect, leaving one's computer online acts as a kind of minimum basic income.
Map Server's provide:
* Reputational Identity Service
Identities are offered to any agents (human or otherwise) that keep the actual individual's anonymous but maintain a reputation based on the identity's transactions with other identities. For example, Hosts and Map Servers have identities. So may people or programs. An identity maintains General Reputation as the sum of all received Specific Reputations. After any transaction, each party to the transaction may "complement" the other's Specific Reputation(s), such as "timeliness" and "quality" but may be any term the complementer decides to use. Each complement is given as a percentage of that identity's General Reputation, drawing down proportionally from previously complemented others, as necessary. So when deciding on whether or not to conduct a transaction with another identity, one may consider its reputation. And one's complements are more or less powerful depending on its own complement's received. Time since birth may also be considered. So complements from one of high esteem, esteems oneself the more so.
* Global matching of services sought with services offered.
An agent may post services sought and/or services offered. The mesh keeps them organized and identifies matches. This is to eliminate unwanted advertising. It also serves to let supplier's know what others are seeking so they don't have to guess what they need to bring to market. The hope is that this will efficiently match ends with means, growing the economy with far less wasted time and guesswork. Also, services sought and services offered are defined in an organic semantic notation (no rigid schemas, as with RDF). So you may creatively describe as many details and sub-details as you like. They are posted in the form of a distributed Tree Graph database.
* Virtual geography
Map Servers are organized into communities, each of which maintains a particular region of a single virtual world, expanding north, south, east, and west from virtual latitude zero, longitude zero. A community manages the physics of all objects with its region of responsibility. The purpose of this is to provide a consistent structure for browsing, such as markets. The virtual world will be interacted with in a protocol enabling textual, 2D, or 3D graphical interfaces.
Yes, a great deal of PHP code in the wild seems unruly. However, this is not due to PHP per-se. Choosing a solid framework (such as codeigniter or cakePHP), following its conventions, and practicing good team dynamics makes all the difference. I have been coding since 1984 in a variety of languages and, although PHP's verbosity annoys me (requires too much finger twisting on the keyboard), I have never seen a more generally productive language. You can easily build a lot, fast. The discipline to make maintainable code is worth the effort that you need anyway, even if coding in Python.
Here are the reasons code becomes unruly: (1) undisciplined and/or weakly experienced coders (2) not clear design pattern (usually goes with #1) (3) well experienced coder's tendency to over-engineer
The worst of these is #3 and it's very common amongst head-strong developers who are knowledgeable.
In the United States, we are bogged down by scientists at the expense of engineers. Even too many of our engineers are acting like scientists--telling of why we can't do this or that. If they were acting like engineers, they'd be focused on how we can. Scientists are necessarily skeptical, by profession. Engineers need heed the findings of scientists but remain optimistic, regardless. An engineer will work with what is known and around what is not to achieve objectives. The more time an engineer has, the better the solution he/she can derive.
There is plenty to criticize China's space program on but they are right that a lunar orbiter does nothing toward establishment of a lunar station. It can be helpful in testing of methods for mining asteroids, as proposed. It is great for miscellaneous NASA science projects. But overall, it's a financial sinkhole..
On the other hand, the Moon is also going to be a financial sinkhole in most ways. There are very few resources for survival on the Moon, much less exploitable profit. Perhaps, helium 3 if we can develop nuclear reactors for it. That is something China claims to be after. The costs of a Moon base are going to be difficult to justify. The regolith is extremely abrasive, quickly tearing through fabrics in space suites. The lack of dust makes working in the light/dark but no grey in between very difficult. And there is very scant water ice.. There is really nothing on the Moon that could assist man's movement farther into space.
In contrast, is very rich in water and other resources like CO2, nitrogen, argon, and many easily accessible metals. Kilometers deep fresh water glaciers strip just north and south of the equatorial region. The regolith is soft--not abrasive. There is both wind and solar power available. You can easily make oxygen, work outside, collect iron, nickel, and various other metal ores. You can make methane or pvc plastics (CO2, water, and salts in the regolith). And the salts in the regolith of both plentiful and oxygen rich, useful for welding, explosives, or rocket fuel. Start with an inflatable habitat, cover it with regolith. Then melt out a castle in the kilometers deep glacier below..
The Moon holds the advantage of being close, so we can provide assistance when necessary. Mars is far but assistance is far less likely to be necessary. The Moon will require everything continuously resupplied. Mars only needs a foothold but resupply of various technologies could be good business. For example, sending rockets into orbit from Mars with various materials would be far easier than from Earth -- metals, plastics, water, even food.
Yeah.. I've seen this and cringed. Manager's think they are fostering better morale and higher productivity by making employees feel pressured to act enthusiastic and highly collaborative yet they are actually just feeling as if they have to pretend... And wish it would stop.
It's also the raw, raw, raw, stand up meetings and such. I remember a meeting at Groove Shark one Friday afternoon (I didn't work there but I was there at the time). I saw the looks at the faces of those employees. They were responding to their leadership in enthusiastic fashion, talking about how they improved the products but, in there faces, you knew they just wanted to go home.
It looked like a high pressure environment like say... maybe North Korea.. where you know you are being watched and you have to behave enthusiastically.. A large part of your job is acting.
Obviously, these managers are trying to capture the enthusiasm and morale for productivity that exists in work places where the workers feel challenged, appreciated, and are given ownership of their work. But these managers are missing the mark. They clearly have the "E" on their foreheads draw the wrong direction.
We overlap contexts to resolve ambiguities. One could think of English's object orientation like this (with comments to the right of each line):
a dog sat in the yard.// instantiate class "dog" The dog's hair is brown.// assign "hair" attribute of the last instantiated instance of the "dog" class a dog is running down the road.// instantiate class dog The dog is fast.// refers to the last dog instantiated. The dog with brown hair is slow.// refers to the last dog with the aforementioned brown hair attribute.
In other words, we always refer to the last version of whatever it is (instance of class) that has whatever attributes we ascribe it is..
The main context is called "general", akin to "void main( argc, argv)" (in C/C++). Each context consists of a sequence of recognizers (patterns for recognizing user statements), organized from longest (number of pertinent words) to shortest. For example, in MorgaScript (I think (and hope) any programmer could figure out how this works by looking at it):
Context "general"
Synonyms yes: yep, yeah, sure
Synonyms no: nope, nah, no way
Group personName: "Jane", "Joe", "Jim"
Group foodType: "spagetti", "smores"
Remember "third person possessive term for female is her"
Remember "Jane's gender is female"
Recognizer "[person:personName] ate [food:foodType] with [toolType:tool]"
Option
Recall "[person]'s gender is [gender]"
Recall "third person possessive term for [gender] is [possterm]"
Say "Did [person] find using a [tool] convenient for eating [possterm] [food]?"
Expect "yes" As "[person] likes to eat using [tool]."
Expect "no" As "[person] does not like to eat using [tool]."
Recognizer "[person:personName] ate [food:foodType] with [foodType:other]"
Option
Recall "[person]'s gender is [gender]"
Recall "third person possessive term for [gender] is [possterm]"
Say "Did [person] find the combination of [food] and other more delicious than [food] alone?"
Expect "yes" As "[person] likes [food] with [other]."
Expect "no" As "[person] does not like [food] with [other]."
Context "whatever"..
You can use the command "Enter" followed by a context name to activate a context and put it first in the cascading priority. Similarly, "Exit" followed by the context name deactivates the named context. Recognizers are checked in order of highest to lower priority context, and longest to shortest within contexts. Any recognizer matched within a context, moves that context to the top priority automatically.
You could use contexts to do what is said.. or you could just use the method I used above... classifying different types of foods and tools.
Thanks -- I have made many version of this kind of thing and my latest Moringa Agent Engine is probably a few days from it's 1.0 release. Matthew C. Tedder
Microbial. Mounting evidence suggests microbial life *might* be very common. If it spends a long time dormant and comes to replicate itself only under ideal conditions, then we'll need to experiment with conditions to see if we can bring it back to life to observe..
Animal. Even if microbial life is plentiful, multicellular life seems likely to be very uncommon. We've only had it on Earth for the last half-billion years, seemingly by some freak accident.
Lingual. Dolphins and whales exhibit languages with complex grammars, refer to each other by name even gossip about each other while the other is away, have an exquisite sense of past, present, and future and yet man has only uncovered a fraction of their languages. There is no known capability of human languages that bottle nosed dolphins lack. If we cannot even hack their language, what hope is there of extra-terrestrials if ever encountered? All we need is a dolphin drone, remotely controllable with VR headset and computer translation of phonemes (both ways), in order to learn through immersion... Nobody is even trying.
Technological. To be a technological species, you need (A) dexterous manipulators, (B) social behavior, and (C) imitation learning/substitution problem solving. You cannot build things without dexterous manipulators and cannot pass along knowledge and skills without both imitation and social behavior. Imitation must be substantial enough to do without a reason for doing so. Chimpanzees imitate but do not continue with behaviors that serve no obvious purpose. Humans continue regardless... We don't seem to care what customs are for. Substitution problem solving the other side of the imitation coin. In order to imitate one person/thing for another, you need to build a mental model of each, identify similarities, and swap one for another. For example, a rock with a flat side might substitute for a hammer. This is analogy -- the essence of conceptual knowledge.
I suspect that, if celestial bodies with subsurface liquid water oceans are as common as they seem then an aquatic technological species would have a far lower bar to entry into space than a surface species, such as ours. On Earth, octopi species have requirements A and C and recently two small examples of B (social behavior) have also been found (look up "Octopolis and Octlantis"). Unlike most octopi species, they build small city-like collective settlements and the mothers live for a time simultaneously with their offspring. This strongly suggests they are building knowledge and/or at least skills across generations. It seems to me likely that species such as these could be more common than surface species, such as us. Furthermore, Pluto suggests they might more so inhabit the colder regions of space... They might even be averse to places as close to stars, as Earth is to the Sun.
I mean come on? At the very least, you'll get to play laser tag in zero-G.. how bad could that be?
If it helps develop research and development into space stations and long range spacecraft then it's a good thing, for non-military reasons.
As for a real military mission, defending our satellites and taking out an adversary's really can be decisive in modern war. To loose GPS, imagery, and flash heat sensors (to detect enemy missile launches or strikes) would be a huge loss, again a space faring adversary.
However, I have long believed orbital space is a competency of the Air Force and that deep space should be a competency of the Navy. The Navy is all about self sufficiency far from any assistance. They also have the experience with being locked up in tiny spaces for many months, in submarines.
I do wonder, if we go to war with Russia--what happens on the International Space Station? Do they duke it out in hand-to-hand zero-G combat? What if it's taken over by the Russian crew complement? Do we send in space marines? What kind weapons would be, eh hem, safe? No conventional firearms. Even tasers could destroy vital systems? Maybe some kind of net shooting device? How would you train for zero-G combat? There is, as of yet, no martial arts for that.
It's all interesting to think about. I also wonder if, on the bright side, a Space Force would give some business to SpaceX or Blue Origin. That would be a helpful for their efforts.
Machine Learning and other standard forms of pattern recognition in the field of Artificial Intelligence are limited to the identification and use of specifically targeted controls and objectives/goals. For example in image classification, it can only learn to identify images it is trained to identify. In a video game, it can only use controls it is given and objectives/goals it is trained to use them to achieve. And it is very machine-like: it will blindly seek those objectives/goals regardless of anything.
So in Cyber Security, art plays a big role. AI may systematically find vulnerabilities and play them but the same methods may be used to find them and seal them. AI cannot think outside the box, as is necessary in an art. It cannot learn to identify new kinds of controls or objectives/goals, as per a "purpose". There is no curiosity or reasoning by analogy that could get it ahead. It's has great strengths but just as great are its weaknesses.
For anyone with any sense of paranoia is likely to try to develop some arthritis like this. In fact, it'll have also include how we walk.. Maybe it'll be voice characteristics, too.
I used to think people walking around talking to invisible others was weird. I discovered it's this new thing called a "bluetooth" earpiece. Now I image we'll see people holding their phones in weird ways, walking, and talking in funny ways... It'll be interesting.
The next James Bond movie will need its villains to do the same while on phones. Skip around, spin, toss the phone in the air and catch it with the other hand--anything you haven't done before.. You might as well make it a musical.
While there are many classically liberal views I agree with, sometimes I think they just go too far. National defense is a critical industry for the survival of the country and, although the United States is not perfect and certain has its share of blame for tragedies in the world, global dominance by Russia or China would be far, far worse..
In national defense, we've been falling backward (in relation to Russia and China) for the last few decades. Our main battle tanks are two generations behind Russia's and their air defense systems are also greatly enhanced. Iran successfully took over one of our most sophisticated drones and captured in, a couple years ago, using electronic warfare... Although we have the F-22 and the F-35 jets, we are falling in most other areas and are even behind in some.
Also, the cost of war is very prohibitive for us as Congress requires subcontractors in virtually every state to fund any new project. Both potential enemies can easily outlast us in a protracted war, financially.
And of course there is that AI in combat is not only inevitable but moving ahead at a very fast pace in both China and Russia. Although U.S. services still require a human in the loop of any kill decision, Russia absolutely does not. They are allowing agent kill decisions by default. This isn't a should we are shouldn't be ethical issue. This is about survival.
The term "self aware" is self defining. It means aware of one's self. I don't see that Free Will was created because they became self aware even in Westworld (though so they claimed). They could well have had Free Will before awareness of what they were.. Even though they kept playing out the same roles in the same ways each time they were reset, they still made the decisions they made themselves. If someone else knows what you'll do before you do it, that doesn't take aware your Free Will at all. It just demonstrates that somebody knew how to predict where your Free Will would take you. It in no way changes how you made any decisions you made.
So I don't even see how learning what they were, the Westworld characters became even self-aware. They just became newly aware of their condition. They already had an awareness of themselves as independent agencies. There is always more to learn about the conditions under which one exists and always will be. And you could be wrong about that, too. It's the perception of those conditions that have an impact on decisions you might make, not necessarily the realities. Free Will was there all along, indepently..
The technological singularity is as defined in the famous book, "The Singularity is Near". It references the predicted time that an AI is capable of improving its own design. It is assumed that each successive version will thereby be able to improve its own design and that this will continue at an exponential rate creating an intelligence vastly beyond anything we can imagine.
Mindless (mechanical) systems are driven by rules. A mindful system is driven by judgements between what appeals most to its values and perceived likelihood. Emotions also drive all vertebrates. However, they are not necessary for a machine. I am differentiating "emotions" from "feelings", the former being patterns of chemical release to excite or inhibit certain patterns of areas in the cerebral cortex, the latter being simply how "preferable" each future possibility is or isn't.
By values, I mean aversives like pain, hunger, bloat (biological/mechanical drives) or fear of the unknown (cognitive drive) and appetives like warmth, good taste, fulfillment of hunger (biological/mechanical drives) and preference for the known (cognitive drive).
Intelligence alone is mechanical--mindlessly driven toward its encoded goals and objectives. It lacks Free Will and self-awareness.
Free Will is the ability derive options, weigh them against each other, and to chose that with the best balance of likeliness and preferability. Such a system is mindful because it is driven by values based on judgement. It transcends mechanics. Free Will is that "little man in the head" who makes use of awareness and intelligence to derive options. Intelligence may come in various flavors and strengths but it's always just some way of solving a problem--transforming a condition A into a condition B. Awareness can also vary in quality and varying distances into the past and future. Contemplating the future is a common way of deriving more options for Free Will. And that's the real point--awareness and intelligence are tools that serve to increase the options and implications thereof for Free Will.
Self-awareness is merely an awareness of one's self, as the term implies. Just as memory may be used to model any external entity (static or dynamic), it may also be used to model one's self. In contemplation of things one may experience and/or do under hypothetical conditions in the future, requires this model of self.
We see so much on how intelligence is key to building the synthetic species that will usher in the singularity. We see a dominant push in AI toward trying to find a "General Intelligence". This idea is simply misguided. Free Will and contemplation with even a very minimal intelligence could solve any problem through enough persistence. Greater intelligence likely requires less persistence but either approach can work. It's interesting to note that high IQ is correlated with bad credit, messiness, laziness. It seems as if perhaps not needed to work as hard, they tend not to. In the end, persistence (a factor of EQ) is correlated much stronger with success in goals than is IQ.
Ok now for fun, here is my take on those predictions:
* A self-aware AI "will inherit most of the culture of the computer geeks who create it. Knowledge of The Jargon File will probably be good..."
- I fully agree. However, this is primarily because we will train them through surrogation and other means of copying ourselves. Surrogation is by far the fastest way to train for complex behaviors. Training from a blank slate may be possible but is far too impractical.
* The self-aware AI "will like us, because we love machines..."
- Given the intellectual ability of imitation/substitution (aka analogy), this seems likely. Because they will come to relate with us. However, what they like is also influenced by their basic values. Like any person, a mindful synthetic person would also be susceptible to corruption through the induction of philosophies/schemas through which it comes to view what it experiences. I strongly propose the highest value as: mutual freedom and well-being. And I also suggest that that, as one's highest value is what defines one as being a "person".
* "It will be as insatiably curious about what it's like to be carbon-based life as we will be about what it's like to be silicon-based life. And it will love the diversity of carbon-based development platforms..."
- I agree again. Particularly since they are trained through surrogation, they must already have some inklings of what it might be like. Curiosity is the middle ground between things that are well-known (thus safe) and things that unknown (thus unsafe). Too much routine with too little danger, yields more curiosity. Exploration under such circumstances makes sense, as the learning could be vital for survival when conditions are no long conducive to normal routines.
* A self-aware AI "will cause a technological singularity for humanity. Everything possible within the laws of physics (including those laws as yet undiscovered) will be within the reach of Man and Metal working together."
- They
Slashdot Mirror
By description, it really is the mark of the best. However, it's also a really good idea. That's the irony.
I've been a software developer for almost 30 years and I can certainly attest that incompetent management is one of the leading causes of project failures and management is almost always a limiting factor on the success or potential of projects. Unnecessary constraints and top-down decisions with a lack of understanding is what it seems to be, in my experience. I don't think that is only about software projects, though. I think it's endemic in business... probably more so in larger organizations.
Sometimes it can also be dirty business. Once I was even blamed by my manager after successfully doing everything he asked me to do, all the while lightly noting that I didn't think it was going to work the way he suggested it would. Later I heard that toward the end, he was making me look incompetent in meetings I did not attend. In private, he gave me all kinds of praise and even when he let me go, said he'd be a strong reference for me.
At best, he's a typical corp hopper.. exchanges long term interests for quick profits. At worse, this is somebody who's going to do the bidding of Tesla's competitors and ruin the company.
The real question is -- how much damage can he do to Tesla Motors before Musk can return, in 3 years.. This seems similar to Steve Jobs being kicked out of Apple for a long time... then Apple revived when he returned, just before otherwise inevitable bankruptcy. The difference is that Musk still has a major role in the company.
I don't like to be conspiratorial but the evidence for an anti-Tesla Motors conspiracy is pretty abundant. The bad reviews started coming out in earnest, just after reaching goals on time in terms of production.
Government constraints are often the reason for limited success, even if government funding may also be a catalyst to success. Look at how the Air Force constraints on the Shuttle limited it's potential.. And the Russian government's demanding of their own space shuttle curtailed the development of a truly more useful and affordable space launch system.
The mere act of allowing commercial space launch in the United States is what brought about a flurry of new space launch systems at dramatically reduced cost. The safety of these systems is likely to follow, in time.. as it did for aircraft.
However--the success of the BFR and the BFS depends heavily on focused engineering goals. So long as they have sufficient funding, I am glad they dodged this bullet of additional design constraints. Work seems to be progressing quickly. The primary risks seem to be loss of investor confidence but investors are well aware that they need to be tolerant of a number of failures before success arrives.
A good deal more profit awaits once the BFS is proven for deep space missions. Imagine chartering a flight to mine or capture just one asteroid rich in platinum... or even just a full load of water ice for sale to other space ventures?
Crazy was necessary to accomplish so many of the things Musk has accomplished. I love crazy engineers, so long as their engineering is sound (as Tesla and SpaceX have proven themselves). Without crazy engineers, we'd all be humping and throwing rocks at each other in the forests of Africa. It never ceases to amaze me how so many people are so defensive of keeping the future the same as the past.
And science receives so much funding and privilege over engineering. Scientists are skeptical by trade. Engineers are optimistic by trade. They are ying and yang. However, the engineer leads the way forward. The scientist just improves the engineer's ability to move faster and with fewer bumps... less crudely.
While we certainly need freedom and protection against powerful interests, we also need technologies for offensive and defensive, including true military, use.
Russia, China, and various others exist that are not our friends. The consistently seek advantageous against us. We cannot pretend that we are not in a game of conquest when others around us most certainly are. That is just a fact.
The NSA has long and very publicly revealed that such chips exist. It's very odd for Apple to claim they've never heard of such things. That reduces Apple's credibility. However, you'd think Apple would know if they requested an FBI investigation. That reduces Bloomberg's credibility.
This is strange. We need a thorough investigation of this story's sources. We also need to educate Apple.
Grant oriented and government laboratories have not been very efficient at developing vaccines or drugs for treatments, generally.
The commercial incentives have spurred corruption (fake science journals, etc) and absurd pricing but it has proven to be more efficient, overall, at coming up with drugs that work.. even if they actively suppress vaccines and cures.
I wonder, would bounties work better? Would government buying out these drug patents work better? The prices would need to be very high but the results could be well worth it.
I think we should do two things:
(1) Offer bounties for cures and vaccines of the most critical ailments (affecting most people and/or cause the most suffering); then make the patents generically available to commoditize them to lowest production prices. Being as those bounties would need to be very high (multi-billion dollars), these would have to be for a limited number of ailments.
(2) Invest heavily in technologies that can speed up and reduce costs of research and development of new vaccines and treatments. This will include AI, automation, or anything that helps.. even if it's purely methodological.
Otherwise, allow the industry to work as it does.. filling in the gaps as best it can.
I have experimented with the idea of Reputational Identities for sought and offered things over a mesh network (calling it, BigMesh). I think it works really well. The gist of it is:
Every entity has an ID through which it/they can post things offered and/or things sought to the mesh. These may be blog articles, tutorials, products, services, or whatever. Each are descripted by a tree of details, such as: Sought: article( topic:"robots" or "artificial intelligence"; price: $0 ); quality > 15
The mesh will return the matches or number of matches and you may either narrow down your criteria or opt to transact (such as, getting the article or buying something or selling something or whatever it is). After the transaction has completed and from that time onward, each party to it may complement each other.
A complement is made by assigning a percentage of one's General Reputation (GR) to a Specific Reputation (SR) of the other. One's GR is the sum of acquired SRs. So, your complements to others are worth more based on the complements you've received from others. It's that simple, really. So you may, for example, reduce the number of matching articles you want to find by increasing the required quality reputation of its offerer.. Or find more unique ideas by requiring a higher reputation for uniqueness. An SR (Specific Reputation) may be any single word.
A few notes:
1. Making a large number of IDs and having them transact with each other to artificially inflate their reputations will not work, as until each received reputation from another that actually has some, it can only complement a percentage of zero GR.
2. As one performs increasingly more transactions and one's GR grows, the number of others one has complemented also grows, thereby dividing up the large GR such that a single complement isn't going to offer too much, unless it really is believed to be deserved by the complementer. If one has earned it, it is proper that one may also give it. If everything thinks great of Joey and Joey thinks great of Sally then Sally is likely to be a great person.
3. If one's later assessment of a transaction changes, he/she may revised the complement. This is important because sometimes things appear to be more or less than you realize they are, later in time. Being able to revise one's past complements incentivised being true to each other.
I have a whole technical design for this BigMesh network and some crude code. It uses UDP sockets and most is managed by "Agencies" that float between Hosting Nodes (Node.js VMs), establishing encryption passwords between every two, individually. A Hosting Node is actually a class of Agency that provides outside resources, including network, memory, and processing time -- at a minimum. Agents are specifically coded services that are employed within Agencies or may be called remotely. So it acts like a microservices framework except that the microservices (Agents) may move closer to where needed for reasons, such as better performance. Every Agency and Agent will have its own reputational ID, to protect from bad actors. A Host Node is repayed for providing its resources to the mesh in exchange for "promises" of resources from the mesh, later. These promises are also kept with a ledger assigned to each identity and act like a kind of currency..... but with real useful value.
I've been continuously revising a mesh network design. There are two layers: hosts and map servers.
Host's provide:
* Sandbox in which to run Map Servers, each of which may have:
* Ability to swap self with another Map Server, at will
* Network Connectivity
* Memory
* Processing Time
* Optional Resources -- extensible but examples include persistent data storage, user interfacing services, etc.
Each Host will earn "promises" for the resources it provides to others. The promises are a form of currency, redeemable for any services. The main idea is that if a human connects his/her computer to the mesh, he/she can allocate how many resources are made available to others. The more resources others use of his/hers, the more that person (or his/her host) may use from others. These promises may be used, however, for any kind of purchases. So in effect, leaving one's computer online acts as a kind of minimum basic income.
Map Server's provide:
* Reputational Identity Service
Identities are offered to any agents (human or otherwise) that keep the actual individual's anonymous but maintain a reputation based on the identity's transactions with other identities. For example, Hosts and Map Servers have identities. So may people or programs. An identity maintains General Reputation as the sum of all received Specific Reputations. After any transaction, each party to the transaction may "complement" the other's Specific Reputation(s), such as "timeliness" and "quality" but may be any term the complementer decides to use. Each complement is given as a percentage of that identity's General Reputation, drawing down proportionally from previously complemented others, as necessary. So when deciding on whether or not to conduct a transaction with another identity, one may consider its reputation. And one's complements are more or less powerful depending on its own complement's received. Time since birth may also be considered. So complements from one of high esteem, esteems oneself the more so.
* Global matching of services sought with services offered.
An agent may post services sought and/or services offered. The mesh keeps them organized and identifies matches. This is to eliminate unwanted advertising. It also serves to let supplier's know what others are seeking so they don't have to guess what they need to bring to market. The hope is that this will efficiently match ends with means, growing the economy with far less wasted time and guesswork. Also, services sought and services offered are defined in an organic semantic notation (no rigid schemas, as with RDF). So you may creatively describe as many details and sub-details as you like. They are posted in the form of a distributed Tree Graph database.
* Virtual geography
Map Servers are organized into communities, each of which maintains a particular region of a single virtual world, expanding north, south, east, and west from virtual latitude zero, longitude zero. A community manages the physics of all objects with its region of responsibility. The purpose of this is to provide a consistent structure for browsing, such as markets. The virtual world will be interacted with in a protocol enabling textual, 2D, or 3D graphical interfaces.
Yes, a great deal of PHP code in the wild seems unruly. However, this is not due to PHP per-se. Choosing a solid framework (such as codeigniter or cakePHP), following its conventions, and practicing good team dynamics makes all the difference. I have been coding since 1984 in a variety of languages and, although PHP's verbosity annoys me (requires too much finger twisting on the keyboard), I have never seen a more generally productive language. You can easily build a lot, fast. The discipline to make maintainable code is worth the effort that you need anyway, even if coding in Python.
Here are the reasons code becomes unruly:
(1) undisciplined and/or weakly experienced coders
(2) not clear design pattern (usually goes with #1)
(3) well experienced coder's tendency to over-engineer
The worst of these is #3 and it's very common amongst head-strong developers who are knowledgeable.
In the United States, we are bogged down by scientists at the expense of engineers. Even too many of our engineers are acting like scientists--telling of why we can't do this or that. If they were acting like engineers, they'd be focused on how we can. Scientists are necessarily skeptical, by profession. Engineers need heed the findings of scientists but remain optimistic, regardless. An engineer will work with what is known and around what is not to achieve objectives. The more time an engineer has, the better the solution he/she can derive.
There is plenty to criticize China's space program on but they are right that a lunar orbiter does nothing toward establishment of a lunar station. It can be helpful in testing of methods for mining asteroids, as proposed. It is great for miscellaneous NASA science projects. But overall, it's a financial sinkhole..
On the other hand, the Moon is also going to be a financial sinkhole in most ways. There are very few resources for survival on the Moon, much less exploitable profit. Perhaps, helium 3 if we can develop nuclear reactors for it. That is something China claims to be after. The costs of a Moon base are going to be difficult to justify. The regolith is extremely abrasive, quickly tearing through fabrics in space suites. The lack of dust makes working in the light/dark but no grey in between very difficult. And there is very scant water ice.. There is really nothing on the Moon that could assist man's movement farther into space.
In contrast, is very rich in water and other resources like CO2, nitrogen, argon, and many easily accessible metals. Kilometers deep fresh water glaciers strip just north and south of the equatorial region. The regolith is soft--not abrasive. There is both wind and solar power available. You can easily make oxygen, work outside, collect iron, nickel, and various other metal ores. You can make methane or pvc plastics (CO2, water, and salts in the regolith). And the salts in the regolith of both plentiful and oxygen rich, useful for welding, explosives, or rocket fuel. Start with an inflatable habitat, cover it with regolith. Then melt out a castle in the kilometers deep glacier below..
The Moon holds the advantage of being close, so we can provide assistance when necessary. Mars is far but assistance is far less likely to be necessary. The Moon will require everything continuously resupplied. Mars only needs a foothold but resupply of various technologies could be good business. For example, sending rockets into orbit from Mars with various materials would be far easier than from Earth -- metals, plastics, water, even food.
Yeah.. I've seen this and cringed. Manager's think they are fostering better morale and higher productivity by making employees feel pressured to act enthusiastic and highly collaborative yet they are actually just feeling as if they have to pretend... And wish it would stop.
It's also the raw, raw, raw, stand up meetings and such. I remember a meeting at Groove Shark one Friday afternoon (I didn't work there but I was there at the time). I saw the looks at the faces of those employees. They were responding to their leadership in enthusiastic fashion, talking about how they improved the products but, in there faces, you knew they just wanted to go home.
It looked like a high pressure environment like say... maybe North Korea.. where you know you are being watched and you have to behave enthusiastically.. A large part of your job is acting.
Obviously, these managers are trying to capture the enthusiasm and morale for productivity that exists in work places where the workers feel challenged, appreciated, and are given ownership of their work. But these managers are missing the mark. They clearly have the "E" on their foreheads draw the wrong direction.
We overlap contexts to resolve ambiguities. One could think of English's object orientation like this (with comments to the right of each line):
a dog sat in the yard. // instantiate class "dog" // assign "hair" attribute of the last instantiated instance of the "dog" class // instantiate class dog // refers to the last dog instantiated. // refers to the last dog with the aforementioned brown hair attribute.
The dog's hair is brown.
a dog is running down the road.
The dog is fast.
The dog with brown hair is slow.
In other words, we always refer to the last version of whatever it is (instance of class) that has whatever attributes we ascribe it is..
The main context is called "general", akin to "void main( argc, argv)" (in C/C++). Each context consists of a sequence of recognizers (patterns for recognizing user statements), organized from longest (number of pertinent words) to shortest. For example, in MorgaScript (I think (and hope) any programmer could figure out how this works by looking at it):
Context "general"
Synonyms yes: yep, yeah, sure
Synonyms no: nope, nah, no way
Group personName: "Jane", "Joe", "Jim"
Group foodType: "spagetti", "smores"
Remember "third person possessive term for female is her"
Remember "Jane's gender is female"
Recognizer "[person:personName] ate [food:foodType] with [toolType:tool]"
Option
Recall "[person]'s gender is [gender]"
Recall "third person possessive term for [gender] is [possterm]"
Say "Did [person] find using a [tool] convenient for eating [possterm] [food]?"
Expect "yes" As "[person] likes to eat using [tool]."
Expect "no" As "[person] does not like to eat using [tool]."
Recognizer "[person:personName] ate [food:foodType] with [foodType:other]"
Option
Recall "[person]'s gender is [gender]"
Recall "third person possessive term for [gender] is [possterm]"
Say "Did [person] find the combination of [food] and other more delicious than [food] alone?"
Expect "yes" As "[person] likes [food] with [other]."
Expect "no" As "[person] does not like [food] with [other]."
Context "whatever" ..
You can use the command "Enter" followed by a context name to activate a context and put it first in the cascading priority. Similarly, "Exit" followed by the context name deactivates the named context. Recognizers are checked in order of highest to lower priority context, and longest to shortest within contexts. Any recognizer matched within a context, moves that context to the top priority automatically.
You could use contexts to do what is said.. or you could just use the method I used above... classifying different types of foods and tools.
Thanks -- I have made many version of this kind of thing and my latest Moringa Agent Engine is probably a few days from it's 1.0 release.
Matthew C. Tedder
Microbial. Mounting evidence suggests microbial life *might* be very common. If it spends a long time dormant and comes to replicate itself only under ideal conditions, then we'll need to experiment with conditions to see if we can bring it back to life to observe..
Animal. Even if microbial life is plentiful, multicellular life seems likely to be very uncommon. We've only had it on Earth for the last half-billion years, seemingly by some freak accident.
Lingual. Dolphins and whales exhibit languages with complex grammars, refer to each other by name even gossip about each other while the other is away, have an exquisite sense of past, present, and future and yet man has only uncovered a fraction of their languages. There is no known capability of human languages that bottle nosed dolphins lack. If we cannot even hack their language, what hope is there of extra-terrestrials if ever encountered? All we need is a dolphin drone, remotely controllable with VR headset and computer translation of phonemes (both ways), in order to learn through immersion... Nobody is even trying.
Technological. To be a technological species, you need (A) dexterous manipulators, (B) social behavior, and (C) imitation learning/substitution problem solving. You cannot build things without dexterous manipulators and cannot pass along knowledge and skills without both imitation and social behavior. Imitation must be substantial enough to do without a reason for doing so. Chimpanzees imitate but do not continue with behaviors that serve no obvious purpose. Humans continue regardless... We don't seem to care what customs are for. Substitution problem solving the other side of the imitation coin. In order to imitate one person/thing for another, you need to build a mental model of each, identify similarities, and swap one for another. For example, a rock with a flat side might substitute for a hammer. This is analogy -- the essence of conceptual knowledge.
I suspect that, if celestial bodies with subsurface liquid water oceans are as common as they seem then an aquatic technological species would have a far lower bar to entry into space than a surface species, such as ours. On Earth, octopi species have requirements A and C and recently two small examples of B (social behavior) have also been found (look up "Octopolis and Octlantis"). Unlike most octopi species, they build small city-like collective settlements and the mothers live for a time simultaneously with their offspring. This strongly suggests they are building knowledge and/or at least skills across generations. It seems to me likely that species such as these could be more common than surface species, such as us. Furthermore, Pluto suggests they might more so inhabit the colder regions of space... They might even be averse to places as close to stars, as Earth is to the Sun.
I mean come on? At the very least, you'll get to play laser tag in zero-G.. how bad could that be?
If it helps develop research and development into space stations and long range spacecraft then it's a good thing, for non-military reasons.
As for a real military mission, defending our satellites and taking out an adversary's really can be decisive in modern war. To loose GPS, imagery, and flash heat sensors (to detect enemy missile launches or strikes) would be a huge loss, again a space faring adversary.
However, I have long believed orbital space is a competency of the Air Force and that deep space should be a competency of the Navy. The Navy is all about self sufficiency far from any assistance. They also have the experience with being locked up in tiny spaces for many months, in submarines.
I do wonder, if we go to war with Russia--what happens on the International Space Station? Do they duke it out in hand-to-hand zero-G combat? What if it's taken over by the Russian crew complement? Do we send in space marines? What kind weapons would be, eh hem, safe? No conventional firearms. Even tasers could destroy vital systems? Maybe some kind of net shooting device? How would you train for zero-G combat? There is, as of yet, no martial arts for that.
It's all interesting to think about. I also wonder if, on the bright side, a Space Force would give some business to SpaceX or Blue Origin. That would be a helpful for their efforts.
Machine Learning and other standard forms of pattern recognition in the field of Artificial Intelligence are limited to the identification and use of specifically targeted controls and objectives/goals. For example in image classification, it can only learn to identify images it is trained to identify. In a video game, it can only use controls it is given and objectives/goals it is trained to use them to achieve. And it is very machine-like: it will blindly seek those objectives/goals regardless of anything.
So in Cyber Security, art plays a big role. AI may systematically find vulnerabilities and play them but the same methods may be used to find them and seal them. AI cannot think outside the box, as is necessary in an art. It cannot learn to identify new kinds of controls or objectives/goals, as per a "purpose". There is no curiosity or reasoning by analogy that could get it ahead. It's has great strengths but just as great are its weaknesses.
For anyone with any sense of paranoia is likely to try to develop some arthritis like this. In fact, it'll have also include how we walk.. Maybe it'll be voice characteristics, too.
I used to think people walking around talking to invisible others was weird. I discovered it's this new thing called a "bluetooth" earpiece. Now I image we'll see people holding their phones in weird ways, walking, and talking in funny ways... It'll be interesting.
The next James Bond movie will need its villains to do the same while on phones. Skip around, spin, toss the phone in the air and catch it with the other hand--anything you haven't done before.. You might as well make it a musical.
While there are many classically liberal views I agree with, sometimes I think they just go too far. National defense is a critical industry for the survival of the country and, although the United States is not perfect and certain has its share of blame for tragedies in the world, global dominance by Russia or China would be far, far worse..
In national defense, we've been falling backward (in relation to Russia and China) for the last few decades. Our main battle tanks are two generations behind Russia's and their air defense systems are also greatly enhanced. Iran successfully took over one of our most sophisticated drones and captured in, a couple years ago, using electronic warfare... Although we have the F-22 and the F-35 jets, we are falling in most other areas and are even behind in some.
Also, the cost of war is very prohibitive for us as Congress requires subcontractors in virtually every state to fund any new project. Both potential enemies can easily outlast us in a protracted war, financially.
And of course there is that AI in combat is not only inevitable but moving ahead at a very fast pace in both China and Russia. Although U.S. services still require a human in the loop of any kill decision, Russia absolutely does not. They are allowing agent kill decisions by default. This isn't a should we are shouldn't be ethical issue. This is about survival.
The term "self aware" is self defining. It means aware of one's self. I don't see that Free Will was created because they became self aware even in Westworld (though so they claimed). They could well have had Free Will before awareness of what they were.. Even though they kept playing out the same roles in the same ways each time they were reset, they still made the decisions they made themselves. If someone else knows what you'll do before you do it, that doesn't take aware your Free Will at all. It just demonstrates that somebody knew how to predict where your Free Will would take you. It in no way changes how you made any decisions you made.
So I don't even see how learning what they were, the Westworld characters became even self-aware. They just became newly aware of their condition. They already had an awareness of themselves as independent agencies. There is always more to learn about the conditions under which one exists and always will be. And you could be wrong about that, too. It's the perception of those conditions that have an impact on decisions you might make, not necessarily the realities. Free Will was there all along, indepently..
The technological singularity is as defined in the famous book, "The Singularity is Near". It references the predicted time that an AI is capable of improving its own design. It is assumed that each successive version will thereby be able to improve its own design and that this will continue at an exponential rate creating an intelligence vastly beyond anything we can imagine.
The observable diversity and enormous size of the universe is pretty good evidence of that claim.
Mindless (mechanical) systems are driven by rules. A mindful system is driven by judgements between what appeals most to its values and perceived likelihood. Emotions also drive all vertebrates. However, they are not necessary for a machine. I am differentiating "emotions" from "feelings", the former being patterns of chemical release to excite or inhibit certain patterns of areas in the cerebral cortex, the latter being simply how "preferable" each future possibility is or isn't.
By values, I mean aversives like pain, hunger, bloat (biological/mechanical drives) or fear of the unknown (cognitive drive) and appetives like warmth, good taste, fulfillment of hunger (biological/mechanical drives) and preference for the known (cognitive drive).
Intelligence alone is mechanical--mindlessly driven toward its encoded goals and objectives. It lacks Free Will and self-awareness.
Free Will is the ability derive options, weigh them against each other, and to chose that with the best balance of likeliness and preferability. Such a system is mindful because it is driven by values based on judgement. It transcends mechanics. Free Will is that "little man in the head" who makes use of awareness and intelligence to derive options. Intelligence may come in various flavors and strengths but it's always just some way of solving a problem--transforming a condition A into a condition B. Awareness can also vary in quality and varying distances into the past and future. Contemplating the future is a common way of deriving more options for Free Will. And that's the real point--awareness and intelligence are tools that serve to increase the options and implications thereof for Free Will.
Self-awareness is merely an awareness of one's self, as the term implies. Just as memory may be used to model any external entity (static or dynamic), it may also be used to model one's self. In contemplation of things one may experience and/or do under hypothetical conditions in the future, requires this model of self.
We see so much on how intelligence is key to building the synthetic species that will usher in the singularity. We see a dominant push in AI toward trying to find a "General Intelligence". This idea is simply misguided. Free Will and contemplation with even a very minimal intelligence could solve any problem through enough persistence. Greater intelligence likely requires less persistence but either approach can work. It's interesting to note that high IQ is correlated with bad credit, messiness, laziness. It seems as if perhaps not needed to work as hard, they tend not to. In the end, persistence (a factor of EQ) is correlated much stronger with success in goals than is IQ.
Ok now for fun, here is my take on those predictions:
* A self-aware AI "will inherit most of the culture of the computer geeks who create it. Knowledge of The Jargon File will probably be good..."
- I fully agree. However, this is primarily because we will train them through surrogation and other means of copying ourselves. Surrogation is by far the fastest way to train for complex behaviors. Training from a blank slate may be possible but is far too impractical.
* The self-aware AI "will like us, because we love machines..."
- Given the intellectual ability of imitation/substitution (aka analogy), this seems likely. Because they will come to relate with us. However, what they like is also influenced by their basic values. Like any person, a mindful synthetic person would also be susceptible to corruption through the induction of philosophies/schemas through which it comes to view what it experiences. I strongly propose the highest value as: mutual freedom and well-being. And I also suggest that that, as one's highest value is what defines one as being a "person".
* "It will be as insatiably curious about what it's like to be carbon-based life as we will be about what it's like to be silicon-based life. And it will love the diversity of carbon-based development platforms..."
- I agree again. Particularly since they are trained through surrogation, they must already have some inklings of what it might be like. Curiosity is the middle ground between things that are well-known (thus safe) and things that unknown (thus unsafe). Too much routine with too little danger, yields more curiosity. Exploration under such circumstances makes sense, as the learning could be vital for survival when conditions are no long conducive to normal routines.
* A self-aware AI "will cause a technological singularity for humanity. Everything possible within the laws of physics (including those laws as yet undiscovered) will be within the reach of Man and Metal working together."
- They