??!! What was that?! Projection? Extreme irony? The most inoffensive, naive and pointless attack ever?! Don't you get it? Here you have a clearer version: - Person 1 thinks that a deeper (expert) knowledge about the given conditions is a basic requisite to ever reach a good enough understanding about any situation. - Person 2 blindly defends approaches on the lines of "things will work out anyway, not sure how, but they will certainly work out". - Person 2 defines (tries to attack?) person 1's behaviour as (fanatic-)religious-like?!
Can you seriously read this comment (+ all the previous ones and confirm its accuracy) and continue with this discussion? And/or talking to me at all? In that case, congrats. I will not continue with this nonsense.
Pfff.... Note that I have done a quite big effort to continue reading your comment after that starting sentence (after all the previous comments), but here I go once again...
We enter data for patient 1 and whether patient 1 attempted suicide. We do the same for all the other patients in the "training" process. The "required knowledge" is objectively recorded, including whether the patient attempted suicide. The "training" is a mechanical process, producing a set of arbitrary-looking parameters that have no obvious meaning. This is not an attempt to codify human understanding (which an expert system would do), but to create a program that will yield a certain output given certain input.
This is either false or representative of a seriously-flawed system. Blindly analysing random sets of data is the perfect recipe for disaster. Even by creating an algorithm very concerned about over-fitting aspects, over-fitting (or other kind of data misinterpretation) is very likely to occur. I don't think that any (serious enough) system aiming to understand any situation has ever been developed by facing the analysis completely blindly. Even in case of focusing on a bunch of unlabelled variables (BTW, I have seen these proceedings in some big-data competitions and I think that it is a very bad idea even despite what I am writing right after this), the mere selection of those variables implies a knowledgeable decision of a person who consciously or not is applying a huge amount of knowledge (e.g., "I will choose the number of attempted suicides over being a rainy day/not because it seems to be much more descriptive"), what a computer would find very difficult (or even impossible) to do.
The most sensible proceeding to deal with the intended scenario is something on the following lines:
1. Getting lots of variables and data points; what means from different people under different conditions, different locations, etc. Logically, you should differentiate between training and testing and never train your model on the same data set which you are using to test it!
2. Analysing very carefully all this data and choosing the most relevant variables. This step should be performed by bringing proper knowledge about the specific situation into picture (e.g., an expert in the field or detailed enough instructions regarding how to proceed).
3. Creating a properly-understanding algorithm able to maximise the aforementioned adequately-filtered information. Again, you would need high-quality knowledge to perform a proper work here.
4. Repeat as many times as you need.
If you reached a stage where you can systematically get 92% accuracy by analysing random sets of data, you could rightfully claim to have created a reliable algorithm delivering that performance (anything before that is either a temporary/intermediate system or plainly a lie). And I am completely sure that there is only one way to ever get there: by following the aforementioned steps and by relying on as high-quality information and as expert knowledge as possible.
I think that the contents of this new comment were pretty much implicit (at least, for a knowledgeable enough person) in all my previous ones. That's why I don't want to continue taking part in a discussion which, IMO, is completely meaningless.
Its not possible at a city or state level in the USA.
Further confirmation of my mostly-focused-on-a-more-technical-level assumptions that actually altering anything relevant to the voting system in a country like the USA is almost impossible, other than perhaps via bribes and under very specific conditions. On the other hand, this fact isn't incompatible with people unfairly (and more importantly: illegally) affecting the result of the election. But as said in some previous comments, I will better wait for the conclusions of all the ongoing investigations before having an opinion about all this.
One party in the USA had a better message and candidate that got...
Sorry, but I am not interested in getting involved in a discussion about politics (in general and, much less, here in Slashdot). I am plainly highlighting my generic position on this front (leftist) and about this specific issue (not liking Trump) to minimise the chances of people wanting to see non-existent motivations to my words.
We were all basically told by every security expert anywhere not to use voting machines (and if we did to print the votes on paper)
You don't need to mistrust digital records, just to minimise the chances of attackers to access them. Avoiding unnecessary internet connections is the same than making sure that your paper votes are fine (e.g., not putting them in a random room with the door open). Additionally, bear in mind that one thing is a connection to internet (= to the whole world) and a different story is a safe enough local network. Being unreasonably afraid of hackers and thinking that the best way to avoid problems is to not use computers at all don’t seem too sensible either. Why not waiting for the final results of all these investigations, seeing what really happened and how it might have been avoided rather than continue making up problems and solutions which perhaps don't even exist?
Why would you be surprised after the bureaucrats went ahead and used those voting machines that they'd also hook them up to the internet?
As said, I have no specific experience working with the US voting system/administration. No idea what to think on this front.
You're seriously asking how internet-based hacking can happen in this day and age?
No. I said "why enabling internet access to something like this?", precisely because of understanding that an internet connection makes any system vulnerable. That's why critical infrastructures not requiring internet at all (e.g., machines containing voter's information) shouldn't be connected to internet or to other computers connected to internet.
Have you ever actually worked in the industry, at all?
In software development? During over the last 8 years, by always building very secure pieces of software. In the US voting industry? Never.
In the real world, the voting systems in place were old, buggy and unpatched
A very good reason to not be connected to internet.
Hell, the systems weren't even classed as critical infrastructure
As said, I have no specific expertise in that sub-world, but voter's data (or citizen's data or similar) seem very protection-worthy to me and I guess that any experienced professional should think equivalently.
This kind of this wasn't just possible, it was inevitable.
The whole point of my comment was to highlight that this kind of data breach is likely to be associated with high negligence. In principle, I find hard to believe that people developing so important systems make such big mistakes. But, as said, I have no actual experience in this world and cannot have a worthy opinion regarding the real situation.
How could this even be possible? By assuming that the option of a well-planned inside job can be dismissed, how could anyone have access to so delicate information from outside?! Through internet?! Why enabling internet access to something like this?
In any case, I guess that all these systems include a quite powerful logging sub-system recording each single modification; or even better: they don't allow modifications at all. So, even in the unrealistic scenario of anyone actually modifying voting information, I guess that reverting any change should be quite easy.
Clarification: I don't like Trump at all and might even be happy in case that he was proven to be somehow related to all this hacking theory. But I am also an honesty- and fairness-driven person who is completely against baseless accusations of any kind.
A very quick one, the last one I promise!! I will not continue answering what seems random ideas from a person without the required knowledge, completely unwilling to understand and seriously expecting what seems random guesses to be true no matter what.
If a chess engine developer can be outperformed by his own algorithm, then a suicide predictor developer can also be outperformed by his own algorithm. It's the same concept.
You misunderstood the idea (again). With enough time and resources (manuals, advice from knowledgeable people, previous games, etc.), a person will always beat/draw with a chess program. The time and the management of the huge amount of information involved is what gives the advantage to the computer; not having a better understanding/thinking process, but being able to deal with much more information much quickly. If the developer of a chess program wanted to fully apply the given algorithm (+ have lots of free time and not too clear priorities), he could do that and always beat/draw with that program. But chess games don't take weeks or months (neither anyone is willing to pass through the nightmare of doing all what the algorithm does) and that's why computers beat humans: they can process much more information much quickly, even though their understanding and learning capabilities are much limited than ours (theoretically, it might be much better than ours, but we would have to create the algorithms to reach that stage, what is virtually impossible). Exactly the same ideas apply to your suicide predictor. No magic, no getting more than what you put in, just very quick execution of a set of instructions plainly applying the understanding of its author.
The developer doesn't even need to be educated in the field of psychology.
You are again misinterpreting my point. A human understanding of the actions to be performed (= accurate prediction of suicides) is a basic requirement. It doesn't matter if this understanding comes from a group of people (which, at some point, will have to transmit the required knowledge to the given programmer), from a trial-and-error analysis or from a bunch of random guesses. The algorithm can only output what its authors can understand and its whole point is to speed up/ease the analysis of big amounts of information. Telling the algorithm what information to analyse and how to weight it is part of the development, which is the output of applying certain (human) understanding about the given situation.
I think that all these ideas (the previous ones and, for a properly-understanding-reader, even the ones in my original comment) are evident and don't see the point of continuing repeating them. So, I invite you to disagree with me and to think whatever you wish, but don't expect me to continue being part of an IMHO-going-nowhere discussion.
I wrote a generic statement intended to provide a clear enough overall picture. As what happens with most of generic statements, proving its absolute validity/falsehood is virtually impossible. So, I am not sure why you are saying a so clear "no" followed by a (logically) pretty imprecise justification for it. Shall I understand this as a more-or-less-blind critic (attack to me?!), not exactly aiming to have a constructive discussion? Or am I misunderstanding your intention? OK, I will bite...
The different patterns of behavior could be so complicated and subtle that people can't pick them up, especially in an area where people tend to have biases.
I fully agree with you. Actually, trying to predict something as complex as the intention of a person to perform a so let's say... intimate action seems something close to impossible to me (now and in the very distant future). But the question is: how are you expecting an algorithm, precisely developed by a person, to succeed where people will fail? It doesn't seem too logical, right?
The underlying requirement is certainly a person being able to reliably determine whether the target individual would commit suicide or not by assuming that all the required information is available (the algorithm would plainly speed up the analysis of such information); otherwise, how could the algorithm be developed at all? Biases? What if the developer is biased? Same story. If you want to ever develop an algorithm understanding any situation with X accuracy, you would need a person able to deliver that same understanding. Once built, the algorithm might deliver better outputs under specific conditions involving a huge amount of information, but the developer would always have to be able to understand the underlying motivation. For example, the programmer building a chess engine can understand why it performs each movement, but will always lose in a game against it.
In summary, if there was an algorithm able to predict whether someone would commit suicide or not with a 92% accuracy, there would be at least one person able to analyse those some inputs and come to that same conclusion; or, in order words, a person able to predict such an outcome about 92% of the times.
(Clueless-CEO impression) Good work houghi! We are very happy with you! But some of our clients aren't completely on board with this +-3%, because they think that it might provoke cancer. Could you work this bit out, by next month perhaps? Ask for whatever you need. LOL.
It looked like this or that they were mostly dealing with not-committing-suicide-at-all people. You can get something like 92% either by having an almost perfect understanding of the given situation (extremely unlikely scenario here) or by playing around with numbers and showing whatever you want to show.
This sounds way too unrealistic, even before analysing the methodology (how are they training the algorithm? By letting people die during various years?!). I am not familiar with suicide-prone personalities, but "AI" can certainly not understand better than humans. So, having an algorithm delivering 92% accuracy would imply that people could detect these situations even more accurately than that(?!)
It seems a new a sample of AI-labelled-really-meaning-nothing hype (or dishonestly/ignorantly over-fitted, blown-out-of-proportion training data and/or conclusions). Algorithms/computers are really good at dealing with huge amounts of information, but not at understanding complex situations. The underlying understanding of the most complex algorithm is way much more basic than the one of the dumbest person.
A positive aspect of this approach might be the automatic management of a wide variety of variables/data under very specific conditions (+ alerts about potentially problematic situations which should be analysed by knowledgeable people) though.
Slashdot has deteriorated completely from "News for Nerds" to "Fake News" status
Don't be so negative! There are quite a few nerd-focused articles. Just a short while ago, Ask Slashdot: Will Python Become The Dominant Programming Language? has triggered quite a few nerd-intensive comments. The premise wasn't perhaps ideal, but the discussion is there for fans of promoting/attacking specific programming languages (and the nonsense of a wrongly-indented line provoking a compilation error), something about what I don't really care:)
but the market tends towards low cost not good solution
This is certainly true for the mass market and personal usage, but I am not so sure with big companies. Just having one client like Google or Facebook making a big order should be more than enough for a hardware manufacturer to create a whole new line of machines. Additionally, the resulting advertisement would attract lots of smaller businesses and individuals not even strictly needing it.
As said, these are just some preliminary ideas which I see more as internal R&D material: a big company with money to burn and interested in improving its own systems.
Thanks for the info. In any case, note that my post took that example just as the starting point of what I never thought before: although current architectures might be (practically) optimal for performing a wide variety of actions, what about coming up with new ones taking care only of very specific aspects?
Do you need a server to exclusively host databases which have to be accessed as quickly as possible? Why separating hardware, OS and database? Why not creating a specific database server whose basic architecture, hardware elements, OS, software, etc. are fully focused on accomplishing that goal? Why relying on caring-about-everything elements which you will not be using anyway and which have a negative impact on the performance of what you really care about? Additionally, the price of these machines would be lower than the general-purpose computers ones! (= big potential market).
This is just an idea I had after reading that article, but the more I think about it, the more appealing it seems.
I found very interesting the following part in that linked page:
disk storage with built-in search capability. The motivation for the device was the discrepancy between the high speed at which a disk could deliver data, and the much lower speed at which a general-purpose processor could filter the data looking for records that matched a search condition.
It makes me wonder about the actual applicability of an approach which I never considered before (note that I am mostly software concerned and my hardware background isn't too solid): might it be worthy to create custom hardware architectures exclusively focused on maximising a limited amount of scenarios?
Shouldn't search-engine (or other internet-based, data-intensive) companies, for which the money isn't an issue, do some research on this front to know whether building customised architectures exclusively caring about the limited actions performed by their main algorithms (quickly searching, retrieving and storing) might be a good idea? Not just optimising or re-designing databases, but creating whole database-focused servers completely from the ground up?
I'm not saying your other priorities are unimportant
I think that the parent AC is actually implying that these other priorities are less important or, at least, heavily misused and systematically brought out of context. By using a more Slashdot-friendly reply: WHOOOSH!!
DISCLAIMER: I am plainly sharing some properly-understanding help. I have no relationship whatsoever with this other AC and am not implying that I (dis)agree with anything of what is expressly or implicitly said in any of the previous posts.
DISCLAIMER TO THE DISCLAIMER: logically, I have some opinion about all this, but my point is that it is completely irrelevant here as far as my contribution is only meant to address what I think that is a real-intention-misinterpretation problem.
DISCLAIMER TO THE DISCLAIMER TO THE DISCLAIMER: I am not implying that people concerned about certain issues are usually misinterpretation-prone and require lots of unnecessary-for-any-properly-understanding-individual clarifications.
Both your comment and the parent provide a comprehensive, realistic and objective summary as opposed to the click-bait, really-meaning-nothing ideas underlying this article. Unfortunately, I don't have any mod points left.
If you were actually a well educated mechanical engineer instead of dumb ass you knew how simple a hyperloop actually is.
I think that this sentence summarises perfectly all what you can give: arbitrarily doubting/attacking others ("If you were actually a well educated mechanical engineer"?!) + being able to put together the craziest what-if scenarios ever ("you knew how simple") + blindly defending whatever nonsense you get paid to/forced to/tricked into do(ing) ("hyperloop").
I am honestly curious about the reason why a person like you think that can talk to someone like me. Although I do consider everyone identical (something which most likely you don't do; it seems that people like you can only grow among multiple restrictions and prejudices), there are certain personalities so extremely incompatible with me that there is no point in having any kind of interaction with these people. I do have met a relevant number of idiots, fanatics and generic-talking-and-saying-nothing individuals like you, all of them getting angry with me; apparently, my mere existence bothers them, the fact of actually knowing, having (lived, done, given, etc.) and honestly not caring at all about their whole crappy half-world of permanent lies and unmotivated fears. Well, I guess that you are a generation-2 pathetically stupid, invasive, ignorant, fanatic half-person (animal-person-breeding stage already reached?!). Congrats.
the air pressure at cruise altitude of a plane is similar to the pressure inside of a hyperloop
How can anyone be so stupid!! Do you know the meaning, implications and actual applicability of this expression here?! Why do you think that a sentence (not delivered as ideal as a random output of actual knowledge) can solve the problem which a sentence (various ones, actually) created? Why do you keep doing these things?! Don't you understand that you are making a complete fool of yourself, no matter if someone says it to you or not? Usually, people with a bit of knowledge on the given issue hearing the kind of nonsense that you have delivered now (= ignorance + dishonesty + expecting to be taken seriously) wouldn't say you a word and just ignore you. Is so difficult to make an effort to properly knowing/understanding something or plainly not wanting to get involved in that something? What prize are you exactly getting with your attitude? It would have been 1000 times better for you to not have said anything! Less effort! Less CO2!
Less being proven as an idiot! Only scenario where you wouldn't have lost is when dealing with other idiots like you, but then why taking any risk for a so irrelevant prize!
OK. This has been funny (quite pathetic actually, although I always look at the bright side), but will better stop it here. I don't think that I will talk to you again, because have already got all what you can offer (= some laughs at your expense).
Do you know what a mechanical engineer is, right? Basically, the making-physics-actually-applicable-to-build-machines kind of engineer. If this Hyperloop thing was ever built (as advertised will certainly never happen), it would be designed by mechanical engineers. There might be a cooperation with other fields like civil engineering for the long stretches (for the bridges which are so interesting to you. You are happy when you think about bridgets, right? How cute!).
I guess you are scared by planes, too?
Planes are also built by mechanical engineers like all the other mechanical machines. There are even more generic names like industrial engineering (actually speaking, I am an industrial engineer specialising in mechanical engineering) which include similar branches like mechanical, electronic, electrical, etc. engineers.
The questions in your previous comments did not make sense, when I read them the first time. Why do you think I would read them again?
You are sooooo dumb. I was referring to the point where you proved you absolute ignorance by expressly saying "Hyper-loop cars are not moving in a fluid but in very thin air", but you know? Air is a fluid:)
You are probably the most ignorant-completely-unaware-of-it-and-additionally-arbitrarily-attacking-others "person" who I have ever met, certainly here in Slashdot. Did you get all the sarcasm in my previous posts or you got completely lost? I was making fun of you and your pathetic attitude, hopefully you got that.
Heavy enough to be a very relevant element which cannot be plainly ignored via "do the same than you do with normal piping". Sorry, but I don't want to continue a conversation which don't seem to drive anywhere. My intention was trying to reduce the level of abstraction a bit and it seems that I failed. This whole discussion became completely useless to me a while ago (the second time when I had to repeat a very similar version of basically the same idea). As said to the one other commentator above, I am not intending to be rude, but plainly not seeing the point of continuing.
As clearly proven by our conversation, you are way much more knowledgeable than me in physics (also your properly-understanding and having-civilised-conversations skills are waaaaaay better than mine). I will start building a statue to honour you and your relevant contributions to the world (of physics) as soon as I can.
Hopefully, you will soon find a place in your (huge) heart to forgive me and understand my situation: I am a simple mechanical engineer, naively relying on actual knowledge rather than on wise statements like "if engineers plan such a thing you usually can trust that they know the math". BTW, have you finally understood the question in one of my previous comments?
No idea whom you want to impress with your fake knowledge.
Out of all the weird ideas which you have written so far, this is the one puzzling me the most by far! The first idea coming to your mind about the motivation of a person to do something is that he is trying to impress someone else?! (With fake knowledge?! In internet?! In Slashdot?).
That statement is so tremendously wrong at so many levels that it doesn't even deserve a "what is wrong with you?", but a "where on the hell have you got the crazy idea that someone like you can talk to someone like me from?" Are you sure that we even belong to the same domain? Because I have some serious doubts on this front. Anyway, I will stop replying to your incoherent nonsense.
Slashdot Mirror
Except when it works, and it often works much better than you appear to think.
Sure. It works pretty much like a methodology to win the lottery or, more graphically, in the same way than Charlie's mom thinks that what she does keeps him alive. LOL.
devout Catholic is of the Trinity
??!! What was that?! Projection? Extreme irony? The most inoffensive, naive and pointless attack ever?! Don't you get it? Here you have a clearer version:
- Person 1 thinks that a deeper (expert) knowledge about the given conditions is a basic requisite to ever reach a good enough understanding about any situation.
- Person 2 blindly defends approaches on the lines of "things will work out anyway, not sure how, but they will certainly work out".
- Person 2 defines (tries to attack?) person 1's behaviour as (fanatic-)religious-like?!
Can you seriously read this comment (+ all the previous ones and confirm its accuracy) and continue with this discussion? And/or talking to me at all? In that case, congrats. I will not continue with this nonsense.
This is wrong
Pfff.... Note that I have done a quite big effort to continue reading your comment after that starting sentence (after all the previous comments), but here I go once again...
We enter data for patient 1 and whether patient 1 attempted suicide. We do the same for all the other patients in the "training" process. The "required knowledge" is objectively recorded, including whether the patient attempted suicide. The "training" is a mechanical process, producing a set of arbitrary-looking parameters that have no obvious meaning. This is not an attempt to codify human understanding (which an expert system would do), but to create a program that will yield a certain output given certain input.
This is either false or representative of a seriously-flawed system. Blindly analysing random sets of data is the perfect recipe for disaster. Even by creating an algorithm very concerned about over-fitting aspects, over-fitting (or other kind of data misinterpretation) is very likely to occur. I don't think that any (serious enough) system aiming to understand any situation has ever been developed by facing the analysis completely blindly. Even in case of focusing on a bunch of unlabelled variables (BTW, I have seen these proceedings in some big-data competitions and I think that it is a very bad idea even despite what I am writing right after this), the mere selection of those variables implies a knowledgeable decision of a person who consciously or not is applying a huge amount of knowledge (e.g., "I will choose the number of attempted suicides over being a rainy day/not because it seems to be much more descriptive"), what a computer would find very difficult (or even impossible) to do.
The most sensible proceeding to deal with the intended scenario is something on the following lines:
1. Getting lots of variables and data points; what means from different people under different conditions, different locations, etc. Logically, you should differentiate between training and testing and never train your model on the same data set which you are using to test it!
2. Analysing very carefully all this data and choosing the most relevant variables. This step should be performed by bringing proper knowledge about the specific situation into picture (e.g., an expert in the field or detailed enough instructions regarding how to proceed).
3. Creating a properly-understanding algorithm able to maximise the aforementioned adequately-filtered information. Again, you would need high-quality knowledge to perform a proper work here.
4. Repeat as many times as you need.
If you reached a stage where you can systematically get 92% accuracy by analysing random sets of data, you could rightfully claim to have created a reliable algorithm delivering that performance (anything before that is either a temporary/intermediate system or plainly a lie). And I am completely sure that there is only one way to ever get there: by following the aforementioned steps and by relying on as high-quality information and as expert knowledge as possible.
I think that the contents of this new comment were pretty much implicit (at least, for a knowledgeable enough person) in all my previous ones. That's why I don't want to continue taking part in a discussion which, IMO, is completely meaningless.
Its not possible at a city or state level in the USA.
Further confirmation of my mostly-focused-on-a-more-technical-level assumptions that actually altering anything relevant to the voting system in a country like the USA is almost impossible, other than perhaps via bribes and under very specific conditions. On the other hand, this fact isn't incompatible with people unfairly (and more importantly: illegally) affecting the result of the election. But as said in some previous comments, I will better wait for the conclusions of all the ongoing investigations before having an opinion about all this.
One party in the USA had a better message and candidate that got...
Sorry, but I am not interested in getting involved in a discussion about politics (in general and, much less, here in Slashdot). I am plainly highlighting my generic position on this front (leftist) and about this specific issue (not liking Trump) to minimise the chances of people wanting to see non-existent motivations to my words.
We were all basically told by every security expert anywhere not to use voting machines (and if we did to print the votes on paper)
You don't need to mistrust digital records, just to minimise the chances of attackers to access them. Avoiding unnecessary internet connections is the same than making sure that your paper votes are fine (e.g., not putting them in a random room with the door open). Additionally, bear in mind that one thing is a connection to internet (= to the whole world) and a different story is a safe enough local network. Being unreasonably afraid of hackers and thinking that the best way to avoid problems is to not use computers at all don’t seem too sensible either. Why not waiting for the final results of all these investigations, seeing what really happened and how it might have been avoided rather than continue making up problems and solutions which perhaps don't even exist?
Why would you be surprised after the bureaucrats went ahead and used those voting machines that they'd also hook them up to the internet?
As said, I have no specific experience working with the US voting system/administration. No idea what to think on this front.
You're seriously asking how internet-based hacking can happen in this day and age?
No. I said "why enabling internet access to something like this?", precisely because of understanding that an internet connection makes any system vulnerable. That's why critical infrastructures not requiring internet at all (e.g., machines containing voter's information) shouldn't be connected to internet or to other computers connected to internet.
Have you ever actually worked in the industry, at all?
In software development? During over the last 8 years, by always building very secure pieces of software. In the US voting industry? Never.
In the real world, the voting systems in place were old, buggy and unpatched
A very good reason to not be connected to internet.
Hell, the systems weren't even classed as critical infrastructure
As said, I have no specific expertise in that sub-world, but voter's data (or citizen's data or similar) seem very protection-worthy to me and I guess that any experienced professional should think equivalently.
This kind of this wasn't just possible, it was inevitable.
The whole point of my comment was to highlight that this kind of data breach is likely to be associated with high negligence. In principle, I find hard to believe that people developing so important systems make such big mistakes. But, as said, I have no actual experience in this world and cannot have a worthy opinion regarding the real situation.
How could this even be possible? By assuming that the option of a well-planned inside job can be dismissed, how could anyone have access to so delicate information from outside?! Through internet?! Why enabling internet access to something like this?
In any case, I guess that all these systems include a quite powerful logging sub-system recording each single modification; or even better: they don't allow modifications at all. So, even in the unrealistic scenario of anyone actually modifying voting information, I guess that reverting any change should be quite easy.
Clarification: I don't like Trump at all and might even be happy in case that he was proven to be somehow related to all this hacking theory. But I am also an honesty- and fairness-driven person who is completely against baseless accusations of any kind.
If a chess engine developer can be outperformed by his own algorithm, then a suicide predictor developer can also be outperformed by his own algorithm. It's the same concept.
You misunderstood the idea (again). With enough time and resources (manuals, advice from knowledgeable people, previous games, etc.), a person will always beat/draw with a chess program. The time and the management of the huge amount of information involved is what gives the advantage to the computer; not having a better understanding/thinking process, but being able to deal with much more information much quickly. If the developer of a chess program wanted to fully apply the given algorithm (+ have lots of free time and not too clear priorities), he could do that and always beat/draw with that program. But chess games don't take weeks or months (neither anyone is willing to pass through the nightmare of doing all what the algorithm does) and that's why computers beat humans: they can process much more information much quickly, even though their understanding and learning capabilities are much limited than ours (theoretically, it might be much better than ours, but we would have to create the algorithms to reach that stage, what is virtually impossible). Exactly the same ideas apply to your suicide predictor. No magic, no getting more than what you put in, just very quick execution of a set of instructions plainly applying the understanding of its author.
The developer doesn't even need to be educated in the field of psychology.
You are again misinterpreting my point. A human understanding of the actions to be performed (= accurate prediction of suicides) is a basic requirement. It doesn't matter if this understanding comes from a group of people (which, at some point, will have to transmit the required knowledge to the given programmer), from a trial-and-error analysis or from a bunch of random guesses. The algorithm can only output what its authors can understand and its whole point is to speed up/ease the analysis of big amounts of information. Telling the algorithm what information to analyse and how to weight it is part of the development, which is the output of applying certain (human) understanding about the given situation.
I think that all these ideas (the previous ones and, for a properly-understanding-reader, even the ones in my original comment) are evident and don't see the point of continuing repeating them. So, I invite you to disagree with me and to think whatever you wish, but don't expect me to continue being part of an IMHO-going-nowhere discussion.
No, it wouldn't.
I wrote a generic statement intended to provide a clear enough overall picture. As what happens with most of generic statements, proving its absolute validity/falsehood is virtually impossible. So, I am not sure why you are saying a so clear "no" followed by a (logically) pretty imprecise justification for it. Shall I understand this as a more-or-less-blind critic (attack to me?!), not exactly aiming to have a constructive discussion? Or am I misunderstanding your intention? OK, I will bite...
The different patterns of behavior could be so complicated and subtle that people can't pick them up, especially in an area where people tend to have biases.
I fully agree with you. Actually, trying to predict something as complex as the intention of a person to perform a so let's say... intimate action seems something close to impossible to me (now and in the very distant future). But the question is: how are you expecting an algorithm, precisely developed by a person, to succeed where people will fail? It doesn't seem too logical, right?
The underlying requirement is certainly a person being able to reliably determine whether the target individual would commit suicide or not by assuming that all the required information is available (the algorithm would plainly speed up the analysis of such information); otherwise, how could the algorithm be developed at all? Biases? What if the developer is biased? Same story. If you want to ever develop an algorithm understanding any situation with X accuracy, you would need a person able to deliver that same understanding. Once built, the algorithm might deliver better outputs under specific conditions involving a huge amount of information, but the developer would always have to be able to understand the underlying motivation. For example, the programmer building a chess engine can understand why it performs each movement, but will always lose in a game against it.
In summary, if there was an algorithm able to predict whether someone would commit suicide or not with a 92% accuracy, there would be at least one person able to analyse those some inputs and come to that same conclusion; or, in order words, a person able to predict such an outcome about 92% of the times.
(Clueless-CEO impression) Good work houghi! We are very happy with you! But some of our clients aren't completely on board with this +-3%, because they think that it might provoke cancer. Could you work this bit out, by next month perhaps? Ask for whatever you need. LOL.
Perhaps this was an intentional error because they are too modest to write 100% accuracy. LOL.
used a group of suicidal patients
It looked like this or that they were mostly dealing with not-committing-suicide-at-all people. You can get something like 92% either by having an almost perfect understanding of the given situation (extremely unlikely scenario here) or by playing around with numbers and showing whatever you want to show.
This sounds way too unrealistic, even before analysing the methodology (how are they training the algorithm? By letting people die during various years?!). I am not familiar with suicide-prone personalities, but "AI" can certainly not understand better than humans. So, having an algorithm delivering 92% accuracy would imply that people could detect these situations even more accurately than that(?!)
It seems a new a sample of AI-labelled-really-meaning-nothing hype (or dishonestly/ignorantly over-fitted, blown-out-of-proportion training data and/or conclusions). Algorithms/computers are really good at dealing with huge amounts of information, but not at understanding complex situations. The underlying understanding of the most complex algorithm is way much more basic than the one of the dumbest person.
A positive aspect of this approach might be the automatic management of a wide variety of variables/data under very specific conditions (+ alerts about potentially problematic situations which should be analysed by knowledgeable people) though.
Slashdot has deteriorated completely from "News for Nerds" to "Fake News" status
Don't be so negative! There are quite a few nerd-focused articles. Just a short while ago, Ask Slashdot: Will Python Become The Dominant Programming Language? has triggered quite a few nerd-intensive comments. The premise wasn't perhaps ideal, but the discussion is there for fans of promoting/attacking specific programming languages (and the nonsense of a wrongly-indented line provoking a compilation error), something about what I don't really care :)
I have never used that site, but this video seems quite descriptive of what they are up to.
Disclaimer: anyone interested in disclaimers and/or with understanding limitations should be able to easily adapt one of these samples to this post.
but the market tends towards low cost not good solution
This is certainly true for the mass market and personal usage, but I am not so sure with big companies. Just having one client like Google or Facebook making a big order should be more than enough for a hardware manufacturer to create a whole new line of machines. Additionally, the resulting advertisement would attract lots of smaller businesses and individuals not even strictly needing it.
As said, these are just some preliminary ideas which I see more as internal R&D material: a big company with money to burn and interested in improving its own systems.
Thanks for the info. In any case, note that my post took that example just as the starting point of what I never thought before: although current architectures might be (practically) optimal for performing a wide variety of actions, what about coming up with new ones taking care only of very specific aspects?
Do you need a server to exclusively host databases which have to be accessed as quickly as possible? Why separating hardware, OS and database? Why not creating a specific database server whose basic architecture, hardware elements, OS, software, etc. are fully focused on accomplishing that goal? Why relying on caring-about-everything elements which you will not be using anyway and which have a negative impact on the performance of what you really care about? Additionally, the price of these machines would be lower than the general-purpose computers ones! (= big potential market).
This is just an idea I had after reading that article, but the more I think about it, the more appealing it seems.
disk storage with built-in search capability. The motivation for the device was the discrepancy between the high speed at which a disk could deliver data, and the much lower speed at which a general-purpose processor could filter the data looking for records that matched a search condition.
It makes me wonder about the actual applicability of an approach which I never considered before (note that I am mostly software concerned and my hardware background isn't too solid): might it be worthy to create custom hardware architectures exclusively focused on maximising a limited amount of scenarios?
Shouldn't search-engine (or other internet-based, data-intensive) companies, for which the money isn't an issue, do some research on this front to know whether building customised architectures exclusively caring about the limited actions performed by their main algorithms (quickly searching, retrieving and storing) might be a good idea? Not just optimising or re-designing databases, but creating whole database-focused servers completely from the ground up?
I'm not saying your other priorities are unimportant
I think that the parent AC is actually implying that these other priorities are less important or, at least, heavily misused and systematically brought out of context. By using a more Slashdot-friendly reply: WHOOOSH!!
:)
DISCLAIMER: I am plainly sharing some properly-understanding help. I have no relationship whatsoever with this other AC and am not implying that I (dis)agree with anything of what is expressly or implicitly said in any of the previous posts.
DISCLAIMER TO THE DISCLAIMER: logically, I have some opinion about all this, but my point is that it is completely irrelevant here as far as my contribution is only meant to address what I think that is a real-intention-misinterpretation problem.
DISCLAIMER TO THE DISCLAIMER TO THE DISCLAIMER: I am not implying that people concerned about certain issues are usually misinterpretation-prone and require lots of unnecessary-for-any-properly-understanding-individual clarifications.
etc.
Both your comment and the parent provide a comprehensive, realistic and objective summary as opposed to the click-bait, really-meaning-nothing ideas underlying this article. Unfortunately, I don't have any mod points left.
If you were actually a well educated mechanical engineer instead of dumb ass you knew how simple a hyperloop actually is.
I think that this sentence summarises perfectly all what you can give: arbitrarily doubting/attacking others ("If you were actually a well educated mechanical engineer"?!) + being able to put together the craziest what-if scenarios ever ("you knew how simple") + blindly defending whatever nonsense you get paid to/forced to/tricked into do(ing) ("hyperloop").
I am honestly curious about the reason why a person like you think that can talk to someone like me. Although I do consider everyone identical (something which most likely you don't do; it seems that people like you can only grow among multiple restrictions and prejudices), there are certain personalities so extremely incompatible with me that there is no point in having any kind of interaction with these people. I do have met a relevant number of idiots, fanatics and generic-talking-and-saying-nothing individuals like you, all of them getting angry with me; apparently, my mere existence bothers them, the fact of actually knowing, having (lived, done, given, etc.) and honestly not caring at all about their whole crappy half-world of permanent lies and unmotivated fears. Well, I guess that you are a generation-2 pathetically stupid, invasive, ignorant, fanatic half-person (animal-person-breeding stage already reached?!). Congrats.
the air pressure at cruise altitude of a plane is similar to the pressure inside of a hyperloop
How can anyone be so stupid!! Do you know the meaning, implications and actual applicability of this expression here?! Why do you think that a sentence (not delivered as ideal as a random output of actual knowledge) can solve the problem which a sentence (various ones, actually) created? Why do you keep doing these things?! Don't you understand that you are making a complete fool of yourself, no matter if someone says it to you or not? Usually, people with a bit of knowledge on the given issue hearing the kind of nonsense that you have delivered now (= ignorance + dishonesty + expecting to be taken seriously) wouldn't say you a word and just ignore you. Is so difficult to make an effort to properly knowing/understanding something or plainly not wanting to get involved in that something? What prize are you exactly getting with your attitude? It would have been 1000 times better for you to not have said anything! Less effort! Less CO2! Less being proven as an idiot! Only scenario where you wouldn't have lost is when dealing with other idiots like you, but then why taking any risk for a so irrelevant prize!
OK. This has been funny (quite pathetic actually, although I always look at the bright side), but will better stop it here. I don't think that I will talk to you again, because have already got all what you can offer (= some laughs at your expense).
Yes, you are a simple mechanical engineer
Do you know what a mechanical engineer is, right? Basically, the making-physics-actually-applicable-to-build-machines kind of engineer. If this Hyperloop thing was ever built (as advertised will certainly never happen), it would be designed by mechanical engineers. There might be a cooperation with other fields like civil engineering for the long stretches (for the bridges which are so interesting to you. You are happy when you think about bridgets, right? How cute!).
I guess you are scared by planes, too?
Planes are also built by mechanical engineers like all the other mechanical machines. There are even more generic names like industrial engineering (actually speaking, I am an industrial engineer specialising in mechanical engineering) which include similar branches like mechanical, electronic, electrical, etc. engineers.
The questions in your previous comments did not make sense, when I read them the first time. Why do you think I would read them again?
You are sooooo dumb. I was referring to the point where you proved you absolute ignorance by expressly saying "Hyper-loop cars are not moving in a fluid but in very thin air", but you know? Air is a fluid :)
You are probably the most ignorant-completely-unaware-of-it-and-additionally-arbitrarily-attacking-others "person" who I have ever met, certainly here in Slashdot. Did you get all the sarcasm in my previous posts or you got completely lost? I was making fun of you and your pathetic attitude, hopefully you got that.
Heavy in relation to what?
Heavy enough to be a very relevant element which cannot be plainly ignored via "do the same than you do with normal piping". Sorry, but I don't want to continue a conversation which don't seem to drive anywhere. My intention was trying to reduce the level of abstraction a bit and it seems that I failed. This whole discussion became completely useless to me a while ago (the second time when I had to repeat a very similar version of basically the same idea). As said to the one other commentator above, I am not intending to be rude, but plainly not seeing the point of continuing.
no clue about physics
As clearly proven by our conversation, you are way much more knowledgeable than me in physics (also your properly-understanding and having-civilised-conversations skills are waaaaaay better than mine). I will start building a statue to honour you and your relevant contributions to the world (of physics) as soon as I can.
Hopefully, you will soon find a place in your (huge) heart to forgive me and understand my situation: I am a simple mechanical engineer, naively relying on actual knowledge rather than on wise statements like "if engineers plan such a thing you usually can trust that they know the math". BTW, have you finally understood the question in one of my previous comments?
No idea whom you want to impress with your fake knowledge.
Out of all the weird ideas which you have written so far, this is the one puzzling me the most by far! The first idea coming to your mind about the motivation of a person to do something is that he is trying to impress someone else?! (With fake knowledge?! In internet?! In Slashdot?).
That statement is so tremendously wrong at so many levels that it doesn't even deserve a "what is wrong with you?", but a "where on the hell have you got the crazy idea that someone like you can talk to someone like me from?" Are you sure that we even belong to the same domain? Because I have some serious doubts on this front. Anyway, I will stop replying to your incoherent nonsense.