Thursday, May 11, 2023

Goldenrod, Solidago gigantea (KY - US state flower of Kentucky): WSJ 5/8/23 - "World’s Top AI Researchers Debate the Technology’s Next Steps: Conference in Africa covers technology's promise and peril for poorer nations" By MIT graduate Karen Hao - Wall Street Journal - Monday, May 8, 2023 * * Africa,machine learning,Languages,MIT language,MIT,Stanford * I came to Northland public library, Pgh, PA, to see if I could find an WSJ article on AI Large Language Models in Africa that John Palfrey had tweeted about and for a chapter in my upcoming book tentatively entitled "Society, Information Technology, and the Global University" - and found and read this article on paper in this helpful library (whereas the day before at the Oakmont Carnegie Public Library I couldn't access either the digital OR paper M 5/8/23 WSJ issue with this) * * * Stanford Iranian Studies' "Women, Art, Freedom: Women Artists & Street Politics in Iran" with MIT PhD Pamela Karimi


Ms. #TimnitGebru hosted panel on limitations of #LargeLanguageModels - technology that underpins #ChatGPT -in handling #AfricanLanguages, which have been increasingly excluded from digital world because of a lack of data needed for current #AItechnologies https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/African_languages~





Languages all 







Timbit 






Retweeting - 

World’s Top AI Researchers Debate the Technology’s Next Steps 











I came to Northland public library, Pgh, PA, to see if I could find an WSJ article on AI Large Language Models in Africa that John Palfrey had tweeted about and for a chapter in my upcoming book tentatively entitled "Society, Information Technology, and the Global University" - and found and read this article on paper in this helpful library (whereas the day before at the Oakmont Carnegie Public Library I couldn't access either the digital OR paper M 5/8/23 WSJ issue with this). 



*  

WSJ 5/8/23 - World’s Top AI Researchers Debate the Technology’s Next Steps - Wall Street Journal - Monday, May 8, 2023 



World’s Top AI Researchers Debate the Technology’s Next Steps: Conference in Africa covers technology's promise and peril for poorer nations 

By Karen Hao





Found it on paper on Wednesday, May 10, 2023 in the Northland Public Library in section B page 4


Quoting and transcribing the last paragraphs - 

"There have been a lot of discussions about the risks of AI, and I've been part of those discussions," he said. "But there are not enough discussions about what we need to do to put AI to really good use." 

Over the years, the largest and most prestigious annual AI research conferences have typically been held in the U.S. or Canada, close to Silicon Valley, which remains an outsize force in AI research. 

African researchers were often unable to attend as they had trouble getting visas, drawing criticism over an absence of their perspectives in developing one of the most powerful and transformative technologies. 

Prominent researchers, including AI ethicist Timnit Gebru, have pointed to the concentration of research into a few dominant players in Silicon Valley and the lack of inclusion of non-Western researchers or those from marginalized groups. In 2017, Ms. Gebru, who grew up in Ethiopia before arriving in the U.S. as a refugee, founded an affinity group called Black in AI to bring more diversity into the community. 

Rwanda typically gives visas to researchers, regardless of company or country. The country , marred by brutal genocide in 1994, is now a budding hub of African AI research through new research centers and government programs aimed at attracting international talent. 

The resulting mix was a study in contrasts: Huawei employees chatted with Google counterparts despite U.S.-China tech tensions, resource-strapped academics lamented to friends at wealthy companies and African researchers challenged Western peers to look beyond the perspectives of coastal elites in developed countries.

On Friday, Ms. Gebru hosted a panel on the limitations of large language models - the technology that underpins ChatGPT - in handling African languages, which have been increasingly excluded from the digital world because of a lack of data needed for current AI technologies. Ms. Gebru gained public prominence when she said she was fired by Google after she co-wrote a paper criticizing the exploding impacts of such models, which also underpin Google's search engine. Internally, Google characterized her departure as a resignation. 

During a separate panel, Vukosi Marivate, the data science chair at the University of Pretoria in South Africa and program chair of the conference, said African researchers were fighting the threat of losing their native languages. "We're racing against the clock" before English takes over and African languages cease to exist, he said after the event. 








--


Scottish Small Piping album #2 - Honey Piobaireachd (2022)


- Scott GK MacLeod  
Founder, President, CEO & Professor
CC-4 licensed MIT OCW-centric. Wiki, 
World University & School (WUaS) 
- PO Box 442, Canyon, CA 94516 
- 210 East End Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15221
1) non-profit World University and School - http://worlduniversityandschool.org  
2) for profit general stock company WUaS Corporation in CA - http://worlduniversityandschool.org/AcademicPress.html

(m) 412 478 0116 - sgkmacleod@gmail.com 

World Univ & Sch Innovation Research -  scottmacleod.com 







* * * 


Dear Prof Pamela Karimi, (Abbas Milani, Shahrzad Shirvani, Roland Vogl), All, 

Thank you for your excellent Iranian studies' Stanford presentation. 

Here's the question I asked in the text chat - 

"Thank you, Prof. Karimi, for your excellent presentation. How do you see women artists’ roles changing - in Iran, societally and regarding Islamic Republic law, and even in changing the Islamic Ministry for art - and with your perspective having lived in the USA in Massachusetts since the early 2000s, and with a MIT PhD? Do you see significant change ahead for Iranian women thanks to art (and protest)?  (Will email you as well with more specific questions). Thanks, Scott GK MacLeod, sgkmacleod@worlduniversityandschool.org (and in developing MIT OCW-centric wiki World Univ & Sch which is planning online MIT 0CW-centric free university degrees in Farsi - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Iran_(Islamic_Republic_of) )" 


Greetings from MIT OCW-centric wiki World University and School - in western Pennsylvania, but seeking to move back to the SF Bay Area on September 1, 2023 to continue to grow WUaS - planned in ~200 countries and in their main languages for online free degrees - Bachelor, PhD. Law, MD, IB high school or similar, AA, and Master's degrees (and on a Google-WUaS platform too) - e.g. in Farsi and for Iranians:  


at Iran World Univ & Sch

https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Persian_language (planned in Farsi)

... and even with a planned online WUaS Iran Law School in Farsi, with parallels to (if at all possible)  - 


Law Schools at World University and School (planned in main languages in them)

Afghanistan Law School at WUaS: https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Afghanistan_Law_School_at_WUaS

Brazil Law School at WUaS: https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Brazil_Law_School_at_WUaS

China Law School at WUaS: https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/China_Law_School_at_WUaS

Egypt Law School at WUaS: https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Egypt_Law_School_at_WUaS

India Law School at WUaS: https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/India_Law_School_at_WUaS

Jamaica Law School at WUaS: https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Jamaica_Law_School_at_WUaS

Mexico Law School at WUaS: https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Mexico_Law_School_at_WUaS

World University Law School: https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/World_University_Law_School


You'll also find some wiki "Art: and "Women" 's WUaS Subjects for open teaching and learning - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Subjects - some of which will be translated into Persian too, and with machine learning, and machine translation. 


Again, thank you for your excellent "Women, Art, Freedom: Women Artists & Street Politics in Iran" Stanford presentation, and the focus on protest. Not easy to bring these questions up, but if you learned that Iranian artist women - perhaps your contacts and informants - were being harassed or even raped, or possibly even turned into slaves in a sense, for example, how would you seek to protect them? In the picture of Mehraneh Atashi, and not the flower picture by her, what if she was being stalked and had even been raped by that person behind her in the first picture ... and this art was even being used for political purposes to impose rape or slavery on women artists by some Iranian networks of men? And what if she had no legal recourse to such possible crimes ... and in that  "several prominent contemporary women artists who have questioned the limitations of public life for women, demanded freedom of expression, and reclaimed the streets through their creative and courageous interventions" ?

With a BArch in your CV - https://associationforiranianstudies.org/sites/default/files/2021-election/pamela.pdf - from Iran I presume - do you know by any chance my friend Shahrzad Shirvani, with a BArch degree from Iran possibly from around this time, and who received a UC Berkeley PhD some 10-15 years ago, and is now living in southern California (with her mother)? I know Shahrzad Shirvani through UC Berkeley Anthropologies' Tourism Studies Working Group (in which I've given 5 talks too ) ... and regarding this blog label - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/tour in daily blog).

How might we best grow a MIT OCW-centric wiki Iran World Univ & Sch in Persian together? 

And, living in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, in SE Massachusetts, have you ever visited nearby Cuttyhunk Island, MA (where I've grown up in the summers since around 1966)?

MIT OCW-centric wiki World Univ & Sch is calling for abolition abolishing organized crime, and the illegal sex and drug industries and their latent networks of violence, and potentially in each of all ~200 countries as major online MIT OCW-centric WUaS Universities, and to protect people, and even in WUaS Planning to code for all 7.9 billion people on the planet, each a Wikidata PIN #  - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/You_at_World_University - and potentially to distribute Stanford Mine Pi cryptocurrency to end poverty via UBI experiments too. 

Will add you to MIT OCW-centric wiki World Univ & Sch's mailings if that's alright, and look forward to learning some of your thoughts about these questions. Thank you! 

WUaS is much on Twitter re your - 
https://twitter.com/pamelakarimi1 - as an idea generator, and see 6 Twitter feeds as well. 

All the best, thank you, Friendly greetings, regards, 
Scott GK MacLeod 

will Also add this to my (first) daily blog post from today as well - 

https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Iran_(Islamic_Republic_of)




PS
Regarding your "Naked City" slide, and your being an architect, how might we explore creating a Realistic Virtual Iran and in Google Street View with Time Slider, Maps, Earth, TensorFlow AI - and as classrooms and STEAM field sites in Iran ... and with parallels to my next book Physical-Digital Harbin Hot Springs' ethnographic book project which seeks for all of us to potentially co-build a realistic virtual Harbin, and a realistic virtual earth ... including all of our countries ... and potentially newly with ... 


PPS
create a Realistic Virtual Harbin for research with Google's #GeospatialCreator?

📣 Announced today at #GoogleIO!

🌟 Geospatial Creator, a tool powered by ARCore and
@GMapsPlatform
 and integrated in
@Unity
 and
@AdobeAero
, to help you visualize, design, and publish world-anchored, immersive #AR content in 100+ countries.

Learn more → http://goo.gle/42rAur8


https://twitter.com/GoogleARVR/status/1656418913188495372?s=20



PPPS
Pamela, out of curiosity, and in seeking to build many realistic virtual Hot Springs for soaking from home bathtubs in (eg in a digital mask), and for ethnographic and STEM brain research with wearables for example, I searched on natural geothermal hot springs in Iran and found the following:   

Here we introduce hot springs of Iran based on the geothermal resources on the map below:
Sarein Hot Springs: Sarein, a famous touristic city especially for its springs, lies in Sabalan region 25 km from Ardabil in the northwest of Iran. ...
Sahand: ...
Khoy-Maku: ...
Tekab-Hashtrood: ...
Zanjan: ...
Ramsar: ...
Tabas-Ferdoos:
https://www.tappersia.com/irans-natural-spas-hot-mineral-springs-and-where-to-find-them/ 


PPPPS
Women, Art, Freedom: Women Artists & Street Politics in Iran
Pamela Karimi

10:00 AM PT | Thursday, May 11 | via Zoom

Following the tragic murder of Mahsa Amini, Iranian women took to the streets in large numbers to protest. Their bodies were the focus of these demonstrations, with women dancing and spinning their headscarves or anonymous activists installing protest banners or using sanitary pads to cover surveillance cameras in order to prevent state authorities from imposing conservative dress codes on women. The courageous presence of women in public spaces has been a crucial aspect of this revolution, with many instances of women's political activism on the streets taking on characteristics of art production. By entering the realm of visuality and sense-experience, traditionally assigned to art and aesthetics, activism has taken on performative dimensions. However, the "Woman, Life, Freedom" uprising is not the only manifestation of such involvement. For over three decades, Iranian women artists (and, by extension, activists as artists) have engaged in public art activism, creating moments of rupture in everyday life without necessarily declaring an overt political stance. These artists have used guerilla-style tactics such as painting graffiti, playful drifting, and occupying empty urban spaces to assert their right to the city and challenge strict urban regulations. Such inventive practices in busy urban areas are more challenging for women artists than their male counterparts. This presentation highlights the work of several prominent contemporary women artists who have questioned the limitations of public life for women, demanded freedom of expression, and reclaimed the streets through their creative and courageous interventions.
 

Pamela Karimi received her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009 and is currently a professor at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Karimi is the author of Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran (Routledge, 2013) and Alternative Iran: Contemporary Art & Critical Spatial Practice (Stanford, 2022). She is the co-editor of The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in the Middle East: From Napoleon to ISIS, a collection of important essays published at the height of ISIS attacks on cultural heritage. Karimi has held fellowships from many organizations, including the College Art Association, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and Iran Heritage Foundation at SOAS. More recently Karimi was the co-recipient of a major grant from the Connecting Art Histories Initiative at the Getty Foundation. Co-founder of Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative, Karimi currently serves on the boards of Thresholds Journal (MIT Press) and the Association of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey.



- Scott GK MacLeod  
Founder, President, CEO & Professor
CC-4 licensed MIT OCW-centric. Wiki, 
World University & School (WUaS) 
- PO Box 442, Canyon, CA 94516 
- 210 East End Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15221
1) non-profit World University and School - http://worlduniversityandschool.org  
2) for profit general stock company WUaS Corporation in CA - http://worlduniversityandschool.org/AcademicPress.html

(m) 412 478 0116 - sgkmacleod@gmail.com 

World Univ & Sch Innovation Research -  scottmacleod.com 



On Thu, May 11, 2023 at 11:55 AM Iranian Studies <no-reply@zoom.us> wrote:
Hi Scott GK MacLeod,
This is a reminder that your webinar will begin in 1 hour:
Women, Art, Freedom: Women Artists & Street Politics in Iran
Date & TimeMay 11, 2023 10:00 AM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Webinar ID947 0390 9490
Passcode978565
DescriptionFollowing the tragic murder of Mahsa Amini, Iranian women took to the streets in large numbers to protest. Their bodies were the focus of these demonstrations, with women dancing and spinning their headscarves or anonymous activists installing protest banners or using sanitary pads to cover surveillance cameras in order to prevent state authorities from imposing conservative dress codes on women. The courageous presence of women in public spaces has been a crucial aspect of this revolution, with many instances of women's political activism on the streets taking on characteristics of art production. By entering the realm of visuality and sense-experience, traditionally assigned to art and aesthetics, activism has taken on performative dimensions. However, the "Woman, Life, Freedom" uprising is not the only manifestation of such involvement. For over three decades, Iranian women artists (and, by extension, activists as artists) have engaged in public art activism, creating moments of rupture in everyday life without necessarily declaring an overt political stance. These artists have used guerilla-style tactics such as painting graffiti, playful drifting, and occupying empty urban spaces to assert their right to the city and challenge strict urban regulations. Such inventive practices in busy urban areas are more challenging for women artists than their male counterparts. This presentation highlights the work of several prominent contemporary women artists who have questioned the limitations of public life for women, demanded freedom of expression, and reclaimed the streets through their creative and courageous interventions.

If you need a disability-related accommodation for this event, please contact us at iranianstudies@stanford.edu. Requests should be made by May 3, 2023.
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Stanford Iranian Studies
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--


Scottish Small Piping album #2 - Honey Piobaireachd (2022)


- Scott GK MacLeod  
Founder, President, CEO & Professor
CC-4 licensed MIT OCW-centric. Wiki, 
World University & School (WUaS) 
- PO Box 442, Canyon, CA 94516 
- 210 East End Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15221
1) non-profit World University and School - http://worlduniversityandschool.org  
2) for profit general stock company WUaS Corporation in CA - http://worlduniversityandschool.org/AcademicPress.html

(m) 412 478 0116 - sgkmacleod@gmail.com 

World Univ & Sch Innovation Research -  scottmacleod.com 



Thank you, Professor Pamela Karimi!




































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