DNDAS, Human-Subject Beta Tests, Art Houses, Cleaner Blockchain and Our New Website
The Don Norman Design Award is here.
The day is finally here! Don Norman announced something we were excited about at Singular XQ—the Don Norman Design Award and Summit. We have known for a while that Don was up to something, and we had an exciting conversation with him both on and off-screen. You can see the two-part episode on video on our Patreon or download the audio on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It’s a two-part episode and well worth the listen!
See Don’s own words about the project here.
Human-Subject Review for Beta Testing
Google aims to relaunch Gemini in a couple of weeks. been fodder for Musk trying to position his AI project as anti-woke to the 40% of Americans who think of woke as an “insult.” (That percentage is much higher in those over 40, in an economy where the mean age of an investor is well over 40.) Regardless, the error was an overcorrection to the lack of diversity in racial bias in existing models. It is an example of miscategorization in AI models and is a logical error in reasoning called the fallacy of composition.
In other words, it programmed a range of racial features to be used for image requests but forgot to accept images of historical people for whom that range would be inaccurate. I wrote extensively about our inability to account for the idea of “fiction,” or “lie,” in computationally derived models of intelligence back in 2003 (and being re-released as a forthcoming book), based on research going back to the 80s. Even then, we saw this as a problem before having a socially connected web to create endless agitprop material for human consumption.
We want to know– where are the humanity-centered designers and researchers in this? Testing should have exposed this flaw easily. But it seems that “the beta test” is so widely accepted we’ve accepted that while scholars and scientists have to apply to human subject review boards, large technology companies do not. Be warned that the court has so far decided that individuals who use technology are accountable for the failures of those technologies, while regulatory bodies are not holding companies or CEOs accountable.
Snipptet from MIT Media Lab for Future Sketches Artechouse
Artechouse is a set of innovative art spaces in Miami, Washington DC, and New York that reflects our dedication to STEAM approaches to learning and knowledge-making in the contemporary world. Zach Lieberman’s Future Sketches/Code Poems is showing in Miami Beach.
Thermal Batteries and Waste Energy
Our research into sustainability in clean energies for blockchain uncovered a new technology called thermal batteries, championed by a new start-up called Antora Energy. While not explicitly targeting blockchain, we predict this might contribute to blockchain-powered initiatives’ overall energy management strategy. Specifically, our Signal team has theorized that the excess energy produced by blockchain operations could be captured and stored in thermal batteries of a similar nature. While this does not reduce the carbon burdens of the Proof of Work (PoW) blockchain, it provides a paradigm in which excess energy could be a feature and not a bug.
Website Launch in 2024
A student design team is redesigning Singular XQ’s website as part of our collaboration with Cornell University’s StudioLab within our Singular XQ Academy program. We have a placeholder site up for now, but, like the rest of the world, we have been experiencing a lot of hosting downtime lately. We aim to have our open-source research repository up and running by June. Stay tuned! There may be downtime here and there as we migrate and redesign. You can always find us on Linked In or our other social platforms. We appreciate those of you who reached out to let us know when we were down yesterday.
