Blog Closing Down

Hi,

I'm closing this blog and this will be the last post. I started it with the first post on April 5th 2010 to support the writing of my book, The Universal Machine, on the history of computing. Over the years it's by and large kept to that topic. It's had 585,622 page views over the decade or so which sounds quite respectable. The blog will remain in place as a record, but I will not be adding new posts as I'm retiring at New Years. Thanks for your support.

Ian Watson

Enigma machine found in Baltic to be restored

 

Divers who found a WWII Enigma coding machine in the Baltic will have their find restored in a German museum, the process will take about a year. The enigma machine is a German Naval Enigma with three coding rotors, not the more complex four-rotor machine used by the U-boat service. The Enigma machines were used throughout WWII but had been cracked by Alan Turing's team working at Bletchley Park in England. As a consequence, the British could read all the German navy's communications from 1941.

Final 2020 Gibbons lecture - 21st October

 The fourth and final 2020 Gibbons Lecture is on Wednesday 21st October 2020 from 6-7pm in Room B10, The General Library, 5 Alfred St. Refreshments and networking from 7pm.  

Please register here to attend in person, if you have not already done so.   This lecture will not be live-streamed nor available later as a podcast.

 

Social media, AI, and society: Some psychological insights

As advanced digital technologies become an indispensable part of nearly all aspects of everyday living, it is essential to consider the downstream effects on society.

In this talk, Associate Professor

Kumar Yogeeswaran from the College of Science at the University of Canterbury will consider social scientific evidence on how these indispensable technologies shape people’s attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours. 

This lecture is run in association with the Auckland ICT Graduate School, IT Professionals NZ, and Dr Beryl Plimmer.

See here for more details on the Gibbons Memorial Lecture Series.  

Third 2020 Gibbons lecture - 14th October

The third 2020 Gibbons lecture is on the 14th October 2020 from 6-7pm in Room B10, The General Library, 5 Alfred St. Refreshments and networking are after the lecture at 7pm.  

Much of scientific research involves the generation and testing of hypotheses that can facilitate the development of accurate models for a system. In machine learning the automated building of accurate models is desired, however, traditional machine learning often assumes that the underlying systems are static and unchanging over time. In this talk, Dr Yun Sing Koh from the School of Computer Science at The University of Auckland will discuss research in the area of data streams and how we adapt to changes in the data.

Please register here to attend in person. The lecture will be streamed live and later available as a podcast.  

Gibbons Lecture Series - Big data: Transparency and reliability

The second 2020 Gibbons Lecture will be live-streamed only on 7 October 2020 at 6pm, due to alert level restrictions.

It will also be available later as a podcast.

 

There is near consensus in the emerging field of data ethics that processes and systems must be transparent and explainable to a wide range of stakeholders. 

In this talk, Professor Tim Dare from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Auckland will discuss why transparency and explainability have become central to data ethics and the reasons there are to question that centrality. Professor Dare will also discuss why we should be more concerned with reliability and with how automated systems compare, ethically, and with alternative ways of doing the tasks which might be done by automated systems.

See here for more details on the Gibbons Memorial Lecture Series. 

Gibbons Lecture - Our future with AI

 

There’s been dramatic progress in learning skills, such as object recognition, translation and speech, and in difficult but uncomplicated tasks like playing chess, Go and video games. Traditional AI focused on improving complex tasks, using knowledge and reasoning, that have driven human success. 

In this first talk, Professor Michael Witbrock from the School of Computer Science at the University of Auckland will discuss these paths to broad AI and explore Aotearoa’s potential to make sure of a positive outcome.

Location | This lecture will be live-streamed on Wed Oct 30 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM NZDT

Register now 

Gibbons Memorial Lecture Series 2020 - AI and Society

Earlier in the year we postponed the Gibbons Memorial Lecture Series due to Covid 19. Now, we are delighted to tell you we are on schedule to deliver the first of the 2020 series on 30 September 2020. Register here to attend in person this very exciting 2020 series that starts with each lecture at 6pm with networking refreshments after the lecture at 7pm. This year we are holding the series in Room B10 in the General Library, 5 Alfred Street. Live streaming links will be available and I will send these out a week before each lecture and they will be available on the website above. 

Prof. Michael Witbrock kicks the series off with Our future with AI and as per tradition, the first session will be chaired by the John Hosking, Dean of Science.

Edinblurb festival: the AI bot creating new fringe shows every hour

I came across an interesting story in The Guardian about an AI creating new fringe shows at the Edinburgh festival

You can see how it happens. The company has yet to start devising the show, but the deadline for the Edinburgh fringe programme is tomorrow. On a wing and prayer, the administrator writes a 100-word blurb and hopes for the best.

NZ's New Algorithm Charter a world-first!

Hi,
"New Zealand’s government says it is the first in the world to produce a set of standards for how public agencies should use the algorithms that increasingly drive decision-making by officials about every area of public life" says the Guardian newspaper. At the moment these standards have no legal teeth, but baby steps in the right direction. At least public bodies can be held up to account for why they aren't meeting the standards. Next, we need legislation like the European GDPR. Read the NZ Government's press release here.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) global data resource

Do you need more data about Covid-19? This is an excellent source of global data, updated each day, from Our World in Data. You can download the data set and analyse it yourself or use their visualisation tools. All their code is open source.

There is one caveat in that all the data is gathered in different ways in different countries. So, as you've heard politicians say, direct nation to nation comparisons must be treated with some caution.

NZ Covid-19 Tracer App released

The NZ Ministry of Health has released its Covid-19 Tracer app. It's available now to download from the Apple App Store and Google Play. Download it and tell your whānau, friends and work colleagues.

The story of New Zealand’s Covid-19 lockdown, in graphs

Stuff recently published an excellent article that functions on two levels. First, as its title suggests it provides interesting information on NZ's Covid-19 lockdown. But, secondly, it shows how the good use of graphs can make complex data much easier to understand. Highly recommended

The University of Auckland is ranked No. 1 by Times Higher Education

The THE rankings measure how universities worldwide are performing against the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs came into force in 2016 and set a 15-year agenda for all countries to end poverty, fight inequalities and build peaceful, just and sustainable societies.
Placing first overall for the second year running reaffirms the University of Auckland’s strong commitment to sustainability and making a positive social impact through its partnerships, research, teaching, operations, community engagement and knowledge transfer. Read more about this here.

Remote teaching during the lockdown

Since the University closed we've been forced to teach remotely. Fortunately, we were already using a great online course delivery system, Canvas. We can reuse lecture recordings from previous semesters or make new ones using PowerPoint's audio recording feature. Most importantly Zoom, a video conferencing system, is proving invaluable. It enables us to host group meetings and webinars. We're also using Zoom for school management and research meetings. Various member of staff are experimenting with other online collaborative tools and will report on their pros and cons in due course. It's not entirely business as usual but we're coping.
On a personal note, my friends and I are also using Zoom socially. Sunday afternoon we got together virtually over a few a drinks and had a great catch-up and last evening we held a pub quiz that went very well. You may be in isolation but there's no need to feel isolated.

The best, and the worst, of the coronavirus dashboards

This is a topical subject, coronavirus (or Covid-19) dashboards that visualise the outbreak in your city, country, continent or the globe. Neel V. Patel. writing for the MIT Technology Review has collated a list of the best, and the worst, of the coronavirus dashboards. Take a look.

Vienna Manifesto on Digital Humanism

My colleague Cris Calude brought the Vienna Manifesto on Digital Humanism to my attention. It states that: “The system is failing – stated by the founder of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee – emphasizes that while digitalization opens unprecedented opportunities, it also raises serious concerns: the monopolization of the Web, the rise of extremist opinions and behaviour orchestrated by social media, the formation of filter bubbles and echo chambers as islands of disjoint truths, the loss of privacy, and the spread of digital surveillance. Digital technologies are disrupting societies and questioning our understanding of what it means to be human. The stakes are high and the challenge of building a just and democratic society with humans at the centre of technological progress needs to be addressed with determination as well as scientific ingenuity. Technological innovation demands social innovation, and social innovation requires broad societal engagement."
Go to their website where you can read their manifesto and sign to support it.

A memorable CS graduate

Computer Science graduate Nodira Khoussainova is the co-founder and CEO of Focused, a Silicon Valley startup that helps people accomplish undistracted work for a couple of hours in a study hall-type setting. This isn't that unusual, many of our graduates start companies. I remember her because she graduated in CS, with Honours, when she was just 16 years old! She then went to study for a PhD is in Computer Science at the University of Washington. She was recently interviewed on Radio New Zealand and you can listen to her interview here.

Augmented reality contact lenses

Happy New Year and decade! I'm back after a holiday break (it's summer in New Zealand). What better way to start the new decade than the news that a company called Mojo Vision has unveiled it's augmented reality contact lenses: "Mojo Lens, a smart contact lens with a built-in display that gives you timely information without interrupting your focus. By understanding your real-world context, Mojo Lens provides relevant, eyes-up notifications and answers. Designed by optometrists, technologists, and medical experts, Mojo Lens gives you the knowledge you need—exactly when it’s needed."
The lenses are still some time away from public use but you can read more about it here.