A Myriad of Tongues: How language may shape our world view

Noam Chomsky theories shaped the understanding related with language acquisition, suggesting the human mind is pre-equipped with a set of linguistic constraints, a "universal grammar"  as common structural foundation across languages. 

Chomsky's theory challenged the belief that language development was solely influenced by environmental factors, arguing that all human languages share underlying syntactic categories and grammatical features. While this theory led to assume that all languages categorize ideas and objects similarly, research has showed that many concepts are not universal and speakers of different languages literally see and think about the world differently.

Linguistics argue that language is not a cultural artifact but instead, a biological and cognitive aspect of language in our brains. 

However, while in English people refers to time in spatial terms, speakers of Amazonian languages do not do that and in fact, some languages do not have a word for time. 

The book Myriad of Tongues, presents profound insights about the fundamentals of human communication and Caleb Everett takes readers around the globe explaining what linguistic diversity tells about human culture. 

AI is not the universal problem solver

Artificial Intelligence is rife with contradictions; a powerful tool still also very limited in terms of capabilities. And, while it has the potential to improve human existence, at the same time it threatens to deepen social divides and put millions of people out of work. While its inner workings are highly technical, the non-technical among us can and should understand the basic principles of how it works - and the concerns that it raises. 

As the influence and impact of AI spreads, it will is critical to involve people and experts from the most diverse backgrounds possible in guiding this technology in ways that enhance human capabilities and lead to positive outcomes.

AI is not the universal problem solver and having a clearer idea of what AI is, and is not "will be critical to move beyond solutionism,” says Stuart Russell, the renowned Professor of Computer Science at University of California, Berkeley.


Speaking during the opening plenary of the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils, Russell explained that “solutionism” is the attitude that, given enough data, machine learning algorithms can offer a solution for all our problems. He also spoke about how to dispel common AI misconceptions and how best to advance the field of study.

Study presents new method for explainable AI; CRP, Concept Relevance Propagation

In their paper "From attribution maps to human-understandable explanations through concept relevance propagation," researchers from Fraunhofer Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institut (HHI) and the Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data (BIFOLD) the concept relevance propagation (CRP), a new method that can explain individual AI decisions as concepts understandable to humans.


The paper has now been published in Nature Machine Intelligence


AI systems are largely black boxes: It is usually not comprehensible to humans how an AI arrives at a certain decision. CRP is a state-of-the-art explanatory method for deep neural networks that complements and deepens existing explanatory models. In doing so, CRP reveals not only the characteristics of the input that are relevant to the decision made, but also the concepts the AI used, the location where they are represented in the input, and which parts of the neural network are responsible for them.


More reading and full article - From attribution maps to human-understandable explanations through Concept Relevance Propagation

When Computer Vision Works More Like a Brain, It Sees More Like People Do

From cameras to self-driving cars, many of today’s technologies depend on artificial intelligence to extract meaning from visual information. Today’s AI technology has artificial neural networks at its core, and most of the time we can trust these AI computer vision systems to see things the way we do — but sometimes they falter. 

According to MIT and IBM research scientists, one way to improve computer vision is to instruct the artificial neural networks that they rely on to deliberately mimic the way the brain’s biological neural network processes visual images.
Researchers led by MIT Professor James DiCarlo, the director of MIT’s Quest for Intelligence and member of the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, have made a computer vision model more robust by training it to work like a part of the brain that humans and other primates rely on for object recognition. This May, at the International Conference on Learning Representations, the team reported that when they trained an artificial neural network using neural activity patterns in the brain’s inferior temporal (IT) cortex, the artificial neural network was more robustly able to identify objects in images than a model that lacked that neural training. And the model’s interpretations of images more closely matched what humans saw, even when images included minor distortions that made the task more difficult.

Japanese groundbreaking vaccine is potentially capable of preventing or modifying the course of Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s disease is a type of dementia that affects memory, thinking and behavior. Symptoms eventually grow severe enough to interfere with daily tasks and the disease accounts for 60% to 80% of dementia patients worldwide.

In Alzheimer’s disease, two abnormal structures called plaques and tangles are prime suspects in damaging and killing nerve cells. In the first, an accumulation of brain proteins called beta-amyloid peptides clump together forming plaques that disrupt cell function.

Researchers at Juntendo University School of Medicine in Tokyo (Japan), have developed a novel vaccine targeting brain cells associated with Alzheimer’s disease, initially designed to eliminate senescent cells expressing senescence-associated glycoprotein (SAGP). The vaccine reduced amyloid deposits in the cerebral cortex region responsible for language processing, attention, and problem-solving. Additionally, it decreased the size of astrocyte cells, a specific inflammatory molecule. It reduced other inflammatory biomarkers, indicating an improvement in brain inflammation.

“If the vaccine could prove to be successful in humans, it would be a big step forward towards delaying disease progression or even prevention of this disease.” says lead study author Chieh-Lun Hsiao, Ph.D., a post-doctoral fellow in the department of cardiovascular biology and medicine at Juntendo University.

Too fast, too soon? Sweden backs away from screens in schools

Sweden recently announced that the country's schools will remove digital technology from classrooms because of poor student performance. Some ask how useful is digital learning. But it also poses the question: is "digital de-escalation" even possible?

Sweden’s Minister of Schools, Lotta Edholm, said children’s ability to read has deteriorated and their writing skills have weakened, and there are many reasons, the most important of which is their increased reliance on tablets and spending a lot of time in front of screens.

The Swedish Minister of Schools, under the supervision of the Minister of Education, had embarked some time ago on a reform of the country’s education system.
Moreover, the research already recommended ensuring a basic level of literacy and mathematics in the traditional way to create equal opportunities in the digital environment – rather than introducing more technological tools in the classroom.

The full article here.

AI has "hacked the operating system of human civilization", says Yuval Noah Harari

Pedro Pinto and Yuval Noah Harari delve into the future of artificial intelligence and together, they explore pressing questions in front of a live audience, such as: 

- What will be the impact of A.I. on democracy and politics? 

- How can we maintain human connection in the age of A.I.? 

- What skills will be crucial for the future? 

- And what does the future of education hold?


"If we are so smart why are we doing so many stupid things? Humanity is not that simple." says Yuval Noah Harari.

An interview filmed on May 19 2023 in Lisbon, produced by Francisco Manuel dos Santos (FFMS).

Harari argues that AI has "hacked the operating system of human civilization". 
He ask what will happen to the course of history when AI takes over culture, and begins producing stories, melodies, laws and religions?

Harari reflection is that "if we are not careful, we might be trapped behind a curtain of illusions, which we could not tear away—or even realize is there. 
Just as a pharmaceutical company cannot release new drugs before testing both their short-term and long-term side-effects, so tech companies shouldn’t release new AI tools before they are made safe. We need an equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration for new technology."