Crimson Reason

A site devoted mostly to everything related to Information Technology under the sun - among other things.

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

AI and the Employment Process

As I understand it, a recruiter typically recieves a set of requirements for a position from the Hiring Manager and then proceeds to use such AI systems as ChatGPT, Gemini, CoPilot etc. to develop a job posting.

The candidates, in turn, use such AI tools as a Bot to scan job postings for a match.  The candidates then search those postings and use a Generative AI tool like ChatGPT to create matching resume and cover letters; which they submit as part of their applications.

Another AI tool scans the AI-generated resume and cover letter for matches, which may then be forwarded to a Voice-enabled Virtual Human AI agent, which places a phone call to the job applicant for more information.  The call is turned to text, analyzed by AI, and eventually seen by the (Human) recruiter.

I think the Marx Brothers did this in one of their movies.

Please see below.




Tuesday, October 22, 2024

Sabotaging AI - ByteDance intern fired for planting malicious code in AI models

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/bytedance-intern-fired-for-planting-malicious-code-in-ai-models/

AI Risk Repository

MIT’s AI risk repository offers a promising tool for categorizing and analyzing these threats. The repository serves as an invaluable resource. Aggregating hundreds of AI-associated threats across various environments and categorizing these risks based on their causes and natures—whether related to privacy, security, disinformation, or other concerns—enhances the probability of risk mitigation.

Saturday, October 19, 2024

When AI Eats Itself

"When AI Eats Itself: On the Caveats of Data Pollution in the Era of Generative AI" explores the challenges of data pollution in generative AI. The paper can be found at arXiv https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.09597

Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Loss of Confidence in IT

This article very much jives with my own experiences and observations as a Senior Software Developer at GM IT during my years with General Motors.  What this article fails to mention, which I experienced at GM IT, is the Fear and Hierarchy that permeated that entire IT organization.

At GM, the loss of confidence by the Business leaders in IT manifested itself in the creation and staffing of an entirely new GM IT facility in Mountainview and the reduction of GM IT in other GM IT locations by 2300 persons in about a year.

Failure always has consequences.

https://www.cio.com/article/3550623/many-c-suite-execs-have-lost-confidence-in-it-including-cios.html?amp=1#origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&cap=swipe,education&webview=1&dialog=1&viewport=natural&visibilityState=prerender&prerenderSize=1&viewerUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Famp%2Fs%2Fwww-cio-com.cdn.ampproject.org%2Fc%2Fs%2Fwww.cio.com%2Farticle%2F3550623%2Fmany-c-suite-execs-have-lost-confidence-in-it-including-cios.html%3Fusqp=mq331AQGsAEggAID&amp_kit=1

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

AI and Philosophy

We face many problems and issues for which we would like to have answers or even partial answers.

We also available to us the works of all Thinkers and Philosophers of Europe and Western Asia written over the last 2500 years.

I think it will bea good idea to develop (train) Large Language Models for Plato, Aristotle, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rusd, Saint Thomas of Aqinas, and others.  In this manner, we could pose questions to them, in a metaphoric way, and get their answers.  Needless to say, such LLMs need to include our contemporary context as well, the Revolutionary changes that Empirical Sciences have caused in our understandings of the world as well as archaeological and historical knowledge that has been gained over the last 200 years.

Furthermore, such an approach may be extended to the very large corpus of religious commentaries and expositions of extant religions; in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hindu Spiritual Doctrines, and Buddhism.

Ideally, one could pose moral, metaphysical, epistemological, ontological questions to these LLMs and see what they come up with.  They are meant as hypothesis generators and discussion starters and not a substitute for Thinkers and Philosophers.

News of IBM (and AI)

https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/ibm_layoffs_ai_talent/

We read ""Senior software engineers stopped being developed in the US around 2012... No country on Earth is producing new coders faster than old ones retire. India and Brazil were the last countries and both stopped growing new devs circa 2023. China stopped growing new devs in 2020."

Yet no employers have been begging me to join their organization!

I must be missing something crucial.

Tuesday, September 10, 2024

Pointing a User Story

When one attempts to point a User Story, one needs to take into account the 3 major factors pertaining to the delivery and completion of that User Story: Viz. Complexity, Effort, Uncertainty, in order to arrive at the points for it.

Factors for Estimating a User Story

One way of doing so would be to point each of the 3 factors above separately, using the usual Fibonacci sequence to assign an independent value to each factor.

The next step would be to compute the geometric mean of the 3 factors and round it up to the nearest Fibonacci number.  Here the geometric mean that could be used would be the cubic root.  Geometric mean is used since, Life is in general rather non-linear.

The advantage of this approach would be to explicitly call out each factor in the pointing process and to cause Developers to consider each factor independently.

The implementation could be a simple HTML page with 3 dropdowns (that are prepopulated by Fibonacci numbers): sel-options-complexity, sel-options-effort, and sel-options-uncertainty.

The JavaScript code - using jQuery - would be as follows:

<script>

    function GetSelectedValue() {

        var complexity = $('#sel-options-complexity').val();

        var effort = $('#sel-options-effort').val();

        var uncertainty = $('#sel-options-uncertainty').val();


        var score = Math.cbrt(complexity * effort * uncertainty);


        score = fitToFibonacciNumber(score);


        document.getElementById("combined-points").innerHTML = score;

    }


    function fitToFibonacciNumber(value) {

        if (value >= 1 && value < 2) return 1;

        if (value >= 2 && value < 3) return 2;

        if (value >= 3 && value < 5) return 3;

        if (value >= 5 && value < 8) return 5;

        if (value >= 8 && value < 13) return 8;

        if (value >= 13 && value < 21) return 13;

        if (value >= 21 && value < 34) return 21;

        if (value >= 34) return Math.trunc(value);

    }

</script>

The method GetSelectedValue() would be invoked every time the user selects a value from any of the dropdowns.  The result is then displayed on the UI (not shown here). 

In principle, any other non-linear function could be used, such as logarithm, or even the Sigmoid function.  One has to experiment with a stable Agile team over time to determine suitable alternatives to the geometric mean, utilized here.

In this treatment, the 3 factors Complexity, Effort, Uncertainty have been treated with equal weights.  However, there could be situations in which the Agile team is tackling User Stories that are more uncertain (ambiguous) or are working with lower-than-needed staffing levels or are dealing with very complex User Stories.  Under such circumstances, it might make sense to assign a different weight to each factor and then calibrate the weights over several Sprints with the Agile team.

Thursday, September 5, 2024

News of Cyborgs

In a case of Life imitating Art, we learn of a cyborg whose biological component is a fungus:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/04/science/fungus-robot-mushroom-biohybrid/index.html

Sunday, September 1, 2024

Programmer Joke

 Question: How can you tell when you are talking to an extrovert programmer?

  Answer: He stares at your shoes, when he talks to you!

About Me

My photo
I had been a senior software developer working for HP and GM. I am interested in intelligent and scientific computing. I am passionate about computers as enablers for human imagination. The contents of this site are not in any way, shape, or form endorsed, approved, or otherwise authorized by HP, its subsidiaries, or its officers and shareholders.

Blog Archive