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<p>This is what made it through my semi-permeable filter-bubble
membrane first thing this morning (CET):<br>
</p>
<p>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://theconversation.com/googles-powerful-ai-spotlights-a-human-cognitive-glitch-mistaking-fluent-speech-for-fluent-thought-185099">https://theconversation.com/googles-powerful-ai-spotlights-a-human-cognitive-glitch-mistaking-fluent-speech-for-fluent-thought-185099</a></p>
<p>which became grist for the mill we have been grinding with here
of late. It highlights interesting things like how flawed (but
useful?) the Turing Test is. The TT represents precisely "the
glitch". I think this idea points in the general direction of
conscious empathy... if we recognize language fluency *as*
mental fluency, then it is more obvious that we would grant others
who present language fluency as being similar to ourselves,
possibly assuming that "other" is closer to "not other" simply
because of the familiar language that flows out of us. <br>
</p>
<p>In my (limited) EU travels this season I have heard only a
half-dozen languages with half as many accents/dialects each...
In english-speaking ireland, a little gaelic slipped out here and
there but the accent referenced it with every lilt. This was not
unfamiliar to my ear, so I mostly heard it as "same", but in
Wales, the Welsh was not nearly (at all?) familiar and the
romanisation/anglification of the written Welsh was overwhelmingly
unfamiliar. When I read a sign, I felt like I was left with a
mouthful of consonants and diacritics that I had to spit out just
to clear my vocal passage to start on the next phrase.</p>
<p> It gave me more sympathy for my non Southwest colleagues
struggling with the various anglifications of the hispanification
of a dozen different native American languages (starting in my
neighborhood with Tewa/Tiwa/Towa and expanding out withe Keres and
Dine' and Zuni ...) The (nearly conventional/normalized)
rendering of most of these languages is for me familiar enough
that I don't struggle or wince, but after (especially Welsh)... "I
get it". When confronted with each British accent (I couldn't
identify or distinguish many if any) it took a few hours at least
to become habituated enough to not be disturbed (intrigued or put
off, depending) by the unfamiliar sound patterns and often
idiomatic constructions. <br>
</p>
<p> I thought i would be able to "hear" French as comfortably as I
did Italian 10 years ago, but it seems the "Romance" connections
between Spanish and Italian and the plethora of Latin
words/phrases in science made it much more familiar than French.
The tiny bit of French I think I am habituated to are a few
Americanized stock phrases and maybe a very little bit of dialogue
from movies... After a week of hearing almost nothing *but*
French it no longer felt outrageously "Other" even if I couldn't
hardly parse a thing out of a run-together-spoken-phrase. Mary
and I observed one another trying to speak English to someone who
did not speak much if any and we realized that we were both prone
to repeat the same sentence with a word choice or two changed, but
more emphatically (and therefore more run-together) each time.
Not helpful, and perhaps what the few French who bothered to speak
to us once it was established that we had no language in common,
were doing themselves. It was hard to recognize even word-breaks
in the word-salad coming at us. The little German we were
exposed to had a *different* set of familiar words and sounds and
I think the English and German might have a much stronger phonemic
overlap, making it not sound quite as foreign... though I was left
wanting to clear my throat after hearing much spoken german...
and then here in the Netherlands with *many*
English-speaking-with-Dutch-Accent we are much more
comfortable... and much of the written Dutch is familiar even
when the pronunciation is a git foreign.<br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/the-cognitive-glitches-of-humans-laurie-santos-on-what-makes-the-human-mind-so-special">https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/the-cognitive-glitches-of-humans-laurie-santos-on-what-makes-the-human-mind-so-special</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>In trying to (re)find the first article, I ran across this
article which was a bit more interesting to me. The point they
make about human cognitive bias against anyone who speaks
differently (acutely illuminated by the once-familiar term "deaf
and dumb" or "dumb-mute" for those who could not speak (due to
deafness, aphasia, or perhaps some trauma? The line from the
Rock Opera "Tommy"s Pinball Wizard comes to mind: "That deaf,
dumb and blind kid, could sure play a mean pin ballll!" <br>
</p>
<p>A counter to the *negative* bias I recently heard was: "Don't
mistake an accent for a personality"...<br>
</p>
<p>It is fascinating to me how many ways we can split a hair in
discussing AI, etc. A* really. Intelligence, Reasoning, Life,
Consciousness, etc. ad nauseum. And yet it is useful (I think)
to note that no one of them is really broad nor narrow enough at
the same time. Each is a facet or reflection of the other. The
second article seems to discuss "emotional intelligence" or I
think more aptly "emotional knowledge". My very first (and
practically only) published "artpiece" was a visual study on the
distinction between "knowing" and "knowing-about", with AI
climbing the steep part of the hill toward a pinnacle (or more
likely series of false summits) of "knowing about" without
possibly getting at all any closer (at all) to "knowing". <br>
</p>
<p>This leads me back to Marcus' haunting suggestion that "is
learning anything more than imitation/emulation?"</p>
<p>Following Glen's ideation about bureaucracy as a form of tech, I
find that a great deal of my daily interaction with other people
is, in fact, with their bureaucratic roles. I am seeking a
transaction... knowledge, information, material goods, a
service. And given the level of the mutual (mis)understanding
I've been enduring for over a month now in those transactions, It
now feels like a luxury to expect a service person to articulate
their preferences and basis of their preferences in a given baked
good, bit of unfamiliar produce, or even (gawdess forbid) Beer!
But it has trained me to "listen for emotional content" more than
substance. If I ask for a "Blonde" or a "Bruun" or a "Trippel"
or a "Wit" and they rattle off something about one or more of
them, I will choose one based on the level of excitement in their
voice-eye over any imagined information content their response
implied. I am sometimes disappointed but almost always
surprised. The vocabulary of European Beers overlaps (up to
language) what I am familiar with amongst American Craft beers but
my exploration is wider (through clumsiness if nothing else). My
best strategy is simply to (try to) ask for "whatever is brewed
locally". Also a good strategy for food it seems.<br>
</p>
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