December 2015

The Imitation Game: Turing’s Analogy of Gaming and AI Theory

December 30, 2015 Movies Technology

The Imitation Game produces an engrossing setting in a chamber with Detective Nock questioning Alan Turing, where he defines the theories of gaming and AI. The detective is clearly bewildered by the mathematical brilliance of his respondent. Alan Turing is widely considered as the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence today.

Turing seems to ostensibly denote the inadequacy of humanity about tolerating an individual’s right to freedom (a reference to his homosexuality) while harbouring a surprising curiosity in machine behaviour to quantify its emotions.

(Very well done Benedict Cumberbatch!)

Detective Nock: Can machines think?
Turing: Oh, so you’ve read some of my published works?
Detective Nock: What makes you say that?
Turing: Well, because I’m sitting in a police station, accused of entreating a young man to touch my p**** and you just asked me if machines can think.
Detective Nock: Well, can they?
Turing: Could machines ever think as human beings do? Most people say not.
Detective Nock: You’re not most people.
Turing: Well, the problem is you’re…asking a stupid question.
Detective Nock: I am?
Turing: Of course machines… can’t think as people do.
A machine is different… from a person. Hence, they think differently.
The interesting question is, just because something, uh,
thinks differently from you, does that mean it’s not thinking?
Well, we allow for humans to have such divergences from one another.
You like strawberries, I hate ice-skating,
you… cry at sad films, I… am allergic to pollen.
What is the point of-of different tastes, different… preferences
if not to say that our brains work differently, that we think differently?
And if we can say that about one another, then why can’t we say
the same thing for brains… built of copper and wire, steel?
And that’s…
Detective Nock: this big paper you wrote? What’s it called?
Turing: ”The Imitation Game.”
Detective Nock: Right, that’s…that’s what it’s about?
Turing: Would you like to play?
Detective Nock: Play?
Turing: It’s a game. A test of sorts.
For determining whether something is a…a machine or a human being.
Detective Nock: How do I play?
Turing: Well, there’s a judge and a subject, and…the judge asks questions,
and, depending on the subject’s answers, determines who he is talking with…
what he is talking with, and, um…
All you have to do is ask me a question.
Detective Nock: What did you do during the war?
Turing: I worked in a radio factory.
Detective Nock: What did you really do during the war?
Turing: (laughs softly) Are you paying attention?

Moonraker

Moonraker: How This 70s Movie Demonstrated The Technology of Tomorrow

December 24, 2015 Movies Technology

Though personally not a Star Wars fan beyond its futuristic innovations, I coincidentally chanced upon Moonraker which is also heavily influenced from the science fiction genre. And it’s quite unimaginable that James Bond could also be cast in a space-age flick diverging from what Ian Fleming had imagined for James Bond in his book Moonraker which was published back in 1955.

It was the 70s when Moonraker gave us distinct clues of the automation and mechanics coming to us in the 21st century. Equally pioneering if not more, than the Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope which was released to an outstanding box-office collection in 1977 which prompted the producers of James Bond to review. Although for the Stars Wars series since the plot and characters had galactic representation the makers could go over-the-top with the weapons and humanoids. In contrast, being a Bond flick Moonraker’s plot had to be deeply entrenched with the human civilization theme while any technological innovations had to echo with the real world. Some of that space technology has either been popularized or retired or is in the process of being modernized today. Sure Bond gadgets are exaggerated functionally in the series but read on if you are just as curious to know about Moonraker’s tech offerings which are remarkable for the era when it was released. It’s an account of where fiction meets with reality at the horizon called ‘cinema’.

The Concorde and the Space Shuttle
It featured the Concorde (but the landing in Rio De Janeiro was off beat?). The supersonic Concorde flight and the Space Shuttle technology are definitely the biggest scientific innovations and suited the futuristic theme of the movie – it’s ironic that both the services (or should I say ‘technologies’) are now considered obsolete and have been thoughtfully retired. It’s also intriguing that the movie featured a fully functional space shuttle (named Moonraker) much before NASA had even conducted its first orbital test flight of the original space shuttle.

Drax Industries and Space Entrepreneurship
A mid-air space shuttle hijack prompts MI6 to investigate the incident and 007 is chosen for the job. The trail leads to Drax Industries and its billionaire owner Hugo Drax while unearthing his wicked plans. Not only did Drax build his own Moonraker shuttles but also had the groundwork to support their launch from the Amazon rain forests. This will sound familiar to the business model which Elon Musk has successfully created with SpaceX (except for launching rockets from the Amazon jungles which is never happening.) Entrepreneurship in space technology wasn’t even considered in the 70s when NASA and other government agencies around the world headed research and held rocket engineering secrets. Despite Drax Industries being a fictitious entity, it introduced to the world the concept of space entrepreneurship and deep-space colonization as a viable alternative for the future of humanity.

The Space Station
This brainchild of Hugo Drax wasn’t surprising considering that the Soviets had already launched the Salyut program in 1971. What was fascinating though was Hugo Drax’s space station had the most modern design and was technologically more advanced than the modular space stations we are used to seeing today at the International Space Station (ISS). The ISS doesn’t have a ‘zero gravity’ setting enabling the astronauts to walk normally like Drax’s space station. So maybe this was a bit exaggerated! The most ambitious feature I thought was the simultaneous docking of the Moonrakers – 6 at a time, to bring in supplies to the station, which could become a remote possibility in the distant future for the ISS.

In Conclusion
The producers of James Bond pushed to develop Moonraker ahead of For Your Eyes Only after the overwhelming response to the Star Wars and the space-age genre. The comparison with Star Wars is thus obvious. However the technology from Moonraker was deployed sooner than Star Wars, even though I believe that the AI/humanoid theme from Star Wars is priceless and requires more research before it can be realistically deployed. This is not to suggest that Star Wars isn’t an entertaining movie series. But to realize that James Bond also went into outer space to save humanity, and that Moonraker was this sci-fi show uncovering some breakthrough technological innovations in the 70s, is personally gratifying to note.

Can I Have Your Honest Feedback Please?

December 21, 2015 General

As someone constantly lurking in the space for personal improvement, I have always valued and fallen back on critical feedback from recruiters and customers. This has helped me immensely to calibrate and improve my response to future job opportunities. Take the case of designing a simple résumé. I have lost count of the number of versions I have designed in order to meet market expectations and I still can’t say if I am completely satisfied. There’s always room for improvement in everything that I do, where the journey is to reach the epicenter of the issue. After all it’s a learning experience just like anything else and I enjoy every moment of it. In the recent spate of job interviews where I faced rejection I have received “positive” feedback from customers but it has been so vaguely reported to me that I can’t plan on making enhancements to anything, let alone the résumé. It only gets tougher and tougher on the mind to figure out why I wasn’t selected for the position despite meeting all the qualifications and acing the interviews.

I’m just playing a small part in the advancement of the UX/UI/Design Thinking community which isn’t particularly renowned for measuring and benchmarking peer performance in design deliverables. So a designer’s reputation is analogous to what you see in the portfolio. It’s also one of those rare fields where a person’s design knowledge on the CV or portfolio sometimes belies his/her industry experience. For example, I once proposed to hire a person whose CV was top class, but as I later found out on an interview this designer hadn’t provided a true reflection of the work experience. I brought that point across vividly in my discussions by pointing out the serious gaps in the CV, and hopefully, the individual would have taken my comments with utmost seriousness. On the other hand in this volatile UX/UI market companies would be finding it tough to weigh in on a designer’s value proposition despite conducting the personal interviews, evaluating the portfolio, etc., and the scale somehow always seems to tip in the favour of that someone special who seems to be more attuned to the company’s requirements. Is there a logic behind choosing A from B? Mostly I hear feedback for the refusal as not being a “cultural fit” for the company. But what exactly does that mean and how does one work to improve his/her chances in the market? Why was the strong candidate overlooked for a “better” one? What has made the other person more promising than me? It’s almost difficult to get any straight answers from recruiters later once the rejection call has been made.

For a multitude of corporations the painful job of sifting through the CVs culminates with finding the perfect candidate but what’s also needed is to provide a strong and honest feedback to the ones who did not make it to the finishing line after the interview round. The uphill task for a candidate to find gainful employment unfortunately does not end with the selection process. Particularly in today’s IT world where software designing has become so complex that each company has specific goals for individual UX positions, this is where I believe an honest exchange of critical insights is very crucial for not only designing better products but also for sustaining in-house design talent. From my experience I can tell you that designers thrive on honest feedback, it’s their bread and butter. So again, what are your thoughts on why the candidate did not make it? Was it the individual’s work or lack of communication skills or something more pertinent? There’s a need for a mechanism to voice your opinion on a personal level.

As far as hiring decisions are concerned, how about developing an HCM sytem to better judge the (design) capabilities in conjunction with the actual effort by combining a person’s inherent characteristics with the company objectives, and presenting a true personality account of the individual. You might have a ‘Yes/No’ answer right there. While nothing’s written in stone so far as humans are concerned and there will be gray areas from software analysis which can be evaluated independently by the SMEs. But connecting the dots by introducing rationale into the hiring process may allay fears within the industry to engage with the wrong talent in the first place, encourage recruiters to contribute with their feedback honestly and dynamically, help job seekers to gain valuable insights into their causes of rejection, and so on. Let’s hope we can continue with this debate until we find the answers.

Indian Military and the Naming of Weapons Systems

December 19, 2015 General

I’ve been trying to figure out how and why do the Indian Armed Forces name their weapons systems specifically after traditional Hindu terminology or those derived from the Sanskrit literature. Just to give you an example., under the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP) several missile systems and technologies were developed and named as Prithvi (Earth), Agni (Fire), Akash (the Sky), Trishul (the trident), and Nag (Cobra), which are prominent and regular Hindu/Hindi terms in the Indian culture. Some more, India’s original aircraft-carrier; also slated to relaunch under the same name, was called INS Vikrant (“courageous”), and other aircraft-carriers have all been named after Sanskrit/Hindu names – Viraat (Giant), (Vikramaditya  (“brave as the Sun”) and, the soon to be launched INS Vishal (Giant or Big). I couldn’t find a credible source to answer my question as to why Islamic or other traditional names do not figure in the list of Indian weaponry nomenclatures, and so I turned to Quora.

I asked – “Why isn’t (sic) the Indian armed forces using Islamic or other traditional nomenclatures for its weapons systems or military hardware?” It wasn’t that these names weren’t popular or that I had reservations about its use. But considering that India has a pretty vibrant and diversified culture of languages and traditions, and being particularly mindful of the concept of secularism deep-seated in her constitution, it was remarkable that the armed forces had not used Islamic or other religious terminologies for naming their weapons or hardware systems. I received a response from Sagnik Basu Choudhuri on Quora which cleared some air, and I thank him for his contribution.

I discovered that the names aren’t just meant to sound hip but they make logical sense when applied to their relevant weapons or hardware systems. For instance, the surface-to-surface missile is called “Prithvi” or Earth, the surface-to-air missile is called “Akash” or the Sky, though when I have to comprehend how an anti-tank missile could be called “Nag” or cobra, it does seem like the system was given just a fancy name without considering the metaphor (or maybe not). I would have much preferred “Ajit” (unconquerable) or “Anshuman” (the radiant) to ‘Nag’ honestly. But overall the armed forces seem to have selected names with regard to the inherent functions of the weapons or hardware systems. Though Sagnik has conceded in his reply to my question that there are not many systems which are named outside of the Hindu/Hindi/Sanskrit terminologies citing some examples. It’s also pleasing to discover that this matter hasn’t been  exploited for political gains though it’s a non-issue. Truth be told matters related to defence and security of any country should be delinked from undue political interference completely.

There are just 2 names (of the many I am sure) in the Indian military weaponry list which aren’t noted for its Hindi/Hindu/Sanskrit vocabulary, which I thought I should mention before ending my post.

INS Arihant (the Conqueror) – India’s fist nuclear-powered submarine; although that’s Sanskrit/Prakrit, the term “Arihant” figures prominently in Jain scriptures.

Shamsher (Sword of Justice) (thanks to Sagnik for this suggestion) – India signed a contract with aircraft manufacturer SEPECAT to license-build the Jaguar attack aircraft in India, the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) produced 120 aircraft under the local name “Shamsher” or ‘Sword of Justice’. (Wikipedia)