You shall not pass

Having spent the first morning of 2015 surfing links on my iPad, it's striking to me how much better the user experience of so-called “new” media sites is on mobile than it is for “old” media sites.

It's almost entirely because the newer sites don't resort to full-screen takeover ads which, on mobile, often make it impossible to find the close or skip button because the ad unit isn't centered properly in the in-app or mobile browser. I don't know how many times I've tapped on a link in Twitter to read an article, only to have it hidden behind a giant black blob, with no idea which direction to scroll to find the close button. I wonder how many such sites even bother to test the experience of trying to read their content the way most people find it nowadays, through links posted on social media, on mobile devices.

Let's hope in 2015 we see more native ad units as on most social networks or new media sites, and fewer of these obtrusive non-native ads like banners and full-screen takeovers. Native ads got a bad name somewhere along the line, but their user experience is far superior.

Love is all around

2014 ended as if America was fraying at the seams, but Bryan Caplan points out all is not gloomy.

Superficial observers will see further evidence that economists can't shut up about selfishness.  But on reflection, the logic of collective action is compelling evidence for the power of altruism.  How so?  Because actual human beings often engage in collective action despite the strong selfish case for inaction!  Many people give blood without the slightest recompense.  Many people voluntarily join the army when they see their country in danger, despite high risk and low wages.  Many people donate to charity even though eligibility for charity has nothing to do with their donation history.  If altruism is not their motive, what is?

Sure, true believers in ubiquitous selfishness can grasp at straws to protect their dogma.  Perhaps people donate blood for the free cookie, join the army because they might run for office one day, or give to charity in order to make business connections.  Or maybe millions of average joes are clueless enough to believe that the blood supply, the safety of the free world, and the availability of charity hinge on whatever they personally choose to do.  

Anything is possible, but that doesn't mean that anything is plausible.  Once you grasp the logic of collective action, basic economics strongly supports a conclusion that economists rarely advertise: Genuine altruism is all around us.  Benevolence doesn't explain why bakers bake bread for paying customers, but it does explain why blood donors give blood to strangers for free.

Better than the Turing test

Is the Turing test really the best way to screen for artificial intelligence? One alternative sounds more promising: Winograd schemas.

The test would take the form of a multiple-choice quiz of reading comprehension. But the text itself would have some very specific features. It would consist of Winograd schemas: pairs of sentences whose intended meaning can be flipped by changing just one word. They generally involve unclear pronouns or possessives. A famous example comes from Stanford computer scientist Terry Winograd:

"The city councilmen refused the demonstrators a permit because they feared violence. Who feared violence?"
1) The city councilmen
2) The demonstrators

And:

"The city councilmen refused the demonstrators a permit because they advocated violence. Who advocated violence?"
1) The city councilmen
2) The demonstrators

Most human beings can easily answer these questions. We use our common sense to figure out what "they" is supposed to be referring to in each case. And that common sense basically involves a combination of extensive cultural background knowledge with analytical skills. (In the first question, we can deduce that the city councilmen feared violence. In the second, the demonstrators advocated violence.)

For computers, however, these questions can be quite difficult. From a grammatical standpoint, the "they" in the sentences is technically unclear. In both questions, "they" could be either the councilmen or the demonstrators.

Is this truly a superior test of AI? We may start collecting some data points soon. In 2015, Nuance Communications is sponsoring the first of what will be an annual Winograd Schema Challenge.

I continue to insist that the next great milestone in AI is when Waze stops trying to send me to unprotected left turns as shortcuts. UPS already figured this out.

First digital animal

One approach to building artificial intelligence is to just build a perfect copy of an animal intelligence (including humans). We are a long ways away from being able to do that. How long I have no idea, but safe to say it's not imminent.

But someday we may look back on this digital worm as a significant milestone in the attempt to replicate a live organism without using genetic cloning.

The bot's artificial brain has the same number of cells as a real nematode brain, and they are connected up in exactly the same way. But instead of a fluid tubular body animated by 95 muscles, WormBot has a plastic body and two wheels. It does not eat, defecate, reproduce or die. That will be left to its future sibling, WormSim, which will be a cell-for-cell digital copy of the worm, living inside a computer.

Both projects began with the simplest, smallest brain that we know of – the one that is inside the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans. This lab workhorse was the first organism to have its genome sequenced, and the first to have its entire brain mapped. It is largely hermaphrodite, with 959 cells each of which has also been mapped. Its network of 302 neurons connect via 6393 synapses – its connectome – and link to the worm's 95 muscles at 1410 junctions.

...

Independent researcher Tim Busbice used the OpenWorm data to build WormBot's brain. He started by building a neural network in which the neurons were connected to each other according to the C. elegans connectome. In a live animal, neurons often latch onto each other through repeated connections: so neuron A might make five synapses to neuron B, and each time A fires, all five relay the signal to B. Busbice used weightings to represent this in his neural network. Just like real neurons, those in WormBot, receive inputs from a network of "upstream" neurons and have to reach a threshold in order to fire and pass the signal on to those downstream. If that threshold isn't reached a set period of time the system resets to zero.

Instead of muscles, WormBot has two wheels controlled by a matrix of 95 cells, representing the 95 muscles of C. elegans. Busbice hooked up the worm's chemosensory neurons, which a real worm uses to detect smells and tastes, to a microphone that is triggered beyond a certain decibel threshold. He also connected the worm's "nose-touch" neurons to a sonar that would send a message upstream to the brain if WormBot gets within 20 centimetres of an obstacle.

Assuming you can create a perfect copy, profound philosophical questions of consciousness, the soul, and all that are sure to follow.

Becons

The Becons are the Behavioral Economics Oscars. They are exactly what they sound like, prizes awarded on the basis of their economic lessons. Cass Sunstein runs down this years winners.

Best picture: No, it’s not "Interstellar," and it’s not "Gone Girl." And a loud system 1 rejection of "Birdman," "The Theory of Everything," "Into the Woods" and "The Imitation Game." The biggest Becon goes to the movie that has the biggest heart, and the best scene, and the best score, and the best romance of the year (without even a single kiss). It’s a celebration of optimism bias, the value of agency, duration neglect, the illusion of control, the gambler’s fallacy, steps you can’t take back, and the human spirit. Mark Ruffalo and Keira Knightley, you are ridiculously good. "Begin Again" dances off with the Becon.

Which goes to show that while movies can teach important economic lessons, that might not be the best way to go about making a good movie (Begin Again is by the director of Once, and it is basically Once with actors instead of musicians as leads; if you choose to see one, see Once).