Posts on Memories of Zion

Reflections on Living in Israel (Part 2)

Sat, 30 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

"Daddy, I'm going to die! I don't want to die!"

My five-year-old daughter is screaming this over and over while we are in our house's bomb shelter. Outside, there was a boom that shook the whole apartment. It was like nothing I have ever experienced. I learned afterward that it was a Hamas missile that landed across the street from us.

This was late on October 7th.

Although we'd been under missile attack all day, it didn't seem to dawn on me until I heard that big boom. I'm not just observing some abstract war. These missiles are designed to kill me, my family, and my five-year-old who is crying her eyes out.

A Nation Of Warrior Poets

Mon, 18 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In the vast expanse of traditions, cultures, and ways of life that stretch across our world, each nation carves its path, guided by its history, values, and the collective spirit of its people. America, with its sprawling landscapes and diverse populace, has long stood as a beacon of freedom and opportunity, where serving one's country is seen as a noble profession, a calling for the brave and the bold. This profession, this sacred duty to protect and serve, is embraced by dedicated individuals who stand ready to defend the nation's ideals.

Reflections on Living in Israel (Part 1)

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I have been a technologist from an early age. When I was eleven, I was already writing complicated programs in a language called mIRCScript. What fascinated me about computers is their ability to calculate at a speed and precision beyond that of humans, or even the sum of all humans at the same time. Computers are precise and fast, and can do things no human can do on their own.

How to talk about AI risk without sounding like a nutjob?

Wed, 09 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

One of the biggest problems I have personally struggled with is how to talk about AI safety without coming off as a madman. To the uninitiated this community comes off like a cult. I've heard it called the rapture of the nerds. Yet AI Safety is also reasonable. It is based on rationality. Even the extreme proposition that AI safety is literally the most important thing is reasonable.

People who work in this field work like cloistered monks. Although it's all in the public view, what they work on is not advertised very well. The amount of highly specific AI Alignment lingo gives the field the feeling of esotericism. This further makes it inaccessible to the normal human.

The Tensions Inherent in Good Things

Tue, 31 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I've been struggling lately with this idea that there are many qualities which are good but in tension with each other.

Peace is contrary to justice
Ambition is contrary to gratitude

And obviously to get goodness, sometimes one has to invite badness. The famous "risk vs reward" calculation. It feels like to get anything done in this world, even if your intent is based on something obviously good, saving the world so to speak, you always have to risk something. To get justice, you have to be a little bit of a jerk. It's rather unfair actually.

Down with Nihilism

Fri, 20 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We are people who can ponder the infinite and yet we live less than a century. We live on a speck of dust in a universe that is billions of light years wide. People spend some of the best years of their lives working in depressing beige cubicles that are more like cages, forced to work on things that are inane and uninteresting merely to continue their trivial existence. We are talking about the most marvelous creatures that we know of, a sapient individual, a human being, being subject to such an existence. And when discussed in normal venues people often respond with the nihilistic statement "that is just the way it is".

In memory of my father Daniel Ben-Joseph (z"l)

Wed, 06 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Each soldier is unique through the eyes of someone who looks up to them.

Baruch dayan emet. May the holy memory of my father Daniel Ben-Joseph be a blessing for you and for the world.

The two lessons I want you to learn from my father are to not take life for granted and to love your children. My father did both ten thousand fold. This is a man that lived to 80 years old despite being chronically ill nearly his entire life. He had renal failure since he was young. This is a debilitating disease. We have a tendency to underestimate it, but kidney failure is one of the worst things to have. It requires you to live at the mercy of a machine, one that truly takes the life out of you. But my father lived to 80 years old, above the average lifespan.

Book Report: Klara and the Sun

Sun, 14 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

TLDR: Combine Gattaca, WALL-E, Blade Runner, and Her

WARNING: Contains mild spoilers.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro touches on the nature of emotion, cognition, loss and loneliness all against the backdrop of a futuristic society. Ishiguro articulates a future where artificial intelligence augments or replaces the need for human companionship. The book is about the relationship between Klara, an Artificial Friend (AF) and her owner Josie, a teenage girl. The book is written entirely in the first person perspective of Klara. By this mechanic, the author captures a kind of personality that is familiar and alien at the same time. Because her purpose is to be a friend, she has a genius for empathy that rivals any human. Klara comes off as some kind of ideal person, a living angel. As the story progresses you start to feel very bad for Klara and the way that humans treat her, even though because of her profound empathy, she herself sees nothing wrong with it.

A Blueprint for a Health Data Organization

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This is some scratchpadding that happened after talking with a friend of mine which I'm making public because why not? (Famous last words.). This is a fantasy league document (think Etz, the fantasy AI lab) and shouldn't be taken seriously.

The future of healthcare relies on a few foundational technologies. These foundational technologies are advanced through machine learning - algorithms that learn from data.

Public Health Intelligence: A Better Name for Biosecurity

Sun, 10 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A colleague of mine mentioned the term "public health intelligence". I rather like it. I interpret this term to mean: the practice of intelligence toward the reduction of pandemic risk and the improvement of public and individual health.

Throughout tens of thousands of years of human history, a nation, a tribe, a people were always at high risk of annihilation. This was not due to pandemics. This is due to war. The existential risks of losing in war are ingrained into the minds of mankind. And so convincing those with power of the importance of national security is easy.

What Makes a Community Livable?

Thu, 31 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

When I was a newly minted teenager, my parents sent me to live on a kibbutz in Israel for a summer. This was a kibbutz that had a massive dairy farm. I remember sleeping in barracks close to a huge group of cows who would moo all day and night. It smelled like shit - all the time. Yet it was the happiest experience of my life. Eating and joking with random strangers in the dining room. Drinking gallons of fizzy bubbly every day from the endless supply. Buying my very first Magnum ice cream bar at the kibbutz's commissary. And at night, the beautiful nights, hanging out at the bonfire with the exhausted kibbutzniks. The crackling of the fire lighting up the star-filled sky. I never wanted it to end.

What was the first language ever spoken?

Wed, 30 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In the beginning there was nothing. And God spoke into the void: Let there be light!

And there was light.

What language did God speak? What was the first language ever spoken?

In Jewish tradition, God's will is expressed through language. God spoke the entire Cosmos into existence.

The nothing that predated reality was surrounded by the Ein Sof (the infinite light). A single ray of light pierced the vacuum and the Hebrew letters and Hebrew language materialized into reality before anything else. And from this burst of Hebrew, all of creation followed. The entire Universe and all its rules and mechanics were described in Hebrew, the first language.

Growing Houses: The Solution to Climate Change

Tue, 29 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Climate change can be solved. In fact: all problems which are solvable can be solved with the application of sufficient intelligence.

I am against the idea of carbon sequestration for sequestration's sake. Carbon sequestration is the removal and storage of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It's like lighting money on fire. There is no economic value in this process. Any process which has no economic value will not get a lot of attention from society. If you want to make an electric car, you better make it a desirable car.

Biology Doesn't Exist

Mon, 28 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

There is no such thing as biology.

There is no such thing as chemistry.

There is no such thing as physics.

Biology is just a word that humans invented so that they can say they are "biologists" on their resume and get jobs as "biologists".

Underlying all of science is mathematics. Underlying all real-world mathematical relations are complex dynamical systems. When you understand the world this way you can make inferences across these synthetic fields of science many others don't even attempt. Because they are an X and not an X' where X can be computer scientist, biologist, chemist, and so forth.

Biothreats are an Existential Risk

Sun, 27 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I have a friend who ponders human existential risks (x-risks) for a living. He proposed that biothreats are challenging to model as an x-risk.

A virus that can kill off all of humanity is highly implausible, since you can literally put people in a box or on an island. But, a virus that would kill or maim the vast majority of humanity is plausible. Certainly so, a biological threat can push humanity to a lower level of civilizational complexity.

When Jews were illegal immigrants in Israel

Sat, 26 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

What is it like to be an illegal immigrant everywhere, including your own homeland?

Jews between 1939 and 1948 (the official founding of Israel as an independent state) largely had to sneak into Israel. The White Paper of 1939 greatly limited Jewish immigration into the Land of Israel. Jews who did not leave Europe by 1939 got de jure trapped just as the Nazis were taking over and the Holocaust was starting. Chaim Weizmann said this of the time: "the world seemed to be divided into two parts – those places where the Jews could not live and those where they could not enter". Jews who managed to escape Europe went through great hardships to evade the British on the way to Israel. Those who managed to escape to Israel between 1939 and 1947 were called the מעפילים ma'apilim. The word is ancient Hebrew and roughly translates to "defiant people", a word that for thousands of years always referred to Jews who defy restrictions not to settle in the land of Israel.

Lu Yehi at the Israel Prize Ceremony

Fri, 25 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I consider this video outstanding on multiple levels:

The fact that there exists a government-sponsored prize ceremony that highlights the best human contributions from the citizenry on prime time TV: the Israel Prize.
In this prize ceremony scientists are treated like rockstars.
The montage behind the singers.
The singers.
The song itself.

You don't need training data

Sat, 29 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I have a two-year-old. Like most two-year-olds she is in a stage of development where she picks up words like crazy. It's interesting as a person involved with machine learning to observe how she learns things. You can point at a sponge, an object she's obviously never seen before and say "this is a sponge". Now ask her again in 5 minutes: "what is this?". "Spon Spon! Songe! Sponge! Spon! Dada it Sponge!" Spooooooooge!! DADAAAA!!". It doesn't stop there, show her a highly artistic illustration of a sponge and she'd just as well quickly identify that it is still a sponge. How could this be possible?

A Correct Definition of Artificial Intelligence

Fri, 14 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence in non-biological form. That seems easy enough, but intelligence itself is what is hard to define. Intelligence includes the ability to plan, problem solve, and apply pattern recognition. This form of intelligence is shared by many lifeforms on this planet. Even the common fruit fly.

We only see higher forms of intelligence in the most intelligent animals - us. In this case intelligence is the ability to understand and use complex natural languages, to rationalize, to create complex works of art or invention, to be self-aware, to have metacognition and a theory of mind. Intelligence covers a wide aspect of concerns. AI today only can address some of these concerns.