Re: End of year reader, holiday Greetings, the old web

As a mathematician, computer scientist and applied engineering researcher whose alter ego is a Madhyamaka Middle Way Buddhist philosopher cum thirty year veteran global sustainable development lobbyist I am aware of both the good and bad developments of the last thirty years.
We are between a rock and a hard place right now, that's for sure but we have the tools, technologies, means and resolve to tackle almost all of the problems facing us.
Right now AI is the main problem, it needs to be regulated and the data mining that serves as the base for LLMs and other forms of AI needs to be controlled. The European Union with its GDPR, Digital Services Act and EU AI act is reigning in some blatant misuse of data and personalization algorithms.
I am myself a staunch proponent of two paradigms for AI, either the centaur model or the digital servant, and where the latter takes the form of a physical unit like a robot with some Laws of Robotics baked in.
These two forms, which should be open, accountable, explainable, trustworthy, safe, ethical and accessible to all are needed to solve global problems caused by climate change and numerous other natural and man-made problems afflicting us.
Mathematicians, computer scientists, engineers, psychologists, computational biologists, neuroscientists and philosophers are key players in resolving issues that have changed the web of discovery from the early days of the Internet (late nineties and early twenty first century years) into a web of deceit, confusion, misinformation, manipulation, surveillance and control.

It won't be easy, but it is not impossible, and to put it into a mission critical perspective, "failure is not an option".
The holiday season brings a much needed break, and I will also be doing some reading, but mostly philosophy.
I agree totally with Paola that AI without KR is going to be not manageable.
Maybe we can think about setting up an outline for an introductory online course "KR for AI: an introduction to formal methods of knowledge representation for open, accountable, explainable, trustworthy, safe, ethical and accessible to all AI." And in this introduce neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, mathematics, computer science and computational biology perspectives.
By creating this outline we are making all the mentioned disciplines pull resources and thought processes together and explore and define the common ground needed to create the KR for AI we envisioned in the AIKR Community Group.
And for such an online course written course material could also be produced with chapters structured around a general line of discourse and the review of basic concepts from the perspectives of the various disciplines mentioned.

I wish everyone all the best for the coming holidays and the new year, and look forward to continue the valuable work the AIKR W3 Community Group and all other W3 Community Groups are doing in 2024.
 
Milton Ponson
GSM: +297 747 8280
PO Box 1154, Oranjestad
Aruba, Dutch Caribbean
Project Paradigm: Bringing the ICT tools for sustainable development to all stakeholders worldwide through collaborative research on applied mathematics, advanced modeling, software and standards development 

    On Friday, December 22, 2023 at 07:29:29 AM AST, Paola Di Maio <paola.dimaio@gmail.com> wrote:  
 
 Greetings W3C AI KR CG cc SWIG (FYI),(you may skip the rant and go straight to the links )

 not sure how many here are in festive joyous mode. Things are tough, a lot are falling apart everywhere.Incomprehensible, logically inconsistent layers of data and processes  that cannot be understood let alone verified. Facts that contradict each other, sources that are not accountable. Things that do not follow, what is false but said to be true pervades our systems, our lives. With awful things happening between the cracks.

I am glad we have an AI KR CG because we can maintain and share a long thread of issues pivotal not only to AI, which is driving scientific and technological progress across the board. but also pivotal to our cognitive processes, which are central to maintaining our mental healthhttps://mhcc.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/2016.02.17._supporting_cognitive_functioning-_mhcc_version__v._11__.pdf
How long can people continue to maintain their sense of purpose, direction and orientation  without  KR, in this otherwise flimsical world.

I ll be brief with my season's greetings and just take the opportunity to sharethe xmas holiday reader for those who are still learning (most of us, I hope)
1. This NYT article mentions that AMERICANS are under a cognitive fog, 

Oh Well. Not just americans.

From my perspective, being persistently deceived by the media, and now by the internet,  presented with fragmented inconsistent logic is designed to break people's ability to think. It is called mind wrecking and it is a well established tactic of psychological abuse.  It is easier to break people when they are disoriented

One the one hand we have been building  open data, the open web, open standards. the common good, on the other hand we are being consistently ruled and driven  by adversarial approaches (designed to deceive and being dysfunctional)
Some think this  cognitive fog is being deliberately inflicted to people by folks who know what they are doing and their funding agencies and those who hire them
A talk on psychological abuse (PA) points to how misleading and manipulative information messes up with people and social networks etc . Things can get complicated. The talk is generic about PA but it ends up mentioning the role of KR and AI and possibly the web at large


2. The Atlantic makes a good point: Nobody Knows What’s Happening Online Anymore  SORRY BEHIND PAYWALL BUT READ THE FIRST FREE PARAGRAPHS TO GET A SENSE and a pointer to 3
3. Follows on from 2, 
The Verge: AI is killing the old web, and the new web struggles to be born
Santa, can we have the good old web back please

Good wishes for 2024
PDM