Cloud Hosting

Back to Gear

In part 1 of this article, I went over being prepared by having a first aid kit, fire, dry clothing, a knife and a compass and map. In part 2 of this article, I will go over five more items that are equally important and also equally versatile if you want to survive some of the worst-case scenarios during your next backcountry hunt. As always, it is important to look at your specific unit, time of year, temperature and present dangers and assess what you should bring; however, this list is fairly universal to any deep or high country hunter who is trying to prepare for some of the accidents that can occur when you are miles from the truck and from help.

Typically, you may not think about carrying around a paracord or lightweight rope with you; however, this item can serve a lot of purposes during both emergency situations and normal day-to-day hunts. I always have some amount of paracord or high strength rope rolled up or around the handle of my knife just in case I need it. In normal day-to-day hunting, I find myself cutting a small piece here and there to perform normal tasks, such as securing a shed or an elk head to my pack, hanging meat high in a tree when I have to leave it overnight or repairing a broken belt or strap on my pack. In emergency situations, a length of paracord can help you splint up your leg, restrict venom flow after being bitten or stop the blood from gushing from an artery after a bad fall. Paracord can help build a shelter, hoist up a tarp or get your pack of food up into a tree and outside of a bear's reach for the night. Though I usually only carry a few feet of rope on my hunting trips, when I am in bear country, I always carry more. You always want to keep some distance and height between bears and your day-to-day food source.

On my first ever solo hunting trip out West, I made it to camp around mid-day just in time for an afternoon hunt. I packed my pack and was weighted down as if I was heading to a spike camp for a week. This was a huge mistake and my legs were the ones that paid the ultimate price. Though I thought it might have been over the top, I chose to pack my ultralight tarp and man was that a good idea. The first evening brought an unbelievable amount of weather while I was out in the mountains. It rained, then sleeted, then snowed. The temperature dropped from around 30 degrees to barely above zero as a storm moved in. For the first few minutes, I tried to keep hunting, but then realized that if I got too wet and cold, I would have to head back to the truck and it was only 4 p.m. in the afternoon hours until prime time. Instead, I quickly headed for the trees and set up that tarp as a canopy in order to shield myself from the elements. After about an hour, the rain, sleet and snow stopped and the sun came back out. I was dry so I packed up the tarp and kept hunting, only to find multiple bulls getting out of bed early to shake off the precipitation and head to feed. If I wouldn't have had that tarp, then I would have been soaked and cold and heading back to the truck instead of having one of the best adventures that got me hooked on elk hunting.For this reason, I always pack a tarp with me. Even if it's sunny, the mountains have a way of brewing up a storm in a matter of minutes. A tarp always allows me to be prepared to wait it out.

A lack of light is an amazing thing that we seldom experience in our lives. We walk into a room after dark and flick a switch, lighting it up. We go on a night run underneath the street lights and jump in our car as the automatic headlights illuminate the road. In today's day and age, we are seldom without light, which is why it is an essential survival item in the backcountry where the only light is the moon and stars and whatever you have in your pack.Having a main light source, batteries and a backup light in our pack can help us on a hunt and also during emergencies.

There have been so many times where my batteries die due to extreme cold and I am glad I have a backup set and a backup light for peace of mind. Having a light source in your pack will give you the peace of mind to stay deep in the mountains until the last light. If you can do this, you will have a better chance of harvesting a mature animal. A lighted path is the only safe path so do yourself a favor and have a great headlamp with high lumens and good battery life and a backup.

When it comes to backcountry hunting, there is one thing that is often taken for granted and this is water. It is estimated that over 60% of an adult body is made up of water and we need an adequate supply of water to keep us hydrated and at our best performance. This is especially true in the West where the arid climate combined with physical excursion will quickly suck moisture out of our body. Having clean, filtered water is important especially out in the mountains where it is common to have water carrying bacteria like giardia. There is a barrage of possibilities for brands and types of water filters; however, my favorites are a Sawyer Mini Water Filter or Katadyn Vario Filter. I also carry around Aquatabs Purification Tablets. The goal of all of these and other brands available at the goHUNT GearShop is to provide safe water to hydrate your body. If you get stuck in the backcountry for whatever reason, you will be glad that you have a way to filter your water.

By far the most important emergency preparation you can take is not any survival item you can buy, but, instead, someone you can trust. The most important emergency item I carry with me is peace of mind that someone back home knows exactly where I am going and when to expect to hear from me. Most of the places I hunt have very limited to no cellular service no matter who your carrier is. Telling someone what drainage you are planning on going in, when you should be out and when they should start to worry and call someone could save your life. When I go backcountry hunting, I always carry a Garmin inReach, but also communicate with my wife and friends who are familiar with the area as to when I should be touching base and when they should worry and call for help. Then, I stick to that plan. Not only does that give them peace of mind, but it also gives me peace of mind as I am hiking. If I were to get hurt or not be able to contact someone, eventually someone would come looking for me. Keeping a spot a secret is not worth your life so tell someone where you are going and know that someone is coming if things go awry.

Overall, there are a lot of other essential survival and emergency items you may want to take depending on the situation. For example, a high decibel whistle may allow someone to hear you from miles away, a space blanket may keep you warm, a bivy sack can keep you dry overnight, bear spray can deter curious bears, an EpiPen can delay an allergic reaction or snake bite kit can slow the spread of venom. It is important to look at every situation and trip differently and carry the things that are important. Of course, weight is always a concern; however, most of these items have been made for backcountry enthusiasts and the goHUNTGear Shop offers an excellent selection of high-quality goHUNT-approved items. Though weight is important, the most important thing is to have you coming off the mountain in one piece even if you are injured along the way. Stay safe out there this fall and always be prepared with some of the aforementioned survival and emergency items.

Here is the original post:
Emergency and survival items you need to put in your pack - Part 2 - goHUNT.com

Read More..

Chris Lapniewski doesnt lose his focus, even as the screams of victory ripple out across the crowd nearby, almost deafening. The celebration is well-deserved. Catching a nearly 800-pound blue marlin is a rarity, even for seasoned anglers. If thats not enough, consider the hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line.

So it goes at the 25th Annual Mississippi Gulf Coast Billfish Classic, a perennial deep-sea fishing competition held in Biloxi. Countless teams of professional anglers gather at the docks outside the Golden Nugget Casino for a shot at piscine glory: to catch the biggest marlin, swordfish, tuna, wahoo or mahi mahi in the Gulf of Mexico. But to the side of the pier, onlookers watch a different team with their own distinctive goals.

For the field researchers at the University of Southern Mississippis Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, the tournament is more than a cultural event: it is an unbeatable opportunity to get a glimpse into the deep, vast ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico. For a quarter of a century, GCRL researchers have attended the Billfish Classic, intercepting the trophy leviathans while returning fishermen celebrate.

Lapniewski, a research scientist at GCRL, is no stranger to the process of breaking down fish for scientific inquiry. He scoops the eyeball from a swordfish as easily as one might shell a peanut, extracting the lensa perfect sphere, clear as crystaland depositing it into a bag.

Ive been doing this for six or seven years now, Lapniewski says.

As he speaks, a pair of teens slip through the barrier separating the labs tent from the crowd to get a closer look at his work. Its something I really enjoy. Ive seen myself doing it all my life. I grew up around this, in Bay St. Louis. He pauses to give the observers a better look at the gemlike lens.

Performing field research under the gaze of hundreds of onlookers is a unique experience for the scientists of GCRL, but its yet another opportunistic benefit of their partnership with the Billfish Classic. All of the researchers present relish the opportunity to show attendees how science is investigative and physicalnot merely something contained in a lab.

Some of us want to do it all, Lapniewski says with a smile. (Fieldwork) lets you see what you actually enjoy. Maybe you love it, maybe you hate it. Maybe it takes your career in a whole different direction.

Exploring the Delicate Balance of Life

To Lapniewskis side, Elizabeth Greenheck, a USM graduate student, is sifting through the gills of a colossal marlin for another kind of opportunist. She is hunting for parasites, so small the untrained eye might miss them as sea detritus. A crowd of children are gathered around the fish, larger than all of them combined.

A lot of these dont hinder the fish, she explains, half to this reporter and half to the surrounding children. But it can tell you a lot about the environment.

Even the most miniscule parasites tell the researchers at the research laboratorys endless stories about the nature of the Gulf ecosystem. Their presence at every level of the greater food web provides subtle clues to the delicate balance of lifeand the complicated relationships between organisms and environment that dedicated study reveals.

This is the primary goal of GCRLs decades-long partnership with the Billfish Classic. Jeremy Higgs is the research manager at the labs Center for Fisheries Research and Development. At times during the long, hot Saturday tournament, he is forced to serve as a bouncer for the research tent, as the crowd swells, overtaking the pier. With that accomplished, he returns to the careful extraction of freshly caught data.

Through the otolith, the earboneswe can get the age of these fish that are being brought to the dock, he explained. We take tissue to see their reproductive state. We collect stomachs, and there we have a chance to look at a snapshot of their diet. Its a small period of time, but it gives us more insight into what theyre feeding upon in their natural habitat.

This data quickly makes its way from speculative research to meaningful, real-world applications. All of this information is really important for future conservation and management of these species: the ages and the reproductive data that we collect go to bigger datasets. We provide that data to managers (like the Department of Marine Resources) and that ultimately helps with conservation, Higgs said.

This Is Our Mission

This is our mission, explains Dr. Read Hendon, director of GCRL in a later interview with the Mississippi Free Press. Conducting research and developing science programs to help the state, the region and the nation better understand our coastal and marine ecosystems, and (to improve) the sustainable and productive use of those resources.

Hendon made the transition from field research to administration years ago. A hint of regretful nostalgia lingers in his tone when he speaks about fieldwork. The biology of swordfish in the Gulf of Mexico is (still) so poorly understood, he explains. Protection of species like swordfish and marlin is impossible without an ever-growing understanding of their basic biology, and relationship to the broader ecosystem.

If you dont know how fast those fish grow, if you dont know at what age or at what size they reproduce, then thats a real large gap in our understanding of how we can successfully manage the species, Hendon said.

Other concerns exist: any resource extraction for the purposes of scientific inquiry has to be sustainable. Dr. Jill Hendon, interim director for the labs Center for Fisheries Research and Development explained in a later statement to the Mississippi Free Press. Through our research endeavors, we have a fairly good understanding of the coastal dynamic: the food web structure, life history characteristics, habitat use, etc. The dynamic of the offshore community is less well understood simply because it is more difficult to explore such a large system while still implementing ethical conservation measures, she wrote.

The difficulty in extracting valuable information about Gulf Coast species comes from more than the elusiveness of the fish themselves. If you look at Alaska, thats a fairly static system, Read Hendon said. But here, in the north-central Gulf, with the Mississippi River, the Pearl River and the Pascagoula River, our system can change hour to hour, week to week.

For the shifting ecological conditions of the Gulf, conditions are quite literally whichever way the wind blows.

Lapniewski, Greenheck, Higgs and the rest of the GCRL researchers remain at the pier through the sweltering day and into a cool and busy evening. Long after the crowd has begun to disperse, the scientists remain. Night sets in, and the team wields electric lamps to continue their work.

If Higgs is tired by the end of the day, it doesnt show. An angler has caught what promises to be the largest swordfish ever hooked in Mississippi state history. Fifteen boats still linger out in the waters, waiting to deliver their catches to be judgedand then dissected. Higgs wipes the sweat off of his brow and grins. He could do this all night.

The Old Man and the Sea

An enormous presence is missing from the days events, and his absence is on the mind of every researcher in attendance. Jim Franks is neither the founder nor the director of the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory. But he is the programs godfather: its oldest veteran, its public face, and a beloved guide to marine researchers young and old.

Franks sees himself in humbler terms. Our work is a multidisciplinary effortmany, many people working together, all with expertise in various aspects of biological research. Its always been a team effort, from fisheries personnel to our academics, he told the Mississippi Free Press in a phone interview days after the tournament, while recovering from health troubles at home.

Read Hendon is among Franks many admirers. He first came under Franks tutelage in 1995, when Hendon was only an undergraduate. Franks time at GCRL stretches back to the 1960s, a remarkably long tenure.

I cant imagine having a better first boss than Jim. He was so patient, an excellent teacher. He is 110% dedicated to what he does, Hendon said. Fisheries and marine biology is his life.

Franks has a deep understanding of the granular biology of individual species in the Gulf. But he also has a keen awareness of the greater ecosystemand humankinds relationship with it. Over the last couple of decades, theres been a great effort put forth by many regarding the effects of human interaction with marine resources in the Gulf of Mexicowith marine resources around the world, Franks explains.

That interaction includes fishing, of course, but extends to broader ecological catastrophe. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 is still fresh in the minds of all marine researchers on the Gulf. The largest marine oil spill in human history, the Deepwater Horizon devastated local ecosystems.

To Franks, the laboratorys work contributes to an understanding of the long-lasting harm the spill caused. But it also provides valuable data for benchmarking ifor whenanother man-made environmental catastrophe occurs. You have to get a feel for the status of those stocks, in case there is another spill. Hopefully thatll never happen, Franks said. But its ongoing. Its been ongoing since the Gulf oil spill.

Between Predator and Prey

The same information feeds into our understanding of the highest level of anthropocentrichuman-causeddisaster. Climate change is something of interest to every research scientist, in many respects. The research community has always been aware of some of those changes, but now I think its getting the attention it deserves, Franks explained. Now were understanding how humans influence it.

The reach of even the simplest scientific inquiry can be staggering, especially for those without a background in ecology. What could the shape and size of a swordfishs ear inform us about the global consequences of climate change?

Everything is interconnected, Franks replied. I still find it fascinating, too. Our system is so well-tuned to function at a level thats beneficial to the (sum) of its parts. Of course, that can be changed, he added. Its tightly knit: the interactions between predator and prey, the oceanographic conditions, hydrographic conditions if thats disrupted, it can all get off cue.

The Billfish Classic, and GCRLs presence there, is not quite the same without the towering presence of Franks. But his students and colleagues are hard at work all the same, engaging with interested observers, meticulously exploring their glimpse into the depths of the Gulf with the same dogged curiosity they learned, in part, from Franks.

Late in his career, it is the cohort of students and researchers succeeding him that seem most important to Franks. He is old enough to have molded the careers of scientists now eminent in their own right. Theyre the next generation, he says, And thats why were trying to give them these hands-on experiences: so they can carry this work forward.

Back at the tournament, Lapniewski finds a moment in between processing a trio of billfish to reflect. For all the young field researchers insistence that others could better describe Franks significance, no one puts it more succinctly.

Everything he is, Lapniewski says, we are.

Read the original:
From The Deep Sea, A Chance To Learn, Preserve on the Gulf Coast - Mississippi Free Press

Read More..

Eindhoven might not immediately spring to mind as a high-tech hub, but the Netherlands city is keen to position itself as a center for deep tech in Europe.

The Technical University of Eindhoven, High Tech Campus Eindhoven, and locally based corporates like ASML and Philips have been eyeing initiatives across Europe and applying what theyve learned to the regions strategy. Philips launched in Eindhoven in 1891 and played no small part in the municipalitys ambitions to become a tech hub.

Eindhoven produces a high number of patents per year considering its small population and has been home to an inordinate number of hardware startups. The local High Tech Campus has a high hardware focus, for instance.

Our survey respondents consider the city strong in areas like photonics, robotics, medical devices, materials science, deep tech, automotive tech, sustainability tech, medtech, Big Data, hardware and precision engineering. They are looking for more mature startups and scaleups focused on AI and hard tech.

Eindhoven is considered weaker in fintech and consumer products, and it exists in a small region with limited global visibility.

Over the next five years, one respondent said, Eindhoven will have evolved to the Netherlands second-largest tech ecosystem, behind Amsterdam. On a European scale, Eindhoven will have entered the top 10.

To learn more about Eindhoven, we queried the following investors:

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?

High-tech systems, photonics, robotics, medical devices.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?

Lightyear, Bio-TRIP, EFFECT photonics, Nemo Healthcare, Sorama.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? Whats their focus?

Fully dedicated.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?

Steef Blok, Harm de Vries, Piet van der Wielen, Andy Lurling, Mark Cox.

Where do you see your citys tech scene in five years time?

More mature, more focused on inclusive development, less quality coming from university spinoffs.

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?

High-tech systems and materials, the real high-tech and deep tech stuff that either leads to scientific breakthroughs or turns scientific breakthroughs into companies. Lithography makes a major contribution to that, as well as medical devices and production technologies.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?

Nearfield Instruments, Optiflux, Dynaxion, AlphaBeats, Incooling.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? Whats their focus?

They focus mainly on high-tech machine building and software development, AI.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out or will others move in?

Largely unaffected.

Where do you see your citys tech scene in five years time?

More integrated between AI and hard tech and production.

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?

The pros are high-tech systems, collaboration culture and excellent startup ecosystem; The cons are that its a small region with limited visibility globally.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?

LionVolt, DENS, Lightyear, Morphotonics.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? Whats their focus?

They focus mainly on high-tech machine building and software development, AI.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out or will others move in?

Others will move in! Housing is extremely expensive but the demand for a skilled workforce is extremely high. If people move to surrounding areas, within 30 km, housing prices skyrocket all over.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?

BOM (thats us!), Braventure, Brainport Development, TNO.

Where do you see your citys tech scene in five years time?

Leading worldwide in several technology areas, mainly, high-precision, roll-to-roll processing atomic layer deposition, material handling, industry 4.0, silicon processing equipment.

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?

The region is strong in deep tech, automotive tech, sustainability tech, medtech, Big Data, hardware and precision engineering. Most excited by sustainability tech and deep tech. The region is weak in fintech.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?

Lightyear, Incooling.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? Whats their focus?

Conservative, non-risk-taking there are so many subsidies they dont need to take risks, so once the tech risk is gone, they are good, but they are not global enough; hardware.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out or will others move in?

Hardware is hands-on people are still moving in! We have a housing crisis!

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?

Innovation Industries.

Where do you see your citys tech scene in five years time?

More mature startups and scaleups on the scene!

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?

The region is strong in sustainable cities, health and well-being, and education.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?

FruitPunch AI, AlphaBeats, Vaulut, Lightyear, Serendipity.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? Whats their focus?

Mainly hardware; LUMO Labs has an early-stage software focus.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out or will others move in?

Stay.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?

Nard Sintenie, Frank Claassen, Hans Bloemen.

Where do you see your citys tech scene in five years time?

Competing on a global scale.

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?

The region is strong in deep tech and health. Im excited about opportunities for cooperation between different companies. Its weak in seed investment.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?

Lightyear, AlphaBeats, Carbyon, FruitPunch, Serendipity.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? Whats their focus?

Tech investors are mainly government-regulated constitutions or angels. Focus on scaleup.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out or will others move in?

They will stay; working from home has some benefits but meeting people in an inspiring environment gives the best synergy.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?

LUMO Labs, HighTechXL, Andy Lurling, Sven Bakkes, John Bell, Guus Frericks, Bert-Jan Woertman.

Where do you see your citys tech scene in five years time?

Leading in the world.

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?

The region is strong in building sustainable and resilient cities and a platform between cities/society and tech market.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?

Digital Toolbox (a Serendipity spinoff), Amber (mobility), Active Esports Arena and other portfolio companies of LUMO Labs.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? Whats their focus?

Through LUMO Labs, there is a focus on societal investments; the rest is investment in high tech due to the big industries (VDLK, ASML, NXP, Phillips).

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out or will others move in?

Work at home or mix in the office and at home.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?

A combination of accelerators (LUMO Labs, HighTechXL, Braventure) and Brainport (ecosystem management) supported by the Eindhoven University of Technology and big corporates.

Where do you see your citys tech scene in five years time?

Leading in the world on societal/systemic change moving from high-tech toward impact (more software and digitization).

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?

Its strong in high-tech equipment, hardware, photonics, additive manufacturing, lighting, electronics, semiconductor technology and health tech, and weak in consumer products and apps.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?

Lightyear, ELEO Technologies, EFFECT Photonics, SMART Photonics, PhotonFirst, Amber.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? Whats their focus?

There is a relatively low number of investors in early stage.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out or will others move in?

They will stay. Eindhoven is a hot spot with many cultures, international tech community and great infrastructure, while it feels like a village.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?

Nard Sintenie, startup founders, HighTechXL.

Where do you see your citys tech scene in five years time?

Worldwide dominance in high-tech hardware scaleups.

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?

Visit link:
Investors say Eindhoven poised to become Netherlands No. 2 tech hub - TechCrunch

Read More..

Among the worlds richest and most powerful companies, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple have made AI core parts of their business. Advances over the last decade, particularly in an AI technique called deep learning, have allowed them to monitor users behavior; recommend news, information, and products to them; and most of all, target them with ads. Last year Googles advertising apparatus generated over $140 billion in revenue. Facebooks generated $84 billion.

The companies have invested heavily in the technology that has brought them such vast wealth. Googles parent company, Alphabet, acquired the London-based AI lab DeepMind for $600 million in 2014 and spends hundreds of millions a year to support its research. Microsoft signed a $1 billion deal with OpenAI in 2019 for commercialization rights to its algorithms.

At the same time, tech giants have become large investors in university-based AI research, heavily influencing its scientific priorities. Over the years, more and more ambitious scientists have transitioned to working for tech giants full time or adopted a dual affiliation. From 2018 to 2019, 58% of the most cited papers at the top two AI conferences had at least one author affiliated with a tech giant, compared with only 11% a decade earlier, according to a study by researchers in the Radical AI Network, a group that seeks to challenge power dynamics in AI.

The problem is that the corporate agenda for AI has focused on techniques with commercial potential, largely ignoring research that could help address challenges like economic inequality and climate change. In fact, it has made these challenges worse. The drive to automate tasks has cost jobs and led to the rise of tedious labor like data cleaning and content moderation. The push to create ever larger models has caused AIs energy consumption to explode. Deep learning has also created a culture in which our data is constantly scraped, often without consent, to train products like facial recognition systems. And recommendation algorithms have exacerbated political polarization, while large language models have failed to clean up misinformation.

Its this situation that Gebru and a growing movement of like-minded scholars want to change. Over the last five years, theyve sought to shift the fields priorities away from simply enriching tech companies, by expanding who gets to participate in developing the technology. Their goal is not only to mitigate the harms caused by existing systems but to create a new, more equitable and democratic AI.

In December 2015, Gebru sat down to pen an open letter. Halfway through her PhD at Stanford, shed attended the Neural Information Processing Systems conference, the largest annual AI research gathering. Of the more than 3,700 researchers there, Gebru counted only a handful who were Black.

Once a small meeting about a niche academic subject, NeurIPS (as its now known) was quickly becoming the biggest annual AI job bonanza. The worlds wealthiest companies were coming to show off demos, throw extravagant parties, and write hefty checks for the rarest people in Silicon Valley: skillful AI researchers.

That year Elon Musk arrived to announce the nonprofit venture OpenAI. He, Y Combinators then president Sam Altman, and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel had put up $1 billion to solve what they believed to be an existential problem: the prospect that a superintelligence could one day take over the world. Their solution: build an even better superintelligence. Of the 14 advisors or technical team members he anointed, 11 were white men.

RICARDO SANTOS | COURTESY PHOTO

While Musk was being lionized, Gebru was dealing with humiliation and harassment. At a conference party, a group of drunk guys in Google Research T-shirts circled her and subjected her to unwanted hugs, a kiss on the cheek, and a photo.

Gebru typed out a scathing critique of what she had observed: the spectacle, the cult-like worship of AI celebrities, and most of all, the overwhelming homogeneity. This boys club culture, she wrote, had already pushed talented women out of the field. It was also leading the entire community toward a dangerously narrow conception of artificial intelligence and its impact on the world.

Google had already deployed a computer-vision algorithm that classified Black people as gorillas, she noted. And the increasing sophistication of unmanned drones was putting the US military on a path toward lethal autonomous weapons. But there was no mention of these issues in Musks grand plan to stop AI from taking over the world in some theoretical future scenario. We dont have to project into the future to see AIs potential adverse effects, Gebru wrote. It is already happening.

Gebru never published her reflection. But she realized that something needed to change. On January 28, 2016, she sent an email with the subject line Hello from Timnit to five other Black AI researchers. Ive always been sad by the lack of color in AI, she wrote. But now I have seen 5 of you 🙂 and thought that it would be cool if we started a black in AI group or at least know of each other.

The email prompted a discussion. What was it about being Black that informed their research? For Gebru, her work was very much a product of her identity; for others, it was not. But after meeting they agreed: If AI was going to play a bigger role in society, they needed more Black researchers. Otherwise, the field would produce weaker scienceand its adverse consequences could get far worse.

As Black in AI was just beginning to coalesce, AI was hitting its commercial stride. That year, 2016, tech giants spent an estimated $20 to $30 billion on developing the technology, according to the McKinsey Global Institute.

Heated by corporate investment, the field warped. Thousands more researchers began studying AI, but they mostly wanted to work on deep-learning algorithms, such as the ones behind large language models. As a young PhD student who wants to get a job at a tech company, you realize that tech companies are all about deep learning, says Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a computer science professor who now serves at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. So you shift all your research to deep learning. Then the next PhD student coming in looks around and says, Everyones doing deep learning. I should probably do it too.

But deep learning isnt the only technique in the field. Before its boom, there was a different AI approach known as symbolic reasoning. Whereas deep learning uses massive amounts of data to teach algorithms about meaningful relationships in information, symbolic reasoning focuses on explicitly encoding knowledge and logic based on human expertise.

Some researchers now believe those techniques should be combined. The hybrid approach would make AI more efficient in its use of data and energy, and give it the knowledge and reasoning abilities of an expert as well as the capacity to update itself with new information. But companies have little incentive to explore alternative approaches when the surest way to maximize their profits is to build ever bigger models.

Link:
Inside the fight to reclaim AI from Big Techs control - MIT Technology Review

Read More..

The mind loves to drift. It will either entertain itself with daydreams, anxiety about the future or rumination over the past. Sometimes, this pattern can get out of control when an overwhelming thought takes over our mind, and thats when we start overthinking. Heres how you can avoid this.

1.Practise Yoga Asanas

Gentle yoga that focuses on relaxing stretches doesnt take a lot of energy. It can be done anywhere, in any mood, and is still rewarding. Yoga creates a sense of relaxation as deep stretches release endorphins that uplift your mood. Even 5-10 minutes of stretches done while taking deep breaths can do the trick. Practising simple asanas is an excellent place to get started. It improves both your physical and psychological health.

2. Check your posture

How you position your body can have a tremendous influence on your state of mind. So, if depressive thoughts are bothering you, your posture may naturally close in, making you smaller as you slouch. If its fear or anxiety, then you may be fidgety or restless. It helps to pace around for a bit and then sit again with a comfortably upright spine. Back bending poses in yoga like cobra, locust and bow poses are excellent to maintain a good posture.

3. Practise Breath Awareness

Once youve set a good posture, you can do some deep breathing. Its a great way to stimulate the vagus nerve, which activates the relaxation response in your body. Overthinking is often a result of an underlying stressor. Deep breathing is a simple but powerful technique that allows your body to switch from stressed to relaxed mode. So, use it often; you can practise 10-20 deep breaths. Just make sure youre not on a full stomach.

4. Practise Gratitude

Our minds are hard-wired to think more about adverse events. So, if you have two positive experiences in a day and one negative experience, youll still think about the latter. That is why we need to think about the positive aspects of life consciously. It requires a little effort as it doesnt happen naturally. Practising gratitude is one way that we can bring our focus back on the positive. A daily gratitude meditation practice can be of great help.

5. Build a Meditation Practice

Meditation is simple training of your mind, and as a bonus, its immensely relaxing. Just like we train our body by staying physically active, its essential to train our minds daily through meditation. Without meditation, we are constantly being pulled around by our senses, going wherever they take us. But with regular mindfulness practice, we can gradually develop more control over what we pay attention to or what kind of thoughts we prioritise.

6. Create a Vata-balancing Lifestyle

In Ayurveda, thoughts are governed by Vata Dosha, which is a mix of air and other elements and its imbalance causes anxiety or overthinking. An excellent way to balance Vata is to strengthen the Earth aspect of our personality. Since air is light and constantly changing, an excellent way to balance it is to create stability and structure by having a fixed routine and set meal times. Weight training, grounding activities like gardening can also help balance Vata.

Excerpt from:
International Yoga Day: 6 tips for de-stressing the overthinker in you - wknd.

Read More..