Happy Birthday Serendipity35

android birhday

Serendipity35 - they/he/him/we - is/are now 18 years old.

In the United States, 18-year-olds are considered adults and can legally do many things. So, I suppose this blog can now:

  1. 18-year-olds can vote in elections, which influences who becomes president
  2. Create a legal will
  3. Healthy people 18 and older can donate blood.
  4. Legally enter into binding contracts, including opening a checking account, taking out a loan, or purchasing a car.
  5. Apply for a credit card, but whether they are accepted depends on the lender's criteria.
  6. 18 is the upper age range for getting a driver's license in all states.
  7. Play the lottery: 18-year-olds are considered adults in the U.S. and can legally play the lottery.
  8. Get married
  9. Get a tattoo

What should we do first?

Can Bloom's Taxonomy Teach Us Anything About AI?

spiral model
Image gettingsmart.com

 

When I was studying to be a secondary school teacher, Bloom’s Taxonomy often came up in my classes as a way to do lesson planning and a way to assess learners. Recently, there have been several revisions to its pyramid stack. An article on www.gettingsmart.com suggests a spiral might be better, particularly if you want to use it as a lens to view AI.

The author, Vriti Saraf, opines that the most important potential of AI isn’t to enhance human productivity, it’s to enhance and support human thinking, and that looking at AI’s capabilities through the lens of Bloom’s Taxonomy showcases the possible interplay of humans and machines.

It is an interesting idea. Take a look.

 

 

Google Podcasts Goes to the Graveyard

graveyard
 

As someone who has used Google Podcasts both as a listener and as one platform for my little poetry podcast, I was disappointed to find that Google is scrapping their podcasts. Why? No explanation but I assume that other platforms (Spotify, Apple et al) have beaten them at that game.

Google has many programs in its cemetery, from big ones like Hangouts, Plus, Picasa, TV and Answers, to ones you probably didn't know existed - Deskbar, Dodgeball, Base, Gears, et al. They are sending Google Podcasts to the cemetery at the end of February. You would think a big player like Google could make this work, but as with social media, they failed.

This means one less place to listen to my WRITING THE DAY podcast, though most of my traffic comes from (in order) from Spotify, Amazon Music , Apple Podcasts and iHeart Radio.

Here is what Google told me:

Recently, we announced that Google Podcasts is going away in 2024. In order to ease this transition, you now have access to a tool that allows you to easily migrate your show subscriptions to YouTube Music or to download a file of your show subscriptions, which you can upload to an app that supports their import. Just like Google Podcasts, with YouTube Music you can listen to podcasts on the go using background play, download podcasts, and more – with no paid membership required. After March 2024, users in the US will no longer be able to listen to podcasts in Google Podcasts.

Applying Technology Laws

Huang's Law  and Moore's Law are technology "laws." Maybe it is more accurate to say they are observations, but "law" has become attached to these observations since they appear to remain true.

Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. Moore's law is an observation and projection of a historical trend. Rather than a law of physics, it is an empirical relationship linked to gains from experience in production.

Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel (and former CEO of the latter), posited in 1965 posited the idea and projected this rate of growth would continue for at least another decade. In 1975, looking forward to the next decade, he revised the forecast to doubling every two years. His prediction has held since 1975 and has since become known as a "law".

Moore's prediction has been used in the semiconductor industry to guide long-term planning and to set targets for research and development, thus functioning to some extent as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Huang’s Law has been called the new Moore’s Law. It seems that the law that the same dollar buys twice the computing power every 18 months is no longer true.

Huang's law is an observation in computer science and engineering that advancements in graphics processing units (GPUs) are growing at a rate much faster than with traditional central processing units (CPUs). The observation is in contrast to Moore's law as Huang's law states that the performance of GPUs will more than double every two years.

Jensen Huang was then CEO of Nvidia and at the 2018 GPU Technology Conference and observed that Nvidia’s GPUs were "25 times faster than five years ago" whereas Moore's law would have expected only a ten-fold increase. As microchip components became smaller, it became harder for chip advancement to meet the speed of Moore's law.

tech in oppositionHuang's Law and Moore's Law are concepts primarily associated with the semiconductor industry and technology advancements. However, their principles can be extended and applied to various domains beyond technology.

You can extend Huang's Law to other fields where exponential growth or improvement is observed. For example, consider advancements in renewable energy efficiency, healthcare outcomes, or educational achievements. The idea is to identify areas where progress follows an exponential curve and apply the principles accordingly.

Both laws highlight the concept of scaling - either in computational power (Moore's Law) or AI efficiency (Huang's Law). You could apply this principle to other systems and processes where scaling can lead to significant improvements.

I am imagining a discussion (probably in a classroom setting) about ethical considerations, such as the impact of rapid advancements on society, and focus on responsible and ethical development in various fields. That certainly is true currently in discussions of AI.