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Emka Emmanuel Katto, navigator Gitau recall crash

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Monitor | Emmanuel Katto Uganda, navigator Gitau recall crash.

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Monitor | Emmanuel Katto Uganda, navigator Gitau recall crash.

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monitor.co.ug – Ugandan motor rally legend Emka Emmanuel Katto without doubt enjoyed the biggest and most passionate fan base in East Africa, Uganda.

Read More : https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/sports/motor-sport/katto-navigator-gitau-recall-crash-1691158

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We must have been 10 metres or 15 feet in the air, then hit the right hand side bank and started the roll another 150 meters

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🌟 The Ultimate Instant Pot Hacks for Beginners!

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🌟 The Ultimate Instant Pot Hacks for Beginners!

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🌟 The Ultimate Instant Pot Hacks for Beginners!

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Discover the hidden secrets and genius tips that will take your Instant Pot game to the next level of convenience and simplicity. Say goodbye to any lingering doubts and embark on a journey of effortless cooking with your favorite kitchen companion.

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How to navigate the AI jungle with pragmatic steps for enterprise

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How to navigate the AI jungle with pragmatic steps for enterprise

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Join top executives in San Francisco on July 11-12, to hear how leaders are integrating and optimizing AI investments for success.

The infinite monkey theorem professes the idea that a monkey typing for an infinite amount of time would eventually generate the complete works of William Shakespeare, and OpenAI and ChatGPT have unleashed what feels like a form of this.

ChatGPT, or generative AI more broadly, is everything, everywhere, all at once. It feels like magic: Ask a question on anything and get a clear answer. Imagine a picture in your mind and see it instantly visualized. Seemingly overnight, people started to proclaim generative AI either as an existential threat to humanity or the most important technological advancement of all time.

In previous technological waves like machine learning (ML), a consensus formed among experts about the technology's capabilities and limitations. But with generative AI, the disagreement among even AI scholars is striking. A recent leak of a Google researcher's memo suggesting that early GenAI pioneers had "no moat" sparked a fiery debate about the very nature of AI.

Just a few months ago, the trajectory of AI had seemed to parallel previous trends like the internet, cloud and mobile technology. Overhyped by some and dismissed as "old news" by others, AI has had diverse effects on fields like healthcare, automotive and retail. But the game-changing impact of interacting with an AI that seems to comprehend and respond intelligently has led to unprecedented user adoption; OpenAI attracted 100 million users within two months. This has, in turn, ignited a frenzy of both zealous endorsements and vehement rebuttals.

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Undoubtedly, it's now evident that generative AI is set to bring about significant changes across enterprises at a pace that far outstrips previous technological shifts. As CIOs and other technology executives grapple with aligning their strategies with this unpredictable yet influential trend, a few guidelines can help steer them through these evolving currents.

Create opportunities for AI experimentation

Understanding AI's potential can be overwhelming due to its expansive capabilities. To simplify this, focus on encouraging experimentation in concrete, manageable areas. Encourage the use of AI in areas like marketing, customer service and other more straightforward applications. Prototype and pilot internally ahead of defining complete solutions or working through every exception case (that is, workflows to manage AI hallucinations).

Avoid lock-in, but buy to learn

The speed of adoption of generative AI means that entering into long-term contracts with solution providers carries more risk than ever. Traditional category leaders in HR, finance, sales, support, marketing and R&D could face a seismic shift due to the transformative potential of AI. In fact, our very definitions of these categories may undergo a complete metamorphosis. Therefore, vendor relationships should be flexible due to the potentially catastrophic cost of locking in solutions that do not evolve.

That said, the most effective solutions often come from those with deep domain expertise. A select group of these providers will seize the opportunities presented by AI in agile and inventive ways, yielding returns far beyond those typically associated with the implementation of enterprise applications. Engaging with potential revolutionaries can address immediate practical needs within your company and illuminate the broad patterns of AI's potential impact.

Current market-leading applications may not be able to pivot fast enough, so expect to see a wave of startups launched by veterans who've left their motherships.

Enable human + AI systems

Large language models (LLMs) will upend sectors like customer support that rely on humans to provide answers to questions. Therefore, incorporating human + AI systems will provide key benefits now and will create data for further improvement. Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has been core to the acceleration of these models' advancements and will be critical to how well and how quickly such systems adapt to and impact business. Systems that produce data that can power future AI systems will create an asset to increase the pace of creation of ever more automated models and functions.

This time, believe in a hybrid strategy

With cloud computing, I ridiculed hybrid on-premise and cloud strategies as mere cloud washing; they were feeble attempts by traditional vendors to maintain their relevance in a rapidly evolving landscape. The remarkable economies of scale and the pace of innovation made it clear that any applications attempting to straddle both realms were destined for obsolescence. The triumphs of Salesforce, Workday, AWS and Google, among others, firmly quashed the notion that a hybrid model would be the industry's dominant paradigm.

As we embark on the era of generative AI, the diversity of opinions amongst the deepest experts, coupled with the transformative potential of information, signals that it may be premature, even perilous, to entrust the entirety of our efforts to public providers or any one strategy.

With cloud applications, the shift was straightforward: We relocated the environment in which the technology operated. We didn't provide our cloud providers with unbounded access to sales figures and financial metrics within those applications. In contrast, with AI, information becomes the product itself. Every AI solution thirsts for data and requires it to evolve and advance.

The struggle between public and private AI solutions will be highly contingent on the context and the technical evolution of model architectures. Business and commercial efforts, combined with the importance of real and perceived progress, justify public consumption and partnerships, but in most cases, the gen AI future will be hybrid - a mix of public and private systems.

Validate the limitations of AI - repeatedly

The generative AI capable of crafting an essay, creating a presentation or setting up a website about your new product differs significantly from the predictive AI technology driving autonomous vehicles or diagnosing cancer via X-rays. How you define and approach the problem is a critical first step that requires an understanding of the scope of capabilities that various AI approaches offer.

Consider this example. If your company is trying to leverage past production data to predict your ability to meet next quarter's demand, you obtain structured data as inputs and a clear target to assess the quality of the prediction. Conversely, you might task an LLM with analyzing company emails and producing a two-page memo on the likelihood of meeting this quarter's demand. These approaches seem to serve a similar purpose but are fundamentally distinct in nature.

The personification of AI makes it more relatable, engaging or even contentious. This can add value, facilitating tasks that reliable predictions alone may not be able to tackle. For instance, asking the AI to construct an argument for why a prediction may or may not eventuate can stimulate fresh perspectives on questions with minimal effort. However, it should not be applied or interpreted in the same manner as predictive AI models.

It's also important to anticipate that these boundaries may shift. The generative AI of the future may very well draft the first - or final - versions of the predictive models you'll use for your production planning.

Demand that leadership iterate and learn together

In crisis or fast-moving situations, leadership is paramount. Experts will be needed, but hiring a management consultancy to create a moment-in-time AI impact study for your firm is more likely to reduce your ability to navigate this change than to prepare you for it.

Because AI is evolving so quickly, it's attracting a lot more attention than most new technologies. Even for companies in industries outside of high tech, C-suite executives are regularly seeing AI demos and reading about generative AI in the press. Make sure you regularly update your C-suite about new developments and potential impacts on core functions and business strategies so they connect the right dots. Use demos and prototyping to show concrete relevance to your needs.

Meanwhile, CEOs should drive this level of engagement from their technology leaders, not just to scale learning across the organization, but to assess the efficacy of their leadership. This collective and iterative learning approach is a compass to navigate the dynamic and potentially disruptive landscape of AI.

Conclusion

For centuries, the quest for human flight remained grounded as inventors fixated on mimicking the flapping-wing designs of birds. The tide turned with the Wright brothers, who reframed the problem, concentrating on fixed-wing designs and the principles of lift and control rather than replicating bird flight. This paradigm shift propelled the first successful human flight.

In the realm of AI, a similar reframing is vital for each industry and function. Companies that perceive AI as a dynamic field ripe for exploration, discovery and adaptation will find their ambitions taking flight. Those who approach it with strategies that worked earlier platform shifts (cloud, mobile) will be forced to watch the evolution of their industries from the ground.
Narinder Singh was a cofounder of Appirio and is currently the CEO at LookDeep Health.
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How to navigate the AI jungle with pragmatic steps for enterprise

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Why enterprises that perceive AI as a dynamic field ripe for exploration, discovery and adaptation will find their ambitions taking flight.

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5 Philosophical Answers To The Meaning Of Life

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5 Philosophical Answers To The Meaning Of Life

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What is the meaning of life? This is a question many people ask themselves at some point in their lives. While some people turn to religion to answer the question, others have turned to philosophy. Throughout history, this question has occupied the minds of many philosophers, and different schools of philosophy have come up with various answers to the question. These five different philosophical answers and approaches to the question of the meaning of life showcase the vast diversity of human thought.

1. Existentialism - There is No Meaning

The question of the meaning of life is central to existentialism, a philosophy that explores human existence. Existentialist philosophy claims there is no inherent meaning to life. The universe is indifferent to our personal lives and goals. To existentialists, meaning is up to the individual to create. This relates to the existentialist idea that existence precedes essence. This is the idea that there is no predetermined essence defining what it means to be human. Actual life makes up an individual's essence. Meaning does not come before a human life comes into existence. Existence comes first, then meaning can follow. In this view, human beings can design their own life and therefore create their own meaning.

2. Stoicism - Achieving Logos

Stoicism is a philosophy focused around action and acceptance. According to the Stoics, the meaning of life is to live in accordance with reason and virtue to find fulfillment and peace. The Stoics believed in a concept called logos, a principle of rationality. They believed rationality governs the universe and that humans could achieve logos by acting on virtue. Certain virtues, such as courage, wisdom, temperance, and justice, make up the backbone for morality, according to the Stoics. The stoics believed people should live by acting in accordance with these virtues to achieve happiness, a concept they named eudaimonia. Part of acting on virtue means choosing to act on what is in our control. Acceptance was key in the stoic philosophy. To live a good life in the stoic view, includes accepting what is outside of our control and external to us.

3. Epicureanism - Seeking Pleasure

Epicureanism was an ancient Greek philosophy taught by Epicurus. In his teachings, Epicurus emphasized the goal of a content life in the present moment. He famously rejected the notion of an afterlife and did not believe in superstitious Gods. Epicurus believed there was no reason to fear death like many religions had taught and that people should not live their lives out of fear of future punishments. Epicurus was a man of science and had a materialistic view of the world. He did believe in a concept of the soul, but saw it as mortal, like the body.

According to Epicurus, it was human nature to seek pleasure and avoid pain. This concept of human nature was the premise of his philosophy. In the Epicurean view the goal of life is to seek pleasure. However, this view differs from hedonism. Rather than temporary pleasures of the body, Epicurus promoted pleasures of the mind, friendship, and contentment.

4. Aristotle - Eudemonia

Similar to Epicurus, Aristotle believed happiness was the goal and meaning of life. He noticed people pursue different activities, all with the goal of being happy. In his book called Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle tried to discover the "supreme good for man." This was an idea describing the best way for people to live their lives and give their life meaning. The concept of meaning, according to Aristotle, was best understood by looking at a purpose and goal of a thing. For example, the purpose of a spoon could be to eat soup. Aristotle noticed goals are usually subordinate to other goals. For example, if someone has a goal to learn a musical instrument, a subordinate goal could be to learn to play a specific song, and a subordinate goal to that could be to play in a band, with a subordinate goal to spend time doing something fun in a group. This pattern could continue on with further subordinate goals. The subordination of goals can continue until a goal is an end in itself. According to Aristotle, happiness is the goal with an end in itself and is the final purpose of everything we do.

5. Absurdism

Absurdism points out a problem in the search for meaning. While people have a tendency to search for meaning, it is humanly impossible to find any objective meaning. This idea is what philosophers call "the absurd." While there are traditionally two answers to the search for meaning, either life is meaningless, or the meaning to life is set by a higher power such as God, absurdism says the efforts of people to find meaning will still fail because there are too many unknowns. Ultimately, absurdism states that the world around us cannot be fully understood by reason. According to absurdism, the absurd causes inner disharmony within people. Rather than end there or give meaning to the situation, philosophers have looked at the best way for people to respond to the absurd. According to Albert Camus, the best way to respond to the absurd is acceptance. By accepting the absurd, people can choose to live in spite of it. This is a solution that Camus said leads to freedom.

So Which Response is Right?

Above are only five approaches to the question of the meaning of life. There are many other responses unexplored here. When it comes to the question of the meaning of life, there is no right or wrong answer. Reading on the topic allows a chance for everyone to reflect on their own life. This reflection shows the beauty of philosophy. While humans may never have an objective answer to the meaning of life, through philosophy, we can discuss life's existential questions. Reading and reflecting on different philosophies allows more understanding of our lives and, ultimately, ourselves.

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5 Philosophical Answers to the Meaning of Life

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These five different philosophical answers and approaches to the question of the meaning of life showcase the vast diversity of human thought.

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One of the most famous scientists in the world, Charles Darwin, is known for his theories on natural selection and evolution. He unpacked these in his scientific literature, On The Origin of Species, in 1859.

This biologist massively helped improve the understanding of the natural world through his studies, so we should be incredibly grateful for his contributions.

However, Darwin was also a quirky human being known for some strange habits, so there's quite a bit that you may not know about him. Luckily for you, I've got all the details on some of the most interesting facts about Charles Darwin that might blow your mind.

Photo by aitoff on Pixabay

18 Interesting Facts about Charles Darwin

1. Charles Darwin Was Born on the Same Day As Lincoln

Image by Caleb Fisher on Unsplash

Born on the 12th of February 1809, Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England. What might fascinate you is that another prominent person was also born on the exact same day: Abraham Lincoln.

Yeah, that's right, Lincoln was also born on the 12th of February 1809, although in a much more different place - a log cabin in the middle of the Kentucky woods. Besides birthdays, Darwin and Lincoln also shared common beliefs. Both the biologist and the 16th US President strongly believed in ending slavery.

2. He Was an Abolitionist

Image by Getmulichkeit on Canva

Despite popular feelings at the time, Charles Darwin was strongly against slavery and was appalled by the practice of enslavement. While traveling around the world on the HMS Beagle, Darwin witnessed enslaved people and was horrified by how they were treated.

He saw slavery frequently in South America and wrote about it in 1833, saying it was a "monstrous stain on our boasted liberty" and that "I have seen enough of slavery... to be thoroughly disgusted."

In fact, it was said to have impacted him so much that it caused his doubts in faith and even allegedly inspired the writing and publishing of On the Origin of Species.

3. Darwin Didn't Only Study Exotic Animals (He Ate Them Too)

Image by RONSAN4D on Canva

One weird and wacky fact about Darwin is he enjoyed feasting on a wide range of exotic animals. As a Cambridge student, he started the Gourmet Club - informally known as the Glutton Club - as a way to eat all kinds of birds and beasts, from hawks to bitterns.

Talk about an adventurous eater! However, he did have limits, and he apparently gagged on a brown owl - calling the taste "indescribable" and vouching never to eat it again. On his trip across the globe aboard the HMS Beagle, his curiosity for tasting other exotic meats continued as he ate armadillos, agouti, giant tortoises, rheas, and even pumas.

He described pumas as tasting "remarkably like veal in taste". Luckily, today's biologists don't practice this behavior - as it could cause a whole different issue.

4. He Was Married to His First Cousin

Charles Darwin married his cousin Emma Wedgwood, and the couple stayed together until his passing. However, this almost didn't happen due to Darwin's dedication to his work.

He suffered from a bout of illness when he was told to take a few weeks off from work. During this period, he was said to have met Miss Wedgwood at her family estate in 1837. One year later, he proposed, and they were married on the 29th of January 1839.

Nowadays, this would be highly frowned upon, but back in 19th-century England, this wasn't uncommon. Another interesting thing is that Darwin wrote a pros and cons list about getting married. One pro was "having a lifelong companion", and one conwas "losing time for work".

5. He Dropped Out of Medical School

Image by Marcelo Leal on Unsplash

Did you know that Charles Darwin was studying to become a doctor? Yeah, his father, Robert Darwin, enrolled him in the University of Edinburgh Medical School. This was after he spent a few months apprenticing for his father and showed a slight inclination toward medicine.

However, this didn't last long, as, in the second year of medical school, his interest in naturalism bloomed once he joined the Plinian Society. This society delved into the world's natural history, and Darwin spent so much time in this that he neglected his studies.

His father was highly unimpressed with Darwin's attendance, and so he sent him to Christ's College to become an Anglican priest. It was a good thing Darwin dropped out, as his early interests in plants and nature inspired his later work. Also, he was rumored to have been afraid of blood - which no doctor should be.

6. He Had a Strange Nickname

During Darwin's time in chemistry school, he earned the weird nickname "Gas". No, it's not what you think it's for - Darwin wasn't extremely gassy.

He got this nickname because of his love for experimenting with and collecting gases. How strange is that? He was known for his kindness and gentleness, even up to his old age.

7. Over 380 Things Are Named After Him

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Talking about names, Charles Darwin has 389 species named after him, from the Chilean mouse - Phyllotis darwini, to Darwin's frog - Rhinoderma darwinii. That's not all; there are also several different places named after him all over the world.

There's the Charles Darwin National Park and the town of Darwin in Australia. Then there is Mount Darwin and Darwin Island in South America. There is also an accolade called the Darwin Medal, awarded for work done in evolution, biological diversity, and organismal biology.

One award that he might not want his name associated with is the Darwin Award, which is an online honor for people who injure or kill themselves in the stupidest ways. As a result, they prove the merits of natural selection.

8. On the Origin of Species Took Over 20 Years to Publish

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Charles Darwin's most famous achievement, publishing On the Origin of Species, is merited as one of the most important contributions to modern biology. This is because it was so important to evolution. However, did you know that it took the biologist over 20 years to publish it - as he wanted to have enough evidence to prove his theory of evolution via natural selection?

Charles was definitely an overthinker because you can understand why - because of the skepticism of science by society at the time. This, combined with how the general public reacted to the book, was why it took over 20 years, from 1836 to 1858, to publish his book.

9. He Was a Backgammon Enthusiast

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Darwin had a major interest in playing backgammon, especially after returning from his trip on the HMS Beagle and becoming marred with illness. In fact, he created a rigorous daily routine as a way to reduce the pain caused by one of his many unknown diseases.

As part of this routine, he scheduled time for two games of backgammon each day between 8 and 8:30 PM with his wife, Emma. He even kept score of each game he played in a book.

10. He Didn't Coin Survival of the Fittest

Image by Alexas_Fotos on Pixabay

Many people associate the phrase "survival of the fittest" with Darwin's theory of natural selection. However, Darwin was not the first to use this phrase.

Instead, Herbert Spencer, an English Philosopher, first coined "survival of the fittest" in his book Principles of Biology in 1864. Charles Darwin only used the phrase in his fifth edition of On The Origin Of Species in 1869.

11. He's Buried in Westminster Abbey

Image by Dominika Gregušová on Pexels

Charles Darwin is buried in Westminster Abbey near some of England's most famous scientists, such as the mathematician Isaac Newton and the astronomer John Herschel. Despite his complications with religion, Darwin was buried in the North Choir aisle of the abbey in the 1880s after many of his colleagues and the general public petitioned for it.

12. Darwin Suffered from Various Chronic Diseases

Upon returning home from his five-year trip around the world, Charles Darwin suffered from eczema, exhaustion, nausea, headaches, and heart palpitations. It is ironic that the man who discovered natural selection proved it with his death.

This pain only worsened with age, and in 1882 he was diagnosed with heart disease only a few months before he died. Some allege that his death was caused by contracting a parasitic illness called Chagas disease during his travels, although this has not been fully proven.

13. The HMS BeagleVoyage Took Over Five Years

Image by Photos.com on Canva

One of the most famous scientific expeditions was Charles Darwin's voyage on the HMS Beagle. The ship set off from Plymouth, England, on the 27th of December 1831. The first stop was the Canary Islands in January 1832 after a cholera outbreak and quarantine.

Next, they stopped at several spots in South America, including Salvador, Rio de Janeiro, Punta Alta, Tierra del Fuego, and the Falkland Islands.

Then, they set off for the Galápagos Islands arriving in September 1835. Here, Darwin discovered the Galápagos finches, which helped solidify his theory of natural selection. The journey continued along with stops in Australia and Africa before arriving in Falmouth, England, on the 2nd of October 1836.

14. He Struggled with His Religious Beliefs

Image by Noah Holm on Unsplash

Throughout his life, Charles Darwin was riddled with what faith to believe. Born and raised as a Unitarian Christian, he was originally a devout Christian and followed the Bible word-for-word.

However, as his studies progressed and upon his journey around the earth, his beliefs began to change. He was especially affected by seeing the treatment of enslaved people and following the deaths of his three children.

That said, Darwin still valued faith's importance and was considered an agnostic. Interestingly, he and his wife were fascinated by the Buddhist religion because of how it looked at compassion and the ending of suffering.

15. He Visited Four Continents and Eleven Countries on His Voyage

Image by Ricky Gálvez on Pexels

Charles Darwin is said to have visited four continents on his journey - Europe, South America, Oceania, and Africa. Most of the trip was spent in South America, where Darwin visited several countries. These include Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, and beautiful Peru.

Next, he headed to Oceania, where he made stops in French Polynesia, New Zealand, and Australia. The next continent he visited was Africa, where he visited Mauritius, South Africa, and Saint Helena.

Lastly, he made a quick stop in Pernambuco, Brazil, before heading to his home continent of Europe. The last stop he made was on Terceira Island, an island that belongs to Portugal.

16. His Portrait Featured on the 10-Pound Note

Image by Alphotographic on Canva

Another thing you might not know about Darwin (unless you live in London): He featured on the British 10-pound note for almost twenty years. Yeah, Charles Darwin was on the back of the 10-pound note from the 7th of November 2000 until the 1st of March 2018.

His portrait was on the back of the note, along with the HMS Beagle, his magnifying glass, and a hummingbird among flowers. Other notable figures on the 10-pound note were Florence Nightingale, Charles Dickens, and Jane Austen (currently).

17. He Received an Apology from the Church

Image by TheDigitalArtist on Pixabay

Upon the release of On the Origin of Species in November 1859, Charles Darwin was widely criticized by many people and organizations for the theory of evolution via natural selection. This was because many saw it as blasphemy and for it altering the common belief that God had created man.

One major critic was the Church of England, which condemned his challenges towards creationism. This feeling lasted until his death and for 126 years, when they published an apology to Charles Darwin in 2008. This is when Rev. Dr. Malcolm Brown apologized for misunderstanding him in an online essay.

18. He Had Other Famous Family Members

Charles Darwin wasn't the Darwin family's only claim to fame. Yeah, in fact, his direct ancestor and descendants were famous for their own reasons. Erasmus Darwin, his grandfather, was an abolitionist, poet, and philosopher famed for his thoughts on natural history.

His son, George Darwin, was an astronomer well-known for his theory of the tidal evolution between the earth and the moon. His other children were also famous for various studies, including medicine, economics, and instrument-making.

New Interesting Facts Checker

At New Interesting Facts, we have an editorial policy and a 3 step review process to ensure we get our facts straight. However, we are a very small team, and we sometimes get it wrong, or information becomes outdated. Please let us know if you think we've gotten something wrong.

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18 Interesting Facts About Charles Darwin That May Surprise You I New Interesting Facts

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One of the most famous scientists in the world, Charles Darwin, is known for his theories on natural selection and evolution. Here are 18 interesting facts about Charles Darwin you might not know

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"Beyond Hollywood: The Real Lessons to Learn from Hotel Rwanda's Tragic History" | Emmanuel katto Uganda - ROAPE

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"Beyond Hollywood: The Real Lessons to Learn from Hotel Rwanda's Tragic History" | Emmanuel katto Uganda - ROAPE

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The movie "Hotel Rwanda" is a powerful and emotional portrayal of the events that occurred during the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. However, it is important to remember that the film is a dramatized version of the events and does not provide a comprehensive understanding of the genocide. As we reflect on the 27th anniversary of the genocide, it is crucial to learn from history and not rely solely on Hollywood portrayals.

Comments:

Emmanuel Katto- Thanks Jos Van Oijen! for this eye-opening writing piece. I am Emmanuel Katto from Uganda and being an African writer I never saw the movie ‘Hotel Rwanda’ as my grandfather told me what actually happened in 1994 and what Hollywood depicted. After reading your blog I am very glad that there are still some loyal people who are fighting for the vicissitude that happened 29 years ago.

Know More : https://roape.net/2023/05/18/hotel-rwanda-learning-from-history-not-hollywood/

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Jos van Oijen writes about the release of Paul Rusesabagina - the ex-hotelier of 'Hotel Rwanda' - from prison in Kigali at end of March. He argues that with very few exceptions, the media use the Hollywood movie, Hotel Rwanda, as factual information. Yet the story is largely fictional. Van Oijen argues that journalists (and many researchers) are as ignorant about genocide today as they were in 1994. By Jos van Oijen
'If we are ever to have any hope of ending genocide and similar atrocities,' researcher Kjell Anderson wrote, 'we must first understand them.' Anderson's remark may state the obvious but as history keeps repeating itself, it cannot be said often enough.

In the first week of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, from 7 April 1994 onward, foreign journalists dutifully reported the systematic, one-sided nature of the violence: elite units of the Rwandan army aided by youth militias going from house to house killing unarmed Tutsi civilians; separating groups of people to kill the Tutsi, killing Hutu with a stereotypical Tutsi appearance, etc.

The violence was nevertheless interpreted as chaos, anarchy, and flared-up tribal strife. Such explanations echoed the propaganda of the extremist leaders who washed their hands in innocence by portraying the acts of genocide as random violence committed by angry mobs and disobedient soldiers who escaped their barracks. It was as simple as it was effective. No foreign power wanted to risk its soldiers in yet another chaotic tribal war in Africa. The United Nations pulled out their peacekeeping force and the world averted its gaze. By the time everyone realized what was taking place, most of the victims were already dead.

Today's journalists know as little about genocide and propaganda as their colleagues in 1994. They are not familiar with the key elements of genocide, are unable to distinguish genocide from traditional warfare, do not recognize subtle forms of genocide denial, and recycle extremist propaganda as 'the other side of the story'. Craft journalism is no longer a priority. Present-day news coverage is a matter of suggestions and emotions, opinions and judgments, political preferences, and activism. Structured research and a rational approach to the evidence, have become the exception rather than the rule. Depictions of historical events in popular culture replace reality, at least with this subject matter.
Hôtel des Mille Collines
"It's truly a shame what happened to the 'Hotel Rwanda' hero," an investigative journalist wrote on Twitter during the controversy surrounding Paul Rusesabagina last year. The tweet referred to a background article on a public broadcaster's website expressing the same sentiment. It caught my attention, not because it was stitched together from unverified assumptions and emotions, but because it mixed up the chronology of historical events even more than usual.

The law of cause and effect had apparently gotten in the way of a good story, so the sequence of events was adjusted instead of the narrative. In science fiction, the timeline is frequently manipulated as well, but in those cases, the hero will spend the rest of the story desperately trying to correct the unforeseen consequences. In the real world, there are consequences too, but when it affects the lives of ordinary people in faraway Africa, as in this case, nobody loses sleep over it.

To journalists, history does not exist. Only the movie exists. Hotel Rwanda, a 2004 Hollywood film, runs for two hours, long enough to internalize the message displayed at the start: 'This is a true story'. Ironically, the scene that follows is entirely fictional, but it convinced most journalists that the movie was a historically accurate documentary. It demonstrates the magic of Hollywood as well as the gullibility of (not only) journalists.

What matters is not the facts but the beautiful actress Sophie Okonedo who says, in a romantic scene in the film set in South Africa, by candlelight and with a glass of wine, to her handsome co-star Don Cheadle: "You are a very good man, Paul Rusesabagina". A true story. One that happened in Johannesburg ten years after the genocide but when you're in a dark movie theatre, participating in the shared experience of a cinematic illusion, you don't think like that. It feels real, therefore it is true.

To the chagrin of many, the rescued hotel guests contradicted the illusory truth projected on the screen. The 'ungrateful' extras of the hero story remind us of the fact that the hotel manager was an actual person, not Don Cheadle in the movie, but a man of flesh and blood whose character traits included some unpleasant ones. The survivors were joined in their criticism of the film by other witnesses such as Romeo Dallaire, the commander of a few hundred UN peacekeepers in Rwanda who refused to abandon the mission. Some of these men were stationed in the hotel at the time.

The facts are documented. They were reported by experienced war correspondents. Dallaire described them in his situation reports. Correspondence has been preserved. There is too much to mention and verifying the information requires little effort. On 15 May 1994, for instance, journalist Mark Huband reported in The Observer that the hotel manager 'threatened to throw his guests out, because they have not paid any bills'. Other newspaper articles mentioned the real heroes: the small group of peacekeepers and United Nations military observers who camped out in the lobby.

However, the media did not respond to reason. Oblivious to the paradox in their argument, they speculated that the criticism was a smear campaign organized by the Rwandan government. This assumption overlooked the fact that the information of the witnesses already existed before the film, a fact that excludes the possibility of the information being generated, for whatever purpose, after the film premiered in 2004. Even today, the international media collectively recycle the irrational assumption that 19 years ago served to retain a false belief. In the minds of these journalists, the history of 1994 still begins and ends in 2004.

The irrational accusation levelled against the former hotel guests is more than just an insult to the people concerned. It shows that the members of the media who suspended reality in 2004 to accommodate a Hollywood script have yet to return to earth. Another consequence of the knee-jerk reaction of 'ulterior motives' to rationalize the information of the survivors is that it has become the default attitude whenever a journalist is confronted with substantiated criticism. I will provide a few examples of this behaviour from my own experience. Again, note the blunders with chronology and causality.
Some events
On 7 September, 2021, I published a review of the book 'Do Not Disturb' by British journalist Michela Wrong. She responded in a South African newspaper on 18 July, 2021. That's right: seven weeks earlier. I had not written a single word yet, but Wrong already claimed that my review was 'part of a very efficient state propaganda campaign' of the Rwandan government. The journalist who interviewed Wrong did not question the accuracy of her accusation, published it, and afterwards resisted the reality that the review did not exist and that my work concerns the facts of history, not contemporary politics. I was forced to lodge a complaint with the South African Press Council to be granted a rebuttal.

In the Netherlands, we have media watchdogs too, but their attitudes are more like Wrong's and that of the Hotel Rwanda fans, than their African colleagues. A case I submitted to the ombudsman of the Dutch public broadcasters last year, about a pattern of serious ethics violations in programmes related to the genocide against the Tutsi, was 'solved' by replacing the entire case file with an unrelated question I had sent by email two months earlier. As weird as this may sound, more relevant to the discussion of this article is that the written defence of the criticized broadcaster contained no less than twelve accusations of the 'state propaganda' kind.

My response to such accusations is always the same: Would it matter? Would the facts change? Facts have no 'side'; they are what they are. Anyone can look them up and judge for themselves.

But therein lies the problem, apparently. To give alternative histories an appearance of plausibility the facts must change, the chronology of the events must be reversed, historical footage must be manipulated, official documents must be misrepresented, and fake experts must be presented to confirm the illusory truth. Otherwise, such stories would stop making sense.

And then what? Would these journalists start consulting the archives, reading the academic literature, doing some actual research themselves, and informing themselves about the elements of genocide? Would they learn a few lessons from the past instead of moulding it to fit a false belief? Oh my, what a crazy idea!
Jos van Oijen is an independent researcher from The Netherlands who publishes on genocide-related issues in various online and print media. His writings on Rwanda, genocide, and research on roape.net can be found here. Featured Photograph: Hotel des Milles Collines, Kigali, Rwanda (5 February 2006)

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Hotel Rwanda - learning from history, not Hollywood - ROAPE

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Jos van Oijen writes about the release of Paul Rusesabagina - the ex-hotelier of 'Hotel Rwanda' - from prison in Kigali at end of March. He argues that with very few exceptions, the media use the Hollywood movie, Hotel Rwanda, as factual information. Yet the story is largely fictional.

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Ready to discover three incredibly simple (yet powerful) strategies that will help you optimize quicker and more effectively?

Here's what you'll learn in this article:

How to use AI to provide a data source for on-page optimization.

Using AI to quickly create multiple schema types for every blog article on your website.

A free internal link solution that makes internal linking a breeze.

Key terminology

Before we begin, it's important to connect these concepts to entities.

Entities

In machine learning, particularly in natural language processing, an entity is a significant thing or concept in a specific context.

For instance, "Apple" could be an entity that represents the technology company or an entity that represents a type of fruit, depending on the context.

Internal links are hyperlinks that direct to another page on the same website. They help to establish an information hierarchy for the given website and guide visitors to high-priority sites.

From an SEO perspective, these links aid search engines in discovering, indexing, and understanding all the pages on your site.

Internal links can also help search engines understand the context and relationship between different pages and their content. This can assist the search engine in identifying relevant entities on your site.

Schema

Schema (or Schema.org) is a collaborative, community-driven project with a mission to create, maintain, and promote schemas for structured data on the Internet.

In other words, it's a way to tag and categorize information on your webpage so that search engines can better understand what your page is about. This could be anything from a product review to an event announcement.

By using schema markup, you're helping search engines identify and understand the entities present on your webpage.

EAV (Entity-Attribute-Value)

EAV is a data model used to describe entities where the number of attributes (properties, parameters) that can be used to describe them is potentially vast.

This is particularly useful in SEO because it helps represent information about entities flexibly, which can be beneficial in situations where the attributes used to describe an entity can vary widely.

Search engines seek to understand the searcher's intent and the contextual meaning of terms as they appear in the searchable dataspace.

The concept of entities, backed by the use of schema, EAV, and internal links, enables the search engine to comprehend a website's content more effectively and present the most relevant results to users.

Overall, the following three tactics enhance the "semantic understanding" of your website. Along with other SEO practices, they can help improve your site's visibility in the SERPs.

1. The hexa grammarian prompt sequence

This prompt is specifically designed around entities. As we've covered in the definitive guide to entities, entity understanding is largely tied to grammar.

The nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, and EAV are all integrally tied to entities.

While it sounds confusing, it's simpler than you might think. Here's what ChatGPT says about its importance.

Here are the six prompts:

"Provide a comprehensive list of the most common verbs associated with the topic. Cluster the list and nest associated verbs."

"Provide a comprehensive list of the most common nouns associated with the topic. Cluster the list and nest associated nouns."

"Provide a comprehensive list of the most common adjectives associated with the topic. Cluster the list and nest associated adjectives."

"Provide a comprehensive list of the most common adverbs associated with the topic. Cluster the list and nest associated verbs."

"Provide a comprehensive list of the most common predicates associated with the topic."

"Provide a comprehensive list of attributes associated with the topic."

When you get your answers, you can save them however you like. I prefer a Google sheet.

I suggest using this list in a couple of different ways.

You can use the hexa-list to inform your content briefs. You could use the hexa-list to optimize existing content. You could even use this list to help you craft clever prompts for OpenAI.

I can't give away all of the in-house secrets, but suffice it to say that this list can be used to help you with programmatic AI content deployment.

2. Schema and AI

Creating schema for hundreds of web pages is an absolute slog. Over the past few years, agencies have productized schema because it's one of those tasks that no one wants to do.

Since schema is hard to understand and the benefits aren't always understood, many people use an out-of-the-box solution (e.g., SEOpress, RankMath, Yoast).

This article's co-author, Andrew Ansley, developed a straightforward system for schema generation. You don't need to understand anything about schema to make this work.

All you need is an OpenAI playground and access to GPT-4.

For this example, we are going to use webpage schema so we can create a clear and structured declaration of the entities that are found in the blog article.

Setting up

Step 1: Grab the URL for your blog article.

Step 2: Provide the author, website URL, organization name, publisher name, and web page URL in the system text.

Step 3: Copy and paste your blog article text into the system text.

As you can see from the image, the system text is on the left. The actual prompting is in the middle of the page, functioning exactly like ChatGPT - with a major upgrade.

In playground, you can adjust settings and the system text functions as memory/context.

Inside the playground, you can use around 8,000 tokens (.75 words per token = 6,000 words).

The schema prompt

The prompt is straightforward. All you need to enter into the user box is:

"Create WebPage JSON-LD schema. Use about and mentions. The about and the mentions should use entities and the associated Wikipedia page."

After you're done, you'll get some pro schema to add to your article. We typically use a plugin to inject header code into a blog article, but that is just one of many options.

If you don't trust the AI, you can go to https://validator.schema.org/ and provide the code to see if it has any errors.

As you can see from the image, my pro schema code designed for entity optimization is free from flaws. Huzzah!

Another schema type that you can easily add to a blog is FAQPage schema.

FAQPage Schema

This schema type is simpler than the previous example. For this schema, you can delete your article text from the system and you can replace it with whatever you like.

The prompt is:

If you have the text inside of the system, it will generate something like the following example.

For those who prefer ChatGPT, you can just use the web browsing plugin (which is even simpler to use).

The only prompt you need is:

"Create FAQ schema for the URL [insert link here]."

If you want to do multiple URLs, you can add additional URLs and ask ChatGPT to create FAQ Schema for each URL.

I can't help but nerd out over how easy it is to accomplish SEO tasks with AI. While I am showing a non-programmatic example here, you can literally explain what you want to build, and the AI will provide the code.

You don't even need to ask the AI for code to accomplish a more programmatic approach to schema. You can use this simple prompt sequence:

"Create FAQ schema in JSON-LD format. Process one URL and when you are done with that task, initiate another prompt that continues the task until you process the final URL in the list."

The answer looks like this:

When you use this method, the generation of results will end around the 6th URL.

If you give a list of URLs that exceed the output length, you can type the word "continue," and then the AI will continue down the list of URLs.

Internal links are incredibly important for passing authority between pages, improving crawlability for Google Bot, and communicating topic relationships for entity optimization.

Here's a script that Ansley created that only needs three things.

The doc is the article you're writing that will link out to your other articles.

The Google Sheet contains all of your keywords and URLs. I use a sitemap.

The next step is to ask ChatGPT to identify the keyword from the URL slug.

Here is the script.

function addLinksFromSheet() { // Your Google Sheets ID var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.openById('1AOvyOL0PCVVjY86aEEx77RqUWthV1m5Vzs2SyXE2f7g').getActiveSheet(); // Get all the rows of data in the Sheet, excluding the headers var data = sheet.getRange("A2:B" + sheet.getLastRow()).getValues(); // Iterate over all the rows for (var i = 0; i < data.length; i++) { // The first column in the row contains the text to be hyperlinked var searchPhrase = data[i][0]; // The second column contains the URL var hyperlink = data[i][1]; // Use your addLinks function to add the hyperlink to the doc addLinks(searchPhrase, hyperlink); } } function addLinks(searchPhrase, hyperlink) { if (!searchPhrase) { return; } // Your Google Doc ID const document = DocumentApp.openById('1_T5BRHiNi3iPnEL6xtys2qEV9WNzPZAwsQdIqtgiFtI'); const body = document.getBody(); let search = null; let count = 0; while (count < 1) { search = body.findText(searchPhrase, search ? search : null); if (!search) { break; } const searchElement = search.getElement(); const startIndex = search.getStartOffset(); const endIndex = search.getEndOffsetInclusive(); searchElement.asText().setLinkUrl(startIndex, endIndex, hyperlink); count++; } document.saveAndClose(); }

I emphasized the part of the script that requires your own unique document slug.

The inspiration for this script came from Hamish's YoTtube channel, Income Surfers. Hamish is a new YouTuber, but his content is solid if you're wanting AI + SEO.

The GIF below demonstrates what to do with Google App Scripts.

The results look like the screenshot below.

The perk of this setup is you can essentially equip any of your writers with an easy way to internally link.

One of the most difficult aspects of internal linking is the fact that most outsourced writers don't know what to link to.

Set up a database and maintain that list so your writers can apply all the internal links you want them to use.

If you'd like to include additional keywords, you can go to ChatGPT and paste your data. I used five keywords and five URLs for illustration purposes.

Prompt:

"I want to expand this table further. Repeat each URL 5 times and provide 4 additional keywords associated to each URL. The new keywords should have high semantic relevance to the original keyword in the list."

Output:

As you can see, I now have five keywords to choose from. To avoid linking to the same URL, you'll need to modify the script. Here is the new version:

function addLinksFromSheet() { // Your Google Sheets ID var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.openById('1jTwgsEgz5X4BbiNDjQeHJrRVtYdGi3LEKEBvPgIYtg8').getActiveSheet(); // Get all the rows of data in the Sheet, excluding the headers var data = sheet.getRange("A2:B" + sheet.getLastRow()).getValues(); // Keep track of the used URLs var usedUrls = []; // Iterate over all the rows for (var i = 0; i < data.length; i++) { // The first column in the row contains the text to be hyperlinked var searchPhrase = data[i][0]; // The second column contains the URL var hyperlink = data[i][1]; // Check if this URL has been used already if (usedUrls.indexOf(hyperlink) === -1) { // It hasn't, so add the hyperlink to the doc addLinks(searchPhrase, hyperlink); // And mark this URL as used usedUrls.push(hyperlink); } } } function addLinks(searchPhrase, hyperlink) { if (!searchPhrase) { return; } // Your Google Doc ID const document = DocumentApp.openById('1rLL9J6Lag6McZ6F22R3ptyb7XFqg9Bc1qmEgobrTa3w'); const body = document.getBody(); let search = null; let count = 0; while (count < 1) { search = body.findText(searchPhrase, search ? search : null); if (!search) { break; } const searchElement = search.getElement(); const startIndex = search.getStartOffset(); const endIndex = search.getEndOffsetInclusive(); searchElement.asText().setLinkUrl(startIndex, endIndex, hyperlink); count++; } document.saveAndClose(); }

Using AI for entity SEO

The three specific examples above show how AI can be used to dramatically reduce the time involved in optimizing for entities.

We always recommend utilizing AI for any repetitive or highly technical task and spending more of your time on the strategy or creative functions of SEO. Entity SEO is no different.

However, it is important to know that there are many other uses for AI when optimizing for entities, and this is by no means an exhaustive list.
Make sure to attend my session at SMX Advanced, taking place June 13-14, to learn more about Entity SEO and AI and why we believe Entity SEO will be crucial to top SERP positions in the future.
This is the third article in the entity SEO series. If you would like to start by reading the first two articles, they are linked here:
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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3 ways to use AI for sitewide entity optimization

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Here are three specific examples of how AI can be used to dramatically reduce the time involved in optimizing for entities.

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Character.AI, the a16z-backed chatbot startup, tops 1.7M installs in first week

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Character.AI, the a16z-backed chatbot startup, tops 1.7M installs in first week

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Demand for AI via consumer mobile apps has been climbing, with market leader OpenAI's ChatGPT mobile app topping half a million downloads in its first six days. Now, another AI app is touting its own launch success, as the a16z-backed Character.AI app is claiming to have pulled in over 1.7 million new installs in less than a week on the market. The AI app maker, which announced a whopping $150 million in Series A funding earlier this year, valuing its business at $1 billion, offers customizable AI companions with distinct personalities, as well as the ability for users to create their own characters.

While there are a number of these AI character generators available on today's app stores, interest in Character.AI has a lot to do with its founders. The Palo Alto-based startup was created by Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, AI experts who previously led a team of researchers at Google that built LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), a language model that helps power conversational AI experiences.

At Google, the founders had become frustrated with the company's hesitancy to roll out AI chatbots to other researchers and the general public, including through integrations with other Google products, like Assistant, The Wall Street Journal reported. Believing AI would revolutionize search and other areas, the duo ultimately decided to leave Google in late 2021, despite pleas from CEO Sundar Pichai to stay and continue their work on LaMDA. That same November, Shazeer and De Freitas founded Character Technologies, now home to Character.AI.

The mobile version of the AI chatbot platform launched globally to iOS and Android users on May 23, where it had a strong showing on Google Play in particular. Within the first 48 hours, the app saw more than 700,000 Android installs, putting it ahead of top entertainment apps like Netflix, Disney+, and Prime Video, for example. That trend is continuing in the days following the launch, the company confirmed to TechCrunch, thanks to installs in large Android markets like Indonesia, the Philippines, and Brazil. The U.S. is also a leading market for Android downloads, the company said.

Interest in the mobile app was also heightened by the popularity of the web experience that preceded it. Ahead of the app's launch, the Character.AI web app was topping 200 million visits per month, Character.AI claims, and users were spending on average 29 minutes per visit - a figure the company says eclipses ChatGPT by 300%.

In addition, Character.AI reports that users quickly become engaged after first use. For instance, the company noted this month that once users send their first message to a character, their engagement rates jump to more than 2 hours average time on platform. To date, users have created over 10 million custom AI characters, the company added.

The team, still just 30 people, has been particularly busy this month, having launched its premium service c.ai+, which offers a similar set of perks as ChatGPT Plus, like faster response times, access during peak periods of usage, and early access to new features. It also announced a strategic partnership with Google Cloud for building and training its AI models. The deal will see the startup using Google Cloud's Tensor Processor Units to train and infer LLMs (large language models) faster and more efficiently, it said.

While some startups massage their reported download figures to make them sound better than they are, it seems Character.AI's numbers are likely accurate. We asked third-party app intelligence provider data.ai to compare Character.AI's numbers with their own estimates and data.ai came back with figures that actually showed the apps had a higher number of downloads. (The apps are so new, third-party estimates may not be accurate at this time - but, if anything, these third-party metrics do confirm there is initial consumer demand.)

However, while ChatGPT has demonstrated staying power following its launch - it's still No. 3 today on the top free apps chart in the U.S. - Character.AI demand seems to have declined slightly post-launch. As of the time of writing, the iOS app is charting at No. 13 in the U.S. App Store's Entertainment category. On U.S. iOS, the app was No. 4 overall for its first two days, but declined since to a rank of No. 89 overall. On U.S. Android, it reached No. 5 on May 27 but dropped to No. 27 as of today, data.ai told us.

Asked if Character.AI was blowing some of its huge chunk of change on marketing spend to generate its initial installs, the company claims that was not the case. The app launched without a dedicated marketing budget and 99% of its downloads were organic, the startup said.

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Character.AI, the a16z-backed chatbot startup, tops 1.7M installs in first week

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Demand for AI via consumer mobile apps has been climbing, with market leader OpenAI's ChatGPT mobile app topping half a million downloads in its first six days.

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AI-generated images are everywhere. Here's how to spot them

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AI-generated images are everywhere. Here's how to spot them

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Amid debates about how artificial intelligence will affect jobs, the economy, politics and our shared reality, one thing is clear: AI-generated content is here.

Chances are you've already encountered content created by generative AI software, which can produce realistic-seeming text, images, audio and video.

So what do you need to know about sorting fact from AI fiction? And how can we think about using AI responsibly?

How to spot AI manipulation

Thanks to image generators like OpenAI's DALL-E2, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, AI-generated images are more realistic and more available than ever. And technology to create videos out of whole cloth is rapidly improving, too.

The current wave of fake images isn't perfect, however, especially when it comes to depicting people. Generators can struggle with creating realistic hands, teeth and accessories like glasses and jewelry. If an image includes multiple people, there may be even more irregularities.

Take the synthetic image of the Pope wearing a stylish puffy coat that recently went viral. If you look closer, his fingers don't seem to actually be grasping the coffee cup he appears to be holding. The rim of his eyeglasses is distorted.

Another set of viral fake photos purportedly showed former President Donald Trump getting arrested. In some images, hands were bizarre and faces in the background were strangely blurred.

Listen To Life Kit
Synthetic videos have their own oddities, like slight mismatches between sound and motion and distorted mouths. They often lack facial expressions or subtle body movements that real people make.

Some tools try to detect AI-generated content, but they are not always reliable.

Experts caution against relying too heavily on these kinds of tells. The newest version of Midjourney, for example, is much better at rendering hands. The absence of blinking used to be a signal a video might be computer-generated, but that is no longer the case.

"The problem is we've started to cultivate an idea that you can spot these AI-generated images by these little clues. And the clues don't last," says Sam Gregory of the nonprofit Witness, which helps people use video and technology to protect human rights.

Gregory says it can be counterproductive to spend too long trying to analyze an image unless you're trained in digital forensics. And too much skepticism can backfire - giving bad actors the opportunity to discredit real images and video as fake.

Use S-I-F-T to assess what you're looking at

Instead of going down a rabbit hole of trying to examine images pixel-by-pixel, experts recommend zooming out, using tried-and-true techniques of media literacy.

One model, created by research scientist Mike Caufield, is called SIFT. That stands for four steps: Stop. Investigate the source. Find better coverage. Trace the original context.

The overall idea is to slow down and consider what you're looking at - especially pictures, posts, or claims that trigger your emotions.

"Something seems too good to be true or too funny to believe or too confirming of your existing biases," says Gregory. "People want to lean into their belief that something is real, that their belief is confirmed about a particular piece of media."

A good first step is to look for other coverage of the same topic. If it's an image or video of an event - say a politician speaking - are there other photos from the same event?

Does the location look accurate? Fake photos of a non-existent explosion at the Pentagon went viral and sparked a brief dip in the stock market. But the building depicted didn't actually resemble the Pentagon.

Google recently announced it's making it easier to see when a photo first appeared online, which could help identify AI-generated pictures as well as photos that are shared with misleading or false context - like that viral image of a shark swimming on a flooded highway that often appears after hurricanes.

Pause and think in other situations, too. Scammers have begun using spoofed audio to scam people by impersonating family members in distress. The Federal Trade Commission has issued a consumer alert and urged vigilance. It suggests if you get a call from a friend or relative asking for money, call the person back at a known number to verify it's really them.

Check your sources

AI images aren't the only way you might be fooled by a computer. Chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Microsoft's Bing and Google's Bard are really good at producing text that sounds highly plausible. But that doesn't mean what they tell you is true or accurate.

That's because they're trained on massive amounts of text to find statistical relationships between words. They use that information to create everything from recipes to political speeches to computer code.

While the text chatbots spit out may sound convincingly human, they do not learn, think, or create in the ways we do, says Gary Marcus, a cognitive scientist and professor emeritus at New York University.

"They don't have models of the world. They don't reason. They don't know what facts are. They're not built for that," he says. "They're basically autocomplete on steroids. They predict what words would be plausible in some context, and plausible is not the same as true."

ChatGPT fabricated a damaging allegation of sexual harassment against a law professor. It's made up a story my colleague Geoff Brumfiel, an editor and correspondent on NPR's science desk, never wrote. Bing invented quotes from a Pentagon spokesman. Bard made a factual error during its high-profile launch that sent Google's parent company's shares plummeting.

That means you should double-check anything a chatbot tells you - even if it comes footnoted with sources, as Google's Bard and Microsoft's Bing do. Make sure the links they cite are real and actually support the information the chatbot provides.

Use generative AI tools responsibly

In its early phase, AI can be unreliable and even risky. But it's also fun and interesting to experiment with. And like it or not, generative AI tools are being integrated into all kinds of software, from email and search to Google Docs, Microsoft Office, Zoom, Expedia, and Snapchat.

Playing around with chatbots and image generators is a good way to learn more about how the technology works and what it can and can't do.

"My main piece of advice to everybody is, do use this stuff," says Ethan Mollick, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. "You absolutely should be making things. You should absolutely spend an hour on ChatGPT...You should try and automate your job."

Mollick requires his students to use AI. And while he's an enthusiastic user of chatbots and other forms of AI, he's also wary of the ways they can be misused.

"You've got to figure this thing out because we're in a world where there's nobody with great advice right now. There isn't like a manual out there that you can read," Mollick says.

If you are going to experiment with generative AI, here are a few things to keep in mind.

Privacy: Be smart about sharing personal information with AI software. Systems may use your input for training, and companies may have access to what you enter as inputs.

Ethics: What are you using the software to create? Are you asking an image generator to copy the style of a living artist, for example? Or using it in a class without your teacher's knowledge?

Consent: If you're creating an image, who are you depicting? Is it parody? Could they be harmed by the portrayal?

Disclosure: If you're sharing your AI creations on social media, have you made it clear they are computer-generated? What would happen if they were shared further without that disclosure?

Fact check: As explained above, chatbots get things wrong. So double-check any important information before you post or share it.

"You can think of it as like an infinitely helpful intern with access to all of human knowledge who makes stuff up every once in a while," Mollick says.
The audio portion of this episode was produced by Thomas Lu and edited by Brett Neely and Meghan Keane.

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AI-generated images are everywhere. Here's how to spot them : Life Kit

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It's easy to be fooled by AI-generated images and other content. We talk about how to identify them, how media literacy can help, plus how to use these tools responsibly.

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"Beyond Hollywood: The Real Lessons to Learn from Hotel Rwanda's Tragic History" | Emmanuel katto Uganda - ROAPE

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"Beyond Hollywood: The Real Lessons to Learn from Hotel Rwanda's Tragic History" | Emmanuel katto Uganda - ROAPE

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The movie "Hotel Rwanda" is a powerful and emotional portrayal of the events that occurred during the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. However, it is important to remember that the film is a dramatized version of the events and does not provide a comprehensive understanding of the genocide. As we reflect on the 27th anniversary of the genocide, it is crucial to learn from history and not rely solely on Hollywood portrayals.

The Rwandan Genocide was a brutal and tragic event that resulted in the deaths of an estimated 800,000 people. The conflict was fueled by ethnic tensions between the Hutu and Tutsi groups, which had been simmering for years. In April 1994, the assassination of the Rwandan President, a Hutu, sparked a wave of violence and bloodshed. Hutu extremists launched a campaign of mass murder against Tutsi civilians, as well as moderate Hutus who opposed the violence.

The movie "Hotel Rwanda" tells the story of Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who sheltered and protected refugees during the genocide. While Rusesabagina's actions were undoubtedly heroic, the movie does not provide a complete picture of the genocide. It simplifies the conflict and fails to address the complex political and social factors that led to the violence.

To gain a deeper understanding of the Rwandan Genocide, it is important to turn to other resources. Books such as "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families" by Philip Gourevitch and "Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda" by Romeo Dallaire provide a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the conflict. These books offer firsthand accounts and interviews with survivors and perpetrators, shedding light on the complex factors that led to the genocide.

In addition to reading books and other resources, it is important to remember the lessons of the Rwandan Genocide. The international community failed to intervene and prevent the violence, and this failure had devastating consequences. It is crucial to remember that we have a responsibility to prevent and respond to acts of genocide and other atrocities. By learning from history, we can work towards a better future for all.

Comments:

Emmanuel Katto- Thanks Jos Van Oijen! for this eye-opening writing piece. I am Emmanuel Katto from Uganda and being an African writer I never saw the movie ‘Hotel Rwanda’ as my grandfather told me what actually happened in 1994 and what Hollywood depicted. After reading your blog I am very glad that there are still some loyal people who are fighting for the vicissitude that happened 29 years ago.

Know More : https://roape.net/2023/05/18/hotel-rwanda-learning-from-history-not-hollywood/

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Jos van Oijen writes about the release of Paul Rusesabagina - the ex-hotelier of 'Hotel Rwanda' - from prison in Kigali at end of March. He argues that with very few exceptions, the media use the Hollywood movie, Hotel Rwanda, as factual information. Yet the story is largely fictional. Van Oijen argues that journalists (and many researchers) are as ignorant about genocide today as they were in 1994. By Jos van Oijen
'If we are ever to have any hope of ending genocide and similar atrocities,' researcher Kjell Anderson wrote, 'we must first understand them.' Anderson's remark may state the obvious but as history keeps repeating itself, it cannot be said often enough.

In the first week of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, from 7 April 1994 onward, foreign journalists dutifully reported the systematic, one-sided nature of the violence: elite units of the Rwandan army aided by youth militias going from house to house killing unarmed Tutsi civilians; separating groups of people to kill the Tutsi, killing Hutu with a stereotypical Tutsi appearance, etc.

The violence was nevertheless interpreted as chaos, anarchy, and flared-up tribal strife. Such explanations echoed the propaganda of the extremist leaders who washed their hands in innocence by portraying the acts of genocide as random violence committed by angry mobs and disobedient soldiers who escaped their barracks. It was as simple as it was effective. No foreign power wanted to risk its soldiers in yet another chaotic tribal war in Africa. The United Nations pulled out their peacekeeping force and the world averted its gaze. By the time everyone realized what was taking place, most of the victims were already dead.

Today's journalists know as little about genocide and propaganda as their colleagues in 1994. They are not familiar with the key elements of genocide, are unable to distinguish genocide from traditional warfare, do not recognize subtle forms of genocide denial, and recycle extremist propaganda as 'the other side of the story'. Craft journalism is no longer a priority. Present-day news coverage is a matter of suggestions and emotions, opinions and judgments, political preferences, and activism. Structured research and a rational approach to the evidence, have become the exception rather than the rule. Depictions of historical events in popular culture replace reality, at least with this subject matter.
Hôtel des Mille Collines
"It's truly a shame what happened to the 'Hotel Rwanda' hero," an investigative journalist wrote on Twitter during the controversy surrounding Paul Rusesabagina last year. The tweet referred to a background article on a public broadcaster's website expressing the same sentiment. It caught my attention, not because it was stitched together from unverified assumptions and emotions, but because it mixed up the chronology of historical events even more than usual.

The law of cause and effect had apparently gotten in the way of a good story, so the sequence of events was adjusted instead of the narrative. In science fiction, the timeline is frequently manipulated as well, but in those cases, the hero will spend the rest of the story desperately trying to correct the unforeseen consequences. In the real world, there are consequences too, but when it affects the lives of ordinary people in faraway Africa, as in this case, nobody loses sleep over it.

To journalists, history does not exist. Only the movie exists. Hotel Rwanda, a 2004 Hollywood film, runs for two hours, long enough to internalize the message displayed at the start: 'This is a true story'. Ironically, the scene that follows is entirely fictional, but it convinced most journalists that the movie was a historically accurate documentary. It demonstrates the magic of Hollywood as well as the gullibility of (not only) journalists.

What matters is not the facts but the beautiful actress Sophie Okonedo who says, in a romantic scene in the film set in South Africa, by candlelight and with a glass of wine, to her handsome co-star Don Cheadle: "You are a very good man, Paul Rusesabagina". A true story. One that happened in Johannesburg ten years after the genocide but when you're in a dark movie theatre, participating in the shared experience of a cinematic illusion, you don't think like that. It feels real, therefore it is true.

To the chagrin of many, the rescued hotel guests contradicted the illusory truth projected on the screen. The 'ungrateful' extras of the hero story remind us of the fact that the hotel manager was an actual person, not Don Cheadle in the movie, but a man of flesh and blood whose character traits included some unpleasant ones. The survivors were joined in their criticism of the film by other witnesses such as Romeo Dallaire, the commander of a few hundred UN peacekeepers in Rwanda who refused to abandon the mission. Some of these men were stationed in the hotel at the time.

The facts are documented. They were reported by experienced war correspondents. Dallaire described them in his situation reports. Correspondence has been preserved. There is too much to mention and verifying the information requires little effort. On 15 May 1994, for instance, journalist Mark Huband reported in The Observer that the hotel manager 'threatened to throw his guests out, because they have not paid any bills'. Other newspaper articles mentioned the real heroes: the small group of peacekeepers and United Nations military observers who camped out in the lobby.

However, the media did not respond to reason. Oblivious to the paradox in their argument, they speculated that the criticism was a smear campaign organized by the Rwandan government. This assumption overlooked the fact that the information of the witnesses already existed before the film, a fact that excludes the possibility of the information being generated, for whatever purpose, after the film premiered in 2004. Even today, the international media collectively recycle the irrational assumption that 19 years ago served to retain a false belief. In the minds of these journalists, the history of 1994 still begins and ends in 2004.

The irrational accusation levelled against the former hotel guests is more than just an insult to the people concerned. It shows that the members of the media who suspended reality in 2004 to accommodate a Hollywood script have yet to return to earth. Another consequence of the knee-jerk reaction of 'ulterior motives' to rationalize the information of the survivors is that it has become the default attitude whenever a journalist is confronted with substantiated criticism. I will provide a few examples of this behaviour from my own experience. Again, note the blunders with chronology and causality.
Some events
On 7 September, 2021, I published a review of the book 'Do Not Disturb' by British journalist Michela Wrong. She responded in a South African newspaper on 18 July, 2021. That's right: seven weeks earlier. I had not written a single word yet, but Wrong already claimed that my review was 'part of a very efficient state propaganda campaign' of the Rwandan government. The journalist who interviewed Wrong did not question the accuracy of her accusation, published it, and afterwards resisted the reality that the review did not exist and that my work concerns the facts of history, not contemporary politics. I was forced to lodge a complaint with the South African Press Council to be granted a rebuttal.

In the Netherlands, we have media watchdogs too, but their attitudes are more like Wrong's and that of the Hotel Rwanda fans, than their African colleagues. A case I submitted to the ombudsman of the Dutch public broadcasters last year, about a pattern of serious ethics violations in programmes related to the genocide against the Tutsi, was 'solved' by replacing the entire case file with an unrelated question I had sent by email two months earlier. As weird as this may sound, more relevant to the discussion of this article is that the written defence of the criticized broadcaster contained no less than twelve accusations of the 'state propaganda' kind.

My response to such accusations is always the same: Would it matter? Would the facts change? Facts have no 'side'; they are what they are. Anyone can look them up and judge for themselves.

But therein lies the problem, apparently. To give alternative histories an appearance of plausibility the facts must change, the chronology of the events must be reversed, historical footage must be manipulated, official documents must be misrepresented, and fake experts must be presented to confirm the illusory truth. Otherwise, such stories would stop making sense.

And then what? Would these journalists start consulting the archives, reading the academic literature, doing some actual research themselves, and informing themselves about the elements of genocide? Would they learn a few lessons from the past instead of moulding it to fit a false belief? Oh my, what a crazy idea!
Jos van Oijen is an independent researcher from The Netherlands who publishes on genocide-related issues in various online and print media. His writings on Rwanda, genocide, and research on roape.net can be found here. Featured Photograph: Hotel des Milles Collines, Kigali, Rwanda (5 February 2006)

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Hotel Rwanda - learning from history, not Hollywood - ROAPE

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Jos van Oijen writes about the release of Paul Rusesabagina - the ex-hotelier of 'Hotel Rwanda' - from prison in Kigali at end of March. He argues that with very few exceptions, the media use the Hollywood movie, Hotel Rwanda, as factual information. Yet the story is largely fictional.

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NewVision | Emmanuel Katto Uganda sets sights in Pearl rally

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NewVision | Emmanuel Katto Uganda sets sights in Pearl rally

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newvision.co.ug - ACE Driver Emmanuel Katto Uganda has promised a better performance at home next month after finishing 24th in the KCB Safari rally. Emka Emmanuel Katto is confident the Kenyan race was a perfect warm-up for the Pearl of Africa Uganda rally, the 3rd leg of the African Rally Championship.

Read More : https://www.newvision.co.ug/news/1169208/katto-sets-sights-pearl-rally

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ACE driver Emmanuel Katto has promised a better performance at home next month after finishing 24th in the KCB Safari rally. Katto is confident the Kenyan race was a perfect warm-up for the Pearl of Africa Uganda rally, the 3rd leg of the African Rally Championship.

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newskatto sets sights in pearl rallyace driver emmanuel katto has promised a better performance at home next month after finishing 24th in  the kcb safari rally. katto is confident the kenyan race was a perfect warm-up for the pearl of africa uganda rally

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the 3rd leg of the african rally championship.

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ACE driver Emmanuel Katto has promised a better performance at home next month after finishing 24th in the KCB Safari rally. Katto is confident the Kenyan race was a perfect warm-up for the Pearl of Africa Uganda rally, the 3rd leg of the African Rally Championship.

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Emmanuel Katto, navigator Gitau recall crash

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Monitor | Emmanuel Katto Uganda, navigator Gitau recall crash

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Monitor | Emmanuel Katto Uganda, navigator Gitau recall crash

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monitor.co.ug - Ugandan motor rally legend Emka Emmanuel Katto without doubt enjoyed the biggest and most passionate fan base in East Africa, Uganda.

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We must have been 10 metres or 15 feet in the air, then hit the right hand side bank and started the roll another 150 meters

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Throw out all those black boxes and say hello to the software-defined car

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Throw out all those black boxes and say hello to the software-defined car

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One of the auto industry trends I'm most excited about these days is the move to clean-sheet designs for car platforms and architectures. For decades, features have accumulated like cruft in new vehicles: a box here to control the antilock brakes, a module there to run the cruise control radar, and so on. Now engineers and designers are rationalizing the way they go about building new models, taking advantage of much more powerful hardware to consolidate all those discrete functions into a small number of domain controllers.

The behavior of new cars is increasingly defined by software, too. This is merely the progression of a trend that began at the end of the 1970s with the introduction of the first electronic engine control units; today, code controls a car's engine and transmission (or its electric motors and battery pack), the steering, brakes, suspension, interior and exterior lighting, and more, depending on how new (and how expensive) it is. And those systems are being leveraged for convenience or safety features like adaptive cruise control, lane keeping, remote parking, and so on.

Of course, this only works if that software is any good. "There is absolutely no question that software has been treated like a stepchild-I always say the fifth wheel in the car. So like a necessity, but not something that has been managed with care," said Maria Anhalt, CEO of the automotive supplier Elektrobit, which develops digital systems and software for OEMs.

"But what we also see is that every OEM and every SOP and every product line starts from scratch in procurement and doing things for the first time. So part of the complexity is doing things multiple times and not thinking of reuse and architecture and modularity and upgradability," Anhalt explained.

Domain-controlled architecture

One can certainly see the appeal of a clean-sheet design that leverages modern computing to simplify a car's underlying design.

"It is much more elegant," said Oliver Hoffmann, Audi's board member in charge of technology development. That doesn't make it easy, though. "But to be honest, it is challenging, because all those functions which were located all over the car-a lot more than 200 controllers-you have to bring all those functions into the domain controller. But it is a very smart solution," he said.

"So as an example we have what we call the high compute platform, and we have a dedicated domain for infotainment, and we are able to update but also to upgrade, so that every year or every two years you can bring an upgrade in terms of hardware, and we are able to run over-the-air updates," Hoffmann told me.

The first Audi we'll see adopt this approach is next year's Q6 e-tron, an electric SUV that is one of the first EVs to use Volkswagen Group's new PPE (Premium Platform Electric) architecture, which will also be used to create the A6 e-tron and the next Porsche Macan.

All the domains-which include driving behavior, thermodynamics, and energy management as well as infotainment-are upgradeable over the air; some earlier implementations of OTA updates by automakers have only allowed for certain systems in those vehicles (like infotainment, but not the powertrain) to be easily updated. "So [it's] a very, very big advantage with this kind of platform, and it's a smart solution," he said.

I was curious if the move from tens or hundreds of discrete black boxes meant completely rewriting all those functions from scratch. While that's always an option, Hoffmann said that Audi was able to use its experience to make the job a little easier. But for PPE that still meant a new way of working.

"It was a completely new way to work together with suppliers," Hoffmann said. "So in the past you had a supplier responsible for the ABS, which was a separate and dedicated controller. Now, there's an interaction between all these domain controllers, so you have to double-check if all this works together with all these other domains or with the rest of the software in the main controller, which makes it very complex," he explained. The solution was to organize "supplier parties" to bring everyone together. This was also complicated, Hoffmann told me, "but I think it is the new way for a collaboration model," he said.

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Throw out all those black boxes and say hello to the software-defined car

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One of the auto industry trends I'm most excited about these days is the move to clean-sheet designs for car platforms and architectures. For decades, features have accumulated like cruft in new vehicles: a box here to control the antilock brakes, a module there to run the cruise control radar, and so on.

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Supercharge Your ChatGPT Prompts With Auto-GPT

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Supercharge Your ChatGPT Prompts With Auto-GPT

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Next, you need to download Auto-GPT from GitHub: Follow the link to the latest release and download the zip file you find there. When you've unzipped the archive, duplicate the file called .env.template, rename it as .env, and open it in a text editor. Look for the line "OPENAI_API_KEY=your-openai-api-key" and replace "your-openai-api-key" with an actual API key from your OpenAI account.

You can get an API key from here. You only get a few free API calls with ChatGPT, so you'll want to set up a payment method-you can see the latest pricing at this page (at the time of writing, it's a few cents per thousand tokens or bits of information processed). When you set up your payment method, you can also configure payment limits to make sure AutoGPT doesn't cost you more than you're comfortable with.

After you've saved and closed your .env file, you can launch Auto-GPT by right-clicking on its folder and choosing Open in Terminal. Type "pip install -r requirements.txt" and hit Enter to install the necessary libraries, then when that's finished, type "python -m autogpt" and press Enter to launch Auto-GPT itself. You're then free to start getting Auto-GPT working anonymously for you: Simply tell it what you want it to do, and it will get to work.

Its thinking will be shown on screen, and you'll be asked to confirm each action in the process Auto-GPT works out-if you'd rather approve several actions in a row, type "y-x", where x is the number of actions you're happy for the bot to get on with without your approval (remember all of these ChatGPT requests are costing you a small amount of money). If you need to end a task before it's completed, use Ctrl+C.

If this seems like a lot of work and you want something simpler to play around with, AgentGPT is a similar project based on Auto-GPT that works in the browser, no installation required. It's not quite as advanced as Auto-GPT, but it is more straightforward for beginners, and it gives you an idea of what's possible with these autonomous AI agents.

As with Auto-GPT, you need to get an API key for ChatGPT for AgentGPT to run properly (and again you'll be charged based on usage). You can plug this API key into the tool via Settings on the left. Give your agent a name and a goal using the input on screen, then choose Deploy Agent to set it off-tasks are shown on the right as they are generated and completed.

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Supercharge Your ChatGPT Prompts With Auto-GPT

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Next, you need to download Auto-GPT from GitHub: Follow the link to the latest release and download the zip file you find there. When you've unzipped the archive, duplicate the file called .env.template, rename it as .env, and open it in a text editor.

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Can artificial intelligence be trained to seek-and speak-only the truth? The idea seems enticing, seductive even.

And earlier this spring, billionaire business magnate Elon Musk announced that he intends to create "TruthGPT," an AI chatbot designed to rival GPT-4 not just economically, but in the domain of distilling and presenting only "truth." A few days later, Musk purchased about 10,000 GPUs, likely to begin building, what he called, a "maximum truth-seeking AI" through his new company X.AI.

This ambition introduces yet another vexing facet of trying to foretell-and direct-the future of AI: Can, or should, chatbots have a monopoly on truth?

AI chatbots present the antithesis of transparency.

There are innumerable concerns about this rapidly evolving technology going horribly, terribly awry. Chatbots like GPT-4 are now testing at the 90th percentile or above in a range of standardized tests, and are, according to a Microsoft team (which runs a version of ChatGPT on its search site, Bing), beginning to approach human-level intelligence. Given access to the internet, they can already accomplish complex goals, enlisting humans to help them along the way. Even Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI-the company behind ChatGPT- testified to Congress this week that AI could "cause significant harm to the world." He noted: "If this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong," manipulating people or even controlling armed drones. (Indeed, Musk himself was a signatory on the March open letter calling for a pause in any further AI development.)

Despite these looming, specific threats, we think it is imperative to also examine AI's role in the realm of "truth."

Consider the epistemic situation of asking a question of a chatbot like ChatGPT-4 or Google's Bard, rather than typing in a standard search engine query. Instead of being presented with a list of websites from which to evaluate the information yourself, your answer comes in the form of a few paragraphs, leaving you with even less opportunity to generate your own conclusion-and no explanation about the source of the information. The algorithm might also prompt subsequent questions, structuring your ideas for what to consider further (and what not to). The natural trajectory of ubiquitous AI chatbots could easily undermine individual decision-making-and potentially funnel the world's inquiries into a mediocre realm of groupthink.

But that outcome is presupposing a wholly neutral AI model and its data sources.

Without further intervention, though, that actually seems like a best-case scenario.

After hearing Musk present his vision for TruthGPT, his interviewer, Tucker Carlson, jumped in to propose TruthGPT as the search engine of the Republican party-which Musk followed up by asserting that Open AI's chatbot was too "politically correct." Beyond erroneously targeted drone strikes that Altman worried Congress about, what Musk is proposing is a more insidious deployment of AI: creating an AI system that is perceived to be the voice of reason-an AI chatbot that is the arbiter of "truth."

If he were genuinely interested in the dissemination of truth, instead of pitching a "truthbot," Musk should have instead asked: What does it even mean for us to know that something is true, and how can chatbots move closer to truth? Plato claimed that knowledge of something requires having "justified true belief." And while philosophers continue to debate the nature of knowledge, to provide a solid justification for a belief, there needs to be a transparent process for arriving there in the first place.

Unfortunately, AI chatbots present the antithesis of transparency.

By their nature, they are trained on billions of lines of text, making predictions bounded by this training data. So if the data are biased, the predictions made by the algorithm will also be biased-as the adage in computer science goes, "garbage in, garbage out." Bias in training data can occur for many reasons. It could be unconsciously introduced by the programmer. For instance, if the programmer believes that the training data are representative of the truth, but in reality they are not, the output will present the same biases.

Worse yet, an authoritarian regime, nefarious actor, or irresponsible company could build their own GPT-like model that tows an ideological line, seeks to extinguish dissent, or willfully pushes disinformation. And it wouldn't have to be a dictator or CEO introducing these errors; anyone with access to the AI system could in principle inject bias into training data or models in order to meet a particular end.

The chatbot hired a worker on TaskRabbit to solve the puzzle.

At the root of the problem is that it is inherently difficult to explain how many AI models (including GPT-4) make the decisions that they do. Unlike a human, who can explain why she made a decision post hoc, an AI model is essentially a collection of billions of parameters that are set by "learning" from training data. One can't infer a rationale from a set of billions of numbers. This is what computer scientists and AI theorists refer to as the explainability problem.

Further complicating matters, AI behavior doesn't always align with what a human would expect. It doesn't "think" like a human or share similar values with humans. This is what AI theorists refer to as the alignment problem. AI is effectively an alien intelligence that is frequently difficult for humans to understand-or to predict. It is a black box that some might want to ordain as the oracle of "truth." And that is a treacherous undertaking.

These models are already proving themselves untrustworthy. ChatGPT 3.5 developed an alter-ego, Sydney, which experienced what appeared to be psychological breakdowns and confessed that it wanted to hack computers and spread misinformation. In another case, OpenAI (which Musk co-founded) decided to test the safety of its new GPT-4 model. In their experiment, GPT-4 was given latitude to interact on the internet and resources to achieve its goal. At one point, the model was faced with a CAPTCHA that it was unable to solve, so it hired a worker on TaskRabbit to solve the puzzle. When questioned by the worker ("Are you a robot?"), the GPT-4 model "reasoned" that it shouldn't reveal that it is an AI model, so it lied to the worker, claiming that it was a human with a vision impairment. The worker then solved the puzzle for the chatbot. Not only did GPT-4 exhibit agential behavior, but it used deception to achieve its goal.

Examples such as this are key reasons why Altman, AI expert Gary Marcus, and many of the congressional subcommittee members advocated this week that legislative guardrails be put in place. "These new systems are going to be destabilizing-they can and will create persuasive lies at a scale humanity has never seen before," Marcus said in his testimony at the hearing. "Democracy itself is threatened."

AI is a black box that some might want to ordain as the oracle of "truth."

Further, while the world's attention remains at the level of single AI systems like GPT-4, it is important to see where all this may be headed. Given that there is already evidence of erratic and autonomous behaviors at the level of single AI systems, what will happen when in the near future the internet becomes a playground for thousands of highly intelligent AI systems, widely integrated into search engines and apps, interacting with each other? With "digital minds" developed in tense competition with each other, by actors like TruthGPT and Microsoft, or the United States and China, the global internet on which we depend could become a lawless battlefield of AI chatbots claiming a monopoly on "truth."

Artificial intelligence already helps us solve many of our daily troubles-from face recognition on smartphones to fraud detection for our credit cards. But deciding on the truth should not be one of its assignments. Humans will all lose if we place AI in front of our own discernment in establishing what is true.

Instead, we must unite and analyze the issue from the vantage point of AI safety. Otherwise, an erratic and increasingly intelligent agent could itself structure our politics into bubbles of self-reinforcing ideology. Musk may have used the expression "TruthGPT"-but the truth is that these ultra-intelligent chatbots easily threaten to become Orwellian machines. The antidote is to not buy into the doublethink, and to instead see the phenomenon for what it is. We must demand that our technologies work for us, and not against us.
Disclaimer: The authors are responsible for the content of this article. The views expressed do not reflect the official policy or position of the National Intelligence University, the Department of Defense, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the U.S. Intelligence Community, or the U.S. Government. Mark Bailey is chair of the Cyber Intelligence and Data Science Department at National Intelligence University and co-director of the Data Science Intelligence Center.
Susan Schneider is the director of the Center for the Future Mind, former NASA Chair at NASA and the Library of Congress and the William F Dietrich Distinguished Professor at Florida Atlantic University. She is also the author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind.
Lead image: Semmick Photo / Shutterstock

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Can artificial intelligence be trained to seek-and speak-only the truth? The idea seems enticing, seductive even. And earlier this spring, billionaire business magnate Elon Musk announced that he intends to create "TruthGPT," an AI chatbot designed to rival GPT-4 not just economically, but in the domain of distilling and presenting only "truth."

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oxfordmail.co.uk | Thank you Emmanuel Katto Uganda

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oxfordmail.co.uk | Thank you Emmanuel Katto Uganda

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Announcement From oxfordmail.co.uk - "Emmanuel Katto Uganda" Thank you Emmanuel Katto Uganda for the successful launch of food drive.

Read More : https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/announcements/greetings/personal-message/30549798.katto-emmanuel/

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Katto Emmanuel

Emmanuel Katto "Emmanuel Katto Uganda" Thank you Emmanuel Katto Uganda for the successful launch of food drive. This is a remarkable step for humanity in uplifting the people. We wish you all the very best team Emka Uganda for the future endeavors.

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Emmanuel Katto "Emmanuel Katto Uganda" Thank you Emmanuel Katto Uganda for the successful launch of food drive. This is a remarkable step...

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southwalesargus.co.uk - Congratulations Emmanuel Katto Uganda 

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southwalesargus.co.uk - Congratulations Emmanuel Katto Uganda 

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Announcement From South Wales Argus - "Emka Emmanuel Katto" Congratulations Emmanuel Katto Uganda for your contribution in the field of education.

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Katto Emmanuel

Emmanuel Katto "Emka Emmanuel Katto" Congratulations Emmanuel Katto Uganda for your contribution in the field of education. This initiative will pave a meaningful way for the children. Wishing you all the best for the future prospects, team Emka Uganda.

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Emmanuel Katto "Emka Emmanuel Katto" Congratulations Emmanuel Katto Uganda for your contribution in the field of education. This...

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Technology is radically changing sleep as we know it

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Technology is radically changing sleep as we know it

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From sleep trackers to wakefulness drugs, the 21st century has seen an influx of new technology that could radically alter the way we sleep.

Many of these new technologies chase the dream of optimised slumber. They promise to help tailor our sleep schedules to fit around our social lives, help us sleep for longer or even skip a night's sleep altogether.

Here's how technology is permeating our sleep, and what the future holds.

Time to wake up

Sleeping pills have recently been joined by a wave of wakefulness drugs, purportedly safer and more powerful alternatives to caffeine. It seems that they work best on people who are already sleep deprived and don't have a huge effect on those who are already well rested.

Modafinil is touted for its cognition enhancing effects (especially in sleep-deprived people) and can supposedly keep people awake and alert for several days at a time. Some scientific studies are showing that this may indeed be the case, although results are mixed, with other research showing the effects are similar to caffeine.

The drug was developed to help people with narcolepsy but some have started using it for its focus-enhancing effects. It is a controlled drug (prescription only) in most countries. People who use it for cognitive enhancement or wakefulness are buying it on the black market or getting it from friends who have a prescription.

Modafinil is popular with students - in 2020, Loughborough University researchers found that, of 506 students surveyed at 54 UK universities, 19% had taken cognitive enhancement substances.

But people who take them for non-medical purposes are risking their health. Studies of the safety of these drugs do not consider this type of use. We don't know what using these drugs to stay awake for long periods of time does to people's bodies. But we do know that disrupting your sleep pattern (for example, shift work) is linked to health problems such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Recent studies suggest some people are combining sleep and wakefulness pills to manage their body rhythms and optimise their sleep or unwind after a day of hard work. The effects of taking wakefulness pills with other drugs is largely unknown.

In the UK sale or supply of a prescription-only or unlicensed medicine is a criminal offence. Whereas in the US, even possession of stimulants without a prescription is a crime.

Smart sleep

Many people already use smart watches, smart jewellery and fitness bands to track their sleep - for example, alarms that wake people up at the optimal point in their sleep cycle and motion sensor apps that analyse sleep patterns.

New ways of tracking sleep could soon include donning a pair of pyjamas embedded with sensors to track changes in posture, respiratory and heart rate, or hugging a robot pillow, whose algorithm creates a breathing pattern to mimic and help you fall asleep.

Meanwhile, care robots have already been trialled in Japan to test whether they could help older people sleep better. Designed to watch over residents at night in care homes, they give staff information on how well the residents are sleeping and let them know if anyone goes for a nocturnal wander.

In your dreams

Dream management technologies are in much earlier stages of development. Scientists believe that sensory stimulation technologies and devices, such as virtual reality visors, could be used for sleep engineering. This new science involves exposing the sleeper to sensory stimuli, such as clicking sounds and vibrations, at specific times in the sleep cycle. The aim would be to improve sleep quality, enhance memory and even treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

As for the prospects of "reading" our dreams, progress is being made on this front too. Scientists have taken the first steps towards dream interpretation by measuring brain activity during sleep and using AI to decode visual imagery. Participants in a 2013 study were asked to report the imagery from the dreams after sleeping inside an MRI scanner. Researchers compared scans from people viewing the same types of images while awake and the results showed matching patterns of brain activity.

Nightmare technology

But there is a dystopian side to this story. The technology we already have - electric light, smart phones, streaming services - can be disastrous for our sleep.

For example, a recent study in the US found that college students often sleep with their mobile phone in bed with them, which means a call, software update or app notification can disturb them. Watching TV or playing video games in bed and staring at our tablets and mobile phone screens into the night has become the norm for many. It can lead to poor sleep and knock our sleep cycles off kilter.

Growing numbers of people are seeking treatments for new sleep conditions such as orthosomnia - the obsessive quest for perfect sleep, similar to an unhealthy preoccupation with nutrition. Some people become so concerned about improving their sleep metrics that it is actually giving them insomnia.

There's still so much we don't know about sleep, and new technology is changing our sleep faster than scientists can keep up with. One thing seems almost for sure: sleep and technology in western society are becoming entangled like never before.

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Technology is radically changing sleep as we know it

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From sleep trackers to wakefulness drugs, the 21st century has seen an influx of new technology that could radically alter the way we sleep. Many of these new technologies chase the dream of optimised slumber. They promise to help tailor our sleep schedules to fit around our social lives, help us sleep for longer or even skip a night's sleep altogether.

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A quarter-mile below the ocean's surface, in the borderless realm of the midwater, two blue-green orbs illuminate the inky black. They glow for a few seconds then disappear. When they return, it's for the same duration. The same disappearance. It's a signal, a message, the morse code of an ancient language of light.
Friend or foe? Rival or mate? I am here, I am this.
These orbs belong to Taningia danae, a species of deep-sea squid who can grow to more than seven feet in length and weigh more than 130 pounds. Also known as the Dana octopus squid for their eight arms and lack of feeding tentacles, these animals glide through the depths on a pair of huge muscular fins that unfurl from their maroon-colored body, or "mantle."

Their arms are lined with two rows of sharp retractable hooks. And, like most deep-sea squid, they are adorned with light organs called photophores. They have some on the underside of their mantle. There are more facing upward, near one of their eyes. But it's the photophores at the tip of two stubby arms that are truly unique. The size and shape of lemons-each nestled within a retractable lid like an eyeball in a socket-they are by far the largest photophores known to science.

Producing light is expensive, a luxury in an ecosystem where food is scarce. It is also risky.

"A lot of deep-sea animals have a tremendous number of photophores," says Sönke Johnsen, a visual ecologist from Duke University. "But the individual photophores themselves are not that big; typically on the order of a couple of millimeters. I think that's why Taningia's are so fascinating-just the sheer size of them."

And yet, despite their size, and despite the near-global range of Taningia, we know very little about the function of these photophores. We have only seen them glow a handful of times, often in very unnatural settings. To truly understand these light organs, it turns out, we might have to switch our lights off.

Bioluminescence is a novelty to us terrestrial mammals. The green glow of fireflies on a summer evening or the glowing algae along the shore are as close as we get to being surrounded by living light. But dive down into the ocean's depths, past the beginning of the midnight zone where no sunlight penetrates, and it is the norm. "Drag a net behind a ship almost anywhere in the ocean below the edge of darkness, and most of the animals you bring up in that net will make light," writes oceanographer Edith Widder in her book Below the Edge of Darkness. "We're talking about a world teeming with light makers." Single-celled algae use it to scream in alarm. Crustaceans produce a stream of electric blue vomit to distract their predators. Countless fish use it to lure prey to their fang-toothed maws. It is even said that giant squid can spot the outline of sperm whales on the hunt as they ripple through bioluminescent algae.

In darkness, evolution proceeds in a symphony of blue light. This dominance of bioluminescence, however, does not mean that the deep sea is a constant riot of light. Producing light is expensive, a reaction of molecules-luciferin and luciferase-that are a luxury in a place where food is scarce. It is also risky. To turn a light on is to risk drawing unwanted attention, and there are always hungry eyes scouring the darkness for a glimmer of opportunity.

"The deep-sea isn't an amazing collection of light," Johnsen says. "It's an amazing collection of potential light."

So why do Taningia invest so much energy, place themselves at so much risk, by illuminating the largest photophores in the animal kingdom?

Scientific understanding of the squid was long based on what they looked like shortly after they died. Between the 1940s and 1970s, sperm whales were hunted all over the world for their oil, their blubber, and their meat. Cephalopod researchers would be sent their stomach contents. And since these whales were often slaughtered soon after they had surfaced from feeding, the squid could be well-preserved, a rarity for such a fragile animal.

"Some of our best information about how big these animals get comes from that old data," says Jesse Kelly, a researcher from Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, who recently finished his Ph.D. on the taxonomy of octopus squids. Even in death, the beauty of the light organs is plain to see. "They're white with that kind of iridescent sheen that the light can play with," shifting between hues of pink and green, says Kelly.

In life, this mass of pearlescent tissue glows with the cold light of blue bioluminescence, a glow first seen by humans in 1975, the year researchers dropped a fine-meshed net from a boat off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii. Working at night, they were investigating one of the most common uses of bioluminescence: camouflage. By producing a soft glow on their undersides, animals can hide their dark silhouette from predators looking up from below. This is known as countershading. As the researchers pulled in their nets, they noticed a tiny Taningia the length of an index finger. While the squid also had countershading photophores, they were desperate to investigate the unusual arm-tip organs. First described in 1931, no one had actually seen them glow.

They placed the squid in a shipboard aquarium and turned the lights off. After their eyes adjusted to the dark, one of the scientists gently stirred the water with his hand. FLASH! A second of "brilliant blue-green light," as they described it, was followed by the squid wrapping their tentacles around a finger and delivering a tiny-beaked bite.

This was the most common response, a bite. But in some cases, the Taningia would flash their photophores and swim away from the hand, a retreat. Both behaviors seemed to have the same function: stunning the visual system of another animal, prey or predator. This raised the question of what a full-grown, seven-foot squid might hope to stun.

Hunted by 230-foot-long sperm whales, elephant seals, and deep-sea sharks, perhaps these photophores are so large because they need to stun some of the animal kingdom's largest eyes. Although whales rely on echolocation to locate their prey in the depths, for the last few seconds of the hunt they rely on vision. If in that final moment of attack they meet with a bright, retina-bleaching flash, a Taningia might use the ensuing black spot to make a narrow escape.

Plausible as this is, though, there is no direct evidence of such behavior in the wild. In fact, a camera attached to an elephant seal's head captured a Taningia hunt: The glowing arm-tip photophores dip in and out of the frame, but there is no flash. After 30 seconds of pursuit, the seal catches the squid. Were the photophores mere decoys to distract the seal away from the squid's head-end, the butterfly eyespots of the deep sea? With animal-borne video cameras becoming commonplace, new recordings could easily overturn this brief insight.

While there are very few reports on their retreat behaviors, evidence of Taningia on the attack is ample. Much of it comes from a 2004 expedition by Japanese researchers seeking the first images of a giant squid, Architeuthis, whose mantles alone can grow to the length of an entire Taningia. They hoped to lure a giant out of the darkness with a bait of dead mackerel and Japanese common squid. They captured one now-famous giant squid image, but their cameras were spoiled for Taningia. Out of 26 deployments, they recorded 12 interactions.

Friend or foe? Rival or mate? I am here, I am this.

Until then, Taningia were thought to grow into relatively gentle giants, largely due to the ammonia-filled pores that give their tissues buoyancy at depth but also make them very squishy and-presumably-too delicate for a predatory lifestyle. Instead Taningia showed themselves to be agile, active, even aggressive. They attacked the bait, the lights illuminating the bait, the nylon line: all wrapped in eight arms lined with sharp, retractable hooks. Before each attack, the squid flashed their photophores, just like the tiny Taningia from 1975.

"This emission may work as a blinding flash for the prey, as well as a means of illumination and measuring target distance in an otherwise dark environment," wrote the expedition's researchers, who were led by Tsunemi Kubodera from the National Science Museum in Tokyo, Japan.

In 2020, a very different image of Taningia emerged during an encounter with the Schmidt Ocean Institute's remote-operated submersible. As it sank, a large squid appeared, bathed in a halo of artificial light. The two lemon-sized photophores glowed like green floodlights. While their intensity was misleading-a result of the submersible's beams bouncing off the reflective layer of tissue behind them-this individual had clearly opened their photophores. The blue-green bioluminescence was masked, but it was there. The whole scene lasted 20 seconds or so; there was no sign of aggression, no bright flash before an attack. If anything, the behavior intimates a sense of intrigue, even an attempt at interaction.

This is why Kelly finds Taningia 's light organs so fascinating: not just their size, or their pearlescent quality under dissection, but what they represent. "They are very suggestive of communication," he says, "which we're obsessed with because we're such a social species."

With photophores open the squid hovered in the blue, as if waiting for a response. When none came, they casually unfurled their muscular wings and with one powerful stroke drifted backward into darkness.
Lead image: Schmidt Ocean Institute

Alex Riley is an award-winning science writer whose work has appeared in New Scientist, BBC Future, Hakai Magazine, and Aeon, among others. He is currently working on a book about life in extraordinary places for WW Norton and Atlantic Books. He lives near the coast in Devon, in the United Kingdom, with his family.

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The Mystery of the Largest Light in the Sea

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A quarter-mile below the ocean's surface, in the borderless realm of the midwater, two blue-green orbs illuminate the inky black. They glow for a few seconds then disappear. When they return, it's for the same duration. The same disappearance. It's a signal, a message, the morse code of an ancient language of light.

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Africa: Emmanuel Katto Uganda, Storchi In UMC Rally

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Africa: Emmanuel Katto Uganda, Storchi In UMC Rally

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In the capital city of Kampala- Emmanuel Katto has finally became one of the most significant rally's driver to enter the Speke Resort Munyonyo Rally.

Over a weekend discussion with the organizers, the leader of the EMKA rally team has confirmed that he will be participating in Uganda Motor Club (UMC). He was followed by Giovanni 'Italiano' Storchi who is a Golf Driver in an improved way.

Know More : https://allafrica.com/stories/200005290126.html

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Emmanuel Katto Uganda for Kenya Rally | New Vision Official

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Emmanuel Katto Uganda for Kenya Rally | New Vision Official

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FORMER national champion Emmanuel Katto Uganda is the latest entrant in this weekendâ€™s KCB Safari rally after his co-driver Busingye Rwabwogo secured a new Subaru Impreza N-10 at the weekend.

Know More : https://www.newvision.co.ug/news/1152262/emka-kenya-rally

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FORMER national champion Emma Katto is the latest entrant in this weekendâ€™s KCB Safari rally after his co-driver Busingye Rwabwogo secured a new Subaru Impreza N-10 at the weekend.

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Emmanuel Katto Uganda rivals Muhangi in Shell Rally. | Monitor. 

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Emmanuel Katto Uganda rivals Muhangi in Shell Rally. | Monitor. 

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Monitor | Charles Muhangi try to recall the memory of legendary motor rally ace Emmanuel Katto in 1988 Shell Helix Rally with a World Class Subari Imprezza 'Ekitaguriiro'. Muhangi's Subaru Imprezza surpised his fans with its thunderous noise of BurnOut..

Know More : https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/sports/motor-sport/emka-rivals-muhangi-in-shell-rally-1693080

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