April 2025

Actual learning machines powered by ‘simple math’

Apr 172025

This book has achieved the goal of explaining the conceptual simplicity underlying machine learning (ML) and deep learning, a subfield of ML, that uses multiple parameters to recognize complex patterns in pictures, sound and text. Machine learning is the study of computer algorithms that can improve automatically through experience and the use of data. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence (AI).

Machine learning algorithms build a model based on sample data, known as “training data,” in order to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed to do so. The author deems these algorithms and the underlying mathematics as elegant, a kind of ‘relatively simple math’ which one learns in high school like linear algebra and calculus plus the field of probability and statistics and the Gaussian distribution, also known as the normal distribution or bell curve, used as a foundational assumption for many algorithms and models.

We are living through a revolution in machine learning-powered AI that shows no signs of slowing down. This technology is based on relatively simple mathematical ideas, some of which go back centuries, like linear algebra and calculus. It took the birth and advancement of computer science and the kindling of 1990s computer chips designed for video games to ignite the explosion of AI that we see today.

Why Machines Learn : The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI. Anil Ananthaswamy. New York: Dutton (Penguin Random House), 2024.

Devalue education, critical thinking and expertise… and conquer

Anthropology Comments Off

Apr 012025

To better understand the political landscape in North America now and in the last fifty years, there is a concept that will thoroughly explain it: anti-intellectualism. It is that feeling of hostility and dislike towards intellectuals and intellectual activities. Totalitarian regimes have historically used this form of antagonism to learning, education, and the educated.

The author argues that American politicians have grown increasingly allergic to knowledge, and mass media have encouraged the election of ignoramuses by elevating candidates who are better at performing than thinking. Starting with Ronald Reagan’s first campaign for governor of California in 1966 and culminating with the [re]election of the Chief Executive. [Per amazon review].

In this funny but serious book (don’t forget that the author is also a comedian) three stages of ignorance (the force that fuels anti-intellectualism in order to promote, in turn, the ignorance of the populace) are discussed: ridicule, acceptance and celebration. The latter, the stage that is mostly favored by some political circles.

A withering mockery of 21st-century authoritarianism. And, as we know, there is nothing more serious than humor, more impactful than other forms of communication.

Profiles in Ignorance : How America’s Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber. Andy Borowitz. New York: Avid Reader Press, 2023.