Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

By Yarden Katz

The Atlantic Monthly
November 1, 2012 

If one were to rank a list of civilization's greatest and most elusive intellectual challenges, the problem of "decoding" ourselves -- understanding the inner workings of our minds and our brains, and how the architecture of these elements is encoded in our genome -- would surely be at the top. Yet the diverse fields that took on this challenge, from philosophy and psychology to computer science and neuroscience, have been fraught with disagreement about the right approach.
In 1956, the computer scientist John McCarthy coined the term "Artificial Intelligence" (AI) to describe the study of intelligence by implementing its essential features on a computer. Instantiating an intelligent system using man-made hardware, rather than our own "biological hardware" of cells and tissues, would show ultimate understanding, and have obvious practical applications in the creation of intelligent devices or even robots.

Some of McCarthy's colleagues in neighboring departments, however, were more interested in how intelligence is implemented in humans (and other animals) first. Noam Chomsky and others worked on what became cognitive science, a field aimed at uncovering the mental representations and rules that underlie our perceptual and cognitive abilities. Chomsky and his colleagues had to overthrow the then-dominant paradigm of behaviorism, championed by Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner, where animal behavior was reduced to a simple set of associations between an action and its subsequent reward or punishment. The undoing of Skinner's grip on psychology is commonly marked by Chomsky's 1967 critical review of Skinner's book Verbal Behavior, a book in which Skinner attempted to explain linguistic ability using behaviorist principles.

Skinner's approach stressed the historical associations between a stimulus and the animal's response -- an approach easily framed as a kind of empirical statistical analysis, predicting the future as a function of the past. Chomsky's conception of language, on the other hand, stressed the complexity of internal representations, encoded in the genome, and their maturation in light of the right data into a sophisticated computational system, one that cannot be usefully broken down into a set of associations. Behaviorist principles of associations could not explain the richness of linguistic knowledge, our endlessly creative use of it, or how quickly children acquire it with only minimal and imperfect exposure to language presented by their environment. The "language faculty," as Chomsky referred to it, was part of the organism's genetic endowment, much like the visual system, the immune system and the circulatory system, and we ought to approach it just as we approach these other more down-to-earth biological systems.

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The New Politics of Human Rights in the Middle East

By Shadi Mokhtari

Foreign PolicyTuesday, October 30, 2012

For decades, "human rights in the Middle East" was a subject of scrutiny, debate, and mobilizations spearheaded from outside of the region. Western governments including successive U.S. administrations frequently took up the region's dire human rights conditions and funded a variety of human rights initiatives to remedy them, in many ways as a substitute for forgoing economic and military alliances with highly repressive regimes. These foreign governments' human rights talk was heavy in its emphasis on women's rights and other violations for which backward cultural and religious belief were designated as the key culprits and light on its emphasis on civil and political rights violations. During the post-9/11 era, as highlighting the Middle East's deplorable human rights conditions added a veneer of moral purpose to military interventions in the region, the "human rights in the Middle East" line of inquiry took on a life of its own and created acottage industry of Western-driven human rights assessments and prescriptions. All the while, local voices promoting human rights were largely silenced byauthoritarian rulers simultaneously paying lip service to human rights and undermining it by arguing that it served foreign, Western, imperialist agendas. Cumulatively, there dynamics resulted in minimal Middle Eastern agency in defining the nature and scope of its own predicament vis-à-vis the human rights paradigm.

Today, the region's myriad of human rights mobilizations and contests are increasingly being spurred from within the Middle East, not abroad.

Domestically, where there have been uprisings (not facing crippling state violence) humanrights have emerged at the fore of calls for political change and local human rights activists long relegated to the realm of the out-of-touch Westernized elite, have gained considerably in their legitimacy, numbers, and influence. These strengthened human rights forces now insert their voices into virtually every unfolding political contest -- openly bringing past and present abuses to light and pushing human rights stances into constitutions-drafting processes, parliamentary agendas, and socio-economic policies. Where they have not been able to substantially realize their demands, they have often compelled authoritarian rulers to go to increasingly greater lengths to showcase purported commitments to rights, the most notable examples being the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) and the prosecution of Hosni Mubarak.

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On safari in Zimbabwe

A country in search of tourism  Zimbabwe's troubles scared tourists away, but tour operators are pushing it again. Is travel there rewarding, asks Kevin Rushby, and is it right?     

Kevin Rushby            

The Guardian, Friday 2 November 2012

Ray squats down and inspects the tracks carefully, his rifle held in the crook of one arm. "These are from yesterday," he says, pointing to where the fine dusty edge of the print has been blurred by the breeze. "It's a big male – very big. The one we heard roaring just before dawn."

That was an hour ago. I glance around the silent trees, half expecting to see a big cat staring back at me. Ray gets up and searches the ground nearby. "Looks like there are two lionesses with him," he says.

We walk on through the dry forest. At a glance the area looks dead, but closer inspection reveals signs of recovery: green shoots are appearing, the trees are gambling on rain coming soon. Ray leads on for about a mile then stops and inspects another lion print. This time the track is fresh. There is a stiff breeze blowing but the print is perfect. Ray nods and says: "They were moving around this morning." He glances at me. "Remember the rules. Stay with the gun. Never run."

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The Death of Arab secularism

by Faisal Al Yafai

The NationNov 3, 2012

The death of Arab secularism is the story of a country that no longer exists and a world almost impossible to imagine.

That world can be glimpsed in old newsreels from the Arab cities of the 1950s and 1960s. The cities of the post-war period - Cairo, Beirut and Damascus, Baghdad and Aden - look much the same as many developing countries of the time: American-built cars, European-style suits, a certain easy mingling of men and women.

Unseen is something difficult to describe, but immediately apparent to anyone familiar with the Egypt or Yemen of today: the thick beards of men and the tightly wrapped headscarves of women - symbols of religious devotion, but also symbols of a public expression of Islam - were almost entirely absent from the new urban world then being created.

The vision of the future the men and women in those over-saturated newsreels had, how they saw their modern world unfolding, cannot easily be understood.

But it can perhaps be surmised from a joke, told by Egypt's leader Gamal Abdel Nasser to an audience in the years after the Muslim Brotherhood was accused of attempting to assassinate him. Nasser described meeting with the Brotherhood's leader in 1953 in an attempt to reconcile the group with his leadership. (Nasser doesn't mention whom he met, but it was most likely Hassan Al Hudaybi, a judge who led the group for 20 years from 1951.)

"The first thing he asked me was to make the wearing of hijab mandatory in Egypt," says Nasser, "and to force every woman walking on the street to wear a hijab." The crowd laughs and Nasser hams it up for them, looking perplexed at such an outlandish request. "Let him wear it!" shouts an audience member, and the crowd erupts in laughter and applause.

But that's not the punchline. Nasser tells Al Hudaybi he knows the Brotherhood's leader has a daughter studying medicine, and his daughter doesn't wear the hijab. "Why haven't you made her wear the hijab?" he asks, before delivering a knockout blow: "If you cannot make one girl - who is your own daughter - wear the hijab," he says, "how do you expect me to make 10 million women wear the hijab, all by myself?" The crowd roars its approval.

                                                      Gamal Abdel Nasser on the Muslim Brotherhood (subtitled)

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Two obstacles to freedom of expression

by Mehmet Kalyoncu

Today Zaman

October 30, 2012 

Amid the ongoing international debate as to where the proper line lies between the responsible use and irresponsible abuse of freedom of expression, one can hardly deny the fact that indeed there are obstacles to freedom of expression.

After a decade of arduous debates and negotiations among states and within their respective civil societies, the international community reached a consensus on this matter, and adopted the Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18 in April of last year. Similarly, the 193-member UN General Assembly cast its support for this historic consensus in November of the same year. However, there are still two obstacles that seem to be hindering the international community’s ability to put in practice the provisions of that resolution in a way that would counter incitement of hatred, violence and discrimination against persons on the basis of their religion, belief or opinion, without restricting freedom of expression.

These are the demagogues who exploit the popular fears and frustrations for their narrow political gains, and the opportunists who hijack a genuine human rights debate to demonize Islam and Muslims. The common characteristic of these two is that they have vested interest in perpetuating the crisis over the issue of freedom of expression, as well as the hostile atmosphere it generates. As such, these demagogues and opportunists join hands in manufacturing continuous cacophony in order to prevent the general public from objectively evaluating HRC Resolution 16/18 for what it really is and in persistently defaming the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) as a radical Islamist organization waging war against Western civilization.

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Wealth Growing in Some Favela Communities

By Mary Carroll, Contributing Reporter

The Rio Times
October 30, 2012

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In the same way that distinction can be drawn between the lower, middle and upper classes of most neighborhoods, the economic differences are becoming more apparent in some of Rio’s favela communities. Following the general dynamics of the city, the favelas of Zona Sul (South Zone) are widely held to be more prosperous than those of their counterparts in Zona Norte (North Zone).
Even so, residents from both areas range from extremely poor to those who are managing to climb up the financial ladder. The government’s Police Pacification Unit (UPP) program has stabilized security in many communities, helping businesses grow.

According to a survey released this month by the institute Popular Data and Central Única das Favelas, thirteen percent of residents from one thousand of the major favelas across Rio were ranked “high-income” residents, a significant contrast with 2001 where they only accounted for one percent.

A lot of high income earners wish to remain in their communities and improve their homes, however, most do not have a choice as they have been priced out of the rest of the Rio property market.
Daniel Clark, an Australian who lives in Cantagalo, explains that “the interior of some of the places look much nicer than a lot of the so-called wealthy apartments. I was shocked when I first saw one because we are fed so many negative images of the ‘misery’ of favela life.”

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Asian factories, US jobs show improvement

The Times of India
November 1, 2012

NEW YORK/BEIJING: Private US firms stepped up hiring last month and factories showed modest improvement, surveys showed Thursday, while Asia's large economies started to pick up after a year of slower growth.

The jury was out on whether the data signalled sustained improvement in the fragile global economy, though analysts said strength in the United States and China, the world's two biggest economies, was essential to overall economic well-being.

That's particularly so at a time when a debt crisis in the 17-country euro zone has plunged several countries in the region into recession. Reports on major euro zone countries are due on Friday and expected to show continued economic contraction. 

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When Turkish diplomats saved Jews from the Nazis

Documentary about little-known heroism screens at Jewish film festival in Ashkelon.
By Judy Maltz

Hareetz | Oct.24, 2012

Between 1941 and 1944, a group of Turkish diplomats helped hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of European Jews escape near certain death at the hands of the Nazis.

It is one of the lesser-known stories of Holocaust rescue. But 70 years after the fact, details of this extraordinary saga are beginning to emerge with the release of the new documentary film, "The Turkish Passport."

The 90-minute film, which premiered in Israel last week at the Jewish Eye World Jewish Film Festival in Ashkelon, chronicles the efforts of a group of close to 20 Turkish ambassadors and consuls - stationed in Paris, Marseille, Budapest, Prague, Varna, Hamburg and Rhodes - to save the lives of Jews of Turkish descent in Nazi-occupied Europe. Among these diplomats was Necdet Kent, the Turkish consul in Marseille from 1940 to 1945, whose son, Muhtar Kent, is today the chairman and chief executive of Coca-Cola.

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How Americans and Chinese View Each Other

Pew Research Center
November 1, 2012

Over the past year, public opinion surveys in the United States and China have shown evidence of rising tensions between the two countries on a host of issues. These include increasingly negative perceptions of each other and concern over economic and trade policies. This infographic explores these views. For more, see our collection of reports used as source material.

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