@Edent It’s rather interesting that you tell @gaveen that he shouldn’t live his life expecting everyone to have the same attitudes, experiences etc. as him, but that you expect your interviewees to have the same attitudes as you with regards to how they behave in interacting with people.

So doesn’t that mean that you’ll be perpetually frustrated in your expectations too?

People are complex. Trying to pigeonhole them based on your perceived notions of what is misogyny based on your own culture and experiences will only result in confirmation of your own biases unless you do listen to others’ experiences and viewpoints and take them into account too …

But based on what I have seen through this entire thread, I don’t think people generally are willing to accept that their own perceptions can be fallible … But that is humanity 😛

The racism behind chatGPT we are not talking about....

This year, I learned that students use chatGPT because they believe it helps them sound more respectable. And I learned that it absolutely does not work. A thread.

A few weeks ago, I was working on a paper with one of my RAs. I have permission from them to share this story. They had done the research and the draft. I was to come in and make minor edits, clarify the method, add some background literature, and we were to refine the discussion together.

The draft was incomprehensible. Whole paragraphs were vague, repetitive, and bewildering. It was like listening to a politician. I could not edit it. I had to rewrite nearly every section. We were on a tight deadline, and I was struggling to articulate what was wrong and how the student could fix it, so I sent them on to further sections while I cleaned up ... this.

As I edited, I had to keep my mind from wandering. I had written with this student before, and this was not normal. I usually did some light edits for phrasing, though sometimes with major restructuring.

I was worried about my student. They had been going through some complicated domestic issues. They were disabled. They'd had a prior head injury. They had done excellent on their prelims, which of course I couldn't edit for them. What was going on!?

We were co-writing the day before the deadline. I could tell they were struggling with how much I had to rewrite. I tried to be encouraging and remind them that this was their research project and they had done all of the interviews and analysis. And they were doing great.

In fact, the qualitative write-up they had done the night before was better, and I was back to just adjusting minor grammar and structure. I complimented their new work and noted it was different from the other parts of the draft that I had struggled to edit.

Quietly, they asked, "is it okay to use chatGPT to fix sentences to make you sound more white?"

"... is... is that what you did with the earlier draft?"

They had, a few sentences at a time, completely ruined their own work, and they couldnt tell, because they believed that the chatGPT output had to be better writing. Because it sounded smarter. It sounded fluent. It seemed fluent. But it was nonsense!

I nearly cried with relief. I told them I had been so worried. I was going to check in with them when we were done, because I could not figure out what was wrong. I showed them the clear differences between their raw drafting and their "corrected" draft.

I told them that I believed in them. They do great work. When I asked them why they felt they had to do that, they told me that another faculty member had told the class that they should use it to make their papers better, and that he and his RAs were doing it.

The student also told me that in therapy, their therapist had been misunderstanding them, blaming them, and denying that these misunderstandings were because of a language barrier.

They felt that they were so bad at communicating, because of their language, and their culture, and their head injury, that they would never be a good scholar. They thought they had to use chatGPT to make them sound like an American, or they would never get a job.

They also told me that when they used chatGPT to help them write emails, they got more responses, which helped them with research recruitment.

I've heard this from other students too. That faculty only respond to their emails when they use chatGPT. The great irony of my viral autistic email thread was always that had I actually used AI to write it, I would have sounded decidedly less robotic.

ChatGPT is probably pretty good at spitting out the meaningless pleasantries that people associate with respectability. But it's terrible at making coherent, complex, academic arguments!

Last semester, I gave my graduate students an assignment. They were to read some reports on labor exploitation and environmental impact of chatGPT and other language models. Then they were to write a reflection on why they have used chatGPT in the past, and how they might chose to use it in the future.

I told them I would not be policing their LLM use. But I wanted them to know things about it they were unlikely to know, and I warned them about the ways that using an LLM could cause them to submit inadequate work (incoherent methods and fake references, for example).

In their reflections, many international students reported that they used chatGPT to help them correct grammar, and to make their writing "more polished".

I was sad that so many students seemed to be relying on chatGPT to make them feel more confident in their writing, because I felt that the real problem was faculty attitudes toward multilingual scholars.

I have worked with a number of graduate international students who are told by other faculty that their writing is "bad", or are given bad grades for writing that is reflective of English as a second language, but still clearly demonstrates comprehension of the subject matter.

I believe that written communication is important. However, I also believe in focused feedback. As a professor of design, I am grading people's ability to demonstrate that they understand concepts and can apply them in design research and then communicate that process to me.

I do not require that communication to read like a first language student, when I am perfectly capable of understanding the intent. When I am confused about meaning, I suggest clarifying edits.

I can speak and write in one language with competence. How dare I punish international students for their bravery? Fixation on normative communication chronically suppresses their grades and their confidence. And, most importantly, it doesn't improve their language skills!

If I were teaching rhetoric and comp it might be different. But not THAT different. I'm a scholar of neurodivergent and Mad rhetorics. I can't in good conscience support Divergent rhetorics while supressing transnational rhetoric!

Anyway, if you want your students to stop using chatGPT then stop being racist and ableist when you grade.

#chatGPT #LLM #academic #graduateStudents #internationalStudents #ESL

"Saba Nayagan" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27610443) is an interesting string of love stories by (and about) the same guy.

It kind of reminds me of the Vikram-Vetal stories in a way, but it also makes me nostalgic for the days when you were young and consumed by love.

The humour's good too — some great laugh out loud moments 🙂

Didn't expect much from the movie but was sitting there with a smile on my face at the end.

#Movies #Tamil #SabaNayagan #LoveStories

The entire #MachineLearning and #DataScience team, including me, just got laid off. :( :( :( :( :(

Anybody out there looking for an ML or software engineer with >30 years total experience and ~20 years in the industry?

I have extensive experience with #Python and #ML frameworks, particularly #TensorFlow, and I've worked on #NLP and #ImageProcessing both in the workplace and in personal open source projects. My resume is available here:

https://hosford42.github.io/

I'd love to work for a #coop or non-profit, if that's a possibility, but I'm open to other options.

If you work in this industry or know someone who does, please boost for reach.

#FediHire
#Layoffs

"Animal" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13751694) is a weird one.

There’s a core story that I like so far (an hour in), but it's wrapped in all sorts of nonsense that I dislike — ideas about alphas, stupid senseless stunts with planes, not seeing the reality but talking about a father who can do no wrong ...

There's just too much disavowal of reality and just weird posturing for me to really like the character. The movie? I'll know when I finish 🙂

#Movies #Hindi #RanbirKapoor #Animal

@jefframes Thanks, Jeff 🙂 Just our usual — when we think we’re going to stay long-term in one place, things kick off and we have to move … again 😛

We’re hoping that this will be the last move, but who really knows?

@AngelaPreston I don’t think you have to do *anything* to tick people off online 😛

I have had running attempts to hack my server, accounts etc. and (mind you, this is only a suspicion) I think it’s because “people” want my Instagram handle …

I’ve had multiple people approach me and say that they’ll buy my Instagram handle. And they have rationales such as “I can use it for my business”, “You’re not using it (fully)”, or “You must be a bot/scammer” — the last apparently because I don’t respond to their emails.

So yeah, people are just weird and they get weirder online because they think nobody sees them (or something) 😀

Looks as if Karl Guttag will be reporting in detail about his experiences with the Apple Vision Pro 🙂

https://kguttag.com/2024/01/20/updates-ces-ar-vr-mr-la-sid-conference-apple-vision-pro-ordered/

I’m looking forward to this since Karl has good insights on AR/VR and while I’m not really looking at the Apple Vision Pro at the moment, based on Karl’s experience, I might change my mind.

In the above post, Karl also mentions the new Sony MR headset. That had only been in the periphery for me but given what he notes about the passthrough camera placement and the weight distribution of the headset, I might need to take another look.

#AR #VR #MR #AppleVisionPro

I've been a bit busy the last few months — family health issues, work, a possible move on the horizon etc. and haven’t really had much time to be on here.

Probably not going to get a lot more time for the next month or so either, but trying to get back to writing about stuff that interests me again …

#PersonalUpdate

@gobert If you need somebody to run your ideas/issues over with, I’m here 🙂

Sometimes, it helps to just talk it over and you get what’s going wrong yourself. Of course, stepping away helps too 😛

Good luck and if it helps, just found this which seems to be a recently updated project which might be useful (or might not)?

https://github.com/leminhcse/EpubReader-iOS

But possibly only if you are looking at iOS?

@gobert I’ve written several readers over the years but then abandoned each project for one reason or another 😛

EPUB is basically a renamed ZIP file with a specific structure but the issue I had with writing my own reader was the various ways that structure could be implemented. The content could be inside a folder with sub-folders or it could be in the root folder etc.

I used several different 3rd party frameworks for my later efforts and they mostly worked at that point in time, but since that was a few years ago, it’s certainly possible that none of them have been updated since then …

@davemark I do like Bard over the others because of the detailed answers it gives …

But of course, just like the others, it will feed you false info if you don’t pay attention 😛 Mostly happens to me when I’m trying to find actors from foreign movies/TV shows though … So I guess it’s kind of understandable?

@davemark This is what Bard says:

@davemark Can do the same right now with xReal glasses and an iPad — and much cheaper too 🙂

We, my wife and I, are looking at doing exactly this for an upcoming flight. I wrote an app which synchronises the playback of the same video on two different iOS devices via Multipeer Connectivity and with the xReal connected to the iPad, we can watch the same movie at the same time …

I was very bullish on the Vision Pro till I realized that they still didn’t have shared playback sorted out. So I went ahead and created my own for way less money 😛

"Three of Us" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23804378) is a wonderful, sometimes melancholic, movie.

It starts off with this air of melancholy that kind of persists throughout the movie. It might feel a little slow at times, but I loved the feel of nostalgia and, sometimes, whimsy that the movie evoked.

The actiing was brilliant — not just words, but emotions evoked through a gesture, or a glance.

I always notice Jaideep Ahlawat when he appears in a movie, but afterewards, i can't remember the movies themselves. Swanand Kirkire was great too, but the standout performance here was by Shefali Shah. Absolutely brilliant!

#Movies #Hindi #Bollywood #SliceOfLife #QuietReflections

I generally like Nani's movies, but some of his recent ones have been especially good.

"Hi Nanna" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt25433734) has to be at the top of that list as far as I'm concerned.

At first, it felt a bit like "How I Met Your Mother", but there is a turning point and once you hit that point, there is no looking back. I just had to finish the rest of the movie.

It was heartfelt and moving. It was a bit of a rollercoaster ride of expecting something to happen and have something totally different happen.

One central premise might seem a bit unlikely, but it made the overall movie work.

Definitely recommended! 🙂

#Movies #Telugu #Nani #HiNanna

I used to develop apps for my own use and then distribute it as freeware.

Then life got busy, I stopped writing apps for personal use — just developed for the App Store.

I'm back full-circle now — coding apps for my own use ... but I don't release them in any form, just too much work/hassle.

How things change?

Or maybe we've become too used to centralized distribution points?

I don't know ...

All I know is that suddenly, after a long gap, at least a couple of my most-used apps are developed by me.

#Coding #SoftwareDev #PersonalProjects

"12th Fail" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23849204) is an inspiring story — a story of striving against all odds, against corruption, against classism, against hundreds of thousands to gain a coveted position.

This is more true-to-life than a lot of recent Hindi movies and so far I love every minute of it. I've lived some of it and I do understand where the people are coming from. Makes me nostalgic but also makes me want to stand up and cheer!

#Movies #Hindi #Bollywood #AgainstTheOdds

@sgamel I totally agree that people don’t learn from history and repeat the same patterns — this is one thing that annoys me so much about humanity …

But at least in that case, you can argue that they don’t even see the pattern because they are so blind.

But in the case of the time loops, they know exactly what happens and what their actions were to cause a situation to occur. So it’s not quite the same as not learning from general history, at least in my opinion 🙂

"Parking" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28184712) is an interesting story about how a small incident can blow up to become a big issue due to egos, misunderstandings, and due to the opinions of others affecting our actions.

Maybe this is a (South) Asian thing, but I totally understand how the two characters came to be in the situation that they ended up in ...

A lot of us just rely way too much on what others think/say about us than just living life the way we want to.

#Movies #Tamil #Parking #RealLife