Cyborg patented?
Forbes reports that Microsoft has obtained a patent for a “conversational chatbot of a specific person” created from images, recordings, participation in social networks, emails, letters, etc., coupled with the possible generation of a 2D or 3D model of the person.
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Racial bias in algorithms
From the UK Open Data Institute’s Week in Data newsletter
This week, Twitter apologised for racial bias within its image-cropping algorithm. The feature is designed to automatically crop images to highlight focal points – including faces. But, Twitter users discovered that, in practice, white faces were focused on, and black faces were cropped out. And, Twitter isn’t the only platform struggling with its algorithm – YouTube has also announced plans to bring back higher levels of human moderation for removing content, after its AI-centred approach resulted in over-censorship, with videos being removed at far higher rates than with human moderators.
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Gap between rich and poor university students widest for 12 years
Via The Canary.
The gap between poor students and their more affluent peers attending university has widened to its largest point for 12 years, according to data published by the Department for Education (DfE).
Better-off pupils are significantly more likely to go to university than their more disadvantaged peers. And the gap between the two groups – 18.8 percentage points – is the widest it’s been since 2006/07.
The latest statistics show that 26.3% of pupils eligible for FSMs went on to university in 2018/19, compared with 45.1% of those who did not receive free meals. Only 12.7% of white British males who were eligible for FSMs went to university by the age of 19. The progression rate has fallen slightly for the first time since 2011/12, according to the DfE analysis.
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Quality Training
From Raconteur. A recent report by global learning consultancy Kineo examined the learning intentions of 8,000 employees across 13 different industries. It found a huge gap between the quality of training offered and the needs of employees. Of those surveyed, 85 per cent said they , with only 16 per cent of employees finding the learning programmes offered by their employers effective.
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Reading this I thought about the diversity of categories of knowledge in Welsh. You wrote about it somewhere Graham, but I couldn’t find it quickly so I thought I’d write, because that made me think that it is more than just the right for everyone to be able to get a basic education in his/her mother tongue, it is also about the need to preserve diversity, the same kinds of arguments apply to language and to biology.
So how about a post on the Welsh words for knowledge?
Notwithstanding my previous comment, I think one could take issue with Muguet’s characterisation of the suppression of the you /thou distinction. It is alive and well but carried by the modal verb and other constructions, instead of being limited to the pronoun choice. (You, not thou, you, might consider this Francis, as distinct, for example, from Why don’t you consider this, Francis…a different issue is the deliberate choice of more familiar constructions by most native users which may or not respond to a range of motivations)
Most languages serve the purpose of codifying the world their speakers inhabit. They may however do it in different ways, that may escape the non-native speaker. To assert otherwise could be construed as arrogant, and destructive of the worldwide communication that Muguet would appear, perhaps tentatively, to an preciptivevalue. Most analyses of English as worldwide communication tool point to simplification(arguably impoverishment though the term is value-laden) rather than enrichment. Muguet’ usage might, in some circles, even be used to support this view.
However the other side of the argument is that, despite perceptions, English arguably due to its reduced complexity of inflection and resultant flexibility, is by far the world language with the largest number of loan-words. It has been and continues to be enriched. And for the record it doesn’t “accept to be enriched” there is no Academy (or Cathedral) to “accept” the enrichment, it just happens. The tradition is descriptive rather than prescriptive, and the language evolves with the user community (the Bazaar). Sounds quite similar to Open Source 🙂
Notwithstanding my previous comment, I think one could take issue with Muguet’s characterisation of the suppression of the you /thou distinction. It is alive and well but carried by the modal verb and other constructions, instead of being limited to the pronoun choice. (You, not thou, you, might consider this Francis, as distinct, for example, from Why don’t you consider this, Francis…a different issue is the deliberate choice of more familiar constructions by most native users which may or not respond to a range of motivations)
Most languages serve the purpose of codifying the world their speakers inhabit. They may however do it in different ways, that may escape the non-native speaker. To assert otherwise could be construed as arrogant, and destructive of the worldwide communication that Muguet would appear, perhaps tentatively, to value. Most analyses of English as worldwide communication tool point to simplification(arguably impoverishment though the term is value-laden) rather than enrichment. Muguet’ usage might, in some circles, even be used to support this view.
However the other side of the argument is that, despite perceptions, English, arguably due to its reduced complexity of inflection and resultant flexibility, is by far the world language with the largest number of loan-words. It has been and continues to be enriched. And for the record it doesn’t “accept to be enriched” there is no Academy (or Cathedral) to “accept” the enrichment; it just happens. The tradition is descriptive rather than prescriptive, and the language evolves with the user community (the Bazaar). Sounds quite similar to Open Source 🙂