Spend a vision with me: July 2024

Sunday 28 July 2024

Singapore RI: Blackface mask, delivery personnel uniform in school for racial harmony day?!!

Recently a piece of local news caught my attention, a RI student was reprimanded for what many people would consider “wearing 'blackface'” during racial harmony day.

The evidence

First, let’s start with the picture proudly posted (1):

The face of his friend proudly posing with him has been masked, but you can see the main hero wearing a mask of an African American person hanging loose with his light skinned hands.

Also note the attire.

The Occasion: Racial harmony day

Racial harmony day is when students are encouraged to dress in the attire of a different culture to celebrate the diversity of races and cultures in Singapore.

He chose to dress as a food panda delivery person.

The location/belonging: RI

For those who do not know, RI is one of the most prestigious schools in Singapore. To give context: “How did he get into RI?”(2) was a remark made by am MP when criticizing the speech of an opposition MP, also “he is illiterate”(2). The two MPs alleged to have been involved are today Singapore’s Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Singapore’s Minister of Manpower. So yes, RI is prestigious, some may say elite(ist) school. The two young people in the picture represent the cream of Singapore.

The aftermath or what pisses me off

Mr Aaron Loh, principal of RI:

"The student who was dressed inappropriately had taken the photo as part of current trends around social media memes involving a basketballer… He had no intention to make fun of any group or community."(3)

In an interview where he also confirmed that

“the school had told students they could dress in traditional ethnic attire for its commemoration of Racial Harmony Day”

Some points to bear in mind, from the mouth of the school principal:

It was for Racial Harmony Day
The school allowed students to dress in "traditional ethnic attire"
A student decided that dressing as a food panda delivery person may be “traditional ethnic attire”
That student decided to do a dark faced mask to complete his "traditional ethnic attire"
According to the principal this was in line with current trends
According to the principal again, there was no intention to offend

To me this is normal Singapore racism, and to make things worse, the behaviour of the principal excuses condones this behaviour. The principal probably does not see any racial element here.

He could not be more wrong.

My own experience

2 of my experiences when I had just moved to the hostel in NUS would shine some light on my disgust at the RI principal’s attitude.

1 Non-Chinese friends

A few weeks after I joined the hostel, that was during orientation, one of my friends admitted that I was the 1^st non-Chinese real friend he had made in his life. He came from one of the elite schools and had always had the best education. He was/is a very bright person. He further explained that during his school days, the only non-Chinese he really saw were the people employed by the school as janitors/caretakers for example.

This was decades ago.

I wouldn’t be surprised that the only non light skinned people this boy from RI interacted with were people who delivered food to his house. Hence he associates skin colour and the food delivery uniform.

2 Basketball players

Still in the hostel, when I was a senior, we had a bunch of basket-ball crazy freshmen join my block. They would crowd around the TV in a room and watch NBA games. (I also got into NBA and was a fan of the mail man Karl Malone). Once I overheard a statement that one of the guys (who was until recently C level in NTUC) claimed, he wouldn’t mind being black if he obtained these basket ball skills in exchange.

I had the chance of getting to know these guys earlier, and do not think they are knowingly racist. But this statement made me realise that there are many people who hold racist opinions without realizing it; sub-conciously he thought his less dark skin was better than dark skin and he was willing to exchange this for basket ball skills.

Calling this out was needed to make him realise. Not saying it was part of a social trend to say bein awe to NBA players.

So what I am saying is that more than a decade down the road, the same thing still occurs. But it it worse.

Why is this worse than decades ago?

Singapore has evolved, non-Chinese are at all levels of society. There should not be a reason not to have met non-Chinese people. However, in the elite schools (at least in RI) it seems that it is possible.

Here note that the Raffles name is a brand, and many students are in the Raffles brand all the way to junior college. Also school affiliation (parents having been part of the Raffles family for example) is an advantage for admission. RI is also an independent institution, free to charge for admission, have their own programmes, academic or otherwise (4)

For an institution that supposedly has the cream of Singapore, but still allow students to live in such bubbles is scary.

Far worse is the reaction of the principal of the school.

Mr Loh finds this acceptable. Would he have said the same if say someone had dressed as the Covid19 virus while making “slant-eyed” gesture?

Mr Loh is defending what I see as a double problem within his students (economic and racial discrimination/elitism), and even ascribing it so social media trends. Mr Loh, remember, every time you point at something else, the rest of your fingers are pointing towards you.

To make things more interesting, Mr Loh is himself a product of the Raffles brand; you can find more details about the principals and vice-principals at the RI page (5)

Mr Loh is seated third from the left.

Conclusion:

Racism is something that is around in Singapore (6) and trying to address it is nothing new (7). Even current prime minister waded into the matters by commenting on students in pre-primary who prefer to be with their own race by saying ““human instinct to be comfortable with our own””. Prof Goh retorted that “a lot of that instinct is learnt by young children in their homes and in schools”.

I agree with Prof Goh; racism is taught and influenced; if it is not caught early and addressed, it may lurk in the background and rear its ugly head unexpectedly.

Attitudes like that of the current principal of RI are certainly not helpful, and could even be considered harmful.

Monday 15 July 2024

Do you want to use AI or be used via AI (2/2)

In my previous post (1), I showed how state actors who have been using propaganda for years to influence what we as individuals think/believe are now getting more aggressive, more targeted and more insidious by using AI/ML bots and social media.

It is still my belief that:

Influencing how people behave is nothing new, AI just makes it easier to achieve
AI is being used more and more to influence how people think and therefore behave
AI is neither good nor bad, it is how it is used that matters.
Each one of us has a choice to make, whether to allow the influence or question it

AI is neither good nor bad, neither was fire. It is how it is used that matters, and how we, individually deal with it. For example, it probably is not usual for you to leave flammable stuff next to a gas stove/BBQ, is it? You want to control fire and use it, rather than let is go loose because of error/clumsiness of mind, and cause untold damage.

The battle is for your brain, do you want to lose it?

perchance.org

The most important defense is a sane level of skepticism

People are wired to trust (1). When people’s social circles were small, and tight, you knew the people you interacted well, and their personal characteristics. Add to this mutual benefit (after all you are in a tight knit group), it made sense to trust information that someone in the group relayed to you.

However, the world has evolved from small villages, to global village, add to this the evolution of the press from reporting to giving opinions, and the advent of social media where pretty much anybody can say anything, and you can see that it makes sense to be a little bot skeptical of information you get.

It is ok to be skeptical, but just parking information somewhere is not a good idea.

It may be believed since it has stayed in the parking lot for that long or with similar stories
You may be suspending action while you are evaluating things (analysis paralysis)

Aside: how processing information has changed over time

This is an aside that is slightly more important than a footnote. One of the interesting things that has changed is HOW people are convinced. In the past, people used to postulate “a theory”, then provide ‘facts’ that support the theory, and therefore the people targeted believe the theory. Nowadays, the focus is in repetition rather than a theory. “There is a low bar to assent and repetition: the conspiracy charge is ‘true enough.’ Subscribers to conspiracy without the theory do not to have to believe the particulars of the charge. Indeed, there are rarely any particulars – just assertion and innuendo.”(2)

Nowadays repetition in social media is designed to burn a factoid into your brain, rather than bring you to a conclusion by starting with a theory. The end result is that a belief or a bias is formed, and given we are lazy, we rarely review the reasons for beliefs we may have. So, repetition, especially at the scale of social media, works.

Back to the main topic.

Simple Steps to protect yourself: 1 trusted sources

I started by using US elections of 2016 as an example (3), and this was deliberate. These two posts were motivated by an article I read recently. (4). The Stanford Internet Observatory was one of the first to pull the alarm on Russian interference in the US 2016 Presidential elections. If you have time, it is worth looking into their efforts (5). Basically, they are stuck in lawsuits, so the university has decided the truth was not worth that amount of money.

There are other possible trusted sources that evaluate factoids you may have heard, fact checking websites; politifact is one of them (6); you can find more (7)

Unfortunately for us outside the USA, many of these are US centric.

For example, how many people in Singapore would have believed, despite all the technological excellence of MAS, the banking sector (including the world’s best digital bank), the rapidity of the police at shutting down crime, SGD3Billion worth of money laundering took place (8). But it is a fact.

Simple Steps to protect yourself: 2 learn logical thinking

Someone once said common sense is less common than you think. I unfortunately agree. We were all given brains and these are our quite well equipped to defend themselves against ideas/concepts that are not correct. And logic is the tool that helps. The most important thing is of course to start by being skeptical, and take the time to think through things logically.

The first thing you should do is strip any statement to its basic components, like deconstruct something made of Lego, break it down to its basic components. You take the argument that has been proposed to you into its basic premises. Then you apply a logic technique to see where that gets you.

Deduction (9)

Deduction is the most reliable way to prove an argument or reject it. The key to deduction is to place the premises of an argument into a certain shape, and if the shape holds, then the argument is valid. For example:

All B are A
C is B
Therefore, C is A

Now let me flesh this as an argument with premised and conclusion:

All humans are mortal
John is human
Therefore, John is mortal

How about this one?

All women have long hair
Jane is a woman
Therefore, Jane has long hair

What do you think of this one? The form is the same as above, but do you agree? You probably wouldn’t. The argument is valid, however, one of the premises is not True.

Not all women have long hair

While the shape of the argument is valid, because one of the premises is not true, therefore the argument itself is not sound; you cannot say with certainty that Jane has long hair because one of the premises is not true (Some women do not have long hair).

And that’s the thing about deduction, it provides as close to certainty as you can get, it is bullet proof.

You can see deduction as:

Take an accepted Theory/Proven Idea
Apply it to a specific case that fits
Generate a conclusion for that specific case

What if you have no accepted theory/proven idea?

Induction (10)

While deduction is bullet proof, induction is less so; it gives you a probabilistic answer.

is really yummy, no tummy issues

Let’s say that, like me, you are a fan of la-zi-ji (spicy chicken).

I ate la-zi-ji 10 times in the last 3 months and each time, I had tummy issues the next day
The spices in La-zi-ji can be potent to cause tummy issues
Therefore, causes tummy issues

There are a few differences compared to deduction.

Here you start with some observations (eat la-zi-ji day 1, tummy issues day 2, 10 times in last 3 months), apply some analysis/theory (la-zi-ji spices may cause tummy issues) and derive a probabilistic conclusion.

What do you think of this induction, how strong is it?

To me it is not that strong. It can be improved by gathering more data:

Eat from different stalls to make sure it is not stall specific
How did your friends who also at la-zi-ji react? Or is it just you?
Was It really la-zi-ji, what else did you eat, maybe you also ordered cray fish and you have a mild allergy

In induction, you start from observations, samples and try to build a theory. How strong the theory depends on the size and quality of your observations/samples.

The other important thing here is, if the 11^th time you at la-zi-ji, your tummy is ok the next day, then you can revise your theory to la-zi-ji may cause tummy issues, you lower the probability.

Abduction (11)(12)

No, I am not referring to kidnapping. Abductive reasoning is another logical tool you should equip yourself with.

Interestingly, this is the type of reasoning AI finds less easy.

Abduction starts with an observation, then you think of the various things that could explain the hypothesis, and postulate the one you find most likely.

An example will clarify things:

You find crumbs on the kitchen table and unwashed plate and glass in the sink
You think it is most likely that your flat mate had a midnight snack and was too lazy to clean up.

There are may other explanations that could fit:

You sleepwalk and had a midnight snack while asleep last night
A burglar came in and decided to have a midnight snack
Your flat mate is playing a practical joke on you

You simply picked the one you thought most likely, based on your experience.

It is important to be able to recognize which of these paths of logical reasoning you have taken, then you can understand how much certainty you can associate with your beliefs based on which process you used to reach them.

It may be confusing at first, but with some practice you will get it.

Furthermore, there is a clear progression from Abduction to Induction to Deduction

This is aligned with how discovery takes place and models are created and built all the way to implementation.

The extra problem in the fight for the real estate of your brain is that some people/bots are really good at masking bad arguments, tricking you in believing they are correct.

Simple Steps to Protect yourself 3: Identify Fallacies

I always say I am lazy; I actually think humans are lazy and it takes conscious effort sometimes not to be lazy. Fallacies are shortcuts that people may choose to take advantage of your laziness and implant some stuff surreptitiously into your brain.

There are many fallacies, I will only illustrate a couple of the most commonly used:

Appeal to Authority / Ad Verecundiam

This simply uses a famous person as authority figure to justify the argument. There are 2 flavours: False Authority

CR7 uses K water
CR7 is world famous
Therefore, K Water must be a great soft drink.

Nobody said CR7 was an authority in water, this is the world of influencers…

Anonymous authority

Scientists claim 5G is harmful
Scientists know what they are talking about
Hence 5G is harmful

Who is the scientist, where are the scientific papers?

Bandwagon/Ad Populum

People who have known me well are likely to have heard me respond angrily to Ad Populum arguments; they are basically: do this because everyone does so… No need to think, just follow the bandwagon.

Everyone buys extended warranties
Extended warranties are worth it
Therefore, I should buy one on my spice grinder

Strawman

A strawman argument is used when someone’s argument is distorted by an opponent so that when the distorted argument is refuted by the opponent, they claim the original argument has been refuted. It can take many forms: over simplifying what someone said, taking it out of context… It is used very very often by politicians

Example:

I am against the mandatory sentence for drug mules
He is for allowing entry of drugs into the country

False Dichotomy

False dichotomy truly plays on laziness. It aims to wrongly simplify an argument into 2 possible solutions, one of which is not favourable so you pick the other, ignoring all other solutions.

Example:

Either you eat an apple a day, or you visit the doctor.
You choose.

Ad Hominem

Ad Hominem occurs when the person is attacked rather than the argument that the person is making.

Example:

I don’t think this person can be trusted because he made a mistake last time

This has no impact on the argument the person presents, but the ad hominem attack to meant to damage the credibility of the argument by damaging that of the person making it.

There are many more fallacies, I have just highlighted a few I am sure that, if you think about it, you have seen in action before. You can find more details; Wikipedia is a good place to start (13).

Conclusion

The best way to minimize chances of your brain being taken over by ideas/concepts that are not that correct is to learn to identify these ideas/concepts/arguments/snippets of ‘information’ as early as possible. You can rely on public service websites that check for truth, or choose to verify the veracity/soundness/validity of arguments by your own self, or both.

It is equally important to verify your beliefs in light of new data you may come across and update your beliefs/ideas. It is a constant battle, probably worth being engaged in.

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7216242124814524417/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/trust
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337877932_Conspiracism_and_Delegitimation_A_lot_of_people_are_saying_The_new_conspiracism_and_the_assault_on_democracy_Russell_Muirhead_and_Nancy_Rosenblum_Princeton_University_Press_Princeton_2019_978069118883
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/29/closing-the-stanford-internet-observatory-will-edge-the-us-towards-the-end-of-democracy
https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io
https://www.politifact.com/
https://library.csi.cuny.edu/c.php?g=619342&p=4310783
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/3b-money-laundering-case-su-jianfeng-sentenced-to-17-months-last-of-10-to-be-sent-to-jail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive_reasoning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning
I am using the classical definition of abduction here, as first explained by Pierce https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abduction/peirce.html
For a modern definition, you can consult https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abduction/ ; however, I think the classical definition works best in the process of formulating ideas and also as part of the process of Analytics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

Monday 8 July 2024

Do you want to use AI or be used via AI? (1/2)

This is the first of 2 blog posts on giving some idea of how AI is being used, by who, and the choice each one of us as individuals has to make.

Right up front let me state my position:

Influencing how people behave is nothing new, AI just makes it easier to achieve
AI is being used more and more to influence how people think and therefore behave
AI is neither good nor bad, it is how it is used that matters.
Each one of us has a choice to make, whether to allow the influence or question it.

Influencing how people behave is nothing new, and this comes from everywhere

The ‘father of propaganda’, Edward Burnays (1), in his book Propaganda (2), he started by saying:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

And he continued by saying

“We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of”

Edward Burnays was a psychologist and his book was first published in 1928. Burnays talks about state level molding of minds and suggestion of ideas.

States have always been very active in the field. I was actually very interested to see that Burnays was involved in United Fruit in South America. But that’s another topic. For today, we focus on how state and state agents influence us.

Nation/State-wide propaganda powered by AI/ML, bots

US presidential elections, since 2016

Some people may remember the idea that Russia was accused of spreading ‘selective information’ with a view to influence voters in the US elections in 2016 (3), 2020 (4). Various techniques were used and of course ML and AI were used, in managing bots, microtargeting (after having hacked personal details for example)(5). It was a well executed plan:

Hack into electoral registries especially in states with tight races
Get personal details of voters and how to contact them
Model how they could be influenced and prepare bots with selected information
Take action

In 2016, Mr Trump won the elections, this was supposedly the aim of the 2016 effort.

In 2020, the ‘left wingers’ also started to get active in the bot space, although not as much as the right wing (5)

It is clear that the volume of tweets by ‘left-leaning bots’ was much lower than ‘right-leaning bots’ (and the pattern very different), but still there were efforts to ‘inform’ the electorate from both sides.

Foreign powers too

One of the most interesting aspects of the 2016 presidential elections was the emergence of the Russian interference claims (6) The idea was that Russia intervened to increase the chances of Mr Trump getting elected. The playbook was simple:

Hack electoral register (7)
Gather information about electors
Target them via bots

This also happened in 2020 (8), but prewarned the efforts were less one-sided.

2024 US Presidential elections

Already various sources are warning that Russia will be enhancing its impact by using AI more, and in 2024, China too is getting in on the game (9)(10); with Generative AI (GenAI), the impact is getting potentially stronger.

Interestingly, the aims of the efforts of China and Russia seems to differ. While Russia aims to weaken support for Ukraine in US, China aims at societal polarization (as if that needed a helping hand) (11).

But it is not only foreign national intelligence who are using AI, at least the Republican party is doing it to increase its appeal to specific voting groups (12) and democrats too (13).

Basically, everyone is using AI to fool American voters into doing their bidding.

Now, please do not believe that the USA is only a victim.

USA Military and the drive to hamper Covid19 vaccination in Philippines and Central Asia

A recent piece of research by Reuters uncovered that the Pentagon (USA ‘Ministry of Defence’) was using social media, fake accounts and presumably ML/AI tools, to turn people against taking the Covid19 vaccine from China (14)

In Singapore, the Chinese made vaccine (Sinovac) was made available, as well as Pfizer, Moderna, and is still available until now.

Now, what makes things more interesting is the polar opposite approach between the policies of the USA government (USA first, all vaccines possible to the USA) and China (Covid19 is a worldwide problem so avail vaccines to other countries).

Given the political position taken by the government, the Pentagon decided that they should not allow China to get any goodwill by giving away Covid19 vaccines. That would put the USA in a bad light. Hence, the disinformation campaign.

“Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation.”(14) Actually, this quote from the article would even point to more than just anti-China, since it is also about mask wearing. But for now, let’s focus on the pentagon’s anti-China vaccine stance.

Not only Philippines, but also in Central Asia, using religion

“Tailoring the propaganda campaign to local audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East, the Pentagon used a combination of fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to spread fear of China’s vaccines among Muslims at a time when the virus was killing tens of thousands of people each day. A key part of the strategy: amplify the disputed contention that, because vaccines sometimes contain pork gelatin, China’s shots could be considered forbidden under Islamic law.” By whatever means possible, the Pentagon discouraged adoption of Sinovac in Central Asia using rumours about religious taboos.

To me the key difference is that this campaign is real, and has probably cost people their lives: “When he addressed the vaccination issue, the Philippines had among the worst inoculation rates in Southeast Asia. Only 2.1 million of its 114 million citizens were fully vaccinated – far short of the government’s target of 70 million. By the time Duterte spoke, COVID cases exceeded 1.3 million, and almost 24,000 Filipinos had died from the virus. The difficulty in vaccinating the population contributed to the worst death rate in the region.”

‘“We weren’t looking at this from a public health perspective,” said a senior military officer involved in the program. “We were looking at how we could drag China through the mud.”’

In sum, chances are many Filipinos (and Central Asians) died because they chose not to take Sinovac that was available to them at the time because they were influenced by the Pentagon’s propaganda campaign using social media and bots. But don’t blame the tools. The aim of the campaign was achieved, the tools worked.

‘Deep Fake’, for a cause, the case of Pakistan

I used ’Deep Fake’ because in this case, AI was used to have an the voice of Mr Imran Khan make a speech, but the key is that Mr Khan was in prison and had passed his speech to his supporters to create the movies for the purpose of campaigning; an approved deep fake in a way(15).

This novel campaign strategy (16) was effective enough for Mr Khan and his allies to become the largest single block in Pakistan, although they did not manage to form the government (17)

This is a case where AI was used very effectively to bridge a gap between a politician and his electorate.

And to me, the key is that the electors knew exactly that this was an AI generated image of Mr Khan, but saying the words Mr Khan wants to say.

It worked.

What's next, an AI candidate/elected representative?

As far fetched as it may seem, it is quite a possibility, especially where candidates need not prove they are real humans, that you will get an AI aided or generated candidate near you. A recent case, in the 2024 UK Elections, Reform UK has been accused of fielding 'fake' candidates (18)

What does this mean?

It’s very simple, not only are private companies trying to influence our decisions, usually to buy/consume their products/services by using tools like AI, governments and the political class are also quickly adopting these tools.

The reason is that your brain is the hottest real estate, and everyone wants to plant a flag.

You may be ok with that or you may not.

The second part of this blog will show a couple of ways how each one of us could preserve this real estate.