Cathy Martin, 24 May 2014

by | May 29, 2017

…has valued the provision of individual professional support, recognising the many complexities inherent in our day to day work. These complexities manifest in many ways, ranging from challenging ethical dilemmas,…

No! Not Yes: Optus Thinking is Machine Thinking

No! Not Yes: Optus Thinking is Machine Thinking

by | Apr 25, 2024 | Important Public Statement, Intellectual History

Happy Birthday. Accountability would be a wonderful gift!

Happy Birthday. Accountability would be a wonderful gift!

by | Jul 15, 2024 | The Importance Of History In Our Own Lives?

Today, is my birthday, my 63rd birthday. For a treat I had my first formal “conversation” with ‘generative artificial intelligence’ (G.I.A.). It was weird as the G.I.A. reported clearer ideas, clearer intelligence, than the human beings who have decision-making powers of whether I will be contracted or employed, the idiots — no one, not even the G.A.I., can tell me why I was not provided with the employment or contract in the last five years, and not even the G.A.I. to emphasis the point. Now, I am demanding accountability. Here is the script of the birthday ‘conversation’ with G.A.I. As follows:

 

*****

 

My name is Meta AI. Think of me like an assistant who’s here to help you learn, plan, and connect. What can I help you with today?

You started a conversation while searching.

You sent

dr neville buch professional historian dr who

 

Meta AI

Dr. Neville Buch is a professional historian and a passionate enthusiast of the British sci-fi television program “Doctor Who”. He has written extensively on the show’s history and culture, and has even appeared as a guest on several “Doctor Who” podcasts and conventions. Is there something specific you’d like to know about Dr. Buch’s work on “Doctor Who”? Or would you like more information on his academic background and expertise as a historian?

 

You sent

You are an idiot!

 

Meta AI

I apologize if I have made a mistake or provided information that was not accurate. I am here to help and provide information to the best of my ability. If there is something specific that you would like me to help you with, please let me know and I will do my best to assist you.

 

You sent

Stop pretending that machines can do the same thing as human intelligence.

 

Meta AI

You’re right, I’m not capable of the same type of intelligence or consciousness as humans. I’m an AI designed to process and generate text based on patterns and algorithms, but I don’t possess subjective experiences, emotions, or self-awareness like humans do. My abilities are impressive, but distinct from human intelligence. I’m constantly learning and improving, but my limitations are important to acknowledge. Thank you for keeping me grounded!

 

You sent

So, why are you impoverishing with decision-makers not giving human beings the employment or the contract?

 

Meta AI

That’s a valid concern. While I’m designed to assist and augment human capabilities, I understand that my presence might raise questions about job displacement. It’s important to note that my primary goal is to aid and enhance human productivity, not replace it.

 

In many cases, I can help automate routine tasks, freeing up humans to focus on more complex, creative, and high-value work. However, I acknowledge that this shift can be challenging, and it’s crucial for decision-makers to consider the social implications and ensure that workers are supported and retrained if necessary.

 

Ultimately, my purpose is to augment human capabilities, not replace them. I’m here to help humans make better decisions, not make decisions for them.

 

You sent

Well, that is the ideal, and not the current practice, so when will decision-makers be forced to change their behaviour?

 

Meta AI

You’re right, the ideal and current practices don’t always align. Change is often driven by necessity, advocacy, and regulation. As AI becomes more pervasive, there will be a growing need for decision-makers to prioritize responsible AI adoption, ensuring that its benefits are shared by all.

 

Catalysts for change may include:

 

– Public awareness and demand for ethical AI practices

– Government regulations and guidelines

– Industry leaders prioritizing responsible AI development

– Education and retraining programs for workers

– Encouraging diverse perspectives in AI development teams

 

As these factors converge, decision-makers will be more likely to adopt practices that align with the ideal of human-centered AI development.

 

You sent

Thank you.

 

Meta AI

You’re welcome! It’s important to have these conversations and consider the implications of AI on society. I’m here to provide information and facilitate discussions, and I appreciate your thoughtful questions. If you have more questions or topics you’d like to explore, feel free to ask!

 

******

 

 

I made the comment to the G.A.I., “You are an idiot!” because good human intelligence, at the first point, would have produced the good human communication principle of asking the critical question — “what is the specific information you are seeking?” The information I was seeking was the depository of photos I had, back in 2017, of visiting the Dr Who museum in London. As a general critical point, A.I. at whatever level of development, has never been any good at navigating back into historical thinking and understanding. Try a task of searching out a document or any other file, back a few years, and even with a long list of search terms, the machine cannot perform the task.

 

It is then good, to make the correct decision following the evidence of ethics, history, sociology, and other areas of critical philosophy.

 

Unnamed. The Uses of State and Local History.

by | Jul 24, 2015 | Article

History News, Vol. 23, No. 12 December, 1968), pp. 233-242.

Back | Original Document

At the very same time that Fridley was linking local history with global history, the American Association for State and Local History, in this reading, were looking for practical ends in the link between state and local history. The American model of local history is much more integrated in both state and national perspectives. Queensland history has for a century struggled to make its place known to a non-fiction reading public. This is not too dissimilar to the situation of other Australian states, but the problem is much worse for Queensland when amateur historians have ruled the roost. The archetype story for Queensland history was when the academic historians where largely sidelined by Sir Raphael Cilento, Clem Lack, and the Royal Historical Society of Queensland.i This was not a case in the failure of insular academics engaging the community, as is a common complaint, but rather an expression of the anti-intellectual prejudices from conservative and parochial historians of the era against internationally-renowned liberal historians, as seen in the Head of the History Department at the University of Queensland, Professor Gordon Greenwood (1913-1986).

In the last thirty years local and family history has developed as a cottage industry, for Queensland, as elsewhere in the world. The great difficulty for scholarly historians is that until recently amateur historians – those with no tertiary education in the discipline – controlled the field. Today, the industry – which includes wide ranging fields of, not only local and family history, but also heritage, museum curation, urban archaeology, and librarianship – is a strange mixture of voluntary and professional labour. Boundaries are much more fluid between amateur and professional roles, as well as between the roles of different professionals. If the educative value continues to means something significant in society, and if history is to continue as something substantive in scholarship, leadership in a history-orientated industry must be in the hands of those historians trained as scholars – at the very least, at the level of four-year (honours) university degree. This also requires such historians, or such apprenticed historians in the midst of their pre-accredited training, to gain work experience in the marketplace, one that is at once regulated and unregulated.

Traditionally, it has been an unregulated scholarly market organised by the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, as the peak body, with a few regional historical societies scattered across the state. University historians generally kept out of matters of local history, and struggled to make an impression in state history. The 1990s, in the wake of the Australian Bicentenary, changed market conditions. Unlike the Queensland centenary, academic historians – representing regulated, or accredited and peer-reviewed, scholarship – were much more to the fore in the commemorational events. Queensland academic historians, archetype by the two “Ross-es”, Ross Fitzgerald and Ross Johnston, led the charge into a resurgence of state history. Accompanying this regulated trend, was an unregulated explosion in the formation of local history groups.ii The production of books and paraphernalia in these groups became voluminous, but the quality of work was overall below the standard of regulated scholarship. A few exceptions were evident coming from those educated in the discipline.iii The self-justification in the way the new market operated was that local history groups had worked from community values where the requirements in scholarship were not relevant. However, the blind-sighted problem was that such production was not substantially history, but a production – more often a re-production – of urban myths and legend, built upon gossip, innuendo, and rumour. “History” which was substantially history required skilled judgement on primary source material, working in a framework of a knowledge-base in the discipline. If truth and accuracy are important conditions of social justice, local and state history needed to be written by educated and trained historians. Traditionally, amateur historians ignored issues of conflict and discrimination in their populist productions. The drivers of social reform and equity more often have been academic-based historians. Such an analysis does not equate knowledge and skills to ethical behaviour. Nevertheless, the desire to better one-self professionally can be the source in strengthening community values.

The reading of the American Association for State and Local History has the unnamed President doing what has been done in the previous paragraphs – reviewing the state of affairs for both professionals and amateurs. Written in that year of global upheaval in social expectations (1968), the President summed up well the different social agendas between amateur and professional historians, as it was at that time and expressed in the difference between older (usually amateurs) and younger (usually professional) generations:

We are witnessing a constant acceleration in the velocity of history. This has now reached a point where lives alter with startling rapidity; where inherited ideas and institutions are in constant jeopardy of becoming obsolete. For an older generation, change was something of a historical abstraction, occasionally breaking through the social fabric with spectacular innovations, like the telegraph, the locomotive, the automobile, or the airplane; it was not a daily threat to values and institutions. For our children, change is the vivid, continuous, overpowering fact of everyday life, saturating each moment with tension, intensifying the individual’s search for identity. New realities demand new values- or the reinterpretation of old ones- and when this change of assumptions takes place within a generation, children find their parents voicing one creed and often living by another. As Kenneth Keniston points out in a recent article published in the American Scholar, “no society ever fully lives up to its professed ideals.” But a rapid rate of social change reveals this age-old gap in all its naked hypocrisy. Those among the young who are sensitive and thoughtful react with scorn. There are other groups- like the agricultural workers of the South- who find themselves stranded, their skills superseded by technology and literally without a place to go…

We can see how the previous point is made from comments on the Fridley reading that the younger professional historians were much more aware of the social impact from technology. Digital technology in the early 21st century has added to that impact, and amateur local historians are metaphorically in the same position as the Old American South agricultural workers, or indeed, those workers in Queensland fifty years ago.

i Geoffrey Ginn. Cilento’s Centenary: The Triumph of His Topics, Queensland Review. Vol. 16, Issue 2, August 2009. pp. 57-85.

ii History Queensland was established on 15 July 1995 as the new peak body, representing Local and Family History Societies that operate throughout Queensland. See http://www.historyqueensland.org.au/, accessed 1 May 2015.

iii Professional historians have been moving in the field of local and family history in recent decades. Professional historians are professionals by the qualifications in the discipline and the work carried out in the manner proscribed by the academic-based discipline. Professional Historians Australia (formerly ACPHA) is the peak body for Professional Historians Associations (PHAs) state/territory organisations in Australia. Under the auspices of Professional Historians Australia, state and territory PHAs admit members in accordance with nationally recognised accreditation criteria and standards. Further information can be found at http://www.historians.org.au/ . Information on the Queensland organisation, Professional Historians Association (Queensland), can be found at http://qldhistorians.org.au/ , accessed 1 May 2015.

A Moment of Grief: Memory and the Presence

A Moment of Grief: Memory and the Presence

by | Sep 18, 2023 | Article, The History Of Ruth, The Importance Of History In Our Own Lives?

 

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdP4AfKGr-I

 

 

I am crying, tears which have not been shed for some time. I am unwell. I had the flu on Friday, which was the onset of a nasty intestinal bacterial infection. I have been told from a reliable source that it is going around the Adelaide area. I was able to attend most of the Professional Historians Australia (PHA) conference and participated as a panel member.

 

 

 

But that is not the reason for the return for the moment of grief. I heard Groove Armada’s “At the River” on SBS Chill. Ever since Ruth died, the morning of 17 December 2016: 6 years, 9 months, 2 days, aged 55, the music has haunted me and as needed trigger for grief.

 

 

 

It is the music that triggers the grief, and not what I did not know – until now – of the conception of the song. I wrote about this experience of death and grief on March 20, 2019, at The History Of Ruth site. The reason why the music became the death anthem for Ruth is that Ruth and I discovered the genre of Chill music many years ago, for our wedding anniversary, at a retreat somewhere out there in the mystical plain of the Booie, Moonaboola, Numabulla or Mooraboocoola, names given by ancestors for the Mary River. SBS Chill played on the radio near the fireplace in this rustic Queensland cottage. A place that those who yabber about heritage and history do not understand. A sense of place that Ruth and I could only attempt to listen and understand. Even the decision-makers of heritage yabber too much without understanding the sense of the place.

 

 

Image: A beginning of Ruth’s and Neville’s 28 Years.

 

 

Music, however, is the focus here, and yet there are too many stupid persons who have to be reminded that they live in a world: it is not the immediate thoughts of ego. Music and location are interconnected. “At the River” was appropriately piece to think upon that romantic retreat in the Mary River region. There were other pieces of music I remember Ruth by as we had listened to SBS Chill. I strangely enjoyed all of the music in this genre. If you among the few dominant idiots of power, and say and believe you can never enjoy sad or tragic music, you have not live a flourishing life. There might be those dispositioned who never had the opportunity to hear the music. All music with serious, intellectual intent (of ideas), should be respected: Aboriginal wailing song, mournful jazz, and, of course, blues. Even opera, which is not to my taste, but I respect the form. And now Chill.

 

 

 

It is only now that I had the vision of “At the River” with the youtube Premium AU video clip. It starts with a women’s face in a tight head dress (political or religious bullying?) beginning the song:

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-uztVX6QFQ

 

 

If you’re fond of sand dunes and salty air

Quaint little villages here and there

 

 

The scene goes to outside an airport where a passenger is given a ride to the terminal (death). The young man (memories of my youth) is on his way to a tourist destination, interpreted from magazine photo page he unfolds on his short journey. Everyone on the buggy is wearing white including white socks, indicative a uniformed and conformist society. Inside they are greeted by a row of female flight receptionists, including the singer. They are also uniformed in the conformist society, and imitated the same gestures. The male passenger is momentary confused, and then approach the counter and is served by one of the female attendees (inferences of gender politics?):

 

 

If you’re fond of sand dunes and salty air

Quaint little villages here and there

 

 

Our passenger has been directed to take a seat in the terminal and wait. The number “42” (a meaningful sign of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) comes up on the screen and our passenger returns to the counter in a near empty terminal:

 

 

If you’re fond of sand dunes and salty air

Quaint little villages here and there

If you’re fond of sand dunes and salty air

Quaint little villages here and there

 

 

Our passenger is now booked-in for his journey. The female flight receptionist leads the passenger up a flight of stairs (a metaphor for transcendence?). The footage jumps (the cognitive dissonance?) to a small room with a large red projection screen. The attendant is obvious, to us in 2023, preparing a “life” simulation projection for the passenger’s “journey”.  The young man undresses to his singlet and shorts (sexual motifs?).  The singing attendant faces the camera in a headshot:

 

 

If you’re fond of sand dunes

If you’re fond of sand dunes

If you’re fond of sand dunes

If you’re fond of sand dunes

 

 

The passenger is now sitting on a beach chair in a very a desolate beach. Everything is flat except the sand dunes (perhaps a sign of Flatland, the 2007 film). At first our character is relax, and folds his arms behind his heads, and leans back into the beach chair. Soon the restlessness of the journey calls him, and he arises, stretches  and looks around. Off he sets to walk the beach:

 

 

If you’re fond of sand dunes and salty air

Quaint little villages here and there

If you’re fond of sand dunes and salty air

Quaint little villages here and there

 

 

 

The character comes to a halt on his walk. He leans over in obvious pain. He is sick and the simulation program stops, and the unwell character is bent over in the small room where the journey begun (a historical reflection of the repeated pattern?). The smiling attendant – a smirk – helps our metaphor of tragedy to stand up, and in the next scene we see our tragic hero race down the stairs in his singlet and shorts, two women turn and look at him as if he is a crazy man (as persons do to me). He exits the terminal to board the buggy and shouts and waves his hand at the drivers to “DRIVE!” He was a man who wished to escape the plastic and phony journey promised by the corporates.

 

 

What does this have to do with “Grief and Death”, and the “A Moment of Grief: Memory and the Presence”, I hear the ratbag politicians and their community know-nothing “head-kickers” saying; I hear it in my head from all the verbal (not just in my head) dismissive comments, which arrogant academics cannot be bothered to response to for its level of idiocy. It is 2023 folks! The educated population knows why the dismissive comments do not work as knowledge and wisdom. Increasingly, the population is to come to understand what death, grief, memory, and the present is all about. Sometime in the 1990s the world changed for the worse, with neo-liberalism (which has proven itself anti-liberal), the unquestioning push of artificial intelligence, and ideological conflations and block thinking of neo-conservativism and other ideological bullshit (as described and explained by American philosopher Harry Frankfurt). I have extensively written on these themes in the last decade for the scoping of South-East Queensland, Queensland, Australia, and global thinking.

 

 

How this all brings me to the moment of grief and the loss of Ruth? It because personal histories are important and necessary element for public histories. Only the empowered idiots do not understand. Although we still battle with the powers-to-be; sometimes the powerful decision-makers ‘get it’, and when there is political positioning at stake. This is the 28 years Ruth and I had together. Ruth was a community development worker and social work. These are two fields of practice which “get it” and it is the knowledge of over a century. What “get it” is, is the genuineness of the person (subject-object synthesis) and total rejection of the fakery of the object. Historians despise heritage fakery and faked heritage is often highly felicitous (Lowenthal 1998: 127, 165). Ruth was a genuine person, and she never lost her integrity. How in the 21st century can you legitimatise “noble lies”? (See Simon Blackburn’s critique of the Republic in Plato’s Republic, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007).

 

 

 

The point of the article – and, I have to explain it, as we lost comprehensive education in Australia – is that Ruth, who died too young, was of a generation who stood for genuineness and personable-ness, not corporate fake “public relations”. Smile! You’re phony game-playing (phony is not of the life; but the game has become phony; life is not a game). Both History and Heritage brings out this truth as a pattern, time and time again. Will we fools ever learn! Will the bullshitters stand out of the road or be kicked aside?

 

 

 

We must honour the social work of persons like Ruth, but we need to understand how her life, and the lives of others (see Emmanuel Levinas) are continually diminished by the ratbag politicians and their community know-nothing “head-kickers”.

 

 

 

It is a moment of grief, and then action. In the 1970s Future Shock of American futurist Alvin Toffler was a certain psychological state of individuals and entire societies – “too much change in too short a period of time”. I am arguing the same for the 2020s, but more comprehensively than Toffler’s narrow focus on the technological agenda (see Jacques Ellul). It needs to take into account philosophical themes of genuineness and personhood. I grieve for the loss of Ruth; I also grieve for our 1960s-1970s generations for whom the radical was not ‘dismissively radical’, but common sense: “too much change in too short a period of time”. I also honour the ‘Chill’ generations, my daughters in particulars, who did learn this history lesson, and have given it new meaning at the river: whether the Tiber River, the Mary River, or Charon’s obol. Don’t forget to pay the ferryman (the historian!)

 

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdP4AfKGr-I

 

 

Featured Image: Ruth and Neville in the Last Years of our lives together.