Conceptual AI

Jantunen talks about artificial intelligence, which is capable on bringing so-called "technological singularity". This means that the AI is human-like and intelligent enough to perform various informational tasks, which require independent assimilation of facts. When the AI is sophisticated enough to design software and hardware, we can tell it to design a better AI, and so we have reached the technological singularity.

First, I characterize what I mean by conceptual AI, and then I describe how it may become reality.

This writing is about conceptual AI; an artificial intelligence, which can communicate with humans in natural language. It can also think with concepts, which are not hard-wired. Although current state-of-the-art game AIs can beat most humans in many areas (Deep Blue, Masters of Orion, ...), they wouldn't be conceptual AIs even if they had a natural-language interface, since they can only handle a finite set of concepts. The game AIs couldn't use new concepts to analyze the situation.

The conceptual AI can be divided roughly to two parts: the language unit and the domain model. The language unit could analyze textual descriptions of the domain model. It would try to map the concepts of the natural language to understand what domain model phenomena they denote. It would recongize and handle various linguistic problems: indetifying what pronouns, substantives and verbs denote, recognizing ambiguous exrpressions, guessing the standard of comparison when somtehing is described as "high", "bad" or "special", assimilating new concepts based on definitions, and recognizing when the other end is using a concept in a wrong way.

The domain model would contain the mechanics and dynamics of the subject matter. For example, if the topic of discussion is stock markets, the domain model would contain a database of financial information about the companies, about their production methods, dynamics of the industries, recent news events affecting the economy, etc. This domain information would be structured in a format, which is suitable for the AI. Some parts of format would depend on what concepts the AI considers relevant, and the format would be open-ended to enable extension when new kind of information is hypothesized to be relevant.

The conceptual AI wouldn't contain emotions, goals (except answering the user's questions and performing the tasks given to it), self-interests, visual memory (except if the domain model requires visual thinking), nor other human characteristics.

How Could Conceptual AI Be Developed?

I'm going to handle 3 scenarios; to reject 2 of them and give green light to one.

Rejected: Expert system is generalized into a Conceptual AI. The scenario is basically that initially there is a special-purpose AI, which has a complex and extensive domain model (expert system). The expert system is sharpened with a restricted natural-language interface to make it more usable and accessible for the people who need it. Gradually, the natural-language interface is extended and made more flexible, and metaconceptual elements are added. Why not credible:I haven't heard about expert systems, which could answer to a wide variety of different questions, nor questions which they are not designed to answer. Even if the domain model is complex, it still can probably handle only a finite types of questions. Therefore, there is little or no benefit from the metaconceptual lanugage module. The flexibility wouldn't be useful because of the rigid domain model.

Rejected: Data mining. The scenario is such that we have a huge database of numerical and textual data on some topic. We also have means to do some kind of preliminary analysis for the data: to put it to a relational database in nice tables, to parse the textual data, etc. First, a straightforward natural language interface is added to answer simple queries about the data. Secondly, the AI is sharpened with metaconceptual facilities. It is trained to recongize "normal" levels for various attributes based on distributions, so it can also recognize "higher than usual". It is made to understand definitions. It is made to point out trends and outlier cases. This time, there is both a advantage from the metaconceptual facilities. Why not credible: My impression is that the development is towards more flexible query languages. SQL (the current standard database query langauge) could be replaced by prolog-based query languages, providing a lot more flexibility and deduction. Therefore, there is little incentive to put a natural-language interface, when specialized query languages still have a long way to go.

Probable: Tech support. Suppose that we are talking about an ISP support phone. The AI would be developed gradually:

• Phase 0 (where we are now): Asks the user to press 1 if the problem is in broadband connections, 2 for phones and 3 for other.


• Phase 1: Asks the user to describe the problem. Uses the information to redirect the call to the person, who has handled this kinds of problems before.


• Phase 2: Asks the user for some initial information to search the customer information. Uses the description to checks if the call reports a problem, which has already been reported by someone else.


• Phase 3: The AI is extended to solve very simple and but common problems.


• Phase 4: The metaconceptual side is extended so that it can better understand ambiguous descriptions and provide some initial information before the call is redirected to a human. This way, the queueing time is less wasted.


• ...


• Phase 20: The domain model is extended with information on how specific applications (Word, etc.) work.


• ...


• Phse 56: The domain model is extended with a computer. If the user describes a problem, the AI can try to reproduce the problem in the computer.

In this scenario, the incentive for a good metaconceptual unit is great right from the start, since user descriptions are seldom very clear nor logical. Secondly, each additional step towards more intelligent AI is economically justified, as it directly replaces human effort. The AI is useful right from the start, and there isn't any discontinuity point or big gap, where a big technical leap is needed to make the AI more useful. Therefore, there is constant incentive to take small steps towards a much better AI.
Why it hasn't started yet:This is possible only after a suitably robust speech recognition technology is available. The speech recognition technology must be able to recongize normal speech practically without errors, although it can ask the user to talk clearly. When the speech-to-text conversion is avalable, the work can start.

Habbo Hotel Goes Mobile

Last Tuesday, Sampo Karjalainen, a co-founder of the Sulake Corporation that maintains and develops Habbo Hotel, kept a lecture in Tampere about the past, present and future of Habbo. Habbo is virtual hotel, where people come to chat a bit like in IRC. The participants are represented by avatars, which walk in the 3D hotel rooms. The users see the rooms in the same perspective as in Populous, newer Civilizations or Settlers, and not in the first-person-shooter perspective. From the communication point of view, the main restrictions compared to IRC are that (1) one person can only be in one room at a time, while IRC allows many channels, and (2) the messages are shown in the top of the avatars, and not logged.

Gradual Development

The current version of the Habbo software is running localized hotels in ~20 different languages. However, the software started local and was developed gradually with many intermediate steps.

Seven years ago, the first prototype was located at the website of a band called Mobiles. From the screenshots Sampo showed it seemed to have 2 rooms, where the avatars mainly walked around. Mobiles was a non-commercial project and was not advertised, but it established a user base and demonstrated that there is demand for this kind of service.

The second version, and the first commercial version, was a Radiolinja advertisement game named Lumisota (snow war). There, the avatars first teamed up inside a skiing hut, and then went outside to throw snowballs at each others. The third version was Hotelli Kultakala (Hotel Goldfish), a Finnish virtual hotel.

The presentation was non-technical, so it is not possible to track down exactly what features were added at each point, and how the code size, complexity and technologies developed. Probably most of those facts are trade secrets anyway. The prototyping clearly had a dual role both in making the technology mature and finding out the target group and business model. I got the impression that there weren't any big risks taken; each step forward was clearly justified by extrapolating experiences from the previous prototypes.

Small Torrents Create a River

In Habbo Hotel, the users can get their own room for free. Initially, the room is empty. The user can buy furniture to make the room less hollow. The main sources of are advertising and the sales of Habbo furniture. They also sell ringing tones and logos.

The small unit price of the furniture items requires a solid micropayment solution. The presentation said that Sulake has 160 local partners in arranging the micropayments. I didn't ask how automated the purchasing was: it would have been interesting to know how many systems were directly interfaced with the Habbo engine so that no human intervention was needed in purchases, and what kind of difficulties had to be overcome to make it possible.

The estimated income for year 2005 was 30m euros. There were 5 million different users each month visiting the hotel. This means that the average user produced 6 euros in purchases and advertising income. It's amazing that a whole company can run on personalization - on the willingness to make the environment reflect the identity - and more specifically on virtual personalization.

Smells Like Teen Spirit

The age group 12-18 contains 90% of the Habbo users. Sampo pointed out a central double standards with regards to privacy and censorship in the Internet: With adults, listening to other peoples' conversations is spying, a violation of privacy, a threat to freedom of expression and in general a bad thing. With children, not watching the conversations is a comparable sin, since it exposes the underaged to paedophiles, drug dealers, foul language and bullying.

Sulake was actually contacted by Kuluttajavirasto (Finnish Consumer Agency), and they had to explain what precautions they take to protect the users. They have a special moderation system, and English conversations are watched 24h/day, while local conversations are watched only during times when there are some people in the hotels.

Mobility And Its Discontents

The first link to mobile phones was the micropayment by SMS. There was also a failed attempt to make WAP client to Habbo.

With the arrival of Symbian Series 60 phones, with the performance of native C++ applications (as opposed to Java Micro Edition) and socket connections, porting the Habbo environment became a realistic opportunity. Writing the Symbian client started in 2004 and was gradual. The first phase ensured that the phones are powerful enough to run the visual interface, which they were. The second phase concentrated on solving network-related issues.

Sampo showed an impressive demo, where he run the Habbo environment on a Symbian phone. The screen was big enough to show several avatars. The scrolling was smooth, and there was no visible lag. When the user typed, a red ball appeared on the top of the avatar to indicate that he or she is about to say something. It seemed like most technical problems in the client side were solved.

There were also some Habbo single-user games. The games were warm-ups of simple arcade and puzzle games of the past. The link between the games and the Habbo hotel is the Habbo brand, and they have little to do with the hotel environment. Apparently the intention is to use the huge user base to efficiently advertise the games.

I asked how they tested their software on wide number of mobile devices and languages. They co-operate with Universum to test Java applications. The Symbian application hadn't reached the point were this kind of testing is needed, so didn't get any tips on that.

The Mobile Context Of Use

The difference between the computer and the mobile phone is not only in screen size, keyboard, computing power and network conection, but also in the way people use them. Mobiles are ideally suited to be used in various waiting situations: trains, classrooms, meetings, pauses between events. Another typical feature for mobiles is partial attention: If a person is using a computer, he or she probably sits in front of it and notices quite quickly what happens. On the other hand, on mobiles the person may be doing something else, and only sporadically watch the Habbo interface. This creates the problem that avatars guided from mobile phones seem to be passive lampposts most of the time.

This had at least two consequences. Firstly, they intend to make a separate hotel for mobile users, instead of putting them to PC hotel. Secondly, the shift of emphasis from the Habbo groupware to single-user games reflects the problems of the mobile context of use - they don't consider mere discussion to be fancy enough in itself in the mobile context.

Limperin Hilma

From the point of view of Panu-style ATM activism, Limperin Hilma is probably the most realistic song about the relationships between men and women. Unfortunately my poetic abilities are not good enough to translate this hilarious song to English.

Vieläkö muistatte Limperin Hilman
koulumme oppilaan niin herttaisen
mukanaan aina toi kauniin hän ilman
mietimme ken tekee valloituksen

Anttilan Augustin kaihoisat laulut
herkkähän mielehen tehosi kai
lipevä kieli ja korkea kaulus
parhaimmat pisteet ne kilvassa sai

Hilma se hääräili pellolla illat
päivisin tehtaalla työskenteli
********** kehräsi naapurin villat
********************************
Että hän mökkinsä lunastaa voisi
Augusti työstä ei piitannut lain
mielummin Augusti laulais ja joisi
eläisi helpossa maailmassa.

Vieläkö muistatte Limperin Hilman
vihdoinkin rauhassa levätä voi
ruohoinen hauta on ristiä ilman
Augusti mökkinsä viikossa joi.

A note about the translation: "Aukusti" (August) is a Finnish male name.

Do you still remember Hilma of Limberg
pupil in our school, most pretty and smart.
Her presence always brought weather a glimmer
we speculated who'd conquest her heart.

August's emotive songs and harp
made deep impression to poetic mind.
Collar so high and tongue so sharp
guaranteed best scroes for lifelong bind.

Daytime she was in factory employment,
fieldwork was how she evenings spent.
(don't remember original, can't translate)

She worked hard to pay the debt for the house
August turned out to be a full dork
He dedicated to music and booze
preferred to live in a world without work.

Do you still remember Hilma of Limberg
at last she's getting the rest that she needs.
August sold house and spent all on beer
grave has no cross and is growing weeds.

The Morals Of Narnia

When I went to see Narnia, I expected a story with some kind of christian morals. What I found was a mere Disney spectacle.

The movie started very well. The opening scene is a prime example of how action scenes should be written. It introduced the characters, and the tension between the defiant little brother and the responsible or bossy big brother. It was an integral part of the plot - motivating the move to the countryside - and not just a fill-up whose signifigance boils down to who dies and who survives. And it was short.

The quality of the movie decreased linearly with the time. The final battle scene was a prime example of how not to write action scenes. It revealed no new information about the characters. The solution was known all the time. It was artificially lenghtened. I often close my eyes during such action scenes, and open them when the noise goes silent. Not once have missed important plot events this way in any movie.

Anyway, back to the moral side. The moral choices of the characters consisted mainly of yes/no choices: "yes" continue the adventure, and "no" to return from Narnia to the common world. There were also some multiple choices. The characters didn't plan, didn't try to predict consequences nor predict risks. They were spectators who watched the story unfold. Even christian moral is more fine-grained than the moral of Narnia.

Next, I'll define a moral imperative, which is consistent with transhumanist ideology. I call it "techno-optimist moral imperative".

A pareto improvement in efficiency is a development, which increases the productivity of an employee without making his or her job more straining or irritating. For example, digging a gutter with a digger machine instead of a shovel is such an improvement.

Two things are required to turn the misery of the past into our current comfy Western civilization: pareto improvements in efficiency and political will to spread the bigger cake to masses in the form of democracy, rule of law, education, healthcare, etc. (You could add that a third requirement is some kind of middle-class attitude to life. I'm not going to dwelve into that.)

Since the implementation of rights (I mean real rights, like right to vote, right to a phone call, various contractual rights, etc. and not the kinds of subjective rights that are often ridiculed in other Erektus blogs) requires pareto improvements in efficiency, and the adoption of pareto improvements in efficiency usually enhances the rights of the masses in the long run, it is reasonable to rise these improvements into a moral imperative:

Techno-optimist moral imperative:

It is immoral not to adopt a pareto improvement in efficiency.

Tommi said in one of his writings that he seldom encounters moral choices. Multiple-choice moral decisions have been removed from the life of ordinary citizens, and outsourced to judges, jurys, members of parliament, those who prioritize various life-critical services, etc. The techno-optimist moral imperative concerns a different set of people: those who can influence their own work.

This moral imperative establishes a tight link between knowledge and morality. In order to know if some modification in the way you work is an improvement, you must have good knowledge of your own field. Unlike in Narnia, where the magic bow aims to the target by itself, techno-optimist moral imperative requires training and experience. It also requires the persons involved to plan and speculate what the way of working would look like after a change, and how the various side effects of the practice should be dealt with.

In many areas of informational work, the productivity can not be measured accurately enough to detect small changes (like 10% or so). In these cases, it is necessary to resort to secondary signs of efficiency. For example, if some problem is a recurrent source of frustration, then solving it is likely to also improve efficiency. For example, continuous integration may be such a practise. Also, reducing the time required to do some subtask is a secondary sign of efficiency.

Also, the moral imperative doesn't say that you should believe just any person who says that something will be an efficiency improvement. It is quite common that marketers claim that something improves efficiency, while the real effect is questionable.

Lastly, the imperative doesn't talk about the political feasibility of adopting an improvement. Suppose that there are 6 workers in the team, and a practise can be adopted if 3 people strongly agree that it is good, and no more than one is strongly against. In this kind of situation, the percieved benefits of the new practise are of paramount importance. Here the christian moral tradition offers a good motto.

God give me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to always tell the difference.

But There Was One Thing They Overlooked: The Masses And Multitudes Across This Land

In general I believe that the "deep structure" of international politics consists of (1)valid interest towards other countries and (2) the domeistic situation in the country. The valid interests include economic interests, security interests and geopolitical influence. The domeistic situation is more complicated and variable. Well-organized lobby groups, popular and loud ideologies, and recent events may exert pressure for changes in the foreign policy.

On the top of this "deep strucrure" there is a "surface structure", which consists of events, reactions, speeches, diplomacy, personal relations and other activities between the politicians and interested parties. In a stable and healthy foreign policy, the activities in the surface structure reflect the valid interests of the country.

The most striking feature in the Arab world's indignation towards the comics in Jylland-Posten is that there aren't any valid interests at stake. At least Helsingin Sanomat claims that it is very rare people spontaneously arrage demonstrations in the arab countries, so it is quite obvious that the burning of the Danish embassy is at least passively accepted by their government. It seems that the only interest of the Arab states is to give legitimacy for their own goverments by awaking suspicion towards the West. This interpretation would imply that many Arab governments have a dangerous legitimacy deficit.

Of course, this interpretation may be completely wrong. But if it is true, I don't see how this could be the beginning of any big change, except for the Danish dairy industry. Maybe in 10 years the internet will be full of caricatures of Mohammed, since drawing such caricatures is now brave and rebellious. At that point, the muslims which can see those comics will wonder what the fuss with the 12 first comics was all about.

5 Strange Habits of a Highly Ineffective Person

1. Sometimes I walk to and fro on the floor as a form of procrastination. I've heard that Wittgenstein had the same habit. However, coding is different from philosophy and walking to and fro on the floor doesn't cause any progress good whatsoever.
2. Currently most of my social interaction happens in language courses. Why? No one could be less interested in my school affairs, and I'm really lousy at chit-chat.
3. When I make my own food, I choose from a set of 5 dishes. They are: oatmeal porridge, müsli, [fried potatos OR spaghetti] with fried [onions, sausage cubes and soya], and instant noodles. I don't intend to try new recipes before I graduate and leisure becomes truly leisure - now "leisure" is time, which I should use for something productive, but fail to.
4. I read foreign news with great interest, but find domeistic news uninteresting. Income distribution? Full of moralistic rhetoric and little substance. Education? Most decisions that matter are done locally. Healthcare? Being young, my generation hasn't really confronted the hospital. Taxation? What is it that you can't buy now but could by after 1% reduction in some tax, which may or may not take place next year? It is not that these questions don't matter - they do - but I fail to see any link between the headlines and anyone's daily life. After reading all these peak oil stories on how the presence or absence of energy affects our daily lives, the gas pipe explosion at Georgia feels much more relevant.
5. I don't listen much music nowadays.

It is difficult to find people, who have not been challenged to this meme yet, but I came up with two of them - Taneli Dobrowolski and Syksy Räsänen.

Life imitates fiction.

CALLT 5/5: Testing: When You Train Like You Fight, You Fight Like You Train

First, I'll define super-realistic testing; a form of computer-based testing, which provides uniform measures of skill, is sensitive to progress in language skill, makes cheating almost impossible, can be used for training and scales to a large number of students. Then I'll describe the only language testing project I have heard of [not. Just heard their specification is not ready.]

First, an example of super-realistic test for Chinese character recognition. The test material contains all chracters, which the student is supposed to recognize after the course. The test is administered with a flashcard-like web application. The test chooses randomly 20-40 characters. As I promised earlier, this kind of test would provide:

• Uniform measure of skill:It doesn't matter, whether you learned the characters from course material or some other way.


• Sensitive to progress:If you learn more characters, you get better scores.


• Impossible to cheat:If you memorize all characters beforehand, you have learned what you are supposed to learn.


• Scales to a large number of students:One server is more than enough for all person studying Chinese in Finland.

About the relationship between training and testing: In super-realistic testing, the same material can be used for training. The differences between training an testing is that (1) testing chooses a sample of material, (2) in testing, the true identity of the student needs to be checked.

The close link between training and testing ensures that there is "initial incentive" to collect material even before it reaches the level where cheating is impossible: When the amount of material is still small, it can be already used for training. Since a large number of students can use the same server, also a large number of teachers can divide the load of creating the material.

The same idea can be applied to sentence translation and reading comprehension, although not directly. For example in sentence translation it is common that there are several correct responses. Also common mistakes need to be taken into account - if the student commits a common mistake, he or she should be informed about the nature of the mistake. Just announcing that the answer is wrong does little good. In character recognition, it is OK to show the result after a wrong answer, but in sentence translation it may be better to let the user try again. Since minor spelling mistakes are more probable in long sentences, several tries are reasonable when training. Also some kind of lazy matching should be used, if the point of the sentence is grammatical and the student remembers some word a bit wrong.

In my last Chinese test, there were 4 kinds of questions: (1) Multiple choice: Given the character and the pinyin, Identify the english meaning, (2) Multiple choice: Given the character, idenify pinyin (3) Arrange the characters so that they form a sentence, (4) Given the English meaning and the pinyin, draw the character. From these 4 tasks, only the fourth is something that can't be digitized. The number of questions required to reach uncheatable level is quite low for the other types of questions. (There is a program to train character drawing, but it is too sensitive. It is good that when you train the program insists on absolutely correct form. However, in testing the standards should such that it is possible to get it right the first time.)

The fact that the progress in super-realistic testing is numerically measurable (number of characters recognized, number of sentences translated) makes it possible to draw charts of progress, if the student does the test on regular intervals (say, once every 2 weeks). These progress charts will add motivation by giving a hidden promise that if you keep on putting the same effort, eventually the progress line will reach the very top, and the effort is finished.

CALLT 4/5: Annotators

Annotators are programs, which take a web page as an input and annotate foreign words with extra information. For example, the annotated page could be such that when you hold the mouse cursor over some foreign word, it shows you its meaning in English.

The first annotator I saw was for Lojban. Here is one. I'm not sure if this is the same one. Lojban is an artificial language with a few tens of speakers. However, its grammar belongs to some easily parsable category (LL(k) etc.), which makes it easies to write an annotator.

Here is a Japanese annotator.

The Lukutulkki advertised in the blogilista.fi is also an annotator. I've also seen a web page which claims to contain a Chinese annotator; however, the annotator didn't produce any output.

In general, annotators are very scarce when compared to dictionaries and flashcard programs. Are they really so difficult to implement? Is the process of annotating so straining for servers? Do so many dictionaries have a copyrighted vocabulary that they can't allow anyone to download it with an annotator?

CALLT 3/5: Flashcards

A flashcard is a piece of paper, which contains a foreign word on the one side, and a known-language translation(s) on the other side. Usually you have a deck of flashcards, which contain the words for a certain textbook chapter, vocabulary on some specific topic, etc. Flashcards are used so that you look at the known-language side and try to guess the foreign word. Then you turn the card and check the correct answer. Repeat for all cards in the deck. You go through the deck until you have learned the words well enough.

A flashcard program is not only a digitized version of flashcards. The main additions are Leitner cardfile and sessions.

The Leitner cardfile is about ensuring that you spend your time with unknown words. It consists of 3 - 5 piles. The first pile is a New Words pile, and initially all cards are there. The last pile is an Under Control pile. The cards in the Under Control pile are considered learned; however, you may forget them. In addition, there are 1-3 intermediate piles representing increasing amounts of control.

When the flashcard program asks question in a card, a correct answer moves it to the next pile. A wrong answer takes the card to the lowest intermediate pile. For example, if you have 3 intermediate piles, it takes 3 consecutive correct answers to move a card from the lowest intermediate pile to the Under Control pile.

The Leitner cardfile ensures that you keep repeating the card until you learn it. There is no other way to get it to the Under Control pile. On the other hand, you'll spend your time with words, which you don't know yet - soon after you learn a word it is transfered to the Under Contorl pile.

Sessions define the order in which the cards are asked. A session is a "daily" amount of questions, and the basic input is the number of new words you want to learn per day. Suppose you want to learn 15 words a day. Then a session could consist of the following lessons.

1. New Word lesson: Take 15 new cards from the New Words pile and ask them.


2. Rehearse lesson: Take 15 cards from the Under Control pile. If you have forgotten some of them, put the cards to the first intermediate pile.


3. Intermediate Pile 3: Ask all questions. Move correct cards to the Under Control pile and wrong cards to the Intermediate Pile 1.


4. Intermediate Pile 2: Ask all questions. Correct cards go to Pile 3, wrong ones to Pile 1.


5. Intermediate Pile 1: Ask all questions. Correct cards go to Pile 2, wrong ones to Pile 1.

In addition, there may be special error lessons. Error lessons happen after the main lessons (listed above) and drill those words which the user failed. The words will be asked again and again, until the user has answered correctly 3 consecutive times to each question. The error lesson happens "outside" the Leitner cardfile, and it doesn't affect where the cards are moved.

A problem with the flashcard methodology is that you don't really learn the word. You merely associate a foreign string to some known-language words. Unless traditional methods are used to learn the word (reading texts, translating sentences, etc.) the word is quickly forgotten.

The reason for this is that the words are not independent entities, but always parts of some sentence. Also from the point of view of learning it is important to see how the word is used in sentences. I would guess that adding example sentences (which are shown, if the user answers incorrectly) will greatly facilitate the efficiency of flashcards. However, I haven't seen any flashcards with example sentences yet.

CALLT 2/5: Behaviorism

I'm currently reading Skinner's Technology of Teaching, and I may write this entry again after I've finished it. However, here's a short summary of essential behaviorism.

Behaviorism is school of thought in psychology. It emphasizes empirical research and lab experimentation. Their central claim is that because the mind and thoughts can not be observed directly, psychologists should instead concentrate on the kind of behaviour which can be observed directly.

Behaviorists are most famous for their animal experiments on learning. They used a really simple model:

S -> O -> R
S: Stimulus
O: Organism
R: Response

In natural language, when the organism gets a specific stimulus, it responds with a certain behaviour.

For example, when a dog is trained, the words are the stimulus and the hoped behaviour is the response. The behaviorists called training conditioning - in conditioning, the stimulus becomes a condition for response.

Their central findings are that the following conditions must be met in order to achieve maximal conditioning efficiency:

• Feedback: The learner (animal or human) gets feedback, which he, she or it clearly recognizes as positive or negative.


• Short delay: Too much delay between the act and the feedback sharply decreases the efficiency of conditioning.


• Suitable difficulty: If the behavior is already well learned, the training no more significantly reinforces the behaviour. On the other hand, difficult behavior should be divided to small components, and these component behaviors should be taught first.

These may seem obvious, but once when Skinner attended her daughter's class, he noticed that they are very much violated in the classroom. Often there were days between doing exercises and getting the feedback on their correctness. The level of difficulty was such that the bottom 1/3 had great trouble doing the exercise, while top 1/3 didn't learn much from doing them.

The solution proposed by Skinner was individualized teaching machines. They would show the material in small chunks, and present questions after each piece of material. Correct answers would take the student to the next topic, while wrong answers would present more material on the same topic.

This way, there would be more feedback compared to reading a book. The feedback would be immeadiate. The individualized teaching would ensure that the level of difficulty was always be suitable.

The behaviorists built some mechanical (the only computers back then were mainframes!) teaching devices, although they never became popular. I haven't found any proper explanation, why the movement has not been resurrected now, when computers make it easy to implement everything in software. The 3 issues are still there (except in the university, where you can take basic, intermediate and advanced courses as you wish.)

CALLT 1/5: Dictionaries

In this article, I'll describe various dictionaries as a continuum from the low-end to the high-end.

Basic dictionaries

Electronic dictionaries have two forefathers. One is the dead-wood dictionary. The other is the word list - a text file, opened and searched with your favorite text editor.

The basic feature of an electronic dictionary is to automate the search. Other common features are

• Reverse search: Search from the known language to the foreign one.


• Multiple meanings: The word can have several known-language translations.


• Extra information like grammatical class, pronunciation or examples.

Multimedia dictionaries

Multimedia dictionaries can contain sound and images. The obvious use of sound it to play the pronunciation as a recorded waveform or with a speech synthesizer. Images are more useful for the encyclopedias.

Hypertext is more interesting extension to a traditional dictionary. Combining a dictionary and a grammar should be techonologywise quite easy. For example, if the user looks up a preposition, a grammar page would be more beneficial than a few example sentences.

Morphological dictionaries

Morphological dictionaries can parse inflected words. When the user types an inflected word, the dictionary is smart enough to look up the root word.

The other direction is to produce inflected words. For example Multitran, an English-Russian dictionary, is able to produce the most common inflected verb forms.

A combination of morphological and multimedia dictionary could parse the word and offer the user grammatical information on the inflection.

Wiktionary: Collaborative collection of vocabularies

Wiktionary is a collaborative dictionary, which is based on the wkimedia engine. The wikimedia engine also powers wikipedia. Anyone can edit the articles describing a word.

The core of the wiktionary are known-to-known articles - for example, explaining English words in English. These known-to-known articles have a long list of translations to other languages, for example the word "mouse" has translations to 29 languages.

There are also foreign word articles. They are shorter and contain links to the main language articles. Often they also contain links to related words, which is nice.

Personally, I consider the traditional 2-language dictionaries to be better than Wiktionary. They typeset the entries more beautifully and don't mix more than 2 languages in search. Their coverage is usually good, and sometimes they even contain grammatical information, phrases and example sentences. In the future, I expect that Wiktionary will become a good known-to-known dictionary, while the independent 2-language dictionaries will continue to beat it in the foreign-to-known area.

Computer-Aided Language Learning Tools

Next, I'll write a series of articles about the topic mentioned above. The topic is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, I wrote my own bare-bones flashcard program a few years ago (none of the free existing ones I reviewed had the features I wanted. Not that my own program has them either.) Secondly, the Chinese course web page has some links to various web application. That may not be much, but it is more than anything I've seen on other language courses.

The outline of the articles is:

1. Dictionaries: These are the only tools, which are currently part of the standard infrastructure. However, even in dictionaries there is much unleashed potential. I'll describe some high-end features which are currently not implemented or implemented only in few dictionaries. I'll also talk about the Wiktionary.

2. Behaviorism: This article will tell about the learning theories of the 60s behaviorism, which is the ideological backbone of flashcard programs.

3. Flashcard Programs: This will describe some features of a good flashcard program, and review some existing programs.

4. Annotators: Annotators take a foreign-language text as an input, and annotate it with yellow notes, links, etc. The extra information tells the meaning of the word in the known language.

5. Testing: First, I'll describe some language tests I've taken this autumn, and argument that most of them could be implemented by a computer. Secondly, I'll describe a new way of testing, which is possible on a computer but impossible on paper.

Enter The Dragon

This autumn I've been mainly sudying Chinese. I've spent about as much time on it as on everything else combined.

There are two main arguments for me to read Chinese. The first one is the Demographic Argument. China with its population of 1.3 billion is the most populated country in the world. If they can raise the richest 1/4 of their population to the same standard of living as the USA, they will have equal ecomonic weight. It's really simple.

The second argument is the fact that I've already run into Chinese people and language. In my previous job, one of my 2 closest co-employees was from China. We also wrote a piece of software, which was localized to Chinese.

The fundamental nature of software writing is that you write it once and take as many copies as you can sell. This makes it almost inevitable that I will work with Chinese software also in the future (unless I work only for consulting companies; consults produce local services rather than international products).

When I still subscribed to Helsingin Sanomat, I used to cut all articles written by its the foreign correspondent in China, Sami Sillanpää.

My knowledge of China isn't too deep, and I don't have many opinions on China, other than the fairly trivial ones: They should stop threatening Taiwan. They should democratize their country. EU should retain the arms embargo as long as China threatens Taiwan.

Sanomalehtikatsaus

Jos Aamulehti ei täytä äärimmäisen korkeita laatuvaatimuksia, voi hankkia The Economistin lähimmästä lehtipisteestä (ainakin rautatieasemalla niitä myydään). Jotain lehden tasosta kertoo se, että lehdestä löytyy mainos, joka kelpaisi vähemmän tasokkaan lehden artikkeliksi. Kyseisessä mainoksessa öljy-yhtiö Chevron-Texaco myöntää halvan öljyn kauden olevan ohi. Yhtiö tekee selväksi aikovansa pelata merkittävää roolia energian tuotannossa ja jakelussa myös öljyn jälkeisenä aikakautena. Chevron-Texaco varmaankin toivoo, että tulevaisuuden autot käyvät biokaasulla, biodieselillä, bioetanolilla, etc. - jos sähköautot ja sähköistetyt ratikat ovat tulevaisuuden liikenneratkaisu, öljy-yhtiöillä tulee olemaan vaikeaa keksiä liiketoimintansa uudelleen.

Lehdessä kirjoitetaan myös Uzbekistanista. Otsikkona on "Punishment, please.", ja siinä kirotaan sitä, että EU ja USA eivät asettaneet Uzbekistanille minkäänlaisia seurauksia verilöylystä. Tämä asianlaita muuttui viikko sitten, kun EU julisti Uzbekistanin asevientikieltoon. (Tämä ei tietääkseni ylittänyt HS:n uutiskynnystä.)

Lopuksi näyte The Economistin öljyn hintaa käsittelevästä artikkelista (sivu 1, sivu 2). Ainakin minun kohdallani tämä yli 100 vuotta vanha brittiläinen laatulehti laittoi uusiksi hyvän ulkomaanuutisen standardit, kun tutustuin lehteen ensimmäistä kertaa muutama vuosi sitten. HS:ssä lähinnä Sami Sillanpään ja Mika Parkkosen ulkomaanuutiset pääsevät samalle tasolle, kuin The Economistin tyypilliset kirjoitukset.

Kiltti ja tuhma, hyvä ja paha

Otsikon käsitteistä on keskusteltu paljon blogistanissa. Ensiksi katson kyseisten käsitteiden pragmaattista käyttöä.

Ensinnäkin hyvä ja paha ovat "aikuisten" käsitteitä, ja kiltti ja tuhma ovat "lasten" käsitteitä. Siksi meillä on "Axis of Evil", mutta ei "Axis of Naughty".

Kiltissä ja tuhmassa oletetaan, että on olemassa jokin yläpuolella oleva auktoriteetti, joka on asettanut käyttäytymisnormit ja hyveet. Jos ihminen noudattaa näitä normeja ja hyveitä, hän on kiltti. Jos hän tekee normien vastaisia tekoja, hän on tuhma. Lisäksi on monenlaista käyttäytymistä, josta normit eivät sano juuta eivätkä jaata.
Normit ja arvot asettanut auktoriteetti voi olla joko yhteisö tai henkilö, kuten valvoja tai opettaja tai vanhempi. Tällöin siis kiltteys on synonyymi tottelevaisuudelle. Tottelevaisuus ei kuitenkaan kohdistu keneen tahansa, joka sattuu käskyttämään, vaan nimenomaan dominoivaan auktoriteettiin tai yhteisöön. Kiltti ihminen ei varasta, vaikka käskettäisiin, jos varastaminen on vastoin auktoriteetin ohjeita.

Oma lukunsa on sanan "tuhma" seksuaalinen käyttö (esimerkko on täältä), jossa tuhma tarkoittaa, että kyseinen (naispuolinen) henkilö ei noudata seksuaalisuuden piilottamista koskevia normeja:

At one of my schools, there's this ichinensei girl who is, without question, The Sweetest Girl in the Universe. She's very cute, very polite, always smiling, and is really bubbly. Everyone kind of dotes on her, but you would too, SHE'S SO FREAKING SWEET.

Anyway, she and some other girls were doing a special English drill. In this particular workbook, there was, in my opinion, a rather odd exercise. The other girls would say "So and so, you're a good soccer player!" and the girl who was named would then say "No, I'm not. I'm a bad soccer player. I'm a very bad soccer player." I can only guess that this has something to do with Japanese culture, and their tendency to deny compliments rather than accept them.

So these girls were doing this exercise in turns, and I read ahead to see what Ultimate Sweetness would be responding to. I almost fell over in my chair when I saw it. It was completely innocent, sure, but I knew exactly how my young male mind would hear it.I panicked - I had to stop this from happening, somehow. But I couldn't think of what to do. In my hesistation, the exercise proceeded, and the moment I feared came to be.

Other Girls: "You're a good girl!"

The Cutest, Sweetest Girl in the Universe: "No, I'm not! I'm a bad girl. I'm a very bad girl."

I'm going to hell.

Hyvässä ja pahassa ihmisellä on oma etiikka, jonka mukaan hän luokittelee teot hyviksi, pahoiksi ja neutraaleiksi. Itsenäisellä aikuisella oletetaan olevan tällainen päättelylogiikka, kun taas lapsilla ei tällaista logiikka ole. Aikuisten pitää asettaa (impose, posit) lapsille normeja, jotka on johdettu aikusten hyvän ja pahan käsityksestä. Normien tulee olla sellaisia, että jos lapset kiltisti noudattavat niitä, he käyttäytyvät hyvin, vaikka heillä ei olisikan itsenäistä käsitystä hyvyydestä.

Kiltteyden ja tottelevaisuuden ero on siinä, että kiltteys on aktiivista. Jos tottelevainen ihminen näkee henkilön X tarvitsevan jotain, hän pyrkii tyydyttämään tarpeen vain silloin, kun X sitä pyytää, tai auktoriteetti on asettanut eksplisiittisen säännön, että kyseisenlaiset tarpeet tulee täyttää. Kiltti ihminen ei odota käskyä; tarpeen olemassaolo on riittävä syy sen tyydyttämiseen, jos siitä ei koidu kohtuutonta vaivaa kiltille henkilölle.

Kiltteyden ja tottelevaisuuden yhteinen piirre on, että niissä noudatetaan ennalta määriteltyjä sääntöjä. Kiltin ihmisen oma harkinnanvara on rajallinen, ja tällöin kiltti ihminen noudattaa sääntöjä myös silloin, kun olisi päteviä syitä olla noudattamatta.

Feministisessä diskurssissa on luotu "kiltin tytön" käsite (sanan "tyttö" käyttäminen "kiltin naisen" sijasta korostaa lapsenomaisuutta). Kyseessä on halventava termi, jolla viitataan ihmiseen, joka luopuu omasta edustaan sellaisessa tilanteessa, jossa (1) jokin kiltteysnormi kehottaa luopumaan omasta edustaan ja (2) yhteisön normit kehottavat jäseniä pitämään kiinni omasta edustaan. Tällöin feministien stereotyyppinen "kiltti tyttö" siis jää jalkoihin, koska noudattaa yhteisön normien sijasta kiltteysnormeja. Tyypillinen esimerkki työelämästä on sellainen, että johonkin esimiesvirkaan on miespuolinen ja naispuolinen hakija. Yhteisön normit sanovat, että uralla eteneminen on tavoittelemisen arvoinen asia. Kiltteysnormit sanovat, että itsekehu haisee. Tällöin miespuolinen hakija kehuu itseään noudattaen yhteisön normeja, ja naispuolinen hakija ei kehu itseään noudattaen kiltteysnormeja. Tuloksena miespuolinen hakija valitaan virkaan, ja kiltti tyttö törmää lasikattoon.

Anti-uusliberalistisessa diskurssissa kiltin vastakohta on kyynärpäätaktiikka noudattava henkilö. Tämän diskurssin mukaan markkinoilla voittaa vahvin ja itsekkäin ja röyhkein. Koska markkinoille osallistuvat ihmiset ovat tietoisia tästä asisata, jotkut heistä ryhtyvät käyttäytymään röyhkeästi. Tällä tavoin markkinat luovat röyhkeää ja istekästä käyttäytymistä. Tällöin anti-uusliberalistisen diskurssin mukaan kilttien on joko sopeuduttava alimman tason asemaan tai lopetettava kiltteysnormien noudattaminen.

Feministiselle ja anti-uusliberalistiselle diskurssille on yhteistä, että kiltteys on osoitus tyhmyydestä (ei kuitenkaan älykkyyden puutteesta vaan arvostelukyvyn puutteesta).

Edellinen kuvaa sanojen kiltti, tuhma, hyvä ja paha pragmaattista käyttöä. Ylipäänsä sanaa "kiltti" käytettäessä pitäisi kysyä:

1) Tarkoittaako "kiltti" sitä, että kiltti ihminen noudattaa kiltteysnormeja myös silloin, kun muut yhteisön jäsenet ovat päässeet keskenään yhteisymmärrykseen niiden korvaamisesta itsekkäämmillä käyttäytymismalleilla?

2) Tarkoittaako kiltti sitä, että ihminen ei tarkoituksella aiheuta harmia muille (eli ei kiusaa), vai edellyttääkö kiltteys myös jotain muuta?

3) Onko kiltin ja hyvän ero siinä, että kiltti noudattaa sääntöjä myös silloin, kun se on kokonaisuuden kannalta typerää? (=ero on tottelevaisuudessa).

4) Onko kiltin ja hyvän ero siinä, että kiltti ei itse muodosta käsitystä noudatettavista säännöistä, vaan noudattaa muiden määrittelemiä normeja? (=ero on siinä, kuka määrittelee normit).

5) Onko kiltin ja hyvän ero siinä, että kiltti vain välttää syytösten kohteeksi joutumista, kun taas hyvä tekee aloitteita maailman muuttamiseksi, kuten esim. lahjoituksia? (=ero on siinä, että kiltteys on passiivista, ja hyvyys on aktiivista).

6) Onko konteksti, jossa pohdit kiltteyttä, joko feministinen diskurssi tai anti-uusliberalistinen diskurssi? Näissä tapauksissa kiltteyden pohtiminen on poliittisesti motivoitunut kielipeli, ja sinun tulee kiinnittää erityistä huomiota siihen, että et papukaijamaisesti toista muiden syöttämiä kliseitä. Uusliberalistisen diskurssin mukaan, jos X haluaa tienata 100e rahaa, hänen täytyy tarjota asiakkaille jotain sellaista, joka on 100e arvoista. Uusliberalistisen diskurssin mukaan tienaaminen siis edellyttää sitä, että ihmisen pitää asettua toisen asemaan ja tyydyttää asiakkaan tarpeita. Anti-uusliberalistinen diskurssi on siis jossain tilanteissa väärässä, eikä sitä voi olettaa todeksi. Myös feministiseen diskurssiin tulee suhtautua kriittisesti.

Kiltteyttä pohtivat Invincible Girl ja MariaKristiina

Andishanin jälkipyykki

Kuten jotkut teistä vielä muistavat, Uzbeksitanin armeija ampui toukokuussa muutamia satoja siivilejä. Sen seurauksena mm. n. 500 ihmistä pakeni naapurimaahan Kirgisiaan ja USA vaati riippumatonta tutkimusta tapahtumien kulusta.

Kirgisian hallitus halusi pitää yllä hyviä suhteita naapurimaahansa ja luovutti muutamia rikoksista syytettyjä pakolaisia takaisin Uzbekistaniin. Tässä vaiheessa paikallinen YK:n edustaja huolestui, ja alkoi lobbaamaan pakolaisten siirtämiseksi muualle. Pakolaiset lennätettiin Romaniaan. Siellä he saavat YK:n virallisen pakolaisstatuksen ja oleskulupaikan ainakin puoleksi vuodeksi, kunnes loppusijoituspaikka selviää.

Venäjä, Kiina ja Keski-Aasian maat tapasivat Shanghai Cooperation Organization:in kokouksessa. Siellä ne vaativat USA:ta ilmoittamaan takarajan joukkojensa vetämiseksi Keski-Aasiasta. Myöhemmin Kirgisia ja Tadzikistan ilmoittivat sallivansa USA:n joukkojen pysyä maaperällään jatkossakin. Sen sijaan Uzbekistan tuohtui pakolaisten kuljettamisesta Romaniaan (sen sijaan, että heidät olisi palautettu Uzbeksitaniin) ja ilmoitti, että USA:n pitää tyhjentää tukikohtansa puolen vuoden sisällä.

Euroopan jälleenrakennus- ja kehityspankki (EBRD) ilmoitti lopettavansa Uzbekistanin julkisen sektorin rahoittamisen ja rahoittavansa tästä lähin ainoastaan yksityisen sektorin tomia. Syyksi he ilmiottavat poliitisen kehityksen puutteen.

Yleisesti ottaen Uzbekistan pääsi liian helpolla. Kiinalle lätkäistiin sentään asevientikielto Taivallisen rauhan aukion tapahtumien seurauksena. EU:n reaktio on mitätön, ja USA:kin reagoi vain siksi, että Uzbekistan sitä vaati.

Kädestä suuhun

Guardian kertoo kyselytutkimuksesta, jolla selvitettiin ihmisten säästöjä pahan päivän varalle.

Skenaariona oli, että jokin kotitalouslaite rikkoutuu, ja se pitää korvata. 25%:lla kyselyyn osallistuneista olisi ongelmia korvata 100 punnan laite (punta on n. 1.5 euroa). Suurella enemmistöllä - 72% osallistuneista - olisi ongelmia korvata 1000 punnan laite.

Noin kolmasosa kotitalouksista oli aikaisemmin kokenut ongelmia yllättävien menojen takia.

Kehotan lukijoita noudattamaan Absoluuttisen nollapisteen neuvoja:

Laita riippukeinu kiinni keväällä,
pidä jemmarahaa pankkitilillä,
seiso tukevasti sänkys edessä,
aamuisin.

Tammerfest II: Illumination

Käsitykseni mukaan reiveissä on kahdentyyppistä estetiikkaa: (1) perinteistä seksikkyysestetiikka ja (2) vieraannuttamisestetiikkaa. Perinteiseen seksikkyysestetiikkaan kuuluuvat mm. tiukat vaatteet, muodikkuus, naisille tyypillinen takapuolen heiluttaminen tanssiessa ja bilettämisen kestävyysaspektin korostaminen (kestävyys on merkki teveydestä ja terveys on seksikästä).

Kuvaan seuraavaksi Tampereen ylioppilasteatterissa järjestettyjä Illumination-reivejä vieraannuttamisestetiikan kannalta. Ensinnäkin reiveissä on yleistä korostaa ympäristön keinotekoisuutta. Porissa eräs alan tapahtuma nimettiin "Concrete picnic:iksi (concrete = betoni) vastakohtana nurtsilla vietettävälle piknikille. Myös Tampereen ylioppilasteatteri oli sisustettu teollisuushallin näköiseksi.
Illuminationissa oli myös videoscreenit. Niissä ei näytetty musiikkivideoita, vaan R4-pluginilla tehtyä musiikkireaktiivista grafiikka. Ohjelman tuottama grafiikka on kokoelma värikkäitä, pomppivia abstrakteja muotoja, vähän kuin joissakin näytönsäästäjissä. Tunnistettavia esineitä niissä ei ole.

Eräs tanssityyli reiveissä on sellainen, että käsillä tehdään mutkikkaita, kontolloituja liikkeitä, mutta ruumis pysyy pääasiasssa paikallaan lukuunottamatta rytmin mukaista liikettä. Näyttää siltä, kuin tanssija olisi heittämässä jonkinlaista loitsua. Yhdistä tähän videoscreenit, jotka näyttävät siltä, kuin jokin salaperäinen instrumentti visualisoisi jotain käsittämätöntä ilmiötä, kaaottisesti välkkyvät valot, sekä jyskyttävän rave-koneen osasiksi muuttuneet ihmiset.

Tämän vieraannuttamisen kuvallinen metafora musiikkivideoissa on pätkät, joissa kuvataan kaupungin sykintää musiikin tahdissa. Esim. kuvaataan pari sekuntia metron etenemistä. Toistetaan samaa pätkää nopeutettuna jokaisella rummuniskulla. Tällöin ollaan pisteessä, jossa arkipäiväinen todellisuus on vain yksi osa tanssia, eikä päinvastoin.

Välikommentti

Elämäni voi jakaa neljään osaan:
1) Arjen askareet
2) Koulu/työ
3) Harrastukset
4) Yöelämä

Näistä 1) on tylsä, koska siinä ei yleensä tapahdu mitään raportoimisen arvoista. 2) on poissuljettu, koska kukaan muukaan ei kirjoita siitä. Jos siitä haluaisi kirjoittaa, pitäisi perustaa uusi blogi, jossa ei käsiteltäisi mitään muuta.
Aiheista 3) ja 4) lähinnä 4) on ns. jaettua todellisuutta. Harrastuksista on vaikea kirjoittaa. Siksi painopiste on 4):ssä.

Koska elämä on kompleksista, siinä on reaaliosan lisäksi on myös imaginääriosa eli käsitys siitä, mitä aikoo tehdä tulevaisuudessa ja mitä pitäisi tehdä. Imaginääriosasta on vaikeampi tehdä vastaavanlaista listaa, koska se on hajanaisempi.