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Author: Anne Cassidy

The Alignment Problem

The Alignment Problem

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Maybe it’s because I’m going back to school in September and must get some practice reading books I don’t totally understand, but for some reason I was determined to finish The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values, by Brian Christian. I picked it up from the “New Nonfiction” shelf a couple of months ago, and thanks to my library’s liberal renewal policies, I have it still. 

I could tell from the beginning that I was in a bit over my head with this tome, which, though written engagingly, presupposes knowledge of artificial intelligence that I do not have at my fingertips. But it seemed like an important book on an important topic so I plowed through it. 

I finished it last night and, after using the index to flip back and forth to various definitions I spaced out while perusing the first time, was at least able to understand what the alignment problem is and why it’s important to solve it. 

The alignment problem is a term in computer science that refers to the divergence between the models we have created and the intentions we have when creating them, often imprecise or incomplete. It is, Christian assures us, a problem that the AI community is working to understand and rectify, but is by no means solved. 

Instead, he says, “We are in danger of losing control of the world not to AI or to machines as such but to models. To formal, often numerical specifications for what exists and what we want.”

We must be concerned, Christian says, but not grim. “Alignment will be messy. How could it be otherwise? Its story will be our story, for better or worse. How could it not?”

Popped Blossoms

Popped Blossoms

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Well, that was interesting. The month of March, I mean. It seemed to last forever.  There was plenty of wind and rain, the University of Kentucky was not in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship, and I was under the weather on St. Patty’s Day. 

But it’s a new month, the cherry blossoms have popped (though I can’t think of a way to see them unless I ride downtown on Metro at some way-too-early hour) and with more vaccines being given every day, life seems to hold the promise of normalcy in the months to come. 

Then again, this is April Fool’s Day! 

(Photo of popped corn in honor of popped cherry blossoms.)

The Unvoiced

The Unvoiced

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I read an essay over the weekend about the writer Tillie Olsen, whose impact was large though her output was small. It was that last point that comforted and inspired me. And not for the best of reasons. As I contemplate a life soon freed of the day job, I’m already looking for excuses. 

Before, I could always say … gee, I wish I could write more of my own stuff, but I have to work for my living. What will I use for an excuse now? This essay, by A. O. Scott in the New York Times Book Review, provides a blueprint. I’m going to quote liberally from it, because it articulates an exhaustion I’ve long felt but seldom read about. The italics are mine.  

Olsen was a writer her whole life — she died in 2007 — but she didn’t write much. Not because she was blocked or lacked material. The blockage — the obligation of earning a living and tending children, the “immersion” in caring that was a source of fulfillment as well as frustration — was the subject matter. The silence that surrounds those stories is its own kind of statement.

Is there a place in literature — in our canons and course listings, in our criticism and theory — for unwritten work? … Literary ethics prompts us to attend to the unheard and the marginal; curiosity or impatience with the same old stuff sends us in search of the forgotten and the neglected. But what kind of attention do we owe — what kind of attention is it even possible to pay — to the unvoiced?

I’d have to go back to an essay by Ursula Le Guin, “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle Writes the Books,”  to find words that so perfectly describe the unique challenges facing the woman who raises children, makes a home, holds a job and dares call herself a writer. 

It’s a topic I soon hope to explore with renewed relish — or at least, that’s the plan.

Dune Walk

Dune Walk

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Two years ago, I visited the Great Sand Dunes in southern Colorado. My brother Drew and I drove until nightfall to reach the place,  but it was so dark that evening that we could only see the snow on the peaks. The dunes were invisible, being dusk-colored. 

But that only made the morning’s vista grander, a landscape that picked me up and put me in my place, that begged to be explored, which is what I did, starting at the lodge …

Passing a small picnic grounds

And a primitive gas station

I walked for more than an hour in the cold mountain air, all the while being pulled toward the dunes as if by a magnet.

Once on the sand, I trudged and marveled, watching the experienced dune-goers, who brought saucers and boards for sliding. But I had what I needed to capture the experience — and that was what I was after.

20,001

20,001

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Over the weekend I learned that the daughter of a former neighbor, a man I watched grow up, was gunned down in broad daylight just steps away from her middle school outside Richmond, Virginia. 

This was not one of the mass murders we’ve experienced recently; there was “only” one victim: a young girl who brought happiness and light to all who knew her, who was stepping up to take more responsibility on her family’s farm, who had all of life ahead of her. 

Police have the alleged assailant, also a juvenile, in custody, but have released no further information. We can be sure, though, that his life will also never be the same, nor will his family’s. 

I think of the unimaginable pain this murder has caused, and of all who are grieving for this young girl — hundreds if not thousands of people — and multiply it by 20,000, the number of people who lost their lives to gun violence in 2020. 

I know it’s not only about guns. But it’s a lot about guns. How many random shootings and mass murders will it take? How many more lost lives?

P.S. After posting this early yesterday morning, I read about another young life tragically ended. And the next day, there was this. 

An Excellent Trade

An Excellent Trade

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Every year in early spring I try to organize the two climbing rose bushes that clamber over the pergola on the deck. So yesterday, I ventured forth with clippers and gardening gloves and a ladder to snip off the deadwood and re-attach boughs with twisty green gardening wire.  

A new task this year was freeing the detritus that collects under the tangle of limbs. This meant holding up the thorny wood with one hand while sweeping the gunk out with another, all while balanced on a ladder.

By the time I was done, I had leaf bits in my hair, black smudges on my face and pricked fingers and thumbs (the gardening gloves can only do so much). I was, in short, a mess. But the rose … it was looking pretty good. Maybe it’s just where I am now, but I consider this an excellent trade. 

(The rose at the beginning of its blooming period last year.) 

The Heat

The Heat

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For the first time in a long time, I’m warm. The windows are open, the sweater and long-sleeved shirt are peeled off and I’m sitting comfortably in short sleeves. 

The heat has roared in on a wild west wind, sending temperatures into the 70s before 10 a.m. It reminds me of a mythical beast, this heat, like something I’d heard about but wasn’t sure was real. Now that I’ve had a taste of it, I’m remembering how it limbers up the muscles and frees up the mind. How it opens doors, both literally and metaphorically. 

I’d like to think the heat is here to stay, but I know better. It’s a fickle time of year. We could have cold rain tomorrow. But at least the heat is here now. And I’m basking in it. 

Curtain Briefly Drawn

Curtain Briefly Drawn

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It was a gully washer, a cloudburst, the kind of rain that lifts worms from their snug in-ground quarters and deposits them onto the driveway. I even spotted a banana slug this morning, clinging to the siding on the front of the house.

Yesterday’s downpour was torrential at times — rain with a mission. It filled the creeks and muddied the soil. It made the forsythia pop and the skunk cabbage unfurl.

Birds loved it; the feeder was mobbed with goldfinches, sparrows, cardinals and woodpeckers. 

It felt healing, this rain, a curtain briefly drawn between winter and spring — brown boughs and cracked dirt on one side, greenness and growth on the other. 

Open-Door Policy

Open-Door Policy

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It’s a drizzly morning filled with bird song. Water beads on the just-sprouting branches of the climbing rose and small puddles collect on the aging deck floor. 

I sit on the couch just inside the back door, which is open to the moisture and the song, which matches the morning in its timbre and intensity.

It’s often like this in the warm or even warmish months: back door open to breeze and heat and whatever else is out there. That we’ve had mice and snakes and an occasional bird is part of the package. I’ll accept them if it brings us closer to the landscape. It’s my own open-door policy.

(The only open-door shot I could find is of the front door. It’s often open too, but it has a storm door.)

New Normal

New Normal

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Over the weekend, a taste of normalcy: dinner out — in a restaurant — with friends who are also vaccinated.  The restaurant was empty save for one table of three seated 20 feet away. The server was properly masked. In that sense, it was not business as usual. 

But what a thrill to see actual human faces, not squares on a screen; to enjoy full human expressions, not the crinkle of eyes above an oblong of cloth. There were appetizers and stir-fries and shrimp with vermicelli. There was much catching up. And afterward, there was a stroll through the narrow streets of a small, quaint downtown.

It was not the kind of dining experience I might have sought 14 months ago, folks crammed together talking and laughing, the clink of glasses, the buzz of alcohol and laughter. It was the new normal. And it was absolutely wonderful.