An interesting model for other industries?
https://www.zdnet.com/article/5-ways-ai-is-changing-baseball-and-big-data-is-up-at-bat/
5 ways AI is changing baseball - and big data is up at bat
… Dykstra has learned some important lessons during his two years with the Rangers. Here are five ways AI and data are helping to change baseball.
An increasingly popular viewpoint?
How philosopher Shannon Vallor delivered the year’s best critique of AI
A few years ago, Shannon Vallor found herself in front of Cloud Gate, Anish Kapoor’s hulking mercury drop of a sculpture, better known as the Bean, in Chicago’s Millennium Park. Staring into its shiny mirrored surface, she noticed something.
“I was seeing how it reflected not only the shapes of individual people, but big crowds, and even larger human structures like the Chicago skyline,” she recalls, “but also that these were distorted—some magnified, others shrunk or twisted.”
To Vallor, a professor of philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, this was reminiscent of machine learning, “mirroring the patterns found in our data, but in ways that are never neutral or ‘objective,’” she says. The metaphor became a popular part of her lectures, and with the advent of large language models (and the many AI tools they power), has gathered more potency. AI’s “mirrors” look and sound a lot like us because they are reflecting their inputs and training data, with all of the biases and peculiarities that entails. And whereas other analogies for AI might convey a sense of living intelligence (think of the “stochastic parrot” of widely cited 2021 paper), the “mirror” is more apt, says Vallor: AI isn’t sentient, just a flat, inert surface, captivating us with its fun-house illusions of depth.
(Related)
https://hbr.org/2024/12/ai-thinks-differently-than-people-do-heres-why-that-matters
AI Thinks Differently Than People Do. Here’s Why That Matters.
… Yet there’s a critical misconception embedded in this vision: Generative AI simply isn’t the strategic oracle many say it is. Like any other AI, it is a mirror that reflects patterns, trends, and decisions of the past.
Perspective.
https://dig.watch/updates/australian-federal-police-leverage-ai-for-investigations
Australian Federal Police leverage AI for investigations
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) is increasingly turning to AI to handle the vast amounts of data it encounters during investigations. With investigations involving up to 40 terabytes of data on average, AI has become essential in sifting through information from sources like seized phones, child exploitation referrals, and cyber incidents. Benjamin Lamont, AFP’s manager for technology strategy, emphasised the need for AI, given the overwhelming scale of data, stating that AI is crucial to help manage cases, including reviewing massive amounts of video footage and emails.
The AFP is also working on custom AI solutions, including tools for structuring large datasets and identifying potential criminal activity from old mobile phones. One such dataset is a staggering 10 petabytes, while individual phones can hold up to 1 terabyte of data. Lamont pointed out that AI plays a crucial role in making these files easier for officers to process, which would otherwise be an impossible task for human investigators alone. The AFP is also developing AI systems to detect deepfake images and protect officers from graphic content by summarising or modifying such material before it’s viewed.
Perspective.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/price-russian-victory
The Price of Russian Victory
… To figure out just how much money supporting Kyiv saves Washington, in a report to be released in January, my colleagues and I at the American Enterprise Institute added up the expenses the United States would face if Russia defeats Ukraine and then positions forces along NATO’s border. We considered the military capability, capacity, and posture the United States would need to deter and, potentially, defeat Russia should the Kremlin attack a NATO ally—while still preventing further conflict with emboldened adversaries in the Pacific and Middle East.
The resulting number is exorbitant. According to our calculations, defeat in Ukraine would require the United States to spend $808 billion more on defense over the next five years than it has budgeted. Since 2022, by contrast, Congress has appropriated $112 billion to the Defense Department to assist Kyiv. That means the aid provided to Ukraine through the Pentagon is less than 14 percent of what it would cost Washington to defend Europe against a victorious Russia. (That $112 billion is also mostly spent at home, on domestic weapons production.) Put another way, allowing Russia to defeat Ukraine would cost the United States about seven times more than preventing a Russian victory. Aiding Ukraine, then, is clearly the right financial decision.
