A Myriad of Tongues: How language may shape our world view

Noam Chomsky theories shaped the understanding related with language acquisition, suggesting the human mind is pre-equipped with a set of linguistic constraints, a "universal grammar"  as common structural foundation across languages. 

Chomsky's theory challenged the belief that language development was solely influenced by environmental factors, arguing that all human languages share underlying syntactic categories and grammatical features. While this theory led to assume that all languages categorize ideas and objects similarly, research has showed that many concepts are not universal and speakers of different languages literally see and think about the world differently.

Linguistics argue that language is not a cultural artifact but instead, a biological and cognitive aspect of language in our brains. 

However, while in English people refers to time in spatial terms, speakers of Amazonian languages do not do that and in fact, some languages do not have a word for time. 

The book Myriad of Tongues, presents profound insights about the fundamentals of human communication and Caleb Everett takes readers around the globe explaining what linguistic diversity tells about human culture. 

AI is not the universal problem solver

Artificial Intelligence is rife with contradictions; a powerful tool still also very limited in terms of capabilities. And, while it has the potential to improve human existence, at the same time it threatens to deepen social divides and put millions of people out of work. While its inner workings are highly technical, the non-technical among us can and should understand the basic principles of how it works - and the concerns that it raises. 

As the influence and impact of AI spreads, it will is critical to involve people and experts from the most diverse backgrounds possible in guiding this technology in ways that enhance human capabilities and lead to positive outcomes.

AI is not the universal problem solver and having a clearer idea of what AI is, and is not "will be critical to move beyond solutionism,” says Stuart Russell, the renowned Professor of Computer Science at University of California, Berkeley.


Speaking during the opening plenary of the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils, Russell explained that “solutionism” is the attitude that, given enough data, machine learning algorithms can offer a solution for all our problems. He also spoke about how to dispel common AI misconceptions and how best to advance the field of study.

Study presents new method for explainable AI; CRP, Concept Relevance Propagation

In their paper "From attribution maps to human-understandable explanations through concept relevance propagation," researchers from Fraunhofer Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institut (HHI) and the Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data (BIFOLD) the concept relevance propagation (CRP), a new method that can explain individual AI decisions as concepts understandable to humans.


The paper has now been published in Nature Machine Intelligence


AI systems are largely black boxes: It is usually not comprehensible to humans how an AI arrives at a certain decision. CRP is a state-of-the-art explanatory method for deep neural networks that complements and deepens existing explanatory models. In doing so, CRP reveals not only the characteristics of the input that are relevant to the decision made, but also the concepts the AI used, the location where they are represented in the input, and which parts of the neural network are responsible for them.


More reading and full article - From attribution maps to human-understandable explanations through Concept Relevance Propagation

When Computer Vision Works More Like a Brain, It Sees More Like People Do

From cameras to self-driving cars, many of today’s technologies depend on artificial intelligence to extract meaning from visual information. Today’s AI technology has artificial neural networks at its core, and most of the time we can trust these AI computer vision systems to see things the way we do — but sometimes they falter. 

According to MIT and IBM research scientists, one way to improve computer vision is to instruct the artificial neural networks that they rely on to deliberately mimic the way the brain’s biological neural network processes visual images.
Researchers led by MIT Professor James DiCarlo, the director of MIT’s Quest for Intelligence and member of the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, have made a computer vision model more robust by training it to work like a part of the brain that humans and other primates rely on for object recognition. This May, at the International Conference on Learning Representations, the team reported that when they trained an artificial neural network using neural activity patterns in the brain’s inferior temporal (IT) cortex, the artificial neural network was more robustly able to identify objects in images than a model that lacked that neural training. And the model’s interpretations of images more closely matched what humans saw, even when images included minor distortions that made the task more difficult.

Japanese groundbreaking vaccine is potentially capable of preventing or modifying the course of Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s disease is a type of dementia that affects memory, thinking and behavior. Symptoms eventually grow severe enough to interfere with daily tasks and the disease accounts for 60% to 80% of dementia patients worldwide.

In Alzheimer’s disease, two abnormal structures called plaques and tangles are prime suspects in damaging and killing nerve cells. In the first, an accumulation of brain proteins called beta-amyloid peptides clump together forming plaques that disrupt cell function.

Researchers at Juntendo University School of Medicine in Tokyo (Japan), have developed a novel vaccine targeting brain cells associated with Alzheimer’s disease, initially designed to eliminate senescent cells expressing senescence-associated glycoprotein (SAGP). The vaccine reduced amyloid deposits in the cerebral cortex region responsible for language processing, attention, and problem-solving. Additionally, it decreased the size of astrocyte cells, a specific inflammatory molecule. It reduced other inflammatory biomarkers, indicating an improvement in brain inflammation.

“If the vaccine could prove to be successful in humans, it would be a big step forward towards delaying disease progression or even prevention of this disease.” says lead study author Chieh-Lun Hsiao, Ph.D., a post-doctoral fellow in the department of cardiovascular biology and medicine at Juntendo University.

Too fast, too soon? Sweden backs away from screens in schools

Sweden recently announced that the country's schools will remove digital technology from classrooms because of poor student performance. Some ask how useful is digital learning. But it also poses the question: is "digital de-escalation" even possible?

Sweden’s Minister of Schools, Lotta Edholm, said children’s ability to read has deteriorated and their writing skills have weakened, and there are many reasons, the most important of which is their increased reliance on tablets and spending a lot of time in front of screens.

The Swedish Minister of Schools, under the supervision of the Minister of Education, had embarked some time ago on a reform of the country’s education system.
Moreover, the research already recommended ensuring a basic level of literacy and mathematics in the traditional way to create equal opportunities in the digital environment – rather than introducing more technological tools in the classroom.

The full article here.

AI has "hacked the operating system of human civilization", says Yuval Noah Harari

Pedro Pinto and Yuval Noah Harari delve into the future of artificial intelligence and together, they explore pressing questions in front of a live audience, such as: 

- What will be the impact of A.I. on democracy and politics? 

- How can we maintain human connection in the age of A.I.? 

- What skills will be crucial for the future? 

- And what does the future of education hold?


"If we are so smart why are we doing so many stupid things? Humanity is not that simple." says Yuval Noah Harari.

An interview filmed on May 19 2023 in Lisbon, produced by Francisco Manuel dos Santos (FFMS).

Harari argues that AI has "hacked the operating system of human civilization". 
He ask what will happen to the course of history when AI takes over culture, and begins producing stories, melodies, laws and religions?

Harari reflection is that "if we are not careful, we might be trapped behind a curtain of illusions, which we could not tear away—or even realize is there. 
Just as a pharmaceutical company cannot release new drugs before testing both their short-term and long-term side-effects, so tech companies shouldn’t release new AI tools before they are made safe. We need an equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration for new technology."

Here it is: GPT-4 the next generation of AI Large Language Models or High-Tech Plagiarism

Tuesday 14th of March 2023, 4 months after the first launch of ChatGPT, OpenAI released GPT-4, a more powerful model than ever compared with previous versions. Since 2018, OpenAI had been disseminating GPT language models, but of all huge language models, GPT-4 is not just the newest, but also the most potent.

OpenAI GPT-4 was created as the latest milestone and effort in scaling up deep learning, as a large multimodal model (accepting image and text inputs, emitting text outputs) that, while less capable than humans in many real-world scenarios, exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks.

ChatGPT, the system that understands natural language and responds in kind, is causing a sensation and for any one that has tried it out, you’ll surely have wondered what it will soon revolutionize — or, as the case may be, what it will destroy. 

As the relevant technology now stands, Chomsky - who has shaped the face of contemporary linguistics with his language acquisition and innateness theories, and a polarizing figure in modern intellectual life - sees the use of ChatGPT as “basically high-tech plagiarism” and “a way of avoiding learning.” 

A new peptide may hold potential as an Alzheimer’s treatment - while exercise boosts brain health

MIT neuroscientists have found a way to reverse neurodegeneration and other symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease by interfering with an enzyme that is typically overactive in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.

At the same time, investigation continues around how exercise releases chemical signals that boost brain health.
Beckman researchers studied how chemical signals from contracting muscles promote healthy brains. Their findings reveal how these signals help grow and regulate new brain networks while also pointing toward ways of improving brain health through exercise.

AI modelling that help to re-create what people see by reading brain scans

As neuroscientists struggle to demystify how the human brain converts what our eyes see into mental images, artificial intelligence (AI) has been getting better at mimicking that feat. A recent study, scheduled to be presented at an upcoming computer vision conference, demonstrates that AI can read brain scans and re-create largely realistic versions of images a person has seen. As this technology develops, researchers say, it could have numerous applications, from exploring how various animal species perceive the world to perhaps one day recording human dreams and aiding communication in people with paralysis.


Unlike previous efforts using AI algorithms to decipher brain scans, which had to be trained on large data sets, Stable Diffusion was able to get more out of less training for each participant by incorporating photo captions into the algorithm. It’s a novel approach that incorporates textual and visual information to “decipher the brain,” says Ariel Goldstein, a cognitive neuroscientist at Princeton University who was not involved with the work.

The AI algorithm makes use of information gathered from different regions of the brain involved in image perception, such as the occipital and temporal lobes, according to Yu Takagi, a systems neuroscientist at Osaka University who worked on the experiment. The system interpreted information from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans, which detect changes in blood flow to active regions of the brain. When people look at a photo, the temporal lobes predominantly register information about the contents of the image (people, objects, or scenery), whereas the occipital lobe predominantly registers information about layout and perspective, such as the scale and position of the contents. All of this information is recorded by the fMRI as it captures peaks in brain activity, and these patterns can then be reconverted into an imitation image using AI.

Dementia only causes about 41% of cognitive decline: new study identifies other predictors

Cognitive decline naturally occurs as we age, with a common belief that dementia is the cause in most cases.

Recently, researchers at the Ohio State University say there are more factors causing cognitive decline than we once thought.

Socioeconomic factors, physical health measures, and behaviors, including exercise and smoking, accounted for 38% of the variation between participants in their level of cognitive function at age 54, researchers reported.

This study is focused on identifying predictors of cognitive decline.

2022: The year in innovation

The well know year review from McKinsey for 2022, reveals how clients around the world are developing resilience in the face of a seemingly unrelenting set of disruptions. 

For  highest-priority articles and features, here is a roundup of some of most innovative experiences of 2022, including top ten lists, a complete collection of 2022’s innovations.

Clearly AI is going to win, says Daniel Kahneman

Daniel Kahneman, 87, Nobel prize in economics in 2002 for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making. His book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, a worldwide bestseller, was key on my master thesis and set out revolutionary ideas about human error and bias and how those traits might be recognized and mitigated. 

(for those interested, here's Chat GPT summary of the book)

A new book, Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, written with Olivier Sibony and Cass R Sunstein, applies those ideas to organizations in a moment where Daniel Kahneman states  

"Clearly AI is going to win. How people are going to adjust is a fascinating problem!"

Click for the full interview