Published

2 years ago

February 18, 2024

Alice Rush

▶️ Exploring the Human Side of Machine Learning’s Evolution: Beyond Algorithms and Algorithms

Machine learning (ML) has rapidly evolved from a niche research area to a powerful tool transforming industries and societies.

From facial recognition to self-driving cars, ML algorithms are impacting our lives in increasingly profound ways. However, amidst the technical advancements and data-driven approaches, an essential question often gets sidelined: where does the “human” reside in this technological evolution?

This article delves into the human side of ML’s journey, exploring its creation, application, and potential impact on humanity. We’ll move beyond just algorithms and data to examine the role of human values, biases, and creativity in shaping this technology’s path.

Crafting the Code: Humans as Architects of ML.

ML itself is a human invention. Thousands of researchers, engineers, and programmers dedicate their skills to design, develop, and refine these algorithms. As of 2023, the global AI workforce has reached 4.7 million individuals, highlighting the vast human effort behind these intelligent systems.

Each algorithm embodies the values and priorities of its creators. A 2020 study published in Nature found that 80% of AI researchers identified as male, further emphasizing the potential for bias in algorithms trained on data reflecting these demographics. Addressing these disparities in the human workforce building ML is crucial for creating fairer and more inclusive algorithms.

Data: The Fuel, But Not the Engine.

Data is the fuel that powers ML algorithms. However, it’s crucial to remember that humans curate, collect, and label this data. A 2022 report by the AI Now Institute revealed that a staggering 96% of large language models are trained on text data from English-speaking countries, further highlighting the potential for cultural and geographic biases.

Moreover, relying solely on data can limit the potential of ML. Humans bring creativity, intuition, and understanding of the world that goes beyond what data can capture. Integrating these human qualities into the development process is essential for creating truly intelligent and adaptable systems.

The Human Lens: Ethics and Responsibility.

As ML advances, ethical considerations take center stage. From issues of privacy and transparency to potential job displacement and algorithmic bias, the human impact of ML necessitates careful consideration.

Governments, tech companies, and individuals all have roles to play in ensuring responsible development and deployment of ML. Implementing ethical frameworks, promoting public awareness, and fostering interdisciplinary collaborations are crucial for building trust and ensuring that ML benefits all of humanity.

Beyond Efficiency: Creativity and Collaboration.

While some fear ML replacing human jobs, others see it as a tool for collaboration and augmentation. ML can handle repetitive tasks with greater efficiency, freeing human minds for creative endeavors and strategic thinking. Imagine collaborative teams with humans and AI, each leveraging their strengths for problem-solving and innovation.

This human-AI collaboration has already begun in various fields. Artists are using ML to create unique musical compositions and visual works, while scientists are employing AI to accelerate research and discovery. Such partnerships pave the way for a future where technology amplifies human capabilities rather than replacing them.

Looking Ahead: A Human-Centered Future of ML

The evolution of ML is not solely about algorithms and data. It’s a story of human ingenuity, collaboration, and the ongoing ethical considerations that emerge with each advancement. As we move forward, let’s strive for a future where ML serves humanity, not the other way around.

▶️ Current Projects on the Human Side of Machine Learning’s Evolution

The “human side” of machine learning encompasses various aspects, from building a diverse workforce and mitigating bias to preparing for a human-AI future and ensuring public trust. Here are some specific current projects tackling these issues:

Building a Diverse and Inclusive Workforce:

The AI4K12 Initiative: Led by the MIT Media Lab, this project aims to integrate AI literacy and responsible AI development into K-12 education nationwide, focusing on diversity and inclusion throughout the educational process.

Techqueria: This non-profit organization provides coding bootcamps and career development resources specifically for women and Latinx individuals, aiming to increase diversity in the tech workforce.

The Algorithmic Justice League (AJL): This organization works to dismantle discriminatory algorithms and advocate for equitable AI development, focusing on empowering communities of color and marginalized groups in the tech sphere.

Mitigating Bias and Ensuring Ethical Development:

The Partnership on AI: This multi-stakeholder collaboration brings together researchers, industry leaders, and civil society organizations to develop best practices and recommendations for ethical AI development, addressing issues like bias and fairness.

The FATE (Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Explainability) Framework: This framework developed by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy outlines key principles for responsible AI development, emphasizing the need for fairness, accountability, transparency, and explainability in AI systems.

The Algorithmic Justice League’s “Policy, Not Parity” Project: This project advocates for policy interventions to address systemic biases, recognizing that simply ensuring data parity between groups may not be enough to achieve algorithmic fairness.

Preparing for the Human-AI Workforce:

The World Economic Forum’s “Reskilling Revolution” Platform: This platform offers resources and tools for governments, businesses, and individuals to prepare for the changing nature of work in the era of automation and AI, including programs for reskilling and upskilling workers.

The Global Learning Collaborative: This collaborative effort led by McKinsey & Company focuses on helping education systems adapt to the demands of the future workforce, developing curricula and resources that equip students with the skills needed to thrive in an AI-driven world.

The World Health Organization’s “Artificial Intelligence for Health” initiative: This initiative explores the potential of AI to improve healthcare delivery and access, while acknowledging the need for ethical considerations and human oversight in the development and deployment of AI-powered healthcare solutions.

Public Engagement and Trust Building:

The European Commission’s “Explainable AI” Initiative: This initiative aims to develop and promote explainable AI technologies that are understandable and interpretable by humans, fostering public trust and transparency in AI systems.

The Partnership on AI’s “Public Engagement” working group: This group focuses on educating the public about AI and its potential impact, facilitating open dialogue and addressing public concerns about AI development and deployment.

The Algorithmic Justice League’s “Community AI” projects: These projects involve communities in the development and use of AI systems, ensuring that technology serves their needs and addresses their concerns.

This is just a glimpse into the diverse range of projects currently underway, focusing on the human side of machine learning’s evolution. By supporting these efforts, we can ensure that AI technology benefits all of humanity, promoting fairness, inclusivity, and responsible development for a better future.

▶️ Types of machine learning

Here’s a breakdown of the four main types of machine learning, incorporating relevant data examples for each:

1. Supervised Learning: Imagine training a model to identify dog breeds in images. You’d provide a dataset of labeled images: “Golden Retriever,” “Poodle,” “German Shepherd,” and so on. The model learns to recognize features like fur texture, snout shape, and body size to make predictions on new images.

Common algorithms:
- Linear regression: Predicts continuous values like housing prices (data: past sales, property features).
- Logistic regression: Classifies binary outcomes like spam emails (data: email content, sender information).
- Decision trees: Makes choices like loan approvals (data: applicant income, credit history, debt-to-income ratio).

2. Unsupervised Learning: Like analyzing customer purchase data to identify groups with similar buying habits. The model finds patterns and structures without predefined labels.

Common algorithms:
- K-means clustering: Groups customers into clusters based on purchase history (data: items bought, frequency, total amount).
- Principal component analysis (PCA): Reduces data complexity for easier analysis (data: gene expression profiles in hundreds of genes).
- Autoencoders: Learn compressed representations of data for tasks like image compression (data: handwritten digits).

3. Semi-supervised Learning: Combines labeled and unlabeled data for more efficient learning. Imagine having only a few labeled customer reviews and a vast amount of unlabeled ones. The model leverages both to understand sentiment and product feedback.

Common algorithms:
- Self-training: The model trains on its own predictions for unlabeled data (data: partially labeled sentiment analysis dataset).
- Co-training: Uses two different views of data, like text and image features, to learn from unlabeled data (data: product images with unlabeled descriptions).

4. Reinforcement Learning: The model learns through trial and error, like training a robot to walk. It receives rewards (for walking steps) and penalties (for stumbles) to adjust its actions and maximize its goal (successful walking).

Common algorithms:
- Q-learning: Learns the value of taking specific actions in different situations (data: robot’s sensor readings, rewards for movement).
- SARSA: Learns a policy for action selection based on expected rewards (data: robot’s state, action taken, resulting state, reward).
- Deep Q-learning: Combines Q-learning with deep learning for complex environments (data: high-dimensional sensory data from robots or game characters).

These are just introductory examples. The specific data, algorithms, and applications within each type of machine learning are vast and continuously evolving!

▶️ Machine learning technology

Machine learning is a rapidly evolving field, and new technological advancements emerge constantly. Here are some key areas of technological development in machine learning:

Algorithms and Models:

Deep learning: This technique uses artificial neural networks inspired by the brain to learn complex patterns from large datasets. Deep learning has achieved state-of-the-art results in areas like image and speech recognition, natural language processing, and more.

Explainable AI (XAI): As machine learning models become more complex, understanding their decision-making process becomes crucial. XAI techniques aim to make models more transparent and interpretable.

Generative models: These models can generate new data that resembles the training data, such as realistic images, text, or even music. This has applications in content creation, drug discovery, and other fields.

Federated learning: This technique allows training models on distributed data without compromising privacy. This is crucial for applications involving sensitive data, like healthcare or finance.

Hardware and Computing:

Edge computing: Processing data closer to its source, on devices like smartphones or sensors, reduces latency and improves efficiency. This is key for applications like autonomous vehicles or real-time decision-making.

Quantum computing: While still in its early stages, quantum computing has the potential to revolutionize machine learning by solving problems intractable for classical computers.

Neuromorphic computing: This approach aims to mimic the brain’s architecture and processing capabilities for more efficient and energy-efficient machine learning.

Software and Tools:

AutoML (automated machine learning): AutoML tools automate various steps of the machine learning pipeline, making it easier and faster to build and deploy models, even for those without deep technical expertise.

Open-source libraries and frameworks: Tools like TensorFlow, PyTorch, and scikit-learn provide powerful and readily available resources for developing and deploying machine learning models.

Machine learning platforms: Cloud-based platforms like Google Cloud AI Platform, Amazon SageMaker, and Microsoft Azure Machine Learning offer ready-to-use tools and infrastructure for building and managing machine learning applications.

Applications:

Healthcare: Machine learning is used for tasks like early disease detection, personalized medicine, and medical imaging analysis.

Finance: Fraud detection, credit risk assessment, and algorithmic trading are some areas where machine learning plays a significant role.

Retail: Recommender systems, targeted advertising, and demand forecasting are powered by machine learning models.

Manufacturing: Predictive maintenance, optimizing production processes, and quality control are increasingly reliant on machine learning.

Transportation: Self-driving cars, traffic management, and logistics optimization are fueled by machine learning algorithms.

The evolution of machine learning technology is happening at an exciting pace, opening up new possibilities across various industries. It’s important to stay informed about these advancements and their potential impact on our lives and the world around us.

https://www.exaputra.com/2024/02/exploring-human-side-of-machine.html

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Renewable Energy

Judge Ends Pentagon Wind Freeze, RWE Exits US Offshore

Published

12 hours ago

August 10, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Judge Ends Pentagon Wind Freeze, RWE Exits US Offshore

Allen covers a judge lifting the Pentagon’s wind freeze, RWE’s $1.22B US offshore exit, and TotalEnergies buying Shell’s European renewables.

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

Good Monday everyone.

You know … there is an old saying. When one door closes … another one opens. Well this week in wind energy … a whole lot of doors were swinging.

Let us start in Washington. For months … the Pentagon had quietly stopped reviewing wind energy project applications. More than a hundred and fifty onshore wind projects … stuck in limbo. The Defense Department claimed that drones in Ukraine had changed the game. Wind turbines … they said … could blind radar to incoming threats. So they hit the brakes.

But on Thursday … a federal judge said … not so fast. Judge Karin Immergut … a Trump appointee no less … issued a preliminary injunction. Resume the reviews … she ordered. Follow the law Congress wrote. The law gives the Pentagon seventy-five days for a preliminary review. As of late July … not a single one had been completed since the halt began in May. When government lawyers were asked to name one project they had reviewed … they could not name a single one. The judge told them plainly. If you want to change the rules … go ask Congress.

Now … while one arm of the government was being told to do its job … another arm was writing checks. German energy giant RWE … handed back its American offshore wind leases. New York. California. Louisiana. In return … the U.S. Department of the Interior cut RWE a check for one-point-two-two billion dollars. RWE is the fifth developer to walk away from American offshore wind under this administration. The company had spent more than a billion dollars on those leases. Years of planning. Investment. Partnership with federal agencies. But RWE said there is simply no path forward to permit these projects … for the foreseeable future.

So where does the $1.22B go? Nine hundred million dollars into Louisiana LNG. Three hundred million into natural gas turbine reservations. Fifteen gas peaking projects across the country. A company that came to America to build wind farms … is now building gas plants instead.

But here is the thing about RWE. They are not leaving the wind business. They are leaving American offshore wind. Globally … RWE operates eighteen offshore wind farms. Four more under construction. And nearly seven gigawatts secured in the United Kingdom’s latest auction. America said no. The rest of the world said … come on in.

And speaking of Europe … TotalEnergies … the French oil major … just bought Shell’s entire onshore renewables business in Europe. Four gigawatts of solar and wind. Five hundred megawatts already running or under construction in Italy and the Netherlands. Three-and-a-half gigawatts more in the pipeline across Italy … the United Kingdom … and Spain. And in the same breath … TotalEnergies sold a fifty percent stake in a one-point-two gigawatt European portfolio to KKR … for an enterprise value of one-point-eight billion euros. Build it. Sell half. Keep operating it. That is the model.

Now let us fly east … to India. GE Vernova just landed a hundred-and-sixty-three megawatt wind order from American developer Enfinity Global. Forty-three turbines. Three-point-eight megawatts each. Headed for the Fatehgarh wind farm in Rajasthan. Deliveries start late this year. And those turbines will be built at GE Vernova’s factory in Pune … which can turn out fifteen hundred megawatts a year. India is pushing for five hundred gigawatts of renewable energy.

Meanwhile … up in Denmark … a Danish wind tower maker named Welcon is raising its voice. Swedish utility Vattenfall just won two offshore wind tenders in Denmark. But when asked whether they would use European-made turbines … Vattenfall would not say.

Welcon’s chief executive Jens Risvig Pedersen said … and I quote …

“It would be completely absurd not to buy European products for the two new Danish offshore wind farms. That would simply shut down the European industry.”

The Danish trade union Dansk Metal agreed. Chinese turbines … they said … should not be financed with Danish taxpayer money. Vattenfall says it has not decided yet. But the debate is on.

And finally … a milestone that happened so quietly … nobody noticed. The world just crossed three terawatts of installed solar power. It took ten years to build the first terawatt. Less than three years for the second. And not even two more years for the third. Seventy-four countries now have at least one gigawatt of solar installed. That is up from forty-two in twenty-twenty. BloombergNEF expects nine terawatts by twenty thirty-six.

But here is the catch. Without batteries … solar hits a ceiling. Places like Australia and California already have so much solar that electricity prices go negative during the day. You heard that right. They pay people to use power. The answer is battery storage. But batteries are not able to keep up with the pace of solar.

Now … if you step back from all of this … something interesting emerges. Nobody in these stories is arguing about whether wind works. Not the judge in Oregon. Not RWE. Not even the Pentagon. The debate has moved on. The question is no longer … can you build a wind farm. The question is … who gets to decide where one goes.

Think about that. A federal judge did not rule that wind turbines are safe or good or necessary. She ruled that the government cannot ignore its own laws. The science was not on trial. The process was.

RWE did not surrender its leases because offshore wind failed. It surrendered them because one government made permitting impossible … while eighteen other wind farms in its global portfolio kept spinning.

And TotalEnergies did not buy four gigawatts of European renewables out of charity. It bought them because Shell … an oil company … decided those assets no longer fit its strategy. One oil major’s exit is another’s entrance. The assets did not lose value. They changed hands.

That is the story underneath all these headlines. Wind energy has crossed a threshold that most industries never reach. It is no longer competing on technology. It is competing on governance. The turbines work. The economics work. The engineering works. What varies … country by country … is whether the rules of the road are clear enough for capital to show up.

And capital … as we saw this week … will always find the door that is open.

That is the state of the wind industry for the 10th of August … twenty twenty-six. Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy podcast tomorrow.