Chris Peisch – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Wed, 16 May 2018 08:07:47 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Chris Peisch – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Newsome, Eagleman discuss the intersection of science and faith https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/16/newsome-eagleman-discuss-the-intersection-of-science-and-faith/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/16/newsome-eagleman-discuss-the-intersection-of-science-and-faith/#respond Wed, 16 May 2018 08:07:47 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1141141 On Monday night, The Veritas Forum, a non-profit organization that partners with Christian student groups on college campuses, hosted a conversation on neuroscience, consciousness and faith in the Geology Corner Auditorium.

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On Monday night, The Veritas Forum, a non-profit organization that partners with Christian student groups on college campuses, hosted a conversation on neuroscience, consciousness and faith in the Geology Corner Auditorium. The seminar, titled “Is Perception Reality?” aimed to put Christian world views in conversation with alternative philosophies.

The discussion featured Stanford professor of neurobiology Bill Newsome and adjunct professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences David Eagleman, who discussed their perspectives on the intersection of faith and science.

The Veritas Forum solicited student input to determine a topic of conversation that would be of most interest to the Stanford community.

“A lot of students were interested in consciousness and the intersection between science and faith,” said student event coordinator Prescott Bliss M.S. ’18.

Eagleman described himself as a “possibilian,” someone who actively investigates an exploratory “possibility space” and uses science to eliminate possibilities that are not viable.

Newsome’s religious views diverged from those of Eagleman’s. Newsome, a Christian raised by a Baptist minister, described himself as reductionist in scientific methodology, but not in spiritual ideology.

Forum director Samuel Kim said Veritas aims to invite speakers who will engage in meaningful dialogue and explore the intersection between opposing philosophies.

“Bill Newsome and David Eagleman represent two very interesting perspectives and they are very much engaged with their specific world views,” he said

Eagleman and Newsome opened the conversation by introducing their research and their respective philosophical values. Stanford psychiatrist David Carreon moderated the conversation and prompted the panelists on topics ranging from frontiers in neuroscience to the duality of the human soul.

Asked how scientists should approach the challenge of understanding consciousness, Newsome responded, “I would take one of our national laboratories dedicated to nuclear research and fill it with neuroscientists, physicists, mathematicians and engineers to work together to get us a tool that could record from the brain and stimulate the brain at fine spatial and temporal resolution non-invasively. Then we could start understanding the science of consciousness.”

The panelists also discussed the potential for biases against religious individuals in the scientific community.

“I think that there is a peculiar bias which is distributed unevenly across religions,” Newsome said. “There is a tendency to be disdainful toward Christianity, and some of that is with good reason because some of the most central advances in biology were resisted by elements of the Christian church.”

The Geology corner was filled to capacity, and students even began to fill the aisles once all the seats had been filled.

Kim expressed his gratitude for the event coordinators and the “wonderful turnout.”

“We are excited to see that so many people on campus are interested in these deeper dialogues,” Kim added.

The Veritas Forum will host an group discussion with Stanford’s InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in Old Union on Friday night and a follow-up discussion on bioethics with David Eagleman at the Li Ka Shing Learning and Knowledge Center on Thursday, May 17.

 

Contact Chris Peisch at cpeisch1 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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At Stanford Law, scholars discuss AI technology in warfare https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/11/at-stanford-law-scholars-discuss-ai-technology-in-warfare/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/11/at-stanford-law-scholars-discuss-ai-technology-in-warfare/#respond Fri, 11 May 2018 09:52:31 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1140935 On Thursday evening at the Stanford Law School, a Stanford Artificial Intelligence & Law Society (SAILS) panel titled “AI, Warfare, and Autonomous Weapons” addressed the future of autonomous weapons, the technology race between the United States and China and the current state of artificial intelligence in military use.

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On Thursday evening at the Stanford Law School, a Stanford Artificial Intelligence & Law Society (SAILS) panel titled “AI, Warfare and Autonomous Weapons” addressed the future of autonomous weapons, the technology race between the United States and China and the current state of artificial intelligence in military use.

The panel is part of an ongoing series of conversations hosted by SAILS and was principally organized by law student and SAILS president Zach Harned J.D. ’20.

Previous events focused on autonomous vehicles and biases in criminal policing. Three more panels regarding the potential societal impacts of artificial intelligence are also in the works.

“[SAILS’s] was to create a cross-modal exploration of the AI space because it is really touching so many domains,” Harned said.

Event panelists include symbolic systems associate director Todd Davies B.S. ’85 M.S. ’85 Ph.D. ’95, venture capital firm Point72 partner Daniel Gwak, D.C.-based national security think tank Center for a New American Security (CNAS) adjunct fellow Elsa Kania, CNAS senior fellow Paul Scharre, and Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) fellow Andrew Grotto.

During the talk, Davies advocated a ban on killer robots, explaining that small artificially intelligent drones could be produced at a large enough scale to be considered a weapon of mass destruction. He also pointed out that the potential that these precise and intelligent weapons will be misused outweighs any benefits said weapons may bring.

“The types of technology we are talking about decouple the amount of weapons that can be deployed and the number of people [needed] to deploy them,” Davies said.

Gwak responded by discussing the potential for autonomous weapons to save lives on the battlefield by reducing collateral damage.

“The more precise the weapon, the more accurate we can be in the execution of war,” Gwak said.

Kania stated that progress in the field of AI and its varied applications to issues of national security present many possibilities.

“When we think about AI and the future of warfare, the range of possibilities is immense depending on which actor is using it and what their intentions are,” Kania said. “This will be a very complex and multifaceted revolution.”

Attendees of the event included Stanford undergraduate students, Stanford law students and outside guests.

Jakob Hjortshøj, a technology associate working for the Danish Foreign Ministry, attended the event in order to learn about how technology might impact foreign and security politics.

“I am here to learn more from the academic world about what is going on in the artificial intelligence sector,” Hjortshøj said.

 

Contact Chris Peisch at cpeisch1 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Classy classes: Inaugural CS class explores ethics in AI https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/13/classy-classes-inaugural-cs-class-explores-ethics-in-ai/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/13/classy-classes-inaugural-cs-class-explores-ethics-in-ai/#respond Fri, 13 Apr 2018 07:58:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1139380 For the first time, Stanford is offering a student-initiated course focused on the ethical implications of artificial intelligence (AI). The product of a joint initiative by the student groups CS + Social Good and the Stanford AI Group, the class teaches students techniques in machine learning and includes guest lectures by Stanford researchers in computer science.

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For the first time, Stanford is offering a student-initiated course focused on the ethical implications of artificial intelligence (AI). The product of a joint initiative by the student groups CS + Social Good and the Stanford AI Group, the class teaches students techniques in machine learning and includes guest lectures by Stanford researchers in computer science.

“Students will learn about and apply cutting-edge artificial intelligence techniques to real-world social good spaces (such as healthcare, government, education and environment),” the course website states. 

Shubhang Desai ’20, Swetha Revanur ’20 and Karan Singhal ’19 designed the course to highlight the positive impact of socially conscious AI as well as the dangers of potentially biased and insecure AI systems.

Desai said he believes that the course fills a gap in the technical and ethical AI education that Stanford currently offers.

“We wanted to create a course that would educate students not only about AI techniques, but also how they should be applied in a socially conscious way,” added Desai. “The social good motivates exploration into AI, not the other way around. The class is not an AI class, it is a social good class that uses AI to tackle social good problems.”

Though the course required an application, the teaching staff encouraged undergraduate and graduate students across all departments with different levels of computer science experience to enroll. 

“This is the most accessible technical AI class offered at Stanford,” Revanur said.

Along with the three undergraduate instructors, course staff Rachel Gardner ’20 and Nidhi Manoj ’19 help coordinate guest lecturers conducting AI research in industry and academia. Upcoming guest lecturers include graduate student Pranav Rajpurkar, whose research applies machine learning to medicine, education and autonomous driving, and assistant management science and engineering professor Sharad Goel, whose work uses AI to improve public policy in domains ranging from racial bias to online privacy.

Course instructors Desai and Revanur said that decision-making algorithms can often make flawed conclusions based on biased representation in data. For instance, AI algorithms in Google Photos accidentally classified black males as “gorillas” because the data input to the software did not include enough images of humans with darker complexions.

According to the teaching staff, while computer scientists may understand the details of an AI system’s inputs and outputs, they do not know exactly how these algorithms make decisions. The nebulous computations that take place within this algorithmic “black box” can potentially undermine the efficacy of many algorithms if scientists do not approach programming in a socially conscious manner.

CS + Social Good board member Vicki Niu ’18 agreed that it is important to be conscientious about the potential negative social impact of AI.

“We’re constantly balancing a number of factors, including the extent to which we [create] programs that allow students to build socially impactful tech projects versus ones that focus on analyzing the social implications — and often times harms — of technologies currently at play in our world,” she said.

An increase in both computational resources and available data has made AI a powerful decision-making tool.  Revanur, Desai and Singhal emphasized that as the power of AI systems continues to increase rapidly, students must be aware of the potential dangers of flawed AI.

“We foresee the rapid automation of many of today’s most common occupations, including drivers, cashiers and many doctors,” the trio wrote in an email to The Daily. “Much of this change will be driven by today’s budding AI technologists, many of whom will come from Stanford.”

The course will be offered again next spring. 

 

Contact Chris Peisch at cpeisch1 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Felicia Hou at fhou ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Classy classes: History class offers students a broader understanding of the modern world https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/20/classy-classes-history-class-offers-students-a-broader-understanding-of-the-modern-world/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/20/classy-classes-history-class-offers-students-a-broader-understanding-of-the-modern-world/#respond Wed, 21 Feb 2018 03:39:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1137061 This winter, history lecturer C. Ryan Perkins is offering Stanford's first general survey course on the history of South Asia.

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This winter, history lecturer C. Ryan Perkins is offering Stanford’s first general survey course on the history of South Asia. Students in HISTORY 296C: “The Making of Modern India” will acquire a deeper understanding of how the history of India impacts the world today.

Perkins aims to introduce his students to new perspectives on the world by recognizing the web of connections that ties cultures together.

“Offering a course like this allows us to see that there are no monolithic, homogeneous cultures,” Perkins said. “We all end up growing from our interactions with one another.”

Through the course, Perkins hopes to teach students to think critically about modern Indian history and encourage them to see how it fits into the broader history of the world. The course begins with a brief study of India’s ancient past but focuses predominantly on Indian history from the colonial period to the present.

Perkins said he noticed that students with no familial ties to India tend to have a superficial understanding of Indian history. The course focuses on breaking down these assumed concepts through readings and discussion.

Ben Boston ’20 said that HISTORY 296C allowed him to consider the nuance and complexity of topics in Indian history –specifically, the caste system, which he had studied prior to coming to Stanford.

“In high school, we learned that India has a caste system with four castes,” Boston said. “This course has shown me that it is much more complicated than that. The modern caste system is a product of the British interpretation of Indian society and the Indian reinterpretation of that system.”

Characterized by Boston as “absurdly knowledgeable,” Perkins became interested in South Asian studies as an undergraduate student, when he spent three semesters traveling to Pakistan, India and Nepal. During his journey, Perkins worked with refugees from Afghanistan and Iran and became familiar with their native languages of Urdu and Hindi.

Perkins uses his knowledge of Urdu and Hindi, as well as his command of Pashto and Persian, to interpret the primary source materials regarding South Asian history. Citing that much of the prior scholarship of the period relies on colonial sources, Perkins said that there is much room for innovation in South Asian studies, as primary source materials on many historical events remain unexplored.

While Perkins believes that Stanford is committed to fostering curiosity in the social sciences and humanities, he said that it can be challenging when students do not see value in studying history compared to more utilitarian subjects, which can lead to more profitable careers.

However, Perkins hopes that by studying the past, students will be able to work towards creating a more humane world during a period of rapid modernization.

“We look at history with a pride in the present,” Perkins said. “I want students to look at today and see how we may be implicated in injustices and inhumane practices.”

 

Contact Chris Peisch at cpeisch1 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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