Author: Christopher Parsons

Policy wonk. Torontonian. Photographer. Not necessarily in that order.

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Critically Assessing AI Technologies’ Economic Potentials

This article by Ramani and Wang, entitled “Why transformative AI is really, really hard to achieve,” is probably the best critical economic analysis of the current AI debates I’ve come across. It assesses what would be required for AI technologies to live up to the current hype cycles about how these technologies will massively benefit economic productivity. Based on the nature of AI technologies being developed, combined with the history of economic productivity enhancements over time, the authors conclude that the present day hype is unlikely to be met.

Key to the arguments is that AI technologies do not, as of yet, sufficiently automate a vast set of tasks which are comparatively easy for humans to accomplish, nor are they able to benefit from the latent knowledge and intelligence that guides humans in their daily lives. The authors argue that AI technologies must broadly automate tasks, instead of discretely automating them, in order to achieve cross-industry improvements to productivity. Doing otherwise will merely accelerate aspects of processes which will remain gridlocked in the aggregate by more traditional or less automated processes.

The authors are not dismissing the potential utility of AI technologies, however, but instead just arguing that they are not as likely to achieve the transformative economic miracles that many are suggesting are just around the corner. However, even if AI systems are ‘only’ as significant for productivity as the combustion engine (which discretely as opposed to comprehensively enhanced productivity) this would be a significant accomplishment.

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Reviews

Three Month Review- Bellroy Transit Workpack (20L)

I’ve been using the Bellroy Transit Workpack daily for about 3 weeks now to carry my stuff to and from work. It’s a 20L backpack that can hold up to a 16″ laptop. For the weekdays, I use the bag to carry devices to/from work, and to bring my lunch, coffee thermos, and other miscellaneous things on a daily basis. On the weekend, I use it to carry some camera gear, light jacket or vest, and to pick up small things when I’m out.

The Good

I’ve found that it fits well once the excess shoulder straps are tightened, and appreciate how the included clips hold down excessive straps on the shoulders. Once tightened the bag is nicely snug to my back. My normal weekday carry is a 13” laptop, iPad, lunch, water bottle, keys, miscellaneous small electronics, books or shoes, and sometimes a spare jacket. All of this fits easily and comfortably in the bag without it appearing stretched or overloaded.

On the weekend, I regularly use the bag to carry a compressible jacket or vest, various camera batteries, and to pick up small things to bring home.

A couple fun facts:

  • You can easily fit two very large fresh-baked loaves of bread in the main compartment with no problems and they’ll come back in great condition with some room on the top of the main compartment for other baked goods, and
  • The ‘tech sleeve’ in the laptop compartment can easily (and safely) hold a Fuji X100F and even when it has a hood attached to the lens.

During my time with the bag I’ve worn it through rain and heavy snow. While the zippers require a bit more force to pull than those on other backpacks, the same zippers (and material used in the backpack) means that water just flows off the bag. All of which is to say that my electronics and other valuables haven’t ever gotten wet. This includes in situations where I’ve accidentally set the bag down on very wet floors: not once has a drop of moisture gotten past the bag’s exterior.

The bag also stands on its own pretty well, so long as it’s not overly weighted in one direction or another and has at least a little bit of stuff in the main compartment. The pen loops in the front compartment are helpful and not something I realised were included in the bag when I bought it.

Finally, the backpack it light. I’ve been using a much heavier backpack every now and then for the past few years (my daily carry has been a messenger bag for several years) and I really can’t believe just how light and robust the Bellroy Transit Workpack is compared to either my backpack or messenger!

The Bad

There are a few relatively minor downsides to the bag. First, the front pouch: it’s not the most convenient for storing things, though I do appreciate the small ‘lip’ that’s used to keep some items from moving around.

Second, the key elastic being in one of the water bottle pouches makes it pretty impractical for how I use the bag. Also, getting a water bottle into the hidden side-holders can sometimes be a bit of a pain (bad) but once in the holder the liquid is kept away from stuff on the bag’s internal compartment (good!) and preserves the look of the bag (also good!).

Third, the Transit Workpack lacks a luggage pass through so if you wanted to put this on your luggage while moving through an airport you’re going to be out of luck.

Fourth, it has taken me a few months to figure out how to use the webbing straps that come with the bag. Until I have, the straps kept coming loose and I’d have to reset them every few days. This is really, really annoying and if there’s a flaw with the backpack it’s the idiotic strapping system the Bellroy has gone with.

Finally, if you weigh the bag down and are carrying it for a long period of time (defined as 3 hours) you really need to ensure the straps are at the right length and tightness to best allocate the weight. Doing otherwise will leave you with some very sore shoulders!

Purchasing

I bought my Transit Workpack from a local Toronto company, Te Koop. The shipping was prompt and engagement from staff has been excellent, with staff having reached out several times to confirm that I’m happy with the backpack as well as to inform me about any return policies should I need it retained. I’m very happy to have purchased my bag from them.

Concluding Thoughts

If you’re an office worker, or someone looking for a sleek and easy-to-pack backpack, then I’d recommend this for you.

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Deskilling and Human-in-the-Loop

Photo by Digital Buggu on Pexels.com

I found boyd’s “Deskilling on the Job” to be a useful framing for how to be broadly concerned, or at least thoughtful, about using emerging A.I. technologies in professional as well as training environments.

Most technologies serve to augment human activity. In sensitive situations we often already require a human-in-the-loop to respond to dangerous errors (see: dam operators, nuclear power staff, etc). However, should emerging A.I. systems’ risks be mitigated by also placing humans-in-the-loop then it behooves policymakers to ask: how well does this actually work when we thrust humans into correcting often highly complicated issues moments before a disaster?

Not to spoil things, but it often goes poorly, and we then blame the humans in the loop instead of the technical design of the system.1

AI technologies offer an amazing bevy of possibilities. But thinking more carefully on how to integrate them into society while, also, digging into history and scholarly writing in automation will almost certainly help us avoid obvious, if recurring, errors in how policy makers think about adding guardrails around AI systems.

  1. If this idea of humans-in-the-loop and the regularity of errors in automated systems interests you, I’d highly encourage you to get a copy of ‘Normal Accidents’ by Perrow. ↩︎
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Russian Cyber Doctrine and Its Implementation

Photo by Mati Mango on Pexels.com

While the following might be a bit bellicose it, at the same time, has a ring of truth to it.

Using a foreign country’s military doctrine to reframe fuck-ups as successes — here, that the Russians’ real operations have had the intended effects — boils down to doing a GRU colonel’s work for him; placating Gerasimov about whether or not the O6’s department has contributed to winning the war, among other things.

The Russian government and its various agencies have been incredibly active in attempting to influence or affect the ability of the Ukrainian government to resist the illegal Russian invasion of its territory. But at the same time there has been a back and forth about the successes or failures of Russia in largely academic or public policy circles. In at least some cases, these arguments seem to argue for the successes of the Russian doctrine without sufficient evidence to maintain the position.

Notwithstanding the value of some of those debates it’s nice to see a line of critique that is more attentive to the structure of institutions and what often drives them, with the affect of broadening the rationales and explanations for the (un)successful efforts in the cyber domain by Russian forces.

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Photography

My Summer 2023 Fuji X100F Recipes

I’ve been shooting with a Fuji X100F for three years now, having gotten a used one for $800 CAD just prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since purchasing it I’ve shot well north of 100,000 photos, and retained approximately 12,000 after culling.

In mid-October 2021 I built or adapted a recipe for monochrome images. In mid-2022 I found a ‘Leica-like’ colour recipe which I’ve kept in camera, though not used all that often. During my ownership of the camera I’ve made a lot of other recipes and just not really used them.

I’m back in isolation for the second time in 6-7 months and so took the time this weekend to update my Custom profiles. I know that others find these kinds of profiles/recipes helpful and so I thought I’d post them for others who are interested. In the case of Custom One and Custom Four I include a small selection of images that were made with the respective recipes.

Global Note

Ages ago I set my White Balance to Auto (R 2, B -2). My preference would be to have the white balance associated with each Custom mode but that’s only possible with the X100V, so I just have set this and left it.

Generally, I wanted to make sure that Custom One was the most commonly used recipe that I used. Previously, this was set to Customer Five which was fine (I had muscle memory on flipping back to it in the menu) but added more work than should have existed. I then tried to batch the ‘key’ monochrome and colour profiles together; Custom Seven is a default Acros but I don’t really expect to dig that deep into my Custom Recipes to get to it all that often.

Also, for the past year or so I’ve kept a Moment Cinebloom 10% on the lens, which gives images a slightly softer image and blooms light.

Custom One—“My Classic Monochrome”

Yonge & Gould, Toronto, 2023
King & Simcoe, Toronto, 2023
Queen & University, Toronto, 2023
Baldwin & Kensington, Toronto, 2023
Wellington & Bay, Toronto, 2023
Grievances
Shadow Economy

I have shot a lot of images with this recipe, probably to the tune of retaining about 8,000 frames over a year and a half. Generally, I find that in hard lighting (with strong shadows and bright highlights) that it benefits from dialling the exposure down by -⅔ to -1.0. In brighter light, however, I find that it works best to dial up exposure by at least ⅓ and often ⅔.

  • DR: 200
  • Film Simulation: Black and White
  • Grain Effect: Weak
  • While Balance: Auto
  • Highlight Tone: 2
  • Shadow Tone: 2
  • Colour: 0
  • Sharpness: -1
  • Noise Reduction: 0
Shocking Light
Winter Flight
Toronto, 2023
Toronto, 2023
Toronto, 2023
Queen & Bay, Toronto, 2023
Toronto, 2023
Royal York Hotel, Toronto, 2023

I do find that with this profile I sometimes use the Brush in Snapseed to either Dodge & Burn or increase exposure on faces when they’re hidden in shadows.

Custom Two—“Ilford HP5 Plus”

This is the recipe from Fuji X Weekly. I haven’t shot with it as of yet, but am curious to see how it looks as compared to my ‘normal’ (Custom One) monochrome recipe. Based on the settings it should naturally have a stronger contrast than comes normally with Custom One.

  • DR: 200
  • Film Simulation: Acros
  • Grain Effect: Strong
  • While Balance: Auto
  • Highlight Tone: 4
  • Shadow Tone: 2
  • Colour: 0
  • Sharpness: 0
  • Noise Reduction: -3
  • Exposure Compensation: 0 (Normally)

Custom Three—“Astia Kodak Ektar 100”

Another recipe from Fuji X Weekly! I like this as it’s punchy but somewhat soft in its nature. I’m going to be a bit curious to see how this looks with my Moment Cinebloom 10% Filter.

  • DR: DR-Auto
  • Film: Astia
  • Grain: None
  • White Balance: Auto
  • Highlight Tone: 1
  • Shadow Tone: 3
  • Colour: 4
  • Sharpness: 1
  • Noise Reduction: -3
  • Exposure Compensation: 0 to ⅓ (typically)

Note: while the recipe calls for 3 Red and -2 Blue, my white balance is set to 2 Red and -2 Blue.

Custom Four—“Leica Colour”

I have no idea where precisely this came from but it’s been the only colour profile I’ve used for the past year or so. I really like how saturated and bright it is, but really have no idea how much what comes through is really ‘Leica-like’. This was just the description provided by wherever I copied the recipe.

  • DR: 200
  • Film: Standard
  • Grain: None
  • White Balance: Auto
  • Highlight Tone: 1
  • Shadow Tone: 1
  • Colour: 3
  • Sharpness: 1
  • Noise Reduction: 0

Custom Five—“Punchy Classic Chrome”

I have a love of Classic Chrome, and added this to make it a little more saturated than typical. I also wanted to see about adding more dramatic contrast between highlights and shadows, which is something I often tried to do in post when I first shot Classic Chrome a few years ago.

  • DR: 200
  • Film: Classic Chrome
  • Grain: None
  • White Balance: Auto
  • Highlight tone: 2
  • Shadow Tone: 2
  • Colour: 1
  • Sharpness: 1
  • Noise Reduction: 0

Custom Six—“Punchy Pro High-Neg”

I…haven’t really ever taken a photo with Pro High-Neg before. So I don’t quite know how this recipe will play out or even how much I might use it.

  • DR: Auto
  • Film: Pro High-Neg
  • Grain: Weak
  • WB: Auto
  • Highlight: 1
  • Shadow: 1
  • Colour: 1
  • Sharpness: -1
  • Noise Reduction: 0

Custom Seven—“Acros Bland”

This is a pure Acros recipe with no changes. I just want it present to be able to quickly flip to it and try it out at some point.

  • DR: 200
  • Film: Acros
  • Grain: Off (Acros increases grain normally as you exceed 800 ISO)
  • WB: Auto
  • Highlight: 0
  • Shadow: 0
  • Colour: NA
  • Sharpness: 0
  • Noise Reduction: 0
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Photography

The Backstory: Bay & Queen, Toronto, 2023

Bay & Queen, Toronto, 2023

I made this image while out on my weekend photowalk. I’ve passed this same location hundreds of time since I’ve lived in Toronto. In what might become a semi-regular type of post, I wanted to write a bit about the backstory of the image. It was originally posted to Glass.

I was drawn to this scene, first, just because of how the light managed to slice through the shadows which were cast by the surrounding skyscrapers. After dialling the exposure to -1.3 I waited for some interesting characters to pass through the light.

It was only after taking a couple images that I really noticed how the unhoused person’s feet and legs were apparent. They were on grates that pass steam in the colder times of the year. Some of the unhoused use these grates to stay warm during the winter.

I deliberately avoid taking many head-on or identifiable photos of people who are in distress. I’m generally not a fan of that kind of street photography, unless the photographer chooses to really engage with the subjects in meaningful ways.

Still, the city—and especially the city core—does have a serious and growing housing issue. And so I ultimately decided to compose the scene with the hopes that it would show people noticing, but passing by, the individual on the street, as a kind of broader commentary of the social housing issues that exist in Toronto.

Compositionally the image is simple: a pair of men looking in the direction of the source of the light, and not towards the half shrouded person on the sidewalk, and moving towards the light. Behind them the aperture of the light beam starts to close, but the reader of the photograph can see the sparkle of youth (the new, glass, building) as juxtaposed agains the old (Toronto’s historical city hall). The young reflects the old, reminding us that youth is impermanent. As I said: it’s not a deep photograph nor are any particularly special tricks used to make it.

I often linger when I find light that I like for at least a couple minutes, to see if more interesting (or any interesting!) subjects come to fill the scene. Other times I’ll recompose and work the scene a little bit. But I have to admit that staying put is something that I need to get better with: it’s not enough to just linger for 5-10 minutes!

The above set of images aren’t touched up and are a few of the ‘raw’ versions of images I took and normally wouldn’t post (I took a total of about 20 frames before I settled on the one at the top of the post). I, personally, learn a lot from the older Magnum photos that include contact sheets.

While my rougher images aren’t the same, nor as descriptive, as contact sheets maybe they’ll be helpful to someone else when they are thinking of weighing a scene. Or maybe just to make clear that the admittedly very amateur images I make involve a lot more than just one lucky capture (with a handful of exceptions of course).

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Aside

Warning Shots From The FTC On AI

The FTC has a very direct and to the point post about things that businesses should consider ahead of integrating generative A.I. into business offerings:

  1. Should you even be making or selling it?
  2. Are you effectively mitigating the risks?
  3. Are you over-relying on post-release detection?
  4. Are you misleading people about what they’re seeing, hearing, or reading?

The FTC is not, of course, saying that they oppose the integration of A.I. into products. But they are being very clear that companies should do their due diligence ahead of such integrations or else run the risk of government investigations driven to protect consumers’ interests.

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    Aside Quotations

    What to Learn From the Silicon Valley Bank Collapse

    Look, if you think the fact that my Internet of Shit door-lock failed because the company that designed it made no plan to let me into my house if they went out of business would make me sympathetic to that company, you are out of your fucking mind.

    Cory Doctorow, “Learning from Silicon Valley Bank’s apologists”

    The Internet-of-shit is real and we can only hope that the threats associated with their bank collapsing will teach a generalizable lesson.

    I’m…..not optimistic.

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    Photo Essay Photography

    Winter Stations 2023

    For the past five to six years or so I’ve been going to the Winter Stations outdoor art exhibit in the Beaches area of Toronto. Each year there is an international public competition between artists to put up architectural exhibits that include or encompass a lifeguard station that is set up along the Beach. Depending on the year there is, or isn’t, snow on the ground.

    Families, children, and dogs all show up to enjoy (and try to understand!) the various exhibits that go up each year. At this point I see it as one of my ‘Toronto rituals’; the exhibition became important to me many years ago and I’ve refused to let that change. This part of the city, for as long as it lasts, is part of my experience of the city of Toronto itself and the ritual of seeing the exhibitions is part of what it is for me to be a Torontonian.

    There’s a lot to enjoy about the experience, not the least being the presence of ‘typical’ beach stuff like the Muskoka chairs that people use along with the moderate starkness of the beach in a relatively inhospitable period of time. Some times that I’ve been to the exhibit has seen me shivering despite wearing multiple layers, along with an insulated vest and long wool coat with wool mittens and hat. Others have seen me just get wet with the rain as it pours onto the same kind of outfit. Fortunately it was a relatively balmy -2 degrees (Celsius) with no precipitation and I stayed warm the whole time, this year!

    Each time I come to the art exhibit I not only feel a bit like I’m going through a Toronto-ritual I’ve developed but, also, it reminds me a bit of growing up along the Atlantic. The water isn’t salty and the life guard stations are a lot closer to the water, but it’s about the closest I’m likely to get to my historical home as is likely to occur.

    One of the things that I always seem to look for when at this event is the kind of starkness or minimalism that is present in the exhibits. They need to stand up to the elements and, also, the destructive nature of children. And so many of the exhibitions are robust without much decoration. Years ago, there was an exhibit that encouraged children to (and I’m quoting) “interact” with the exhibit. It was ruined by the time that I appeared, though kids still liked jumping on all the damaged bits.

    I had the pleasure this time of visiting the exhibit with my partner and a friend who generously put up with me making photos while they had conversations with one another. Despite being the person who was responsible for dragging people to the event—though it wasn’t this cold this time!—I was probably less present and/or took too much time doing my own thing than was likely appreciated. Both are long forgiving in their willingness to indulge me in my hobby.

    Each time I return to this part of Toronto I’m reminded of my past: this was where I lived, many moons ago, and where some life changing stuff happened in my life. There’s always a sense of renewal—insofar as the art and people are different—along with a sense of the past that haunts me whenever I walked along this part of Lake Ontario.

    At the same time, it’s always invigorating: it’s a place that reminds me of what once was and what is, now. And how great that now is!

    Some of the images I captured while at the exhibition this year, such as the above image of the empty chairs behind the fence, remind me that this space will be renewed soon with beach goers visiting and a liveliness that belies the current (general) absence of humans. Toronto ebbs and flows, and its residents will soon flow back to this part of the city once the weather improves some. I’ll look forward to returning to the Beaches—and capturing them in photographs—when the seasons have shifted!

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    Aside Links

    Felony Contempt of Business Model

    Cory Doctorow has a great analysis of Netflix and it’s efforts to define (and delimit) what constitutes a family. The real kicker, though, is the final paragraph:

    When [Netflix] used adversarial interoperability to build a multi-billion-dollar global company using the movie studios’ products in ways the studios hated, that was progress. When you define “family” in ways that makes Netflix less money, that’s felony contempt of business model.

    Netflix: a company the whole family can appreciate. Just perhaps not together.