One of the most exciting realms of computer science, at least from my appreciation, is the bipolar field of artificial intelligence. Bipolar, I say, because of it’s tremendous ups and downs that seem to cycle like the seasons (not surprisingly, the times when the hype that surrounds the field fails to live up to its promise and a lack a funding derived thereof are called AI winters). During each new cycle, some models that were discarded as useless and naive in the previous iteration of innovation re-emerge in more mathematically sound incarnations that add the necessary rigor to produce meaningful results. One of the greatest example of this type of behavior is the story of the perceptron, a predictor function based on a simple threshold value that roughly models how a neuron reacts given some stimulus. The perceptron was heavily criticized in the late 60’s by the highly cited work of Marvin Minsky and it was more or less abandoned until the return of AI during the 90’s, when the concept of neural networks became formalized and empowered through the backpropagation learning techniques.

We are now living inside of one of those AI summers (the opposite of the AI winters), precisely when the field starts gathering the hype of what it is capable of doing. Like the resurrection of the perceptron, we are now experiencing the resurrection of deep network architectures. You see, quite a few years back, when neural networks were proven effective for some pretty neat tasks (such as recognizing your handwriting in your documents automatically), all kinds of research spawned around them. One of these threads of investigation was construction of multi-layered networks, that had enhanced capabilities as more layers were added (well, sort of, there are some technical issues that have something or other to do with “over-training” the network). However, as more layers were added, the complexity of the learning algorithm increased, to a point that it became unfeasible. Thus, deep architectures were forgotten for some time, until the recent advancements in deep belief networks have made them trendy once more.

Another characteristic of the cyclic nature of AI is the number of its applications in fields other than pure computer science. When there is a burst of innovation in AI, and AI is trendy enough, people all around science and engineering want to apply the new methods to their problem. Sadly, most of them fail (yep, most of them because they haven’t got the slightest clue as how the method truly works…this is in part because the innovation is so, well, new, that even the inventors of the method do not have a complete view of its limitations), but those that do succeed more often than not rebrand the method and make it a subfield of their field (OMG! This support vector machine method works really great on predicting climate changes, let’s change tweak it and say that we are doing, err, non-linear adaptive meteorology) and the credit to the original method is a bit lost in the trail of application. Both effects when combined take important credibility away from the AI folks, who are most of the time too occupied trying to make the toaster talk to them or teaching their car to park itself in dukes-of-hazard-fashion to even notice (until funding suddenly starts faltering, in which case the guy with the poetic toaster swears revenge, which leads to flying, MIG-equipped toasters and other crazy stuff).

Being in a field that makes heavy use of AI, I cannot help but notice the difference between doing science with these powerful statistical and heuristic tools (which I like to call meta-modeling) and doing it in the old-school Newton-Hilbert-inspired framework. Because  perhaps of my pure math bias in higher education, I consider standard modeling as the premier, elegant way of describing the world. I definitely enjoy more the solution of counting the number of alveoles we have through some powerful group-theoretic theorem than through the classification and analysis of all images of the human lungs available through some machine learning method. Elegance is a compact approach that masterfully brings down a problem with seemingly little effort, and most AI applications lack this (note that the model per se may be quite elegant, but the application may be not). Thus, to my appreciation, AI should be used as the tool that will help you leverage your problem when standard, classical models fail or are too limitative (one great example is the prediction of the variation of RNA splicing across tissues, a problem in which we have so little insight and that was recently addressed using a complex code that was selected using AI techniques and models). It does not entitle you, however, to abuse it by applying it to everything you come up to. This is specially true in the biological domains. Even if you are versed enough in the art, even if you know how to pick the right set of features to make things work, such model should be either used as a first rough draft to better understand the problem, or as a last resort when things aren’t really working out (and will most probably fail with AI as well, but hey, it is worth a shot no?). It is more intellectually satisfying (and challenging) to come up with a simple equation, relation or whatever that faithfully describes your system than to use a computational powerhouse to predict your system’s outcomes.

Hi,

I write to you from a special place in a piece of fiction. This is ten years away from the date that you will be reading this and the ideas that are imprinted in this awkward flow of words are the truth (which, as you might suspect, is never hidden but rarely found). This is the telling of a story from the Time that Never Existed, and as such, you should approach it with caution. In that context, let us begin.

Many years back, I awakened in the middle of a ruined hospital bed inside a wild and beautiful garden. Back then, I barely had a mind to convince myself to eat and drink, let alone ask questions about the situation of my world. For many weeks I lived in a strict routine of waking up, eating crickets, drinking mud, and resting in the sinking bed that was ever-present in the center of the garden. This animalistic lifestyle would vanish shortly after the 2nd dayweek of the New Time. In the day 48 after my first blink, I found a notebook that contained several sketches depicting a simple, yet elegant, face of an astoundingly beautiful woman. In the pencil slashes that permeated the pages of the drawing pads, the woman was always in the company of a man that vaguely resembled my distorted reflection in the local pond, located 23.4 meters from the bed, approximately 24 degrees in direction from the pillow, clockwise to itself. Upon the finishing of my appraisal of such delightful drawings, I remembered clearly that I had been with you, touching you, kissing you, praising you. After the epiphany, I left the garden to explore the Outer Realm. From that moment onward, I was determined in completing the task of finding my memories that would link me to you.

Needless to say the task was daunting, and the places that knew of the artifacts that contained the essence of my gnosis were few, strange, and scarce. Some were trapped inside the workings of a gnome made completely of clockwork that was in dire need of repair, while others I found simply dancing with the autumn leaves in a forest that once existed but is now long gone. But by far the strangest was found resting in the ears of an elephant that lived happily in the imagination of an old dame that died two hundred and seventy five days ago.

I do not regret my journey, though it was harsh, challenging, and sometimes with unexpectedly cruel rewards. As you may know, our memories together are not all made of dreams come true, love, and fantasy. Some contain dark feelings of hatred and disappointment. Experiencing some of these was like dying a second time. I writhed in pain upon touching the source of their essence and would sometimes cry for days after reliving our most vicious fights. However, as I stated earlier, now that I am done, I think that the effort was well spent and the reward by far surpasses the sacrificed that had to be made.

Having completed my task, I sat down, if just for a moment, to contemplate the Great Blue Sea. I must tell you that it was almost as beautiful as you will be, having the threads of sun dancing, and giggling, and setting all kinds of little shops that sell candy and enlightenment. The sunset came to an end and I stood up to continue my journey. My suit was elegant, my mind was sharp, and my eyes could pierce through the veil of the world as easily as they had been able to convince you to scream and shout and sing with me. Love was tiring and lovely. It was a summer’s breeze, a drop of honey that refreshes the inner workings, that constantly pushed me towards the boundary. The rim of the World was near, and I could sense it’s gentle waves resonate with my fingertips.

The NeXT step was not clear to me at the moment, but only the notion of one day finding you, resting on the shoulders of some Tree of Peaches.

(call/cc to-the-outer-realm)

I finally performed a  long due wordpress update. This was in response  to various spam attacks that used several (yes, several!) SQL injection vulnerabilities of previous versions. I hope this will finally put an end to the madness.

Hay un misterio que escapa las aras de la razón y la bondad
Cuya sombra enternece el espíritu cansado y abatido
Y que respira el viento de mil canciones que coronan las figuras de la nada.
Sus dos rostros se enredan y desatan, bailando al ritmo de mi mirar
De cuando en cuando rojo es su destello, de cuando en cuando negro es su cantar
Su mano me alza y me ilumina más allá de los cien sefirotes
y me da a probar la divinidad del placer y de la muerte,
que se revela en infinita simetría,
de caricies y besos por venir.
La danza, que con gracia la efectúa
trasladando sus caderas, rosando sus breves linos,
la dibuja en las arenas y mueve mundos y destinos,
mientras el más humilde de sus egos reclama atención desenfadada
a la que atiendo y le ruego, me otorgue el pase al fin de las delicias.
¡O musa, O musa!
Tu nombre es vislumbrado,
y por sabios fue celebrado,
desde las más altas de las cimas
desde las más vírgenes colinas.
No hay fuego que queme el vientre,
tan potente como el tuyo.
No hay veneno más cercano,
que el de la anestesia de tus manos,
que al corazón, con certera obsesión,
acarician y hacen ocasión para ahogarlo en sentimientos
alejados de este mundo y sus parcos pensamientos.
En la brisa te descifro, pues he sido iluminado entre círculos plateados
de fragancia franca y averiada por los pasos de irregular geometría,
unos que siguen y otros que guían, unos que lanzan
y otros que se guardan en rebelde armonía.
Así, caminamos por la playa,
y te sabes perdida y encontrada,
sabes que en mis labios está al final nuestra morada.
O en otra ocasión, sobre mi movimiento reposas
y miras al cielo color chocolate, que reina a tus ojos y a tus rosas.
Miras expectativa, sabiendo que pasará lo que tendrá que pasar
y te pregunto la más inverosímil de las preguntas.
Sabes la respuesta, que no es hablada y la meces sin cesar
Y se cierra el cielo y el mundo. con nuestros respiros detenidos,
con nuestras manos juntas.
¡O musa, O musa!
Tu nombre es vislumbrado,
y por mi es venerado,
desde las más altas de las cimas
desde las más añoradas colinas.

-Suna

Since the second week of my first quarter in Stanford, my routine has been established as work at the lab, work at home, sleep at home (I’m not sleeping at the lab…yet), and eating whatever is possible in the middle. Last week (or was it the week before? I loose track of time…), I bought the Final Fantasy Tactics for PSP. This is a game that I missed back when the PS one was still raging and have longed to play it ever since. However, due to my workload, I have not even opened it and will probably not be able to until the end of the quarter. Being videogames an activity that demands high focus and quite some time, I have traded their joy for the more quick and turn-a-page e-manga. Specifically, I have rediscovered my passion for manga in Onidere, not because of the deep character personalities with a post-apocalyptic measure of the post-modern archetypes of youth (such as Akira), or because the highly stylized and seductive artwork (like any Satoshi Urushihara manga), but because of the honesty of the romantic comedy and the total lack of rationality. I remembered why, back when I was 14, I became an anime addict when I watched Ranma 1/2 (speaking of which, a new OVA is going to come out next year, and the animation looks just like a Miyasaki movie…kudos to that). Truth be told, my vision of true love is mostly based on the (granted) simplistic nature of Ranma and Akane’s relationship. Reading Onidere was like returning to those years where seeing how a girl’s face could blush by simply thinking of his boy would make me smile.

I now have a Ranma-Akane relationship of my own (she doesn’t hit me with mallets…most of the time), and it’s heart-warming to know that I have someone who keeps blushing when she thinks about me. I guess life can be pretty anime-ish at times.

Once there was a way to go back homeward…

Now the road is lost. Now the time is gone. All that is left is a future full of pale shadows,

To travel the far distances of places strange and foreign.

The certainty of it all beckons and gives way to the fear that has been building inside.

It is an expected outcome, a weight that must be carried, diligently and with a smile.

Love is dead. Long live Love!

As time moves on, we forget about projects that add spice and flavor to our life. A blog is one of such projects and a great way to unwind and write some thoughts. This blog has been dead for a while,  and since I have a lvl 9 spell to spare I will proceed to revive it. I will write with force and constance, so stay tuned!

Recently, I started to notice the true impact of the now everywhere-accessed internet. People blogging all the time, posting to twitter, ogling facebook photos, chatting away from their cellphones, giving their opinion on the latest piece of news, reading rss, searching, etc. The web has truly become another dimension, another place, another world (those who have played Mage: The Ascension know what I’m talking about). For those of you who know me, you would think that these changes would make me extremely happy and excited…and a past version of myself would. However, time and experience have changed me. I don’t feel I fit in the model of a person who spends his whole life online. I think social apps like facebook are overrated, a fad, a bubble that is going to burst (see MIT’s Technology Review take on this).

A friend told me recently that she hadn’t seen me code in weeks. She told me, just pull my leg, that if I stopped coding I would stop being computer scientist.The truth is, I love to code. I love to program, in different languages, in different ways. However, contrary to the frenetic activity that is programming, I also like to sit a while and think. I haven’t write much code recently because I have been busy reading some papers in order to write a research proposal for my Phd application. There have been entire days that I have spent thinking about the problems I want to address in my research. I have been generating ideas, algorithms, and methods that will make up my project for the next four to eight years (depending on the program that I get accepted to). In this way, I have been true to my computer scientist nature.

Google AJAX API (GWT and such and such)

As was to be expected, Google kept on promoting its AJAX API. GWT was the big star here, which as you may know features a Java to Javascript “compiler”. I’m not really into GUI development (I like to mess with the business and data tiers instead) but I’m a big AJAX fan nonetheless (for one thing, it’s not flash =P). Still, GWT seems to me a bit limited. It’s code generation is neat, but as I see it, you can’t do AJAX if you don’t do AJAX, that is, if you don’t handle de requests by yourself. I still can’t find an AJAX API that I am satisfied with. Maybe I’m just to picky, I don’t know. Ok, so that was my excuse not to enter the AJAX conferences.

Android

Ah, Android, I know thee well. Since I have been messing around with the API since the SDK went prerelease, I tried to avoid the Android 101 talks. In the introductory talk, they showed what Android was capable of. In very short words, Android is Google’s iPhone. Sure, it’s (or will be) open source and more of a defined stack and standard to be followed but Apple’s influence is really there. One thing that provoked ‘Ohhhs and Aaaahs’ is when they accessed a San Francisco street in Street View and panned through it by actually panning the device (as if the device was a window to the street). This is very showy for sure, but as tech critic I must say that it is not that hard to do. I mean, it’s been a while since accelerometers got their own software abstraction and became easy to use, so the real technical achievment there is Street View, which is not Android’s. Of course, since most of the guys at the conference are web devs, so they may not know that (please don’t get mad at me =P).  The interesting stuff came when they talked about the DalvikVM which modifies java’s bytecode so that it becomes more efficient in both CPU and memory consumption at certain times (I just loved to see mmap and malloc mentioned, it was refreshing =). Some things may be tweaked before version 1.0 and you can see that the team is still making some crucial decisions. So Android’s still in Zygote stage (pun intended), I’ll just wait for its birth =)