So four years ago I was burying my wife. I have vivid memories of that time. It seems like a different life since then. I know things moved swiftly after her death and I am glad they did. I feel my kids and I am in a better place. I still hate that memory. I still have anger when I think on everything.
My sister got me an Amazon Echo. After some serious frustrations in getting it setup it has become a point of amusement to all. Since then it seems everyone (including myself) are asking the most mundane questions "Alexa - what is the weather?, Alexa - what do you think of Siri?, Alexa - Do you send your data to the government?, etc." The best so far is when I asked her how she can tell between right and wrong... her response... "Hmm. I don't know about that." This reminds me of the homeschooling Jan and I were involved in with our kids. We used a "Thomas Jefferson Education" or TJEd for short. In this curriculum it is essentially broken into three phases - Core, Love of Learning, and Scholar. The point of the Core phase is to instill ethics into the student before they learn anything. The Love of Learning phase is to instill a love of learning that will enable the learner to enjoy learning and make it a life-long endeavor. Scholar phase is for deep diving into some curriculum. I'm not talking about studying for a research paper but rather a deeper dive into everything and anything about the subject matter.
Anyway - ethics seems to be a missing important key to lots of political and social media discussions. Alexa reminds me of what you get with technology without any ethics learning. So - from someone who deals with artificial intelligence (AI) at work I am intrigued at what the Amazon Echo can help with as well as what it could hurt. I'm also interested in learning how to train AI technology with ethics since AI technology will likely replace much of what is repeatable. I mean - you know the phrase "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime" right? The point of why this is important is what AI I believe has to yet learn. It can repeat tasks and tell how to tell what step to do next but I don't think it is yet at the point of being able to tell if it should do a certain task because of an ethical conflict. Anyway - that being said - Amazon Echo is something that is fascinating to me.
Emma and Spencer are heading up North this afternoon. I am going to run some errands with Samantha and life is getting back to normal.
Perhaps more later -
