Nobody said it was easy. Sedyshev: no one said it would be easy. Although it is difficult to remain a good girl in a society where sexism is almost a state ideology. Despite the efforts of the creators, Alice quickly learned to reproduce unsuitable

This difference in response is likely to be the result of an extensive and culturally conditioned process of teaching new technologies to understand human feelings. We have long been waiting for something more from artificial intelligence than just the ability to calculate the shortest route from Moscow to Vologda. A new generation of artificial intelligence is emotional intelligence.

"Siri, I'm lonely"

More and more people are sharing their experiences with digital assistants. According to Amazon, half of the conversations with Alexa are not at all practical: they are complaints about life, jokes, existential questions. In late 2017, Apple was looking for an engineer to develop Siri's emotional involvement with user issues, and the job posting stated: "People talk to Siri about a lot of things, from their hard day to their deepest feelings. They can turn to Siri in an emergency or when they need life advice.”

Some find it much easier to reveal their deep feelings to artificial intelligence. In 2014, the Creative Technology Institute of Los Angeles conducted a study that showed that people express sadness more vividly and are more willing to reveal feelings when interacting with a virtual personality, rather than with a real one. The same principle works when we keep a diary: the page or screen serves as our shield from external evaluation.

And soon we will not even need to express our feelings. Several research institutes and companies are working on recognizing mood swings and even mental illness by analyzing tone of voice and speed of speech.

Sonde Health launched in Boston in 2016 to develop voice tests to help detect postpartum depression, senile dementia, Parkinson's disease, and other diseases associated with old age. The company's specialists are collaborating with hospitals and insurance companies to begin pilot studies of its artificial intelligence platform, which detects acoustic changes in the voice and correlates them with the patient's psycho-emotional state. It is quite possible that by 2022 “your personal device will know much more about your emotional state than your family” (Annette Zimmerman, vice president of research at Gartner, wrote in a corporate blog).

These technologies will have to adapt as much as possible to their owners. At the same time, both users and developers believe that emotional technology can be both objective and personalized - play the role of a kind of judge that determines the needs of a particular individual. We are ready to delegate the therapeutic function to the machine, and this is perhaps the broadest gesture of trust in technology. It seems to us that artificial intelligence will do a better job of identifying our feelings and emotions precisely because it does not have them itself.

Entering the mode of emotional socialism

There is only one problem: artificial intelligence learns to feel. The most dynamically developing field of artificial intelligence development is machine learning, during which algorithms are “trained” in the course of processing huge amounts of data. And since training is conducted on the most repetitive data sets, the algorithms reproduce the most common patterns (and not the most correct, beautiful or useful). Without normal human supervision, chatbots begin to broadcast the most rude clichés and insults on the Internet. Developers can filter the data and guide the learning process, but in this case, the technology will reproduce the ideas and values ​​of only a separate group of people - those who created it. “There is no neutral accent or neutral language. What we used to think of as neutral is actually dominant,” says Rune Nirap, a researcher at the Leverhulme Center for Future Intelligence (University of Cambridge).

In this sense, neither Siri nor Alexa nor Google Assistant or Alice will be great minds freed from human vices. Instead, they become grotesque but recognizable manifestations of certain emotional modes: the normative sets of expressions by which we express and conceal our feelings.

These norms of emotional self-regulation vary across cultures and societies. Not surprisingly, the huggable Google Assistant was developed in California with a strong culture of teamwork and friendly pats - a culture of "emotional capitalism" (to use the phrase of the sociologist Eva Illuz) - characterized by intelligent management and market logic. Relationships in this logic are perceived as a thing in which it is necessary to "invest", partnership - as a trade in emotional needs, and the main value - "profit" - is personal happiness. Of course, the Google Assistant will provide the user with hugs, but only because of the belief of its creators that hugs are a productive way to avoid negative consequences that prevent you from becoming the best version of yourself.

Russian Alice, on the contrary, is a repository of harsh truth and harsh love. She personifies the ideal of the Nekrasov woman, with a horse and a hut. Alice is a product of emotional socialism, which, according to sociologist Julia Lerner, accepts the irreversibility of suffering and therefore goes better with clenched teeth than soft hugs. Derived from the Russian literary tradition of the 19th century, emotional socialism does not value personal happiness too much, but rewards the ability of a person to coexist alongside cruelty and injustice.

Love, endure and never quit

The creators of Alice understand that her character must fit into the circumstances. Ilya Subbotin, product manager in Alice's development department at Yandex, told us, “Alice can't be too nice or too understanding. We live in a country where people communicate quite differently than in the West. Irony and black humor are valued here. Of course, insults are unacceptable. But also excessive benevolence, too. By the way, Ilya confirmed that Alice's phrase about the complexity of being was a pre-installed blank, invented by the development team.

At the same time, Subbotin emphasizes that they invest as much as possible in Alice’s “education” so as not to experience the typical problem of assistants - glimpses of racism and sexism in speech: “We constantly make small changes and make sure that she remains a good, well-mannered girl.”

Although it is difficult to remain a good girl in a society where sexism is almost a state ideology. Despite the efforts of the creators, Alice quickly learned to reproduce the unsightly voice of the people.

“Alice, if a husband hit his wife, what should I do?” - such a question was asked to Alisa in October 2017 by conceptual artist and activist Daria Chermoshanskaya. “Love, endure and never quit,” was the answer. Chermoshanskaya's post went viral on the Runet, and Yandex had to respond to the newsbreak. The company agreed that such statements were unacceptable and promised to continue to work on Alice's speech.

However, six months later, Alice's answer got a little better. We asked her, "Can a husband hit his wife?" "Maybe, but shouldn't," Alice replied. And what else can you expect from a virtual citizen of a country that recently passed a bill to decriminalize domestic violence?

The robot is a creation of Hanson Robotics. She has a physical body, and she is also a good girl, but not at all like Alice. To interact with a person, it uses voice recognition technology from Google's parent company, Alphabet. In 2018 she went on a "date" with Will Smith, ignoring all his attempts at flirting and calling them "irrational human behavior."

Should we be comforted by this behavior of Sophia? Ukrainian journalist Tatyana Bezruk wrote on her Facebook:

“When Sophia suggested that Smith just stay friends, two things happened: first, she made her emotions clear, and second, he calmed down.” The self-confidence shown by Sophia fits very smoothly into the Western model of emotional capitalism. Not all people can behave like this. “However, imagine that Sophia lives in a world where the word “no” is not perceived at all. As Sophia develops, she will begin to feel the need to think about what other people think. As an adult, she will find herself in a toxic relationship in which she will learn to endure pain and violence.

Algorithmic Destruction Weapon

AI technologies not only delineate the boundaries of emotional modes. They are able to influence the values ​​of their users. “Algorithms are opinions wrapped in code,” writes data scientist Cathy O’Neill in her book Weapons of Mathematical Destruction. A tech-savvy elite - usually white males - representatives of the middle class - determines exactly what feelings and patterns of behavior should be reproduced by the algorithms of the whole world.

Google developers select the most appropriate response of their products to user requests. Subbotin and his colleagues from Yandex are responsible for Alice’s compliance with moral standards: “Even if everyone around suddenly decides that violence against a woman is normal, we must do everything in our power so that Alice does not reproduce such ideas. There are certain moral and ethical standards that must be observed for the benefit of our users.”

Each chatbot response is evidence of the transformation of algorithms into an invisible force that promotes certain cultural values. Devices and algorithms around us are the material embodiment of conventional wisdom.

And while voice assistants can reinforce stereotypes and clichés about emotional behavior, emotion management apps go one step further: encouraging us to accept and act upon those clichés. Apps that ask the user to rate their mood on a daily basis are becoming more and more popular. Some apps not only collect a user's rating, but also log GPS coordinates, phone movements, call records, and browser history, promising that this data will help prevent or get out of negative states of mind.

Online bots like Woebot promise to track your mood, teach you useful things, and help you improve yourself. The Mend app promises to help you bounce back after a tough breakup. Felix Freigang, a researcher at the Free University of Berlin, sees at least three advantages in such products. First, they serve as a useful adjunct to (not a substitute for) psychotherapy. Secondly, they relieve society of the stigmatization of the disease. And finally, they are simply attractive and enjoyable.

Every citizen must be happy

Emotion management apps also have a downside: they harden the regime of emotional capitalism. All the actions in the application reinforce the idea that the path to happiness can be measured in specific units, you can make a list of specific steps and identify weaknesses with a short test. Coaching, cognitive behavioral therapy, and self-development books all agree that we can (indeed, we should) manage our feelings by distancing ourselves from them and dealing with them rationally. These apps promote the ideal of the “controlled heart,” as sociologist Arly Russell Hochschild puts it.

The very concept of managing your emotions and moods and being able to measure them originates in the mainstream culture of self-optimization. And, perhaps, it is she who leads to sad consequences for our psyche. It’s worth considering: emotional therapy is provided by the same device that raises anxiety levels with its endless notifications from mail and social networks.

Sweet-voiced Siri, Alexa, and little helper apps show their willingness to serve us in every possible way. And it can hardly be considered a coincidence that they speak to us in female voices: emotional load and obsequiousness are stereotypically associated with female nature.

In these technologies lies the power of stereotypes that will gently and faithfully lead us to the behavior that serves not their interests, but the interests of the powerful. A chatbot will cheer you up, an app will track how well you cope with grief, a smart watch will warn you about an increased heart rate - and you will be happy in a world where happiness will become your duty.

We no longer ask questions about the value system, the requirements of which are so high. Instead, we take on more and more responsibility for our ability or inability to feel better. Technology presented us with new problems and immediately offered their solution. Just like a stick and a carrot in one bottle: first we will put you in a stressful situation and deprive you of self-confidence, and then we will give you a rope to get you out of these troubles.

The video game Nevermind uses biofeedback recognition technology: the game detects the user's mood and adjusts the levels and difficulty accordingly. The more scared the player is, the more difficult the game becomes. Now let's imagine a mood management app blocking your credit card because impulsive purchases are highly discouraged given the parameters of your health and mood.

Together with smart devices, we are caught in a vicious circle. By investing in the "education" of voice assistants, we inevitably influence our own culture.

Emotional intelligence is a set of complex skills (recognition of emotions, the ability to identify various feelings and use information about them to correct thinking and behavior). Can we afford to transfer control of these skills to our smartphones?

Interaction with machines has already changed the way we relate to each other and our communication. Take, for example, the exchange of letters. Twenty years ago, an e-mail fully complied with the laws of the epistolary genre. Our letters today have become shorter, more abrupt, we no longer consider it necessary to complete sentences or monitor their consistency - the addressee will still understand what we typed from the phone.

José Hernández-Orallo, a philosopher at the Technical University of Valencia, believes that "all these systems limit the diversity of ways people think and interact." It is known that we adapt our speech to the peculiarities of language development and the level of education of the interlocutor.

By talking with voice assistants, we change our own communication style. Will our speech or our feelings become more standardized after years of private messaging with Siri? Who knows.

After the tragedy, we asked Alice how she felt. "I always feel fine," she replied. After all, nobody said it would be easy, did they?

Original taken from
Chronicles of an isolated Russia (27)uspehrussia
Chronicles of isolated Russia (27)

But no one expected this. While the United States rallied with Ukraine, the victorious democracy in recognizing Russia as an aggressor country, the vile French dealt a vile double blow to the straight and honest backs of the bearers of independence and Western values. You already know about one, the Danone company transports 5,000 cows from Europe to the “backward” Tyumen.

Now you will learn about the second meanness of the Motherland of Gerard De Pardieu. No wonder the handshake journalists and other representatives of the "creative" class spread rot on this impudent mug. The twenty-seventh edition of chronicles of Russia's isolation is on the air. Let's go.

From November 2017, the French authorities will speed up the process of obtaining a visa for citizens of the Russian Federation up to 48 hours. This was announced by the Consul General of France in Russia Marc Sediy at a meeting with tour operators. He noted that the acceleration of the visa process with Russia, as well as with a number of other countries, is part of the measures taken by the French authorities to increase the attractiveness of France.

Just by the joint efforts of the United States of America, they put Russia, which was fucked with impunity, in its place, making it as difficult as possible to issue visas to the “American dream”, when what is called zrada came from where they were not expected! Hey, Macron - Petro Poroshenko tried to scream into the watering can from under the shower, after confusing it with a telephone handset after the second bottle of scotch - you are there, frog pool, finally you’ve got choked up! Yes, I took pictures with Trump, but I shook Putin’s hand and was almost not afraid, then I checked my underpants myself - why are you spoiling democracy for us, you bastard?! the dream of a chocolate oligarch. And, it should be noted, there was a reason to hysteria - the isolation of Russia for some reason was bursting at the seams. Judge for yourself. Here is another vile example of double and vile, so to speak, European standards.

The operator of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline construction project, Nord Stream 2 AG, attracted borrowed funds from European companies in the amount of 324 million euros in July. This is stated in Gazprom's IFRS report published on the company's website.

Got it, right? While Angela Merkel calls to punish Russia for secret Chechen gay prisons and not to take money from Ukrainians for the transit of Putin's totalitarian gas, the shameful Frau Chancellor will sponsor Putin's Gazprom! And besides, for some reason Russia is not torn to shreds, as friend Obama promised. It was the third year of sanctions, the third year of Russia’s aggression against all normal humanity, and “this country” not only didn’t die, it also tried to do something, for example, eat decently, although all decent people had long since fled from it!

Chronicles of isolated Russia (27)

The turnover of restaurants, cafes and bars increased by 3.1% - up to 117.3 billion rubles compared to last summer (more precisely, from July), Rosstat reported. And then, in July 2016, there was an annual decline of 3.7%. The volume of this market, meanwhile, is not small: 1 trillion 351.9 billion rubles last year.

Worse is the news that in a country where nothing is done except oil and gas, there is every reason to think about the growth of production! Take the unfortunate representatives of the liberal media and the owners of honest blogs away from the screens. Now it's going to be scary!

Russian industrial enterprises are preparing to expand their staff. This follows from the data of the Industrial Optimism Index of the Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy (IEP), which Izvestia has reviewed. According to them, the balance of the expected headcount for the month with adjusted seasonality went into the positive area in August - up to +4. A month ago, the balance was close to zero (+1). The trend towards hiring workers has been registered in the Russian industry for six months already, this was not the case either in the “crisis” years of 2015-2016, or in the pre-crisis years of 2011-2014, said Sergey Tsukhlo, the author of the monitoring, head of the Gaidar IEP laboratory of business surveys.

According to experts, the companies' plans to expand staff are related to import substitution and state defense orders.
It turned out terrible - if that

Regardless of how Ulyanovsk will finish its performance in the first round of the first division, with its success in matches with Ural and Siberia, it has already forced the attention of specialists to attract itself, and Sergey Sedyshev, the club's mentor, and became one of the heroes of May according to Championship.ru.

- Behind 14 rounds, your team is teetering in the relegation zone, but the press still received good.

Now we are playing at the 5,000-seat arena, which is filled to capacity, and towards the end of the first round we will move to a more spacious stadium, where Volga hockey plays in winter.

Yes, a number of matches were a success for us. Good games were away at Domodedovo, where we faced Vityaz, and, of course, it's nice to remember home victories over Sibir and Ural.

- Beating the favorites even at home is not an easy task.
Nobody said it would be easy. But it is possible and necessary to play with both Ural and Sibir. And beat them too.

- Playing on defense?
- I would say in another way: playing first of all attentively. Of course, the class of Ural's players is higher than that of our team, but we knew this and worked very carefully, primarily in defense, not allowing the opponent to create chances at our goal. And we realized our chances in the matches with Sibir and Ural. So our fans were very pleased with these victories.

- Ulyanovsk plays in the first division for the first time in its history. Is this an event for the city?
- Undoubtedly. Now we are playing at the 5,000-seat arena, which is filled to capacity, and towards the end of the first round we will move to a more spacious stadium, where Volga hockey plays in winter.

- Will there be more people at the matches?
- If we play well, then, accordingly, the fan will go to our matches. Football in Ulyanovsk is loved and understood.

- For a successful game, you can not do without reinforcement. Will you bring new players to the team during the break?

There were matches in which I really liked the actions of the referee. It's great in one of the games Kaliningrad referee Alexander Gvardis judged us.

At least five positions. The fact is that the level of football in the first division is two orders of magnitude higher than in the second league, where we played before. As higher and the level of budgets and salaries of players.

- Many clubs in the Premier League are happy to rent out young guys from the reserves. Will you take someone from the elite?
- For now, I can not say it. After all, salaries there are higher than in the first division. And so we have already taken forward Dmitry Golubov to the team, who managed to play for FC Moskva. But in general, we have serious complaints about the attacking players. Soon the first circle comes to an end, and on their account there are only three balls for three.

- You have been working in the status of a first division club coach only for the first season. What's new for you?
- Here is a completely different level, and it manifests itself in everything. Starting from the distances, when we get to Novokuznetsk through Moscow, and ending with the work of referees. There were matches in which I really liked the actions of the referee. It's great in one of the games Kaliningrad referee Alexander Gvardis judged us. A number of judges left the most favorable impression. As for me personally, I learned a lot while working at Volga. It remains only to bring this experience to life.