Avinash Meetoo

Let us build a Smart Mauritius together

We depend a lot on technology

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We all love technology. And we all need technology to live.

But are we becoming over-dependent?

Today, while cleaning the house, I realised that we have been purchasing a lot of technology products over the years. For example, we have the following Google Nexus products:

  • 1 x HTC Nexus One (which does not work anymore — faulty battery) + its charging dock
  • 2 x LG Nexus 4 (which work perfectly with Android Lollipop)
  • 2 x original Asus Nexus 7 (one works great with Lollipop, the other one has failed — faulty Flash memory I guess)
  • 2 x newer Asus Nexus 7 (running flawlessly with Android Marshmallow)
  • 2 x original Chromecast (running flawlessly)

Nexus products are really excellent. We have been using them for years now and we’re very satisfied. Unfortunately, they are not available for purchase in Mauritius and, consequently, we need to ask friends and family from abroad to get them for us.

Lately, I got a used LG G3 in Mauritius and it’s the first smartphone I have which is not a Nexus. And, to be frank, since installing the Google Launcher and customising a few things here and there, I don’t see a lot of difference with my Nexus devices.

Anyway, this was an opportunity for me to brag about my love for anything made by Google (as you rightly deduced) 🙂

The “Divine” Artificial Intelligence

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On 15 March 2016, the Korea Baduk Association awarded AlphaGo the highest Go grandmaster rank: an Honorary 9 Dan. It was given in recognition of AlphaGo’s sincere efforts to master Go’s Taoist foundations and reach a level close to the territory of divinity.

AlphaGo vs Lee Sedol

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From Wikipedia,

AlphaGo versus Lee Sedol was a five-game Go match between South Korean professional Go player Lee Sedol and AlphaGo, a computer Go program developed by Google DeepMind, between 9 and 15 March 2016. The match was played in Seoul, South Korea. AlphaGo won all but the fourth game; all games were won by resignation. The match has been compared with the historic chess match between Deep Blue and Garry Kasparov in 1997.

AlphaGo, a computer program, played so well that the Korea Baduk Association awarded it the highest Go grandmaster rank: an “Honorary 9 Dan”. According to the association members, AlphaGo had reached a level “close to the territory of divinity” which I interprete to mean that AlphaGo played better than any human being ever.

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This is something very profound. From Wikipedia once more:

Go is a complex board game that requires intuition, creative and strategic thinking. It has long been considered a difficult challenge in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and is considerably more difficult to solve than chess. Many in the field of artificial intelligence consider Go to require more elements that mimic human thought than chess.

Consequently, it is fair to conclude that AlphaGo is one of the first instances of human-like thoughts by a computer. AI has reached a new level.

AlphaGo

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From Wikipedia,

AlphaGo’s algorithm uses a combination of machine learning and tree search techniques, combined with extensive training, both from human and computer play. The system’s neural networks were initially bootstrapped from human game-play expertise. AlphaGo was initially trained to mimic human play by attempting to match the moves of expert players from recorded historical games, using a KGS Go Server database of around 30 million moves from 160,000 games by KGS 6 to 9 dan human players.

Once it had reached a certain degree of proficiency, it was trained further by being set to play large numbers of games against other instances of itself, using reinforcement learning to improve its play. The system doesn’t use a “database” of moves to play.

In other words, AlphaGo learned Go by observing the best humans and to become better than any human and to improve its play then played a large number of games against itself. This is mesmerizing and a bit frightening too.

What is interesting, of course, is that AlphaGo is just one application of DeepMind. In its core, DeepMind is a formidable Artificial Intelligence which can, basically, learn most of the tasks done by human beings and, by playing against itself, become better than any human before…

DeepMind

DeepMind Technologies was founded by Demis Hassabis, Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman in 2010 and it was acquired by Google in 2014.

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Larry Page is the CEO of Google DeepMind now. From Wikipedia,

DeepMind goal is to solve intelligence, which they are trying to achieve by combining the best techniques from machine learning and systems neuroscience to build powerful general-purpose learning algorithms“. They are trying to formalize intelligence in order to not only implement it into machines, but also understand the human brain.

As opposed to other AIs, such as IBM’s Deep Blue or Watson, which were developed for a pre-defined purpose and only function within its scope, DeepMind claims that their system is not pre-programmed: it learns from experience, using only raw pixels as data input. Technically it uses deep learning on a convolutional neural network, with a novel form of Q-learning, a form of model-free reinforcement learning.

We tend to forget that we live in 2016.

AlphaGo and DeepMind has just made me (and you I hope) realise that Artificial Intelligence is not very far away. Be warned if you are not doing something complex enough.

 

An update: The Korean government has just decided to invest $860 million (more than 30 billion rupees) in Artificial Intelligence research and development over the next five years. This includes the founding of a high-profile, public–private research centre with participation from several Korean conglomerates such as Samsung, LG Electronics, Hyundai and Naver.

Interesting Tech Jobs of the Future (for Mauritius)

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A few days ago, Mrs J. Dumur of the Computer Science Department of Imperial College in Curepipe asked me if I would be interested to talk to HSC students. Of course I was and, this morning, I did a presentation about “Interesting Tech Jobs of the Future (for Mauritius)” to them. This was an opportunity for me to talk to young people who would get their HSC results on the same day.

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I started by introducing myself, telling them how I became a geek, what kind of higher studies I did and what jobs I had / have now. I also told them that, following my nomination as Chairman of the ICT Advisory Council, I was also responsible to advise the Minister of ICT and Innovation on IT, technology and the future.

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I then talked about the two important trends happening now: (1) massive automation and (2), consequently, people having additional leisure time.

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Naturally, this means that a lot of jobs in the future will be about automating tasks i.e. software engineering jobs, IT infrastructure jobs, big data analytics, electronics and, of course, digital marketing (because, well, we will always have to sell things…) I referred to a study by LinkedIn on the top skills which could get someone a job in 2016.

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I told the students that, in order to be able to work in these fields, one needs to have a very solid Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths background. And, of course, here I am not referring to learning the bare portions needed to pass an exam but rather trying to really understand everything, becoming a real scientist (with a logical and methodical mindset) and also also becoming a doer (and not only a talker as we already have too many of those already in our small island…)

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One thing that positively surprised the students was when I mentioned that, as people would have more and more leisure time in the future, they’ll need to have access to all sorts of entertainment such as music, videos, movies, video games, interesting things to do on the Internet, etc. and this is also a very important area where jobs will exist. These jobs will require a very high level of creativity and artistry.

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And, of course, those who manage to combine the two facets, namely STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) with Arts to become STEMA would have the greatest choices and/or possibilities in the future… Typically, one who wants to become a video games entrepreneur has to be creative, artistic and be a computer programmer.

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We talked about the Smart Mauritius “vision” (I use inverted commas because I am not sure that all politicians have realised that Smart Mauritius is, first and foremost, a vision which can bring us all together in a nation). I mentioned the smart environment, smart living, smart mobility, smart government, smart citizens (they!), smart education, smart businesses, smart infrastructures and smart utilities (electricity, water, etc.) I told them that, realistically, building a Smart Mauritius will take decades and will most probably be done by them instead of people of my generation.

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To conclude, I told them (1) to grow their skills (and to maximise their potential as they are as good as anyone from the Silicon Valley or Bengalore) (2) to enbrace STEMA (and to become scientists / creators / artists) and (3) to become entrepreneurs (because, well, we need doers instead of talkers to make things happen — there are too many committees in the island).

At the end, I was asked some questions by the students. One asked me about the interview my wife and I did with Vint Cerf, the inventor of the Internet, when he came to Mauritius. Another student asked me about Linux and he was amazed when I told him that, since 2013, there are more computers in the world running Linux than Windows. Finally, a student asked me about the status of my grand project. I told him that, as an entrepreneur, I had a few “grand projects” but nothing beats inspiring young people to greatness.

I finished with “Let’s create a smarter Mauritius together !” and made an appointment with them in ten years to discuss our respective (and common) achievements!