All Quotes

"As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to reshape international security narratives and paradigms, I am pleased to welcome Dr. Paul Scharre. Paul Scharre is the vice president and director of studies at Center for a New American Security. He is the award-winning author of the book Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. His first book Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War has won several awards and is seen as instrumental in understanding modern warfare."

"We are in a society where nobody trusts that women can do it, it’s so challenging here. There’s the family burden, the social burden, and of course one’s career. Maybe it’s the way I was raised in the eastern part of Ethiopia."

"There is growing recognition and action to promote the balanced and meaningful participation of women and men in global security and disarmament processes. Through my position, I will actively support efforts to promote greater diversity of perspectives, equal participation of women and men and give room to innovate. I will also endeavor to bridge the gaps between disarmament policy and emerging fields such as in science and technology"

"The human brain is a marvel. A mere 20 watts of energy are required to power the 22 billion neurons in a brain that’s roughly the size of a grapefruit. To field a conventional computer with comparable cognitive capacity would require gigawatts of electricity and a machine the size of a football field."

"As chair, my top priority is to work with the entire Board of Trustees and the president and administration of the College to ensure the long-term strength of Union."

"In order to do this, we must ensure that we attract and invest the necessary human and financial resources to be a leader in a highly competitive higher education market.Thanks to all the stakeholders in Union, we have an excellent base upon which to build."

"Union has many strengths, including our outstanding faculty, administration and staff, our beautiful campus, and many supporters. In the end though, it comes down to the quality and diversity of our students, and the differentiated education that we provide."

"We need to continually leverage our strengths in combining liberal arts and engineering, and our geographic location, to provide unique opportunities for students."

"I believe that Union is in a very solid position. That said, we must understand that higher education is facing many challenges due to demographics, cost, technology and the like. Recognizing this, we have a very strong strategic plan that we are implementing."

"The president, working with our board, has laid out a set of project priorities that support our strategic plan. These projects require substantial financial investment and time to complete. We are discussing several aging facilities such as dining, housing, the arts, and Science and Engineering."

"Union is a unique institution and we occupy a special place in higher education. Quite frankly, we are very distinctive. I have come to realize what this singular education has meant to my success in life and my career. I simply felt that I must give back and help ensure that this college prospers and is available for generations to come."

"I was lucky enough to have the Adirondacks close by growing up in the Capital District. I have also felt that Union needs to take more advantage of our location near the Adirondacks, the capital, and many high tech corporations. When the opportunity arose for the College to acquire the center, it was a perfect opportunity for us to step up and make it happen. We are thrilled to see the center’s programs expanding, and so many students, faculty, and neighbors benefiting from it."

"Like so many students, my experience at Union was incredible. As a physics major, I naturally took a lot of science and math, but two things stood out for me. First, I was able to take world-class liberal arts classes in addition to all the science and math. I particularly enjoyed political science and psychology. This part of my education was so foundational to developing my thinking and handling of complex problems to this day. Secondly, the direct relationships with faculty were critical. It allowed me to do research and be responsible for complex scientific equipment, which helped prepare me for graduate school and my career. This is very rare at the undergraduate level."

"We were not asked to write a thesis in the mid ‘70’s at Union. I did do about a year and a half of lab and research work in X-ray fluorescence ( X-rays that are generated when a material is bombarded with an energetic beam). In my case, we had received a particle accelerator from GE that needed rebuilding, and my adviser, Professor Dennis Pilcher, had acquired a state-of-the-art detector. I had the unique opportunity to assemble and perform research with this advanced capability. It turned out to be directly relevant to my graduate studies and first job at IBM."

"There were so many faculty and students that left their imprint on me at Union. I would call out my physics adviser, Professor E. Pilcher, as being very special. He was a brilliant, kind, gentle man, who took this young student under his wing and taught me so much. He not only taught me physics and how to work in a lab doing research, but he taught me how to use scientific methods to explore nature. Perhaps most importantly though, he taught me how integrate these lessons in to my life."

"Not surprisingly, most of what I read these days are scientific articles and books. I have become particularly interested in the future of “Cognitive Computing,” or what some may call Artificial Intelligence (AI). While we will never be able to replicate the amazing human brain, I firmly believe that we can build machines to supplement our human intelligence. Think of what this could mean to such fields as healthcare, where doctors are being swamped with more discoveries and data (such as genomic data) than they can possibly make sense of, much less act on. This technology will help transform healthcare, providing better outcomes at lower cost."

"In this area, H. Nagamochi is a powerful partner and, with him, we recently published Algorithmic Aspects of Graph Connectivity from Cambridge University Press."

"From the nineties to the first decade of the new century, my research interest has been gradually shifted to the application side, and we tried to develop heuristic algorithms for various combinatorial optimization problems."

"In these years, local-search based heuristic algorithms, now called metaheuristics, became popular, although they do not have solid theoretical basis. These algorithms include genetic algorithms, simulated annealing, tabu search and so forth. As it is very complicated and time consuming to develop good metaheuristic algorithms, we were inclined to target those problems as general as possible, so that our products can be used by many people to solve their problems."

"For this purpose we have chosen such standard problems as constraint satisfaction problem, resource constrained project scheduling problem, vehicle routing problem and generalized assignment problem, to develop metaheuristic algorithms. Some of these turned out to be very useful and are currently used by many practitioners, partly because our codes are included in the commercial package NUOPT released from Mathematical Systems Inc."

"I am glad to see these outcomes. Jointly with M. Yagiura, we wrote a textbook Combinatorial Optimization - Metaheuristics published from Asakura Shoten."

"“To suggest that we democratize Al to reduce asymmetries of power is a little like arguing for democratizing weapons manufacturing in the service of peace. As Audre Lorde reminds us, the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.”"

"“It is a common practice of life to focus on the world immediately before us, the one we see and smell and touch every day. It grounds us where we are, with our communities and our known corners and concerns. But to see the full supply chains of Al requires looking for patterns in a global sweep, a sensitivity to the ways in which the histories and specific harms are different from place to place and yet are deeply interconnected by the multiple forces of extraction"

"Controlling time — whether via the clocks for churches, trains or data centers — has always been a function of controlling the political order.”"

"From the perspective of deep time, we are extracting Earth's geological history to serve a split second of contemporary technological time, building devices like the Amazon Echo and iPhone that are often designed to last for only a few years."

"In one case, Amazon negotiated a memorandum of understanding with a police department in Florida, discovered through a public records request filed by journalist Caroline Haskins, which showed that police were incentivized to promote the Neighbors app and for every qualifying download they would receive credits toward free Ring cameras. The result was a “self-perpetuating surveillance network: more people download Neighbors, more people get Ring, surveillance footage proliferates, and police can request whatever they want,” Haskins writes. Surveillance capacities that were once ruled over by courts are now on offer in Apple’s App Store and promoted by local street cops. As media scholar Tung-Hui Hu observes, by using such apps, we “become freelancers for the state’s security apparatus."

"It’s that the NIST databases foreshadow the emergence of a logic that has now thoroughly pervaded the tech sector: the unswerving belief that everything is data and is there for the taking. It doesn’t matter where a photograph was taken or whether it reflects a moment of vulnerability or pain or if it represents a form of shaming the subject. It has become so normalized across the industry to take and use whatever is available that few stop to question the underlying politics.”"

"What epistemological violence is necessary to make the world readable to a machine learning system? AI seeks to systematize the unsystematizable, formalize the social, and convert an infinitely complex and changing universe into a Linnaean order of machine-readable tables. Many of AI’s achievements have depended on boiling things down to a terse set of formalisms based on proxies: identifying and naming some features while ignoring or obscuring countless others. To adapt a phrase from philosopher Babette Babich, machine learning exploits what it does know to predict what it does not know: a game of repeated approximations. Datasets are also proxies—stand-ins for what they claim to measure. Put simply, this is transmuting difference into computable sameness.”"

"Over and over, we see the ideology of Cartesian dualism in AI: the fantasy that Al systems are disembodied brains that absorb and produce knowledge independently from their creators, infrastructures, and the world at large. These illusions distract from the far more relevant questions: Whom do these systems serve? What are the political economies of their construction? And what are the wider planetary consequences?”."

"Ultimately, 'data' has become a bloodless word; it disguises both its material origins and its ends. And if data is seen as abstract and immaterial, then it more easily falls outside of traditional understandings and responsibilities of care, consent, or risk."

"South Africa has made significant contributions to global research. For instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we played a crucial role in identifying and understanding the Beta variant. The NRF supported this work, which gained global recognition. However, it is worth noting that some reactions were less favorable, with countries closing their borders to South Africans! Still, this showcases the impact of South African research."

"We also contributed to the global fight against COVID-19 by sharing technology and research on ventilators, even when many were focused on their immediate needs."

"In South Africa, we’ve taken proactive steps to address critical gaps and challenges. During the ventilator shortage, we used technology from the field of astronomy to develop our own ventilators. This was a necessity since ventilators were unavailable for purchase. These are the kinds of innovative solutions we pursue in the healthcare sector."

"Our work in physics and nuclear science has been remarkable. We recently completed the construction of the largest cyclotron on the African continent at NRF-iThembaLabs. This facility supports research in areas like tuberculosis and cancer treatment, including nuclear medicine. Our research covers a wide spectrum of fields."

"We explore diverse areas, including humanities, to address issues like migration and population movements between our country and neighbouring nations. Understanding these dynamics can also benefit policymaking and service provision when individuals move between countries."

"But love's gonna bring you home, Even God didn't see it comin'. But no matter where you're at, We'll always find the way back."

"I'd like to get lost on some old back road, Find a shade tree and a honey hole. And talk to my grandpa again. And I see God in everything: The trees and pain and nights in the spring. So why do I still long for a home?"

"So let me go down the line, Let me feel it all, joy, pain, and sky. So let me go down the line, We all burn, burn, burn, and die."

"Give me my dawns back 'Cause everything that dies makes its way on back. I lost her last July in a heart attack. I need one small victory."

"We're laying on the roof of my car, Feelin' young, feelin' numb, feelin' starved Of all the things that a moment can be. This one's best kept a memory, The purest parts of my heart are you and me."

"You won't find no answers safe at home, You can't learn heartbreak from a poem. And every hard time, song rhyme, friend you've got, You'll have, with Heaven on top. You'll have, with Heaven on top."

"Well, the love that you got Is the love that I need. It's in the air of these hills And the blood that I bleed. And the love that you gave For the awful shape I'm in Led me through the day So I can find my hope again."

"I'm movin' at God speed. Only God and my mama know what I need. And I feel the hardwood floors on my knees, As I beg you just to take it easy on me. I'm movin' at God speed."

"Sweet DeAnn, I miss you so, And your words go where I go. The reasons? I don't know, But I'll sing 'em loud and slow. So you can hear me from the Heavens And you can draw my thunder down. I miss havin' you around, But in my heart, you're always found."

"Come as you are, however broken, And we will see if we can make you whole again. Come as you are, with your heart wide open; The bridges that you've burned, they are still there, just floatin'."

"You don't have to drink tonight. Why don’t we just get some sleep? 'Cause I'm tired of cryin’ in driveways As you slur the words you speak. I know growin' up Has been an evil thing to you. Makes you awfully hard to love From a lover's point of view."

"'Cause from where I'm standin’, You got a long climb ahead. I'll be there to wipe the vomit When you cannot lift your head. 'Cause a lover doesn't leave When times like these get dark. I'll be there to watch the sunrise When we reclaim your heart."

"Was a boy who was a dreamer and he flew so high and proud In a world full of people out to cut his young ass down. No one ever understood a single word he said; They cast him to the wolves when he wasn't well and fed.But, boys, we've got a riser, a riser in our midst, And he will get the last laugh if it's the last thing he did. And he used to roll around in that red dirt mud, But now he's skippin' town and that dreamer's out for blood."

"Until the leaving leaves this house, no, we ain't going out 'Til I make some promises that I can't keep. And I wish I could explain how the toxins in my brain Get me so damn down sometimes I can't speak And you'll try to understand why I can't be a better man, But it's hard when I'm yelling at you in the street. So if leaving comes to staying and you walk yourself away, Leave knowing that no one could love you more than me."

"We're having an all-night revival, Someone call the women and someone steal the Bible. For the sake of my survival, Baptize me in a bottle of Beam, put Johnny on the vinyl."