AI Safety and Reproducibility: Establishing Robust Foundations for the Neuropsychology of Human Values

We propose the creation of a systematic effort to identify and replicate key findings in neuropsychology and allied fields related to understanding human values. Our aim is to ensure that research underpinning the value alignment problem of artificial intelligence has been sufficiently validated to play a role in the design of AI systems.Comment: 5 page

Integrative Biological Simulation, Neuropsychology, and AI Safety

We describe a biologically-inspired research agenda with parallel tracks aimed at AI and AI safety. The bottom-up component consists of building a sequence of biophysically realistic simulations of simple organisms such as the nematode $Caenorhabditis$ $elegans$, the fruit fly $Drosophila$ $melanogaster$, and the zebrafish $Danio$ $rerio$ to serve as platforms for research into AI algorithms and system architectures. The top-down component consists of an approach to value alignment that grounds AI goal structures in neuropsychology, broadly considered. Our belief is that parallel pursuit of these tracks will inform the development of value-aligned AI systems that have been inspired by embodied organisms with sensorimotor integration. An important set of side benefits is that the research trajectories we describe here are grounded in long-standing intellectual traditions within existing research communities and funding structures. In addition, these research programs overlap with significant contemporary themes in the biological and psychological sciences such as data/model integration and reproducibility.Comment: 5 page

HOPS 383: An Outbursting Class 0 Protostar in Orion

We report the dramatic mid-infrared brightening between 2004 and 2006 of HOPS 383, a deeply embedded protostar adjacent to NGC 1977 in Orion. By 2008, the source became a factor of 35 brighter at 24 microns with a brightness increase also apparent at 4.5 microns. The outburst is also detected in the submillimeter by comparing APEX/SABOCA to SCUBA data, and a scattered-light nebula appeared in NEWFIRM K_s imaging. The post-outburst spectral energy distribution indicates a Class 0 source with a dense envelope and a luminosity between 6 and 14 L_sun. Post-outburst time-series mid- and far-infrared photometry shows no long-term fading and variability at the 18% level between 2009 and 2012. HOPS 383 is the first outbursting Class 0 object discovered, pointing to the importance of episodic accretion at early stages in the star formation process. Its dramatic rise and lack of fading over a six-year period hint that it may be similar to FU Ori outbursts, although the luminosity appears to be significantly smaller than the canonical luminosities of such objects.Comment: Accepted by ApJ Letters, 6 pages, 4 figures; v2 has an updated email address for the lead autho

Reimagining health and fitness materials: an affective inquiry into collaging

This paper, or ‘experiment,’ draws on data from a health and fitness scrapbooking project with four Black and Latinx youth. While the data are part of a longer 18-month visual ethnography (Pink, 2013), the focus here began to consider one week of the project in which the four youth and I interacted with health and fitness related magazines. In that week, we created magazine re-assemblages in our scrapbooks. To reimagine what ‘matters’ for education research and pedagogical practices in health, fitness and physical culture, I re-visited data (Levy, Halse & Wright, 2016) through an affective lens (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), drawing on PhEmaterialism (Ringrose, Warfield & Zarbadi, 2019). The affective lens produced a collage inquiry entangled with doubt (Holbrook & Pourchier, 2014), wonder (MacLure, 2013a) and slowness (Renold, 2018), which began to open up possibilities to think-see-feel my way through the data and the process differently.&nbsp

Private Suits Under Washington\u27s Consumer Protection Act: The Public Interest Requirement

This comment discusses the current state of the law in the area of private remedies for unfair business practices and focuses on two questions: (1) Is the public interest requirement for private suits under the Act justified? (2) What are the appropriate tests for finding an effect on the public interest? The comment concludes that the statutory purpose and historical context justify the public interest requirement but that the Washington courts have not yet developed a sufficiently specific test for determining when the requirement has been met. A specific test is therefore suggested to fulfill the appropriate function of the private remedy. The proposed test requires the presence of (1) unequal bargaining power, (2) solicitation or public offering, and (3) the probability of repetition of the transaction which forms the basis of the complaint. This three-part test explains the results in the Washington cases and adheres to the proper scope of the private remedy. The specificity of this test should aid both courts and private litigants in their determination whether a given transaction sufficiently affects the public interest to bring it within the Act\u27s protection