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#pierre

1 post1 participant0 posts today
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Canadian Crone

While Cdns focus on unity, #PP spews slanderous attacks & slick slogans in his lustful bid for power. #MapleMAGA email says: “The elexn could be weeks away. The Carney-Trudeau Libs & their NDP buddies might have the WOKE media to push their message but with your help, we can make sure every Cdn hears Pierre’s common sense plan to fix what Trudeau has broken. Act Fast. Your donation to #PP goes further than ever. To meet our goal, we need 175 PATRIOTS to chip in. Help #Pierre become our next PM.”

Continued thread
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Chuck Darwin

A larger question is whether this is what Grothendieck would have wanted.

In 1972, during his ecologist phase,
concerned that capitalist society was driving humanity towards ruin,
he gave a talk at CERN, near Geneva,
entitled
"Can We Continue Scientific Research?"

He didn’t know about AI
– but he was already opposed to this collusion between science and corporate industry.

Considering his pacifist values, he would probably also have been opposed to Huawei’s championing of his work;
-- its chief executive, #Ren #Zhengfei, is a former member of the People’s Liberation Army engineering corps.

The US department of defense,
as well as some independent researchers,
believes Huawei is controlled by the Chinese military.

Huawei insists it is a private company,
owned by its employees and its founding chairman,
Ren Zhengfei,
and that it is “not owned, controlled or affiliated to any government or third-party company”.

Lafforgue points out that France’s IHES,
where Grothendieck and later he worked,
was funded by industrial companies
– and thinks Huawei’s interest is legitimate.

Caramello, who is the founder and president of the Grothendieck Institute research organisation,
believes that he would have wanted a systematic exploration of his concepts to bring them to fruition.

“Topos theory is itself a kind of machine that can extend our imagination,” she says.

“So you see Grothendieck was not against the use of machines.

He was against blind machines, or brute force.”

What is unsettling is a degree of opaqueness about Huawei’s aims regarding AI and its collaborations,
including its relationship with the Grothendieck Institute,
where Lafforgue sits on the scientific council.

But Caramello stresses that it is an entirely independent body that engages in theoretical,
not applied research,
and that makes its findings available to all.

She says it does not research AI and that Lafforgue’s involvement pertains solely to his expertise in Grothendieckian maths.

#Huawei#topos#Olivia
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Chuck Darwin

In mid-April, dapper Parisians are filing out of the polished foyer of a redeveloped hotel in the seventh arrondissement, heading for lunch.

The first French TV programmes were broadcast from the building -- now, #Huawei is pushing for a similar leap in AI here.

It has set up the Centre-Lagrange,
an advanced mathematics research institute, on the site and hired elite French mathematicians,
including Laurent Lafforgue, to work there.

An aura of secrecy surrounds their work in this ultra-competitive field,
compounded by growing suspicion in the west of Chinese tech.

Huawei initially refused to answer any questions, before permitting some answers to be emailed.

Grothendieck’s notion of the #topos,
developed by him in the 1960s,
is of particular interest to Huawei.

Of his fully realised concepts, toposes were his furthest step in his quest to identify the deeper algebraic values at the heart of mathematical space,
and in doing so generate a geometry without fixed points.

He described toposes as a “vast and calm river”
from which fundamental mathematical truths could be sifted.

#Olivia #Caramello views them rather as “bridges” capable of facilitating the transfer of information between different domains.

Now, Lafforgue confirms via email,
Huawei is exploring the application of toposes in a number of domains, including telecoms and AI.

Caramello describes toposes as a mathematical incarnation of the idea of vision;
-- an integration of all the possible points of view on a given mathematical situation that reveals its most essential features.

Applied to AI, toposes could allow computers to move beyond the data associated with, say, an apple;
-- the geometric coordinates of how it appears in images, for example, or tagging metadata.

Then AI could begin to identify objects more like we do
– through a deeper “semantic” understanding of what an apple is.

But practical application to create the next generation of “thinking” AI is, according to Lafforgue, some way off.

#Grothendieck#Laurent#Lafforgue
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Chuck Darwin

Was this hermit mathematician a forgotten genius whose ideas could transform AI – or a lonely madman?

#Grothendieck’s genius defied his attempts at erasing his own renown.

The long-awaited publication in 2022 of Grothendieck’s exhaustive memoir, "Harvests and Sowings", renewed interest in his work.

And there is growing academic and corporate attention to how Grothendieckian concepts could be practically applied for technological ends.

Chinese telecoms giant Huawei believes his esoteric concept of the topos could be key to building the next generation of AI,
and has hired Fields medal-winner #Laurent #Lafforgue to explore this subject.

But Grothendieck’s motivations were not worldly ones, as his former colleague #Pierre #Cartier understood.

“Even in his mathematical milieu, he wasn’t quite a member of the family,” writes Cartier. “He pursued a kind of monologue, or rather a dialogue with mathematics and God, which to him were one and the same.”

Beyond his mathematics was the unknown.

Were his final writings,
an avalanche of 70,000 pages in an often near-illegible hand,
the aimless scribblings of a madman?

Or had the anchorite of Lasserre made one last thrust into the secret architecture of the universe?
And what would this outsider
– who had spurned the scientific establishment and modern society
– make of the idea of tech titans sizing up his intellectual property for exploitation?

theguardian.com/science/articl

The Guardian · ‘He was in mystic delirium’: was this hermit mathematician a forgotten genius whose ideas could transform AI – or a lonely madman?By Phil Hoad
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Claude Trudel

Découverte archéologique en France
▶️ La dalle dite de Saint-Belec a été revendiquée comme la plus ancienne carte d’Europe par des chercheurs en 2021. Les chercheurs ont examiné la dalle de pierre sculptée et l’ont datée du début de l’âge du bronze. (MÖ 2150-1600)
arkeonews.net/a-4000-year-old-
#archéologie #France #pierre #géographie #Europe #carte #cartographie #cartography

Arkeonews · A 4,000-year-old treasure map of France's - ArkeonewsOverlooked for millennia, a rock fragment adorned with enigmatic inscriptions has emerged as a valuable "treasure map" for archaeologists. After 4,000 years of dormancy, researchers are now using it to uncover ancient sites in northwestern France.
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Canadian Crone

@canadianglen @gemelliz @JustinDerrick @NMBA @BarryCooke
#ChairmanHarper chooses his #Stooges well. Brent was no #Scheer, no #OToole and would never be a #Pierre.
“Brent Rathgeber is a Canadian lawyer and former Member of Parliament. He was elected as a Conservative in 2008 and 2011. On June 5, 2013, he resigned from the Conservative caucus to sit as an Independent in protest over the government's lack of support for transparency and accountability. He lives in Edmonton.”

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