Leon on Everything

In the late 1980s, the crime rate in New York City reached an all-time peak.  Attempts were made to understand this crime wave and fight it better. The " Broken Window Theory " was advanced to explain how New York and other major urban cities in the United States have reached this sad situation. The theory gives as an analogy a house with a broken window. Passerby looking at it will deduce that its owners don't care much about it (they didn't fix the broken window) or are absent, and those with malicious intents will tend to damage the house. It might start by breaking another window and drawing graffiti on a sidewall. It will end with the total vandalism of the house and kicking out its inhabitants.  Several experienced software developers can attest to having witnessed a metaphorical broken code window in some of their projects. It might have started with some code copied a few times.   A golden rule here holds that twice is ok, but three times and you...

(A previous version of this essay was published here 5 years go) During these past few years (2014-2020), Artificial intelligence has been mentioned a lot in news stories and movies. This was mainly fuelled by the success of one branch of AI known as Machine Learning, and specifically its subbranch Deep Learning (Neural networks). With these successes and naming the technology “Artificial intelligence”, a lot of experts have engaged in a global discussion about its dangers as well as its potential. The most alarmist voices have talked about Terminator scenarios and the risk to the future of global employment, especially when the day that most white-collar work will be automated by these AIs. Billionaires like Elon Musk are funding projects to make AI safe for humanity . Some famous scientists like the late Stephen Hawking have warned us that the end was near with the advent of the thinking machine. Other computer scientists like Ray Kurzweil have talked up the coming of a t...