Artificial intelligence is likely to transform the public sector by automating many government tasks—including making combat decisions. But, according to experts at a recent symposium held  at Harvard University, this “over-the-horizon” technology can only guide and inform government leaders. There will always be a need for human decision making—and for clear ethical standards to prevent harmful intentions.

At the September 20 conference, “AI-Government and AI Arms Races and Norms,” organized by the Michael Dukakis Institute (MDI), Professor Marc Rotenberg underscored the growing gap between informed government decision-making and the reality of our technology-driven world. “Governments may ultimately lose control of these systems if they don’t take action,” he told some 60 attendees.

Rosenberg, who teaches at Georgetown University Law School, is President of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and a member of the AI World Society Standards and Practice Committee,

Prof. Matthias Scheutz, Director of the Human-Robot Interaction Laboratory at Tufts University, said the greatest risk caused by AI and robotics technologies is when unconstrained machine learning is out of control. This can happen when AI systems acquire knowledge and start to pursue goals that were not intended by their human designers, he said. For example, “If an AI program operating the power grid decides to cut off energy in certain areas for better power utilization overall, it will leave millions of people without electricity, which consequently turns out to be an AI accidental failure.”

Scheutz also said that common preventive solutions inside and outside the system are largely insufficient to safeguard AI and robotics technologies. Even with “emergency buttons,” the system itself might finally set its own goal to prevent a shutdown previously set up by humans.

The best way to safeguard AI systems is to build ethical provisions directly into the learning, reasoning, recognition and other algorithms. In his presentation, he demonstrated “ethical testing” to catch and handle ethical violations.

Here’s a link to video of Scheutz’s talk. https://youtu.be/66EeYzkTxwA

Prof. Joseph Nye, emeritus of Harvard University, who created the concept of “Soft Power” diplomacy, focused on the expansion of Chinese firms in the US market and their ambition to surpass the US in AI. Nye said the notion of an AI arms race and geopolitical competition in AI can have profound effects on our society. However, he added, predictions that China will overtake the US in AI by 2030 are “uncertain” and “indeterminate” because China’s only advantage is having more data and little concern about privacy.

Nye also point out that as people unleash AI, which is leading to warfare and autonomous offensives, we should have treaties in place to control the technology, managed perhaps by international institutions that will monitor AI programs in various countries.

During the symposium, Tuan Nguyen and Michael Dukakis, cofounders of the Michael Dukakis Institute (MDI), announced MDI’s cooperation with AI World–the industry’s largest conference and expo covering the business and technology of enterprise AI, to be held in Boston December 3-5, 2018.

Nguyen said, “Our cooperation marks the determination between two organizations toward achieving the goal of developing, measuring, and tracking the progress of ethical AI policy-making and solution adoption by governments and corporations.” Nguyen also introduced Eliot Weinman – Chairman of AI World Conference and Expo as a new member of AIWS Standards and Practice Committee.

Conference details are published in the current issue of AIWS Weekly.
–Dick Pirozzolo

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, a PR, content and digital marketing firm based in Cambridge, MA.

Dick Pirozzolo is a member of the Group; the Michael Dukakis Institute, formed by Boston Global Forum, is his client. 

Still thinking about the fabulous Georgia O’Keeffe show I saw last Sunday at the Peabody Essex Museum, in Salem, MA. “Georgia O’Keeffe: Art, Image, Style,”  is a retrospective going back to O’Keeffe’s high school years. It continues through her experiences in Chicago, Texas, New York City, Lake George, New Mexico and beyond her lifetime, to the present day.

The exhibit  features not only her art work through those years, but also year-book entries, photos of and by O’Keeffe, video of a conversation in which she says she was lucky that her work coincided with her time and was liked but that her paintings might have been better if she’d remained unknown.

Central to the show is the distinctive clothing she designed and wore–presented in relation to her paintings.

The show includes video from a 2018 fashion show in which models prance on a runway. wearing styles like those originated by OKeefe.(immediately below)

My friend E remarked on O’Keeffe as a feminist force. But while O’Keeffe was a ground breaker in the art world and is sometimes referred to as “the mother of abstract art,” a PEM commentary points out that she insisted throughout her career that she did not want to be considered a female artist…but simply an artist.

I did wonder what would have happened if famed New York City photographer Alfred Stieglitz, 30 years her senior, had not seen her work when she was a young artist and championed it–and her; if she had not moved to New York and married him; if he had not taken and shown photograph after photograph of her; if she had not had the safety and freedom afforded by Stieglitz and his family wealth in NY and Lake George. But an example of the early commercial artwork (left), on which she embarked to supplement her Texas teaching salary, makes me certain she would have become renowned on her own.

While I love most of O’Keeffe’s  paintings, I’m less enamoured of her fashion, which the show presents as an element of her artwork.  In my view, it seems to have become more traditionally masculine–with chunky-looking  black suits ordered from a men’s clothier in Hong Kong– as she moved on in life.(Or, as women’s societal roles changed?) 

I’ve  seen quite a few O’Keeffe shows over the years..several in New York, and one in Glens Falls, NY, near Lake George– but this is the first I’ve seen that incorporates and integrates so many aspects of her life.

I would have liked to have been told a bit more about O’Keeffe’s childhood and family and about her relationship with Stieglitz, but then, there’s Wikipedia for that. All in all, I found the exhibit of an artist who worked well into her 90s enriching and inspirational.

Should also mention the wonderful docent and ceramic artist/jewelry maker who told me that the unlabelled photos were taken by O’Keefe and encouraged me and other visitors to share our comments and photos on Instagram.  Also, btw, the PEM  cafeteria serves the richest, thickest hot chocolate I’ve ever tasted.

Georgia O’Keefe, Art, Image, Style will be at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA, Dec. 1-April 1, 2018. 

–Anita Harris
Anita M. Harris is a writer, photographer and communications consultant  basedin Cambridge, MA. She is the author of Ithaca Diaries, Coming of Age in the 1960s, and Broken Patterns: Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity.

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, a PR and content marketing firm based in Kendall Square. :

Had a great time at this year’s women’s march…Much good cheer; great signage, and a wide range of participants. At about 2 pm, half-way through, a police officer told me that the crowd estimate was 4000…but he believed the number of participants was twice that, and I’d guess even a few more. (Given that there were only about 10 porta-potties, I’d also guess that was many more than the organizers expected). The sound system left something to be desired (from my perch on a monument, I could see the speaker but not hear an understandable word) but I much enjoyed the creativity of the signage and enthusiasm of the attendees.

–Anita Harris
Anita M. Harris is a writer and communications consultant based in Cambridge, MA. She is the author of Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity  

and Ithaca Diaries, Coming of Age in the 1960s. 

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, a pr and content marketing firm  in Cambridge.

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Fresh Pond Rules of the Road, posted after we contacted Ranger Jeanne

Two weeks ago, I stopped to thank Ranger Jean Rogers for the information she sent after I emailed her about almost being run off the path at Fresh Pond, in Cambridge–and to mention it that I’d posted it on New Cambridge Observer (September 11).

She told me that several people had similar complaints, and that her office would soon be posting signs suggesting proper “etiquette.” (She also suggested that I call the police if anyone ran roughshod like that, again).

On my run this morning, I was pleased to see that signs outlining etiquette have been posted.

They apply to runners, walkers, bikers and dog people. (Well, to everyone)

• Keep to the right
• Pass on the left and make your presence known.
• Slow down when passing
• Keep your dog on a leash
• Be aware of your surroundings . When running with ear buds. check behind you before passing.
• Kindly move off the path to stop and talk.
• Slower-moving people stay to the right
• Use lights when it’s dark.
• See Fresh Pond Reservation Rules and Regulations for off-leash use.

Fresh Pond, Sept 24, 2017

.I want to apologize for occasionally running on the dirt path to the left of the blacktop–but only because, in some areas, the dirt path is very narrow and overrun with bushes or, worse, yet, poison ivy.

I also want to thank Ranger Jean for her help with this.

Anita Harris

Anita M. Harris is a writer, photographer and wunner (she walks and runs?)  in Cambridge, MA.

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, also of Cambridge.

Fresh Pond, Cambridge
Credit: Anita M. Harris

I often run at Fresh Pond. True,  I have a “running” debate with my exercise app, which sometimes  calls what I do “walking”  but be that as it may… I have struck up a number of very cordial relationships, there, with the dogs and their humans.

Ordinarily,  everyone is quite friendly (though I can get a bit ferocious when a human attached to three dogs on leashes blocks the entire width of running path).

But a  few weeks ago,  I ran into a spate of ungracious humans who yelled at me that I was running on the wrong side of the road, gave me the finger (to be honest, I responded in kind)  and one who even tried to force me off the dirt path. I asked Ranger Jean Rodgers if there are right-of-way rules for the Pond. 

Here’s her response.

Dear Anita,

Thank you for taking the time to write and share your experiences here at Fresh Pond Reservation.  I’m sorry to hear you are having some less than civil interactions with other users.  Soft running surfaces are in short supply here at Fresh Pond.  No one has a right to them to the exclusion of others. As with all public spaces, sharing and civility are required however frustrating.   If most people keep to the right as they are able, travel on the Perimeter Road would have a level of predictability.  

The behavior of others as you have reported it is unacceptable for any reason.  I will post some signs in our information boards, the ranger station and at entrances excerpted from the street code booklet that help visitors know that sharing and civil interactions are  expected.

The City has just issued “Street Code, Rules and Etiquette for Getting There Together” to address the need for safe and civil behavior when people are moving about the City’s Public Spaces.  Shared Path Etiquette is addressed on page 16. I plan to post it around the Reservation.  http://bit.ly/CambridgeStreetCode  

Here’s a summary and some links to our Shared Use Plan that was developed a while ago with the public to encourage civil interactions and use of Fresh Pond Reservation:

https://www.cambridgema.gov/Water/freshpondreservation/aboutfreshpond/shareduse

Shared Use Plan 

As the terminal reservoir in the water system that provides drinking water to the City of Cambridge, Fresh Pond Reservation serves as in important buffer to protect the health and water quality of Fresh Pond.  The Reservation is also an important open space for Cambridge residents and visitors. Due to limited space on paths, trails, and open areas, as well as increasing popularity due to restoration efforts, occasional conflicts among users can arise. To address these conflicts, the City sought to engage the public in order to develop a shared vision for future use and a clear implementable plan between the Summer 2010 and Spring 2011. The result of this process was the Shared Use Plan with the intent to accomplish the following objectives (in no particular order):
*Protect the flora, fauna, and overall ecosystem and water supply, 
*Promote a welcoming and safe place, 
*Provide for a multitude of recreational activities, 
*Promote mutual respect and civility among users, 
*Improve communication among users and with those managing the Reservation, 
*Provide for additional education and opportunities to participate in stewardship, 
*Enhance user safety and enforcement through rules that are easy to understand, posted, and enforceable, 
*Provide for enjoyment by current and future generations. 

Please feel free to put the ranger phone number (617 349-xxxx) in your phone contact list and call me to come out and assist if you if people don’t settle down and share the space with you.   I do my best to answer the phone whether I’m on or off duty.   If someone threatens you or puts a hand on you, call the police for immediate assistance (911 or at their business number 617 349-3300).

We all matter and we all make a difference.

Jean Rogers
Chief Ranger
Fresh Pond Reservation

Anita Harris is a writer and communications consultant based in Cambridge, MA.
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, also in Cambridge.

When I was growing  up in Albany, my mother, our friend Dorothy and I frequently drove over to the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, in Williamstown, MA, to see the Degas, Renoirs and other European and American works from the museum’s collection.

Clark Institute-Opened in 1955

Over the years, the marble building, which opened in 1955, became increasingly crowded with visitors.

Clark-Center_ReflectingPool_Opened 2014

But recently, the Clark has added more than 2,200 square feet of new gallery space in a fabulous new, light-filled wing called the Clark Center; a library and research center;  and, on a hilltop across the 140 acre campus, the Lunder exhibit center.

This summer,  I viewed woodcuts and large-scale paintings by the American Artist Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), and prints by the Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso–all in the Clark’s new buildings.

No Rules: Helen Frankenthaler Woodcuts

No Rules
The woodcut show, “No Rules,” takes its name from a quote from Frankenthaler:

There are no rules, that is one thing I say about every medium, every picture . …that is how art is born, that is how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules, that is what invention is about.

As  a Frankenthaler Foundation writeup explains: in 1983, having experimented with lithography, etching and screen printing, Frankenthaler  traveled to Japan to work with the expert woodcarver Reizo Monjyu and the printer Tadashi Toda.

“These efforts resulted in an entirely new, layered approach to color, which differed from traditional forms of woodcut in which images are pulled from a single carved block or from several different color blocks.”In the 1990s and early 2000s,

Japanese Maple, woodcut, 2005

Frankenthaler continued to experiment in woodcuts , working with dyed paper pulp printed with color blocks to create layers of color. For Tales of Genji (1998) and Madame Butterfly (2000), she again collaborated with an expert Japanese carver, printers, and papermakers to produce stunning prints that are considered landmarks in the evolution of the woodcut medium.”

I especially liked her Japanese Maple (above) a 16-color woodcut displaying the deep, vibrant tones of such trees–but no images. 

As in Nature
I found “As in Nature” (twelve large-scale paintings exhibited in the Lunder Center at Stone Hill)  breathtaking: vibrant shapes and colors demonstrating tension between abstract art and nature.

As suggested in a Frankenthaler Foundation press release, Frankenthaler’s work  maintains “a complicated relationship” with traditional landscape painting– showing nature as a joyous respite, despite its unpredictability and even violence.

Many of Frankenthaler’s works of the 1980s and ’90s… feature ‘unsettling contrasts among colors and forms, evoking the drama inherent in nature, beauty and destruction…”

After viewing the paintings, I walked down the road toward the reflecting pool and the Clark Center with heightened awareness of the vibrancy and serenity of the trees, plants, white clouds and blue sky. 

Shifting my gaze from the stunning museum architecture to the vibrant hillside,  I felt  engaged in the synergy of manmade artistic structures and natural ones, each creation highlighting the beauty of the others. 

Picasso/Encounters 

I would be remiss not to mention the fascinating Picasso | Encounters, which “ explores the artist’s interest in and experimentation with large-scale printmaking throughout his career.” The exhibit, in the Clark Center, displays  Picasso’s “evolving techniques, the narrative preoccupations that drove his creativity, the muses who inspired and supported him, and the often-neglected issue of the collaboration inherent in print production.   Showcasing 35 prints and three paintings, the exhibit includes  portraits, portraits and scenes such as “Luncheon on the grass,”  after Manet’s “Dejeuner Sur L’herbe.”   Several of the works bring the viewer perhaps uncomfortably “up close and personal” to the women in Picasso’s life.

According to a Clark writeup, Picasso (Spain, 1881-1973)had a complex relationship with women. He once argued: ‘There are only two types of women—goddesses and doormats.’ Such misogynist statements align with historical understandings of Picasso’s various muses as passive. But for Picasso the relationship was much more complicated; as his goddesses, these muses inspired his art and were the foundation of his family life. While it is perhaps easier to understand these women as servile, they were essential to Picasso’s life and art as collaborators and partners.”

Frankenthaler’s “No Rules” will be on view through September 24; “As In Nature” through October 9, and the Picasso “Encounters” through August 27. See them all if you can.

The Clark’s permanent collection features European and American paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, photographs, and decorative arts from the Renaissance to the early twentieth century. The collection is especially rich in French Impressionist and Academic paintings, British oil sketches, drawings, and silver.

–Anita M. Harris
Anita Harris is a writer, photographer and communications consultant based in Cambridge, MA.
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, located in Kendall Square, Cambridge.

Walking into the Lacoste Gallery in Concord, MA I was struck by the  lightness, strength and movement in the work of Shozo Michikawa, a Japanese ceramicist who combines both slab and wheel methods to create pots resembling objects formed by nature.

Michikawa is “inspired by the power and energy of nature in its every form” and the belief that “nature will  ultimately triumph over science and civilizations,” he writes. “The beauty that nature offers as seen in the formation of rocks, mountains, deserts and the seas are unparalleled and conversely natural disasters brought on by tsunamis, earthquakes and erupting volcanoes cannot be underestimated.”

Accordingly, Michikawa throws clay to build block-like formations on a potter’s wheel, and, often, places a stick in the interior of the form and spins the wheel in different directions–thus creating, according to Atlanta’s  Catherine Fox “torqued, spiraling forms and a sense of dynamism.”   The pots, some of which resemble rocks, riverbeds, or other natural formations, may appear to be as unpredictable as forms created by natural forces.

Writing in Artsati, Fox  describes the pots as “irregular in shape, asymmetrical, roughly textured, and deceptively primitive.” She points out that, ” Unlike most ceramists, who center the clay o n the wheel and build up the walls of the vessel with two hands — one on the interior, one on the exterior — Michikawa effects his sculptural forms by working the decentered clay from the inside out, often poking the interior with a stick to get the shape he wants.” After spinning it on the wheel, Michikawa may “cut away at the exterior with a wire to shape the rodlike protrusions, wedges, flaps and origami folds that give his work an earthy tactility.”

Each piece is then faceted and glazed to mimic the effects of nature, according to Lucy Lacoste, the Concord gallery proprietor.”Built on the potter’s wheel and often twisted on an internal axis, ” the works are sculptural yet retain a core of functional pottery.” That functional core is critical, the artist says, because pottery has been so integral to people’s lives in Japan.”.

Shozo Michikawa at Lacoste Gallery, Concord June 4, 2017

Michikawa was born on the Island of  Hokkaido, the most northern area of Japan, in 1953. After graduating from Aoyama Gakuin University in 1975, he worked in business until evening classes “gave him a passion for clay,” according to a gallery writeup.  Ultimately, he settled in Seto,  one of the sites of the six ancient kilns in Japan.   His exhibitions are held widely in Japan and also internationally, such as Philippines, Mongolia, France, USA, and UK.
“Michikawa’s is a unique talent based on his personal expression of pottery as an art form, Lacoste says.  “His voice is contemporary and poetic. ”

 At  the Lacoste Gallery, 25 Main Street
Concord, MA until June 28, 2917.

–Anita M. Harris

Anita Harris is a Cambridge writer, photographer and communications consultant based Cambridge, MA.
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, also located in Cambridge.

Yesterday, the news from DC was not good, nor was the weather, nor was my writing! So I quit work at 3:30 and headed for the Kendall Square T. where I came upon the delightful Keytar bear, who immediately raised my spirits. I’ve long wanted to share the work of Boston area street musicians– Keytar said it would fine to post a video. I’m hoping this will be the first of many–and would welcome your contributions!

Anita M. Harris

Anita Harris is a writer and communications consultant based in Kendall Square, Cambridge.
New Cambridge Observer is ia publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning PR and market development firm baswed in Cambridge, MA.