The Interplay of Inquiry: From Ancient Teachings to Modern AI

The Interplay of Inquiry: From Ancient Teachings to Modern AI

Ali Rıza SARAL

 

In both ancient teachings and modern artificial intelligence (AI), the importance of asking questions stands as a cornerstone of knowledge acquisition and understanding. Delving into the significance of questioning in religious scriptures and customs reveals parallels with the mechanisms driving AI models like transformers, shedding light on the timeless nature of inquiry in human cognition and technological advancement.

 

Ancient teachings, whether found in religious texts or cultural customs, have long emphasized the value of asking questions. In these traditions, questioning serves as a pathway to deeper understanding, fostering critical thinking, exploration, and personal growth. The act of asking questions is not merely about seeking answers but also about engaging with the material, leading to profound insights and self-discovery.

 

Matthew 7:7-8 (NIV): "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened."

 

This emphasis on questioning finds resonance in the realm of modern AI, particularly in attention mechanisms and transformer models. Attention mechanisms enable AI models to focus on specific parts of input data, effectively asking questions about what information is relevant or important in a given context. By continually refining and improving these questions, AI models enhance their understanding and performance over time, mirroring the iterative process of learning and inquiry seen in human cognition.

 

Moreover, as AI models learn from data, they refine their representations of knowledge, akin to individuals refining their understanding of ancient teachings through study and reflection. Just as religious scholars deepen their comprehension of scriptures through ongoing inquiry, AI models iteratively improve their understanding of the world through exposure to more data and feedback, enhancing their ability to generate insights and make predictions.

 

The interconnectedness between ancient wisdom and modern technological advancements underscores the universal principles underlying the quest for understanding and knowledge. By recognizing the parallels between human cognition and AI processes, we gain a deeper appreciation for the enduring significance of inquiry in shaping our understanding of the world, both past and present.

 

In essence, the interplay of inquiry, from ancient teachings to modern AI, highlights the timeless nature of questioning as a fundamental aspect of human cognition and technological progress. As we continue to explore the depths of knowledge, may we embrace the transformative power of asking questions, both in our spiritual and intellectual pursuits, and in the ever-evolving landscape of artificial intelligence.

 

 

 

 

 

  

A Comparison of Human Attention Mechanism with ANN Transformer’s

Human Focus and Attention

When you're trying to solve a problem or understand a concept, the process can be broken down into the following steps, which align closely with the query-key-value attention mechanism:

1.      Clarify Your Mind on What You Seek (Query):

·         Query: This is your specific goal or the question you want to answer. For instance, if you're looking for a way to solve a specific type of math problem, your query might be "methods to solve quadratic equations."

·         In human terms, this means you have a clear idea of what you're searching for. You might even phrase it as a specific question or a goal in your mind.

2.      Limit the Relevant Texts (Keys):

·         Keys: These are the potential sources of information where you might find your answer. In a book, keys could be different chapters, sections, or paragraphs.

·         As you read or search through the book, your attention is drawn to parts of the text that are likely to contain information relevant to your query. You mentally filter out sections that are clearly not related to your query.

3.      Clarify What You Really Need to Find (Values):

·         Values: These are the pieces of information within the keys that are relevant to your query. In our example, values could be specific formulas, examples, or explanations of quadratic equations.

·         Your brain evaluates the keys and extracts the most relevant values. For instance, it might highlight a specific formula or a step-by-step solution that directly addresses your query.

Applying the Attention Mechanism

Here’s how this process looks in a neural network with an attention mechanism:

1.      Query: The neural network receives a specific query vector representing the information it needs to find.

2.      Keys: It then looks at all the potential information (keys) in the input data. Each piece of data is associated with a key.

3.      Values: For each key, there is a corresponding value which contains the actual information.

The attention mechanism works by:

·         Calculating the relevance: The network computes how relevant each key is to the query by calculating attention scores (often using a dot product of the query and key vectors).

·         Weighting the values: The network uses these scores to weigh the values. Higher scores mean more relevance and thus more weight.

·         Aggregating the values: The weighted values are then combined to form an output that is focused on the most relevant information.

Human Attention and Learning

In human learning, this process is less mechanical but conceptually similar:

·         You clarify your goal (query), making sure you know what you’re looking for.

·         You scan through potential sources (keys), identifying where relevant information might be located.

·         You focus on extracting relevant information (values), filtering out what is not needed and concentrating on what will help you solve your problem.

Example in Practice

Suppose you're reading a textbook to solve a physics problem about projectile motion. Here’s how you might apply this:

1.      Query: You decide you need to find the formula for the range of a projectile.

2.      Keys: You flip through the chapters and sections that cover projectile motion.

3.      Values: You find a section with the heading "Range of a Projectile" and start reading. You focus on the equations and examples that directly address your query.

In summary, the human process of focusing involves clarifying your objective, filtering through relevant sources, and pinpointing the precise information needed, closely mirroring the query-key-value attention mechanism in neural networks

 

Thinking by Feeling

Thinking by Feeling

Human thinks by feeling.

We learn words with sounds.  We learn thinking by listening sounds.

We think with sounds. Our inner-voice voices our thoughts out of our will.

(For deaf people...

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-voices-within/201401/do-deaf-people-hear-inner-voice

)

View, lip reading, the view of words may replace the function of hearing in deaf people.

The fundamental in thinking is the perception element.  The fundamental is sound.

Perception  function of the brain must have developed with priority in the evolution process.

Human thinks by percepting that's why it is difficult to think abstract things.

Attention Window and the Situation Awareness

ATTENTION WINDOW AND THE SITUATION AWARENESS

Looking is turning our fase and eyes to a certain direction and percieve the objects there as a whole.  For example, percieving that the sides of a rectangle connect and the sides are parallel.

In contrast, seeing is identifying this object as ‘door’.  Looking is a simple operation without mental depth, a process in which lower level seeing information is stored temporarily at the buffer regions.

In seeing the object that is seen gets binded or related with the ‘door object’ in the semantical memory.

Focusing is the limitation of the area that we see under mental control and inhibition of the area outside.

Concentrating is the increasing of the binding operation during seeing.

For example, the evaluation of the door size, whether it is old or new, a comparison with the other doors etc.

Paying attention includes both focusing and some concentration. We first focuse and limit the area af attention and then concentrate, increase the binding depth somewhat.

The focused thing does not have to be a percievable object.  One can focus on an abstract subject.  The increasing attention transforms into concentration.

Attention window is the area, details of which contents are binded with their meanings.  We see the objects that are in the frame at which we focus our attention.

The attention window may be visually three dimensional as in driving.  Attention window is not visual only.  The area which has a high relational depth forms the attention window when focusing on an abstract subject.

While solving a problem, attention concentrates on different aspects of the problem and subjects related to these.  The relation’s depth and amount determines the size of the attention window.

In tasks such as Air Traffic Control, the controller who may be faced by serious problems, will have to redirect his/her attention window, shed light upon other subjects, direct his/her attention just after solving the problem.

Experiments have proved that, even some of the things that reside in the same screen may not be noticed, when the attention window gets too small.

Situation Awareness requires awareness of the size of the current attention window.

 

The Role of Design in Creativity

Some artists create spontenously some think ahead and even make roadmaps to reach the end of a creative process: the work.

Spontenous creativity may make recursive walk throughs of the incomplete work.  Sometimes a breakthrough happens and you enter a creative space which you just imagine at one step or it is relatively easy to proceed.  Intuition is triggered by the minute steps of the creative process even by coincidence.

Sometimes the creative process gets very slow and difficult and come to a halt.  The waiting period for a new beginning may take a few days or years in some cases.

Large scale work creation, even sonatas, chamber music, are difficult to manage without seeing forward.  Musical structure helps the composer to keep a sense of direction while proceeding the creative process.

Design helps the creator to do size scaling.  For example, selecting  a variations form enables you to increase the size as you wish.

Design helps the composer to divide the heavy load to small pieces and concentrate on every and each section.  Design also enables the  composer to correlate  the small pieces and build up music that is  impossible for an individual to keep in mind as a whole.

It helps to define the entities that build up the work.  This gives the possibility to observe the relative affect that arises when they come together.  

The composer interacts with instrument players and singers through the score.  The design of instrumentation and characters in an opera is simply the design of interface between them.

Design also enables the composer to set explicit intention and task set for the work.  The composer must know what he wants to get at at the beginning.  This increases the coordination of many elements of a complex art work.

The timing, duration, flow of events in an opera, flow of information in an abstract music form, the characters, moods all can be designed.

The design has to be guiding and opening the way when it gets narrow.  It should determine the main contours of the work.  It should not specify all the details.  This may cause you to get lost even at the design phase before beginning to write.

The more details defines the design, the less flexible it becomes.  But this does not mean that the design even at its birth moment should not define any details.  Sometimes you work for 12 months for a simple symbolic trick that you believe it has to live for as long as possible.

Designs help the creator to come over deadends.  The design of the nature is the genetic material in the nucleus of each living creature.  The nature has overcome her failure by being flexible enough to try new species with different genetics namely different design materials.

Design has to be dynamicly updateable.  The tendency to make change or not is left to the creator.

The dynamic decisions may be given by cognition or by intuition.  The balance between them depends on the artist and th character  of the work, also on the genre.

The design serves as a prototype which serves as a model for the intuition and imagination of the composer.  It gives clairvoyance to the composer mind's eye.

Design has an organising, guiding and regulating affect on the  creative process.  It also enables the creator to repeat the same design and create other works with the same theme.  The 'Rondeau' form is a simple example.

Design is more than what I have described upto this point.   It can be described but it is not definable.  I believe, the flexibility of the design element of the creative process is at its best when it leaves intentional spaces for intuition and crafty spaces for imagination.

Ali R+ SARAL

A Short Outline of Automatic motor activation in the executive control of action

For various performers on the field

[1] Automatic and unconscious processes are traditionally regarded as inflexible (e.g., Shiffrin and Schneider, 1977, 1984), quite distinct in quality from the flexible nature of “voluntary” processes. However, there is increasing evidence that automatic and subliminal processes can in fact be modulated by “top-down” processes of attention, intention (“task set” or current goals) and expectation.

[2] DISSOCIATIONS IN AUTOMATIC AND VOLUNTARY CONTROL

Recent work from Boy et al. (2010b) suggests that the important distinction is not between control that is automatic compared to control that is voluntary, but rather between pre- and poststimulus control

[3] PRE-STIMULUS VS. POST-STIMULUS COGNITIVE CONTROL

Control mechanisms that can override inappropriate response plans which have been automatically evoked by the environment not only act to inhibit responses after they have been evoked by the stimulus. Pre-stimulus control mechanisms also seem to play a role. Thus, task set and previous experience can modulate conflicting response tendencies in a preparatory manner.

[4] EVIDENCE FOR AUTOMATIC ACTIVATION OF MOTOR RESPONSES

Perceptual processing of a visual stimulus can result in motor responses even when the observer does not intend to act. One of the most well-studied of these phenomena is the “visual grasp reflex”, where an observer makes a fast, reflexive eye movement (saccade) toward a suddenly appearing—and irrelevant—visual stimulus, despite their intention to look elsewhere (e.g., Theeuwes et al., 1998; Irwin et al., 2000). ... But as response latencies increase, saccades are more likely to curve away from a distractor (e.g., Walker et al., 2006), revealing an inhibitory mechanism acting to suppress unwanted motor activity toward the irrelevant stimulus (e.g., Sheliga et al., 1995). 

[5] EVIDENCE FOR AUTOMATIC MOTOR ACTIVATION FROM “PARTIAL” ERRORS

However, it is possible that small amounts of force applied (erroneously) to a button might be insufficient to trigger a measurable response and thereby escape detection.  ... trials provides strong evidence that an irrelevant stimulus—or part of a stimulus—can automatically activate responses associated with it. These responses are not merely partially activated somewhere in the brain; the response can be measured in the muscles or in small hand movements with force transducers. 

[6] INVISIBLE INFLUENCES

In summary, shifts of attention and motor responses can be automatically and unconsciously triggered by visual stimuli. Effects of non-perceived stimuli such as these have provided key evidence that visual stimuli can automatically prime the observer to act.

[7] INHIBITION OF PRIMED ACTIONS

Thus, it is necessary to consider how brain systems inhibit or override responses that have been triggered automatically by the environment and are not relevant to our current goals....Processing by the fast, direct processing route is automatic, and occurs irrespective of task instructions. For example, the spatial location of a target stimulus in a Simon task would be processed quickly and automatically via the direct processing route. At the same time, processing of the task-relevant target attribute (e.g., target color in a Simon task) proceeds via a slower indirect processing route. On congruent trials, the same response is activated by both the direct and the indirect processing routes, producing fast, correct responses. On incongruent trials, however, the direct processing route and the indirect processing route activate different responses which results in increased error rates, and slower response times as the conflict between competing responses is resolved.

... Importantly, models of information processing in conflict tasks often include an active inhibition mechanism which acts to selectively suppress inappropriate response activation resulting from the direct processing route...

In conflict tasks, accuracy for compatible trials is near-perfect, while fast responses on incompatible trials are often near (e.g., Wylie et al., 2009) or below (e.g., Stins et al., 2007) chance level.

...that erroneous responses are activated quickly via the direct processing route, before being selectively suppressed by an inhibitory control mechanism. 

[8] UNCONSCIOUS CONTROL OVER UNWANTED RESPONSES

inhibition of primed responses only operates when stimuli are presented above—and not below—the threshold required for conscious awareness (e.g., Merikle et al., 1995 using the Stroop task).  However, when the interval between prime and mask was extended beyond around 100–150 ms, incompatible trials produced faster responses than compatible trials. In other words, the usual priming effect had reversed.  This negative compatibility effect (NCE) has now been widely reported with button-press responses, foot responses, and eye  movements

... Many researchers have suggested that this reversed priming results from an inhibitory mechanism in the motor system which acts to suppress sub-threshold motor activation evoked by the prime

[9] AUTOMATIC INHIBITION IN THE AFFORDANCE PARADIGM

visual stimuli automatically evoke motor responses, Overall, these studies suggest that actions which have been automatically primed by object affordances may also be subject to automatic control.

[10] AUTOMATIC TRIGGERING OF “ENDOGENOUS” CONTROL

However, recent work suggests that endogenous suppression of pre-potent responses can also be primed or evoked unconsciously and automatically (e.g., Verbruggen and Logan, 2009a; van Gaal et al., 2008, 2009, 2010a,b).

[11] AUTOMATIC PRE-STIMULUS CONTROL

 Many researchers have suggested that observers must consciously experience conflict in order for the pre-stimulus control mechanisms to be deployed (e.g., Kunde, 2003; Mayr, 2004; Ansorge et al., 2011). However, recent evidence from van Gaal et al. (2010a) suggests that some pre-stimulus control can be evoked automatically, without conscious awareness. ...unconsciously presented stimuli can automatically evoke these pre-stimulus conflict adaptation mechanisms, and can modulate the effects of subsequent conflicting stimuli.

 Edited by Ali R+ SARAL from[REF-1]

[1] Jennifer McBride1*, Frédéric Boy2, Masud Husain1 and Petroc Sumner2 ‘Automatic motor activation in the executive control of action’

1 Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, UK

2 School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

 

Automatic Processes and Speech

Language perception is a semi-automatic process.  When we listen some one’s speech we understand key words first and put them on the premises of a context.  The rest of the sentence or phrase comes automaticly.  We do not try to understand every and each word we hear.

Speaking fast does not mean to hurry everything you say but to slow at the critical points and then throw down the rest at an incredible pace.  Increasing the speed in any mental process means the conversion of the process from a controlled one to an automatic one.

Listening a fast speech in this style is also easy to keep track of because the perception process will also get automatic and automatic processes are easier than controlled ones.

If I allude once more to my previous notes[1,2], some jobs that require continuous and heavy attention for a long duration may hurt the employees’ natural mental balance of controlled vs automatic processing.  In this case, people begin to speak slowly as well as moving slowly.  Feeling difficulties in speech can be observed for long durations even after this type of service.

Using/studying more than 3 to 5 languages concurrently may also hurt the natural automaticity of speech.

 

Ali R+ SARAL

 

[1]  Kendiliğinden Süreçlerin Bilinçle Etkileşimi

http://largesystems-atc.blogspot.com/2013/03/kendiliginden-sureclerin-bilincle_9413.html

[2] On the Interaction of Automatic Processes with Consciousness

http://largesystems-atc-en.blogspot.com/2013/03/on-interaction-of-automatic-processes.html