Tag Archives: Crystal Huff

Free Reading: Finnish Weird

Posted on by

By Crystal Huff: The Finns have put together a free ebook publication, Finnish Weird, which is an introduction (entirely in English) of Finnish rising authors and some of their short stories done in the style of suomikumma, or Finnish Weird.  It’s online at http://www.finnishweird.net/. Paper copies will also be available at Loncon 3 next month, while supplies last.

The Finnish Weird publication was my first introduction to Emmi Itäranta’s brand new novel, Memory of Water, which I’ve just begun reading. It’s incredibly lyrical, captivating, and distressing, all at once. She wrote it simultaneously in Finnish and English, so neither is a translation of the other (although when you buy the novel, you have to choose which language to read it in).

Finland Bids for Worldcon in 2017

Posted on by

The Helsinki in 2017 committee has published more details about its composition and goals.

Eemeli Aro will chair the bid with Karoliina Leikomaa as the bid’s Project Manager. Currently, the other bid committee members are Crystal Huff, Jukka Halme and Hanna Hakkarainen.

The proposed venue is the Messukeskus, Expo and Convention Centre Helsinki. They propose to hold the convention to in August.

The announcement is signed by Eemeli Aro, Juha Autero, Tuomas Colliander, Hanna Hakkarainen, Jukka Halme, Benedict Hirvi, Crystal Huff, Tomi Junnila, Pasi Karppanen, Sanna Kellokoski, Harri Kiiskinen, Karo Leikomaa, Susanna Leppälahti, Mika Loponen, Hanne Martelius, Mitja “WuMing” Mieskolainen, Sini Neuvonen, Sari Polvinen, Ben Roimola, Mikko Seppänen, Vesa Sisättö, Shimo Suntila, Vilgot Strömsholm, Jukka Särkijärvi, and Elisa Wiik.

Presently the http://helsinkiin2017.org/ URL just leads to a Google doc of the announcement. They’re also on Twitter @helsinkiin2017.

AI AI Oh!

Posted on by

Add one more to my list of science fiction technologies under development in the real world – Artificial Intelligence.

Crystal Huff reports —

My company, Luminoso, is in the news this week for having created an artificial intelligence that is “about as smart as a 4-year-old” on an IQ test. Of course, the public version of Concept Net is the previous release, and we think the proprietary Luminoso software is much smarter (hey, it’s using ConceptNet 5, for starters).

When ConceptNet 4 was given the Weschsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intellgence Test, an IQ test for children, the results showed it had the IQ of a four-year-old.

ConceptNet is described as a –

a semantic network containing lots of things computers should know about the world, especially when understanding text written by people.

It is built from nodes representing concepts, in the form of words or short phrases of natural language, and labeled relationships between them. These are the kinds of things computers need to know to search for information better, answer questions, and understand people’s goals. If you wanted to build your own Watson, this should be a good place to start!

According to University of Chicago at Illinois News Center, the test results in different categories varied widely:

“If a child had scores that varied this much, it might be a symptom that something was wrong,” Professor Robert Sloan, lead author on the study, explained in the report.

While the AI sailed through the vocabulary aspect of the test, it stumbled on comprehension — the so-called ‘why’ questions.

“One of the hardest problems in building an artificial intelligence is devising a computer program that can make sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts — the dictionary definition of commonsense,” Sloan explained.

Crystal Huff says she’s putting the “smart-as-a-4-year-old” software to work analyzing historical Arisia convention feedback forms. Which reminds me of the famous quote uttered by a convention chair when asked the directions to babysitting — “That child don’t need a babysitter – he needs a job!”

Crystal Huff’s Helsinki

Posted on by

Crystal Huff went to Finland for Acon and used the opportunity to shoot brief interviews for a video promoting the Helsinki in 2015 Worldcon bid called “Meet the Conrunners of Finland.”

I found the first segment hard to follow, perhaps because it was recorded in front of a glass wall that distorted the acoustics, but the others came out okay.