The Worlds I See

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI, by Fei-Fei Li.  In her memoir The Worlds I See, AI pioneer Dr. Fei-Fei Li offers rare insight into the human story behind modern artificial intelligence advances. Detailing her journey from her childhood in China to leading Stanford’s famed AI Lab, Dr. Li reveals the curiosity, exploration, and discovery underlying her seminal contributions.

Central was her risky gambit developing ImageNet—a categorical catalogue of what is now over 14 million images—to push computer vision research. This massive dataset allowed for a competition to assess how good a given algorithm was at analyzing what category an image might belong to. The contest proved a turning point as Geoff Hinton’s convolutional neural network approach shattered records, launching the deep learning revolution now embodied by systems like ChatGPT.

Beyond the analytical breakthroughs, Dr. Li compellingly addresses the human biases and ethical considerations tha influence what AI models learn. Dr. Li helped establish AI Safety and AI for Social Good as research priorities.

Threaded with Dr. Li’s discussions of her research and visionary leadership is her personal tale escaping stifling environments in communist China. Through clear storytelling and hard-won wisdom, The Worlds I See inspires future innovators while unveiling AI’s societal importance and human foundations. For comprehending modern AI or the values driving great science, Dr. Li’s memoir fascinates and enlightens. This is already going to go on the list as one of our favorite books of the year!

Barb in Lima, Peru February 13-15!

Join Barb (here’s a message from her!) and a spectacular lineup of speakers at the Congreso Internacional de Educadores 2024 in Lima, Peru on February 13-15. This enormous conference will allow you to discover the latest trends and innovative methodologies to enhance your teaching work. 

You’ll have a unique opportunity to connect with colleagues, experts and educational leaders. Don’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for professional and personal growth–register here!

Pioneering Work in Understanding Working Memory 

This fascinating article from MIT News describes the pioneering work of MIT’s Professor Earl Miller and related research groups.  This work is giving us vitally important, far deeper understanding of working memory than we’ve ever had before.  As the article observes: 

“The human brain contains billions of neurons, each of which has its own electrical firing patterns. Together, groups of neurons with similar patterns generate oscillations of electrical activity, or brain waves, which can have different frequencies. Miller’s lab has previously shown that high-frequency gamma rhythms are associated with encoding and retrieving sensory information, while low-frequency beta rhythms act as a control mechanism that determines which information is read out from working memory.”

“His lab has also found that in certain parts of the prefrontal cortex, different brain layers show distinctive patterns of oscillation: faster oscillation at the surface and slower oscillation in the deep layers. One study, led by Bastos when he was a postdoc in Miller’s lab, showed that as animals performed working memory tasks, lower-frequency rhythms generated in deeper layers regulated the higher-frequency gamma rhythms generated in the superficial layers.

“The findings support a model that Miller’s lab has previously put forth, which proposes that the brain’s spatial organization helps it to incorporate new information, which carried by high-frequency oscillations, into existing memories and brain processes, which are maintained by low-frequency oscillations. As information passes from layer to layer, input can be incorporated as needed to help the brain perform particular tasks such as baking a new cookie recipe or remembering a phone number…

“‘The consequence of a laminar separation of these frequencies …may be to allow superficial layers to represent external sensory information with faster frequencies, and for deep layers to represent internal cognitive states with slower frequencies… The high-level implication is that the cortex has multiple mechanisms involving both anatomy and oscillations to separate ‘external’ from ‘internal’ information.’”

This YouTube presentation by Earl Miller is well worth your while if you are interested in working memory!

Barbara Oakley on Critical Thinking and Learning

Richard “Ric” Lindberg and Barb have a wide-ranging podcast conversation (check out the comprehensive list of books in the list of references mentioned during the podcast). This is one of the most interesting podcast conversations Barb has had in many years–you’ll enjoy it, too.  

That’s all for now. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

• Uncommon Sense Teaching—the book and Coursera Specialization!
• Mindshift—the book and MOOC
• Learn Like a Pro—the book and MOOC
• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers
• For kids and parents: Learning How to Learn—the book and MOOC. Pro tip—watch the videos and read the book together with your child. Learning how to learn at an early age will change their life!