Academic Rants

Our society's fascination with Artificial Intelligence is strongly rooted in science fiction films, video games and novels. For many that brand of AI suggests a dark future where robots could destroy the world, replace humans in the workplace and create dystopic societies.  But what about in real life? "Artificial Intelligence" research is decades old having its origins in late 19th century Europe. The movement took shape at Dartmouth College in 1955 when John McCarthy coined the term. By 1979, the American Association of Artificial Intelligence, now the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, was formed.   Although history reveals that AI research has universal guidelines and principles and is not controlled by a group of mad scientists, modern nationalism is deeply involved in its development and deployment. AI has applications in almost every facet of human life including health, media, education, film sustainability, transportation/mobility, nation...

  This is a map of Underground Railroad Routes. In many respects it could be a map of the Great Migration. Between the late 1820s and the 1860s, enslaved African Americans fled the South.  In the 1830s, the Underground Railroad was officially born and hundreds traveled northward towards midwestern or northeastern cities. Sometimes blacks had to go to Canada East or Canada West before finding safe havens. Note later in the Antebellum years, blacks fled west to Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas trying to escape the expansion of the slave trade. About 80 years later, some of the same routes were used to escape Jim Crow oppression. This time people used the actual railroads. They took trains northward and sometimes towards the west. These migrations continued into the post-war era leaving blacks in most northeastern, midwestern, and western cities. New York, Chicago, Washington, Detroit, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Pittsburgh became the major recipients of the first waves of black arriv...