Brief notes from the summer interlude
Hello, dear reader, and welcome to another issue of AI, Law, and Otter Things! I am currently on my summer break before the academic year returns, trying to deal with the Florentine heat; as a result, this edition will be shorter and less polished than usual. Nevertheless, I hope it is still interesting.
Vacations are usually a troublesome time for me. Since I am whatever the opposite of a chill person is, resting and relaxing are not things that come naturally to me. But the previous year has been quite intense, between published work — more on that in the next issue — and the whole moving-across-the-Atlantic-during-a-pandemic thing, so my body decided to take a break for me. This means I have spent the last few days trying to breathe, do non-productive activities and entertain the interests I have been neglecting lately.
Among other things, this means I am trying to entertain myself with some mathematics. While studying math has some instrumental value for the kind of research I want to do — and I am following a book on Mathematics for Machine Learning — my main goal over the next few weeks is to take some time to immerse myself in mathematical constructs and nurture the sense of wonder that drew me to computer science in the first place. I also plan to take a first look at the new edition of Introduction to Statistical Learning, which has new chapters covering topics such as deep learning and multiple hypotheses testing. This new edition has also reworked its practical labs, apparently making it even more accessible to readers from the social sciences with little (or no) previous exposure to programming.
In both cases, my plan for the next few weeks is to entertain myself with the beauty of maths and statistics. However, I plan to revisit both books during the academic year, going back to do the hard work in the exercises. Following the lead of Raul Pacheco-Vega, a Mexican scholar who maintains a superb repository of resources on academic writing and best practices for research work, I have decided that I will find some time every week to attend to intellectually interesting stuff that is not immediately connected to my thesis or my current work. Given that a hedgehog-like focus does not come naturally to me, this will help me to keep my mind fresh when I am swamped with work.
A further benefit of this approach is that it will hopefully give me time to explore unusual ideas. Some of my best work so far has been enriched by my familiarity with unusual sources, and I am inclined to believe that reading widely will help me mature as a scholar. As Terry Pratchett put it, "Ninety percent of most magic merely consists of knowing one extra fact."
On an unrelated note, this newsletter issue is being released on the exact day I arrived in Europe one year ago. Due to the complications of leaving Brazil during the pandemic, my port of entry was actually Lisbon, where I spent 14 sunny days before finally arriving in Florence. Despite all the uncertainties involved in moving to a new country and joining a new academic culture, it has been quite a fruitful year, both in personal and professional terms.
This is not to say, of course, that things were always uneventful. Beyond the already-discussed complications of living in a "small" city, my wife and I are currently struggling with the EU Green Pass. As we were both vaccinated in Florence, before the Italian rules imposed barriers to non-resident vaccination, we should have access to the Green Pass under the current law. Yet, it seems that the Italian system for vaccination certificates is unprepared to handle cases in which a person does not have the Tessera Sanitaria, regardless of their citizenship status. And neither the local pharmacies nor the health authorities can sort this situation out. Consequently, we cannot obtain the needed certification even though we are fully vaccinated, something that already poses some problems.
Regarding policy design, I believe Italy is correct to require the Green Pass for various activities, as it currently does for entering bars and restaurants, and seems to be planning to do with long-range travel and universities. However, our case is a somewhat mild — even if personally inconvenient — example that the edge cases of IT systems can have consequences in how people conduct their lives. Hopefully, that will be sorted out soon, but keep your fingers crossed.
See you next week, dear reader!