09-25-2023, 08:53 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-26-2023, 08:48 PM by Marcus DuBois.)
After he spoke to the waiter, he focused back on his wallet, reading the projected screen (visible only from his single perspective) finishing up his meeting notes while it was still fresh in mind. This last had been with Fiorella Sannazaro, who oversaw the Applicant Division. The announcement regarding Force users had opened the floodgates as people reported anything that seemed strange or out of the ordinary. Sometimes it was from the person themselves, talking about dreams or smells or premonitions or hallucinations. Sometimes it was family, friend, work or school colleagues. And sometimes it was just anonymous tips.
People looked for patterns in the best of times. And these were....changing times, to put it most charitably. People saw the unknown or the unknowable everywhere and reacted. Domovoi headed up any reports of possible creatures that might pose a threat. But what about a girl who slept all day, a faint humming coming from her, with rampant growth of flowers and shrubs outside her window?. Same with the anonymous complaint from someone who got a headache every time they bumped into their coworker. The fantastical and the crazies- not that they were mutually exclusive- flooded them. And they took time to work through. In times past, even those who had legitimate abilities might still find themselves being treated for mental illness or drugged to the gills. Weeding fact from fiction, disentangling memory from drug induced fog, and above all, classifying was a monumental task.
Fiorella was dogged and kept at it. It was one of those situations where you started nibbling at the edges and worked your way in. From a certain perspective, it seemed like a massive collection of special edge cases, each one unique and requiring its own study, classification and processing methodology. And from that perspective, it would be intractable.
But Marcus had stolen from the field of Abstract Algebra and specifically Group Theory, the way mathematicians had been able to abstract away extraneous details of different objects like polygons, sets of numbers, polynomials, knots, permutations, and matrices to derive groups, rings, fields and so on. This then let them make use of their tools of analysis techniques from one specific domain to find a solution in the other. It had been taking a topological object like an elliptical curves, expressing it in a modular arithmetic from, and then bringing to bear on that form complex analysis that allowed Wiles to solve the 500 year old question of Fermat's last equation over 60 years ago. Translating from one Group to another and then using the tools for that group to find a solution.
It had taken some time, but Fiorella had gotten the spirit of it and the endlessly unique list of reports to process had begun to take shape as certain forms were discerned, and gradually become manageable. It had been successful enough that now they were moving to making use of machine learning. Part of her team was researching what kind of neural network architecture would be best, while another was doing the laborious and tedious work of combing through and preparing the data so that training could be done. The goal was that the trained model would then do most of the work of processing reports, freeing them up to actually do something about them.
He made a note recommending a hybrid of a Graph Convolutional Network, useful for graph structured data like social media- necessary to determine proximity or relation to known persons of interest- Autoencoders for cleaning sparse or noisy data- which summarized most reports- and Siamese networks, ideal for measuring similarity and dissimilarity. The architects would be busy putting this together, he knew. But the potential was worth it.
He looked up as the server returned with the invitation. He thought for a moment, considering- This could be interesting- then nodded, closing his wallet so his screen disappearing, and prepared himself mentally before he asked that his meal to be brought to him there when theirs was served.
He wore a friendly smile as he approached and touched Danika's shoulder warmly for a moment, his smile widening considerably. "Danika, It's really good to see you." Not a trace of apology or awkwardness showed. Neither of them had done anything wrong, after all. He turned to the man, extending a hand. "Mr. Rikovy, it's nice to see you as well. It's been a while since I visited the Dominion Facility." Movement behind him resolved into the waiter bringing him a fresh water with lemon. He pulled the chair out and sat down.
He busied himself taking his napkin and putting it in his lap/ "Thank you for the invitation. Taking a solitary work lunch always seems like it will be productive...But you miss the potential back and forth of conversation."
People looked for patterns in the best of times. And these were....changing times, to put it most charitably. People saw the unknown or the unknowable everywhere and reacted. Domovoi headed up any reports of possible creatures that might pose a threat. But what about a girl who slept all day, a faint humming coming from her, with rampant growth of flowers and shrubs outside her window?. Same with the anonymous complaint from someone who got a headache every time they bumped into their coworker. The fantastical and the crazies- not that they were mutually exclusive- flooded them. And they took time to work through. In times past, even those who had legitimate abilities might still find themselves being treated for mental illness or drugged to the gills. Weeding fact from fiction, disentangling memory from drug induced fog, and above all, classifying was a monumental task.
Fiorella was dogged and kept at it. It was one of those situations where you started nibbling at the edges and worked your way in. From a certain perspective, it seemed like a massive collection of special edge cases, each one unique and requiring its own study, classification and processing methodology. And from that perspective, it would be intractable.
But Marcus had stolen from the field of Abstract Algebra and specifically Group Theory, the way mathematicians had been able to abstract away extraneous details of different objects like polygons, sets of numbers, polynomials, knots, permutations, and matrices to derive groups, rings, fields and so on. This then let them make use of their tools of analysis techniques from one specific domain to find a solution in the other. It had been taking a topological object like an elliptical curves, expressing it in a modular arithmetic from, and then bringing to bear on that form complex analysis that allowed Wiles to solve the 500 year old question of Fermat's last equation over 60 years ago. Translating from one Group to another and then using the tools for that group to find a solution.
It had taken some time, but Fiorella had gotten the spirit of it and the endlessly unique list of reports to process had begun to take shape as certain forms were discerned, and gradually become manageable. It had been successful enough that now they were moving to making use of machine learning. Part of her team was researching what kind of neural network architecture would be best, while another was doing the laborious and tedious work of combing through and preparing the data so that training could be done. The goal was that the trained model would then do most of the work of processing reports, freeing them up to actually do something about them.
He made a note recommending a hybrid of a Graph Convolutional Network, useful for graph structured data like social media- necessary to determine proximity or relation to known persons of interest- Autoencoders for cleaning sparse or noisy data- which summarized most reports- and Siamese networks, ideal for measuring similarity and dissimilarity. The architects would be busy putting this together, he knew. But the potential was worth it.
He looked up as the server returned with the invitation. He thought for a moment, considering- This could be interesting- then nodded, closing his wallet so his screen disappearing, and prepared himself mentally before he asked that his meal to be brought to him there when theirs was served.
He wore a friendly smile as he approached and touched Danika's shoulder warmly for a moment, his smile widening considerably. "Danika, It's really good to see you." Not a trace of apology or awkwardness showed. Neither of them had done anything wrong, after all. He turned to the man, extending a hand. "Mr. Rikovy, it's nice to see you as well. It's been a while since I visited the Dominion Facility." Movement behind him resolved into the waiter bringing him a fresh water with lemon. He pulled the chair out and sat down.
He busied himself taking his napkin and putting it in his lap/ "Thank you for the invitation. Taking a solitary work lunch always seems like it will be productive...But you miss the potential back and forth of conversation."