Ali Minai is Professor of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and a member of the Neuroscience Graduate Faculty at the University of Cincinnati. His research focuses on complex adaptive systems, computational neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. He has co-edited several books, including Conflict and Complexity: Countering Terrorism, Insurgency, Ethnic and Regional Violence (Springer, 2015). He is a former President of the International Neural Network Society. He is interested in history, science, art, poetry, politics, cricket, photography, and science fiction - not necessarily in that order. Two collections of his Urdu poetry have been published in 2005 and 2017. Email: minaiaa [at] gmail.com
by Ali Minai April 2018: ‘Tis the Season of Giddiness in Democratlandia. Republicans are saddled with a widely despised President and riven by internal dissension. The Republican leadership in Congress is lurching from fiasco to fiasco – interrupted briefly by one great “success” on tax cuts. The zombie candidates of the Tea Party are still…
by Ali Minai A light went out in the world yesterday. Asma Jahangir — Pakistan’s icon of human rights and liberal values — passed away. In her short 66 years, she lived the length — and made the impact — of many lifetimes. If a person’s character is known by the enemies they make, her…
by Ali Minai A few years ago, while introducing my class of electrical engineering students to information theory, I said that we lived today in a world created by Faraday, Maxwell, and Shannon. Even as I said this, I was aware that, in my zeal for effect, I was omitting the names of many who…
by Ali Minai Following the shock of Brexit in Britain and the cataclysmic election of Donald Trump in the United States, there is much soul-searching, head-scratching and gnashing of teeth in liberal circles. Some see the end of democracy, others predict the collapse of liberalism, or at least of the liberal world order. The more…
by Ali Minai "My colleagues, they study artificial intelligence; me, I study natural stupidity." —Amos Tversky, (quoted in “The Undoing Project” by Michael Lewis). Not only is this quote by Tversky amusing, it also offers profound insight into the nature of intelligence – real and artificial. Most of us working on artificial intelligence (AI) take…
by Ali Minai It is the worst of times. Period! The presidential election of 2016 possibly represents a hinge-point in American like no other since the beginning of the Cold War, though perhaps an argument can be made for 9-11. Indeed, September 11, 2001 and November 8, 2016 may be seen as two ends of…
by Ali Minai By this point in US Election 2016, everyone acknowledges that the Presidential candidacy of Donald Trump is one of the most transformative phenomena to arise in American society in a long time – possibly since the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, of which it is, in some ways, a perverted mirror…
by Ali Minai The Arab conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries CE were arguably among the most cataclysmic and consequential events in world history, creating a completely new and long-lasting civilization from India and Central Asia to the Western edge of North Africa. And, while this civilization has ramified and fragmented considerably over the…
by Ali Minai The terrible terrorist attacks by ISIS in Paris on November 13 have understandably generated a great surge of opinion and analysis – some of it insightful and some just opportunistic. It is precisely at times like these that the volume of immediate response threatens to obscure deeper issues, and for a problem…
by Ali Minai It is only the fall of 2015, and the United States is already in the grip of the Presidential campaign for an election that is still more than a year away. Since the emergence of 24-hour news, and especially with the explosive growth in social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, each…
by Ali Minai Artificial Intelligence is on everyone's mind. The message from a whole panel of luminaries – Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Apple founder Steve Wozniak, Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of Britain and former President of the Royal Society, and many others – is clear: Be afraid! Be very afraid! To a…
by Ali Minai Majeed Amjad (1914 – 1974) is considered one of the most important modern poets in the Urdu language. He was born in Jhang, which is now in Pakistan, and spent most of his life in the small towns of Punjab, away from the great literary centers of Urdu. Perhaps this was one…
The decision on how to build and operate the China Pakistan Economic Corridor will require an inordinate degree of foresight and courage from the powers that rule Pakistan. A large change always creates uncertainties, and power hates uncertainty above all else. It would not be surprising if the corridor triggers a natural impulse to double down on control. But history also shows that many of humanity’s greatest follies have been committed in the attempt to maintain power without embracing change. As the topology of the world is changed by technology at multiple levels, decision-makers in Pakistan would do well to seek a less linear, more connected, and more participatory arrangement for the country – one where simple strategies for maintaining control could be replaced by more complicated, but ultimately more successful ones.
The fact is that true change across a diverse set of societies encompassing more than a billion people can occur neither through the edicts of scholars nor the concerted actions of dictators. It is even less likely to occur as a result of lectures by Western intellectuals. The space for militant ideologies will disappear only when a sufficient number of individuals professing the Islamic faith develop an attitude that celebrates humanity, seeks to engage with the universe on rational terms, and comes to value life in service of Man more than death for the glory of God. And these things will not occur through reformist fatwas, but by modern education, political participation, cultural renewal, reconnection with actual history, a change in economic incentives, and – as happened in Europe – by courageous individuals within the Muslim community reimagining the roles of Faith, Justice and Reason in society. The Muslim world does not need a Reformation; it needs a Renaissance – leading, perhaps, to an Enlightenment. Ultimately, it isn’t “Islam” that needs to change, it is Muslims.