AACP August 2022 Newsletter

Hello AACP Newsletter Readers.

We hope you’re having a good summer.

I’m late with our newsletter as usual. So I’ll try to keep this short. I just hope it’s still August by the time we finish this.

We’ve been preparing for three and possibly four or five upcoming events. So we’re quite busy doing other non-newsletter related things. I’ll tell you more about the events further into this message.

Okay, for this newsletter we have two articles that we hope you’ll find interesting.

The first article (The Brave New World of Artificial Intelligence and Its Impact on Truth and the Arts) deals with a topic that I thought wouldn’t come so soon. Back when I was a software engineer many years ago, we thought most creative occupations were relatively safe from being done by computers. I guess I was wrong. For those of you that are writers, artist, coders, and practically any occupation, your world is changing rapidly and you should keep your eyes and ears open to anything that pertains to Artificial Intelligence (AI).

For our second article, we continue the Mas Hongo Interview Series. This segment deals with his postwar experience in occupied Japan. We saved this part of his story to try to have it close to the anniversary of the atomic bomb drops in Japan. Mas is the last person I know that saw the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima and the firebombing of Tokyo.

For our book selection this month, we have six books that relate to the atomic bomb drops to fit with our article’s theme.

Another six books fit with the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival (Sept. 10). Two of these books are cookbooks that have mooncake recipes.

The last eight books are stories that in some way relate to school to fit with all those that are going back to school right now.

Good luck to all the students out there and Happy Zhōngqiū Jié, Jūng-chāu Jit, Chuseok, Tsukimi, and Tết Trung Thu for anyone that celebrates the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival.

Please check us out in San Francisco at the 4th Annual Bay Area Chuseok Festival. This is our first Korean event in a number of years.

If you’re in the East Bay, check us out at the San Leandro Moon Festival. This year we’ll be at a new location for this event (the San Leandro Main Library).

If you’re in Minnesota, please check out author friend Phứơc Trần at the 16th Annual Mid-Autumn Moon Festival/Tết Trung Thu. Note that the page I link to for this event has not been updated yet. So please check this page regularly or contact the facility for more information.

Thank you Philip, Susan, Mina, and Mas.

Take care and keep reading.

Bye.

September 10, 11am-4:30pm: San Leandro Moon Festival (we'll be there)

San Leandro Main Library, 300 Estudillo Ave., San Leandro, CA

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September 10: 4th Annual Bay Area Chuseok Festival (we'll be there)

Author Jane Park and illustrator Felicia Hoshino will join us

The Presidio, San Francisco, CA

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September 18, 1-3pm: 16th Annual Mid-Autumn Moon Festival/Tết Trung Thu

Landmark Center, 75 W. 5th St., St. Paul, MN 55102

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September 24, 10am-4pm: Silcon Valley Fall Festival

Memorial Park, Cupertino, CA

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October 2, 10:30am-4:30pm: 17th Annual Millbrae Japanese Culture Festival (we'll be there)

Author Oliver Chin will join us

Milbrae Library, Milbrae, CA

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October 2: Orange County Children's Book Festival

Orange Coast College, Costa Mesa, CA

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October 21-22: Poston Pilgrimage

Parker, AZ

If you have an event that you would like us to mention and or to participate in, please feel free to let us know.

By Leonard Chan

I recently listening to a radio program (KQED’s Forum, on August 26; DALL•E, Deepfakes and the New Frontier of Online Misinformation) that interviewed a UC Berkeley professor named Hany Farid. It was so alarming that I changed what I had planned to include in this newsletter to tell you about it.

Professor Farid was updating the listeners on the current state of computer artificial intelligence (AI) to create deepfakes – fake images (especially of celebrities and notables) that are so good, people are having a hard time telling if they are real or not.

Prof. Farid states,

“We tend to think of disruption of technology impacting manual labor… but now we’re talking about AI disrupting creative tasks…it’s not just creative, doctors, radiologist, AI systems are getting so good now… I don’t think you can stop this. So it’s a question of how do we come to grips with this massive disruption on the scale of the industrial revolution.”

When I heard that radio program, I began to wondering about the current state of AI being used in other fields such as writing. I recalled hearing about scientist using AI to create music compositions that sounded like it was composed by some famous composers and I seemed to recall hearing about how they were also using AI to write in the style of great writers. What I just read about the advances in AI writing in this one article, 5 Reasons Why AI Is a Threat to Writers, is equally alarming.

In Alberto Romero’s article about AI and writing, he states,

“AI will impact the writing industry, that’s true. But it’ll also impact virtually every other industry. Current reports estimate that around 40–50% of all jobs could be replaced in 15–20 years. The day in which computers can replace many of our jobs is at hand.”

Since we just marked the 77th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs in Japan, we continue with Mas Hongo’s post World War II experience in Japan.

Mas was drafted towards the end of the war and after about five months of basic training in Texas, he was selected to be in the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) and was brought to their school at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, for intensive training in Japanese.

When the war ended, Mas’ new language skills were needed more than ever in post war occupied Japan.

Mas traveled in a Victory ship to Yokohama and was initially stationed at the US military base at Fort Zama.

View full descriptions of all these featured books at Bookshop.org where you'll also have the opportunity to purchase them.