Zero Retries 0082

Zero Retries is an independent newsletter about technological innovation in Amateur Radio. Zero Retries promotes Amateur Radio as (literally) a license to experiment with radio technology.

About Zero Retries

Steve Stroh N8GNJ, Editor

Jack Stroh, Late Night Assistant Editor Emeritus

In this issue:

• Request To Send
• Brave New World (Soon Enough) - Artificial Intelligence in Radio Technology
• ZR > BEACON
• Join the Fun on Amateur Radio
• Closing The Channel

Request To Send

In Zero Retries, I only rarely, and reluctantly, wade into the politics of (US) Amateur Radio. I prefer to spend my time and the space in Zero Retries, and the attention of Zero Retries subscribers promoting technological innovation and “Zero Retries Interesting” topics. Zero Retries is a completely independent publication, so it’s one of the few Amateur Radio publications that can report on this issue I’m about to discuss.

Amateur Radio needs more, and more diverse people reaching out to the current generation that may be interested in Amateur Radio. Ria Jairam N2RJ is one such person.

Thus I feel strongly that the ARRL Board sanctioning ARRL Hudson Division Director Ria Jairam N2RJ over the issue of her new book - Ham Radio Technician Class Test Study Guide 2022 - 2026: Everything You Need to Know to Get Your Technician License is a significant error.

If you’re an ARRL member, I urge you to read this article by Bruce Perens K6BP - Director Ria Jairam “Recused” by ARRL, and It Seems Political To Me. Don’t just take K6BP’s descriptions verbatim, look at the relevant minutes and the ARRL report on the incident that K6BP posted. Also consider the history of the ARRL Board’s similar actions (more ably described by K6BP).

Perhaps N2RJ didn’t observe all the minutiae of potential conflict of interest given her position as a Board member of the ARRL. Having had a recent conflict of interest issue with a large organization (not ARRL), I’m sympathetic to N2RJ on that issue.

In the end, N2RJ’s “sin” for which she was sanctioned by the other members of the ARRL Board (nearly unanimously) was to write a book to help people pass the Amateur Radio Technician exam, and that her book (not published by the ARRL) “competed” with an ARRL book on how to pass the Technician exam.

Passing the Technician exam is, in the end, answering enough multiple choice questions correctly. Given that, all books on how to pass the Technician exam will inevitably have substantial similarities.

Parse the bigger picture of this for a bit. A younger (than average US Amateur Radio Operator), enthusiastic, bright, well-spoken, techie woman wrote a book about getting licensed for Amateur Radio from her perspective. Such a book on passing the Technician exam is unique because N2RJ wrote it.

N2RJ is a tireless promoter of Amateur Radio on her website, social media and her YouTube channel. From personal discussions, I know that N2RJ inspires a lot of young people, especially women, who, through N2RJ’s advocacy, can maybe see themselves represented in Amateur Radio.

If you’re an ARRL member, you have some standing in this issue. Thus I urge ARRL members to contact your ARRL Division Director. Doing so is the only way to influence this decision. I’ve sent my letter of protest to my ARRL director.

Disclaimers:

• I haven’t read N2RJ’s book… but as a General, I’m not the target audience.
• As I related in Zero Retries 0070 - Big Project for Organization X - Now It Can Be Told - I did work for hire for ARRL in 2022 in contributing to the 100th Edition of the ARRL handbook.
• I am a (dues paid) member of the ARRL.

de Steve N8GNJ

Brave New World (Soon Enough) - Artificial Intelligence in Radio Technology

You likely overlooked that I made a change in the “masthead statement” for Zero Retries in this issue. Previously, it was

Zero Retries is an independent newsletter about technological innovation in Amateur Radio.

As of this issue, I’ve added this additional sentence:

Zero Retries promotes Amateur Radio as (literally) a license to experiment with radio technology.

A small part of that changed statement was the result of an exchange of emails with a subscriber that expressed dismay that I offered my opinion that VARA FM was technologically superior to “classic” packet radio. I tried to explain that Zero Retries isn’t a “packet radio” newsletter (though I discuss it a lot) but rather, I strive for Zero Retries to highlight the technological innovation that is occurring in Amateur Radio.

Thus, I thought including that second sentence would help clarify that Zero Retries is intended to be an ongoing discussion of technological innovation and experimentation in Amateur Radio.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI)
The primary reason that additional sentence seemed appropriate is a trend I'm seeing for what I think will be a tsunami of innovation in Amateur Radio (and radio technology). That transformation will result from experimentation with Artificial Intelligence (AI) being applied to Amateur Radio operations and technology1.

Apologies to those that haven’t seen it, but the “television” series The Expanse somewhat illustrates the ultimate evolution of this trend. When the primary characters want to communicate externally from their ship (the Rocinante), they just state who they want communicate with. No mention of frequencies2, codes, modes, systems, antennas, relay nodes, etc. is necessary. The ship's AI system figures out how best to accomplish the communication and gets it done. Yes, that ease of communication3 is mostly a plot device, but it's an excellent illustration of the application of AI to radio / communications technology. Soon enough, we’re going to have that kind of capability, mostly because we've figured out how to effectively use the vast amounts of compute power we now have available to implement usable AI and apply that to Software Defined Radio (SDR) systems.

The primary inspiration for this article was an article in the 2023-01-16 issue of the New York Times - Alarmed by A.I. Chatbots, Universities Start Revamping How They Teach. That article discusses the use of OpenAI’s project called ChatGPT and how amazingly capable it is at generating text that’s nearly indistinguishable from text written by humans. One professor relates their discovery of the use of ChatGPT in their classes for a paper assignment… not because the paper one student turned in was poor in comparison to the rest of the students… because it was so much better!

Here’s the stunner (to me) - the article reminded me that ChatGPT was opened for use in November - three short months ago… and it’s already this capable! To me, this signals that the era of AI is now upon us… ready or not. AI is being applied to solving problems in ways we can imagine, and applied in ways we can’t yet imagine. One thing we’ve learned the hard way about such new capabilities is that we need to stretch our imaginations big enough to try to imagine the (previously) unimaginable.

Yet Another Plug for Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (DLARC)
Before I turn to the main thrust of this article, ChatGPT is so capable because OpenAI trained it on incredible amounts of (human generated) text. Thus, imagine how good something like ChatGPT could be as a virtual, omniscient mentor4 of Amateur Radio by training on the rapidly growing Amateur Radio material that’s available on Internet Archive’s Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (DLARC). Thus, it’s important to get a lot of good, representative material about Amateur Radio into DLARC. Reminder to self - resume my personal contributions to DLARC soon.

AI Applied to Radio Technology
I credit Dr. Robert ”Dr. Bob” McGwier N4HY for “waking me up” to the possibility inevitability of AI being applied to radio technology. I cannot find the reference now5, but at the end of a presentation, N4HY said something to the effect of "If you think this is impressive, let me tell you that you haven't seen anything yet - wait until you see what AI is going to do in radio communications".