Erika Patrikainen, you are member of the European Gay & Lesbian Sport Federation from Finland. Can you tell us more about yourself, EGLSF and how did you get involved with the organization, what are your tasks? As I read you became member of the EGLSF board at The Annual General Assembly, which took place in Copenhagen 2018. I live in Helsinki, in which I enjoy the various cultural and sporting activities, especially biking around the city. I do volunteer work in three sport organisations and play floorball in two of them. In Finland there’s only one LGBTIQ sports club, called H.O.T., and at the moment I’m the chair person of that. I started there playing floorball, but I also wanted to work on the LGBTIQ issues in sports and that’s what I’m now doing, also in the EGLSF. EGLSF is the umbrella organisation of all the European LGBTIQ sports clubs and groups. We provide them e.g. a platform to co-ordinate their events and license a multi-sport event called EuroGames which is the largest LGBTIQ sports event in Europe, with about 1500 - 5000 participants. Next games are planned to be held in Dusseldorf in August and then in Copenhagen in 2021. EuroGames is an event for athletes from beginners to top level. The idea is that everyone is equally invited regardless of gender, sexual orientation or skills. It is a social event as much as a sports event since many of us go there every year if possible. In the bigger picture, EGLSF aims to be the leading voice for LGBTIQ sport in Europe. In order to achieve that, we co-operate with other European level sport organisations and lead / take part in Erasmus+ projects. My role in the board of EGLSF is to work as liaison of the EuroGames organisers and to work on our IT systems. There’s of course quite a lot of work to do, but I enjoy being part of this international community and being able to use my expertise for a meaningful purpose. You were one of the co-presidents with Juha Meronen of the EuroGames 2016 in Helsinki. Can you tell us how did you win a bid to be a host of the games and how was to organize such a big event? Before submitting the bid board of H.O.T. wanted to make sure we can actually organise the event, so we contacted the president of Finland and the city of Helsinki to support us and to reserve us the venues. It also helped us a lot since Juha had been in the board of EGLSF and knew what was expected of us. When you organise a big event with volunteers only, there are always ups and downs what comes to being able to commit to the tasks each person has. We prepared the event for a long time (about three years) and I think we had more positive surprises how committed people were, so at the day of the event, there weren't that many issues to be concerned about. We were all positively surprised how well everything went. Even the sun was shining for us. I am sure you have some interesting anecdotes from EuroGames to share with the readers, what is your most favorite? Well, as the events are organised by volunteers there’s always much going on behind the scenes, but in addition to those, the most memorable moments are the opening ceremonies when everyone gathers up with their teams (or when people go greet everyone else and they end up marching with other countries team) and march to a stadium or when people give hugs and kisses to each other when standing at the podium. That’s the right spirit for any event. How long have you been a sports fan and how many sports do you play and do you think that it is important to be a LGBT activist? I’ve been doing team sports since I was a kid: Finnish baseball, floorball, badminton and volleyball. I don’t have much time to follow sports any more, I rather use it to do sports. It balances my long working hours, sitting and using a computer. Being a LGBT activist is still important since the sports world is very much struggling to include people from gender minorities. Even at the grass root level where the outcome of a sports competition shouldn’t much matter. Well, also women, disabled people, sexual minorities, just to mention a few groups, are also fighting for their rights and existence within the sports world. So, if you ask me, there is a need for all kinds of activists. I also read that you are a lead data scientist at the company Aureolis, what do you do you do? Yes, I work there as a consultant. We help our customers to yield value from the data they collect. My work consists mainly of designing the processes and environments in which data is transformed to information and to knowledge based decisions. In the role of a data scientist, the work is a lot about finding patterns in the data or testing if expected patterns actually exists. That’s perhaps the best thing being a data scientist - you’ll get to be the first to discover all sorts of new information. In one of your articles (2017) you claim that everyone should study artificial intelligence for numerous benefits its offers to humans and that everyone is sooner or later going to take part in coding and programming. Why do you think so? Coding is already being thought in primary schools in Finland, and I believe in many other countries as well, so this prediction has already become true. And why I think people will benefit for studying artificial intelligence is that since they use more and more applications where AI plays a significant role, they will have a need to understand what is the logic behind the outcomes of the AI applications and also how to modify them in order to e.g. do business with the application. Mastering Excel is no longer enough in order to compete in global business. As a philosopher, who learned about neural networks at the course Cognitive Philosophy, I was intrigued by your statement that we should think about ethical implications of the programming and to which end could and shouldn't be used. I don't know if you read a book "Age of Ems" by Robert Hanson, professor of Economics at George Mason University who predicts that humans are going to be able to upload their brains/mind in virtual cloud in hundred years. Once brains can be uploaded to computers, he argues, humans will make countless copies of the most effective brains, running them at a thousand times human speed: soon ems (brain emulations) will take over almost every job on the planet, while also building their own super cities and evolving their own strange civilization. What do you think of such statements, is it real or utopia and what implications do you see for human intimate partnerships, sexual orientation or identity, age and society in general? I haven’t read that book, but yes, I think it might be possible to “upload your brain” at some point, since most likely everything in our brain can be measured and hence copied or at least modelled with a computer. However, I do wish that people realise that all things that are possible should not be done. For example replacing people with machines at work places results in unhappy people. At least everybody I know, would like to work. To me a better solution would be to make work more diverse for us: if I could choose, I would like to work with my brain maybe 4 days a week and then 1 day do physical labour. That would keep me in better fit and also give my brain time to get more creative. In general I think people are obsessed trying to solve problems with technology instead of adjusting their own actions to their environments or other people. For example, instead of controlling the size of human population, which is a major factor in global warming and other ecological catastrophes, we are focused on building networks of machines so that we would use less energy for warming up our houses or for transportation… Clearly that is not the way to solve the problem. What comes to partnership and sexual orientation, as AI develops, I guess the trend is that people will have more relationships with dolls and other kinds of machines. If the machines that we spend time with start looking more attractive to us than our phones and computers do now, then most likely they will be commonly used for sex as well. Something good might come out that as well… Perhaps people will even realise that sexuality is not something that is best described by a few labels, but is something that evolves over time, varies depending for instance on hormone levels. The best thing you can do is to keep your mind open, regarding your self and other people, and to avoid to abuse anyone. What about AI predictions regarding homosexual population - do you think AI can/could help humans with fighting prejudices, stereotypes and hate crime based on sexual orientation and/or sexual identity? Yes, AI can for example replace humans when people are elected to a position or hired for a job. It does depend on the data the AI was thought with how objective criteria it is able to apply, but on the other hand it is a quickly developing aspect in AI research now. An AI can be granted a certificate that guarantees that its ethics have been checked. Protecting people from crime is also possible based on the data people generate when they deal with public administration. It is an other question how early we can actually act if we predict someone to commit a crime. If you haven’t done anything yet, can you be for example forced to meet a psychiatrist? There will be interesting discussions about this, I’m sure. How come that you work in the area of sports and AI? Is there any connection between the two, or are you educated in computer science and sports have been your hobby or vice a versa? Well, being active in the student organisation at university lead me to work also in the boards of different sport organisations. And of course statistics studies give you competence of doing any computer related tasks, such as updating websites etc. What achievements you are most proud of and why? Organising the EuroGames is definitely something to be proud of. None of us had had experience of organising such large events before, and yet we got wonderful feedback from the participants. We had a core team that I could trust and I’m very proud of the teamwork we did. What is your biggest inspiration and what are your plans for the future? I usually get inspired when I have some free time to think and got a mathematical or logical problem to solve. I get my best ideas when I just sit in a bus or in the morning after a goodnight sleep … In the future I would like to work for slowing down the climate change and destruction of ecosystems. Those are the most important things I can think of in order to keep on having some intelligent lifeforms on this planet. Katarina Majerhold
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