Jay Anderson, Founder of Project Unity, discusses the AI revolution with Michai Morin, CEO of Coeus Institute. A very timely conversation in light of the growing attention that AI is receiving – attention that is long overdue. Michai made the video available to me in a comment on the LinkedIn poll I launched the other day. The poll has once again received a large response. If you have not already, please respond to this poll.
Continue readingArtificial Intelligence
Three phases of AI that shape the future: narrow, general, super
The Age Of AI
The other day I reflected on a future of transportation post via Bill Gates. Today, I am writing about his recent post on the age of AI. Driven by the fascination of ChatGPT, I’ve heard the phrase “The Age of AI” multiple times recently. The launch of ChatGPT made what was lurking beneath the surface visible – the same effect that the pandemic had in making the word “resilience” a critical part of our vocabulary. Artificial intelligence was already on this path, but this recent exposure is making it real for many. I asked this question initially in February 2020: Will Artificial Intelligence be more impactful than fire, electricity, or the Internet? I followed it up with a second poll late in 2022. The community answered in the following way.
Continue readingTipping Points Start With Mindset Shifts
After ChatGPT was launched, I was asked if I believed it represented a tipping point for artificial intelligence (AI). We are surrounded by hype these days and it is easy to dismiss this as another hype cycle. As I considered my response, I focused first on mindset. The early stage of a tipping point starts with a change in how we perceive the world. Major historical tipping points had this in common – the world as we personally perceived it looked the same day-to-day. Then something happens that causes us to question that world. These mindset shifts are one indicator of a tipping point. A shift in mindsets was therefore the first criteria I assessed in answering the question. Has ChatGPT made AI more real to the casual observer?
Continue readingWill ChatGPT Change The World?
Updated 12-14-2022: Given all the buzz associated with ChatGPT and the overwhelming traffic to their website, I have updated this post with several more articles on the topic.
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The New Fire
I just finished reading the latest addition to my book library. The New Fire was written by Ben Buchanan and Andrew Imbrie. The book explores artificial intelligence (AI) through the lens of geopolitics, specifically, the prospects for democracy versus autocracy. A worrying possibility is highlighted in the book; that AI will do more for autocracy than democracy. In comparing artificial intelligence to fire, the authors make a comparison that I explored in a recent poll. Fire is very destructive, but as the authors state, it is also the basis for civilization. Humans learned to tame the destructive nature of fire, while harnessing its power. That is the precise analogy to AI that the book studies.
Continue readingThe Consciousness Debate
The AI and consciousness discussion was bound to emerge in the media at some point – and here we are. The debate in my mind is hindered by how we define consciousness. Nonetheless, the debate continues. Watch the video and see where you land on the question. Take the quick poll below to provide your thoughts.
Continue readingDigital Resurrection
In a post from 2020 I asked readers if they would digitally reconnect with a lost loved one. I explored advances in affective computing, a field of computer science that is dedicated to building systems that encroach on tasks that require our affective capabilities, our capacity for feelings and emotions. There are systems, for example, that can look at a person’s face and tell whether they are happy, confused, surprised, or delighted. In that post, I shared a video that brings this form of computing to life. On February 6, 2020, a Korean TV show called Meeting You, which focuses on lost family, reunited a mother with her deceased child in the virtual world. The mom was strapped in a VR headset and brought into a massive green room. She was provided touch-sensitive gloves. This allowed her to move around and even interact with her daughter.
Continue readingVideo Reflecting Artificial Intelligence Poll Results
In 2015, best-selling author Martin Ford gave us Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future. In the fall of 2021, he followed that up with Rule of the Robots: How Artificial Intelligence (AI) Will Transform Everything. In his recent book, he explores various aspects of artificial intelligence – both positive and negative. When I finished that book I launched a poll that attracted a significant response. After analyzing the results, Adam Boostrom and April Harris produced this brief video. What did the respondents believe? After viewing the video, give us your thoughts via the same poll.
Realizing Value On The Path To Artificial Intelligence
While debates about the long-term implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are likely to rage on, AI itself is not waiting for answers.
Continue readingWith AI and ML becoming ubiquitous across industries, it has the same potential to refactor the Fortune 500 as the internet has had over the past several decades
The Machine – making sense of AI
AI 2022: Creativity, Ubiquity, and Public Policy
How far will artificial intelligence (AI) go? In a post earlier this week, I asked for the reader’s perspective on that question. The poll from that post is included here – please contribute your thoughts. In the nearer term, a recent article provides perspective on AI trends in 2022. Three key areas are addressed: creativity, ubiquity, and public policy. I have shown several examples of AI encroaching upon areas of human creativity. The article provides examples that mark a shift in the creative abilities of AI.
Continue readingThe Age Of AI: And Our Human Future
Continue readingThis shift is neither inherently threatening nor inherently redemptive. Yet it is sufficiently different that it very likely will alter the trajectories of societies and the course of history. Few eras have faced a strategic and technological challenge so complex and with so little consensus about either the nature of the challenge or even the vocabulary necessary for discussing it.
The Age of AI: And Our Human Future – Henry A Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, Daniel Huttenlocher
Misinformation Is About To Get Worse
Technology has always been a double-edged sword – after all fire provided light, warmth, and more calories – but it also burned downed villages. When social media first burst onto the scene, I was a big believer in its power to build community, reconnect people, and move us towards democracy 2.0. I was wrong. The destructive side of that sword is winning – and technological advances are about to make that problem worse.
We are mostly all guilty of locking ourselves into echo chambers. Passing along information that supports our views, but is simply false information. The sheer reach of Facebook, when combined with deep fakes and AI-enabled misinformation, makes the destructive potential frightening. A new book that addresses this topic will launch in November. Eric Schmidt, Henry Kissinger, and MIT Dean Daniel Huttenlocher, co-authored “The Age of AI” in an effort to shine a light on both the positive and negative aspects of our AI future. This Article summarizes an interview with Eric Schmidt that describes the book and the issues.
You can pre-order the book on Amazon. A massively important topic that we should all invest the time to understand.
Will Artificial Intelligence Be More Profound Than Fire, Electricity, And The Internet?
Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google’s owner Alphabet, believes that artificial intelligence (AI) will eventually have a bigger impact than fire, electricity, and the Internet. Historically, general purpose technologies have driven two major tipping points – from the hunter-gatherer era to the agrarian, and agrarian to industrial. Advancement of human development through transformative periods like this had two common drivers: the growth of knowledge and inventions that served as a platform for society. With that in mind, Mr. Pichai’s assessment when viewed through the lens of history could be spot on. Artificial intelligence combines both drivers in a way that prior platform technologies did not. AI is a general purpose technology that is increasingly woven into the fabric of society, and it could ultimately represent the pinnacle of knowledge attainment.
Continue readingWhat Do AI and Kurt Cobain Have In Common?
I never thought I would put artificial intelligence and Kurt Cobain in the same sentence. As we continue to explore the path of AI and its reach, one critical question is just how far it will encroach on our right brain characteristics. Those traits that make us distinctly human have long been considered out of AI’s reach. Yet, we slowly see signs that we could be wrong. What do AI and Kurt Cobain have in common? A new song. This song titled “Drowned in the Sun” was written by Google’s AI as described by Vanessa Bates Ramirez in a recent article. Read the full article for a fascinating look at how this was accomplished.
Now, consider a scenario where Nirvana lives on and performs new material in concert with Kurt Cobain appearing as a hologram. Listen to the song below and then let me know how you react via the poll.
The Road To Artificial General Intelligence
The tremendous advancements in artificial intelligence remain focused in narrow applications. As described in a recent article authored by Ben Dickson, these narrow systems have been designed to perform specific tasks instead of having general problem-solving abilities. The quest for general problem-solving ability has long been pursued, with many focused-on replicating aspects of human intelligence like vision, language, reasoning, and motor skills. Now, a new paper submitted to the peer-reviewed Artificial Intelligence journal describes an argument put forward by scientists at U.K.-based AI lab DeepMind. They argue that intelligence and its associated abilities likely emerge by rewarding maximization versus formulating and solving complicated problems.
Continue readingAnimating History
What if you could bring your ancestors back to life? Creepy, or fascinating to see what it would have been like to interact with them? MyHeritage is a company focused on DNA testing and helping discover their family history. They recently developed what they call Deep Nostalgia, which uses AI to animate photos of people from the past. The company encourages you to decide for yourself by creating a video and sharing it with your family and friends. This Article describes how it works, shows some amazing examples from Twitter, and encourages people to try it. Those interested can do so on the MyHeritage Website. Look at the video below to watch the animation of history.
Artificial Intelligence And The Pursuit Of Global Power
A Sputnik moment: events that cause nations to suddenly realize they must work urgently to bridge or surpass a gap that’s arisen between them and a competitor. A book I recently finished titled “T-Minus AI”, reflects on the moment in history when that phrase was born. On October 4th, 1957, the United States was taken by surprise. The Soviet Union, under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, had just launched the first artificial satellite into space. As the book describes, Sputnik, a beachball-sized, silver metal sphere that weighed 184 pounds, was in orbit 495 miles above Earth. Speeding through space at 18,000 miles per hour, Sputnik crossed directly over the US mainland with each new orbit.
Continue readingTransformers Prioritize AI Investment
There are many examples of COVID-19 serving as an Accelerant. History and necessity tell us that automation is one of those examples. According to a Business Insider survey of 53 leaders featured in the Transforming Business series, AI and Cloud are at the top of the list of transformation that companies will invest in during 2021. It’s on the agenda of 47% of those surveyed. The connection to the pandemic can be seen in examples of where automation is applied. This recent Article describes a scenario where social distancing requirements are met through automation. Author Joe Mullich points to the kitchen of a burger joint, where a hard-working fry cook named “Flippy” is paving the way for greater use of artificial intelligence and cloud technology in the restaurant industry.
Continue readingArtificial Intelligence And The Cerebral-Physical Gap
As artificial intelligence continues to both dominate the news and stimulate our imagination, many questions remain. One such question was explored in a recent Article. As the authors describe, artificial intelligence still needs to bridge the gap between mastering cerebral games like chess and Go and translating that impact to the physical world. The latter remains a bigger challenge.
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Reimagining the Future 