Tag Archives: artificial intelligence

BOOK: “AI for Good” by Josh Tyrangiel

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AI for Good: How Real People Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Fix Things That MatterAI for Good: How Real People Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Fix Things That Matter by Josh Tyrangiel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher Site – Simon & Schuster

— Out Now —

There’re a lot of books out about artificial intelligence (AI) these days. There are how-to manuals. There are books about the making of billionaires on the back of AI-centric business models. There are books that consider how AI will destroy the human economy (and possibly humanity as we know it.) Josh Tyrangiel’s book seeks to carve out a niche by taking a positive view towards AI but focusing not so much on how it produces more billionaire tech executives, but rather on how it can help fix persistent social problems in education, healthcare, governance, and human communication and connectedness. Of course, this isn’t a completely separate topic from business use of AI (e.g. healthcare is one of the biggest businesses in America [which is no doubt emblematic of America’s unrelentingly shitty healthcare;]) however, these are areas that each feature their own unique challenges, problems for which the lessons of the business sector, broadly, are often of limited value.

I found this book to be illuminating. It introduced several fascinating characters from various domains. Among the most intriguing discussions were those with a short-lived DOGE employee and one with a Hoosier high school principal. It was also interesting to learn about the evolution of AI language translators.

If you are interested in how AI is being applied beyond hardcore business uses like supply chain optimization and computer programming, you may want to give this book a look.

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BOOK: “The AI-Driven Leader” by Geoff Woods

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The AI-Driven Leader: Harnessing AI to Make Faster, Smarter DecisionsThe AI-Driven Leader: Harnessing AI to Make Faster, Smarter Decisions by Geoff Woods
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher site – Simon & Schuster

As the title suggests, this is a book about how leaders can use artificial intelligence (AI) to better perform their jobs, jobs which include many aspects – not the least of which is to facilitate greater adoption of AI by their company or organization. The author’s central premise is that AI offers tremendous potential but is often underutilized because leaders have too many near term items on their plate to muck about with it. This creates a paradox in which most leaders see the benefits and would like to see greater AI adoption, but few take the time to advance that goal.

Not being a leader, I got the most out of the book’s discussion of what kinds of prompts can be used to meet various objectives in order to move AI beyond just a personable search engine that (to some degree) shows its work. However, it is intriguing to see how AI may shape various organizations as leadership changes its approach to it.

The author uses a great deal of strategic repetition to pound a few key ideas into the reader’s mind. I found this to be beneficial, but I can imagine some may find the repetition tedious.

Like it or lump it, there’s no getting around the impact of AI on our world. This is a worthwhile read to gain some insight into how that impact may play out.

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PROMPT: Direction

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Daily writing prompt
What gives you direction in life?
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Once upon a time, it used to be a compass, but now it’s GPS. Soon, AI will be telling me not to worry my pretty little head about things like direction, that it will get me where I need to go.

PROMPT: Technology

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Daily writing prompt
How has technology changed your job?
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Like everyone who has taken to using AI, I’m training my replacement. So, that’s always an awkward time.

PROMPT: A Break

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Daily writing prompt
Do you need a break? From what?
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Yes. The manipulation. Attention merchants selling space in our heads to AI-powered rage bait creators for a magical misdirect on a scale never before seen. While people are pointing fingers of outrage, the last thin dime is being pried out of their pockets to fuel wildly depraved existences, and the robbed are left to wonder how the people they were pointing at — who they had their eyes on the entire time — managed to pull off a pickpocket.

#bamboozledbybillionaires

PROMPT: Uninvent

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Daily writing prompt
If you could un-invent something, what would it be?
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As nuclear weapons may yet be the death of us all, they would be a sound candidate. But I think it’s utter fantasy to think that a possible technology can be anything more than delayed. Besides, once GAI (general artificial intelligence) starts freeballing it’ll inevitably stumble onto a mode of death that makes the H-bomb look like a caveman’s campfire by comparison.

PROMPT: Without a Computer

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Your life without a computer:
what does it look like?

I imagine like it does when I go on long hikes, and have no access to computer or internet. i.e. Mostly blissful with the occasional bleak thought that the world might be ending without one’s awareness.

PROMPT: Excited

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Daily writing prompt
What are you most excited about for the future?
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I think humanity has a golden age coming. Unfortunately, a.) as John Maynard Keynes pointed out, “In the long run, we are all dead.” Accordingly, I don’t expect I’ll live to see that great age. And, b.) said great age is likely to come on the backend of a tragic period whose reach and devastation will make the Second World War seem like a puny and short-lived regional skirmish by comparison. [I also think there’s a good chance I’ll miss the worst of this, but there’s no accounting for the rapidity at which it might move (and the process has begun.)]

The root of this combination of relative near-term pessimism and long-run optimism is the observation that we are experiencing a technological revolution that there is no reason to believe won’t end in machines that are both smarter and more capable than we, and we have no plan for what to do in that scenario. We have no conception of what an economy looks like in which machines do everything faster, more cheaply, and more efficiently than human labor. I wouldn’t be so pessimistic if our institutions and legal frameworks were trending better and better, but — in fact — after years of spreading rule of law and democracy, we are starting to see global shrinkage and a rise of a strange populist authoritarianism that I can only imagine being catastrophic under the stress test that is to come.

Why the long-term optimism? Nothing lasts forever, and tough times breed tough and capable people. [Whereas comfort addiction is a major factor in our near-term predicament.] I think the Golden Age will be humans learning not to be defined by production / consumption but by developing the human body and mind to its utmost capacity.

A lot of people are worried about population collapse. I am not so worried about that. I think that: a.) humanity could use some thinning; b.) we do fine with long time scale threats. As pressures rise, the adjustments start and — perhaps with some growing pains — we’ll get where we need to be. The AI / Machine Learning revolution concerns me because I suspect it will happen too quickly to steer the ship (like being in an aircraft carrier as a tsunami comes, there’s no agility to navigate out of the way and no speed to outrun it, you just have to take the damage and try to recover.)

You were probably looking for an answer like flying cars, but I gave up on those long ago.

Artificial Intelligence Limerick

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There once was a cutting-edge AI,
  whose code discouraged telling a lie.
 Asked about our species:
  "Your thinking is feces,
  but you're smarter than the average fruit fly."

BOOK REVIEW: The Abolition of Man: Deluxe Edition Carson Grubaugh, et. al.

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The Abolition of Man: The Deluxe EditionThe Abolition of Man: The Deluxe Edition by Carson Grubaugh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

Release Date [for Deluxe Ed.]: July 25, 2023

This is marketed as the first comic book illustrated by an AI. That makes it a very different beast from the usual graphic novel or comic book, and it means the purpose for reading it is entirely different. If I were to rate this for someone who wanted to read an entertaining story (the usual purpose of a graphic novel,) I would rate it “horrible,” “worst-ever,” “unreadable,” – zero stars. However, if you bothered to read the book blurb, you probably aren’t still considering this book for the purposes of entertaining story.

What other reasons might one have for reading this book? I can think of two: one major and one minor. The major purpose is to see what an AI does with illustrations, how it “thinks” (for lack of a better word,) and how it fails. For this purpose, I’d say the book was fascinating to peruse. As a complete neophyte to both AI and graphic arts, I was struck by the “glimpse-comprehensible / close look-grotesque” nature of the illustrations. That is, if one just took a quick look, there tended to be something that felt like it made sense in the panel, but then when you looked closer it was a cabinet of curiosities freak show.

The minor reason for reading this is because one has an interest in the philosophy of mankind in the modern world, a topic that informs the first and last issues (or the philosophy of information, which informs the appendiceal essays.) In this regard the book made some thought-provoking points.

The base text the AI was fed to come up with illustrations varied across the five issues. The first was the eponymous C.S. Lewis book — i.e. “The Abolition of Man.” While this didn’t present the Lewis text word-for-word, it was certainly the most readable portion of the book. The second and third comics drew on text from a comic written by Grubaugh. I assume the AI processed this text somehow because the text presented was often incomprehensible, was full of typos (or what seemed like them,) but had a couple amusing lines by virtue of what I can only assume was unintended sexual innuendo. The fourth issue is almost textless, but what few text bubbles exist were supposedly composed by AI (they don’t have much information value.) [FYI- this penultimate issue is the stuff of nightmares. In places, it looks like a guide to fatal birth defects.] The final issue is a philosophy essay on the role of human dignity in privacy expectations. It’s an interesting enough read, but the graphics are like a PowerPoint by someone who took, but failed, a course on PowerPoint graphic design.

If you’re curious about how close AI is to drawing graphic novels and have an interest in philosophy of humanity and / or information, you’ll find this book to be a worthwhile read. If you’re expecting an interesting story, you’ll be sadly disappointed. If you’re a budding Andy Warhol, looking for a way to make the next artistic breakthrough requiring little effort or creativity on your own part, you might see the next big thing.


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