Tag Archives: technology

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: Underrated

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Daily writing prompt
Who are some underrated people in history?
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Alfred Krupa, Bernard Sadow, and Robert Plath, men whose inventions over thirty-three years during the late twentieth-century ushered in a new epoch in human history — the era of the wheeled suitcase.

Now, the fact that we didn’t figure out putting wheels on a suitcase until the late 20th century (and that when we did it took several long-fought permutations before wheeled suitcases were worth a damn) is a chilling testimony to how quickly General Artificial Intelligence will leave our species in the dust.

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: Topics

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Daily writing prompt
What topics do you like to discuss?
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Anything but myself. Unfortunately, that seems to be the main mode of social discourse in the world. People mostly want to hear enough about me that they feel justified in telling me more about them. I’m an ideas guy: philosophy, science, literature, technology, economy, international affairs, etc. (Also, travel, but that only works with travelers — a tiny segment of the population.)

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: Patriotic

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Daily writing prompt
Are you patriotic? What does being patriotic mean to you?
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I am. I wish my country the best, am pained to see ailments of what have always been the country’s greatest strengths (the government being limited and at the command of the people and the law [rather than the other way around] and the courage to boldly lead by building the new technologies and adapting to the world that came to be,) and will not stop bitching about it unless and until the situation rights itself. When I was a young man, I served in the military and waved flags. Now, as an old man, I’m not eager to see America go gently into that good night.

I realize that may sound excessively Pollyanna about America’s past and pessimistic about the present / future. I do realize that the country has always had its flaws, as humanity always does. (And loved it all the same.) There have been missteps and mass movements that would later come to be viewed as wrongheaded and self-defeating. But we always had checks and balances, an Enlightenment norm for tolerance, and a respect for decorum and gravitas in our leaders. Now, as I see the “Putin-Orban Manual for New Populist-Nationalist Dictators” being played out, I wonder if the shark hasn’t been jumped on all that was good, honorable, and impressive in the America in which I grew up.

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: Invention

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Daily writing prompt
The most important invention in your lifetime is…
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Velcro and Sticky Notes! We knew how to fasten things, but before then we couldn’t fasten things in a half-assed fashion. As Laozi says in the Daodejing [Ch. 40,] “Returning is the movement of Tao; yielding is the way of Tao.” So, to be able to stick and unstick at will is the highest virtue under heaven.

[NOTE: Technically, research indicates both inventions predate me, but I don’t believe ether became popular for household consumer use until my lifetime.]

PROMPT: First Computer

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Daily writing prompt
Write about your first computer.
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All I know is that it was much bigger and less capable than my current computer. But – then again – it wasn’t designed to monopolize and commoditize my attention.

In summary: bigger, slower, less capable, but less sinister.

PROMPT: Complain

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Daily writing prompt
What do you complain about the most?
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The state of the modern world. Increasingly, I feel humanity has jumped the shark.

Years ago, I heard someone wise use the term “information inflation” to describe the fact that we were so awash in information that each piece of information became virtually valueless. [Not to mention that with so much information it becomes harder to distinguish quality information from junk information or quasi-information.] I think we are now treading water in an ocean of [mostly shit] information and quasi-information, and the exhaustion is setting in.

This makes people crave simplicity, which would be great except that we often try to simplify the complexities that must be accepted to have a bit of tolerance and humility.

[The one thing I learned in years of education involving policy is whenever anyone says, “This problem would be so easy to fix, all you’ve got to do is ____________.” that person has no idea what he is talking about and is completely blind to the challenges, complexities, feedback effects, and externalities of the issue at hand.]