Monthly Wrap - July 2023

MONTHLY WRAP - JULY 2023

www.dhirubhai.net/chuckmetz

July's post roll-up around Tech and Us. What it’s doing and how we’re reacting.

How do we take our 1.0 selves into a 4.0 digital world?

As always, you can view the complete LinkedIn feed?HERE.

TECHNOLOGY

• Why to leverage chatGPT and its kin as creative partners rather than competitive threats. AI Outperforms Humans in Creativity Test - Neuroscience News
• Trends are historical and not everything is a trend as this excellent short piece reflects. "In order to try to compete for success from a strategic perspective today, it is necessary to do what we might psychologically call reframing, changing assumptions about the future, moving beyond the determinism and fatalism of trends. In order to make a shift in the thinking of corporate decision-makers, investors or innovators, new fields of action need to be identified – relying less on existing trends and more on predicting or hypothesising where they might accelerate, where they might slow down, and where they might collapse and be replaced by something completely different. That’s what foresight is about." Future starts where trends end - 4CF
• Rising European tech hot spots. 6 places labelled Europe’s ‘next Silicon Valley’ (thenextweb.com)
• I've been pleased to contribute to IEEE's efforts to build a Strong Sustainability by Design initiative. The 400+ page draft is now out for public comment and review. Please take a moment to review the document and give your feedback at the link below.

• The humanoid robots are entering the "real world" more quickly than our Boston Dynamic viewing might lead us to think. Mass Production of Tethered Humanoid Robot for Researchers by Chinese Company Fourier Intelligence | NextBigFuture.com
• Great resource. Worth your look. The Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential | Union of International Associations (uia.org)
• Opensource LLaMA2 enters the exploding large language model fray with favorable review. Meta’s latest AI model is free for all?| MIT Technology Review
• As we're again discovering with large language models, no technology is released into a vacuum. Managing those releases into our social infrastructure is largely an unmanaged art. Evolution's tactics of survival of the fittest rather than of responsible collaboration on daily display. Using societal context knowledge to foster the responsible application of AI – Google Research Blog (googleblog.com)
• Less hyped than chat AI, equally revolutionary quantum computing technology promises exponentially world changing results. It's just not as friendly to our mental evolutionary imaginations as easier anthropomorphic chatGPT and kin technology. It's sneaking in under most of our radars. The dawn of quantum supercomputers? Microsoft says it's less than a decade away (zmescience.com)
• And as always with technology change, this quantum revolution promises significant social and economic challenge as well. Trends point to competition rather than responsible collaboration as in current unfolding AI releases. Scientists warn the ‘quantum revolution’ may stagnate economic growth (cointelegraph.com)
• Meanwhile, great continuing interest in longevity research. Harvard Scientist Says He's Found a Cocktail That Can Reverse Aging in Human Cells : ScienceAlert
• How does a decentralized platform swallow an 800-pound gorilla? Not always easily. Meta’s Threads Could Make—or Break—the Fediverse | WIRED
• Another chatGPT competitor. Why Marketers Need to Pay Attention to Anthropic’s Claude 2 (marketingaiinstitute.com)
• A very promising tool in bridging cultural divides. What is more divisive than language's fundamental tribalizing tendencies? I had a chance to use this technology platform in some group meetings, and it was impressive. We can concentrate on the humanity that unites us rather than at least one cultural division that separates us. And celebrate the beauty of our diversity while sharing as understanding equals. Byrdhouse Release: Auto Language Detection + Pop Up View - YouTube
• Still on the hunt for the mystery of consciousness. Scientists Unveil New Results in Hunt to Pinpoint the Seat of Consciousness (singularityhub.com)
• With the Android release, ChatGPT enters the huge portion of the world dependent on mobile phones. Promises further exponential growth and challenge. OpenAI Brings ChatGPT to Android as AI Boom Continues - Decrypt
• Part of the bell curve nature of adoption in societies. AI And The Economy: Companies and Industries That Be Slow to Adopt (forbes.com)
• And our evolutionarily wired responses on bell curve view here. On holding back the strange AI tide - by Ethan Mollick (oneusefulthing.org)
• And speaking of bell curves, ponderings of that upper edge. Space Civilizations That Cannot Be Killed | NextBigFuture.com
• Nice McKinsey AI trend review. Just bear in mind that the future begins where trends end. This might be my new favorite mantra. McKinsey Technology Trends Outlook 2023 | McKinsey and Generative AI and the future of work in America | McKinsey
• Huge. Huge. Huge. Where Will Practical Room Temperature Superconductors Matter? | NextBigFuture.com
• And here some grey swans I dare say...Why Digital Biology Has the Power to Change the Game Across Industries ReadWrite - Healthcare

US

• Yup, already happening. The coming AI ‘culture war’ | Montreal AI Ethics Institute (montrealethics.ai)
• One among many and worth reviewing. Institute for Technology, Ethics, and Culture - Markkula Center for Applied Ethics (scu.edu)
• Yes, we double down when challenged. Because we have strong wired tendencies that way. And as we've said in the past, we may not be able to change our wiring for now, but we are able to manage it if we choose. Why Is It That Even Proven Facts Can't Change Some People's Minds? | Discover Magazine
• Emotions supported our evolutionary survival. They remain important today. Just tough to manage. The Best Decision-Making Is Emotional - Every
• Feared by many. Promoted by some. But oh, how it wars against our tribal instincts... Exploring institutions for global AI governance (deepmind.com)
• Interesting tidbit here. Human Evolution is disgusting: Why being disgusted is a survival advantage - The University of Sydney
• Our exponentially exploding "tyranny of choice." We aren't wired for this. What is all this content doing to us? (ethics.org.au)
• Useful if we use it. Social scientists look to AI models to study human behavior (axios.com)
• Lovely essay on one very human aspect of the ChatGPT revolution. ‘It was as if my father were actually texting me’: grief in the age of AI | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian
• Nice refresh primer. Worth the short read. The Neuroscience of Tribalism | Psychology Today
• Another worthy social read about ourselves. Is AI biased or just holding a mirror up to ourselves? | Cybernews
• Potentially huge - useful OR threatening. AI System Detects Social Norm Violations - Neuroscience News
• Fun little read. What the viral AI-generated ‘Barbenheimer’ trailer says about generative AI hype | The AI Beat | VentureBeat
• Social innovators address both trends and futures for our benefit. How 25 years of social innovation has transformed 700 million lives | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)
• A different, and hopeful, spin on our trauma challenges. Rethinking Trauma: Understanding Anxiety as Adaptation | Psychology Today United Kingdom
• And a final bit of neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. Feeling nostalgic? Your brain is hardwired to crave it (nationalgeographic.com)

So. Much. More. In this month's posts. But I want to keep this mid-summer newsletter a refresh break rather than a deluge. See the LinkedIn posts HERE for the buffet, if interested.

Be well. Take care of yourselves and each other.

Chuck