Artificial Intelligence and You

Our relationship with time is dysfunctional. Here to help us explore possibly the most critical effect of AI on the pace of life is Oliver Burkeman, author of the best-selling self-help book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals and former author of the psychology column “This Column Will Change Your Life” in The Guardian.

Most of us can attest to being severely overworked and with a shrinking amount of personal time left over. This is true despite the introduction into our lives of a huge amount of technology from the PC to the Internet. Why have tools like email, Google, and instant messaging not reduced our workload and stress? In fact, it’s not hard to believe that they are responsible for making those things worse. In which case, we must ask, what effect will unleashing AI – which accelerates everything it touches - have on our work life? 

This is exactly the thought space that Oliver inhabits, and his work has made a major difference in my own life. Read Oliver's posts and subscribe to his newsletter at OliverBurkeman.com.

In this first half of the interview we talk about the parable of the rocks in the jar and how it’s a pernicious lie, the psychology of perceiving life as finite, and how technology has not changed our work stress and may be making it worse through induced demand. 

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

Mounir Shita, CEO of Kimera Systems, is author of the upcoming book The Science of Intelligence, which contains some interesting and thought-provoking explorations of intelligence that had me thinking about Pedro Domingos’ book The Master Algorithm. We talk about theories of AGI, free will, egg smashing, and Mounir's prototype smartphone app that learned how to silence itself in a movie theater!

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

There is, perhaps, no more burning topic at the moment than the future of work, and so I am particularly grateful to welcome to the show Gary Bolles, author of The Next Rules of Work and a co-founder of eParachute.com, helping job-hunters & career changers with programs inspired by the evergreen book “What Color Is Your Parachute?” written by his father. Gary's courses on LinkedIn Learning have over 1 million learners and he is a former Silicon Valley executive and a co-founder of SoCap, the world’s largest gathering of impact entrepreneurs and investors.

Gary is adjunct Chair for the Future of Work for Singularity University, and as a partner in the consulting agency Charrette, he helps organizations, communities, educators and governments develop strategies for “what’s next.”

In the conclusion of the interview, we talk about unbossing and holacracies, how AI will impact organizational structures, fear, FOMO, and agency, and the Singularity University.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

There is, perhaps, no more burning topic at the moment than the future of work, and so I am particularly grateful to welcome to the show Gary Bolles, author of The Next Rules of Work and a co-founder of eParachute.com, helping job-hunters & career changers with programs inspired by the evergreen book “What Color Is Your Parachute?” written by his father. Gary's courses on LinkedIn Learning have over 1 million learners and he is a former Silicon Valley executive and a co-founder of SoCap, the world’s largest gathering of impact entrepreneurs and investors.

Gary is adjunct Chair for the Future of Work for Singularity University, and as a partner in the consulting agency Charrette, he helps organizations, communities, educators and governments develop strategies for “what’s next.”

In the first half of the interview, we talk about the gig economy, the new rules of work, what ChatGPT did to the job market, and an interesting concept called the community operating system.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

My guest is the co-host of the Good Robot Podcast, "Where technology meets feminism." Eleanor Drage is a Senior Research Fellow at The Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge and was named in the Top 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics of 2022. She is also co-author of a recent book also called The Good Robot: Why Technology Needs Feminism. 

In this conclusion of the interview, we talk about unconscious bias, hiring standards, stochastic parrots, science fiction, and the early participation of women in computing.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

My guest is the co-host of the Good Robot Podcast, "Where technology meets feminism." Eleanor Drage is a Senior Research Fellow at The Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge and was named in the Top 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics of 2022. She is also co-author of a recent book also called The Good Robot: Why Technology Needs Feminism. 

We talk about about all that, plus some quantum mechanics, saunas, ham, lesbian bacteria, and… well it’ll all make more sense when you listen.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

My guest is a really good role model for how a young person can carve out an important niche in the AI space, especially for people who aren’t inclined to the computer science side of the field. Fiona McEvoy is author of the blog YouTheData.com, with a specific focus on the intersection of technology and society. She was named as one of “30 Influential Women Advancing AI in San Francisco” by RE•WORK, and in 2020 was honored in the inaugural Brilliant Women in AI Ethics Hall of Fame, established to recognize “Brilliant women who have made exceptional contributions to the space of AI Ethics and diversity.”

We talk about her journey to becoming an influential communicator and the ways she carries that out, what it’s like for young people in this social cauldron being heated by AI, and some of the key issues affecting them. 

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

At the end of February there was a landmark conference in Panama City and online, the Beneficial AGI Summit. AGI of course standing for Artificial General Intelligence, the Holy Grail of AI. My guest is Jerome C. Glenn, one of the organizers and sponsors, and who has a long and storied history of pivotal leadership and contributions to addressing existential issues.

He is the co-founder and CEO of The Millennium Project on global futures research, was contracted by the European Commission to write the AGI paper for their Horizon 2025-2027 program, was the Washington, DC representative for the United Nations University as executive director of their American Council, and was instrumental in naming the first Space Shuttle the Enterprise, banning the first space weapon (the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System) in SALT II, and shared the 2022 Lifeboat Guardian Award with Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

He has over 50 years of futures research experience working for governments, international organizations, and private industry in Science & Technology Policy, Environmental Security, Economics, Education, Defense, Space, and much more. 

In this second half we talk about approaches for actually controlling the development of AGI that were developed at the conference, the AI arms race, and… why Jerome doesn’t like the term futurism. 

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.