How to tell the good people from the bad

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Behavior can be good or bad. But people themselves aren't good or bad—though they have the capacity for doing either one. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago, “The line separating good and evil passes right through every human heart, and through all human hearts.”

Evil is not a thing you can point at and say, “There it goes!” or “Here it is!” Evil is a privation. A negation. It's not something in itself. It's like rot to a tree. Without the tree, the rot wouldn't exist. Without a context of good, evil doesn't exist. So, if you want to declare something evil, then you must first come to terms with what is good.

Stephen Goforth

Love Means Putting yourself out of business

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The proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gift. We feed children in order that they soon be able to feed themselves; we teach them in order that they may soon not need our teaching. The hour when we can say “They need me no longer” should be our reward.

My own profession – that of a university teacher – is in this way dangerous. If we are any good we must always be working towards the moment at which our pupils are fit to become our critics and rivals. We should be delighted when it arrives, as the fencing master is delighted when his pupil can pink and disarm him. Any many are. But not all.

CS Lewis, The Four Loves

A Dozen Recent AI Prediction Articles

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Advice from Conan O'Brien

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Nietzsche famously said, "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger." But what he failed to stress is that it almost kills you. Disappointment stings, and for driven, successful people like yourselves, it is disorienting.

There are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized. I went to college with many people who prided themselves on knowing exactly who they were and exactly where they were going.

My peers and I have all missed that mark in a thousand different ways. But the point is this: It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. It's not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right, your perceived failure can become a catalyst for profound re-invention.

In 2000, I told (Harvard) graduates to not be afraid to fail, and I still believe that. But today, I tell you that whether you fear it or not, disappointment will come. The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality.

Many of you here today are getting your diploma at this Ivy League school because you have committed yourself to a dream and worked hard to achieve it. And there is no greater cliché in a commencement address than "follow your dream." Well, I am here to tell you that whatever you think your dream is now, it will probably change. And that's okay. Four years ago, many of you had a specific vision of what your college experience was going to be and who you were going to become. And I bet, today, most of you would admit that your time here was very different from what you imagined.

I have told you many things today, most of it foolish but some of it true. I'd like to end my address by breaking a taboo and quoting myself from 17 months ago. At the end of my final program with NBC, just before signing off, I said, "Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen." Today, receiving this honor and speaking to the Dartmouth Class of 2011 from behind a tree trunk, I have never believed that more.

Conan O'Brien, born April 18, 1963

From his commencement address to Dartmouth College (watch the entire speech here)

How to tell the good people from the bad  

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Behavior can be good or bad. But people themselves aren't good or bad—though they have the capacity for doing either one. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago, “The line separating good and evil passes right through every human heart, and through all human hearts.”

Evil is not a thing you can point at and say, “There it goes!” or “Here it is!” Evil is a privation. A negation. It's not something in itself. It's like rot to a tree. Without the tree, the rot wouldn't exist. Without a context of good, evil doesn't exist. So, if you want to declare something evil, then you must first come to terms with what is good.

Stephen Goforth

Why confusion makes some people creative and other people crazy

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Not everyone has the same impulse when it comes to ambiguity. Some people are very uncomfortable with confusion, and their minds jump to quick decisions in the face of uncertainty. Others are content to be confused a while, and may even find it makes them more creative. Even with this article, some may have read the ambiguous headline and been intrigued -- while others may have felt annoyed or daunted.

Psychologists describe the degree to which people seek out certainty as their "need for closure." This trait varies not just from person to person, but also with environmental factors, like fatigue, time pressure and stress.

The need for closure doesn’t have anything to do with intelligence, but it can have a powerful influence on your behavior -- including your capacity to innovate, your predilection for stereotyping, and your ability to make decisions in times of crisis.

Ana Swanson writing in the Washington Post

Love Begets Love

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The more children know that you value them, that you consider them extraordinary people, the more willing they will be to listen to you and afford you the more willing they will be to listen to you and afford you the same esteem. And the more appropriate your teaching, based on your knowledge of them, the more eager your children will be to learn from you. And the more they learn, the more extraordinary the will become, If the reader senses the cyclical character of this process, he or she is quite correct and is appreciating the truth of the reciprocity of love. Instead of a vicious downward cycle, it is a creative upward cycle of evolution and growth. Value creates value. Love begets love.

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

13 Things People are Trying to Get AI to Do

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The Aim of Genuine Love

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Parents who say to their children, “You should be grateful for all that we have done for you” are invariably parents who are lacking in love to a significant degree. Anyone who genuinely loves knows the pleasure of loving. When we genuinely love we do so because we want to love. We have children because we want to have children, and if we are loving parents, it is because we want to be loving parents. It is true that love involves a change in the self, but this is an extension of the self rather than a sacrifice of the self. As will be discussed again later, genuine love is a self-replenishing activity. Indeed, it is even more; it enlarges rather than diminishes the self; it fills the self rather than depleting it. In a real sense love is as selfish as nonlove.

Here again there is a paradox in that love is both selfish and unselfish at the same time. It is not the selfishness or unselfishness that distinguishes love from nonlove; it is the aim of the action. In the case of genuine love the aim is always spiritual growth. In the case of nonlove the aim is always something else.

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

18 Recent Articles about Teaching & AI

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17 Articles about the Business of Running an AI Company

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Listening to Children

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Why exert effort to focus totally on the boring prattlings of a six-year-old? First, you willingness to do so is the best possible concrete evidence of your esteem you can give your child. If you give your child the same esteem you would give a great lecturer, then the child will know him or herself to be valued and therefore feel valuable. Second, the more children feel valuable, the more they will begin to say things of value.

They will rise to your expectation of them. Third, the more you listen to your child, the more you will realize that in amoungst the pauses, the stutterings, the seemingly innocent chatter, your child does indeed have valuable things to say. Listen to your child enough and you'll come to realize that he or she is quite an extraordinary individual. And the more extraordinary you realize your child to be, the more you'll will be willing to listen. And the more you will learn.

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

Social Groups rather than Facts Shape our Opinions

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Our attitudes are shaped much more by our social groups than they are by facts on the ground. We are not great reasoners. Most people don't like to think at all, or like to think as little as possible. And by most, I mean roughly 70 percent of the population. Even the rest seem to devote a lot of their resources to justifying beliefs that they want to hold, as opposed to forming credible beliefs based only on fact. 

Think about if you were to utter a fact that contradicted the opinions of the majority of those in your social group. You pay a price for that. 

I live in a very limited universe, and so I have to depend on the beliefs and knowledge of other people. I know what I’ve read; I know what I’ve heard from experts. In that sense, the decisions we make, the attitudes we form, the judgments we make, depend very much on what other people are thinking. 

Steven Sloman quoted in Vox

The Impact of AI on Creativity in 19 Articles

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18 Articles about How AI is Affecting Jobs

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Want to Know if AI Will Take Your Job? I Tried Using It to Replace Myself - WSJ

AI-powered robotics will fuel jobs disruptions in ways we don’t realize - Semafor

The human side of generative AI: Creating a path to productivity - McKinsey

An Analysis of 5 Million Job Postings Showed These Are the 3 Jobs Being Replaced by AI the Fastest – Inc.

Gen AI is here to stay — here are 5 skills to help you stay relevant in the changing job market – CNBC

Swedish fintech Klarna says its AI assistant does the work of 700 people—after it laid off 700 people – Fast Company

Oops! Replacing Workers With AI Is Actually More Expensive, MIT Finds – Futurism

AI Is Starting to Threaten White-Collar Jobs - Wall Street Journal

The AI machines are not coming for your job – MarketWatch

 AI Talent Is in Demand as Other Tech Job Listings Decline - Wall Street Journal 

AI's job threat extends to CEOs who move too slowly in adapting to it – Axios 

AI hiring tools may be filtering out the best job applicants - BBC

10% of US workers are in jobs most exposed to artificial intelligence, White House says - CNN

Will A.I. Take All Our Jobs? This Economist Suggests Maybe Not. – New York Times

AI could help ending the dominance of the credentialed classes – Washington Post

9 AI jobs you can get without being an expert coder – Business Insider

Amid Fears of AI Job Losses, This MIT Professor Thinks It Can Fix the Labor Market – Inc. 

AI Can't Do All Our Jobs for Us. But We Can Make It a 'Superhero Sidekick' - CNBC

Slicing Projects

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Rather than looking at tasks, projects or decisions as items that must be completed, slice them into the smallest possible units of progress, then knock them out one at a time. This strategy relieves the pressure of thinking we need a perfect plan before we begin something — after all, if your first step is “open a new Google Doc for this week’s newsletter” and not “pick a perfect topic, write a perfect lede and have a perfect organization,” you either have achieved that micro-goal or you haven’t. There’s no gray area.

Tim Herrera writing in the New York Times 

23 Amazing Things AI Can Do Now

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Artificial intelligence might revolutionise coaching based on football research – Cosmos

OpenAI reveals artificial intelligence tool to re-create human voices - Axios 

NASA is releasing its first open-source geospatial artificial intelligence foundation model for Earth observation data - EarthData 

Advances in AI and satellite imagery allowed researchers to create the clearest picture yet of human activity at sea – The Verge 

AI Is Telling Bedtime Stories to Your Kids Now - Wired

Why AI will help IT workers get more sleep - Semafor

New study finds ChatGPT gives better advice than professional columnists – PsyPost

LinkedIn Tests New AI-Based Learning Elements In-Stream – Social Media Today

AI platform demonstrates ability to autonomously plan and execute a chemistry experiment after taking input prompts from researchers – Engineering   

Can AI Predict What Shoppers Will Buy? – Business of Fashion

AI is speeding up scientific discoveries and helping to spot new ideas - Axios

Google Chrome will summarize entire articles for you with built-in generative AI - The Verge

AI is helping cut the carbon footprint of online shopping returns - Semafor

Elvis Evolution: Presley to be brought to life using AI for new immersive show - BBC

How an AI robot smashed human world record in Labyrinth, a classic marble maze game – Fox News  

George Carlin has a new AI-generated comedy special – USA Today 

This AI game controller can predict which button you'll press next - BGR

This AI learnt language by seeing the world through a baby’s eyes – Nature   

AI program “can train neural networks using just a handful of satellite and drone images - Phys.org 

How AI Can Find the Perfect Movies, TV Shows and Books for You – Wall Street Journal  

Ex Zillow exec launches AI-powered home search platform - Axios

A Celebrity Dies, and New Biographies Pop Up Overnight. The Author? A.I. – New York Times

The AI art generator Midjourney is the favored tool in architecture - Bloomberg