the idea you get in the shower
/Everyone who's ever taken a shower has an idea. It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference. - Nolan Bushnell (founder of Atari)
ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire
Dependency in Marriage
/Dependency may appear to be love because it is a force that causes people to fiercely attach themselves to one another. But in actuality it is not love; it is a form of antilove. It has its genesis in a parental failure to love and it perpetuates the failure. It seeks to receive rather than to give. It nourished infantilism rather than growth. It works to trap and constrict rather than to liberate.
For passive dependent people the loss of the other is such a frightening prospect that they cannot face preparing for it or tolerating a process that would diminish the dependency or increase the freedom of the other. Consequently it is one of the behavioral hallmarks of passive dependent people in marriage that their role differentiations is rigid, and they seek to increase rather than diminish mutual dependency so as to make marriage more rather than less of a trap. By so doing, in the name of what they call love but what is really dependency, they diminish their own and each other’s freedom and stature.
M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
18 recent articles about students using AI
/How two professors harnessed generative AI to teach students to be better writers – Fast Company
AI isn't a daily habit yet for teens, young adults - Axios
University Suspends Students for AI Tool It Gave Them $10,000 Prize to Make – 404 Media
College-bound students concerned about AI skills – Inside Higher Ed
New report shows widespread usage of AI by high school seniors – The National Desk
AI Detection Is a Business. But Should It Be Faculty Business? – Chronicle of Higher Ed
New Data Reveal How Many Students Are Using AI to Cheat – Ed Week
The Risky Words That Might Make School Admissions Suspect AI Wrote Your Essay – Slash Gear
College student put on academic probation for using Grammarly: ‘AI violation’ – New York Post
Facial Recognition Heads to Class. Will Students Benefit? - Inside Higher Ed
66% of leaders wouldn't hire someone without AI skills, report finds – ZDnet
Humans plus AI detectors can catch AI-generated academic writing – University World News
Teen and Young Adult Perspectives on Generative AI: Patterns of Use, Excitements, and Concerns – Common Sense Media
AI and the Death of Student Writing – Chronicle of Higher Ed
How two professors harnessed generative AI to teach students to be better writers – Fast Company
A.I. Program Aims to Break Barriers for Female Students – New York Times
AI is getting very popular among students and teachers, very quickly – CNBC
Six New LinkedIn Features College Students should care about - Her Campus
Boredom and Cowardice
/Teenagers and their younger siblings grow bored quickly. It's their job to figure out how not to be bored.
Life is filled with dull meetings and duller people and many empty moments. Either you hate a large part of your duties in life or you figure out ways to make that time interesting. Boredom is a wake-up call for us to get involved in process of life.
Scott Peck wrote in The Road Less Traveled, "Mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs." Embracing what we are handed and turning it into something worthwhile is a lifelong struggle.
It isn't the parents' job to keep children entertained. The kids' job is to take charge of their own situation and figure out what captivates them. Parents just need to provide opportunities and a sense of direction to help kids discover what works.
If we are not in the hunt for the compelling, we will certainly be miserable people. Many escape attempts from the dullness of life that can temporarily distract us. It takes something meaningful and awe-filling to engage us over the long run.
Stephen Goforth
14 Surprising Things AI Can Do Now
/Using AI to decode dog vocalizations – University of Michigan
An app that uses generative AI that writes biographies for users – Tech Crunch
'AI is redefining the insurance industry' – FT Advisor
AI Is Coming to a Restaurant Near You, Says OpenTable CEO Debby Soo – Barrons
Internet Horrified at AI App for Cloning Dead Family Members - Futurism
Spotify launches personalized AI playlists that you can build using prompts – Tech Crunch
The AI art generator Midjourney is the favored tool in architecture – Bloomberg
Anthropic claims its AI models are as persuasive as humans - Axios
Ready for a Chatbot Version of Your Favorite Instagram Influencers? – New York Times
AI “deathbots” are helping people in China grieve – Rest of World
I Used ChatGPT to Build My Best Wardrobe Ever, and It Worked – Cnet
No physics? No problem. AI weather forecasting is already making huge strides. – Ars Technica
Tom Brady says he's 'using AI' to prepare for broadcasting career – Awful Announcing
Unfocusing increases Creativity
/“By taking that fifteen-minute period for mindlessness or daydreaming, your attention has been broadened and your mind is now able to make more creative connections between ideas. This cannot happen when you stay overly focused on a problem,” explains (Scott Barry Kaufman, scientific director of the Imagination Institute at the University of Pennsylvania).
Walking, in particular, appears to boost creativity. In a study appropriately titled “Give Your Ideas Some Legs,” researchers found that, both during the walks and right afterward, people scored higher on several different creativity tests.
You can also unfocus by broadening your experiential and intellectual horizons. According to Kaufman, anything that violates expectations of how the world works can boost creativity. For example, a semester spent studying abroad boosts students’ creativity. Why? New experiences that disrupt our usual way of life and show us a different perspective make us more mentally flexible or creative.
Stanford psychologist Emma Seppälä writing in the Washington Post
Critical thinking is up to you
/Critical thinking means being able to evaluate evidence, to tell fact from opinion, to see holes in an argument, to tell whether cause and effect has been established and to spot illogic. “Most research shows you can teach these skills,” notes cognitive psychologist D Alan Bensley of Frostburg State University, Maryland. “But critical-thinking skills are different from critical-thinking dispositions, or a willingness to deploy those skills.”
In other words, critical-thinking skills are necessary for engaging in critical thinking, but they are not sufficient. You also have to want to think critically. If you have good critical-thinking skills but for some reason are not motivated to deploy them, you will reach conclusions and make decisions no more rationally than someone without those skills.
Sharon Begley, Critical Thinking: Part Skill, Part Mindset and Totally up to You
10 Webinars This Week about AI, Journalism, Media & More
/Tue, June 11 - Using AI Tools like ChatGPT to Help You Launch and Grow Your Business
What: Dive into the Entrepreneurs Toolkit, a treasure trove of prompts tailored to guide you through key stages of business development. From assessing opportunities and establishing your entity to financial planning, marketing strategies, and human resources management, you will learn how to harness AI tools effectively at every step of your entrepreneurial journey.
Who: Daniel Street, Asst. Professor of Accounting & Financial Management, Bucknell University
When: 12 noon, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: The Pennsylvania Small Business Development Centers
Tue, June 11 - The Future of Measurement: Use AI to Elevate Marketing ROI
What: How to best equip your brand for efficient marketing ROI measurement and prioritization of marketing activities. The optimal data-driven techniques to predict the performance and impact of media activities. Strategies to transform MMM results into actionable recommendations for optimizing marketing spending and maximizing ROI.
Who: Igor Skokan, marketing science director at Meta, and Henrik Busch, CEO of Kantar Global Analytics.
When: 12 noon, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Kantar
Tue, June 11 - How to Protect Yourself Online
What: This lesson will focus on online risks and how they can be mitigated.
Who: Stephanie Sugars U.S. Press Freedom Tracker
When: 11 am, Central
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: New England First Amendment Coalition
Tue, June 11 - Introduction to the All-New Adobe Captivate – A Beginner’s Guide
What: An interactive session designed specifically for beginners where we'll delve into the fundamental features and functionalities of the all-new Adobe Captivate, which is used for creating eLearning content such as software demonstrations.
Who: Sharath Ramaswamy Senior eLearning Evangelist, Adobe
When: 12 noon, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Adobe
Tue, June 11 - AI Innovator Collaborative: Evaluating AI Tools
What: How to evaluate tools for your newsroom. We’ll get into how to evaluate the landscape of vendors, ethical and privacy considerations to take into account, assessing potential solutions within current systems and conversations to have with potential vendors. Come prepared to share how your newsroom is thinking about vetting potential AI tools and vendors — we are going to create a collaborative list of considerations and questions to address.
Who: ONA’s Head of Strategic Partnerships, Hanaa Rifaey
When: 3 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free to ONA members
Sponsor: Online News Association
Wed, June 12 - Leveraging Generative AI to Drive Nonprofit Innovation
What: Learn how to utilize Generative AI to streamline operations and elevate member engagement.
When: 1 pm
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: TechSoup
Wed, June 12 - Smart Ways to Use GenAI to Assist the Newsroom
What: Learn about an internal chatbot that makes it easy for journalists to search the archives, as well as highlighting workflow-friendly tools that help journalists. Also, how GenAI can be used to help this process in the future along with specific examples of how The Times is using GenAI to help its newsroom move faster and get more done.
Who: Ole Reissman, director of AI at Der Spiegel, and Luke Sikkema, Head of Editorial Operations at The Times UK.
When: 10 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: International News Media Assoc,.
Wed, June 12 - Supporting and engaging students in an AI-powered, post-pandemic world
What: We explore the profound changes and emerging trends within the academic landscape post-pandemic, focusing on how these shifts have redefined learning and research practices.
Who: Stephen Kemsley Senior Manager, User Experience Design Clarivate; Image of Cheryl Simpson Cheryl Simpson Senior User Experience Designer Clarivate; Sarah Brooks Senior User Experience Designer Clarivate; Mark Ayling (Moderator) Senior Manager, Product Marketing ProQuest, Part of Clarivate
When: 11 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: ProQuest, Part of Clarivate
Thu, June 13 - The Futurist: The Age of AI
What: Influential policymakers and technology pioneers explore the impact of artificial intelligence on the way we work, live and interact with the world around us.
Who: Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and Inflection AI; Gen. Mark A. Milley (U.S. Army, Ret.) and former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; Maria Ressa, co-founder and CEO at Rappler and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate; Kai-Fu Lee, chair of Sinovation Ventures and CEO of 01.AI, and many more. Presenting Sponsors:
When: 2 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: IBM and Nasdaq
Thu, June 13 - 4 Key Things Executives Need to Know About AI
What: This session demystifies AI by sharing not only how to understand AI, but how to strategically implement it.
Who: Shaun Dippnall Chief Delivery Officer, Sand Technologies
When: 12 noon, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: SAND Technologies
You can’t opt Out of Life
/Imagine that three people see a twenty-dollar bill on the front seat of an unlocked car. Each person walks past and leave the cash there. Why? The first person wanted to take the money but passed up the opportunity for fear of punishment if caught in the act. The second rejected the temptation out of a conviction that God makes certain rules that people are to follow, and one of those rules is that we shouldn’t take things that don’t belong to us. The third refrained from taking the money because of empathy—awareness of how frustrated and angry she herself would be if some of her money were stolen.
The action is the same for each individual—no one took the money. But people do things for reasons and the reasons behind the same action in the case above vary significantly. The bumper-sticker-sized version of the first person’s ethics is “Whatever you do, don’t get caught,” while that of the second person is “Thou shall not steal.” The final persona builds her morality around “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” These different reasons grow out of differences in theories about what constitutes right behavior.
Though none of the three people may have been immediately conscious of these theories at work, the theories were there, and they guided each person’s behavior.
Also consider the motives or the reasons behind the action.
Why they did what they did—the theoretical basis of their actions—is significant.
The reality is we must make decisions about the ethical issues confronting us, and we must have a theoretical foundations on which to build and evaluate these decisions.
In other words, the issue is not whether we have a theory, but whether we are conscious of the theory we do have and believe it is the best available guide for our life. We do not choose to be ethicists; we cannot opt out of that. The real question is whether we are going to be good ethicists.
Steve Wilkens, Beyond Bumper Sticker Ethics
17 Recent Articles about the Dangers of AI
/What AI thinks a beautiful woman looks like - Washington Post
4 Types of Gen AI Risk and How to Mitigate Them – Harvard Business Review
OpenAI, Google DeepMind's current and former employees warn about AI risks – Reuters
This Is What It Looks Like When AI Eats the World - The Atlantic
The Low-Paid Humans Behind AI’s Smarts Ask Biden to Free Them From ‘Modern Day Slavery’ – Wired
Janet Yellen warns AI in finance poses ‘significant risks’ - CNN
A.I.’s Black Boxes Just Got a Little Less Mysterious – New York Times
Spam, junk … slop? The latest wave of AI behind the ‘zombie internet’ - The Guardian
The big AI risk not enough people are seeing – The Atlantic
Equipped with AI tools, hackers make apps riskier than ever – CS Online
When AI Gets It Wrong, Will It Be Held Accountable? - RAND
In novel case, U.S. charges man with making child sex abuse images with AI - – Washington Post
The ugly truth behind ChatGPT: AI is guzzling resources at planet-eating rates – The Guardian
AI will transform sports betting. It will also increase the risks. – Washington Post
Huge Power Demand for AI Is Keeping Polluting Coal Plants Alive – Futurism
What Ever Happened to the AI Apocalypse? Out: building God. In: partnering with Apple. – NY Mag
UN secretary general warns humanity on ‘knife’s edge’ as AI raises nuclear war threat – The Guardian
Our Willingness to Risk
/People with a phobia about being struck by lightning place such a heavy weight on the consequences of that outcome that they tremble even though they know that the odds on being hit are tiny.
Gut rules the measurement. Ask passengers in an airplane during turbulent flying conditions whether each of them has an equal degree of anxiety. Most people know full well that flying in an airplane is far safer than driving in an automobile, but some passengers will keep the flight attendants busy while others will snooze happily regardless of the weather.
And that's a good thing. If everyone valued every risk in precisely the same way, many risky opportunities would be passed up. Venturesome people place high utility on the small probably of huge gains and low utility on the larger probability of loss. Others place little utility on the probably of gain because of their paramount goal is to preserver their capital. Where one sees sunshine, the other sees a thunderstorm. Without the venturesome, the world would turn a lot more slowly. Think of what life would be like if everyone were phobic about lightning, flying in airplanes, or investing in star-up companies. We are indeed fortunate that human beings differ in their appetite for risk.
Peter Bernstein, Against the Gods
I Count You
/Listening attentively says, "I count you." Clearly stating what you want or feel, says, "I count myself."
Counting someone—either yourself or another person—is a means to say:
- you are important,
- I have confidence in your ability to handle situations and to recognize when help is needed,
- I trust you will follow through on promises.
On the other hand, when you discount someone (including yourself), the assumptions are the opposite: lack of faith, lack of confidence, and lack of trust.
Your counting attitude is not the same as your momentary feelings about someone or yourself. Counting is a way to say, "This person's intentions, thoughts, feelings, etc., are worth taking into account. You have value."
Stephen Goforth
A Dozen Articles about AI & Coding
/Many developers still aren't really sure how useful Gen AI tools will be for them – MSN
With AI writing so much code, should you still study computer science? – Business Insider
AI company launches coding assistant trained on over 80 programming languages – ItPro
AI Copilots Are Changing How Coding Is Taught - IEEE
How to Learn to Code with ChatGPT in 2024 – Geeky-Gadgets
How AI assistants are already changing the way code gets made – MIT Tech Review
Computer Science Is No Longer the Safe Major - The Atlantic
How to Learn Python Quickly with ChatGPT – Geeky Gadgets
AI Is Writing Code Now. For Companies, That Is Good and Bad. – Wall Street Journal
The rise of the novice coder: Can AI turn every employee into a developer? – Semafor
Forcing AI on developers is a bad idea that is going to happen – The Register
Top R Packages for Data Science You Need to Know – Analytics Insight
Normal had Shifted
/Regression to the mean is most slavishly followed on the stock market. Wall Street folklore is full of such catch phrases as “Buy low and sell high,” “You never get poor taking a profit.” All are variations on a simple theme: if you bet that today’s normality will extend indefinitely into the future, you will get rich sooner and face a smaller risk of going broke than if you run with the crowd. Yet many investors violate this advice or selling high. Impelled by greed and fear, they run with the crowd instead of thinking of themselves.
Since we never know exactly what is going to happen tomorrow, it is easier to assume that the future will resemble the present than to admit that it may bring some unknown change. A stock that has been going up for a while somehow seems a better buy than a stock that has been heading for the cellar. We assume that a rising price signifies that the company is flourishing and that a falling price signifies that the company is in trouble. Why stick your neck out?
Consider those investors who had the temerity to buy stocks in early 1930, right after the Great Crash, when prices had fallen about 50% from their previous highs. Prices proceeded to fall another 80% before they finally hit bottom in the fall of 1932. Of consider the cautious investors who sold out in early 1955, when the Down Jones Industries had finally regained their old 1929 highs and had tripled over the preceding six years. Just nine years later, prices were double both their 1929 and their 1955 highs. In both cases, the anticipated return to “normal” failed to take place: normal had shifted to a new location.
Peter Bernstein, Against the Gods
12 Articles about Running an AI Company
/The media bosses fighting back against AI — and the ones cutting deals – Washington Post
Nvidia’s Sales Triple, Signaling AI Boom’s Staying Power – Wall Street Journal
A.I.’s Black Boxes Just Got a Little Less Mysterious – New York Times
In One Key A.I. Metric, China Pulls Ahead of the U.S.: Talent - New York Times
The Fight for AI Talent: Pay Million-Dollar Packages and Buy Whole Teams – Wall Street Journal
What GPT-4o illustrates about AI Regulation – HyperDimensional
Tech's AI answer war heats up - Axios
Quantum Computers Can Now Run Powerful AI That Works like the Brain – Scientific American
Reddit to Give OpenAI Access to Its Data in Licensing Deal - Wall Street Journal
Meta, Google driving voice assistants, but people have found the technology uncool - New York Times
OpenAI announces new safety committee with Sam Altman, Bret Taylor, John Schulman, and others – Axios
Wayve, an A.I. Start-Up for Autonomous Driving, Raises $1 Billion - New York Times
A time to launch out
/Everyone needs a time to question, ponder and launch out without walls in order to make authentic moves.
Engineering Spiritual Growth
/One of the problems people encounter when they discover "spiritual growth," and first fully realize they are on a spiritual journey (is that) they start to think that they can direct it. They think if they go off to a monastery for a weekend retreat or take some classes in Zen meditation, or take up some Sufi dancing, or attend an EST workshop, then they’ll reach nirvana. Unfortunately, that is not the way it works. It works only when God is doing the directing. And people can get into a certain kind of trouble if they think they can do it on their own.
If you think you can plan your spiritual growth, it ain’t going to happen. I don’t mean to discount workshops or other forms of self-inquiry – they can be valuable. Do what you feel called to do, but also be prepared to accept that you don’t necessarily know what you’re going to learn. Be willing to be surprised by forces beyond your control, and realize that a major learning on the journey is the art of surrender.
M Scott Peck, Further Along the Road Less Traveled
Everyone dies
/Everyone dies, but not everyone lives. - A. Sachs
31 Articles about Data Science & AI from May
/A significant upgrade to the US space-based surveillance powers
Behind the scenes: A breakdown of what my data science role truly entails
How the Pentagon is making use of AI with spy satellite data
Some of the recent neural networks breakthroughs shaping AI
AI Definitions: Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
Thinking about implicit bias in large language models
A Guide to working with SQLite databases in Python
A Russian counter space weapon launched into space poses a threat to US satellites
How to build neural networks for node classification
China launches four high-resolution remote sensing satellites
New Insights into Transformer Neural Networks and Their Performance Dynamics
AI Definitions: Vector Databases
Geospatial tech has found its place in almost all the sectors
Charting the course for small satellite market growth
The NGA is injecting machine learning & computer vision across its operations
Microsoft has developed a generative AI platform exclusively for the US intelligence community
Few breakthroughs have done so much in so little time as the AI design known as a transformer
Supercharging Graph Neural Networks with Large Language Models
Recurrent Neural Networks: An Introduction to Sequence Modelling
Big AIs in Small Devices using tensor networks
The most useful data analyst tools ranked
A look at the “rising trend of LLMs in AI, their trailblazing effect on industry working sectors
The attempt to transfer electronic neural networks into the optical domain
When are Foundation Models Effective?
Deep learning for high-resolution seismic imaging
Why the US military is hitting the brakes on generative AI
Have smaller open source foundation models begun replacing proprietary models?
The loyal opposition
/One very outspoken, controversial minister was finally able to reduce his own anxiety when he began to think of his detractors as the “loyal opposition.” As pompous as the phrase sounds, it helped him stay out of a polarizing position with other members of the congregation who in the past got “togetherness” with him by “loyally” attacking the attackers. By conveying that he thought their attacks on him or a sign of duty rather than subversion, he eliminated almost completely from his own behavior the anxious feedback that is necessary to sustain chronic conditions.
One important distinction must be made, however, between family systems and work systems. In a family system, efforts to reduce anxiety by dealing only with process and totally avoiding content issues, even if it makes others more upset for a while, generally will lead to fundamental change in the long run. A work system, however, can kick us out before change comes about. in a work family, therefore, it is sometimes necessary to touch upon content to some extent so as not to create so much havoc that we lose our jobs.
Edwin Friedman, Generation to Generation