Sharing photos may subtly change how we remember

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When we’re hunting for the perfect Instagram shot, we’re not listening, we’re not smelling, we’re not always paying attention to the beautiful, complex minutiae that make up the moment.  

Powerful experiences in the real world are immersive and often engage all the senses. On your last vacation, can you remember what the wind felt like on your back? Do you remember what was going on internally: Were you thrilled, excited, or scared? When you look back on the Instagram photos from the trip, will you remember what a dinner tasted like, or just that it was pretty?  

Brian Resnick writing in Vox

AI disruption

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Saying you played around with AI a year ago and weren’t impressed is like judging this year’s Tesla models based on having studied a Ford Model T. Even if AI development plateaued at the level of the current models, “We would have a decade of major changes across entire professions & industries (medicine, law, education, coding …) as we figure out how to actually use it. AI disruption is baked in.” No one I’ve spoken to in the industry seems to think AI will plateau where it is now. -Megan McArdle writing in The Washington Post

An AI-powered Mathematical Future

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A group of mathematicians are now starting to examine what an AI-powered mathematical future might look like, and how it will change what they value. In such a future, instead of spending most of their time proving theorems, mathematicians will play the role of critic, translator, conductor, experimentalist. Mathematics might draw closer to laboratory sciences, or even to the arts and humanities.  Imagining how AI will transform mathematics isn’t just an exercise in preparation. It has forced mathematicians to reckon with what mathematics really is at its core, and what it’s for. - Jordana Cepelewicz writing in Quanta Magazine

The AI-first Trend

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Why would CEOs be saying that everyone at their companies should be using AI tools? Do they think their employees are all bad at their jobs? Being “AI-first” shows that a company is participating in the AI trend in the "right" way, by imposing it on workers, rather than trusting workers to judge what tools are useful for them to do their jobs. It's telling that the creators of so many of the AI tools don't even have enough confidence in their offerings to simply let users choose to adopt them, and are instead forcing them into users' faces in every possible corner of their apps and websites. - Anil Dash

What on earth is He up to?

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Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of — throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity

The Madman’s Narrative

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Consider that two people can hold incompatible beliefs based on the exact same data. Does this mean that there are possible families of explanations and that each of these can be equally perfect and sound? Certainly not. One may have a million ways to explain things, but the true explanation is unique, whether or not it is within our reach. 

In a famous argument, the logician WV Quine showed that there exist families of logically consistent interpretations and theories that can match a give series of facts. Such insight should warn us that mere absence of nonsense may not be sufficient to make something true. 

Nassim Taleb, The Black Swain

Breaking AI with a few Prompts

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"Tests showed Meta AI often balked at prompts that could lead to explicit topics but the Wall Street Journal found these barriers could regularly be overcome simply by asking an AI persona to go back to the prior scene. ‘There are multiple red-teaming examples where, within a few prompts, the AI will violate its rules and produce inappropriate content even if you tell the AI you are 13,’ one employee wrote in an internal note laying out concerns." -Wall Street Journal

What to do when facing inappropriate behavior

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When someone keeps repeating inappropriate behavior:

 Describe the other person’s behavior objectively (be specific and don’t switch from talking about the action to the motive) 

Express your feelings (as related to the goal but don’t relive the feelings)

Specify what you want to see changed (and what you are willing to change, don’t merely imply that you’d like a change) 

Give explicit Consequences if there is change (reward) or no change (punishment)