Mottos Learned in Childhood

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(not necessarily verbalized)
 
a. Measure up (you’re climbing a ladder to get to ahead and when you get there it’s already been moved 3 rungs up)
b. Don’t let your guard down. People won’t like you.
c. You can’t trust a man until he’s 6 feet under
d. Sex is dirty. So save it for the one you love.
e. Good Christians don’t show negative emotions
 
You must let go of false messages from your childhood and carry your OWN cross. Not someone else’s.
 
What mottos have you had to battle and what effect have they had on your life? 

David Seamonds

Is AI Is Making the College Experience Lonelier?

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Even for those students committed to doing their own work, AI poses a threat that is quieter and harder to measure: that they will go off to college and find the experience of learning far more solitary, far lonelier, than ever before. That is the threat that AI increasingly poses to higher education today: not that it will steal our words, but that it will steal our ability to think and work together. - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Wanting Black Coffee in a World of Expanding Options

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Even though cartoons and skits over the last decade have made fun of exotic coffee drinks by suggesting it’s hard to just get a regular coffee these days, this has never happened. No one is being turned away from Starbucks for asking to buy a black coffee. So why is this scenario repeated as if regular coffee drinkers are being excluded? Jason Pargin explains:

This exaggeration is of a world that doesn’t exist. No one took his black coffee from him. All that happened is that the range of options for other people were expanded. He perceived that as persecution as if his choice was taken away. Most people are not satisfied to simply have the option to live the life the way they want. They also want to feel normal. They want to walk around and see that most other people have made the same choice that they have made. If they see that, over time, their preference has become less popular, and even worse, is seen as being base or unsophisticated, they will perceive the mere existence of those other options as a criticism of them, even if they’ve never heard anyone voice that criticism. There is basic psychological comfort in knowing that you are conforming to what the world wants and in the reassurance that that world is not going to change.

It’s not about the coffee. It’s the fear that if everybody else stops drinking coffee the way I drink it then I will become an outcast. That is scary to someone who is suddenly remembering how they have always treated outcasts.  

Generative AI Doesn't Know How to Write Suspense

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Suspense, in some form, is what keeps people watching anything longer than a TikTok clip, and it’s where A.I. flounders. A writer, uniquely, can juggle the big picture and the small one, shift between the 30,000-foot view and the three-foot view, build an emotional arc across multiple acts, plant premonitory details that pay off only much later and track what the audience knows against what the characters know. A recent study found that large language models simply couldn’t tell how suspenseful readers would find a piece of writing. -New York Times

Staying Power

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Faith supplies staying power. It contains dynamic to keep one going when the going is hard. Anybody can keep going when the going is good, but some extra ingredient is needed to enable you to keep fighting when it seems that everything is against you.

You may counter, "But you don’t know my circumstances. I am in a different situation than anybody else and I am as far down as a human being can get.

In that case you are fortunate, for if you are as far down as you can get there is no further down you can go. There is only one direction you can take from this position, and that is up. So your situation is quite encouraging. However, I caution you not to take the attitude that you are in a situation in which nobody has ever been before. There is no such situation. 

Practically speaking, there are only a few human stories and they have all been enacted previously. This is a fact that you must never forget – there are people who have overcome every conceivable difficult situation, even the one in which you now find yourself and which to you seems utterly hopeless. So did it seem to some others, but they found an out, a way up, a path over, a pass through.

Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking

23 Recent Articles about the Impact of AI on Health Care

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Harvard Medical School licenses consumer health content to Microsoft – Reuters

AI maps how a new antibiotic targets gut bacteria – MIT

AI can design toxic proteins. They’re escaping through biosecurity cracks. – Washington Post

Doctors develop AI stethoscope that can detect major heart conditions in 15 seconds – The Guardian

A stunning scientific accomplishment: Computers can now design new viruses that can then be created in the lab - Washington Post 

The rising danger of AI-generated images in nanomaterials science and what we can do about it – Nature

Study looks at how biomedical journal editors-in-chief feel about AI use in their journals. - Springer

AI-generated medical data can sidestep usual ethics review, universities say - Nature

Study: Google's Gemma model downplays women's health needs compared to men's – Technology Magazine  

Are AI Tools Making Doctors Worse at Their Jobs – New York Times

ChatGPT Convinced 37-Year-Old Psychologist His Sore Throat Was Fine; Biopsy Revealed Stage 4 Cancer – Mashable

AI designs antibiotics to fight drug-resistant superbugs – Semafor

Study: Some doctors lost skills after just a few months of using AI – Bloomberg

Using generative AI, researchers design compounds that can kill drug-resistant bacteria – MIT

Man develops rare condition after ChatGPT query over stopping eating salt – The Guardian

Ethical Obligations to Inform Patients About Use of AI Tools – Stanford Law

Study finds AI is better than experts at differentiating between human- and AI-written stroke papers - AHAIASA

Bringing AI to medicine requires philosophers, cognitive scientists, and ethicists – Stat News

How AI Is Transforming Kidney Care – MedScape

AI Reads Your Tongue Color to Reveal Hidden Diseases – Scientific American  

A Chinese AI tool can manage chronic disease — could it revolutionize health care? – Nature

With therapy hard to get, people lean on AI for mental health. What are the risks? – NPR

A new AI model can forecast a person’s risk of diseases across their life - Economist

The Real Threats AI Poses

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The real threats AI poses come not from AI itself but from the humans who wield it. As an extension of human intelligence, it is a reflection of our own selves. When AI produces hateful or violent outputs, it is not because it has malicious intent but because it has integrated human hatreds into its programming. If it generates destructive malware, it is because someone intentionally requested it. If it is misaligned with our goals, it is because we were not clear in our commands. For now, AI remains a tool, and we should focus on harnessing and constraining it effectively. -Eric Oliver writing in the Washington Post

Your cynical, I’ve-seen-some-things attitude.

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You’re at the beginning of your life with the entire world in front of you. Whatever happened before reaching this point is done and unchangeable. What lies ahead is entirely up to you. Get the chip off your shoulder and walk on. Allow your past to be a source of strength and direction, not the thing that keeps you from moving on with your life.

Alex McDaniel

22 Articles about the Business of Running an AI Company

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Bank of England warns of potential AI bubble - Semafor

Publishers with AI licensing deals have seven times the clickthrough rate – Press Gazette

Morgan Stanley warns the AI boom may be running out of steam – Quartz

Meta Will Begin Using AI Chatbot Conversations to Target Ads - WSJ  

ChatGPT’s new parental controls failed my test in minutes - The Washington Post

Perplexity AI rolls out Comet browser for free worldwide – CNBC

OpenAI launches ChatGPT Pulse to proactively write you morning briefs- Tech Crunch

Google is blocking AI searches for Trump and dementia – The Verge

OpenAI Launches Video Generator App to Rival TikTok and YouTube – WSJ

Top A.I. Researchers Leave OpenAI, Google and Meta for New Start-Up to accelerate discoveries in physics, chemistry and other fields. – New York Times

OpenAI’s New Sora Video Generator to Require Copyright Holders to Opt Out - WSJ

‘All-of-the-above’ approach needed to power AI boom, Nvidia sustainability chief says - Semafor

Musk’s xAI accuses rival OpenAI of stealing trade secrets in lawsuit – Washington Post

Spending on AI Is at Epic Levels. Will It Ever Pay Off? – WSJ

Turning “human in the loop” from a catchphrase into a design practice – Medium

The Psychology Of Trust In AI: A Guide To Measuring And Designing For User Confidence – Smashing Magazine

Why Meta Thinks It Can Challenge Apple in Consumer AI Devices – WSJ

Record labels claim AI generator Suno illegally ripped their songs from YouTube – The Verge

Microsoft looks to build AI marketplace for publishers – Axios

China's DeepSeek AI publishes peer-reviewed study finding its AI model R1 did not rely on rival models like ChatGPT for training, - Yahoo

Hundreds of Google AI Workers Were Fired Amid Fight Over Working Conditions – Wired  

OpenAI launches ChatGPT Pulse, a paid feature that generates personalized subject matter briefs for users overnight– Tech Crunch

Talking Through a Problem

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Can’t figure out a complicated problem? Talk about it out loud or doodle on some paper. Psychologists in Spain say their tests show that processing information verbally or visually is more effective than remaining silent and still. They put students in separate rooms and gave them the same problems to solve. The students who talked to themselves or drew pictures to map out solutions finished first and scored higher. Psychologist Jose Luis Villegas Castellanos says he isn’t sure why it works this way, but believes verbal and visual problem-solving creates greater opportunities to discover the right answers.

Stephen Goforth

Managing Your Professional Decline

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The shelves are packed with titles like The Science of Getting Rich and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. There is no section marked “Managing Your Professional Decline.”  But some people have managed their declines well.   

At some point, writing one more book will not add to my life satisfaction; it will merely stave off the end of my book-writing career. The canvas of my life will have another brushstroke that, if I am being forthright, others will barely notice, and will certainly not appreciate very much. The same will be true for most other markers of my success.  What I need to do, in effect, is stop seeing my life as a canvas to fill, and start seeing it more as a block of marble to chip away at and shape something out of.

Arthur C. Brooks writing in The Atlantic

To be Creative

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I hope everyone will decide to take control of their lives, to reach inside themselves, to explore who they are and what they have, and learn to use those inner powers. Not for success, not to be seen; that's not important. What is important is that you fulfill your own personal need to keep growing.

Examine yourself and how you work. Get used to the pattern by which things come up in your mind and in your imagination. Find out when and at what times of the day you work best and what motivates you. Is it anger or serenity? Do you want to prove someone else wrong? What sort of inner needs do you fulfill?

Ken Bain, What the Best College Students Do

Be a Poet

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In 2016, educational psychologists, Denis Dumas and Kevin Dunbar found that people who try to solve creative problems are more successful if they behave like an eccentric poet than a rigid librarian. Given a test in which they have to come up with as many uses as possible for any object (e.g. a brick) those who behave like eccentric poets have superior creative performance. This finding holds even if the same person takes on a different identity.  When in a creative deadlock, try this exercise of embodying a different identity. It will likely get you out of your own head, and allow you to think from another person’s perspective. I call this psychological halloweenism.   

Srini Pillay writing in the Harvard Business Review

19 Articles about AI Audio & Video

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OpenAI Launches Video Generator App to Rival TikTok and YouTube – Wall Street Journal  

A short video from the UK’s Particle6 featuring AI ‘Actor’ Tilly Norwood (and is completely AI generated) - YouTube

AI video wars heat up - Axios 

OpenAI’s New Sora Video Generator to Require Copyright Holders to Opt Out - Wall Street Journal

What Happened to Lionsgate’s Splashy Plan to Make AI Movies With Runway? – The Wrap

Charlie Kirk's AI resurrection ushers in a new era of digital grief – Religious News Service

The rise of A.I. nostalgia bait – New York Times  

An agreement with the AI startup to make AI movies can serve as a cautionary tale of the pitfalls of embracing a technology too early - The Wrap 

OpenAI Backs AI-Made Animated Feature Film - Wall Street Journal

'AI slop' videos may be annoying, but they're racking up views — and ad money – NPR  

How AI is reshaping the audiovisual industry - UKTN

Google's generative AI filmmaking program Flow has over 100 million AI videos in the program - CNET 

Making cash off ‘AI slop’: The surreal business of AI video - The Washington Post

Voiceover Artists Weigh the 'Faustian Bargain' of Lending Their Talents to AI – 404 Media

Is It Still Disney Magic if It’s AI? - Wall Street Journal

How to spot an AI video? LOL, you can’t. - The Washington Post

The 17 Best AI Movies To Make You Dread What’s Coming In 2026 – Thought Catalogue

AI news videos blur line between real and fake reports – NBC News 

In an era of AI slop and mid TV, is it time for cultural snobbery to make a comeback? – The Guardian

The Power of Small Wins

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Try to remember the last time you – or anyone you know – had a truly enormous breakthrough in solving a problem or achieving one of those audacious goals. It’s pretty hard, because breakthroughs are very rare events. On the other hand, small wins can happen all the time. Those are the incremental steps toward meaningful (even big) goals. Our research showed that, of all the events that have the power to excite people and engage them in their work, the single most important is making progress – even if that progress is a small win. That’s the progress principle. And, because people are more creatively productive when they are excited and engaged, small wins are a very big deal for organizations.

Religiously protect at least 20 minutes – and, ideally, much more – every day, to tackle something in the work that matters most to you. Hide in an empty conference room, if you have to, or sneak out in disguise to a nearby coffee shop. Then make note of any progress you made (even if it was a small win), and decide where to pick up again the next day. The progress, and the mini-celebration of simply noting it, can lift your inner work life.

Teresa Amabile talking about her book The Progress Principle