Tech companies, and frankly, most of the knowledge work industry, have jumped at the opportunity to replace human workers with AI. This possibility was so enticing that they didn’t bother to wait to see if the technology’s promises were real. They may have shown their hand too soon. I believe that we are fortunate that…
Current LLMs are losing money. More and more reporting is suggesting that these frontier style models may in fact never be profitable. This certainly isn’t a consensus opinion, but it does seem to be gaining momentum. If LLMs don’t make money, it is going to put a damper on the AI-revolution. One potential path to…
Human conversations carry incredible amounts of implicit information. We decipher meaning from each other by 🗣️Tone 👺Facial Expressions 🙅Body Language We add more context based on our environment: 🤼Our relationship 🏴🏳️Our organizational affiliations 🧑🌾⛷️🤹Our roles There is an incredible amount of data in human conversations that is never spoken.AI systems don’t yet capture all of…
Outlive by Peter Attia An approach to extend not just our lifespan, but more importantly our healthspan. Thoughts on how we can stave off the four horsemen of age-related decline and a death. A bit on the sciencey side at times, but overall, very accessible. Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall A look at how…
In Draft No. 4, McPhee describes his pre-computer writing method. Handwritten notes and audio tapes are transcribed by typing on a typewriter. He manually rolled the paper after each note to leave space. Once all the notes were typed up, he photocopied them and then used scissors to cut out each individual note. Notes were…
Contingency plans are nothing new for business operations. Workers get sick, take vacation, don’t perform as expected, etc. The business needs some slack capacity and/or a prioritization system when there isn’t enough capacity to meet demands. Process automation also isn’t particularly new. Again, you can build in slack capacity and/or task prioritization to manage outages…
In this episode we examine how the dramatic changes in the world of knowledge work over the past five years can have traumatic effects. Acute Trauma – Life is noticeably different before and after Job Loss, Layoffs, New AI Capabilities Chronic Trauma – Prolonged exposure to a harmful situation Self-doubt, hopelessness, insecurity, fear, negativity about…
You may have seen the recent MIT paper presenting data suggesting that using ChatGPT for your writing causes your cognitive abilities to atrophy from lack of use. So, I thought it was worth thinking a bit about when one might choose to take the trade-off of ease and speed as opposed to writing the painful…
Capitalism is the driver pushing businesses to endlessly chase efficiency and growth. While it is the current cause casting so much uncertainty on human job prospects, I think that ultimately it will help produce the cure. In a market economy, it is entirely logical for businesses to lower costs and reduce profit. There is no…
Describing AI Agents as digital workers who are members of your digital workforce is great marketing. It is also dehumanizing. Analogy is a powerful tool to explain innovation. Referring to something we already know and understand makes it easier to conceptualize novel ideas. There are certainly similarities between tasks currently done by human workers and…