Brain Food

The Sacred Rebellion: Reclaiming Purpose in Uncertain Times

Uncertainty defines modern life. Once, pensions and safety nets offered a sense of security in a world where people lived shorter lives and communities were smaller and more predictable. Today, we step into the workforce armed with hope intertwined with anxiety. Questions hover in our minds: Did I choose the right career? Will my industry survive the next decade or even the next five years? The world feels less like solid ground beneath us and more like shifting sands—uncharted and unpredictable.

So much of our lives, it turns out, is determined by decisions we make without the influence of perspective. We stumble into choices guided by parents, whose own perspectives are often constrained, or by overburdened school counselors striving to help in an underfunded system. In the end, we must muddle our way through, trusting in the fact that no life is a linear experience, and come out the other side with something we can take to the bank and that will hopefully allow us to fulfill our calling in life, at least in some small way that doesn't feel like too much of an afterthought.

Is our time truly more uncertain than any other? It's impossible to say. Those who claim to know the past speak from history—a narrow lens written by the victorious or the loudest. History forgets the quiet struggle of the individual, the fears and losses of those who lived ordinary lives. It's a flawed, selective record. Perhaps uncertainty has always been our companion. What is unique today is the velocity. The world moves faster now—change accelerates, and with it, the anxiety of keeping pace. We are carried along in this relentless rush, without pause, without ritual.

AI Safety Bites

Choose Your Own Adventure: Government Edition

With the appointment of David Sacks as the "AI & Crypto Czar," President-Elect Trump is making a bold bet on deregulation and market-led innovation to catapult America to the forefront of these critical technological arenas. Sacks was one of the original PayPal Mafia and was a tech tycoon himself, having sold Yammer to Microsoft for $1.2 billion.

Sacks' deep industry connections will undoubtedly influence his governance style, aligning it more closely with industry interests than public welfare. Under Sacks, the administration will likely champion unfettered free speech online while reducing Big Tech oversight. Sacks' preference for lean regulations may sideline the ethical and security frameworks that ensure AI doesn't harm society.

AI models demand massive computational power, and without strong incentives to reduce energy footprints, they could worsen climate concerns by increasing energy consumption and carbon emissions.

Disregarding the importance of privacy standards is a threat to personal data and society at large. We saw the fallout of a lethargic government failing to keep up with technology during the 2016 US elections and the Brexit debacle by data aggregation firm Cambridge Analytica aggregated from unencumbered by regulation Facebook. Deregulation of AI and the impact of corporate cronyism is sure to undermine public trust in the technology.

Accompanying the data privacy concerns is the threat of deepfakes, which have been used in high-profile cases to create misleading political content, facilitate financial fraud, and generate non-consensual pornography that disproportionately targets women. Regulation is not a bad word, and we must stop pretending that all regulation is political or bad when the opposite is true...

Lack of regulation caused the catastrophic leak of poison gas that killed thousands and continues to impact the third generation of children born to those exposed in ​Bhopal, India​, by American-owned company Union Carbide, 40 years ago this month. Regulation protects the public, annoying as it might be to the bottom line of some.

I am left wondering whether this gamble on corporate deregulation in critical technology sectors will prove beneficial for the majority of Americans.

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AI Creative Applications

Socratic Learning: AI Edition

In his recent paper from Google DeepMind, Tom Schaul introduces "Socratic learning," a revolutionary method enabling AI agents to self-improve continuously within a closed system, leveraging language as both the medium and mechanism.

Published by the prominent AI research lab based in London, the paper underscores how AI can use language games to enhance its capabilities without external inputs recursively.

Socratic learning involves AI agents engaging in interactive language games, generating limitless data through communication, and receiving iterative feedback; this learning model allows AI to improve without a human in the loop. Concerning or captivating, both sentiments are appropriate here, as with most things AI.

Schaul envisions a future where AI agents can endlessly generate and learn from new games. Socratic learning is a pivotal development in AI, allowing iterative improvement within contained systems.

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