Author: neil

HBR;s 8 Trends to Watch in 2023

What makes employees trust AI?

From an interview with the founder of The Museum of Failure, Samuel West:

I realized that there’s no lack of methods or cool processes for innovation. The main obstacles are that people are afraid of failing, and being embarrassed by it—those are two of the biggest obstacles for innovation.

QOTD, James Clear:

“The edge is in the inputs.

The person who consumes from better sources, gets better thoughts. The person who asks better questions, gets better answers. The person who builds better habits, gets better results.

It’s not the outcomes. It’s the inputs.”

GPT:

• • Search through Google Books, and ChatGPT writes a summary from the relevant text: https://www.allsearch.ai/
  • Nick Cave responds to a song written in the style of Nick Cave by ChatGPT

A long analysis of Elon’s Twitter

Steven Sinofsky on his experience Writing a book on Substack

Common Cog has a provocative, thoughtful piece on why Goodhart’s Law is not as useful as you may think, & some lessons from Amazon’s Weekly Business Review

John Hagel on the Untapped Opportunity of Institutional Narratives.

Benjamin Walker talking to author George P about Listening to Noise.

On GPT:

An analysis of Claude, an LLM from an OpenAI competitor called Anthropic.

ClaytonChristensen Institute’s primer for understanding the components of a solar energy system for consumers and producers.

On the origins of the phrase “Red Tape”

The London Review of Books has this fiery review of a book on consultants by Laleh Khalili.

Raymond Luk on Building a Startup in a Downturn

Nick Morgan asks Why do we deny the facts, and offers some ideas about what we can do about it.

on GPT:

• • Cybercriminals starting to use ChatGPT

How to change careers even when you’re super-afraid

Ray Croc: “As long as you’re green you’re growing, as soon as you’re ripe you start to rot.”

Doesn’t this usually happen when a company goes bankrupt? Twitter’s excess furniture sale in progress

 

 

 

Talking points for life: Ideas on how to have conversations (bonus: without long awkward pauses :))

Seth Godin: Generous and selfish

It turns out that happy people are more likely to be generous. (Which implies that generous people are more likely to be happy). Not because they get something measurable in return, but simply because abundance is a choice. And making choices celebrates our agency and potential.

Colin Newlyn offers a few reasons why organisations aren’t shifting to better ways of working?

 

Everything & more I didn’t know about trucking. I wonder how this translates to other countries?

The differential impact of ChatGPT

any subject area has a core / fundamental area (the science) and an applied area (use of the technique or application repeatedly towards the same or different problems)
– My assertion is that ChatGPT will impact applied area of any topic but not the core area relatively much, where understanding of the underlying building blocks is very important

Bruce Schneir on choosing secure passwords

Surrendering to a drone?

Kurt Armstrong’s advice is to repair and remain

Sahil Bloom asked a bunch of nonagenarians what advice they’d give their 32 year old self

A Sydney startup proposes that Room Temperature Sodium Sulphur batteries can be a cheaper alternative storage mechanism.

Excel Mandelbrot? Seriously?  Hui demonstrates how to on Chandoo’s blog.

Cory Muscara on lessons from meditating for 15 hours a day for six months.

On ChatGPT

• • Researcher Deepfakes His Voice, Uses AI to Demand Refund From Wells Fargo

 

 

Anne-Laure Le Cunff on Change Fatigue:

Change fatigue mostly arises when we feel like we’re not in control of the never-ending chaos that keeps on derailing our routines and forces us to constantly adapt. Very often, it is the case that change itself is unavoidable. What we have some control over, however, is how we react to change.

Dr. Hannah Rose explains how a family trip to Abilene gone wrong led to an observation called the Abilene paradox:

this unfortunately common situation where a group of people agree to an idea, despite most of them not fully believing that it is the best decision.

Robin Dunbar explains how the Dunbar number is more a series of numbers, or concentric circles, rather than an absolute

 

On GPT

David Clowery, a songwriter, has a different take on the “Open” part of OpenAI.

Tom Krazit on why MS needs OpenAI & is worth the $10b price tag

AI recommendation of books on AI

I’ve received, gratefully, a mammoth data/information/knowledge/wisdom dump today, and a collection of the things, unsynthesized are here for later consumption/digestion:

• • Time to re-read The Strength of Weak Ties by Mark Granovetter.
  • Damon Centola – Change, particularly the reference to fishing nets of network relationships
  • Vector Theory of Change
  • ASHEN framework to help the formulation of tacit knowledge so that it can be codified
  • Constraint mapping
  • Inspiration from bees Waggle dance on communication & decision making

On GPT:

On the dangers of Stochastic Parrots

 

 

Steve Blank has some advice for a B2B startup on its sales strategy: Be where your business is.

In Redefining the analytical process, the author emphasizes that while exploratory analysis takes time, explanatory analysis is the visible part and where more time must be actually spent for the message to land effectively.

Origins of the World Map (Video)

On GPT:

• • Microsoft’s deal with OpenAI to acquire 49% stake is one to watch.

 

For laughs & giggles – and to try out on the next trip to the beach 🙂 Potato shaped stones are better for skimming

On the train trip to work & back today, I watched the interview  on Caro & Gottlieb I linked to yesterday. Magnificent. I also discovered a 3 year old interview of Caro on DemocracyNow which is also fantastic. Robert Caro’s research, and his storytelling angles are incredibly inspiring, focusing as they do on “how power affects the powerless”.

Rands on The Seven Dispositions of Task Management.

On GPT:

• • Francois Chollet (of TensorFlow fame) has some reservations about the commercial viability of ChatGPT, not the technology itself, he clarifies.
  • This feels terrifying: Microsoft has unveiled VALL-E. Using a 3-second sample of human speech, it can generate super-high-quality text-to-text speech from the same voice. Even emotional range and acoustic environment of the sample data can be reproduced.
  • Seth Godin bids good riddance  to the high school essay, thanks to ChatGPT. It’s better to get students to learn how to use the tool effectively rather than to ban it, a view I subscribe to.