LET’S BE FWENDS ISSUE #47:

CAN WE MAKE OURSELVES OBSOLETE?

“Reason shapes the future, but superstition infects the present.” ~ Iain M. Banks

What happens when exponential improvement leads to linear results

There’s one idea in AI that is so strong, it borders on creating religious feelings on the tech community:The Singularity

What the concept of the singularity describes is that when computing power grows exponentially, so does do the results. And once the results allow us to create an Artificial Super Intelligence, that is superior to human intelligence, that by itself will start creating new, improved versions of itself, without our interference. The consequence of this is a “runaway” process of technological invention based solely on machines. Humankind will simply be unable to understand the results of these processes, and it’s everyones guesses as to what will happen to us then. (It is remarkable similar to the Minds of the Culture series by Iain M. Banks, in which the humans don’t care how the mega-brains called Minds work, and the Minds like to have humans around for company, while running everything)

In a short series of posts, renowned technologist Ed Felten argues against such an idea, and says that every progress made by exponential improvement will lead to linear results.

What is it, that makes us “human”?

Source: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Do you remember when we briefly touched on the issue of general AI vs. specific AI?

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal have a slightly disconcerting comic about that.It addresses a topic that is very near to specific Artificial Intelligence and shifting the goal posts of what we would consider to be an intelligent being: That our idea of what a human is - and isn’t - is completely arbitrary.

The King of Fake News

The Hustle (who have a nice newsletter as well) have a nice write-up of the story of Jestin Coler, the “King of Fake News”. While we know a lot about fake news and how they work by now, it is still an interesting read because it digs a bit into the “why” people like Coler would write and publish and promote and monetise things they know are lies.

Cyclists are not considered to be humans

_A scale used for rating “how human” cyclists are in the opinions of the study participants. More than half of the participating motorists did not consider cyclists “fully human” (Source)_Leaving the interesting but arguably not very practical argument under which conditions a computer should be considered human aside, here is something very troubling:

An Australian study came to the conclusion that over half of the participating motorists did not consider cyclists to be “completely human”, and 10% confessed to have deliberately driven their vehicle too close to a cyclist.

Words fail me.

Fwends x Bleed

_Source: bleed_Ever wondered how that fwendly, smiling F in “Fwends” came to be?

One of my best business decisions was made right at the start of the journey, by asking Bleed to help me with my Identity.

I love the results (I hope you do, too!), and if you’re interested, they put up a case study on the design and their thinking. It is always cool to see when someone really understands what you’re trying to do.

Empowering Agile

Here’s a conference tip for you: Empowering Agile is a new conference held in Vienna that tackles the hot topic of implementing Agile work styles in legacy organisations. Being an Agile Coach and facilitator myself, I can tell you that the line-up of speakers is excellent; If you can make it, be there!

They even picked up one of my favorite sentiments!

Full disclosure: The organisers are business partners of mine. But that just says that they know what they’re doing, or otherwise I wouldn’t work with them. 😛

Vienna - then and now

This website is documenting how the city of Vienna changed over the last decades, and in some cases even centuries:

It compares historical photographs and images made under identical situations (same perspective, same motif) now; It even has a slider for changing the fraction of the image you can see.

It is fascinating to see how the city has changed over the years, not only if you live there.

Flags of the world (and other flags)

As a kid, I was addicted to heraldry. I made up kingdoms, nations, interstellar empires and everything in between. The thing next important to maps are flags and insignia. Being not much of a painter, I found doing flags (which tend to be more geometric in nature) much easier.

When working on my flags and space ship markings, I learned from the best: The people who already made flags in the real world. I copied and altered the designs I found, and in the process noted that they did the same: There are many themes visible in the design of flags, and here’s a very nice animation showing exactly that.

How was your week so far? I hope it was terrific, and it will continue to improve - exponentially of possible, but linear sounds fine to me was well. 📈