What should we do about “bad” AI?
OpenAI has built an AI that it suspects may be too dangerous to release to the public. What should it do? Sorry to say, but the technology train is hard to stop. Whatever OpenAI...
Category: Complex Systems
Big Decisions, Small Data: Eight Key Principles
Conquering the most important problems faced by complex organizations often requires great models, not “big data”: in many situations, better decisions can be made with imperfect or incomplete data. As storage and processing costs...
Guest Post: Shifting at the Edge: Gandhi, AI, and Beyond
Gandhi predicted that both capitalism and communism would eventually fail.[1] He proposed a third system, called trusteeship,[2] which held tremendous promise. Yet today’s world is much more complex than the one that Gandhi inhabited, and so we...
Has media reached a reality/complexity tipping point?
A landmark paper appeared last December in the National Science Review (summary). It describes the complex interdependencies between climate, consumption, population, demographics, inequality, economic growth, migration, and more. Written by an interdisciplinary team of...
Single link think
In the swirl of events, I’m often left wondering if there’s something deeper going on. Our leaders seem to be increasingly missing the bigger picture. A glimpse, here and there, into the underlying cause...
Pulling Back the Curtain on #MachineLearning Apps in #Business
Please enjoy this interview broadcast today with me and Daniel G. Faggella of TechEmergence. I touch on intelligence augmentation (IA), machine learning in vision, text, and other domains, the emerging decision intelligence ecosystem, the...
Artificial intelligence and human limits
Are we getting dumber? Or is stuff just harder? Both are true. Between-silo problems are the new bottleneck. We’re inundated with information, so we take cognitive short cuts. And “wicked” problems keep getting...
From maker space to solver space
Conferences are for meetings. Project teams build deliverables. Data is for data scientists. Online communities are for social contact. Until now, when a new mix is emerging. Can we solve difficult problems in a...
Necessary, but not sufficient
When asked “who created Apple?”, it’s tempting to say Steve Jobs did it. The truth is that, although he may have been necessarily, he was not sufficient. Similarly Bill Gates, who (as Malcolm Gladwell...
The World Resources Sim Center: on its way to Silicon Valley
Last month I received an intriguing email inviting me to an event at Kimberly Wiefling’s house. I’d met Kimberly before through Jonathan Trent, as part of the work I’ve been doing to help out...
