The important distinction between Generative AI and Analytic AI

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To tap the power of AI in organizations it is critical to understand the distinction between Generative AI and more traditional AI, which is perhaps best termed ‘Analytic AI’.

Recently I have frequently seen these domains confused. Generative AI is not all AI, as many imply. It is a relatively new domain with characteristics distinct from much of mroe traditional AI.

The following chart lays out some of the most important distinctions. Click on the image below for the full size image, and scroll below for more discussion.
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The open-ended potential of the 60s, 90s, and 20s

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We seem to be in a three decade cycle of belief in open-ended potential for positive change.

I was born too late to experience it properly, but when I was younger I always felt the 1960s had been the most magical time in human history.

For the first time ever the established hierarchies had been seriously questioned and challenged,. Still today some of the most extraordinary music ever came from that period, transcending existing genres time and again. The civil rights movement shifted nations. Psychedelics became mainstream, shaping the worldview of many who became social activists or some later became CEOs.    

This was a time when the young – for a moment- believed that they could change the world, throwing away the past and transforming society in sometimes unimaginable ways.

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Innovation in decentralized organizations: From DAOs to BORGs and beyond

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Powerful forces of decentralization over the last decades, underpinned by the Internet, flowing through to societal shifts, and expanded by distributed technologies such as blockchain, have reshaped business and society.

However governments and regulators have largely tried to block these forces, often successfully.

The global economy is still founded almost completely on joint-stock companies, with legislated centralized structures of ownership and governance. 

So what is the best path to decentralized organizations, how can we best innovate in structures for participative value creation?

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Future lift: a concept co-created by Ross Dawson and AI

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“Future lift” is a concept developed by Ross Dawson that refers to the ability of a technology, business, or idea to improve the future. He visualizes it as an upward lift or force that elevates the trajectory of the future.

Some examples of things that provide future lift include:

• Technologies like artificial intelligence and biotechnology that could fundamentally improve health, longevity, and human capabilities.

• Social innovations and movements that help people reach their potential and improve well-being, such as advances in education and skills development.

• New business models and ideas, such as the sharing economy, that provide people and societies more value and prosperity.

• Scientific breakthroughs that could help solve major problems, such as new energy technologies or drought-resistant crops.

The concept of future lift is a useful way to evaluate and explore how different trends, technologies, and ideas could positively shape the future and make the world better. It helps us focus on the uplifting forces of progress.

This is a hallucination by the Anthropic AI chatbot. I have never said or written the words “future lift” that I can remember or find.
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The implications of new mind-reading technologies that discovers what we find most attractive

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What if technology could help you discover what you found most attractive, in people, art, or your environment?

In Alfred Bester’s SF novel The Deceivers, Demi Jeroux evolves her appearance to match what her lover finds most attractive.

Now existing in real life, a recent paper Brain-computer interface for generating personally attractive images describes the process of identifying what people find the most attractive.
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Touch typing is still a vital productivity skill but will that continue?

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When I was a teenager my father encouraged me to learn to touch type, in those days this being on electric typewriters. His rationale was that if I was preparing my resume I wouldn’t be able to give it to the typing pool to do. Needless to say I have benefited from his encouragement greatly over many years, in more ways than preparing my resume.
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How do we know when AI becomes conscious and deserves rights?

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Machines becoming conscious, self-aware, and having feelings would be an extraordinary threshold. We would have created not just life, but conscious beings.

There has already been massive debate about whether that will ever happen. While the discussion is largely about supra-human intelligence, that is not the same thing as consciousness.

Now the massive leaps in quality of AI conversational bots is leading some to believe that we have passed that threshold and the AI we have created is already sentient.

An article in Washington Post The Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life tells the story of a member of Google’s Responsible AI team, Blake Lemoine, who has become convinced that the Google’s (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) LaMDA chatbot platform has become sentient, and after being placed on administrative leave by Google, ‘blew the whistle’ to media.
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Beyond Zoom fatigue: next generation 3D and holographic calls

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I was recently interviewed on the Sunrise breakfast TV program on the next phase of video calling, which will shift to far more immersive technologies.

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Responsible AI: selecting degrees of transparency and highlighting potential for bias

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As the power of AI soars, the ethics of how we use AI is becoming an increasingly pressing issue, which as a futurist I speak about frequently.

In working with the intelligent automation company Pega I have learned about some of their extremely interesting approaches to ‘Responsible AI’.
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The race heats up between Facebook and Apple to create the next big thing after smartphones

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News is just out that Facebook has locked up an exclusive deal with microLED leader Plessey to supply next-generation micro displays to power augmented reality glasses. Read on for the context and implications…

Beyond smartphones will likely be smartglasses

After the TV and desktop came the laptop and tablet and then the smartphone. The progress of our interfaces with technology and information will not end here. The most obvious contender for the immediate successor to the smartphone is some form of augmented reality glasses.

I have been writing about the potential of augmented reality glasses for over a decade, even being honored at the top of a list of ‘failed’ tech predictions for the 2010s for my prognostications in late 2009 of AR as a core form of human augmentation.
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