A realistic understanding of AI
Zork Hun has written an excellent overview of Artificial Intelligence including how its misunderstood by many people, its risks of malevolent abuse, and its enormous potential for good.
Why I am sharing the above link.
Modern society is undergoing an AI-driven technological transformation that is poorly understood by the majority of our citizens. Uncertainty and misinformation produce fear and poor decisions. These issues and consequences can me avoided with the help of people like the author.
I know Zork Hun.
Like me, Zork had a long career working with Information Technology. He possesses a thirst for practical knowledge that is rivalled by few. The powerful analytical skills that made him successful in troubleshooting complex IT problems he now applies to explaining IT’s next big evolutionary leap - ‘Artificial Intelligence’.
Zork is not an AI scientist, application developer, or systems designer. He is the well-inforned middle man between those experts and the average citizen. He can clearly and succinctly explain this complex field for intellect laypersons and help the to sift through the hype and misinformation.
I just returned from the golf course where I enjoyed the company if a retired lawyer with an impressive career in litigation and as a judge. When I asked him about AI its affect on the legal profession, he expressed concern, especially with respect to the prospects of the decline in jobs. I gave him my card and asked him to read Zork’s article.
Society needs writers like Zork.
Professional journalists have been “generalists” who know a little about a lot of subjects. However, they possess only superficial knowledge in specialized topics like Machine Learning, Large Languate Models, and their useful application to the world around us. A “specialist” citizen journalist like Zork, who possesses vastly superior subject matter knowledge, experience and judgement in Information Technology and good writing skills, are much better able to help average citizens understand these topics.
As the legacy media industry continues it's decline into oblivion, independent journalism is exploding. What is emerging is an industry that offers a vastly better landscape to serve news and information consumption. Specialized niches of journalism will thrive and compete in a decentralized industry framework in which the best entrepreneurs will thrive. The top-down, centrally-controlled model of past journalism has become a zombie. It is ready for the pine box and a tombstone.
The new breed of “inde-journalism” offers greater value to society. The success of each competitor will depend on their ability to attract and keep subscribers. This will also depend the demand for their domain expertise. There will be many markets of domain interest in which the best will survive and the very best will thrive.
Guys like Zork, for example, will likely earn a reputation for guiding his followers safely along solid stepping stones into a very confusing future of tech-enabled ‘everything’. His informed insights will reduce the likelihood that his audience will land in a crocodile-infested swamp.
In 1932, Aldous Huxley wrote the novel Brave New World. I can’t image what he would think if he saw it today.
