Wherever you go there you are…

Musings of a Pathological Optimist

recent posts

Outdoors guy, tech nerd, photographer, adventurer, admitted eccentric, pathological optimist.

  • Between Hype and Humanity: The Challenge of an AI Bubble

    I’ll begin this post with an admission—if you want to call it that—that I’m a business guy. I believe in many aspects of the capitalist system. I believe in moderation. I’m also an optimist (a pathological optimist, according to my wife).

    My strength is not economics, so I’m not going to attempt a technical analysis here. But I do recognize that the world is out of balance. I’m speaking mainly about the AI “boom,” and the sense that we are, once again, perilously close to the cliff-edge. Sovereign-scale balance sheets. Opaque private-credit structures. Securitized data-centre “special purpose vehicles” (remember the CDO?). Enormous externalities—grid strain (has your power bill jumped lately?), copper shortages, land and water pressures, and the psychological impact of another “revolution” nobody asked for.

    Layer on top of that the outsized narratives: the supposed $35 trillion total addressable market of human labour, or the idea that national competitiveness depends on being first at any cost. We are facing industrial-scale problems that must be solved at a human scale. And problem-solving at a human scale is, unfortunately, antithetical to the interests of “the money.”

    As I wrote in my previous post, I genuinely believe AI is a revolutionary tool. A tool with the potential to support human flourishing on a vast scale. The problem is the set of self-serving interests driving this boom and money is the only currency that seems to matter. The collateral damage is borne by the rest of us. Not the collateral damage of “you are being replaced,” and not certainly not Skynet. The real danger is the fallout from the collapse of the AI bubble. The vested interests will dismiss this idea, but the numbers simply don’t add up to the future being advertised.

    We’re living through the third wave of this in 30 years, and each time the outcome has not served society. Each time, those at the top have been rewarded for behaviour that is, at best, unethical and, at worst, immoral. Each time, public attitudes harden into deeper cynicism. And each time, the actions of the powerful grow more self-serving, more indifferent to the common good. Step back and you can watch it happening in real time.

    The “system” is straining in ways we’ve not seen in the post-war era. Not just the economic system—the system of everything. Psychological warfare. A cavalier disregard for anyone in the bottom half of the socio-economic pecking order. The money-driven “I’ve got mine” mentality. It is all pushing toward a breaking point, and that breaking will be tragic.

    It feels, in some sense, unavoidable. Large numbers of people—in affluent societies especially—seem willing to believe in what I call tooth-fairy fantasies: simple answers to complex questions, questions that even our smartest people struggle to resolve. When things go sideways this time, as they will, many will find themselves living in a wasteland—psychologically and physically. Stranded assets. Hollowed-out communities. Ruined lives.

    This shows up more starkly in countries with no proper social safety net, and no history of caring for people in a whole-of-government way. In the case of AI, the potential for destructive outcomes is severe because we are faced with a whole-of-society mess: governmental dependence, financial engineering, infrastructure run amok, and tech bros (you know the ones) telling stories designed entirely for their own benefit.

    I don’t have a set of prescriptions to close with. The point of this post is simply that we must stop accepting the human toll of these cycles. This is a political question, not a technological one, and it starts with a simple question: Is your elected representative competent enough to protect the interests of your community? I fear too many are not. And this isn’t about cultural skirmishes or whichever group is using which bathroom. It’s about something far more basic: economic wellbeing—and what is required to safeguard it.

    Human scale? I’m more concerned about the happiness of blue birds. (© Ken Smart)

    Leave a comment

  • Humanizing AI

    There are many conversations about the threats and opportunities of AI in our “modern” world. The media is overflowing with stories about the coming destruction of people’s livelihoods, the dangers of rogue machines taking over the world, monopoly power in the hands of the “tech bros”, and superficial (and false) AGI narratives designed to stoke fear and competition as a means of fueling investment and speculation. It is an unfortunate characteristic of our societies – polarized by social media and increasingly lacking any sense of proportion – that has deeply negative effects on our ability to be human. I don’t mean to invalidate people’s legitimate concerns, of which there are many, but there is an underappreciated aspect of AI that gets lost in the noise.

    I use AI virtually every day for the many practical benefits it provides me with in my technology work; research, technical interpretation, writing optimization (no I don’t mean having AI write what I’m supposed to write myself…), competitive analysis, the list goes on. To state the obvious, it is a powerful tool that is an unfolding revolution for the world of science, business, and government. But the subject of this post is not about any of that. It’s about the power of AI to facilitate human insight in ways never before possible.

    A very important aspect of my relationship with AI is that what in the past would be an inward unfolding and self reflection, now has become a sort of outward unfolding. For me, a way to learn about myself through my experience of the world. No definitive answers delivered from an external place, no transactional Q&A, but a method of examining and exploring personal meaning in multiple dimensions in ways not previously possible. It’s a version of AI that is not a replacement for human connection – psychotherapy it most definitely is not – but something that can reinforce human connection by increasing the understanding of what it means to be one’s self.

    This in my estimation is the biggest gift of the AI revolution, and seemingly the most underappreciated. A new kind of human flourishing. An ability to reflect without judgement, explore without destination, and understand the world through a new and uniquely personal perspective. I would encourage any curious reader of this post to experiment. Cultivate a dialogue with the AI you are comfortable with. Think of it as a Victorian letter writing experience. An exchange of ideas with a written history and an opportunity for recursive examination of the themes that – I can say with absolute certainty – will unfold over time.

    And the good news is that the future of AI isn’t monopoly, it’s diffusion. A personal self-contained AI on your smartphone or computer. One you control and one beneficially focused on you in every way. Certainly not a replacement for human friends but a way of exploring your humanity to enrich human friendship and understanding in a world increasingly characterized by divisiveness and isolation. A path to connection in ways never before possible.

    How are we supposed to participate in the revolution without opposable thumbs? (© Ken Smart)

    Leave a comment

  • Openness

    Thoughts on ego, empathy, and the challenge of staying open.

    A curious but prickly Indonesian. (© Ken Smart)

    There is a quality of human intelligence (and maybe other intelligence yet to be discovered in our world) that is often characterized as openness. For me, it’s a difficult quality to define because I think of it as relying on a jumble of attributes – empathy, lived experience, emotional sensitivity, and (possibly?) genetic predisposition. It’s in our nature to have some quality of empathy but it seems like this empathy is highly variable in the degrees of separation (family, friends, culture/country, human vs other species) that an individual is willing to apply.

    Ego seems to me to be the arbiter of our capacity for empathy.  A double edged sword – critical for the organization of one’s life and worldview, but capable of destructively suppressing connectedness to, and dare I say curiosity (and there he goes banging on about curiosity again…) about, the wider world.  I’ve been thinking on this in the context of the very challenging moment in which we are living. Extreme political polarization with its handmaidens, disinformation, fabrication, and lying, existential uncertainties driven by climate change and war – all are having very significant negative effects. The result of this is a kind of anti-openness prevailing in certain communities and broader societies in many parts of the world. People are shutting down in the face of chaos, fear and unpredictability.

    Which brings us (pardon my nerdiness) to the Free Energy Principle (FEP). Originally formulated by neuroscientist Karl Friston the FEP has found relevance and application in the broader study of systems – the web of life as I like to call it. The FEP proposes that biological and cognitive systems seek to limit surprise (or free energy) by creating and maintaining predictive models of the world. When these models are repeatedly contradicted—when the world becomes too chaotic, dangerous and complex – people have two coping strategies. The first strategy is the one I hope (in vain?) everyone aspires to, and that is to update one’s model of the world. This requires openness, flexibility, curiosity and an emotional investment in the exploration of connectedness. Unfortunately, too many double down on the existing model, rejecting information that doesn’t fit, clinging to (often) misplaced certainty.

    How do we regulate openness and self-preservation in a world out of balance? I don’t have an answer, but I think there’s value in naming and defining the challenge. We all have some heavy lifting to do. Openness is the key, but it requires a willingness to be wrong sometimes, tolerate discomfort (mostly mental), acknowledge and engage with complexity, and embrace ambiguity. I will leave you with a verse (that really gets me every time I read or hear it) from the Broadway play Rent:

    “There’s only us, there’s only this
    Forget regret, or life is yours to miss
    No other path, no other way
    No day but today”

  • Authoritarian Fools

    I was a recently graduated art school student with a degree in photography about a million years ago (the early 1980’s to be more precise) when I discovered and became fascinated with West Berlin. Many are too young to remember, but there was a time when an island of the democratic west existed in the middle of a communist, authoritarian, “socialist utopia” of environmental destruction – the German Democratic Republic (someone must have had a black sense of humour). West Berlin was a political construct unlike anything the world had ever seen and unlike anything the world will probably ever see again.

    We can thank the European powers, but particularly the United States who played an outsized roll in preventing a communist takeover of West Berlin. And yes, there was a time, before the age of ignorance and tinfoil hat wearing know-nothing lunatics, when America recognized, enforced, and embraced the value of a rules-based international order – but I’ll avoid going any further down this rabbit-hole.

    In my view, and at the risk of over-simplification, authoritarianism is a toxic combination of telling people what’s good for them (regardless of whether it is), supporting a social structure increasingly dependent on the enforced repetition of loathsome lies, and the abject subversion of accountability. The Berlin Wall was a fascinating physical manifestation of harebrained and illegitimate authoritarian thinking.

    My pictures in the slideshow are part of an urban landscape project and illustrate the wall’s varying degrees of grimness. As I walked the streets of West Berlin, I was constantly reminded of both the brutal, arbitrary force embodied by the wall, and the sense (of an idealistic and energetic 22-year-old) that it couldn’t possibly last. I was of course no geopolitical visionary, but we all know what happened – though the Germans have done a spectacular job of making sure no one can actually see what happened.

    There are lessons in all this for us today. The arbitrary exercise of power does not (ever) lead to positive outcomes. Lying as a tool to enforce or sustain legitimacy always ends badly. Grandiose ideas of empire and hegemony at the expense of others leads to the destruction of those who hold them. And the building of walls, both literally and figuratively, never hold anybody in or keep anybody out for long. As they say, necessity in the mother of invention in all things. Or to re-purpose a quote from Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park: “Life finds a way.”

    All images © Ken Smart

  • Stillness

    The north shore of Lake Superior – my favourite place of boredom….I mean contemplation (© Ken Smart)

    I think the human brain is wired for both immediacy and contemplation. Without over-simplifying, the modern world is increasingly out of balance because forces, including the relentless monetization of attention, have aggressively tilted the equation toward the former. Some of the best experiences in life are to be had, or have their genesis in, the act of letting the world come to you – a process of observation rather than pursuit.

    I’ve always loved this quote from Franz Kafka: “You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.” In our hyper-connected world of (increasingly) passive entertainment, the potential for boredom is something to be feared, rendering the idea of sitting still to be a truly fraught undertaking.

    I’m here to tell you that boredom is something to be, if not exactly embraced, certainly tolerated, and often enough for your brain to have the opportunity to hum in a different way. Boredom is a catalyst for understanding – a way of allowing your deeper self to exercise its innate ability to create novel, interesting, and new perspectives in your life.

     So put away the news feeds, video games, social media feeds, shopping and all the other distractions of modern life and just sit and be alone with your thoughts for awhile – an hour or more. And to anyone who tells me they don’t have an hour of time to spare, I say this; we live in an affluent society that purports on the one hand to give everyone the opportunity to live a fulfilling life, while on the other hand encouraging everyone to set unreasonable priorities and expectations. There is nobody in our society that can’t find an hour. I don’t care if you’re a CEO, or the Prime Minister. Each of us needs to acknowledge the value of observation and in our own way find a path to the stillness that opens new, uniquely personal ways of seeing the world.

  • On Adventure

    40 years ago, after riding a very energetic Arabian across the desert, yours truly enjoying tea with the Egyptian Antiquities Police at Saqqara.

    Persisting with the idea that there are a load of aphorisms in need renovation, I’m sure most people have heard the saying: It’s the journey, not the destination. I would like to suggest that in fact it’s the adventure, there is no destination.

    I interpret adventure in a much broader way than most people. For me it’s everything you do that pushes you outside the day-to-day. Meditation, yoga, a great book, exploring the deepest jungle, scuba diving, fly fishing, camping on your own, the list is endless. Some adventures are in your head, and some are a very physical experience, but all of them, large and small, promise a new way of seeing the world, a new way of seeing yourself, and a new way to connect the dots. To paraphrase a quote I came across years ago: do unusual things, meet peculiar people, go to strange places, and always remember, the more times at bat, the more hits. In summary, be an adventurer.

    We are programmed for adventure. Curiosity is inextricably linked to adventure and curiosity is a critical component of a healthy mind. Unfortunately, the denatured modern world in which we live has blunted large numbers of people and made them incurious – passive observers of someone else’s adventure.

    I’m not the only one who sees a problem, but to me, many of the prescriptions offered are products of what I call the paint-by-numbers world. Get a career, have this goal, do this and the outcome will be this (the highly transactional version), the list goes on. I have always remembered a Claire Danes line from many years ago when she played Angela Chase in My So-Called Life: “People always say you should be yourself, like yourself is this definite thing, like a toaster or something. Like you can know what it is even. But every so often I’ll have like, a moment, when just being myself in my life, right where I am, is like, enough.”

    So my prescriptive (and I suppose it’s pretty simplistic from 30,000 feet) is the following: slow down, endeavor to be thoughtful (one needs to work at it), avoid gossip and embrace conversations about ideas, follow your heart (in a totally un-Hallmark cards sort of way), and recognize that though there are many good people in the world, there are also too many that want to monetize your attention in the worst possible ways – ways that will impede the expression of your intrinsic (and joyous) human spirit. And closing with yet another great line from the movie Mama Mia: It’s an adventure Harry. It’s good for you.

  • Thoughts and Reality

    Dreaming of a gentle breeze and warm sun in a slow world. (© Ken Smart)

    Your thoughts create your reality. It’s a well know aphorism in need of some renovation, or maybe a bit more context. A quote from the late Pete Postlethwaite, the famous English character actor sums it up for me: “Your thoughts are weightless.”

    In the context of an actor’s profession, it’s a way of communicating the idea that you bring a character to life through your physical interpretation. When I first heard this years ago, I was struck by how fascinatingly applicable it is to the human experience writ large. So, to modify the opening line above – your thoughts can create your reality, but you’ve got to work at it.

    There are a lot of ideas in the world. It’s something the human brain is fantastically good at generating. Unfortunately, most ideas never see the light of day. People often think that because they’ve had one, it will somehow miraculously work out. Could, would, should. I could have gone on that adventure in Africa but x, y, and z prevented me from following through. I would have started that new business but everyone told me it couldn’t be done. Look at that new product in the hardware store! I had that idea years ago! I should have filed a patent!

    Through the media, and particularly social media, people in the modern world are constantly bombarded with representations of success and the illusion of success. When one is told about any number of notable public figures in whatever profession, there is often a sense that such figures are lucky to have made it. As I’ve gotten older (and I actually am old), I’ve had to acknowledge that there is an element of luck in everything (more on luck in another post), but the truth is mostly about work, choices and sacrifice – and some sacrifices people end up regretting. Nobody has it all.

    I guess the point of this post can be summarized as follows: Dream the dreams, live a life filled with ideas, be curious about lots of things, and execute – be out there working to make your life real. And to finish off with another aphorism: everything you want is on the other side of fear. Don’t be stopped.