Say Hi to Ai
Understanding the tech we interact with daily
Hey learners,
Last week I watched the trailer of The Social Dilemma, a new Netflix documentary where high position ex-employees of all major social media platforms shared how badly social media has impacted the world and manipulates our minds in a way it wants to. It seems like we are nothing but lab rats for these big tech companies, inundated with advanced fake news, increasing cybercrime, rising depression, and surveillance capitalism.
We all have heard about the big tech companies engineering addictive designs and creating dopamine traps. This got me thinking about the advancement in AI (for example, look at the latest GPT-3, a cutting edge language model that uses machine learning to produce human-like text). While the goal of AI is to make smart systems, there is a dark side to it. AI is reshaping our daily lives, but how much do we laymen really know about it? And how can we use these new technologies effectively instead of being run by them?
Today’s Skill: Understanding Artificial Intelligence
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes 48 seconds“The more you know, the more you realize you know nothing.”
— Socrates
💡 Let’s Dive In
In the broadest sense, AI refers to machines that can learn, reason, and act for themselves.
Our Netflix recommendations, Alexa understanding us, or a machine telling doctors if a patient has cancer-based on the MRI are just some applications of AI.
A decade ago, artificial intelligence was more common in dystopian science-fiction movies than in everyday life. A lot has changed since then. Now we interact with AI on a daily basis; our lives literally run by algorithms.
AI is now used for everything from helping us take better smartphone photos and analyzing your personality in job interviews to letting you buy a sandwichwithout paying a cashier
If you have seen the movie Her, you must remember a lonely writer played by Joaquin Phoenix who falls in love with his digital PA Samantha, an advanced version of Siri that deals with his emails, provides personal advice, and run his digital errands. That future seems very likely now.
No matter how useful, there is a significant chance that humanity will develop machines more intelligent than ourselves in this century. This could lead to large, rapid improvements in human welfare, but there are good reasons to think that it could also lead to disastrous outcomes. Look at any episode of Black Mirror and you will understand what I mean. (S3 E2 is my favorite)
Excited by the possibilities of all this, I devoted a few hours to get a basic understanding of AI and where do we actually stand right now.
🤖 Why learn? (Learning Objectives)
Here are some reasons why you should understand AI:
At a basic level, you’ll understand the systems and tools that you interact with on a daily basis
Industry Agnostic - not limited to computers and space-related industries; applications in healthcare, finance, marketing, farming, disaster management
Your next business idea might use one of these technologies. You don’t need to be an expert but know enough to experiment and hire the right people
Get comfortable with Abstract Thinking - possibilities of AI are endless. If you already know the basics, you can imagine and implement new things in your business/work
Gives you an interesting topic to chat with friends on your next Zoom meeting ;)
Learn how to keep yourself safe on the internet as tech advances
📋 Resources
When Tim Urban started investigating his article on AI, he expected to finish it in a few days. Instead, he spent three weeks reading everything he could, because, he says, “as I dug into research on Artificial Intelligence, I could not believe what I was reading. It hit me pretty quickly that what’s happening in the world of AI is not just an important topic but by far THE most important topic for our future..”
There’s a ton of resources to study AI. I think the best way to get a working knowledge is through entertaining content, so skip Netflix this weekend, and dig in the videos and long-form articles below.
To Read:
The AI Revolution Part 1: The Road to Superintelligence (Highly Recommended)
Basic Concepts of Artificial Intelligence and Its Applications
Course:
ElementsofAi - Free introductory AI course by Reaktor and the University of Helsinki
AI for Everyone - Short 5 hour beginner course on Coursera
To Watch:
Sam Harris talks about superintelligent AI and the problems associated with creating something that may treat us the way we treat ants:
Below WIRED documentary examines the extraordinary ways in which people are interacting with AI today:
The Age of A.I. is an 8 part documentary series hosted by Robert Downey Jr. covering the ways Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Neural Networks will change the world:
The whole Joe Rogan <> Elon Musk podcast is over 2 hours long, but the below 24-minute snippet covers Elon’s views on AI (start at 3:20 mark):
After watching/reading:
Think ahead and get creative! Write down 10 ideas on how you can use AI in your business/job. 📎 Check this out
Some cool AI-powered web apps to play around with:
QuickDraw - Google’s AI-powered web app game, where users have to draw an everyday object that a neural network tries to recognize.
Otter Voice Meeting Notes – Otter.ai
Generate rich notes for meetings, interviews, lectures, and other important voice conversations with Otter, your AI-powered assistant.
Remove.bg gets transparent background for your image using it’s clever AI. It works very smoothly.
👉 Know any friends who’d enjoy this? Please do forward this email to them :)
🔖 Something to Read:
(Click on the title to read the full article)
Why is Taking Action Hard?
There seems to be an amazingly high correlation between the ability to take action and eventual success. Action and success are so closely matched, that it makes the struggles we have with inaction all the more perplexing. If success in life is often as simple as “do things, learn from them, repeat” why do many of us get caught in loops of laziness, self-sabotage, and procrastination?
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See you next week!
*Cover Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash