The New AI and ChatGPT

 AI

Artificial Intelligence

ML

Machine Learning

No it is not coming for your job but will rather augment what you do today.

More on that in a moment.

Here is a quick story about a Sci-fi magazine that had to close submissions because of the swarm of AI written material:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/sci-fi-becomes-real-as-renowned-magazine-closes-submissions-due-to-ai-writers/

Here is a blurb about 

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/generative-ai-is-coming-for-the-lawyers/

... and a quick clip from that one ...

“Legal document drafting can be a very labor-intensive task that AI seems to be able to grasp quite well. Contracts, policies, and other legal documents tend to be normative, so AI's capabilities in gathering and synthesizing information can do a lot of heavy lifting.”

The strength of AI is in the performance of repetitive tasks.  You can visualize this as a machine in say an assembly line of a car. Where do we put robots today? Highly repetitive tasks of a very uniform standard nature.  Yes. Now take that to the intellectual world such as writing (see above) and apply the same concept. However it cannot fully replace the human in the task.

There is a lot of space there in the world to fill in the work with machines. It is already happening and has been happening for centuries.  Think of washing machines for your laundry. We used to do all the work washing each item of clothing by hand. Now the human manages the machine that does the grunt work of washing. The human is still present.

Tomorrow (today) we will have new jobs that manage the AI to ensure it is staying on task and target. Some jobs will go away, some will be created, some groups of people will gain, and some will lose. 

The wealthiest in the world see two solutions to staying ahead in the coming decades: capital and creativity.  All else will become tertiary.

Best,

J.W. Gant

Product Management Leadership

 Hello,

A recent experience highlighted something, again, that is worth exploring. How do we become Product Managers?  It is an apprenticeship and as such is unlike many or most other modern disciplines (higher education, are you listening?).  You can go to nursing school and become a nurse, law school and become a lawyer, but Product Management?  No.

I was recently asked by a recruiter to please speak with the Head of Product at a large wealth management technology offshoot company who wanted to hire some help.  I was immediately very skeptical as the industry is known (by me personally) to be well behind the times regarding all things tech. But the recruiter was persuasive.  I took everything said with a heavy grain of salt and went into the conversation having done some prep work.

She/him, the Head of Product, the executive at the company responsible for its products & services, has a background in economics and finance and decades with various New England wealth management companies.  I decided to dumb down my talk dramatically and see how it played.

Within 5 minutes I could see his/her head spinning.

She/he had essentially complained about the job of heading product management listing all the common areas of focus where we professional PM executives apply our frameworks, knowledge, processes, and people skills, then stated she/he had no idea what to do about it and needed help.

This executive told me she/he had no idea how to do their job. As Head of Product.

I then stated I'd had interviews where the CTO ripped off my ideas, assured this person I didn't believe it was happening today, then said I'd give these couple "for free" and listed off the basic frameworks I would use to handle the situation presented.

Head spinning.

Lesson. There really is an enormous gap between people who are in the position and what they actually needed to do to get there at a technologically modern company. If you are an executive at a company that is not traditionally known as a "technology" company, or a "product" company, you have to do more than just say it.  There is real nuts & bolts to doing it.  The first step is accepting that you have much to learn. As we all do.

Best,

J.W. Gant

BRotD Entry 0265 - The Twitter Takeover

Best Reading of the Day

 Some people believe a person who's net worth is in the billions is naturally better than everyone else.

"Drop Elon Musk down in a third world country with no money and he'd be running the place within a year," is the typical hagiography we see around these folks.

True?

Hardly.

Here is a little piece (free to read for a limited time) about the Twitter takeover by the world's (previously) richest man:

elon-musk-twitter-takeover.html

Here is a snippet from that piece:

Alicia [part of the core engineering team] wasn’t reflexively anti-Musk. She respected what he had done at his companies and felt hopeful that, as someone who thought of himself as an engineer, he would support her highly technical work. But Musk had a different interest that day. Twitter, he said, should immediately get into video.

“We really should be able to do longform video and attract the best content creators by giving them a better cut than YouTube,” he said, according to Alicia’s recollection. The infrastructure engineers in the room agreed that adding support for longform video was technically possible, but their job was building stuff — not strategy or marketing. It seemed as though Musk didn’t understand the basic organizational structure of a social-media company; it was as if a rich guy had bought a restaurant and started telling the cooks he wanted to add a new dining room. Might he want to speak with the media product team instead?

Having been in tech and product for a few decades now I can say this use of engineering time by Musk is as stupid a waste I have heard of. Engineers should not be making business decisions, rather, they relate what is feasible, exactly as "Alicia" indicated during this meeting.  Any other discussion with the engineering team is a waste of extremely valuable resources.

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

2022 the Year of the Narcissist

 If you've never encountered a narcissist, that you know of, count yourself lucky.

Most are obsessed with maintaining a perception bubble around them so people view them as they wish to be viewed, and shower them with accolades for how amazing they are so the shattered vessel of a human they are is constantly being filled with validation.

I have encountered some in my personal and professional life.  The key to identifying them is to witness a lack of empathy.  They are unable to see the world from another person's perspective and feel what they feel (this is different from a person who is detached from their emotions, low EQ). For example your boss might attack you publicly and can't see how this is harmful to you.  If you reciprocate they will be quick to see the harm you are doing to them (this one is personal experience, he is a narcissist and my actions exposed his severe leadership deficiencies to leadership, limiting his career there).

This little article states 2022 was the year of the narcissist and is worth a read:

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/happy-new-year-2023-kick-trump-elon-musk-kanye-depp-rcna63557

Here is a snippet from the piece:

True narcissists self-centeredly disregard the needs of others and care little for pesky matters like consequences. They can also tend to be manipulative, arrogant, grandiose and hungry for admiration. Always busy concocting fantasies of unlimited power or brilliance, narcissists delight in reeling others in to play supporting roles in dream worlds, where they are always the stars.

Why have they gained so much power and influence? Why are so many people in thrall every time they open their mouths or fire off tweets? Are they the problem or a symptom of something bigger than their own egos? 

The truth is that our society breeds narcissists. We put them on pedestals and get a strong hit of vicarious pleasure when they act out.

Happy 2023!

J.W. Gant

New Year Resolutions, Should You?

 This topic is one of the most hated each year, right behind the year-end recap endlessly and worthlessly providing a "top 10" or whatever on any topic imaginable from movies, to deaths, to fiction novels.

However it is really worthwhile to consider what you do in January as a reset to your health.

Studies continue to show the average American gains about 1.5 pounds over the holiday, winter, season, then don't lose it.

Here is WebMD on the subject stating the gain is 1.36 pounds:

https://www.webmd.com/diet/features/holiday-weight-gain-big-fat-lie

The article emphasizes the issue is what we do, or don't do, AFTER the gain that is the problem.

Then there is this little piece about taking January off from drinking alcohol:

Dry January

Here is a snippet from that piece:

People who abstained from alcohol for a month started drinking less the rest of the year and showed striking improvements in their health.

So, what should you do?

Why not plan on a health reset every January? Enjoy the holidays.  Sip on that eggnog with the run/cognac/bourbon mix in it. Have that extra slice of cake. Then reset in January.  It really will make a difference.

J.W. Gant

AI and Beethoven's 10th

 Yes.

His tenth.

But he only has nine you say.

Yes, but he had many sketches for his tenth at the time of his death.

So what?

Yes, we can never know exactly what he would have created had he finished it but we can gleam something from it, through Artificial Intelligence.

AI works through a process of cognition through a hero sketch and repetition, followed by an execution effort.

So we might take a very clear photo of a person, teach the AI system who that person is, then run thousands of video files through it to find instances where a person is in the frame who looks like that hero photo.

With Beethoven we have nine completed symphonies to teach the AI and a sketch of the tenth.  Why not finish it?

Here is a brief history of the 10th as it was prior to AI:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._10_(Beethoven/Cooper)

And here is a story about he completion of the 10th using AI:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-artificial-intelligence-completed-beethovens-unfinished-10th-symphony-180978753/

Here is a snippet from that piece:

The task at hand eventually crystallized. We would need to use notes and completed compositions from Beethoven’s entire body of work - along with the available sketches from the Tenth Symphony - to create something that Beethoven himself might have written.

This was a tremendous challenge. We didn’t have a machine that we could feed sketches to, push a button and have it spit out a symphony. Most A.I. available at the time couldn’t continue an uncompleted piece of music beyond a few additional seconds.

Best,

J.W. Gant

BRotD Entry 0264 - Car Sensors Focused on Humans

We have sensors for many things in the systems we use, the devices.  Many of our devices are quite personalized.  "Siri, when do the RedSox play again?"  Our voice is known, our location, our history, all kinds of things unique to "you" are known by the AI and used (for convenience, and, to sell you things).

Cars spend all their time monitoring the road and other drivers.  What about the driver in the car? You? 

Referred to as human-centric sensors. The idea is for the system to know the human as well as so many other devices and systems do.

Read more here:

https://europe.autonews.com/guest-columnist/get-ready-wave-human-centric-sensors

Here is a snippet from that piece:

But this dynamic is changing because of the growing popularity of driver monitoring systems (DMS) that add AI-powered intelligent safety features to cars, which can detect the state and behavior of drivers.

For example, DMS can determine if a driver is experiencing symptoms of sickness or nausea and course correct the in-vehicle experience through controls such as regulating air conditioning or releasing aromatherapy, just as cruise control slows down or speeds up the vehicle depending on real-time sensor inputs.

All the best,

J.W. Gant