Adam Gamwell
@anthrocurious
In pursuit of mutual thriving. Cultural Anthropologist, Technologist, Dad, musician, vibe maker-coder,
Adam Gamwell
anthrocurious.com
Aside from the doomers who believe that AI will kill us all and the techno-utopians who believe it will solve all of our problems, there are three main ways that people seem to be thinking about AI.
At one extreme, you might fear that AI will take your job. Certainly, you’ve read as much in the press, and it does seem to be getting better and... See more
At one extreme, you might fear that AI will take your job. Certainly, you’ve read as much in the press, and it does seem to be getting better and... See more
He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the... See more
Read today this almost feels like a backdoor secret entrance to empathy for a culture that prefers not to listen to those with different perspectives have to say
When we introduce new machines, we also disrupt social structures, games, and the rules of those games. With paradigm shifts come lots of progress, yes. But agents of progress are agents of chaos too. They create agitation and anxiety.
I see many shades of this, but I’ll narrow it down to three major types:
Anxiety of incompetence: my skills are devalued and i have to learn new ones
Anxiety of irrelevance: people might not relate to, value, or think about me
Anxiety of uncertainty: I don’t know what the future holds and it feels fickle
Clear’s Law of Recurrence: The number of people who believe an idea is directly proportional to the number of times it has been repeated during the last year—even if the idea is false.
James Clear • Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds
I think the most worrisome aspect of AI systems in the short term is that we will give them too much autonomy without being fully aware of their limitations and vulnerabilities. We tend to anthropomorphize AI systems: we impute human qualities to them and end up overestimating the extent to which these systems can actually be fully trusted.
Melanie Mitchell • Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans
In investing, higher volatility usually equates to higher possible returns. In today’s world of online expression, we settle for lower expected value, market-level outcomes so as to not ruffle any feathers and not take any outsized risk. We’re basically hoping to allow people to know us enough so that they include us in their passive index of... See more
Being Known is Being Loved
Thought provoking and VC Culture
An interesting reflection on the contrast between the desire for big gains in Venture capital and culture and the mediocre results a product might create and how that mediocrity shapes the way we think about humans
focus less on AI as something separate from humans, and more on tools that enhance human cognition rather than replacing it… If we want a future that is both superintelligent and "human", one where human beings are not just pets, but actually retain meaningful agency over the world, then it feels like something like this is the most natural option.
For me, that means limiting that amount that I do, even if that disappoints people; sharing my needs as an autistic person at the start of all event bookings; setting aside specific times for publicity, and closely guarding my writing time; and saying ‘no’ to opportunities that are not a great fit for me (for example, events in noisy, crowded... See more
If AI starts to generate intelligence by itself, there’s no guarantee that it will be human-like. Rather than humans teaching machines to think like humans, machines might teach humans new ways of thinking.