Adam Gamwell
@anthrocurious
In pursuit of mutual thriving. Cultural Anthropologist, Technologist, Dad, musician, vibe maker-coder,
Adam Gamwell
anthrocurious.com
The first step is to understand the fundamental difference between humans and AIs. We are analog, chemical beings, with emotions and feelings. Compared with machines, we think slowly—and we act too fast, failing to consider the long-term consequences of our behavior (which AI can help predict). So we should not compete with AI; we should use it. At... See more
Esther Dyson • Don’t Fuss About Training AIs. Train Our Kids
Humanity is waking up to the challenges and opportunities of artificial intelligence, but we don’t yet understand our role. People talk about unexplainable AI when they should be more concerned about the unexplainable humans running the companies that develop the AI. (Hiya, Sam!) People worried about AI taking their jobs and taking control are... See more
Esther Dyson • Don’t Fuss About Training AIs. Train Our Kids
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
In one way, it is easier to be inexperienced: you don’t have to learn what is no longer relevant. Experience, on the other hand, creates two distinct struggles: the first is to identify and unlearn what is no longer necessary (that’s work, too). The second is to remain open-minded, patient, and willing to engage with what’s new, even if it... See more
Frank Chimero • Everything Easy is Hard Again
Imagine if we could somehow show the people of the eighteenth century a simple child’s toy from today — say, a speaking doll.
The common folk would marvel at its ability to speak its few stock phrases. The scientists and engineers would marvel even more at its innards; at the minutely detailed silicon; at the bewildering complexity soon to be within... See more
The common folk would marvel at its ability to speak its few stock phrases. The scientists and engineers would marvel even more at its innards; at the minutely detailed silicon; at the bewildering complexity soon to be within... See more
Towards an experience of humanity
A short meditation on remembering where we place value
In startups, the big winners are big to a degree that violates our expectations about variation. I don't know whether these expectations are innate or learned, but whatever the cause, we are just not prepared for the 1000x variation in outcomes that one finds in startup investing.
Paul Graham • Black Swan Farming
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
“There can be no experience of the world without the experiencer and that, my dear friends, is us.”
“Before anyone can make theories or get data or have ideas about the world, there must be the raw presence of being-in-the-world. The world doesn’t appear in the abstract to a disembodied perspective floating in space… it appears to us, exactly where... See more
“Before anyone can make theories or get data or have ideas about the world, there must be the raw presence of being-in-the-world. The world doesn’t appear in the abstract to a disembodied perspective floating in space… it appears to us, exactly where... See more
We’re experiencing many crises in America right now, but arguably the meta-crisis is one of social trust.
For decades, there has been a building body of evidence that when people trust each other — including literally responding “yes” to the question “Can most people be trusted?” — lots of important, positive things are easier: income inequality... See more
For decades, there has been a building body of evidence that when people trust each other — including literally responding “yes” to the question “Can most people be trusted?” — lots of important, positive things are easier: income inequality... See more