Salman Ansari
@salmanscribbles
embracing my inner polymath — writing, drawing, coding, playing
Salman Ansari
@salmanscribbles
embracing my inner polymath — writing, drawing, coding, playing
The first moment where I realized that art and writing has a place in community organizing was during a city council hearing with people in power. It was about the rezoning of Jerome Avenue which would change the landscape of one of the longest streets in the Bronx. During that hearing, I went up there and I read a poem. I hadn’t planned to read that poem. I just decided at the last minute to do it and I saw how much that shifted the room. I wasn’t saying anything that other people weren’t saying. [The poem] encapsulated the feeling, the frustration, the anger and the pride in being someone from the Bronx. It really moved people.
He said that it’s a very good idea that after you write a little bit, stop and then copy it. Because while you’re copying it, you’re thinking about it, and it’s giving you other ideas. And that’s the way I work. And it’s marvelous, just wonderful, the relationship between working and copying.
But here’s the problem: These estimates don’t capture the near future of how we’ll use AI. In that future, we won’t simply ping AI models with a question or two throughout the day, or have them generate a photo. Instead, leading labs are racing us toward a world where AI “agents” perform tasks for us without our supervising their every move.
As I understand them, the founders of AI–Alan Turing, Herbert Simon, Marvin Minsky, and others–regarded it as science, part of the then-emerging cognitive sciences, making use of new technologies and discoveries in the mathematical theory of computation to advance understanding. Over the years those concerns have faded and have largely been displaced by an engineering orientation. The earlier concerns are now commonly dismissed, sometimes condescendingly, as GOFAI–good old-fashioned AI.
“Traveling leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.”
—Ibn Battuta
Don’t do any task in order to get it over with. Resolve to do each job in a relaxed way, with all your attention. Enjoy and be one with your work.
—Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation