Hi Friend
This has been a week of working on the business. I didn’t have any speaking events, which hurts my heart. I LOVE speaking where people are gathered. I enjoy a good one-on-one conversation, but there’s something in my soul that leaps with joy when I’m in front of an audience filled with smart, interesting people.
I did purchase about eight different plane tickets for upcoming trips. As much as airlines get grief for their painful shortcomings, I literally could not have the business and life I have without them. I’m grateful.
Like most of you, I’ve been saturated with stories about AI. I’m completely intrigued. I’m certain it’s just like when the internet came online and people had no clue how drastically life would change in the days to follow. I have a decent imagination and I’m confident I have no clue what the future will look like.
It really is fascinating. The release of ChatGPT, the follow up releases from Microsoft and Google; as well as the creative ones like DALL-E, are wild. The immediate utilization from high school to college students is rampant. The crack down at colleges with tools supposed to spot AI-generated content is spotty. Marketing, advertising, business plans and writing, writing, writing in the business world has seen just the beginning of total transformation. Buckle up.
The rapid adaption and innovative uses in just weeks has been staggering. The article I posted was about an AI-created photograph that won a top award. The photographer wouldn’t accept the prize because he didn’t take it. His intention was to start a conversation. I thought the robots were going to relieve us of the mundane, not the beautifully creative! Have you played with image/photo AI yet?
Progression or Digression
Besides the fact that it now seems Terminator, Matrix and Wall-E are prophetically inevitable, the question of what constitutes progress and who gets to define it, seems a useful conversation. As humans it seems we are only able to profess that every bit of collective change that occurs is positive progress with a few peripheral downsides. We’re incapable of saying something is more worse than better for us right from the start.
Can technology be anything but neutral since it only takes on the characteristics of the humans who educate it? My friend David is fond of saying that everyone is born good, which I love. It’s what happens to them as they grow, encounter life and experience pain that contaminates their hearts. Greed, unforgiveness, powerlust, bitterness and pride have a way of distorting love, hope, relationships and our own identity; which I suspect has found it’s way into AI.
Blurred Reality
Filters, characterization, aging and all the other visual transformative morphing that society is applying to themselves via social media is definitely a gateway practice to the eventual meta-verse. It’s like a concerted massive attempt to escape reality.
I like reality. I’m going to miss it.
I have compassion for those who want to exit their current existence. It tends to lean younger, but there are plenty of grown adults who would love to permanently alter their exterior. It’s a centuries old conversation that no matter what we do outwardly, it’s only what occurs inwardly that will give us peace.
Instigating Ideas…
1. Encourage someone whose reality is hard.
2. Have a conversation with someone about AI and see what you learn.
3. Would you take the red pill?
4. Where else does progress and digress simultaneously exist?
The different conversation that come just from breaching this subject, inspire me. Almost everyone is smarter than me, when it comes to these matters. My approach is from a very simplistic perspective and mostly business-focused. I recognize my limited understanding and appreciate those like my brother Doug who have put much more thought and research into it.
Discomfort Moves Me
I had a conversation this week where I shared that I’m OK creating scenarios where people are uncomfortable. It emerged from a discussion where the other person was sincerely concerned about a possible awkward situation. I was not because I believe discomfort is a livable offense. Not only that, I think it’s a healthy prompt for action! You better believe the painful reality of NOT speaking this week compelled me to more actions!
The discomfort of the world transforming swiftlybefore my eyes necessitates my acceptance and embrace, even with a mandate to elicit all the good from it I can, for myself, my family, you and others!
I hope this week you experience all the best reality has to offer. Stretch beyond comfort to engage in meaningful growth about the progress or digress that is coming. I suspect it’s up to you & me to determine which it is…