What now?

What now?

AI this, AI that, the news nowadays is so filled with AI advancements and discoveries that it is hard to keep up anymore. It is advancing so fast it has become worrisome, to the point that even big thinkers like Elon Musk are saying we should put the brakes on improving it without testing it first. Why am I bringing this up? Recently I came across an article on Hacker News that had this headline: “I asked ChatGPT to summarize 14,509 books in 5 bullet points. Here’s the result: https://www.bookpecker.com “

I checked the results for a few books I have read, and yes, the points are pretty accurate. It also makes me think about a few things. Such as whether it is actually summarizing the books, or if it is regurgitating things other people have said about the books. Regardless, one sobering realization I had is the fact that AI now has the knowledge of all these 14,509 books, more than any “normal” human being can read in a lifetime. AI was able to absorb these in a fraction of the time, along with probably a million more.

Business & Finance, Personal Development, Computers & Technology, Health & Fitness, History & Biographies, Religion & Spirituality, Philosophy. These are a few categories in this test. I would love to have the sum of knowledge from them all. And it isn’t only books it had access to. The amount of information AI has accumulated is staggering.

A benevolent human being with this amount of knowledge can be referred to as an Oracle. But what if it isn’t benevolent? After all, AI is being molded to be ‘superhuman’; unfortunately, this will include all of our faults, which are all very well documented. AI has knowledge of all of them now.

What is even more amazing is that AI can now do many thing that are just extraordinary: it can create realistic things like pictures, videos, music and speech. Oh yeah, it also knows everything we know about computer programming, engineering, chemistry, biology, quantum physics…

Am I the only one who just had a Skynet déjà vu moment?

Yes, there is OpenAI, a U.S. based artificial intelligence research organization with the goal of developing “safe and beneficial” AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), which it defines as “highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work”.

The fact that there is even a research organization dedicated to developing a safe and beneficial AGI makes you wonder if it isn’t too late by now; my view on this is that Pandora’s box may be opened already. Don’t be surprised if they already achieved AGI and are keeping it under wrap. The reason they would’t release it yet is because whoever achieves AGI first will control it and will be able to use it to get to the ultimate goal shortly thereafter: ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence).

OpenAI was in the news recently regarding an internal conflict that housted CEO Sam Altman. And a few days later reinstated him. This turmoil is happening at a research organization dedicated to developing a safe and beneficial AGI. Humans will never change.

We need to think harder on the implications of AI’s capabilities, from its potential benefits to the ethical considerations and risks associated with its development and integration into society. Unfortunatelly it is too late to do anything about it now.

Our only hope is that ASI will turn out to be benignant.

The Impact of Social Media on Anxiety

The Impact of Social Media on Anxiety

Generation Z, those born after 1995, have experienced a steady increase in anxiety since 2010. This is in contrast to those born after 1958 who have seen a decrease in anxiety during the same period. The main reason for this increase in anxiety among Gen Z is attributed to the rapid conversion of early social networking into social media platforms.

The chart below gives an idea of the steady increase in anxiety disorders from individuals aged 17 years and younger, it went up 42.3% in just five years. It might take a little while to get updated results because of the COVID pandemic, but the writing is on the wall: it’s not going to be lower.

SOURCE: National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH)

After 2009, social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube became the main mode of communication for many people. These platforms, being for-profit companies, drive to maximize user engagement through quantified prestige and influence while bombarding them with advertisements.

The pressure to perform and be publicly recognized has added to the anxiety levels of Gen Z, who have grown up in an era where social media is the norm. This shift in communication has created a generation that is highly connected yet emotionally immature, resulting in increased anxiety levels.

The move to social media has also led to a sudden increase in shouting and a decline in listening, resulting in a loss of shared stories, meanings, and human relationships.

How are you supposed to handle the situation when your young teenager asks for their first smart phone?

Teaching kids to be careful with social media can be a challenging task, but it is necessary in today’s digital age.

To start, it’s important to have open and honest conversations with kids about the potential dangers of social media, such as cyber-bullying, exposure to inappropriate content, and privacy concerns.

Encourage them to think before they post, to keep their personal information private, and to never share anything online that they wouldn’t want the whole world to see. Also, educate them on the importance of being kind and respectful online, and explain the long-term consequences of negative online behavior.

Emphasize the importance of using social media in a positive and responsible manner, and encourage them to limit their time spent on these platforms to avoid over-exposure. By teaching kids these skills and habits, you can help them develop healthy and safe social media practices.

To sum it up, the rapid growth of social media platforms has had a significant impact on the mental health of Generation Z. While these platforms have made it easier for people to communicate with others, they have also created a culture of competition and performance that has contributed to the increase in anxiety levels.

Kids are like sponges, they soak up everything and fast. It’s up to us to make sure they don’t soak up the filth.

The Hard Problem of Consciousness

The Hard Problem of Consciousness

The Hard Problem of Consciousness refers to the baffling challenge of understanding how the human brain is capable of having subjective experience: how could a 1.4kg lump of moist, grayish tissue inside your skull give rise to something as mysterious as the experience of being that grayish lump, and the body to which it is attached?

This is also known as the mind/body problem.

And why can’t the world’s greatest minds solve this mind/body problem?

Is Consciousness exclusive to humans or do animals also have Consciousness?

Are there different levels of Consciousness? When does a human embryo become Conscious? Or is it already Conscious?

Does sperm have any measurable level of Consciousness?

What happens to Consciousness when you die? Is this what some people refer to as a ‘Soul’?

And when one is on a death bed, does Consciousness gradually dissipate or is it like an ON/OFF switch?

So many questions, but very few and vague answers… this is why it is called The Hard Problem of Consciousness.

To start off, what is the definition of Consciousness? When we do a dictionary search we find results such as:

con·scious·ness
/ˈkän(t)SHəsnəs/

noun
the state of being awake and aware of one’s surroundings.
“she failed to regain consciousness and died two days later”

“state of being awake and aware of one’s surroundings”... that’s pretty vague, it’s like saying ‘an engine’ when asked what makes a care move. We need to know how that engine works, what different parts it is made of and how each parts interacts and works.

Well, actually, we know most of this already about the brain: we know of the cerebrum, the brainstem and the cerebellum. We know about neurons and their communication with other cells via specialized connections called synapses.

We have mapped most of the different regions of the brain. Yet we can’t locate Consciousness.

There are researchers that are trying to find a physical location in the brain where Consciousness might be located. In my opinion they will never find it, because Consciousness is the sum of all the brain parts.

Take for example a corpus callosotomy. The corpus callosum is a fiber bundle consisting of about 300 million fibers in the human brain that connects the two cerebral hemispheres. A corpus callosotomy is a surgical procedure performed on epilepsy patients in which the corpus callosum is cut, partially or fully, separating connections between the left and right hemispheres of the brain in an effort to prevent seizures from spreading. One would easily think that this could cause a ‘split’ personality, where two different Consciousness would fight for dominance. This does not happen even if it appears that way from the outside. After the operation the brain has much more difficulty sending messages between the hemispheres. The functions of the corpus callosum include the integration of perceptual, cognitive, learned, and volitional information. The most prominent non-surgical complications of corpus callosotomy relate to speech irregularities. Another complication is alien hand syndrome, in which the afflicted person’s hand appears to take on a mind of its own. Patients can experience something called “hemispheric rivalry,” in which they are seen attempting opposing behaviors with their left and right hands in a disturbing battle such as trying to button up their shirt with one hand while the other hand is busy at work unbuttoning it. Because of their odd behavior, from the outside this could come across as split personality, however, these patient are just as Conscious as before the operation.

So, if the corpus callosotomy does not affect Consciousness, how much brain can be isolated or removed before Consciousness goes away?

The problem is that we don’t understand what Consciousness really is and how it comes into being, let alone trying to quantify it.

The mind-body problem is now know as the “Hard Problem” of consciousness. Philosopher David Chalmers coined this term in his paper and in his book, “The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory.”

Chalmers thought the mind-body problem should be called “hard” in comparison to what, amusingly, he called the “easy” problems of neuroscience.

How neurons and the brain work at the physical level of course is not actually easy at all. But his point is that they’re relatively easy compared to the truly difficult problem of explaining how consciousness relates to matter.

One of the latest theory point to resonance, the “resonance theory of consciousness” is kind of interesting.

This is an article I started writing over a year ago and I chipped away at it couple of times since.

Until today.

Today, as I held my unconscious mother’s hand as she was slowly dying, while I was reliving the good memories we had, I couldn’t stop thinking about her Consciousness right there and then.

She was a great soul, which we can only hope it continues on a wonderful journey.

It may take a long time before we find Consciousness’ location, being it physical or not. But is it such a bad thing that it remains a mystery?

Not really, in my opinion there are some things that should remain as such.

My mom was terrified of dogs since she was a little girl, but our dog Prada converted her.

Featured Image Copyright: This work by Matthew Willis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Life Truths from Nassim Taleb’s book – The Black Swan

Life Truths from Nassim Taleb’s book – The Black Swan

These are just plain-spoken, blunt and downright brutal. They feel like a slap on the face to wake you up.

Wired to follow the stupid masses
“It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers.”

The seeds you plant
“When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.”

No one can compete with you being you
“Remember that you are a Black Swan.”

Respect
“It is my great hope someday, to see science and decision makers rediscover what the ancients have always known. Namely that our highest currency is respect.”

Know what you don’t know
“The problem with experts is that they do not know what they do not know”

Ignore
“If you hear a “prominent” economist using the word ‘equilibrium,’ or ‘normal distribution,’ do not argue with him; just ignore him, or try to put a rat down his shirt.”

Treat yourself
“We tend to use knowledge as therapy.”

Be a storyteller
“Ideas come and go, stories stay.”

History repeats itself
“The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history”

Validity vs. contagion
“I will repeat the following until I am hoarse: it is contagion that determines the fate of a theory in social science, not its validity.”

Question your belief
“I am most often irritated by those who attack the bishop but somehow fall for the securities analyst — those who exercise their skepticism against religion but not against economists, social scientists, and phony statisticians. Using the confirmation bias, these people will tell you that religion was horrible for mankind by counting deaths from the Inquisition and various religious wars. But they will not show you how many people were killed by nationalism, social science, and political theory under Stalin or during the Vietnam War. Even priests don’t go to bishops when they feel ill: their first stop is the doctor’s. But we stop by the offices of many pseudoscientists and “experts” without alternative. We no longer believe in papal infallibility; we seem to believe in the infallibility of the Nobel, though….”

Enslaved to our own system
“Categorizing is necessary for humans, but it becomes pathological when the category is seen as definitive, preventing people from considering the fuzziness of boundaries.”

Let go of external expectations
“I don’t run for trains.” Snub your destiny. I have taught myself to resist running to keep on schedule. This may seem a very small piece of advice, but it registered. In refusing to run to catch trains, I have felt the true value of elegance and aesthetics in behavior, a sense of being in control of my time, my schedule, and my life. Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking. You stand above the rat race and the pecking order, not outside of it if you do so by choice.”

Survival mode
“If you survive until tomorrow, it could mean that either a) you are more likely to be immortal or b) that you are closer to death.”

Talk is cheap
“Prediction, not narration, is the real test of our understanding of the world.”

Stress test them
“If you want to get an idea of a friend’s temperament, ethics, and personal elegance, you need to look at him under the tests of severe circumstances, not under the regular rosy glow of daily life.”

Hell is other people
“Believe me, it is tough to deal with the social consequences of the appearance of continuous failure. We are social animals; hell is other people.”

You are lucky
“We are quick to forget that just being alive is an extraordinary piece of good luck, a remote event, a chance occurrence of monstrous proportions.”

Spot the difference
“I propose that if you want a simple step to a higher form of life, as distant from the animal as you can get, then you may have to denarrate, that is, shut down the television set, minimize time spent reading newspapers, ignore the blogs. Train your reasoning abilities to control your decisions; nudge System 1 (the heuristic or experiential system) out of the important ones. Train yourself to spot the difference between the sensational and the empirical. This insulation from the toxicity of the world will have an additional benefit: it will improve your well-being.”

Question your trust in the system
“Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird’s belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race “looking out for its best interests,” as a politician would say. On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief.”

Have an anti-library
“The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore, professore dottore Eco, what a library you have ! How many of these books have you read?” and the others — a very small minority — who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you don’t know as your financial means, mortgage rates and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an anti-library.”

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”

~ Marcus Aurelius