Denner's Digest - 2023-01-30

Wonderful methaphor about challenging your (larger) decisions, either regularly or in the face of new information. And being able to acknowledge that another decision may need to be made that will challenge your core. I've been thinking a lot about decisions I've made. There have been definite moments where sunk cost has been an issue for me. Thankfully there are more moments where I've "corrected" a poor decision quickly. I probably haven't stared into the abyss enough though. What abyss should you stare into?

You've undoubtedly tried ChatGPT. Have you ever considered telling it how to shape its responses? That's exactly what this project did. "As you can see, I explained everything in plain English. I described the types of requests, the exact structure of the response, and asked it to behave like a sentient AI, giving advice even for personal questions. I also provided a few details about time, location, and the devices and rooms in the house. From this, we will receive a perfectly structured response." Often when we use a tool we acknowledge a constraint (conversational interactions) without questioning its validity. Opportunity often lies in the moments where we do. What constraint will you question today?

I guess there are a couple of questions that come to mind: Firstly there is one around when to release the results of psychology experiments: are we too soon too often? I wonder if our rush to understand ourselves enhances our biases in (getting) the results. In such an open field we should be more cautious as a lot of these are commonly used to explain events. Secondly, what am I to do instead of the now debunked morning power pose?

Are we now in another arms race? ChatGPT has opened the door to learning and rapid development. Of course that also applies to less "positive" scenarios, like writing malware or ensnaring unsuspecting individuals. The solution that will be proposed will be two pronged. The tech companies behind AI will propose using AI itself to detect and combat these nefarious use cases (when all you have is a hammer ...). Then the governments will attempt to bring in legislation and hobble the technology itself (there's the barn door being closed). The real problem is the societal imbalances across the world. And that isn't going to be something we'll solve any time soon.