Seeking Delphi™: Recent Episodes
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“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”–variously attributed
The above quote dates from the late 19th century. A 21st century version might well be, “everybody talks about disruption, but can anybody do anything about it?”
One person who has strong ideas on what to do about it is Roger Spitz. He is a former M&A investment banker and current venture capitalist and advisor to the World Economic Forum’s Global Foresight Network. He is also a fellow member of the Association of Professional Futurists. His new book Disrupt with Impact, Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World, provides a roadmap for doing such.
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Roger Spitz
Episode #64: Disrupt with Impact, with Roger Spitz
Disrupt with Impact on Amazon
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“To have another language is to possess a second soul.”–Charlemagne
This podcast originally aired in March of 2022
“To have another language is to possess a second soul.”–Charlemagne
I wouldn’t call future fluency a a new jargon. I would call it a unique and practical way of looking at foresight–of integrating it into the culture of an organization.
Dmitriy Zakharov is a fellow alumnus of the University of Houston’s graduate foresight program. His recent volume Future-Fluent equates foresight with language. He breaks down it’s component parts into syntax and semantics and discusses how to implement this point of view of the future into your life and your organization.
In episode #58 of Seeking Delphi Dmitriy tells us of his journey to write the book, and explains what it’s all about.
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Dmitriy Zakharov
#58: Future-Fluent
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“The internet gave us access to everything; but it also gave everything access to us.””–James Veitch
Our daily lives are overloaded with information from more sources than anyone can can count. Your smart phone is substantially more connected to the world of information than the network TV newsroom of just a couple of decades ago. How does one make sense of it?
In this first of a new series, Two Futurists Talking, I’m joined by fellow futurist Mike Courtney, of Aperio Insights, to sort out our views on some recent news stories that have intrigued us. What are the possibilities that can emerge from our futurist points of view?
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Mike Courtney
Episode #63, Two Futurists Talking: Global IT Outage, Bird Flu, and Weaponized AI–with Mike Courtney
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“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.”–Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlett)
What is the fodder that feeds generative AI? Of course, there is massive software programming, but creating useful output requires data. Tons of data.
Anne Boysen has a masters in strategic foresight from the University of Houston and a graduate certificate in business analytics from Penn State University. Working in high tech for 6 years, she also works on foresight projects and uses data mining and analytics in her research. She is generally recognized as one of the top data experts in the professional futurist community. In this episode she provides an overview of the state of big data, and its importance in “feeding” today’s generative AI models.
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Episode #62: AI and the Future of Big Data, with Anne Boysen
Anne’s Outline:
Trends
- Less public access and ethical considerations
- Better ability to combine different types of data
- Synthetic data
- More diluted data
Less public access and ethical considerations
If data is the new oil, the land grab is coming to an end. That time when anyone could grab a piece of the digital turf and put up their yard sign unsuspectingly is fading away. You still can, but you now know you may not own mining rights to the treasure beneath the soil of your homestead.
This realization has made people more cautious, and considerations around IP and privacy make important data less accessible. Tech companies are also more protective of user generated content for liability reasons as well as their ability to capitalize on it. It wasn’t long ago that Elon Musk decided to put Twitter’s public tweets behind a paywall. I can not longer use Application Programming Interface (API) to access tweets to do sentiment analysis for my foresight research, which was vital to monitor trends I could not access any other way. Being able to take the pulse of public opinion was a phenomenal way for futurists to gain early insight into trends that otherwise would have stayed below the radar and the big headlines. This is monopolizing not only the data, but the AI models that feeds on this data.
So we see an inverse curve where there is more hope tied to advanced models, but less access for these models to feed themselves.
- More ability to combine different types of data
Thankfully, the way we store, extract, transform and load our data is advancing along with the models, so we can get more “bang for our buck”. Different types of data used to be stored in siloes, so businesses had a hard time accessing even their own data for analysis. It too lots of time for cleaning and combining. But with the entrance of Data Lakes, we can now store different data formats in combinable ways, giving us better access to unstructured data and then query different formats together.
- Synthetic data
Another way to overcome data scarcity is through creating synthetic data. This is a way to make sure the core distributions remain intact but we add some “jitters” to camouflage certain aspects of the original data or create larger quantities.
There are different reasons why we may want to use synthetic data. First and foremost, we may want to remove personally identifiable information (PII). Even if we remove name, address and other identifiers from an original dataset, it doesn’t take many combined data points to reconstruct a person’s identity. The beauty of synthetic data is that we can remove all this and still keep the aggregate level distributions to see the main trends.
We can also use synthetic data to create more data. I did this recently in a deep learning model and it worked remarkably well. I was worried the synthetic data would overfit the model, but when I later got access to more original data of the same source, the performance stayed very close to it.
Of course this is a drawback with synthetic data. You don’t really get to discover the outliers, what we futurists call fringe or weak signals, so it’s just going to maximize the patterns we already have.
- More diluted data
In this scenario we will still train large models even if data is less accessible. It may be tempting for some to train models using bad data or diluted derivative data produced by AI. This is like ingesting vomit. The “nutrients” have already been absorbed, meaning the variety and serendipity that existed in the original may be gone. This is very different from synthetic data, which keeps the properties intact. Many people mix this up.
A few words about Generative AI. Much Ado about not a whole lot at the moment. This has to do with an incongruence between the type of LLM GenAI is, the type of data it ingests, how it trains on it on the one and most real, “unsexy” business needs on the other.
Generative AI such as LLMs will probably help businesses in some hybrid form, but not as the “out-of-the-box” solution we see today.
Future of data conclusion
–Synthetic data will make up for reduced access. This will reduce important outliers and regress to the mean even more
–Peak access to random data is behind us
–Opt-in data will never be representative
Previous Podcast in this AI series
#59–Transitioning to AGI, Implications and Regulations with Jerome Glenn
#60–Investing in AI and AI in Investing with Jim Lee
#61–Keeping it Human, with Dennis Draeger
You can subscribe to Seeking Delphi on Apple podcasts , PlayerFM, MyTuner, Listen Notes, I Heart Radio, Podchaser and Blubrry Podcasts and many others. You can also follow us on twitter @Seeking_Delphi and Facebook.
“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”-Albert Einstein
Note: this is a repost of a previously (inadvertently) deleted post.
Regulating artificial intelligence is a bit like the weather. Everybody talks about it but nobody is doing anything about it. Well–there are efforts, there is trying. But as Yoda said, “there is no try, only do or do not.” The big problem, according to Jerome Glenn of the Millennium Project, is that those that are trying are metaphorically trying to keep up with a speeding racecar. He insists that they should be looking ahead to where it is going to be in three to five years, not trying to run alongside it right now. And where it is likely to be in three to five years is AGI–artificial general intelligence. AGI will be far more powerful than today’s narrow large language models AGI. It will be able to research and learn new skills on its own, and even rewrite its code. In this episode, he explains The Millennium Projects efforts to create urgency to regulate this coming, more powerful AGI.
You can subscribe to Seeking Delphi on Apple podcasts , PlayerFM, MyTuner, Listen Notes, I Heart Radio, Podchaser and Blubrry Podcasts and many others. You can also follow us on twitter @Seeking_Delphi and Facebook.
Episode #59: Transitioning to AGI, Implications and Regulations, with Jerome Glenn
Millennium Project page: Transition form Artificial Narrow Intelligence to Artificial General Intelligence Governance
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“I’d rather see artificial intelligence than no intelligence.”–Michael Crichton
If you’re asking if artificial intelligence will work for us or against us, you may be asking the wrong question. The key, according to Dennis Draeger of Shaping Tomorrow, is to design AI to collaborate with us. In this episode, we discuss this and other related issues involving working with A.I.
You can subscribe to Seeking Delphi on Apple podcasts , PlayerFM, MyTuner, Listen Notes, I Heart Radio, Podchaser and Blubrry Podcasts and many others. You can also follow us on twitter @Seeking_Delphi and Facebook.
Dennis Draeger
Episode #61–AI: Keeping it Human, with Dennis Draeger
You can subscribe to Seeking Delphi on Apple podcasts , PlayerFM, MyTuner, Listen Notes, I Heart Radio, Podchaser and Blubrry Podcasts and over 2 dozen others. You can also follow us on twitter @Seeking_Delphi and Facebook.
“Anyone who thinks there is safety in numbers hasn’t looked at the stock market.”–Irene Peter
“To have another language is to possess a second soul.”–Charlemagne
Nowhere do we hear more about artificial intelligence than in the world of investing. Nvidia and other major AI-related stocks are in the news every day. Is AI over-bought and due for a correction? Perhaps at the peak of Gartner Hype Cycle? Beyond that, how much is AI being used to make investments, particularly by institutions?
One person I know who is well qualified to answer those questions is financial futurist Jim Lee. He is a fellow member of The Association of Professional Futurists and alum of the University of Houston graduate foresight program. He also happens to manage $100 million in assets for Stratfi (Strategic Foresight Investments, LLC)
You can subscribe to Seeking Delphi on Apple podcasts , PlayerFM, MyTuner, Listen Notes, I Heart Radio, Podchaser and Blubrry Podcasts and many others.
Jim Lee#60: Investing in AI and AI in Investing with Jim Lee
You can subscribe to Seeking Delphi on Apple podcasts , PlayerFM, MyTuner, Listen Notes, I Heart Radio, Podchaser and Blubrry Podcasts and over 2 dozen others. You can also follow us on twitter @Seeking_Delphi and Facebook.
“The real problem is not whether machines think, but whether men do.”–B.F. Skinner
“To have another language is to possess a second soul.”–Charlemagne
It’s non-stop: the buzz, the chatter, the speculations, the concerns. It’s visceral: the excitement, the awe, the deep amazement. But it’s also disturbing and at times, to some, terrifying.
It’s artificial intelligence. We hear about it, we read about, we worry about. Where is it going, how will it best be used, and what are the dangers of misuse? Many are asking that question, but Jerome Glenn, CEO and founder of The Millennium Project, says the would be regulators of A.I. are asking the wrong question.
In episode #59 of Seeking Delphi Jerry tells us what the right questions are–and they don’t have to do with where generative A.I. is going now. They have to do with where Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will likely be in the next few years.
You can subscribe to Seeking Delphi on Apple podcasts , PlayerFM, MyTuner, Listen Notes, I Heart Radio, Podchaser and Blubrry Podcasts and many others.
Jerome Glenn
59 Artificial Intelligence–Implications and Regulations with Jerome Glenn
You can subscribe to Seeking Delphi on Apple podcasts , PlayerFM, MyTuner, Listen Notes, I Heart Radio, Podchaser and Blubrry Podcasts and over 2 dozen others. You can also follow us on twitter @Seeking_Delphi and Facebook.
“I did not come to NASA to make history.”–Sally Ride“Going to Mars would make NASA great again.”–John Grunsfeld
http://www.andertoons.com
This episode was originally aired in October of 2019. The inaugural ASCEND conference was cancelled due to Covid-19. It was held virtually in 2021 and live in 2022. The 2023 event will be held in October. Significant NASA accomplishments in the three plus years since this recording was made include the deflection of an asteroid, the first Artemis moon rocket launch, and the stunning success of the James Webb Space Telescope.
A new space race is upon us. But unlike the two-way competition days of the 1960’s and early 1970’s, it is now a multi-player race to dominate and exploit the final frontier.
Where does NASA sit in all of this, in the rapidly changing world of the second space race? In Seeking Delphi episode #35, host Mark Sackler gets an overview of where the agency is headed, from former NASA program director for launch systems, Dan Dumbacher. There’s also a very special announcement of the upcoming ASCEND** space conference, slated for Las Vegas in November of 2020.
**Accelerating Space Commerce, Exploration, and New Discovery
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Orion Capsule. NASA
https://seekingdelphidotcom.files.wordpress.com/2023/03/dumbacher-redux-final.mp3
Episode #35 (redux) NASA, the Next Ten Years, with Dan Dumbacher
YouTube slideshow for episode #35
Links:
NASA home page
ASCEND space conference
Dan Dumbacher biography
AIAA
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“To have another language is to possess a second soul.”–Charlemagne “To have another language is to possess a second soul.”–Charlemagne I wouldn’t call future fluency a a new jargon. I would call it a unique and practical way of looking at foresight–of integrating it into the culture of an organization. Dmitriy Zakharov is a fellow […]
“So I submit to my colleagues here today that hydrogen is not as far away as we think it is.“–Bob Inglis In February of 2017, Seeking Delphi™ featured Infinity Fuel Cell and Hydrogen, Inc.™ founder and CEO Bill Smith, in an episode entitled What Ever Happend to Fuel Cells. Not much was happening in early […]
“Mining asteroids will ultimately benefit humanity on and off the Earth in a multitude of ways.”- Peter Diamandis Peter Diamandis might be right, but asteroid mining is probably not imminent–at least not in the way that lunar mining is. With both the NASA and the Chinese National Space Agency having designs on establishing permanent lunar […]
“We have created science and technology to extend our life, but we haven’t created life we want to extend.”–Sergey Young, Seeking Delphi™ episode #55, explaining why he believes more people do not support radical life extension. Few individuals have done more, from an advocacy standpoint, to promote breakthroughs in human longevity, than Sergey Young. Seeking […]
This podcast was originally recorded and aired in November of 2018. “The Promise of Autonomous Vehicles is Great.”–Dan Lipinski “My opinion is that it’s a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous vehicles.”–Elon Musk ™ There’s no shortage of opinions on the viability of self-driving cars. Be you a bull or a bear, though, […]
This podcast originally ran in June of 2018. Seeking Delphi(tm)will return from hiatus with new material next month. “I can’t imagine a future without robots.”–Nolan Bushnell ™ In the popular HBO series Westworld, robotic hosts are depicted as being placed into a kind of psychiatric analysis by their creators. Could this actually happen one day? […]
“I believe fuel cells could end the 100-year reign of the internal combustion engine.” –William Clay Ford Seeking Delphi will return from hiatus soon. This is the first in a series of rebroadcasts of the highlights from the past 4 years of programs. Much has changed in the fuel cell sector since this program first […]
“There’s a lot of automation that can happen that isn’t a replacement of humans but of mind-numbing behavior.” –Stewart Butterworth “Automation is going to cause unemployment, and we better prepare for it.”–Mark Cuban In an early standup routine, Woody Allen once joked that when his father came home to announce that his job on an […]
“Ageing is, simply and clearly, the accumulation of damage in the body. That’s all that ageing is.–Aubrey de Grey It’s that simple. Or so say Aubrey de Grey and his many followers in the gerontological and biotech communities. But the sixty-four dollar question is: how does the message disseminate to the rest of the world? […]
“It is not in our stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves.”–Willaim Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene III Got foresight? Do you even need it? Hell yes, you do. The consequences of lack of foresight have never been more evident than they are in the age of the coronavirus pandemic. But just how […]
“What I’m after is not living to 1,000. I’m after letting people avoid death for as long as they want to.”–Aubrey de Grey
http://www.cartoonstock.com It’s all so complicated. Back in January I hosted a panel entitled The Dawn of Superlongevity: Scenarios for a post-aging future. I hoped to address many of the issues involved in getting to radical life extension–and dealing with it. We barely scratched the surface. In that light, this is the first in a series of Longevity Dialogues. In this installment, we explore some of the challenges and logistics involved in implementing radical life extension, as well as the implications for the very meaning of human life, should we attain it. Our panelists:
- Sergey Young–XPrize innovation board member, founder of the Longevity Vision Fund, and author of The Science and Technology of Growing Young.
- David Wood–Chair of the London Futurists and author of The Abolition of Aging
- Jose Cordero–Author of La Muerte de las Muerte (The Death of Death) and former candidate for the European parliament.
51: The Longevity Dialogues, Part 1, The Long View [Audio podcast]
- Podcast Special Edition: Highlights of The 2019 Undoing Aging Conference
- April 9, 2019
- Podcast Special Edition: X Prize Future of Longevity Impact Roadmap
- May 5, 2019
- Podcast #40: Scenarios for a Post-Aging Future, with Aubrey de Grey, Elizabeth Parrish, David Wood, and Keith Comito.
- January 15, 2020
(From January, 2020.)