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| Greetings dear subscribers, friends, clients and colleagues! This is a special edition of my newsletter, with a focus on Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT / GenAI. I hope you enjoy it… and you're having a great summer, as well! I'll be in Zurich, Lanzarote and Brazil for some get-away time as well as for a few speaking gigs and filming sessions. As mentioned in my previous newsletter, my new film on AI and the Future of Humanity, Look Up Now (LuN) is almost finished, and we've just released a pretty cool trailer on Youtube, see below (it has garnered some 70K+ views already). LuN is about the future of humanity as we are heading into the age of artificial intelligence. It's my first collaboration with Emmy-award winning director Chris Sean Nolan (nope, not the Oppenheimer guy); this powerful 23-minute film is also the pilot for a new TV series on AI and The Future that Chris and me are working on. NOTE: We are still open to partnership inquiries for the distribution, marketing and promotion of this important film, as well as for the subsequent series. Please contact me anytime to find out more. Now, let's dive in the news! Here are some of my latest MUST-READ / WATCH items on AI: Generative AI could raise global GDP by 7% (Goldman Sachs) Good stuff here – but will this alleged huge rise of Global GDP be collectively beneficial… and does GDP growth still matter? And what impact will this have on our global economic model? How Generative AI Has Supercharged the Future of Work (deep read via Dion Hinchcliffe). Side-note: This is how my team uses AI – in this case, RunwayML, to create new backgrounds for my videos. Noam Chomsky: The False Promise of ChatGPT (Via the NYT) The Illusion Of AI’s Existential Risk: NOEMA.com “Focusing on the prospect of human extinction by AI in the distant future may prevent us from addressing AI’s disruptive dangers to society today” *I'm pretty sure I don't agree but it's a good read nevertheless Wired.com: Where Memory Ends and Generative AI Begins: New photo manipulation tools from Google and Adobe are blurring the lines between real memories and those dreamed up by AI. Google DeepMind: Exploring institutions for global AI governance. Thoughtful stuff by DeepMind – I certainly hope this is more then a fig-leaf post 🙂 The Economist: What are the chances of an AI apocalypse? “Professional “super-forecasters” are more optimistic about the future than AI experts” (makes me wonder why expert-ship is still being touted so much). Bill Gates: The risks of AI are real but manageable: “The world has learned a lot about handling problems caused by breakthrough innovations” Marc Andreessen’s “Why AI Will Save the World”: A Reductionist, Self-Serving Ode to Singularity (my arguments why Marc is utterly wrong) This week's #1 read: The Nation: Silicon Valley’s Quest to Build God and Control Humanity “The world we have is ugly enough, but tech capitalists desire an even uglier one… People like Mark Andreessen stand to make billions when our technology development is aimed toward crushing labor, managing a disempowered population, threatening rival powers, and extracting profits by commodifying larger swaths of daily life. For the rest of us, giving Andreessen free rein would be a disaster… We are left with Silicon Valley’s promises that this time will be different, that AI—unlike the Internet—won’t be a disappointment” The Contradictions of Sam Altman, AI Crusader. The CEO behind ChatGPT navigates the line between developing artificial intelligence on the cutting edge and pushing technology to dystopia. *WSJ (free gift link… hopefully no paywall issues): Via David Brooks, NYT: Human Beings Are Soon Going to Be Eclipsed. “A.I. is capable of synthesizing these linguistic expressions, which humans have put on the internet and, thus, into its training base. But, I’d still argue, the machine is not having anything like a human learning experience. It’s playing on the surface with language, but the emotion-drenched process of learning from actual experience and the hard-earned accumulation of what we call wisdom are absent” MIT Technology Review: Junk websites filled with AI-generated text are pulling in money from programmatic ad: “More than 140 brands are advertising on low-quality content farm sites—and the problem is growing fast” My 2 cents: AI will super-charge social media fakeness and manipulation – the last thing we need! MUST- WATCH VIDEO but not for the faint-hearted: Artificial Escalation “FLI's new fictional film depicts a world where artificial intelligence (‘AI') is integrated into nuclear command, control and communications systems (‘NC3') with terrifying results. When disaster strikes, American, Chinese and Taiwanese military commanders quickly discover that with their new operating system in place, everything has sped up. They have little time to work out what is going on, and even less time to prevent the situation escalating into a major catastrophe…” Youtube Wired.com: The Last Word on AI and the Atom Bomb “Elton John said music’s power was to take us outside ourselves—the better to see ourselves, our own special human sauce, what makes us cry, yearn, get goosebumps, giggle. Humans sail circles around AI. We just need to keep our hands on the tiller” Via Noahpinion, this interview: Kevin Kelly, editor, author, and futurist. A prophet of the tech world shares his thoughts on where it's all headed. And here is my summary: Generative AI, ChatGPT, Dalle2 et al: “Knowledge without wisdom is like water in the sand” – An excited yet critical commentary by Futurist Gerd Leonhard I hope this will keep you busy for a while but if you're looking for even more good reads this summer… just browse GerdFeed to see my latest highlights, or visit my blog for my latest posts, or subscribe to my Youtube channel to watch my latest talks. Or just read my book:)) AI makes it possible. Via Twitter… More here!Here are some must-watch videos on AI: The Most Likely Outcomes of an AI Future with Emad Mostaque | EP #55 Guardrails needed for safe and responsible AI: Yuval Noah Harari and Nick Thompson The Godfather in Conversation: Why Geoffrey Hinton is worried about the future of AI Empowering Humanity Towards a Good Future | Gerd Leonhard, ep105. Singularity University UN chief Guterres backs proposal to form watchdog to monitor AI Full Keynote: Satya Nadella at Microsoft Inspire 2023 (really good stuff, I like Satya's approach to AI's possibilities) My YT playlist on Generative AI and ChatGPT Via YT, all my recent keynotes on AI (beware… there are many!) LoL: Unrelated to AI but HILARIOUS: Nissan LEAF – ‘What if everything ran on gas?' commercial Finally, a brief reminder about GerdBot aka TheGerd.AI: Now you can ask me any question and get instant answers, drawing from all my content from the past 10 years, using my new ChatBot. Read the announcement on my blog, or watch the video overview. Thanks again for being a subscriber, and please send feedback or comments anytime Live long and prosper! Gerd Leonhard Futurist and Humanist, CEO The Futures Agency, Zurich / Switzerland LookUpNow! “To have a Good Future, we must invest as much in humanity as you invest in technology “ |
