Category: Uncategorized

I realize that this day in history is best known to Americans as the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, prompting the United State to enter World War II.

But it seems to me that in this time when our own U.S. Government is trying to create fear and division between us, it would be productive to remind ourselves that we are all bound together by our common humanity.

And so I give you this beautiful and inspiring picture, taken on December 7, 1972 from the window of the Apollo 17 spacecraft.

I hope it will inspire you to remember that we are all brothers and sisters on this planet, and that at our best, we possess the moral courage and the spiritual awareness to care for one another.

The U.S. federal administration just released its new security doctrine. The basic thrust is that Europe is facing an existential threat because of immigration from non-European countries.

This is essentially the “Great Replacement” theory, the same one used by the Nazis to justify their, um, “policies”.

This sad episode helps me to understand why it is important for Europe to continue to receive all those immigrants. After all, on very public display right here in our own country is a sad example of the alternative.

You can find that example in the White House, which is currently housing a low functioning, knuckle dragging genetic throwback. Alas, too much inbreeding can lead to bad outcomes, or even existential threats to a nation’s well-being.

Europe, in contrast, is getting the benefit of the kind of cultural and genetic diversity that until recently was the greatest strength of the United States of America. It’s nice to see that a least somebody is still doing it right.

Sometimes you have technical breakthroughs. And sometimes you have conceptual breakthroughs.

Today I had a conceptual breakthrough. I realized that an important research concept had been staring me in the face for months, waiting for me to stare back.

The good news is that now I know what direction to go. The bad news is that now I’ve got lots of work to do.

Or maybe that’s also good news.

Today at a conference at NYU I learned all about the Oura ring, that $350 health-monitoring device you wear on your finger. For example, one colleague told me that it can continually monitor your heart rate, body temperature, blood oxygen level and breathing rate. It even has a linear accelerometer.

Another colleague told me that it can also be used for family planning. When I asked her how, she explained that it can track your menstrual cycle.

I told her that you could also use a VR headset for family planning. “Why can a VR headset do that?” she asked.

“Because,” I replied, “it gives you a headache.”

Today I was in a discussion with someone who designs those user interfaces that you see on the Web. When you need to navigate somewhere on the web page of your bank or your airline or your doctor, there are teams of people who figure out how to make that process as unconfusing as possible.

As for me, I gave up trying to figure those things out as soon as I could simply ask Google Gemini. I just ask, in plain English, how to get to, say, the refunds option, or the cancel appointments option, and Gemini gives me clear step-by-step instructions how to traverse the tree of menu options.

It doesn’t take much foresight to realize that this phase of things is very temporary. Within another few years, we will all be vibe coding those nested menus.

Underneath there will still be a branching tree of menu choices, but we will never see it, because our AI bot will be clicking through those menus for us.

Navigating those web options will then become a lost art. I suspect it is an art that very few people will miss.

On my MacBook I have Google Docs. I also have Zoom.

I use both of these programs pretty much every day, as well as manyother useful pieces of software.

They co-exist with one another in a kind of uneasy truce, as though they are shouting at each other across a wide ravine.

I cannot embed my Zoom window into a Google document, and I cannot automatically upate the contents a Google Doc from the text in my Zoom chat window, or vice versa.

Both Zoom an Google Docs have facilities for creating and inserting sketches and diagrams, but there is no way to go from one to the other.

And neither Zoom nor Google Docs can interact with my 3D modeler in any meaningful way, let alone a presentation tool from another company such as Apple Keynote or Microsoft PowerPoint.

Why can’t all my apps play nice with one another? Do they really all need to be locked within their respective separate islands?

Or is this just the price we must pay for internet software that comes from large warring corporations?

A new month arrives
Fresh with possibility
And fresh with danger

What do Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain, Woody Allen and ChatGPT have in common? They were all born on November 30.

Three of those are known for their ability to show us the absurdity of our world. The fourth is part of a kind of absurdity that I suspect none of the first three ever imagined.

How odd that they were all born on the same day of the year. I wonder whether it’s all just an absurd coincidence.

I was attending a workshop the other day in which the question came up of what will happen to human creativity as AI continues to advance. One participant worried that AI might make end up doing everything, and then there would be nothing left for humans to do.

To my great relief, there was immediate pushback from many participants. One participant pointed out that children don’t need a reason to play together on a playground. Children play together on a playground because that’s what they like to do.

Similarly, we don’t do things just because they need to be done. We often do things because that’s what we like to do.

We take a walk, converse with one another, paint, play the guitar, and do a million other things simply because it feels good to o them. And in the case of engaging in these pleasurable activities, we often come up with new ideas.

This is wildly different from what AI does. AI does not engage in pleasurable activities, or think about things or people just because those things or people happen to be amusing or intriguing or charming.

Yes, AI will continue to advance. But that doesn’t mean that AI will replace us, any more than cars or telephones or pianos have replaced us.

Our tools and technologies, no matter how powerful they become, do not replace us. They simply allow us to express our humanity in new ways.

Two related techniques are currently rising at once: Extended reality and large language models.

As with any emerging technology, these are still finding each other. Each one is still finding its sea legs, and expanding its potential.

Yet as they each advance in their own respective spaces, they are gradually beginning to overlap in purpose. So here are two salient questions:

(1) What is the overlap between XR and LLM based AI? (2) When they fully meet each other, what will be their combined impact on the world?