AI is curious

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What is AI anyway? (from 1987 before everything became AI) | Roger Schank | Pulse | LinkedIn

Cats, small children, and most adults are curious. They ask questions about what they see, wonder about what they hear, and object to what they are told This curiosity is not so wondrous when we realize that once a system makes predictions, these predictions might fail, and the system should wonder why. The ability to wonder why, to generate a good question about what is going on, and the ability to invent an answer, to explain what has gone on to oneself, is at the heart of intelligence. We would accept no human who failed to wonder or explain as very intelligent. In the end, we will have to judge AI programs by the same criteria.

Desires about our desires

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Wanting to Want What We Want - Russ Roberts, Medium, 10/13/2016

Animals desire food, ..., shelter, survival. We humans have such desires along with a much longer list including respect, honor, power, fame, wealth and so on. Frankfurt argues that while, like animals, we have desires, we have something the animals do not have. We can have desires about our desires. I might crave ice cream and I might decide to satisfy that craving. But I can also desire not to crave ice cream. I still might end up eating ice cream but I can have regret. I can decide to try to curb my desire the next time I face a dessert choice. An animal, claims Franfurt, cannot do that.

The Explorer

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Unlocking the passion of the Explorer | Deloitte University Press

Three attributes characterize worker passion: Commitment to Domain and Questing and Connecting dispositions. Commitment to Domain can be understood as a desire to have a lasting and increasing impact on a particular industry or function. Workers with the Questing disposition actively seek out challenges to rapidly improve their performance. Workers with the Connecting disposition seek deep interactions with others and build strong, trust-based relationships to gain new insight. Together these attributes define the “passion of the Explorer”—the worker passion that leads to extreme sustained performance improvement.

Neo-generalist

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The value of the neo-generalist at work | Marginalia

In the second part of The Neo-Generalist, we explore some of the characteristics and behaviours that we associate with the concept. Among them are: An acceptance that we are always in beta, never the finished product. An understanding that we never truly know (recognising that the history of scientific discovery teaches us that what was correct yesterday is wrong tomorrow; that the bounds of the unknown grow exponentially). A passion for learning fuelled by never-sated curiosity. A tolerance of ambiguity. An ability to adapt to change. A willingness to test out the crazy hypothesis, as an opportunity to either create or educate. Plus a host of skills that we associate with leadership, sense-making and communication.

Knowing what we don't know

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Tim Harford — Article — Can trivia help us to be less ignorant of our own ignorance?

any particular fact can be looked up, but without a knowledge base who knows where to start?

More than a logo

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Brand Is Experience in the Digital Age

Brand is a tool for influencing choice. Brand is not made of visuals or words alone — it’s not a logo or a slogan. Nor is it a figurehead, such as Steve Jobs. Those things are simply ways to communicate the brand. Although a figurehead such as Elon Musk or a logo such as McDonald’s golden arches can and do serve to effectively deliver the brand message, ultimately, a brand is formulated through a larger set of experiences. Flipping the flow of information from one-way to two-way (as discussed above) results in flipping brand from being a message to being an experience.

Will the networks emerge?

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End of nations: Is there an alternative to countries? | New Scientist

Ian Goldin, head of the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford, which analyses global problems, thinks such networks must emerge. He believes existing institutions such as UN agencies and the World Bank are structurally unable to deal with problems that emerge from global interrelatedness, such as economic instability, pandemics, climate change and cybersecurity – partly because they are hierarchies of member states which themselves cannot deal with these global problems. He quotes Slaughter: “Networked problems require a networked response.”

via @ndcollaborative

Great conference activity

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Using Events to Close Triangles - New Directions Collaborative

We placed forms to enter the drawing in registration packets. The forms required the name of the connector and the two connected people – and prompted people to name what made the connection meaningful.

The essence of networks

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Interdependence by Valdis Krebs

Connect on your similarities and profit from your differences. Everyone has knowledge and skills that can benefit others. Look for opportunities to build upward spirals via creative combinations of similarity and difference.

We all learn like children, and it's not usually through training! via @rogerschank

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Education Outrage: Pragmatic Learning: It's not "fun"

With this simple idea, I have told you all you need to know about training. Because we can build “on-demand online training” we can change the world of training significantly. This is what we have to do:

1. We need to anticipate the needs of trainees
2. We need to provide a way for them to satisfy those needs
3. We need to provide people for them to discuss things with

Lecturing and training are rarely the right way for people to learn. People are motivated to learn when they need to know or do something in the moment. Providing just-in-time information, mentors and colleagues for conversation, and short, digestible resources are key.