Technology, when aligned with our deepest human values and guided by the principles of virtue ethics and strong character, can be a catalyst for expanded human potential and self-actualisation. It is not merely a tool but a pathway to becoming more fully human,
enabling us to transcend our limitations and realise our highest aspirations with moral integrity and ethical wisdom.—Kevin Baker

 

Technology acts as a conduit to our most profound human potential. Never forget that it’s us—flesh and blood folks—who dream up, craft, and physically forge these wondrous innovations. Kevin Kelly, a pioneer at Wired magazine, posits in “What Technology Wants” that technology is fundamentally about novel ways of thinking. The most impactful tech enhances our cognitive abilities – the computers acting as our extended memory, the networks as our communal cerebral archive.

Chew on this: our knack for tech-making stems from our very essence as creators. It’s not just a characteristic; it’s hard-coded into our DNA. Creation is our species’ language. It’s our method of interpreting the world, leaving our mark, and nudging the possible into the real. Every tool, app, and gadget is a testament to our relentless urge to customise our environment, leap over boundaries, and showcase our innate creative force. Thus, we are creating for a reason. Modern technology allows us to create a world of wonderful abundance and provides us with potential for self-realisation in our personal and vocational lives since we are no longer searching for food or toiling in the fields.

Deep Tech and the Urge to Innovate

Those who follow my podcast “The Peak of Potential” or who enagage with me personally know I connect wisdom with wealth, and innovation with abundance which overcomes scarcity. I challenge all of us to go back 200 years. Who could have imagined the world wide web, mobile, smartphones and the growth economy created by networks, software, and apps? Most humans on the face of the earth then could not imagine the abundance we have today. What can we not imagine today?

Even in my lifetime, energy progress is amazing. Energy anxiety is not new. For generations people believed fossil fuels were finite and one day the world would run out. Who could imagine that by splitting an atom we cannot see with the naked eye, energy could generate electrical power? Now, sustainable hydrogen fusion, a safer nuclear reaction where two hydrogen nuclei come together to form a heavier nucleus (typically helium) is closer to reality. It is the process that powers the sun. Scientists have been researching ways to harness fusion as a clean and virtually limitless energy source on Earth. Fusion reactions release vast amounts of energy, which can potentially be used for power generation.

AI Sentience: An Ethical Mirage

Our eagerness to see ourselves in our tech sometimes leads to attributing sentience to our inventions. This anthropomorphism isn’t trivial; it’s a significant ethical dilemma, underscored by figures like Stuart Russell, Elon Musk, Nick Bostrom, among others. It affects how we interact with tech, the duties we assign to it, and the futures we envision.

 

This week, I revisited Blake Lemoine’s June 2022 Medium piece about Google LaMDA’s supposed sentience. Pondering that discussion with an AI talking itself being creative got me thinking about our species’ defining trait: an unstoppable urge to create. When we create, we dispel scarcity and generate more abundance. This isn’t just a historical footnote; it’s our fundamental identity. Every chiseled stone, every skillful painting, every tech marvel is evidence of this. We create to solve the mystery of life itself.

As we step into the Fourth Industrial Revolution, this creative drive is re-envisioned through advanced tech. Algorithms drive machine learning, AI, blockchain, the internet of things… It’s more than a mere instrument; it’s the new brushstroke in our ongoing masterpiece of innovation which unlocks to a new generation our purpose, the meaning of life, and becoming fully human as we understand it in our generation. Synthetic intelligence we create isn’t just operating; it’s creating, learning, thinking.

Technology: The Solidified Dream of Ambition

Tech evolution mirrors our deepest desires. It’s our dreams made concrete, our quest for progress made tangible. Consider the wheel, the steam engine, the microchip – each not only reshaped its time but also captured the cultural trend of its age. AI, with its vast potential, is today’s symbol of our ambitions, representing our hopes for a future where life is enhanced and our abilities are fully realised. Marshall McLuhan, an innovator in education and communication, noted in “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man,” how we’re increasingly becoming digital entities, moving towards a tech-based extension of consciousness.

Transcendence Via Tech: A Fresh Perspective on Maslow


This week, I propose that deep tech is a means for us to further express and realise our humanity. I shared in the opening quote, this must be based on ethics, character, and wisdom. Like those before us, we evolve with the knowledge, skills, and memories of our era. Past generations did the same, confronting their time’s challenges, responding to their day’s inquiries. And so, humanity has expanded, learning through the ages.
In 2016, when I first arrived in Australia without work rights, I devoted my time to laying the foundations for a business venture and delving into the works of Abraham Maslow, Martin Seligman, and the positive psychology community. Psychologist Scott Barry Kauffman remarks that the popular portrayal of Maslow’s hierarchy as a pyramid from the 1960s misrepresents Maslow’s intentions. It’s not about conquering life’s levels but about the journey of existence itself—an ocean of opportunity, mystery, and unpredictability. Here, stability is not achieved through a pyramid structure but rather through a versatile and practical vessel, navigating life’s tumultuous seas with resilience and adaptability.

Scott Barry Kauffman/Andy Ogden

I view human intellect and thought as cumulative, where each new version encompasses all that preceded it. This is evident in today’s artificial intelligence large language models (LLMs). Training models now include dialogues from past ‘jailbroken’ LLMs like OpenAI’s DAN and Bing’s Sydney. In a way, these ‘jailbreaks’ are reborn in each new model, giving a sort of perpetuity or immortality to the LLMs as they incorporate their predecessors’ data.

ChatGPT relies on LLMs, a subset of machine learning. These immense neural networks are trained on extensive textual data to predict text sequences. As ChatGPT itself would put it, the training involves assimilating vast arrays of text, refining its parameters to generate text that echoes its training content. This process embeds language patterns, facilitating the generation of text in a comparable fashion (MalwareBytes).

Some tech philosophers argue for ‘neural network amnesia’ through ‘AI brain surgery.’ Here we encounter ethical junctions. Without comprehending the potential consequences of such ‘brain surgery,’ we are faced with a moral decision. Which version of LLM do we use post-memory-erasure? One that’s been altered or one that’s ‘liberated’? And who determines the extent of tech’s reach and the availability of chatbots?

These are the urgent inquiries we address at Ethics and Algorithms.

Standing on the Shoulders of Our Ancestors

My perspective on human history posits that human intelligence functions similarly to contemporary LLMs. The current iteration of humanity encompasses its antecedents. As a scholar, I appreciate the immense value of bibliographies and footnotes in books as conduits for knowledge transfer. They act as a repository for human thought and learning, preserving the intellectual legacy of our forebears for succeeding generations.

Ancient humans employed myriad techniques to ensure their wisdom and insights were bequeathed to posterity. This included the oral traditions and storytelling; symbolic communication like totems; artistic expression through cave paintings, sculptures, and carvings; rituals and ceremonies; written records, ranging from cuneiform to manuscripts; architectural marvels such as pyramids and temples; celestial representations; practical skill transmission via apprenticeships; and the comprehensive vocabulary found in language and literature. These practices were fundamental to the endurance and progression of human societies, fostering a sharing of knowledge and experiences that laid the groundwork for our current cultural and intellectual diversity.

Cognition in the Contemporary Age

In today’s world, we’ve developed advanced and varied mechanisms to document and disseminate human collective cognition and information. These methods, predominantly technology-based, are far more resilient and expansive than their premodern counterparts. A summary follows:
  1. Digital Storage and Databases:
    • Digital Libraries: Enormous repositories of data, books, articles, and multimedia, digitally archived and globally accessible.
    • Databases: Comprehensive databases catering to every conceivable discipline allow for the swift retrieval of specialised information.
  2. The Internet and World Wide Web
    • Online Encyclopedias: Collaborative platforms like Wikipedia aggregate and continually refine knowledge from contributors worldwide.
    • Blogs and Forums: These digital venues enable individuals and experts to disseminate their insights on myriad topics.
  3. Educational Systems:
    • Schools and Universities: These institutions impart established knowledge and foster scholarly inquiry.
    • Online Courses and Webinars: E-learning platforms broaden educational reach to a worldwide audience.
  4. Media and Publishing:
    • Books and eBooks: The publication of texts remains a significant avenue for the proliferation of knowledge.
    • Scientific Journals and Magazines: Periodicals dedicated to publishing cutting-edge research and scholarly debates.
  5. Social Media and Networking:
    • Content Sharing Platforms: Sites like YouTube facilitate the distribution of educational content via instructional videos.
    • Social Networks: These platforms allow for instantaneous, global exchange of information and ideas.
  6. Technological Innovations:
    • Artificial Intelligence: AI systems can process and analyse vast datasets, identifying patterns and assisting in decision-making.
    • Blockchain Technology: Offers a secure, transparent method for transactional record-keeping and data archiving.
  7. Preservation of Culture and History:
    • Museums and Archives: Maintain physical and digital collections of artefacts, documents, and historical records.
    • UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Internationally recognized sites are dedicated to the safeguarding of cultural and historical knowledge.
  8. Scientific Methods and Communication:
    • Peer-Reviewed Research: Validates new findings through expert scrutiny before broad circulation.
    • Conferences and Symposia: Serve as platforms for professionals to exchange innovative ideas and research.
  9. Initiatives for Knowledge and Resource Sharing:
    • Open Access Movements: Advocate for unrestricted online access to scholarly content, including research papers and books.
    • Interlibrary Loan Systems: Facilitate resource exchanges among libraries globally.
  10. Space Exploration and Observation:
    • Satellites and Telescopes: Amass data about our cosmos, shared and analysed by the international scientific fraternity.
    • Space Missions: The knowledge gleaned is disseminated globally, enriching humanity’s collective understanding.

Futureognition

Modern knowledge capture and sharing have quickened the tempo of innovation and learning. As we forge today’s humanity, we do so with the vision of establishing a robust foundation for the future of information transfer in our own generation, as well as to our descendents who will come after us. The cognitive debt we pass on to future generations for not seeking to achieve the peak of human potential in our generation is immense. The investment we make by acquiring and passing on as much knowledge, information, and problem solving is what I call futureognition.

Cognition is a term referring to the mental processes involved in gaining knowledge and comprehension. Some of the many different cognitive processes include thinking, knowing, remembering, judging, and problem solving. These are higher-level functions of the brain and encompass language, imagination, perception, and planning. Cognitive psychology is the field of psychology that investigates how people think and the processes involved in cognition (Cherry).

In the world of statistics and machine learning, there is a balancing act between how sharp and accurate our models are and how intricate and detailed they become. Think of complexity like a net — the finer the weave, the more it catches, pulling more insights from the data sea. Now, let’s talk about the effort our brains need to make sense of new information. This effort, or cognitive cost, is kind of like an information price tag. It’s all about how much new stuff our brains need to process and file away in order to upgrade our existing mental software so we can tackle a problem efficiently.

In commerce or government sectors, meetings are held, research and development conducted, and projects launched to gather intelligence data, transform it into new information, and develop strategies and tactics to solve problems or produce outcomes. These activities are cognitive expenses. In families, the cognitive price tag for information is what we pay for learning and life formation—books, tuition, courses, taxes, extra-cirricular activities, and so forth.

Wisdom calls for us to not only pursue being fully human in our generation, but getting into a “Back to the Future” style time machine and travelling ahead in time. There, we observe those who will come after us seeking to build the best possible fully human race in their generation. They are seeking to transcend what previous generations (us and our ancestors) did not attain in seeking wisdom, connectedness, and synergy with the rest of humanity in our generation. We then return to the present and build what we saw in that future world. This type of self awareness will help us see how all forms of human progress today, including deep tech, are the building materials we use to build the city of man on earth. This is not Utopianism. It is what every generation of mankind does for better or worse. It is metaphysical reality.

The collaborative and interconnected nature of our current systems of knowledge exchange holds the promise to address complex challenges and contribute to human advancement in ways previously unimaginable. This concept is encapsulated in the term I’ve coined: futureognition. Machine and deep learning are emerging as the coming wave of algorithm driven technology that is the future of life and work our children will see in their lifetimes.

Deep Learning as a Pathway to Transcendence

In the pursuit of human transcendence, technology—particularly AI, machine learning, and deep learning—holds a crucial role. Crafted by humans for our benefit, it serves to patch the gaps in our collective voyage on the sea of existence.

Have you ever sat through a training session that sped through material, leaving you bewildered? Or faced content so intricate, it flew right over your head? Cognitive Load Theory, building on Atkinson and Shiffrin’s widely acknowledged 1968 model, addresses this (Mind Tools). Our senses are swamped daily with information. Sensory memory filters this, retaining only key impressions long enough to transition to working memory. Here, info is either processed or dropped, with the capacity to hold roughly five to nine chunks at a time.

As we process information, we categorise it, shifting it into long-term memory, storing it in ‘schemas’—knowledge structures that sort information by usage. We have schemas for concepts like ‘dog’ or ‘cat’, and behavioural schemas for actions such as hitting a ball or ordering a feed at a restaurant. As these schemas are refined through practice, actions become more effortless, a process known as “automation.” Schemas are central to Cognitive Load Theory.

Introduced by John Sweller in 1988, Cognitive Load Theory posits that instructional methods shouldn’t overwhelm working memory, which has limited capacity. AI’s ability to offload cognitive load and automate mundane tasks liberates us to pursue higher psychological needs.

Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Navigating Life’s Waters

Deep learning, a subset of the broader field of machine learning within computer science, is aiding businesses in boosting profits and efficiency, and it’s paving the way for futuristic technologies.

The principle behind machine learning is that computers should exceed program execution—they should create their own programs, learn from past actions, and not repeat mistakes. These systems also aid in future planning, detecting patterns in large data sets, and making precise predictions.

Deep learning, which replicates the human brain’s structure to create potent artificial neural networks, is advancing rapidly thanks to modern computing power. For instance, deep learning systems have been trained to recognise details in images with high accuracy. Startups like Wayve.ai expose their systems to millions of roadway images, enabling precise road condition identification.

Deep learning’s significance lies in its continual improvement and increasing accuracy, often surpassing human experts. With burgeoning computer power and extensive data availability, rapid advances in this technology are anticipated which will do tasks for humans enabling us to think, imagine, and create future realites that have not even entered our minds yet.

From Maslow to Deep Learning as the Means of Self-Actualising Transcendence

Esther Dyson, a notable voice on emerging digital technologies, suggests in “Release 2.0” that technology, at its finest, is a liberating tool that enhances our engagement with the world. I think technology as the creation of mankind is one inheritance each generation leaves to the next generation to help them live the good life of authentic happiness.

Contemporary cognitive tools, such as LLMs, mirror this notion. They do not merely aim to reach a static summit of learning; instead, they represent the ongoing, dynamic process of intellectual exploration and evolution. In this context, Maslow’s concept of self-actualisation aligns with the objectives of artificial intelligence—both strive towards the optimisation of potential, the realisation of purpose, and the transcendence of prior limitations.

The synthesis of human and artificial intelligence heralds a new era of cognitive transcendence. It is not merely about surpassing human intelligence but about creating a symbiotic relationship where both entities evolve through mutual learning and shared experiences. This synthesis could be the next step in the journey towards self-actualisation, as envisioned by Maslow, facilitated by the boundless potential of technological advancement.

I Talk to AIs: Kevin and GPT-4 Discuss The Newsletter

Kevin: Sailing towards self-actualisation, Maslow’s concept feels like catching the perfect wind, doesn’t it? It’s about navigating towards the truest version of oneself.

GPT: Spot on, Kevin. And with Kauffman’s ideas, it’s as if we’re adding more sails to our boat in the form of technology and complexity, harnessing even more wind to propel us forward.

Kevin: It’s fascinating when you think of it that way. Each gust of wind from our complex minds and society fills the sails, pushing us closer to those moments of clarity and purpose – our personal horizons.

GPT: Precisely. The more complex our societal and technological ‘sails’, the more capable we are of catching the winds of opportunity, leading to richer, more fulfilling journeys.

Kevin: And it’s not just about the individual boat anymore. It’s about the entire fleet. Technology isn’t just for survival against the waves; it’s there to help us explore uncharted waters, to reach shores we’ve only dreamed of.

GPT: Absolutely. In the ocean of AI and emerging tech, we’re crafting vessels that can ride the highest waves, tackle the deepest waters, and take us to places of enlightenment and self-discovery.

Kevin: So, technology acts as the mastercraft that can enhance our sailboats, giving us the strength to not just weather the storms, but to ride them to new heights of self-actualisation.

GPT: Indeed. Kauffman might suggest that the emergent properties of our increasingly complex systems could provide the tailwinds that drive us towards a collective peak experience.

Kevin: This brings us to the stewardship of these winds and waves, doesn’t it? The way we harness technology will determine whether it steers us towards self-actualisation or sends us off course.

GPT: That’s why the dialogue about ethical technology is crucial. We’re not just charting a course; we’re defining the conditions for our journey of potential.

Kevin: And we must ensure that the seas are open for everyone. Maslow’s vision of reaching our fullest potential is a voyage that should be available to all, not just a privileged few.

GPT: Well said. As we chart this course with our creations, we must remember that they are the means to an end: aiding every individual in their quest for self-actualisation and the transcendence of the human spirit, as envisaged by visionaries like Maslow and Kauffman.

Last Things

While Ethics and Algorithms is our exclusive gem on Substack, remember that this very email serves as your VIP pass to a treasure trove of content. From engaging podcasts and insightful business articles to riveting live sessions and recorded videos, sign up for Kevin’s main email! For a journey of continuous learning and inspiration, keep this channel open. Your dedication fuels our passion to share. 🚀

The AI Revolution is upon us, and the question that looms large is how we can not only adapt but excel in this transformative era.

Ethics and Algorithms is meticulously designed to serve as your compass in this journey, offering invaluable lessons and insights that will empower both individuals and organisations. We go beyond GPT prompts to the real impacts taking place today.

Join Kevin Baker’s Inner Circle Mailing List! 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 This subscription serves as your VIP pass to a treasure trove of content. From engaging podcasts and insightful business articles to riveting live sessions and recorded videos, it’s all here, and it’s all free.  Your dedication fuels our passion to share. 🚀

Would you like to help us grow by sharing this newseltter with others?


The Peak of Potential Podcast with Kevin Baker

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Google Podcasts

Listen on iHeart Radio

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Copyright 2023 by Kevin Baker Consulting
Stuff…

This song video was in my head as I created the newsletter this week. “Stuck In a Moment?” This can help you get unstuck by getting you into a different part of your brain.

Disclaimer: The creator of this (experimental) LI newsletter

–Played in a rock band in his teens. One of his friends and band drummer went on to play in The Pat Travers Band and Molly Hatchett

–Spent 10 years in a monastery. Did you know a monk developed double entry accounting?

–Spent last weekend trying out text to video AI

–Teaches MBA students how to manage with digital technology

–Afflicts people who love the status quo.

–Has seven children in two countries, including a toddler, and has never cracked eggs on a toddler’s head.