Weekly Link Roundup #21
From archaeology to copyrights for brain waves. What's not to love?
Archaeologist braves the Joe Rogan podcast to counter Graham Hancock's nonsense: This one hits on a professional and personal topic that's near and dear to me, #anthropology/ #archaeology. I know it seems cute and maybe funny to talk about things like Atlantis and if aliens built the pyramids but as professor and archaeologist Flint Dibble argues > > "Pseudoarchaeology robs Indigenous peoples of their heritage. Hancock's narrative of engineering feats from some "lost" civilization includes the Sphinx in Africa, pyramids in Mesoamerica, and an enormous, terraced monument in Indonesia. Does it include Stonehenge? No, Hancock says ancient British people built that. Hancock and other pseudo-archaeologists center White Europeans as able creators while chalking up the accomplishments of other peoples to outside influences: the Atlantis civilization, aliens, lizard people, or the "lost" empire of Tartaria. Real archaeology inoculates people against the online and in-person racists who take Hancock's polished presentation of a mysterious civilization and twist it into overt white supremacy." So as I sit on Coastal Salish and Duwamish land, I will continue to post arguments and debates like this that seek to make clear the enormous past and ongoing contributions of #Indigenous People to our world's history.
Utilizing Behavioral Economics in Game Design: I have a favor to ask, before you start down any road that ends with something called “gamification” - read this article. This article itself isn’t content rich but it does have good pointers to the other areas you should be familiar with like choice architecture, anchoring effect, and mental accounting. This is what game designers know and this is the kind of deep knowledge that gets stripped out by most vendors of gamified products and services.
Revisiting Fun: 20 Years of A Theory of Fun: Work with humans? Interested in learning? Watch this video. No kidding. Then go and watch these.
MSR AI + Orgs Research: This is looking like some amazing research. From danah boyd, she is part of a team supporting “four ethnographic projects (and five amazing scholars) to better understand how new forms of generative AI are playing out in different business contexts across different sectors.” One is particular will look at “how organizations change as they adopt generative AI systems. Most research to date focuses on individual-level impacts of algorithms and AI. Yet time and again, new technologies change organizational structures and processes. We aim to expand understanding of how GenAI and LLMs change organizational structures and processes.” > > I’ll be waiting for this research like a kid on Christmas.
Honeywell exec reveals plan to deliver $100 million in value with generative AI: “Just getting started”: I always take these kind of numbers with a large grain of salt. This number seems high, fast and makes me wonder things like how efficient where the areas where they are seeing this improvement this quickly, before AI. Here though is their slide indicating where they’ve deployed AI. What will be interesting is what Honeywell will do with this ROI.
Why LLMs are predicting the future of compliance and risk management: This is the bit that caught my eye: “Gartner notes that the GRC market was valued at $39.4 billion in 2022 and is projected to grow to $76.4 billion by 2028, attaining a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.6% from 2023 to 2028. The research firm predicts that by this year, legal departments will have automated 50% of legal work related to major corporate transactions. By next year, legal departments will triple their spending on technology.”
ArenaX Labs launches ARC AI game infrastructure and SAI research platform: Kinda feel like this is another one of those items that people might see the headline but say that they don’t work in game development so they go past it. This, though, is a prime example of the adjacent possible…."The ARC platform is ArenaX’s AI infrastructure that allows human players to collaborate with AI, which the company is offering as an SDK via a white-label license. The SAI platform, a competitive research platform design to gamify and incentivize AI research and problem-solving.” > > If those capabilities don’t ring a bell for how they could translate to other uses, don’t know what to tell ya.
Logitech's free AI Prompt Builder is surprisingly handy. Here's how I'm using it: A) this is cool and B) I can imagine CIOs and CISOs losing their mind about mouse software being an attack vector: “The company's Logi Options+ configuration tool has improved over the years, with helpful features including shortcut functions for keys and buttons, a macro builder, and now, an AI prompt builder.”
AI Will Radically Transform the Workplace — Here's How HR Teams Can Prepare for It: I'd like to file this under "Change is inevitable, adaptation is not." AI will transform the workplace even in ways we haven't even thought of yet AND #HR and #LearningAndDevelopment do have a chance to use this moment and establish themselves as leaders around re/up skilling and educating senior leaders but they are under no obligation to take it. They will not be forced into this new future. They can stay right where they are and run the risk that they will get passed by as the org rebuilds itself with them on the edge.
Dataminr debuts ReGenAI pairing predictive with generative AI for real time information: “ReGenAI works on top of the existing predictive and gen AI models to apply logic in real time to help users understand what’s important about an event at any given moment. “It’s a combination of classic predictive AI taken to the next level in the age of foundation models and LLMs together with generative AI, fusing the two together to create this new form of dynamic, iterative live information,” he said.” >> So tell me again how your 30/60/90 day course creation schedule will map to this.
How One Author Pushed the Limits of AI Copyright: Really interesting case of AI and copyright given the focus on AI as an ADA assistive technology.
Your Brain Waves Are Up for Sale. A New Law Wants to Change That: Now we’re definitely closing in on Gibson/Stephenson territory > > “In a first, a Colorado law extends privacy rights to the neural data increasingly coveted by technology companies. The new law, which passed by a 61-to-1 vote in the Colorado House and a 34-to-0 vote in the Senate, expands the definition of “sensitive data” in the state’s current personal privacy law to include biological and “neural data” generated by the brain, the spinal cord and the network of nerves that relays messages throughout the body.” > > What happens at new hire onboarding, when the company wants you to sign a release for your brain activity while employed there?
Google will provide AI to the military for disaster response: “Google on Wednesday said it is providing artificial intelligence tools to help the National Guard analyze images of disaster areas so it can respond to them faster and more effectively.”
The Cloud Under The Sea: Super cool story (with some very cool design elements) about the repair ships that work to keep the undersea cables that keep the internet connected, fixed and running.
The Best Science Fiction Worlds: If you work in innovation or just want to be innovative and you’re not reading scifi, you’re hamstringing yourself. Let go of legacy thinking and engage with these utterly improbable worlds and come back with expanded visions of possibility in ours.
Generative AI in Education: Another Mindless Mistake?: Look I get the thinking here and to a point the author is right about how we can get caught up in these cycles of tech is gonna change everything and nothing changing. The failure here is that the analysis doesn’t go deep enough. The reason why the institution of education doesn’t change that much, even in the face of a new technology, is because its built on a system of funding that includes buildings, teacher unions and salaries, population growth patterns and a funding model that was created when everyone was supposed to own a home. Change those things and we can create an environment more receptive to trying new and possibly better ways of doing things.
Elon Musk's 10 worst predictions and broken promises: I’ll just leave this here.
Researchers develop stretchable quantum dot display: How very Star Trek.
Mimicking fish to create the ideal deep-sea submersible: Another cool one. The oceans are the single largest unexplored area of our planet.
The 65-year-old computer system at the heart of American business: COBOL just keeps going.
Europe is dismantling its dams at a record-breaking rate – and it's saving rivers: Yay! (in various European languages)