Footer
the presencepulse
— a newsletter for conscious minds. Every Sunday morning, you'll get 1 guiding tip to recognize, understand, and accept the power of your presence in less than 4 minutes.
Enter your email and sign up for free right now.
Enter your email and sign up for free right now.
The cradle of stupidity lies in certainty.
A shiver down the spine takes you by surprise. For good news, bad news, or somewhere in between, the field is set and the journey ahead keeps us on our toes.
It was a Wednesday. A system crash came to visit me. It didn’t ask for permission just found itself overshadowing the day and interrupting all operations. Seldomly happens when finding where to start compounds and finds no answer.
The day was over and resisting it was futile. A few outraged outbursts slipped through yet overall the system rebooted with no dire ramifications.
In retrospect, it was nothing but a minor blip of how the week went especially the days that came after filled with answers and more so relief.
Walking into every crash feels like the end. Walking out revels in beginnings that cannot recognize the end and only see opportunities. How did we end up with that bargain I do not know and by no means fair but it is so.
Thursday came carrying with it a riveting interview with a Professor of AI Strategy who amidst his many achievements has interviewed seventeen noble laureates making him the second highest in history to capture insight from that many esteemed intellectuals.
Our conversation danced between the edges of what enables creativity, how education could shape the future, and of course some of the false assumptions almost everyone has about AI.
One of which is the attribution of hallucinations to these programs for which he said: “Don’t like the term hallucination, because it attributes to the machine, something that is very human. It also suggests that there is something wrong with it.
There is nothing wrong with it. This is what generative AI does. It registers patterns, and then it generates a pattern that resembles the ones that were registered. So it is programmed to hallucinate. It is doing its job.”
A chuckle burst out of both of us at the notion of the mismatched labeling assuming an identity to these machines which they were programmed to execute exactly as they should.
Telling stories about home and how our journey unfolded intermittently stumbling into politics, organizational development, and some more topics as appetizers over a seafood menu we picked on the Georgetown waterfront.
Somehow we landed on borders and what defines one nation over another. But the truth of the matter which he so eloquently expressed. Every border is the result of a conflict where someone lost and another won so a line was drawn.
And I couldn’t but gasp at the reality staring us in the face where what was bred on the heels of conflict keeps fueling conflict in a world priming for a devastating infinite cycle of crashes.
And here my friend lies a scary thought. Is there something wrong with us or is our programming preset and it’s a lost cause? When we are certain we feel in command and when it is uncertain we do not. Our ingenuity lies in our ability to stay uncertain even when certainty is what we ultimately seek.
This week left me with many shivers each projecting a surprise onto my mind and body, none I anticipated, and most I welcomed even the crash.
Until next time,
Carlo