Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! We’re a couple of weeks from the technical first day of fall, but with Labor Day behind us, I am already there. It’s like the sun setting in the rear view mirror. Or side-view, I suppose. I was actually sitting in the passenger seat, composing the notes about the links below and my wife shouted, “Take a picture of the sun now!” Now this might be strange in some cars, but I knew what she wanted me to do because we are crazy, and we are both doing a Project 365 (taking a picture a day). So I complied, and here it is. Cell phones are such amazing tools. Communication device - text and audio, camera, entertainment, access to virtually all of the world’s knowledge. We take them for granted, but they were literally science fiction in my lifetime. And now we complain about how they distract us. We’ll get there - we are still adjusting to this new tool, just like we adjusted to electricity and steam power before that.
Speaking of tools, that’s the emergent theme for this week’s links. I have a couple of articles on AI, some discussion about defense tech in Ukraine, and a pod about using economic tools to analyze discrimination. I love it when a non-plan comes together!
See you Sunday with another essay. As usual, willing good for all of you!
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Read
What: AEI, The Future of Work: Augmented, not Automated
https://www.aei.org/workforce-development/the-future-of-work-augmented-not-automated/
Why: I am learning to use ChatGPT in my writing. I use it like a research assistant. It’s especially useful for quickly pulling together lists of ideas that I already know, but it would require me some thinking and maybe some Googling to come up with. For example, I am writing a chapter for a health policy textbook and I asked it, “what are some recent examples of important federal laws that focus on healthcare” and it cranked out a list of 10 recent laws with short descriptions of each. I was familiar with all of the laws, but it would have taken me some cognitive effort to come up with this list. ChatGPT did it in about 10 seconds. I then picked a few of the laws from the list to expand on and created a table for the chapter. It was essentially a collaboration between the AI and I. I could have done it on my own, just like I could have hand wrote the chapter and then typed it up on a typewriter. The AI made me more efficient. It came up with the list, but my knowledge allowed me to first ask an appropriate question, and second to review and edit the list into a useful format. That’s the future of work being argued in this short article: human-AI collaboration is the future. From the article:
successful organizations are already transforming their business processes to foster collaboration between workers and AI platforms. Having identified where humans and machines each have comparative advantages, organizations are moving toward partnerships that generate more value than either human labor or machines alone can produce.
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What: Persuasion, Our Deep Blue Moment
Why: This is an interesting idea on AI: chess masters today have been trained by AI chess programs. The author makes the argument that today’s chess, played human on human, has been raised to a higher level than ever before because of the training AIs have been able to provide. Is that AI-augmented as discussed above? It’s an interesting thing. AI is going to perform a very powerful role in education in the future. Chess has a large number of possible plays, but the plays are finite (even if they are fantastically huge). The real world is not confined by a board and rules. And yet, AI could be very useful in training us in all of the various areas of reality where there are bounded possibilities. Maybe that is where the human will add value in the human-AI interface?
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Watch
What: Times Radio, 'Rout' of Putin's forces could take just 'a number of days' after breakthrough | Nicholas Drummond (29 min)
Why: This is a discussion with British a defense analyst about the current state of the Ukraine war. What I found particularly interesting was the discussion of equipment and tactics. I continue to follow the war in Ukraine closely because I believe this is the last gasp of the old Soviet Union. From my perspective it is imperative that Ukraine and the West prevail in this war, so I am interested in hearing perspectives from sources other than the US. I’m not familiar with Drummond, but the discussion was insightful.
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Listen
What: EconTalk, Roland Fryer on Race, Diversity, and Affirmative Action (67 min)
Why: Roland Fryer is an economist at Harvard and studies the effects of discrimination and education. In this podcast he discusses how the tools of economics can help us get past anecdote to get a clearer picture of discrimination.