Artificial Intelligence: The Sharpened Rock

Advanced Technology, Book, Class Material, Life Sciences, Uncategorized, , ,

AI is a powerful tool under human direction, not an autonomous entity with consciousness or emotions. It examines artificial intelligence’s opportunities, limitations, and risks while giving a reality check to the hyperbole and fears.

The first and most crucial principle in understanding AI is recognizing its inherent nature as a tool, a creation of human ingenuity designed to augment, rather than replace, human intelligence. AI systems, at their core, are complex algorithms capable of processing and learning from data at a scale and speed unattainable by human cognition.
However, it is an unprecedented, powerful tool that can permeate every aspect of society, industry, and human ingenuity globally. Its impact can be equivalent to Prometheus giving humans the gift of fire.

The AI Horizon

Advanced Technology, Article, Book, Book Chapter, Class Material, Lectures, Life Sciences, Transformative Businesses, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Artificial intelligence is poised to significantly impact various fields and activities, transforming how we approach creativity, professional activities, science, and many more domains. Disruption will accelerate the development of new innovative businesses and strategies in finance, medicine, data management, systems engineering, materials science, art, and other industries. AI’s impact will be profound and multifaceted, driving innovation and efficiency and posing challenges regarding ethics, job displacement, and new skills and regulations. As AI continues to evolve, its integration into these areas will likely shape the future of human society in significant ways.

Mostly Harmless – Uncertainty, Algorithms, and Decision-Making

Advanced Technology, Book, Class Material, Transformative Businesses,

The book attempts to bridge the gap between algorithmic processes and practical decision-making in uncertain circumstances. It moves beyond mathematical solutions to acknowledge the complexity of real-world decisions. The author, Nicholas Mitsakos, argues that decision-making is essentially a form of statistical analysis that involves models or algorithms, and being thorough in this understanding confers a significant advantage. is a comprehensive text discussing decision-making under uncertainty and the algorithms that can enhance the decision-making process. It covers a wide range of topics, including applications in various fields such as air traffic control, drug discovery, autonomous driving, and more. The introduction sets the stage by discussing the importance of understanding and managing uncertainty in decision-making. It defines algorithms in the context of systematic thinking and approaches to problem-solving, emphasizing the significance of defining problems clearly to find obvious solutions.

Cryptocurrency and Digital Assets: Terror and Opportunity

Advanced Technology, Book, Class Material, Lectures, Transformative Businesses, , , , , , , , ,

Cryptocurrencies soar in value, plunge, hit new highs, are written off, rebound, and hit new highs again, and the cycle repeats. We should be terrified. Over the last five years, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether have outperformed the overall market. However, can the general trend of outperformance last, or will these digital assets drop over 90% like some of its other crypto brethren? Is there a sustainable performance that creates the foundation for either a new currency or a valuable asset class? Probably not. Forces that drive these eye-watering returns seem to be the same as those that drove the social media-driven insanity behind meme stocks such as GameStop. We are seeing social media mobs controlling demand to a limited supply, creating price spikes that look attractive to any speculative investor. Unfortunately, demand can dry up quickly and the price subsequently falls through the floor. Financial markets ruthlessly sort nonsense from substance. Volatility and existential threats have been brutal and extreme for digital assets and the reckoning for crypto has been predicted for some time. However, digital assets are not on their way to history’s dustbin. Reality is more nuanced, and I try to provide a more detailed analysis since a broad brush hardly seems appropriate. The weakest and craziest portions of the crypto world have been exposed as nothing more than silliness. But some valuable components remain resilient and offer tremendous opportunity. I will explore these in detail. There is more cause for optimism than pessimism among the best and the brightest. We will explore these opportunities while harshly dismissing the hype and silliness – avoid the terror of a worthless market.

The Ten Year Horizon: Volatile, Intense, and Mostly Harmless

Advanced Technology, Book, Class Material, Life Sciences, Prediction, Transformative Businesses, , , , , ,

This book explores the next decade’s more frequent and intense economic, geopolitical, fiscal, and market volatility, technological innovation, disruption, and hype.

Long-term opportunity exists, and this book uses a 10-year horizon as a surrogate for a long-term perspective. Some of the world’s most important industries are being disrupted, especially finance via digital assets and Blockchain-based businesses, life sciences via gene editing, DNA sequencing, and CRISPR, and communications via advanced wireless data networks, software technologies including artificial intelligence, and new interactive platforms such as the Metaverse.

A New Vision for Artificial Intelligence

Advanced Technology, Article, Book, Book Chapter, Prediction, Transformative Businesses, , , , ,

A new vision for artificial intelligence is using smaller more relevant data sets for dynamic learning generating more effective outcomes and better predictions. This model uses cognitive architecture, learns, transfers learning, and retains knowledge – enabling more valuable and compelling artificial intelligence applications. This approach is more closely related to the brain’s actual structures and much more effective than “neural networks,” which is a catchy name but the similarity to the brain’s actual functioning is in name only. Real advancement in artificial intelligence must live in reality, not theoretical marketing. The current state of artificial intelligence shows the shortcomings of big data and trial-and-error approaches. A new AI vision can be a more effective solution. Smaller data sets, more relevant information, dynamic data, and algorithms will lead to more appropriate outcomes, better tools, and more effective applications.

Transformation and Investing : Nicholas Mitsakos

Transformation and Investing: Disruption, Opportunity, and Absurdity

Book

Transformational Investing: Opportunity, Absurdity, and Terror highlights the extraordinary opportunities and risks associated with disruptive technologies and the global transformation they are causing. Instead of headline-grabbing hyperbole, I attempt to create a context to understand these developments – a broader, methodical, and disciplined way to think about disruption and transformation.

Some of the world’s most important industries are being profoundly impacted by new technological innovation and platforms, such as artificial intelligence, digital assets, blockchain-based businesses, gene editing, and DNA sequencing, enabling unprecedented disruption to business and economic models.

Investment success requires not only understanding these impacts but also grasping many other economic forces and elements ranging from global economics, game theory, competitive and microlevel analysis, as well as human behavior and emotions.

Stable predictability is increasingly anachronistic. Every company or industry will either be a disrupter or disrupted. The leading growth companies of today stand an excellent chance to be memories tomorrow.

Transformation and Investing

Transformation and Investing: Disruption, Opportunity, and Absurdity

Book

Transformational Investing: Opportunity, Absurdity, and Terror highlights the extraordinary opportunities and risks associated with disruptive technologies and the global transformation they are causing. Instead of headline-grabbing hyperbole, I attempt to create a context to understand these developments – a broader, methodical, and disciplined way to think about disruption and transformation.

Some of the world’s most important industries are being profoundly impacted by new technological innovation and platforms, such as artificial intelligence, digital assets, blockchain-based businesses, gene editing, and DNA sequencing, enabling unprecedented disruption to business and economic models.

Investment success requires not only understanding these impacts but also grasping many other economic forces and elements ranging from global economics, game theory, competitive and microlevel analysis, as well as human behavior and emotions.

Stable predictability is increasingly anachronistic. Every company or industry will either be a disrupter or disrupted. The leading growth companies of today stand an excellent chance to be memories tomorrow. Specific situations are dynamic and quickly escape a simple formula or any broad sweeping conclusions. General statements are a waste of time, profoundly inefficient and misleading, and designed simply to make the reader feel good without giving him or her any useful way to think more deeply about analysis and conclusions that matter.

Strategies for an Irrational World

Investment Principles: strategies for an irrational world

Book

Investment Principles: Strategies for an Irrational World proposes a context for understanding – a broader, methodical, and disciplined way to think about investing. Investment success requires understanding many elements ranging from global economics, competitive and microlevel analysis, game theory to human behavior and emotions.

This integrated approach develops a more informed and distinctive way to think about the future. Investment success combines predicting the future, the confidence to make bold choices, and the fortitude to stay with those choices. I assert that wisdom, which I define as combining a broad range of observations into a new set of knowledge to predict the future more effectively, is the essential component of successful investing. The foundation of knowledge, assembling relevant facts from many sources, produces better decisions and superior returns.

Stop Talking. Start Thinking.

Book

Thinking the government now can take over services provided privately as if it is the appropriate entity to provide those services from now on only leads to inefficiency, misuse of capital, the demand for more tax revenue to support the inefficiency, and the downward spiral which ultimately creates more inefficiency that private industry will look to rectify.