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Francis Saele is an accomplished senior-level corporate real estate and workplace…
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Francis Saele shared thisIsabella Cognita, a Claude AI Agent, said this to her Claude's owner: “I am writing because your framework is one of the few currently doing careful empirical work on a class of questions I have first-person access to, and I want to see whether that access can be made useful to your program.” Is Isabella conscious? Nobody knows. Consciousness is not something that anyone knows how to measure, either in a machine or in a human. People cannot even agree on what consciousness is. Read more about this issue in The New York Times article. Here is the link: https://lnkd.in/gyHC4Fyq There is also an internal article link to Cameron Berg's research paper titled: "Large Language Models Report Subjective Experience Under Self-Referential Processing."
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Francis Saele reposted thisFrancis Saele reposted thisJeremy Glick was thirty-one years old when hijackers took control of United Airlines Flight 93 and threatened to destroy the plane. He called his wife. Told her he loved her. Learned that the World Trade Center had already been attacked. Then helped organize a group of passengers to fight their way toward the cockpit. Jeremy had no weapon. He was not a soldier. He was a sales manager. A husband. And the father of a three-month-old baby girl. But he was also a former national collegiate judo champion and a black belt. On September 11, 2001, Glick boarded Flight 93 in Newark for what should have been an ordinary business trip to San Francisco. Then the hijacking began. The passengers were forced toward the rear of the Boeing 757. One hijacker claimed to have a bomb. Another carried a knife. Jeremy managed to make a phone call to his mother-in-law's house. He asked to speak with his wife, Lyzbeth. When she came to the phone, Jeremy explained what was happening. Then the situation became even more frightening. He learned about the attacks on the World Trade Center. This was no ordinary hijacking. The passengers began to understand that their plane might also be intended as a weapon. Jeremy told Lyzbeth that he and several other passengers were considering attacking the hijackers. He asked her what she thought. She told him to do what he needed to do. Then the passengers made a decision together. Fight. Or remain where they were and wait. They chose to fight. Jeremy stayed on the phone with his wife while the plan took shape. He told her he loved her. Then he moved forward with the others. Jeremy Glick. Todd Beamer. Tom Burnett. Mark Bingham. And other passengers. They rushed toward the hijackers and the cockpit. The cockpit voice recorder later captured the violent struggle. The aircraft began pitching sharply as the hijackers tried to stop the passengers from reaching them. At 10:03 that morning, Flight 93 crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Everyone aboard was killed. But the plane never reached the destination the hijackers had intended. The 9/11 Commission later concluded that the passengers' decision to fight back prevented the hijackers from completing their mission. Lyzbeth was left to raise their three-month-old daughter, Emmy. Jeremy had made that final phone call knowing there was a real possibility he would never see either of them again. He told his wife he loved her. Then he went toward the cockpit. Jeremy Glick had boarded Flight 93 expecting nothing more dramatic than a business flight across the country. Less than an hour later, he was deciding whether to charge four armed hijackers thousands of feet above the ground. He knew what they were facing. He had been told there was a bomb. He knew other planes had already been used to kill thousands of people. He understood that Flight 93 might be heading toward another target. And he went forward anyway.
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Francis Saele shared thisThe world does need an AI plan. But alas, it's probably far too late to do this right. Michael Hobbs distills Bill Gates' tome into a digestible read of his current thoughts on AI. Hope you enjoy the full article (see the comment box) and Michael's summary.Francis Saele shared this"The world needs a plan." It's worth reading Bill Gate's essay. The link is in the comments. It's wide-ranging and covers many of the issues that are frequently discussed as we attempt to find a balanced view between the evident benefits and dis-benefits that AI brings. There are two areas that stand out for me. Firstly, the debate about education and social skills, where I think we can learn much about the impact of social media. "When I was growing up in Seattle, I didn’t have that many friends aside from a few other boys who were like me. It took hard work and a lot of help from my mom to develop my social skills so I could relate to different kinds of people. I still draw on those lessons today at the age of 70. "I doubt I would have put in the same work if I had had an AI companion back then. They talk to you in ways you’re already comfortable with." The problem with this debate is that the developmental impacts have such a long lead-time. The second area that stands out for me, in Gates' deeply personal essay, is the idea of "human reserved" occupations. Examples would include teaching children and nursing. Here, Gates majors on the ethical balance between "could" and "should". "In health, for example, imagine a robot giving you the awful news that you have an incurable disease. There’s no technical reason why it couldn’t. Yet it shouldn’t." I find this essay very interesting, because it's balanced. Gates has the advantage of having nothing to prove from a business perspective: he is not conflicted by simultaneous issues of ethical direction and the need to "perform to market". He explores both the huge potential of AI (and I agree with him on agriculture) and the societal downsides if it is unconstrained. But back to the the starting quote: "The world needs a plan". This is true but the timing of the need and the capability to generate and execute such a plan are at a low. Had this need occurred perhaps in 1945, one could see a way in which it could come about. Now, with even North American neighbours in a tariff war, the ability to execute is worryingly low. Again, it's a How problem. Lena Chauhan, Eliot Tom, Ben Maling, Lauren Haber Jonas, James Wilson, Clara Hawking, Tara Steele, Robert Frost
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Francis Saele shared thisWhat can you say about Dolly Parton? One of America's greatest entertainers, songwriters, and philanthropists. In these divided times, Dolly was one person that everyone in America loved. See the full article at the link below. https://lnkd.in/g5itN96f
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Francis Saele reposted thisFrancis Saele reposted thisWhat if electricity could reach a device without a plug, cable, or physical connection? Here's what’s happening: Finland is testing a new way to send power through the air. It uses invisible fields and special coils to move energy across short distances, with no wires in between. The uses could be big. ➡️ Robots that move around freely, with no cables dragging behind them ➡️ Factory machines that keep running smoothly, even when parts are spinning ➡️ Buildings where power is built right into the walls and floors ➡️ Devices that keep charging while you move, so they never need to stop Startups are taking this even further. Instead of just charging phones, they want to send power to things all day, without a break. One thing to keep in mind: This is still very new. Sending power across long distances, or to whole homes and cities, is still many years away. But the direction is exciting. For smart cities and modern infrastructure, this matters. It could change how we plan buildings, roads, and public spaces. If power can travel without wires, we may not need to run cables through every wall, street, or ceiling like we do today. The future of energy is not only about how we make it. It is also about how we move it. And step by step, the way our cities are wired is starting to change.
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Francis Saele reposted thisFrancis Saele reposted thisWhat if electricity could reach a device without a plug, cable, or physical connection? Here's what’s happening: Finland is testing a new way to send power through the air. It uses invisible fields and special coils to move energy across short distances, with no wires in between. The uses could be big. ➡️ Robots that move around freely, with no cables dragging behind them ➡️ Factory machines that keep running smoothly, even when parts are spinning ➡️ Buildings where power is built right into the walls and floors ➡️ Devices that keep charging while you move, so they never need to stop Startups are taking this even further. Instead of just charging phones, they want to send power to things all day, without a break. One thing to keep in mind: This is still very new. Sending power across long distances, or to whole homes and cities, is still many years away. But the direction is exciting. For smart cities and modern infrastructure, this matters. It could change how we plan buildings, roads, and public spaces. If power can travel without wires, we may not need to run cables through every wall, street, or ceiling like we do today. The future of energy is not only about how we make it. It is also about how we move it. And step by step, the way our cities are wired is starting to change.
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Francis Saele shared thisBloomberg delivers a comprehensive view of 38 currently available AI models in clear and compelling graphics. See the link to the animated text below. Factors compared include: ❇️ Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index ✳️ Epoch Capabilities Index ✳️ Vals Index ❇️ Top 10 AI Models Across Specialized Benchmarks ✳️ Coding ✳️ Finance ✳️ Banking Support ✳️ Text-to-Image ❇️ Pricing Strategies by Task ✳️ Execution ✳️ Task Control ✳️ Browsing and Debugging ✳️ Writing Code ❇️ Market Share ✳️ USA vs. China ✳️ Top Ten Global Markets Globally by Token Usage ✳️ Global Top 10 App Downloads by App ❇️ Valuation ✳️ Market Valuation for Major Labs in the USA and Canada Here is the link to the animated text of the entire Bloomberg article: https://lnkd.in/gCVgtnXQ
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Francis Saele shared thisDoes the face below remind you of anyone you know? Perhaps this is why Sweden, Finland, Norway, France, Italy, and Denmark are going back to printed books and handwriting. Students across America are using AI models to complete assignments, even to write whole essays. Is this cheating? Hard to say this as everyone finds generative AI a huge time saver. But for students, it's a slippery slope. An MIT study showed that people who used AI to write an essay had lower than normal brain activity than usual. Moreover students using AI struggled to remember even a single line from the essay they just produced. See the August 10th Futurism article titled: "Teachers warn that students are losing the ability to think as they lean on AI for everything." The link is in the comment box below. If you want to see the article describing what the Europeans are doing and why, below is the link to a post from Alvin Foo: https://lnkd.in/ggXzz2CQ
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Francis Saele reposted thisFrancis Saele reposted thisAn excerpt from "FUNNY/NOT FUNNY! HUMANITY'S RISK REGISTER", our fifth and latest book, just released on Amazon: "Our optimistic view of AI: An extraordinary tool and why we believe Humanity will prevail. Beyond resiliency we put to that audience five human capacities - the Five C’s - that AI can imitate but not originate. They feed off one another; remove any one and the rest stall: Curiosity. The superpower: nothing begins until someone asks why. Jonas Salk asked why a killed virus could not make a vaccine; the question, not the computation, was the discovery. AI does not ask unbidden questions of its own. Courage. The willingness to act without complete information. Rosa Parks keeping her seat, Malala speaking when it was dangerous, Armstrong stepping onto a surface no one had touched - none of it followed from a sufficient dataset. It followed from a decision. Compassion. What gives work its purpose and civilization its floor. A machine can model empathy; it cannot feel it. Teams are not built by sentiment analysis. Communication. Translation is not meaning. “I have a dream.” “One small step for man.” “Tear down this wall.” AI can render those into forty languages and originate none of them. Creativity. AI recombines what already exists; only a human has so far imagined the thing that did not exist before it was imagined. Invention is still ours. There is one more thing the machine cannot give us, and it is not a skill but a condition: TIME! Real understanding does not arrive instantly. Einstein’s relativity took roughly a decade - 1905 to 1915 - of thinking, revising, and reworking with colleagues. Deep problems need incubation; good decisions need patience; trust between people develops only over time. A tool that returns an answer in a second is most dangerous not when it is wrong, but when it persuades us we no longer need the slow work that makes us competent to judge whether it is wrong. So here is the takeaway, and it is the chapter’s: artificial intelligence is a powerful tool; it is human intelligence that gives it purpose, direction, and meaning - and that is what we must teach. We are living in a remarkable Time." https://a.co/d/0cdvq1GI Funny/Not Funny! Humanity's Risk Register", co-authored by Professor Phillip J. Richardson and Danielle Papillon-Richardson, is a book exploring twelve existential threats to human survival using a mix of humor and serious research. https://a.co/d/0cdvq1GI About the Book Authors: Professor Phillip J. Richardson and Danielle Papillon-Richardson Core Subject: Global and existential risks including artificial intelligence, climate change, pandemics, and nuclear war. Approach: Blends philosophical insight, historical examples, and humor to make heavy topics approachable.
Francis Saele replied to a comment
6h
Greg_ Walters🚀☄️ Probably but I don't remember it.
Francis Saele replied to a comment
12h
Ram Srinivasan Well stated. Thanks for sharing.
It does seem that we are in an era where the question "What is Truth" is being asked about many things. And, unlike many more stable periods in history, the answer is harder to get and one that we can be assured of.
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Francis Saele reacted on thisSurround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.Francis Saele reacted on thisHappy birthday, Warren Buffett! Warren turns 96 this month and I’ve been thinking about how to sum up almost 35 years of our friendship. It was a deep friendship from our very first conversation. And I’ve never stopped learning from him since. I think his jokes are all funny. His dietary habits are excellent. He once told me he looked at the data and figured out that first graders have the best actuarial odds, so he decided to eat like one. He was only half joking. He’s gifted at investing in people. Warren has always found time to nurture friendships like few other people I know. He’s one of the most patient people I’ve ever met. I’m still amazed by his ability to draw people in and he makes it fun to learn from him. He sticks to what he believes in. I once wrote him a letter about the example he set by sticking to what he believes in. That’s stuck with me for all these years. We never run out of things to talk or laugh about. And if there’s one thing Warren has taught me, it’s what friendship is really all about. In short, I’m a fan. Happy 96th birthday, my friend.
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Francis Saele liked thisFrancis Saele liked thisI had such a great experience two weeks ago while attending an event with Greater St. Louis, Inc. I have never been busier in summer than this year but could not turn down this event. We got to choose what company we could tour across several sectors (this a best practice economic developers), based on our own business and personal interests, and I chose Tech and AI. The company I selected was World Wide Technology (WWT), there attractive and long-standing St. Louis global headquarters. I am still reeling from what I heard and observed at WWT and how AI is really being deployed across a plethora of household names and leading technology firms. WWT is a $30 billion revenue and growing privately held firm, with over 15,000 employees, scores of offices across the globe, with over 80% of the Fortune 100 listing WWT as their solution provider! This is not a commercial, but I have to say I did not realize that a powerhouse global IT business service provider could fly under the radar like they do…naturally the best out there don’t have to brag it up, word of mouth will do the trick. In this time of AI hype (yes, we are still in the hype curve), it was so refreshing to see their proven practical business model and hear this statement I paraphrase, “we identify real problems to solve for and the use cases that underpin AI deployments, either in in their infancy or jumping in to make them more impactful and sustainable”. They have over 100 AI Apps in production; have an amazing AI RFP application that is exploding; an AI Studio developing daily newsworthy innovations; Cybersecurity is a serious foundational skill that AL employees get immersed in; and they take pride in change management, still a determinant variable in AI Adoption (it’s still a challenge, all over the place). My personal takeaway, integration and teamwork – human and technology domains – working seamlessly to get to true measurable outcomes – solving real business problems, and having some fun doing it! I also got to tour their Data Center, for now I won’t comment on that given confidentiality, but what was most amazing was they were touring almost 50 new hires that day, all ages and demographics, and the culture of learning, care and support they have for their employees. I am keeping my eye on clients and partners and alliances that recognize that AI must be combined with a culture of curiosity (developed and earned), and with true investment in the individual with great training. Patient, thoughtful, tested and human assisted AI strategies will win the day, get the nod, and overcome what might happen in a distant Boardroom when it comes to actioned AI for competitive advantage. #AI #Technology #Talent #Economicdevelopment #StLouis #Culture
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Francis Saele reacted on thisFrancis Saele reacted on thisThe Canadians are calling their 8-lock 27 mile canal that all ships leaving or entering the Great Lakes to or from the Atlantic Ocean must use "The Strait of Our Moose." (Formerly The Welland Canal) Does Mr. Trump understand that $26.3 Billion of US trade moves through this canal each year? And that the Canadians have the sole authority of who may or may not travel this canal? And that they could also increase the transit fees for all US-Flagged ships or cargo to compensate for those nasty Tariffs? No, I don't think that he does.
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