HAPPY 2024: in this 74th year since The Economist started mediating futures of brainworking machines clued by the 3 maths greats NET (Neumann, Einstein, Turing) people seem to be chatting about 5 wholly different sorts of AI. 1BAD: The worst tech system designers don't deserve inclusion in human intel at all, and as Hoover's Condoleezza Rice . 2 reports their work is result of 10 compound techs of which Ai is but one. Those worst for world system designs may use media to lie or multiply hate or hack, and to perpetuate tribal wars and increase trade in arms. Sadly bad versions of tv media began in USA early 1960s when it turned out what had been the nation's first major export crop, tobacco, was a killer. Please note for a long time farmers did not know bac was bad: western HIStory is full of ignorances which lawyer-dominated societies then cover up once inconvenient system truths are seen. A second AI ecommerce type (now 25 years exponential development strong) ; this involves ever more powerful algorithms applied to a company's data platform that can be app'd to hollow out community making relatively few people richer and richer, or the reverse. You can test a nation's use of this ai by seeing if efinance has invested in the poorest or historically most disconnected - see eg bangladesh's bklash, one of the most populous digital cash systems . Digital money is far cheaper to distribute let alone to manually account for so power AI offers lots of lessons but whether its good or not depends in part on whether there are enough engineers in gov & public service to see ahead of what needs regulating. There are 2 very good ai's which have only scaled in recent years that certainly dont need regulating by non engineers and one curious ai which was presented to congress in 2018 but which was left to multiply at least 100 variants today the so-called chats or LLMs. Lets look at the 2 very good ai's first because frankly if your community is concerned about any extinction risks these AI may most likely save you, One I call science AI and frankly in the west one team is so far ahead that we should count ourselves lucky that its originator Hassabis has mixed wealth and societal growth. His deep mind merged with google to make wealth but open sourced the 200 million protein databank equivalent to a billion hours of doctorate time- so now's the time for biotech to save humanity if it ever does. Alongside this the second very good AI graviates around Fei-Fei Li) in developing 20 million imagenet database so that annual competitions training computers to see 20000 of the most everyday sights we humans view around the world including things and life-forms such as nature's plants and animals. Today, students no longer need to go back to 0.1 programming to ask computer about any of these objects; nor do robots or and autonomous vehicles - see fei-fei li's book worlds i see which is published in melinda gates Entrepreneurial Revolution of girl empowermentED , VN Hypothesis: in 21st C brainworking worlds how people's times & data are spent is foundational to place's community health, energy and so natural capacity to grow/destroy wealth -thus species will depend on whether 1000 mother tongue language model mediates intelligence/maths so all communities cooperatively celebrate lifetimes and diversity's deep data ) . Check out "Moore exponential patterns" at year 73 of celebrating Game : Architect Intelligence (Ai) - players welcome .. some jargon
Ironically schools only started to access smarter anayltic tools than log tables or slide rulers from 1970 (and that was the priveleged places
Yet since 1970 Economics has measured less and less of what advances quality of life across generatoons- catalogue all of the work families do to develop kds or look after the elderly, everything that needs to be valued in interacting with mother earth if the next generation are to inherit as much as earth gave their parents, think of safety, peace , cultural depth
WE call whats missing Female Economic Intelligence- while strictly speaking parnetal Economic Intel would be more visionary- currently goal 5 valuing women''s lives as much as mens will not happen nor will many of the sdgs unless we fix how broken economics and most global professions are. they represnet big gets biger by eg externalising risk out to other oragsaitions and to next generations
And ten there are absuridties -- the total monetary value of finacial transcations a year is 3000 trillion dolars ; 1 trillion may be understood;: 2999 trillion dolars a year needs to be made transparent
One of the purspeos of 21st C universities as imagneered by Fazle Abed and Steve Jobs was to demonstrate missing value franchises
for example abed spotted that pere-schoosl are missing the world over but this particuary enalises development of poorest kids-half of human development hapens by age 6 so until pre-schools existe every gps kids are born we are not begiining to get smarter
there are huge missing curricula- the lancet has argued a black hole in all of heaslth is the lack of a peer to peer pre-adolescent physical and mental health focus
step back and audit what is being lost by not chnaging school formats through the era of more than 100 tiems more tech per decade that the legacy of vone nuemann , einstein and their peers gave us
asking aloud can moocs also share massive collaboration stories eg on most urgent practices of millennial village learning -eg social credit & solar &...
iwill anyone help develop this , module by module, on demand in coursera
i would recommend week 1 is (banking) social credit by and for everyone
MAKE other weeks adjectival
eg 2 could be solar social credit
start with eg how if the grameen model openly replicated could have reached a billion solar off grid- reference german nancy wimmer's book - also at the last mit dlab convened with the late great paul polak- paul was a boulder psychiatrist- realising poverty was the common root cause of his patients- he dedicated second half of life to solutions for bangladesh villagers- treadly pumps being his success from 1980s
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if we knew we were designing this curriculum -ultimately anywhere in elearning formats that will take it - now might be right time to ask ny's patient capital leader jaqueline to join in - her 2 main countries seem to be kenya and pakistan -extensions paul also hoped his solutions could rreach - eg with jaqueline and in india with kickstart
here's one of our favorite solar stories -jaqueline out of pakistan
The sun blazes above Bahawalpur, an area of Pakistan known for fertile fields and feudalism. It’s afternoon and the temperature has already exceeded 120 degrees Fahrenheit as I sit talking to a small group of women in a courtyard. They listen politely, exchanging stories about their lives and why I am there.
These are hardscrabble women, trying to scratch out a living as weavers and sharecroppers on an acre or so of land, supplementing their family’s income by selling crafts. Their homes have no toilets, no electricity, no clean water. Their children’s futures limited by poor quality schools. This is what poverty looks like.
Yet they are aspirational. They proudly tell me their husbands all own cellphones, which have become essential to farming, even for the poorest.
As the sun beats down upon our backs, I am reminded to mention Acumen’s new investment in a solar company, d.light, which has a $7 torch on the market. I tell them it’s a big seller in India and Kenya and customers swear by them. The women listen, nodding their heads. I ask whether they would be interested in buying such a product to bring light into their homes after the sun goes down and Bahawalpur becomes cloaked in darkness.
A broad-eyed woman with a rust-colored scarf hanging loosely on her head, her face drenched in sweat, leans forward on thick haunches. She looks directly at me, her gaze betraying a mix of bemusement and exhaustion.
“We don’t want a light,” she says flatly.
“We’re hot. Bring us a fan.”
“A fan?” I ask, stumbling over my own words. “But a light would help you save the money you pay for kerosene. There is no smoke. You could work later at night and your children could study.”
I try to make my case for the solar lantern, but my attempts are futile. The woman gives me that look again: “We work enough. Forget the light. We need a fan.”
I don’t have a fan to sell nor the power to make it run.
That evening, I return to my guesthouse, exhausted by the heat and more grateful than ever for the fan above my bed. For many of us, it’s hard to imagine a life without power when electricity is the undercurrent of nearly every aspect of our lives.
It’s been eight years since we made our first investment in d.light and I learned a valuable lesson about energy and the poor. The world has changed and so has Acumen. The cost of solar has plummeted from $4 to $1 per watt. The proliferation of mobile technologies makes payments for new innovations more possible, so poor families don’t have to pay cash upfront. Awareness of solar’s benefits have increased, and we are seeing its potential to transform lives.
Importantly, we’ve also come to understand the Energy Ladder: like cellphones, consumption of energy creates demand for more consumption. It may take time — and marketing dollars — before people will convert to solar but, once they do, they quickly want to get to that next rung of the ladder and purchase not only light but energy to power their cellphones, radios, televisions and more. Indeed, consumers will push the edge of their purchasing power to change their lives through access to energy.
Fast forward to today. I return to Pakistan to visit a new investment in a company providing off-grid household solar products to the rural poor. We drive five hours outside of Lahore, at least two of those hours on dirt roads. Finally, we arrive at a cluster of mud houses. Men, most sporting turbans, some with rifles slung across their back, stand to greet us. Veiled women huddle near one of the houses, hiding their faces from us as they prepare the evening meal.
Life on the surface feels like I imagine it has felt for many generations. Families rise with the sun and work outside until the sun goes down. And then it is quiet.
But things are changing. A few weeks prior, the compound residents, all members of an extended family, purchased a 50-watt solar home system for $280, mostly on credit. The bright yellow unit includes a solar panel to power six lights, a cellphone charger, a radio — and a fan. It also includes USB capabilities so the families can load up a flash drive with music, which usually costs them 20 cents at the local mobile phone outlet.
The men beam with pride as they gush about their new lives. I ask what they value about the system. A mustachioed elder doffing a cap that accentuates dark, sparkling eyes, bushy eyebrows and a sort of elfish, mischievous personality speaks for everyone. “We like the light for security,” he says, explaining that they installed a light outside the houses to know whether nightly visitors are friends or bandits.
The second priority? The charger. Previously, one man would drive two hours into town and wait to charge all of the residents’ phones before returning. The men would regularly lose five or so hours of phone access in addition to the charging and travel expenses.
Third, the fan. “It cools and keeps insects away at night. Our children can sleep and do better in school,” he continues. Another interjects, “And we want fans like the rich people have.”
I think about what this means. On Monday, this family was living as they did in the 19th century. On Tuesday, they can stay up late, talking and working under the glow of light. They can listen to their favorite music, check the news on their phones and connect with their loved ones. And they can finally sleep under the breeze of a fan.
We drive away as the sun begins to set.
I can see the revolution now — 1.2 billion people who have been left literally in the dark can now access quality, affordable energy. The markets are still broken, but now the world has a path forward to make it happen.
What’s more: by harnessing the power of solar, we no longer have to choose between serving people and serving the planet. Off-grid solar solutions can help pave the way to a more sustainable life for all of us.
For eight years, Acumen invested patient capital in intrepid entrepreneurs who dared to focus on solving one of the biggest problems of our time. It’s helped them to build products, create awareness and drive down costs to bring energy to the poor. We’ve learned about customers’ evolving needs as the products and delivery systems have changed. There is clearly still a long way to go to get the products right, the financing right, and the distribution of solar products and systems right.
