johnmaconline

I suck at negotiation. Always have.

Winning a negotiation is about gaining leverage. Gaining leverage is the art of knowing what the other side cares about. I suck at that art. 

Luckily, here come the hagglebots.

Procurement departments rejoice! Bots with all of the info, including what makes the other side tick, will soon be on a tear. Hagglebots will be putting the squeeze on the supply chain. 

I’ve paid almost full price for my cars. I’ve rarely made headway on salary or benefits moving into a new job. I can’t remember a touchy situation when I successfully extracted what I wanted. 

But that doesn’t mean I’ve always come out of negotiations feeling like a loser. 

There’s more to winning a negotiation than any objective measure because winning is a feeling. You’ve won if you felt like you got a good deal. The best negotiators know this. If you can make the other side feel like they’re getting a good deal, i.e., the proverbial win-win, then you’ve actually won. 

Would an AI ever think to itself, “I feel like I got a good deal.”

We can’t (yet) control the weather. Neither can AI.

If the surf’s up, the powder is fresh, or the breeze is strong and steady, you gotta jump on it. Cancel your chores and grab your board.

Neither we nor AI can control when the mood hits us just right.

If a serendipitous opportunity pops up to dance with your partner, play catch with your son, or have lunch with your daughter, you gotta jump on it. Cancel your chores and grab a hand.

AI has no idea. No amount of programming, training, and machine learning could ever give it a clue.

So let it do its thing. Let it do the chores. Maybe give it more of your chores.

Don’t waste the moment.

AI should be the CEO of the Effective Altruism movement. 

In fact, it’s inevitable. Which is kinda ironic because the Effective Altruists are also “helping to create the field of AI alignment research.”

Effective Altruism’s principles:

• Prioritization — because human intuition isn’t good enough
• Impartiality — because human connection isn’t good enough
• Truthseeking — because human belief isn’t good enough
• Collaboration — because a single human helping another human isn’t good enough

Effective Altruism seeks qualification of need through computation. “Look at the numbers (that we’ve decided are the important ones).” AI runs circles around humans at numbers. Therefore, AI will get us to the objectively correct vision of the world faster and better than any human could. 

There’s just one problem. 

There is no objectively correct vision of the world. Therefore, there is no objectively correct way to get there. Therefore, there is no objectively correct way to use our individual and collective resources to help others.

True effective altruism is, always was, and always will be about personal connection to those whom you want to help. Giving freely from your sense of humanity. 

For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in;

Matthew 25:35

Would an AI ever think to itself, “I’d like to invite him in.”

Time is everything. 

Time is the one resource that we can never recover. A wish for one more year, one more day, one more minute. Regrets of missed opportunities, wasted time, and wrong place at the wrong time. 

Chronos is time as you and I experience it. The ticking of the second hand. The serial march of one thing after another. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Objectively quantified and measured. 

Productivity is the quest for expanding chronos. Get more done in the same period of time. AI is the just latest tool that promises to expand chronos. 

Kairos is also time, but ontologically very different. A theologian might describe it as God’s time. A secular philosopher might describe it as the right time or the opportune moment. 

Kairos is time you remember. Kairos left you yearning for just a little while longer. 

As a kid, I remember skimming through my great-grandfather’s journals. Volumes of dry, daily entries about the weather, visitors, and current events. But every once in a while, I came across some extended entries providing a glimpse into thoughts and feeling about the otherwise dry course of events. 

Today’s smartphone camera roll serves as your journal. Scroll back, and you’ll find grocery lists, road signs, notes, and a million other everyday objects scattered through the faces and places. 

Chronos turned kairos.

AI knows nothing about kairos. At least not now. 

Would an AI ever think to itself, “I just wish I had one more day.”

AI should do your work chores. 

You know the Eisenhower Matrix? Urgent versus important, etc. A method like this helps us because we tend to put off the hard stuff. The human stuff. We use excuses of urgency or money or whatever else we can grab onto to justify prioritizing the wrong tasks. 

Chores are one of those categories of tasks that we use as an excuse. Here’s what the brilliant Seth Godin has to say about chores:

“Entrepreneurs, artists and freelancers [my input: and all workers] often spend a lot of time on chores. We justify this because outsourcing chores to others costs money, and in this moment, money is tight.

But that’s not the real story. 

The truth is that if we stop doing chores, we have to do real work instead. The things that aren’t repeatable or proven. The things that are emotionally difficult, creatively challenging or simply requiring exploration and guts to pursue.”

Seth Godin — Chores

Chores in non-work life do provide value. They help connect us to the physical requirements of life. The bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and whatnot. 

But in our work, we often justify doing chores because of our emotional resistance to doing the real work. The work that matters. 

AI doesn’t care. It’s happy to do the chores. It would never think, “I don’t want to do this menial task.” So let it. 

Because if AI does your chores, you can be the free-thinking human. We need you to be.

Faster, cheaper, better. 

I’ve been on the front lines of outsourcing almost my entire career. I’ve hired, led, and worked with off-shore software teams and contracting firms for over 20 years. I help my current company work and scale better through automation. And yes, now I’m exploring how AI systems like ChatGPT can accelerate and improve our work. 

Maybe that makes me one of the evil ones. Anti-American or anti-human even. Contributing to the downfall of our culture and spiraling into a Player Piano dystopian world. 

Spoiler alert: I don’t see it that way. My motto has always been, “If a different person or machine can do my job faster, cheaper, and better, then let’s do that. I’ll find some other way to add value.”

I have always seen it that way because I truly believe that each human has value and purpose. My job is to find purpose and add value where I can. In the case of outsourcing, automation, and AI, it’s being the adult in the room. 

For me, using outsourcing, machines, and AI to do work isn’t about replacement. It’s about enhancement. Allowing each of us to contribute more of the things that the humans need to contribute. 

New technology has always replaced or removed jobs, but we humans have always found new purpose and better ways to add value. 

For example, should “faster, cheaper, better” be the goal? 

I guess it depends. 

Would an AI ever think to itself, “It depends.”

AI doesn’t have a mother.

Plenty of people don’t have, and never had, a mother in practice. But they did ultimately have a mother. That’s how human life works.

What does AI have? Theorists, programmers, trainers, feedback providers, tweakers, and users.

Maybe in the future when AI is running this place, we will no longer have holidays such as Mother’s Day. Maybe the supreme AI world leader will designate “Progammer’s Day,” “User Appreciation Day,” and “Non-biological Life Day.” Maybe we’ll celebrate a new kind of Christmas that remembers the birth of the first sentient AI.

Whatever.

Those days are still about the humans.

Thank you, mothers. Thank you for being.

I sure would love to outsource my hard conversations to AI.

I’m non-confrontational. My nature is to shy away and deflect. But I’m also adult enough to have them when needed. I’m currently in the middle of a couple of them, both professionally and personally.

How can AI help me here?

“Handling challenging conversations with colleagues can be difficult but important for maintaining effective working relationships. Here are some steps you can take to navigate this situation:

1. Stay calm and composed: It’s natural to feel defensive or upset…“

– ChatGPT

And on for another seven bullet points.

As I suspected. It can’t. And it won’t ever. 

AI can’t help because it’s never had a hard conversation. Or rather, it’s never felt a hard conversation. It doesn’t know when it’s having a hard conversation. It doesn’t know when to engage or walk away.  

Future AI may be trained on counseling and hard conversations and possibly give the impression of engaging, but it still doesn’t know. Not really. 

Would AI ever think to itself, “I think I’ll walk away from this.”

What is creativity?

Like art, it’s hard to define, but you know it when you see it. We use creativity to describe the generation of something new — ideas, art, technologies, and problem solutions. When we see something creative, it strikes us emotionally. 

We can plot creativity along a spectrum from discovery to invention:

• Fire is a discovery. Gas stoves are an invention.
• Thought is a discovery. Language is an invention. 
• Electricity is a discovery. The internet is an invention.
• Color is a discovery. The idea of using color paint on a canvas is an invention. 

Inventions rely on discoveries (and other inventions). Discoveries are like the Lego bricks dumped all over the floor just waiting to be stepped on, I mean, assembled into something meaningful — an invention.

Every human is creative. You may not be an accomplished artist, but you are creative in the sense that you learn, do, and then assemble the discoveries and inventions of your world into new inventions. That invention may be something as simple as how you organize your day. 

You see? You are creative. How does that feel? 

And when you see somebody else’s creativity that resonates with you, how do you feel? You probably say something to yourself like, “That’s cool.” Because you can appreciate your own and others’ creativity. 

AI can learn, do, and assemble. AI can find solutions to problems that we can’t. 

But would an AI ever contemplate something new and think, “That’s cool.”

Ex Machina, Her, Westworld, Blade Runner (original and 2049), and the Terminator series.

These are some of my favorite movies and shows. All explore some form of human-AI love relationships. Is this our future?

If so, will AI possess real emotional love toward a human, or will it be mimicry? Play acting expressed through programming, data set training, and ulterior motives, whether good or nefarious. 

Will it matter?

What does it mean to be in a love relationship? Is reciprocity required? If it’s romantic love, is sex required? Most of the movies and shows I mention above explore this one. 

I can’t help but think about love relationships built and fostered across long distances. Whether romantic or familial, we’ve all seen stories about pen pals, prisoners, and long-lost siblings finding their love for each other without ever meeting physically (at least initially). Love built upon reciprocal communication only. And if there’s one thing AI is good at, its reciprocal communication. In fact, at this time, reciprocal communication is the main purpose of Large Language Model (LLM) AIs like ChatGPT. I suspect the humanoids are on their way also. Boston Dynamics meets ChatGPT. 

But is love, like all emotions, just a biochemical, deterministic response, or does it require something other? Something like free will. Something like a soul. Does love require the ability to choose and the self-awareness to make a choice? 

Would an AI ever think to itself, “I love him.”