Diary of a Madman, Page 30
9,700 people peering inside. Don’t get trapped.
I. This Week’s Analyses
Notes from Gigaom’s AI 2017 Conference [FEATURED]: 3,500 words taken directly from CIOs on what is actually happening inside large US Corporations when it comes to AI investment. Short answer: too many external vendors, trying to build in-house, requires net new thinking and architectures. Get in touch if you want to go deeper.
- Insight for What Caused the Big Bang: The insight came during a full-body swedish massage. After exploring Biologic Intelligence so long, I’m convinced that the way to activate the neurons in your body is through exercise and muscle massages. It unlocks distant memories and new insights.
- The Next Motor of the World [fountainhead unlocked]: general intelligence is real. Let’s hope you’re betting on the right horse.
- Early Stage Robotics & AI Funding Versus Market Size [fountainhead]: How big is the market and how much is something net new really worth?
- Correct Mix of R&D to Ops Budgets [fountainhead]: Something we’ve long felt but haven’t yet seen.
- What Customers Want from General Intelligence [fountainhead]: People have yet to really start asking the question of what new kinds of problems can general intelligence solve for my organization?
- Snap’s Roadshow Presentation Materials [fountainhead]: Interesting new way to do an IPO roadshow, going on now. March 1 is the IPO date.
- Access to Wealth for Everyone: Create a system of incentives that pull people to work hard and achieve more. Entitlements and handouts are not the answer. Governmental gamification could take us far.
- How Chatbots & AI Reshape Analytics: The first step is census data (yesterday, software). The next step is insights (today, narrow intelligence). The final step is automatic, action-based optimization (tomorrow, general intelligence).
II. Trust as the Only Mechanic
We’ve been talking about trust here betwixt Humanizing Tech’s digital walls. Some people look at it as yet another culture hack and something nice to pin up on the wall of an office. But we take it much more seriously. It’s the reason we created The Fountainhead Movement in the first place. A safe place for real talk between builders.
Trust is the great separater. It tells you who you should take money from, who you should hire, who you should fire, what partners you should work with, and ultimately what kinds of customers you’re willing to go to the extreme for.
Trust, my friends, is the only mechanic that matters in this world. It’s a spiritual thing. Your human sensors take in such incredible volumes of information that often the conscious part of your brain can’t decipher it all. And it’s the reason people say they have a “gut feeling”. Did you know the second place in your body with the most neurons, after your brain? It’s your stomach. When you get nervous, scared, and even feel love, it all happens in your stomach (not your heart).
So when you get a “bad vibe” from someone, it’s a message from the Universe to stay away.
Here’s a real-life example of how hard this is. A very close friend who’s raising money for a feature-length film set in Japan has someone on his team who is a cancer. But the guy introduced much of the investor community and some of the employees to the project. The question is whether you kick the power-hungry, distasteful person to the curb and risk the project because of it.
The response, from our trusted family, was without hesitation. He didn’t pass the Trust Test so anything you do with him will be tainted and is likely to cause even more mayhem in the future. Ditch the guy, at any cost, including the “bad money”. If you stand like a lighthouse, describe the qualities that the project will be run under and preach that to the investors, employees, actors, and the rest, people will get to decide for themselves who they want to work with.
It simultaneously attracts the right people and pushes away the wrong.
In another piece of BS news over the weekend, we found out that Uber has been harboring sexual predators within their organization and not doing anything about it. Shame on you. Your organization doesn’t pass the Trust Test. “High performer” is no excuse for breaking Trust.
Zero tolerance. One strike and you’re out. But our guts already know bad actors, so just don’t be a party to them in the first place and you’ll be just fine.
III. Be A Lighthouse
That brings us to our next point. You are the only one who will set the rules for your own life and the small, or large, piece of your organization. You set the boundaries. You set the culture. You set the hard lines in the sand that you defend to the end.
The single, shining lighthouse for us is Trust.
We hire for trust, in each of our organizations. Technical ability is a distant second. Interviews are about people, not about coding challenges. Some people don’t care about trust at all. They optimize short-term profits over everything else.
But you and I both know what end is in store.
The weird thing about trust, though, is that it’s quiet. The people you meet who you can trust with your life aren’t boisterous about it. It’s just an open-hearted smile. Everything else can be taught. But trust, cannot.
Finally, because this Diary entry was a little intense, it’s time for a little laughter. Don’t forget the divine comedy. Life is a journey meant to be lived with joy. As they say:
You shouldn’t take life too seriously. You’ll never get out alive.
~Van Wilder
— Sean
Read The Rest
29, 28, 27, 26, 25, 24, 23, 22, 21, 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
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Humanizing Tech is a premiere technological think tank for building humanity’s future. It covers autonomous robotics, self-learning AI, superhuman augmentation, personal hedge funds, editable DNA, SAAS space platforms, personal power stations, and video as an app. This newsletter is a peek inside the Editor’s mind.
