@cattywampus

Did my friend kill a buffalo?

I spoke with a friend who described this truly interesting thing he's doing for his work. It involves AI. After he finished describing it and the real value it's creating he wondered out loud... How many buffalo did I just kill?

Another friend I spoke to recently said a similar thing. He feels he needs to use AI or he'll be out of a job. There's a lot of pressure from the major players in the field he works in to use AI for cost cutting. Not so much for innovation, but that may come with constraints. He hopes.

He says he loves the innovation possibilities, and hates everything else about AI. 

I know a little bit about the field of complexity science. The thinking here is chaos theory (in a nutshell). We can't control the results of our actions. It's non-linear and positive and negative things emerge. Or things emerge and we label them as positive or negative.

  • Use AI to do a thing
  • That uses so much water to cool the data center that a buffalo can't find water
  • the buffalo dies
  • scavengers feed on the remains
  • etc

This is my very rudimentary understanding of the butterfly effect. The whole "A bird flaps its wings in NYC that causes a tornado in Japan" thing. 

How many steps ahead can you see when you play chess? 

Are you directly responsible for the buffalo dying? Or the scavenger getting to live another day?

Why can you control?     

Influence?    

Be concerned about?    

You're driving. Fifteen minutes ago someone "let someone in" disrupting the flow of traffic, and now you're in an accident. 

Everything is connected. 

My Buddhist friends would say:

  • We're all part of an interconnected web of life
  • Our actions have ripple effects on others and the world
  • This understanding is supported by wisdom and results in compassionate action 
  • We need to connect more deeply with life at all levels

Paradoxes in paradoxes. I'm tired of trying to make sense of it all. Just be nice to people, do what you think is right as long as it doesn't knowingly harm another. Apologize when you fuck up. 

That's all I got. 

thoughts