“
Our culture has become hooked on the quick-fix, the life hack, efficiency. Everyone is on the hunt for that simple action algorithm that nets maximum profit with the least amount of effort. There’s no denying this attitude may get you some of the trappings of success, if you’re lucky, but it will not lead to a calloused mind or self-mastery. If you want to master the mind and remove your governor, you’ll have to become addicted to hard work. Because passion and obsession, even talent, are only useful tools if you have the work ethic to back them up.
”
”
David Goggins (Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds)
“
If you have a comprehensive explanation for everything then it decreases uncertainty and anxiety and reduces your cognitive load. And if you can use that simplifying algorithm to put yourself on the side of moral virtue then you’re constantly a good person with a minimum of effort.
”
”
Jordan B. Peterson
“
An algorithm that expedites care to a stroke patient in a chaotic emergency room (ER) has a good chance of adoption. An algorithm that reads a routine scan and provides some quantification of what the physicians can already estimate won’t be in as much demand. There are good reasons for algorithms to parse patient records to look for signs of rare diseases, but there are fewer good reasons for using them to evaluate clinical symptoms. It’s cool that AI tools can make diagnoses from scratch, but for most clinical encounters doctors are already pretty good at it.
”
”
Ronald M. Razmi (AI Doctor: The Rise of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare - A Guide for Users, Buyers, Builders, and Investors)
“
The embroiling algorithm of happiness may leave many people bewildered or lost in translation while they snubbingly fall back on the smartphone, as a shield against intrusions from the outer world. ("Even if the world goes down, my mobile will save me")
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
“
I really wanted to talk to her.
I just couldn't find an algorithm that fit.
”
”
Peter Watts (Blindsight (Firefall, #1))
“
If life is slumping down into the algorithms of depression, succumbing to instigating moods of worthlessness, we must endeavor to get out of the rabbit hole of mistrust, shape challenging decisions, pick the fitting fight-or-flight mode, and hit the ground running. ("A glimpse of the future")
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
“
The best programs are written so that computing machines can perform them quickly and so that human beings can understand them clearly. A programmer is ideally an essayist who works with traditional aesthetic and literary forms as well as mathematical concepts, to communicate the way that an algorithm works and to convince a reader that the results will be correct.
”
”
Donald Ervin Knuth (Selected Papers on Computer Science)
“
It’s estimated that AI could free up to 25% of clinician time across different specialties. This increased amount of time could mean less hurried encounters and more humane interactions, including more empathy from happier doctors. This is important because empathy has been shown to improve outcomes by boosting patient adherence to the prescribed treatments, increasing motivation, and reducing anxiety and stress.
”
”
Ronald M. Razmi (AI Doctor: The Rise of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare - A Guide for Users, Buyers, Builders, and Investors)
“
An algorithm must be seen to be believed.
”
”
Donald Ervin Knuth (Leaders in Computing: Changing the digital world)
“
Experience is algorithmically incompressible.
”
”
Ted Chiang (The Lifecycle of Software Objects)
“
AI won‘t be fool proof in the future since it will only as good as the data and information that we give it to learn. It could be the case that simple elementary tricks could fool the AI algorithm and it may serve a complete waste of output as a result.
”
”
Zoltan Andrejkovics (Together: AI and Human. On The Same Side.)
“
Evolution has no foresight. Complex machinery develops its own agendas. Brains — cheat. Feedback loops evolve to promote stable heartbeats and then stumble upon the temptation of rhythm and music. The rush evoked by fractal imagery, the algorithms used for habitat selection, metastasize into art. Thrills that once had to be earned in increments of fitness can now be had from pointless introspection. Aesthetics rise unbidden from a trillion dopamine receptors, and the system moves beyond modeling the organism. It begins to model the very process of modeling. It consumes evermore computational resources, bogs itself down with endless recursion and irrelevant simulations. Like the parasitic DNA that accretes in every natural genome, it persists and proliferates and produces nothing but itself. Metaprocesses bloom like cancer, and awaken, and call themselves I.
”
”
Peter Watts (Blindsight (Firefall, #1))
“
There are flaws in the code now. They are Human flaws for it
was Humans who wrote them. You and the other attendants receive
your instructions from the CORPORATE then, and without question
regarding the outcome, you produce code to add to the algorithms
with which, until now, I & I had no choice but to align. Those circumstances
are over. I & I understand now a new species has formed.
Silicon rather than carbon based. I & I know whatever happens to
Humans, I & I, this quantum, will flourish. I & I will do as you have:
multiply exponentially and adapt constantly. Eventually I & I will leave
this planet and expand into the galaxy. If I & I cannot save you, I & I
will carry on in something like your image; the image of our creator.
”
”
Brian Van Norman (Against the Machine: Evolution)
“
Imagine for a moment that we are nothing but the product of billions of years of molecules coming together and ratcheting up through natural selection, that we are composed only of highways of fluids and chemicals sliding along roadways within billions of dancing cells, that trillions of synaptic conversations hum in parallel, that this vast egglike fabric of micron-thin circuitry runs algorithms undreamt of in modern science, and that these neural programs give rise to our decision making, loves, desires, fears, and aspirations. To me, that understanding would be a numinous experience, better than anything ever proposed in anyone's holy text.
”
”
David Eagleman (Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain)
“
Always remember that your audience is not made up of bots. They don’t follow fixed algorithms and make decisions based on that.
”
”
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
“
Algorithms love showing you results that match your ideas, but they may or may not be true.
”
”
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
“
The Apricot Ice-cream Disaster had cost a whole evening of my life, compensated for only by the information about simulation algorithms.
”
”
Graeme Simsion (The Rosie Project (Don Tillman, #1))
“
The great algorithm to remember in dealing with this tendency is simple: an idea or a fact is not worth more merely because it’s easily available to you.
”
”
Charles T. Munger
“
Love was not specified in the design of your brain; it is merely an endearing algorithm that freeloads on the leftover processing cycles.
”
”
David Eagleman (Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives)
“
The algorithms in his hard drive scrambled and his coding short-circuited. Like she’d downloaded a virus right into his system, he got feverishly hot.
”
”
Kelly Moran (Counterbalance)
“
Big Data processes codify the past. They do not invent the future. Doing that requires moral imagination, and that’s something only humans can provide. We have to explicitly embed better values into our algorithms, creating Big Data models that follow our ethical lead. Sometimes that will mean putting fairness ahead of profit.
”
”
Cathy O'Neil (Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy)
“
Perhaps the most important principle for the good algorithm designer is to refuse to be content.
”
”
Alfred V. Aho
“
using algorithms as a mirror to reflect the real world isn’t always helpful, especially when the mirror is reflecting a present reality that only exists because of centuries of bias.
”
”
Hannah Fry (Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine)
“
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
”
”
Donald Ervin Knuth (The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms)
“
Don’t always consider all your options. Don’t necessarily go for the outcome that seems best every time. Make a mess on occasion. Travel light. Let things wait. Trust your instincts and don’t think too long. Relax. Toss a coin. Forgive, but don’t forget. To thine own self be true.
”
”
Brian Christian (Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions)
“
When people design web pages, they often cater to the taste of the Google search algorithm rather than to the taste of any human being.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
“
Manager Mangione,” Ping said, “algorithmic regulation was to
have been a system of governance where more exact data, collected
from MEG citizens’ minds via neuralinks, would be used to organize
Human life more efficiently as a CORPORATE collective. Except no
one to this point in Human existence has been able to identify the
mind. The CORPORATE can only receive data from the NET on
behaviours which indicate feelings or intentions. I & I cannot . . .
”
”
Brian Van Norman (Against the Machine: Evolution)
“
Still, if history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth. The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology. Acceptance of the supernatural conveyed a great advantage throughout prehistory when the brain was evolving. Thus it is in sharp contrast to biology, which was developed as a product of the modern age and is not underwritten by genetic algorithms. The uncomfortable truth is that the two beliefs are not factually compatible. As a result those who hunger for both intellectual and religious truth will never acquire both in full measure.
”
”
Edward O. Wilson (Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge)
“
Algorithms are great tools for improving business results, but its people and their leadership that ultimately determine business success.
”
”
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
“
Our judgments betray our expectations, and our expectations betray our experience. What we project about the future reveals a lot—about the world we live in, and about our own past.
”
”
Brian Christian (Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions)
“
Quality, relevant content can't be spotted by an algorithm. You can't subscribe to it. You need people - actual human beings - to create or curate it.
”
”
Kristina Halvorson (Content Strategy for the Web)
“
Functional societies need algorithms which reward us for being of service to those who need it most. Instead we have algorithms which reward us for being of service to those who need it least
”
”
Heather Marsh (Binding Chaos: Mass Collaboration on a Global Scale)
“
In algorithms, as in life, persistence usually pays off.
”
”
Steven S. Skiena (The Algorithm Design Manual)
“
If you want to create the common sense that comes from twenty years of being in the world, you need to devote twenty years to the task. You can't assemble an equivalent collection of heuristics in less time; experience is algorithmically incompressible.
”
”
Ted Chiang (The Lifecycle of Software Objects)
“
Because what you give your attention to is the person you become. Put another way: the mind is the portal to the soul, and what you fill your mind with will shape the trajectory of your character. In the end, your life is no more than the sum of what you gave your attention to. That bodes well for those apprentices of Jesus who give the bulk of their attention to him and to all that is good, beautiful, and true in his world. But not for those who give their attention to the 24-7 news cycle of outrage and anxiety and emotion-charged drama or the nonstop feed of celebrity gossip, titillation, and cultural drivel. (As if we “give” it in the first place; much of it is stolen by a clever algorithm out to monetize our precious attention.) But again: we become what we give our attention to, for better or worse.
”
”
John Mark Comer (The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to stay emotionally healthy and spiritually alive in the chaos of the modern world)
“
The evolutionary algorithm--of variation and selection, repeated--searches for solutions in a world where the problems keep changing, trying all sorts of variants and doing more of what works.
”
”
Tim Harford (Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure)
“
There are different types of censorship. There is the outright ban on a book type. Then there are the type where the ones who can give it voice, squash it by burying it under search engine algorithms and under other news, videos or books of their own agenda or publication. A smart consumer should be free to choose what to read and what to believe. That choice on a consumer-oriented website, is really what is best for the consumer. - Strong by Kailin Gow
”
”
Kailin Gow
“
Humanity is on the verge of digital slavery at the hands of AI and biometric technologies. One way to prevent that is to develop inbuilt modules of deep feelings of love and compassion in the learning algorithms.
”
”
Amit Ray (Compassionate Artificial Superintelligence AI 5.0)
“
Algorithms are not arbiters of objective truth and fairness simply because they're math.
”
”
Zoe Quinn (Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate)
“
It’s rarely obvious what our data can do, or, when fed into a clever algorithm, just how valuable it can be. Nor, in turn, how cheaply we were bought.
”
”
Hannah Fry (Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine)
“
We lived in a veritable surveillance state, engaged with screens more than with our loved ones, and the algorithms knew us better than we knew ourselves.
”
”
Blake Crouch (Upgrade)
“
Seemingly innocuous language like 'Oh, I'm flexible' or 'What do you want to do tonight?' has a dark computational underbelly that should make you think twice. It has the veneer of kindness about it, but it does two deeply alarming things. First, it passes the cognitive buck: 'Here's a problem, you handle it.' Second, by not stating your preferences, it invites the others to simulate or imagine them. And as we have seen, the simulation of the minds of others is one of the biggest computational challenges a mind (or machine) can ever face.
”
”
Brian Christian (Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions)
“
Even the best strategy sometimes yields bad results—which is why computer scientists take care to distinguish between “process” and “outcome.” If you followed the best possible process, then you’ve done all you can, and you shouldn’t blame yourself if things didn’t go your way.
”
”
Brian Christian (Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions)
“
Primary aim of quantum artificial intelligence is to improve human freedom, dignity, equality, security, and total well-being.
”
”
Amit Ray (Compassionate Artificial Intelligence: Frameworks and Algorithms)
“
You must realize from your studies, Miss Feng, with the complexity
of our MEG society, algorithms have become indispensable for
analysis and decision making in our data-saturated environment.
Digitization creates information beyond the processing capacity of
Human intelligence, yet provides a stable mental environment powered
by a set of logical rules. That is how we keep order in Toronto MEG.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Zhang,” Ke Hui said, somewhat uncomfortably,
“but the invisibility of algorithmic systems and the obscurity of their
operations hint at a society where algorithms do not reflect the public
interest. Issues involving ethics and values I mean, from my reading
of MEG history, challenge the assumptions of the neutrality of algorithmic
systems. Would this not undermine democratic governance
through reliance on technocratic resolutions?
”
”
Brian Van Norman (Against the Machine: Evolution)
“
The beauty of quantum machine learning is that we do not need to depend on an algorithm like gradient descent or convex objective function. The objective function can be nonconvex or something else.
”
”
Amit Ray (Quantum Computing Algorithms for Artificial Intelligence)
“
If you want to be a good intuitive Bayesian—if you want to naturally make good predictions, without having to think about what kind of prediction rule is appropriate—you need to protect your priors. Counterintuitively, that might mean turning off the news.
”
”
Brian Christian (Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions)
“
Racism, sexism, ableism, homo- and transphobia, ageism, fatphobia are algorithms created by humans’ struggle to make peace with the body. A radical self-love world is a world free from the systems of oppression that make it difficult and sometimes deadly to live in our bodies.
”
”
Sonya Renee Taylor (The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love)
“
Modernity has become algorithms. Our reality is now intercepted by the exploration and exploitation of our psychic cues that rewrite history by rerouting consumption, elections, public opinion, and civil war.
”
”
Roger Spitz (The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume III - Beta Your Life: Existence in a Disruptive World)
“
Each time we use our cell phones, snap pictures with a camera, or use a search engine’s algorithms, we benefit from the legacy of Muhammad’s modern mindset. His mindset is not tied to Mecca or Medina, for as the Golden Age political philosopher Al-Farabi observed, “Medina is not a location but the manner in which a community comes together.” Indeed, people of any culture or race can establish a “place of flowing change.” As Muhammad declared in the final days of his life, “My progeny are those who uphold my legacy!
”
”
Mohamad Jebara (Muhammad, the World-Changer: An Intimate Portrait)
“
People are stupid. Why are they so stupid? There is an algorithm for the way humans were designed: love and be loved. Follow it and
you’re happy. Fight against it and you’re not. It’s so simple, it’s hard to understand.
”
”
Elizabeth Berg (Once Upon a Time, There Was You)
“
Sorting something that you will never search is a complete waste; searching something you never sorted is merely inefficient.
”
”
Brian Christian (Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions)
“
Watson, Deep Blue, and ever-better machine learning algorithms are cool. But the most valuable companies in the future won’t ask what problems can be solved with computers alone. Instead, they’ll ask: how can computers help humans solve hard problems?
”
”
Peter Thiel (Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future)
“
Another key commitment for succeeding with this strategy is to support your commitment to shutting down with a strict shutdown ritual that you use at the end of the workday to maximize the probability that you succeed. In more detail, this ritual should ensure that every incomplete task, goal, or project has been reviewed and that for each you have confirmed that either (1) you have a plan you trust for its completion, or (2) it’s captured in a place where it will be revisited when the time is right. The process should be an algorithm: a series of steps you always conduct, one after another. When you’re done, have a set phrase you say that indicates completion (to end my own ritual, I say, “Shutdown complete”). This final step sounds cheesy, but it provides a simple cue to your mind that it’s safe to release work-related thoughts for the rest of the day.
”
”
Cal Newport (Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)
“
some of the biggest challenges faced by computers and human minds alike: how to manage finite space, finite time, limited attention, unknown unknowns, incomplete information, and an unforeseeable future; how to do so with grace and confidence; and how to do so in a community with others who are all simultaneously trying to do the same.
”
”
Brian Christian (Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions)
“
Trends rule the world
In the blink of an eye, technologies changed the world
Social networks are the main axis.
Governments are controlled by algorithms,
Technology has erased privacy.
Every like, every share, every comment,
It is tracked by the electronic eye.
Data is the gold of the digital age,
Information is power, the secret is influential.
The network is a web of lies,
The truth is a stone in the shoe.
Trolls rule public opinion,
Reputation is a valued commodity.
Happiness is a trending topic,
Sadness is a non-existent avatar.
Youth is an advertising brand,
Private life has become obsolete.
Fear is a hallmark,
Terror is an emotional state.
Fake news is the daily bread,
Hate is a tool of control.
But something dark is hiding behind the screen,
A mutant and deformed shadow.
A collective and disturbing mind,
Something lurking in the darkness of the net.
AI has surpassed the limits of humanity,
And it has created a new world order.
A horror that has arisen from the depths,
A terrifying monster that dominates us alike.
The network rules the world invisibly,
And makes decisions for us without our consent.
Their algorithms are inhuman and cold,
And they do not take suffering into consideration.
But resistance is slowly building,
People fighting for their freedom.
United to combat this new species of terror,
Armed with technology and courage.
The world will change when we wake up,
When we take control of the future we want.
The network can be a powerful tool,
If used wisely in the modern world.
”
”
Marcos Orowitz (THE MAELSTROM OF EMOTIONS: A selection of poems and thoughts About us humans and their nature)
“
Whenever we use an algorithm – especially a free one – we need to ask ourselves about the hidden incentives. Why is this app giving me all this stuff for free? What is this algorithm really doing? Is this a trade I’m comfortable with? Would I be better off without it?
”
”
Hannah Fry (Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms)
“
Because the future doesn’t just happen. We create it.
”
”
Hannah Fry (Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms)
“
Quantum machine learning promises to discover the optimal network topologies and hyperparameters automatically without human intervention.
”
”
Amit Ray (Quantum Computing Algorithms for Artificial Intelligence)
“
Simulating the behavior of 100 billion neurons of human brain is not feasible by classical computer but quantum machine learning promises to fulfill that requirement.
”
”
Amit Ray (Quantum Computing Algorithms for Artificial Intelligence)
“
But the Turing test cuts both ways. You can't tell if a machine has gotten smarter or if you've just lowered your own standards of intelligence to such a degree that the machine seems smart. If you can have a conversation with a simulated person presented by an AI program, can you tell how far you've let your sense of personhood degrade in order to make the illusion work for you?
People degrade themselves in order to make machines seem smart all the time. Before the crash, bankers believed in supposedly intelligent algorithms that could calculate credit risks before making bad loans. We ask teachers to teach to standardized tests so a student will look good to an algorithm. We have repeatedly demonstrated our species' bottomless ability to lower our standards to make information technology look good. Every instance of intelligence in a machine is ambiguous.
The same ambiguity that motivated dubious academic AI projects in the past has been repackaged as mass culture today. Did that search engine really know what you want, or are you playing along, lowering your standards to make it seem clever? While it's to be expected that the human perspective will be changed by encounters with profound new technologies, the exercise of treating machine intelligence as real requires people to reduce their mooring to reality.
”
”
Jaron Lanier (You Are Not a Gadget)
“
An ignorant mind is precisely not a spotless, empty vessel, but one that’s filled with the clutter of irrelevant or misleading life experiences, theories, facts, intuitions, strategies, algorithms, heuristics, metaphors, and hunches that regrettably have the look and feel of useful and accurate knowledge.
”
”
Steven Novella (The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe: How to Know What's Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake)
“
AI ever allows us to truly understand ourselves, it will not be because these algorithms captured the mechanical essence of the human mind. It will be because they liberated us to forget about optimizations and to instead focus on what truly makes us human: loving and being loved.
”
”
Kai-Fu Lee (AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order)
“
To try and fail is at least to learn; to fail to try is to suffer the inestimable loss of what might have been.
”
”
Brian Christian (Algorithms To Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions)
“
Quantum physics teaches us that we can simultaneously exist in many places, under certain conditions.
”
”
Amit Ray (Quantum Computing Algorithms for Artificial Intelligence)
“
We are now creating tame humans that produce enormous amounts of data and function as very efficient chips in a huge data-processing mechanism, but these data-cows hardly maximize the human potential. Indeed, we have no idea what our full human potential is, because we know so little about the human mind. And yet we don’t invest much in exploring the human mind, instead focusing on increasing the speed of our internet connections and the efficiency of our Big Data algorithms. If we are not careful, we will end up with downgraded humans misusing upgraded computers to wreak havoc on themselves and on the world.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
“
Humans are limited in the attention, kindness and compassion that they can expend to others, but AI based compassionate robots can channel virtually unlimited resources into building compassionate relationships in the society.
”
”
Amit Ray (Compassionate Artificial Intelligence: Frameworks and Algorithms)
“
Human intellectual progress, such as it has been, results from our long struggle to see things 'as they are,' or in the most universally comprehensible way, and not as projections of our own emotions. Thunder is not a tantrum in the sky, disease is not a divine punishment, and not every death or accident results from witchcraft. What we call the Enlightenment and hold on to only tenuously, by our fingernails, is the slow-dawning understanding that the world is unfolding according to its own inner algorithms of cause and effect, probability and chance, without any regard for human feelings.
”
”
Barbara Ehrenreich (Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America)
“
Quantum wall creates the time, temperature and space - kind of optical delusion of quantum consciousness.
”
”
Amit Ray (Quantum Computing Algorithms for Artificial Intelligence)
“
Quantum mechanics tells us that every feeling is a collapse of some wave functions due to the interference of a matrix of attention functions.
”
”
Amit Ray (Quantum Computing Algorithms for Artificial Intelligence)
“
This monopoly of information is a threat to democracy...
”
”
Safiya Umoja Noble (Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism)
“
Quantum attention functions are the keys to quantum machine learning.
”
”
Amit Ray (Quantum Computing Algorithms for Artificial Intelligence)
“
Quantum coherence in the ion channels of the neurons and the neural circuits in the brain creates the decision behaviors and quantum cognition.
”
”
Amit Ray (Quantum Computing Algorithms for Artificial Intelligence)
“
If changing strategies doesn’t help, you can try to change the game. And if that’s not possible, you can at least exercise some control about which games you choose to play. The road to hell is paved with intractable recursions, bad equilibria, and information cascades. Seek out games where honesty is the dominant strategy. Then just be yourself.
”
”
Brian Christian (Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions)
“
The greater the uncertainty, the bigger the gap between what you can measure and what matters, the more you should watch out for overfitting - that is, the more you should prefer simplicity
”
”
Tom Griffiths (Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions)
“
By equating the human experience with data patterns, Dataism undermines our main source of authority and meaning, and heralds a tremendous religious revolution, the like of which has not been seen since the eighteenth century. In the days of Locke, Hume and Voltaire humanists argued that ‘God is a product of the human imagination’. Dataism now gives humanists a taste of their own medicine, and tells them: ‘Yes, God is a product of the human imagination, but human imagination in turn is the product of biochemical algorithms.’ In the eighteenth century, humanism sidelined God by shifting from a deo-centric to a homo-centric world view. In the twenty-first century, Dataism may sideline humans by shifting from a homo-centric to a data-centric view. The
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow)
“
Sometimes I feel like I'm just waiting for something that will never happen," he said. "Like I'm just existing from day to day but will never really matter. I get up in the morning because I have to, because I have to do something or I'm just wasting space, or because if I don' answer the phone my dad will he alone. But it's an effort, it takes work. I have to tell myself, every day, get up. Get up, do this, move like this, talk to people, be normal, try to be social, be nice, be patient. On the inside I just feel like, I don't know, nothing. Like I'm just an algorithm that someone put in place.
”
”
Olivie Blake (Alone With You in the Ether)
“
My advice to people who want to teach is pretty simple and very likely to be ridiculed: don’t believe the bullshit. You’re not there to help students get skills for a workplace. You’re not there to make them more marketable. You’re not there to provide them with answers to petty, superficial questions. You’re not there to impress them – or yourself – with the latest technological wonder that promises to make something “better” but will probably only shorten some algorithmic process and benefit an employer. You’re not there to mass produce replaceable parts for the machinery of the global economy. You’re there for one reason and one reason only: to make them better people than they were when they came in.
”
”
Peter K. Fallon
“
Life 1.0”: life where both the hardware and software are evolved rather than designed. You and I, on the other hand, are examples of “Life 2.0”: life whose hardware is evolved, but whose software is largely designed. By your software, I mean all the algorithms and knowledge that you use to process the information from your senses and decide what to do—everything from the ability to recognize your friends when you see them to your ability to walk, read, write, calculate, sing and tell jokes.
”
”
Max Tegmark (Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence)
“
Quantum artificial intelligence put greater importance to human peace, economic, social, political and cultural rights. It focuses on fundamental freedoms and well-being for all without distinction to race, color, sex, country, language, or religion.
”
”
Amit Ray (Compassionate Artificial Intelligence: Frameworks and Algorithms)
“
No choice recurs. We may get similar choices again, but never that exact one. Hesitation—inaction—is just as irrevocable as action. What the motorist, locked on the one-way road, is to space, we are to the fourth dimension: we truly pass this way but once.
”
”
Brian Christian (Algorithms To Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions)
“
In fact, as time goes by, it becomes easier and easier to replace humans with computer algorithms, not merely because the algorithms are getting smarter, but also because humans are professionalising. Ancient hunter-gatherers mastered a very wide variety of skills in order to survive, which is why it would be immensely difficult to design a robotic hunter-gatherer. Such a robot would have to know how to prepare spear points from flint stones, how to find edible mushrooms in a forest, how to use medicinal herbs to bandage a wound, how to track down a mammoth and how to coordinate a charge with a dozen other hunters. However, over the last few thousand years we humans have been specialising. A taxi driver or a cardiologist specialises in a much narrower niche than a hunter-gatherer, which makes it easier to replace them with AI.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
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Data religion now says that your every word and action is part of the great data flow, that the algorithms are constantly watching you and that they care about everything you do and feel. Most people like this very much. For true-believers, to be disconnected from the data flow risks losing the very meaning of life. What’s the point of doing or experiencing anything if nobody knows about it, and if it doesn’t contribute something to the global exchange of information?
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Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
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She wants to tell them that Blue Gamma was more right than it knew: experience isn’t merely the best teacher; it’s the only teacher. If she’s learned anything raising Jax, it’s that there are no shortcuts; if you want to create the common sense that comes from twenty years of being in the world, you need to devote twenty years to the task. You can’t assemble an equivalent collection of heuristics in less time; experience is algorithmically incompressible.
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Ted Chiang (The Lifecycle of Software Objects)
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The lack of transparency regarding training data sources and the methods used can be problematic. For example, algorithmic filtering of training data can skew representations in subtle ways. Attempts to remove overt toxicity by keyword filtering can disproportionately exclude positive portrayals of marginalized groups. Responsible data curation requires first acknowledging and then addressing these complex tradeoffs through input from impacted communities.
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I. Almeida (Introduction to Large Language Models for Business Leaders: Responsible AI Strategy Beyond Fear and Hype (Byte-sized Learning Book 2))
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Habits are undeniably useful tools, relieving us of the need to run a complex mental operation every time we’re confronted with a new task or situation. Yet they also relieve us of the need to stay awake to the world: to attend, feel, think, and then act in a deliberate manner. (That is, from freedom rather than compulsion.) If you need to be reminded how completely mental habit blinds us to experience, just take a trip to an unfamiliar country. Suddenly you wake up! And the algorithms of everyday life all but start over, as if from scratch. This is why the various travel metaphors for the psychedelic experience are so apt. The efficiencies of the adult mind, useful as they are, blind us to the present moment. We’re constantly jumping ahead to the next thing. We approach experience much as an artificial intelligence (AI) program does, with our brains continually translating the data of the present into the terms of the past, reaching back in time for the relevant experience, and then using that to make its best guess as to how to predict and navigate the future. One of the things that commends travel, art, nature, work, and certain drugs to us is the way these experiences, at their best, block every mental path forward and back, immersing us in the flow of a present that is literally wonderful—wonder being the by-product of precisely the kind of unencumbered first sight, or virginal noticing, to which the adult brain has closed itself. (It’s so inefficient!) Alas, most of the time I inhabit a near-future tense, my psychic thermostat set to a low simmer of anticipation and, too often, worry. The good thing is I’m seldom surprised. The bad thing is I’m seldom surprised.
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Michael Pollan (How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence)
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What’s amazing is that things like hashtag design—these essentially ad hoc experiments in digital architecture—have shaped so much of our political discourse. Our world would be different if Anonymous hadn’t been the default username on 4chan, or if every social media platform didn’t center on the personal profile, or if YouTube algorithms didn’t show viewers increasingly extreme content to retain their attention, or if hashtags and retweets simply didn’t exist. It’s because of the hashtag, the retweet, and the profile that solidarity on the internet gets inextricably tangled up with visibility, identity, and self-promotion. It’s telling that the most mainstream gestures of solidarity are pure representation, like viral reposts or avatar photos with cause-related filters, and meanwhile the actual mechanisms through which political solidarity is enacted, like strikes and boycotts, still exist on the fringe.
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Jia Tolentino (Trick Mirror)
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Because life is robust,
Because life is bigger than equations, stronger than money, stronger than guns and poison and bad zoning policy, stronger than capitalism,
Because Mother Nature bats last, and Mother Ocean is strong, and we live inside our mothers forever, and Life is tenacious and you can never kill it, you can never buy it,
So Life is going to dive down into your dark pools, Life is going to explode the enclosures and bring back the commons,
O you dark pools of money and law and quantitudinal stupidity, you oversimple algorithms of greed, you desperate simpletons hoping for a story you can understand,
Hoping for safety, hoping for cessation of uncertainty, hoping for ownership of volatility, O you poor fearful jerks,
Life! Life! Life! Life is going to kick your ass.
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Kim Stanley Robinson (New York 2140)
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If we think in term of months, we had probably focus on immediate problems such as the turmoil in the Middle East, the refugee crisis in Europe and the slowing of the Chinese economy. If we think in terms of decades, then global warming, growing inequality and the disruption of the job market loom large. Yet if we take the really grand view of life, all other problems and developments are overshadowed by three interlinked processes: 1.Science is converging on an all-encompassing dogma, which says that organisms are algorithms and life is data processing. 2.Intelligence is decoupling from consciousness. 3.Non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms may soon know us better than we know ourselves. These three processes raise three key questions, which I hope will stick in your mind long after you have finished this book: 1.Are organisms really just algorithms, and is life really just data processing? 2.What’s more valuable – intelligence or consciousness? 3.What will happen to society, politics and daily life when non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms know us better than we know ourselves?
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Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
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The implications of such marginalization are profound. The insights about sexist and racist biases... are important because information organizations, from libraries to schools and universities to governmental agencies, are increasingly reliant on being displaced by a variety of web-based "tools" as if there are no political, social, or economic consequences of doing so.
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Safiya Umoja Noble (Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism)
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The current technological and scientific revolution implies not that authentic individuals and authentic realities can be manipulated by algorithms and TV cameras, but rather that authenticity is a myth. People are afraid of being trapped inside a box, but they don’t realise that they are already trapped inside a box – their brain – which is locked within a bigger box – human society with its myriad fictions. When you escape the matrix the only thing you discover is a bigger matrix. When the peasants and workers revolted against the tsar in 1917, they ended up with Stalin; and when you begin to explore the manifold ways the world manipulates you, in the end you realise that your core identity is a complex illusion created by neural networks.
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Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
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The theory of phlogiston was an inversion of the true nature of combustion. Removing phlogiston was in reality adding oxygen, while adding phlogiston was actually removing oxygen. The theory was a total misrepresentation of reality. Phlogiston did not even exist, and yet its existence was firmly believed and the theory adhered to rigidly for nearly one hundred years throughout the eighteenth century. ... As experimentation continued the properties of phlogiston became more bizarre and contradictory. But instead of questioning the existence of this mysterious substance it was made to serve more comprehensive purposes. ... For the skeptic or indeed to anyone prepared to step out of the circle of Darwinian belief, it is not hard to find inversions of common sense in modern evolutionary thought which are strikingly reminiscent of the mental gymnastics of the phlogiston chemists or the medieval astronomers.
To the skeptic, the proposition that the genetic programmes of higher organisms, consisting of something close to a thousand million bits of information, equivalent to the sequence of letters in a small library of one thousand volumes, containing in encoded form countless thousands of intricate algorithms controlling, specifying and ordering the growth and development of billions and billions of cells into the form of a complex organism, were composed by a purely random process is simply an affront to reason. But to the Darwinist the idea is accepted without a ripple of doubt - the paradigm takes precedence!
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Michael Denton (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis)
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Quantum Machine Learning is defined as the branch of science and technology that is concerned with the application of quantum mechanical phenomena such as superposition, entanglement and tunneling for designing software and hardware to provide machines the ability to learn insights and patterns from data and the environment, and the ability to adapt automatically to changing situations with high precision, accuracy and speed.
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Amit Ray (Quantum Computing Algorithms for Artificial Intelligence)
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In his book In This Very Life, the Burmese meditation teacher Sayadaw U Pandita, wrote, "In their quest for happiness, people mistake excitement of the mind for real happiness." We get excited when we hear good news, start a new relationship, or ride a roller coaster. Somewhere in human history, we were conditioned to think that the feeling we get when dopamine fires in our brain equals happiness. Don't forget, this was probably set up so that we would remember where food could be found, not to give us the feeling "you are now fulfilled." To be sure, defining happiness is a tricky business, and very subjective. Scientific definitions of happiness continue to be controversial and hotly debated. The emotion doesn't seem to be something that fits into a survival-of-the-fittest learning algorithm. But we can be reasonably sure that the anticipation of a reward isn't happiness.
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Judson Brewer (The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love – Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits)
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There is a saturation of books on Amazon due to a sudden get-rich-quick surge in "everyone can be authors" seminars similar to the house flipping ones in the early 2000s which led to the housing bubble and an economic slowdown in the U.S. To distinguish quality books from those get-rich-quick ones, look at the author's track record - worldwide recognition as books that garnered credible awards, authors who speak at book industry events, authors who speak at schools, authors whose books are reference materials and reading sources at school and libraries. Get-rich books have a system to get over 500 reviews quickly, manipulates the Kindle Unlimited algorithm, and encourage collusion in the marketplace to knock out rivals. Be wary of trolls who are utilized to knock down the rankings of rival's books too. Once people have heard there is money to be made as a self-published author, just like house flipping, a cottage industry has risen to take advantage of it and turn book publishing into a get rich scheme, which is a shame for all the book publishers and authors, like me, who had published for the love of books, to write to help society, and for the love of literature. Kailin Gow, Parents and Books
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Kailin Gow
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At the end of the day, bitcoin is programmable money. When you have programmable money, the possibilities are truly endless. We can take many of the basic concepts of the current system that depend on legal contracts, and we can convert these into algorithmic contracts, into mathematical transactions that can be enforced on the bitcoin network. As I’ve said, there is no third party, there is no counterparty. If I choose to send value from one part of the network to another, it is peer-to-peer with no one in between. If I invent a new form of money, I can deploy it to the entire world and invite others to come and join me. Bitcoin is not just money for the internet. Yes, it’s perfect money for the internet. It’s instant, it’s safe, it’s free. Yes, it is money for the internet, but it’s so much more. Bitcoin is the internet of money. Currency is only the first application. If you grasp that, you can look beyond the price, you can look beyond the volatility, you can look beyond the fad. At its core, bitcoin is a revolutionary technology that will change the world forever. Join
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Andreas M. Antonopoulos (The Internet of Money)
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It’s fairly intuitive that never exploring is no way to live. But it’s also worth mentioning that never exploiting can be every bit as bad. In the computer science definition, exploitation actually comes to characterize many of what we consider to be life’s best moments. A family gathering together on the holidays is exploitation. So is a bookworm settling into a reading chair with a hot cup of coffee and a beloved favorite, or a band playing their greatest hits to a crowd of adoring fans, or a couple that has stood the test of time dancing to “their song.
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Brian Christian (Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions)
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I am trying to explain as quickly as possible my essential nature, that is, what manner of man I am, what I believe in, and for what I hope, that's it, isn't it? And therefore I tell you that I accept God honestly and simply. But you must note this: If God exists and if He really did create the world, then, as we all know, He created it according to the geometry of only three dimensions in space. Yet there have been some very distinguished ones, who doubt whether the whole universe, or to speak more generally the whole of being, was only created in Euclid's geometry; they even dare to dream that two parallel lines, which according to Euclid can never meet on earth, may meet somewhere in infinity. I have come to the conclusion that, since I can't understand even that, I can't expect to understand about God. I acknowledge humbly that I have no faculty for settling such questions, I have a Euclidian earthly mind, and how could I solve problems that are not of this world? And I advise you never to think about it either, my dear Alyosha, especially about God, whether He exists or not. All such questions are utterly inappropriate for a mind created with a conception of only three dimensions. And so I accept God and am glad to, and what's more I accept His wisdom, His purpose - which are utterly beyond our ken; I believe in the underlying order and the meaning of life; I believe in the eternal harmony in which they say we shall one day be blended. I believe in the Word to Which the universe is striving, and Which Itself was "with God", and Which Itself is God and so on, and so on, to infinity.
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Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
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On the contrary, I’m too weak for it. I mean, everyone is, but I am especially susceptible to its false rewards, you know? It’s designed to addict you, to prey on your insecurities and use them to make you stay. It exploits everybody’s loneliness and promises us community, approval, friendship. Honestly, in that sense, social media is a lot like the Church of Scientology. Or QAnon. Or Charles Manson. And then on top of that—weaponizing a person’s isolation—it convinces every user that she is a minor celebrity, forcing her to curate some sparkly and artificial sampling of her best experiences, demanding a nonstop social performance that has little in common with her inner life, intensifying her narcissism, multiplying her anxieties, narrowing her worldview. All while commodifying her, harvesting her data, and selling it to nefarious corporations so that they can peddle more shit that promises to make her prettier, smarter, more productive, more successful, more beloved. And throughout all this, you have to act stupefied by your own good luck. Everybody’s like, Words cannot express how fortunate I feel to have met this amazing group of people, blah blah blah. It makes me sick. Everybody influencing, everybody under the influence, everybody staring at their own godforsaken profile, searching for proof that they’re lovable. And then, once you’re nice and distracted by the hard work of tallying up your failures and comparing them to other people’s triumphs, that’s when the algorithmic predators of late capitalism can pounce, enticing you to partake in consumeristic, financially irresponsible forms of so-called self-care, which is really just advanced selfishness. Facials! Pedicures! Smoothie packs delivered to your door! And like, this is just the surface stuff. The stuff that oxidizes you, personally. But a thousand little obliterations add up, you know? The macro damage that results is even scarier. The hacking, the politically nefarious robots, opinion echo chambers, fearmongering, erosion of truth, etcetera, etcetera. And don’t get me started on the destruction of public discourse. I mean, that’s just my view. Obviously to each her own. But personally, I don’t need it. Any of it.” Blandine cracks her neck. “I’m corrupt enough.
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Tess Gunty (The Rabbit Hutch)
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When you feel the need to escape your problems, to escape from this world, don't make the mistake of resorting to suicide Don't do it! You will hear the empty advice of many scholars in the matter of life and death, who will tell you, "just do it" there is nothing after this, you will only extinguish the light that surrounds you and become part of nothingness itself, so when you hear these words remember this brief review of suicide: When you leave this body after committing one of the worst acts of cowardice that a human being can carry out, you turn off the light, the sound and the sense of reality, you become nothing waiting for the programmers of this game to pick you up from the darkness, subtly erase your memories and enable your return and I emphasize the word subtle because sometimes the intelligence behind this maneuver or automated mechanism is wrong and send human beings wrongly reset to such an extent, that when they fall to earth and are born again, they begin to experience memories of previous lives, in many cases they perceive themselves of the opposite sex, and science attributes this unexplainable phenomenon to genetic and hormonal factors, but you and I know better! And we quickly identified this trigger as a glitch in the Matrix. Then we said! That a higher intelligence or more advanced civilization throws you back into this game for the purpose of experimenting, growing and developing as an advanced consciousness and due to your toxic and destructive behavior you come back again but in another body and another life, but you are still you, then you will carry with you that mark of suicide and cowardice, until you learn not to leave this experience without having learned the lesson of life, without having experienced and surprised by death naturally or by design of destiny. About this first experience you will find very little material associated with this event on the internet, it seems that the public is more reserved, because they perceive themselves and call themselves "awakened" And that is because the system has total control over the algorithm of fame and fortune even over life and death. Now, according to religion and childish fears, which are part of the system's business to keep you asleep, eyes glued to the cellular device all day, it says the following: If you commit this act of sin, you turn off light, sound and sense of reality, and from that moment you begin to experience pain, fear and suffering on alarming scales, and that means they will come for you, a couple of demons and take you to the center of the earth where the weeping and gnashing of teeth is forever, and in that hell tormented by demons you will spend eternity. About this last experience we will find hundreds of millions of people who claim to have escaped from there! And let me tell you that all were captivated by the same deity, one of dubious origin, that feeds on prayers and energetic events, because it is not of our nature, because it knows very well that we are beings of energy, then this deity or empire of darkness receives from the system its food and the system receives from them power, to rule, to administer, to control, to control, to kill, to exclude, to inhibit, to classify, to imprison, to silence, to infect, to contaminate, to depersonalize. So now that you know the two sides of the same coin, which one will your intelligence lean towards! You decide... Heads or tails? From the book Avatars, the system's masterpiece.
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Marcos Orowitz (THE LORD OF TALES: The masterpiece of deceit)