Antonym: The Option Engine Edition
AI strikes, nuclear-proof trees and the art of problem solving.
Dear Reader
This week, Antonym returns to its roots – a collection of amazing things I learned this week - and also visits its weird future by co-piloting with our AI tool of the week, Raycast, a kind of instant search bar which you can call upon in any document or webpage and start talking to like ChatGPT. Where I’ve used Raycast I’ve included Q&A style dialogue, with my questions in bold type and its responses as quotes in italics. I’ve also used my Orwellbot on the Poe app to help tighten up some of the baggy copy, but as you will note – not all of it.
Last week we saw two small harbingers of the near future: the first industrial action citing AI as an issue (Writers Guild of America objecting to their scripts being fed to machines that will replace them) and the first company to blame the new wave of AI for a drop in its earnings. Chegg, an education software company said its study-guide business had lost 20% of its revenue since ChatGPT came online.
First up is another bit of AI fun (I told you it would be back)...
“AI is an option engine, not an answer engine.”
This week I attended an excellent webinar from Stanford University, led by Perry Klebahn of the university’s design school (called a “d.school”, which rhymes with cool) and guest Sebastian Krakowski from the Stockholm School of Economics (which rhymes with very little).
Resonating with the themes we explored in the Antonym Special Edition Idea-Finding With AI, Perry said that people misunderstand tools like ChatGPT when they treat them like something that will tell them things. AI is much better at taking your enquiry and giving lots of options.
What AI lacks, both academics stressed, was the human ability to spot the brilliant ideas in there. It can’t be surprised and it can’t be curious. Coming up with breakthrough design ideas and amazing innovations through design thinking is about generating quantity – many, many wild ideas of varying quality – and then systematically working through them to find the most interesting answers.
With an AI working alongside us, we can generate many times the number of ideas we might come up with on our own. And then we can use them to hone in on and build on the elements which give us really useful and interesting new solutions.
Homework 2.0
Stanford’s d.school (design school) has an innovative approach to homework, which was discussed in a recent webinar, offers a useful perspective on the role of technology in education. Rather than simply providing students with fixed solutions to problems, the school encourages them to use artificial intelligence to generate multiple solution options to a problem. This process is followed by a rigorous editing, selecting, and consolidating phase, where students hone their skills in discernment, evaluation, and critical thinking. In the age of intelligent machines, the most valuable skills we can cultivate are those related to scrutinising, refining, and questioning the output of these machines.
Below is an article and the original webinar if you would like to go deeper into this topic:
Stanford University webinar (you will need to register to watch the video).
“Artificial intelligence and the changing sources of competitive advantage.” – an academic paper by Sebastian Krakowski from 2022 that looks at chess as an example of how new ways of thinking come from competing with hybrid teams of humans and AI.
Wes Wars
The meme de jour (at least in my Gen X / millennial-adjacent strata of internet culture) is things in the style of Wes Anderson. This is a sweet trailer for an imaginary remake of Star Wars, using AI (what else) to create a mostly plausible trailer:
Trees that survived an atom bomb
The temperature on the ground in the centre of the atomic bomb blast at Hiroshima reached 3-4,000 degrees, turning people into shadows on walls. But Gingko trees, which send their roots very deep into the ground, survived and grew again. The New York Times this week told the story of people who plant seeds from these trees around the world. The organisation behind this is the Green Legacy Hiroshima.
A map of trees planted from seeds from trees that survived the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
Here’s a lovely RTW news story about trees being cultivated in Cork.
I’ll also note that Cork’s a city close to my heart as my Grandmother grew up there. She used to tell me the terrifying story of the burning of Cork in 1920 by British paramilitary police. But that’s another story, for another day…
Amazing lyric of the week
Once I took your medication to see what it's like
And now I have act like I can't read your mind
— boygenius, "Cool About It"
Here they are singing it at Coachella. It’s a very lovely song.
Word of the week: Dyscalculia
It’s an alien word to say: dyscalculia is pronounced: “diss-cal-cool-lee-ah”.
Define dyscalculic.
[AI] A person with dyscalculia. Dyscalculia is a specific learning disability that affects a person’s ability to understand and work with numbers and mathematical concepts. People with dyscalculia may have difficulty with tasks such as counting, adding, subtracting, and recognizing patterns in numbers.
Is it a new condition?
[AI] No, dyscalculia is not a new condition. It has been recognized for many years, although it is still not as well-known as some other learning disabilities such as dyslexia. However, with increased awareness and understanding of dyscalculia, more resources and support are becoming available for those who are affected by it.
Reading: The Art of Problem Solving, by Russell Ackoff
I started reading an old book (1970s) on systems thinking and problem solving this week and wanted to share it with you. I’ve run out of time and energy now, so I’ve done a quick interview with the Raycast AI, and fact checked it, and here it is:
Can you give me a synopsis of The Art of Problem Solving by Russell Ackoff
“The Art of Problem Solving” by Russell Ackoff is a book that presents a problem-solving approach that emphasises understanding and addressing the underlying systemic causes of problems. Ackoff argues that many problems are misdiagnosed or mistreated because they are viewed in isolation, rather than as part of a larger system. He advocates for a holistic approach that involves understanding the relationships and interactions within a system, and using this understanding to develop effective solutions. The book also includes case studies and practical tools for applying the problem-solving approach.
What’s an example of one of the tools?
Ackoff’s Idealized System Planning (ISP) is a problem-solving approach that involves creating an idealized vision of a system and comparing it to the current state of the system to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement. The approach involves a participatory process that engages stakeholders in defining the idealized system and developing strategies for moving towards it. ISP is based on the premise that the best way to improve a system is to envision an ideal state and work towards it, rather than simply trying to fix problems within the current state.
Questions to calm the restless mind
With SO MUCH going on at the moment, it can be hard to let the old grey matter slow down, let alone rest. To help calm a racing mind at bedtime, Caroline Jory, a leadership coach, suggests writing down the answers to three questions:
What have I achieved today?
How have those things made progress toward my goals?
What do I need to do tomorrow?
There’s a nice flow to these questions in thinking about how to build on the day’s good work, rather than thinking about things I should be doing tomorrow. The exercise is practical as well as calming.
It reminds me of the importance of taking time to reflect on tasks and projects in order to create mental bookmarks or paused images, which serve as a map or prompt to easily resume work later on without the mental strain of trying to recall what you were thinking and what you were working on. By asking structured questions and hitting the pause button, I think we can unlock productivity and creativity in a world that moves quickly.
Caroline explains the questions in an Instagram video. You can find out more about her coaching practice here.
After talking about the wonderful and bewildering tools that AI is bringing, this is a good point on which to end. Just one more thing, a quote from The Creative Act by Rick Rubin (yes, I’m still reading it).
No matter what tools you use to create, the true instrument is you. And through you, the universe that surrounds us all comes into focus.
Thank you for reading.
Antony
P.S. Raycast was great as an AI assistant, apart from when I asked it to check grammar and spelling. It told me about loads of changes it made but it hadn’t at all. So I’ve left the typos in and will rely on reader feedback instead. Get your red pencils out!