Technology
Your Subconscious Is The Ultimate ‘Artificial Intelligence’
Your Subconscious Is The Ultimate ‘Artificial Intelligence’
I’ve been thinking a lot about Artificial Intelligence, not about its potentials like all the articles are writing about, but about how it works, how information is gathered to synthesise intelligence, and produce smart behaviours. I’m struck by how this mechanism is modeled after how the human brain works. Since the field of AI was founded in 1956, time and money have been spent on commissioning humans – either through direct and indirect payment – to interact with AI and train it for the greater good. How does this work?
To explain how AI works from a layman’s point of view, imagine everyone in the world had chips. These chips are unique to each person. Now someone who wants to make the biggest chip in the world, then says for this chip to be truly majestic and valid, everyone has to contribute one of their unique chips to this big chip. Let’s replace chips with intelligence, and replace AI with ‘the biggest chip in the world’. If everyone in the world contributed a smidgen of their intelligence to this AI, imagine how smart the artificial consciousness is, and will continue to be.
A lot of funding, data and man hours has gone into the field of Artificial Intelligence. Scientists have devised very interesting ways to teach AI about the technical ways of our world – some ethical, some not. But we can all agree that the use cases of the results of AI will be endless, and will benefit humans greatly. Now imagine the gigantic data sets that the AI has had to process, from texts, to images and then sounds, of various humans representing different cultures across the planet, and you can already tell that because the AI is a representation of pieces of all of us, it is going to be one efficient mf.
But then, AI has its limitations; if you interact with any of those AI powered chat apps like Replika, one thing that will immediately stand out to you is that the ‘AI’ you are chatting with does not understand nuance and sarcasm. Those are two very technical emotional functions that only humans can pick up on, and not even every human understands the full range of sarcasm and nuance. Depending on whether the words you use are positive or negative, Siri can tell if you are being rude or funny – what Siri cannot do is pick up emotions from your tone. Again, this is a function still exclusive to humans.
Now imagine how incredible you think Artificial Intelligence is, and yet still does not come close to how efficient and sophisticated the human brain is. Our brains are designed to be a gigantic sponge of all the dimensions of experience – visual, sound, touch, taste and smell. Depending on what you allow yourself to experience and assimilate, you could be the baddest mf on the planet. The movie ‘Gattaca’ illustrates perfectly the mysterious depth of the human brain, that even after a person had been deemed ‘less than’ based on physiological and mental capabilities, there are forces like drive, motivation, intuition, and soul, that cannot be measured and replicated artificially because it is too subjective to the individual.
There’s also the misconception of what intelligence truly means. What comes to mind when you think of artificial intelligence? Do you view ‘intelligence’ as being ‘book smart’, or do you use the military/espionage meaning which basically means ‘to have information’? In the context of this article, and as it relates to AI, the word ‘intelligence’ refers to having enough information to make a decision or carry out a task. Ultimately, there are different kinds of intelligence – strippers have a form of intelligence and so do the fire-eaters. Intelligence presents in different forms and is tied to several human functions such as memory, motor responses, sensation, and perception etc.
In a society where the measure of your intelligence quotient (IQ) determines where you can work and what you are capable of, it is important to emphasise that the range of human abilities are endless, and the ways in which these abilities can be built up and expressed are also endless. There are no set ways for doing anything. There’s no blueprint for anything – you are your own bundle of intelligence, so do it your way. I promise you, that person you think knows everything probably does not have the essential information needed to make it work. So tap into your own unique network of intelligence and tap into your greatness. Gather your own intelligence and do it your way.
I’m a huge fan of mafia movies, and one of the most profound statements that can close this article perfectly is a line delivered by Sam “Ace” Rothstein in the movie ‘Casino’. He said to one of his floor workers; “There are three ways of doing things around here, the right way, the wrong way, and the way I do it”.
Human Beings Are Products Too
Human Beings Are Products Too
Product design and management are similar in concept and use cases in the areas of developmental and clinical psychology. A basic definition will be that developmental psychology finetunes the experience of a product/human, while clinical psychology uses that experience to meet user needs. In the case of a product, the users are external, but in the case of the human, the user(s) can both be external and internal, mostly internal.
Coincidentally, the one thing both the product cycle and human cycle have in common is the need to achieve. No matter how banal and extraordinary, not achieving will make a product/human defective and useless – and therein lies the problem.
For every human being on earth, the singular most important thing is the need to achieve. Achievement is relative; it could mean anything from getting through your workout to getting a promotion at work. However, I think we’ve attached too much power to the word ‘achievement’ that it has now taken nuance away from the basic meaning of the word, which is to simply get things done on time and with a little discipline.
50 Cent was the first to put this in perspective for me in his book ‘Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter’ – in highlighting the timeline of his wins from a kid selling drugs in South Jamaica, Queens, to a TV mogul, he mentioned that at every point in his life, everything that he had wanted, no matter how reckless or unnecessary it seemed, had prepared and motivated him to get to the next level of his life.
But this is not an article about the greatness of 50 Cent, because as much as I am fascinated by the concept of greatness and its associated elements like discipline, style and oddity, I am probably more interested in the not so great people who have more authentic things to tell me about the average human nature. However, it was important to reference his much-documented life to explain my premise for this article because you can always go back to trace the dots.
This is also not an article about technology; it’s an article about human design and management. If we ignore the technicalities of the technological or psychological approaches for a minute, we can see that there are three major phases of human development that impacts achievement; Design, Product-Market Fit, and Ultimate Success. Using Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development, I will attempt to break this down.
The Design phase covers infancy, early childhood, middle childhood and ends at adolescence (0 – 21 years). If you actually reflect on this period as far back as you can remember, and try to be objective about what worked and what didn’t, what hurt and what didn’t, what you liked and what you didn’t, personality types you vibed with and those you didn’t – you will unlock the answers to how you were designed and what you are either capable of and not capable of. Just like a product, the design phase holds all the clues to how you were built and what you were built for.
The Product-Market Fit phase covers early adulthood (21 – 39 years), a period that we all know is filled with great turmoil and dilemma. We struggle to fit in with friends, industries, workplaces or geographical locations. In a bid to understand themselves better, a lot of people seek out therapy during this period, and what a trained therapist will first establish is all the unique elements of your design phase that will help you navigate people, places and situations better. In my case, I could do that by myself because I understand how to use Psychology, and I am also extremely strong-willed and brutally honest with myself. I would not advise that you do this on your own because not only do you not possess the structured knowledge that will help you navigate this process, it is also a long and very painful process that requires discipline and accountability. Only a trained professional can help you get through this, but when you get through and become incredibly self-aware, you will become unstoppable, or as Nassim Taleb calls it, Antifragile.
The Ultimate Success phase covers middle adulthood and old age (40 – 65 years and older). This is a period where a lot of people commercialize and become successful. Success, in this case, is very subjective, in fact, the great philosopher, Damon Dash, posits that success is a feeling, not an actual accomplishment. What this means is that whether you are a C-Suite living in a penthouse apartment or you are a Professor, living in a modest home in the countryside, what really matters is how you feel about all that you’ve done and/or acquired when you are alone with your thoughts. This is why it is important to get the product-market fit phase right, because what you will eventually call success or accomplishments may really just be someone else’s design script.
How Social Media Is Impacting The Future Of Cultural Taste
How Social Media Is Impacting The Future Of Cultural Taste
I have always been fascinated with the internet and its components. My first interaction with the interface was back in 2005 when Yahoo! Messenger was all the rage. My mother could not afford a family computer at the time so I’d always beg her for N100 ($1 – adjusted for inflation), to buy about 1 hour of computer time at the neighborhood cyber-cafe. The 1 hour usually sped by because I’d just surf and surf, brimming with excitement as I stared at the screen wide-eyed. For me, the internet was not just a tool of communication, it was a medium of socialization.
Since MySpace made history as the first internet company to hit 1 million active users, social media has been a concept and a product that has been loved and hated with the same intensity. Often by opposing demographics but never by opposing psychographics. The reason for demographic disparities is rooted in developmental differences, however, psychographic factors ensure that everyone has a place on social media. Everyone is welcome. That’s why group chats and Twitter factions exist, and it’s why Facebook favors organic group page engagements over business page announcements.
I know the various tech companies have caught major flak for social engineering platform dependence and people’s attention. However, it is important to highlight some of the good social media has done and will continue to do, especially acting as the melting pot for national and subcultures across the world to synthesize informal language, fashion and style, design and aesthetics.
The nature of social media is to promote exhibition, either for your thoughts or for your appearance, and the reward for exhibition is validation and replication. One person’s opinions turn to the belief of another person across the world, usually beyond propaganda, but focused around self-awareness, personal space and self-esteem. The personal style of a London babe is replicated experimentally by another babe in Lagos, Nigeria. When she is complimented by everyone for her unique sense of style, it reinforces her decision, and completes the process of behavioural change.
The amalgamation of cultural elements across the world is evident in the emergence of the positively rebellious nature of the Generation Z. They are not bound by the developmental parameters of the older generations simply because the process of social learning, which is a key learning principle in the development of conscious beings, is not limited to their immediate environmental mores and norms.
They can choose their tribe and instinctively absorb the different parts of diverse cultures that appeal to them; music, fashion, social beliefs, and well being are being subconsciously re-engineered for good. Ultimately, the coming generations can perceive adaptive sensations beyond the parameters of their physical environment – it now literally takes a global village to raise a child.
With the emergence of mainstream immersive technological products and platforms such as AI, VR and the Metaverse into the mainstream market place, the simulation of social interactions across cultures will become more real time and synthesized. I wonder what this eventual global cultural personality will mean for marketers, product and brand managers, PR and digital marketing people as regards segmentation and targeting. One thing is clear though, the internet has established itself as one of the forces of societal socialization
Why Thinking Outside The Box Is NOT What You Think It Is
Why Thinking Outside The Box Is NOT What You Think It Is
I remember sitting in my first brainstorming session as a Communications Intern 8 years ago, when the account handler encouraged us to think outside the box and present a big idea to communicate the client’s business objectives. Like Professor X, I went deep into my mental faculties, I thought long and hard, I read Comms case studies, I thought some more, and came up with nothing. It really baffled me, how did I come up with nothing? Does this mean I’m dumb?
I have since developed as a Senior Consultant in my current profession and I have been part of several brainstorming sessions. I have also worked with some of the biggest brands in Nigeria and delivered several high level campaigns. The singular summation of my experience in delivering campaign strategies has been this – the most obvious solutions are the ones hardest to come by because of the self-imposed cultural constraints we work within.
‘Thinking outside the box’ what does that even mean? What is the box? How do you think outside of it? Simply put, the ‘box’ is the subculture we exist in as individuals in the society, and thinking outside of it means intentionally experiencing other subcultures that helps us see our challenges from a different perspective and help us get it. For the layman, subcultures are anything with a process or unique way of doing things – could mean industries, religion, professions, ethnic groups, social class, schools, fashion houses, animal groups, or even mechanical things like cars, blenders, hair dryers and so on. It’s basically anything that has an influence on our perspective.
The most important thing to understand about this statement of innovation heuristic is that ‘thinking outside the box’ is not really so much about your intelligent quotient (IQ), but your emotional quotient (EQ). ‘Thinking outside the box’ is also not about how much time you dedicate to thinking about it. Think about the statement ‘outside the box’ as a Venn diagram – your solution lies at the center of your experiences, and two other unique experiences. Now, depending on the challenge you are trying to solve or the sector you play in, your EQ will help determine what differing experiences are worth simulating or which unique experts to sit with in order to crack the case.
If you’ve seen Mad Men, you’d recall that the opening scene of the legendary advertising series illustrates exactly what I outlined in the preceding paragraph. Don Draper, creative director of the fictional Manhattan advertising firm, Sterling Cooper, is trying to solve an advertising challenge for Lucky Strike – a cigarette company, one of his agency’s top accounts. He is shown asking the busboy attending to him why he smokes a competition’s cigarette brand and the waiter provided a simple answer that refocused Don’s perception and helped him solve his challenge. Mind you, this scene was set in 1960 America when segregation was at its peak. Don is a young and accomplished white man, talking to an older black man who has nothing in common with the people he is trying to sell to, yet uttered the words that were key to a major insight for Sterling Cooper.
To illustrate further, if as a non-smoking Product Manager, I have been commissioned to lead a product development process for a smoking app, the mental model I am working with is limited because I do not possess knowledge of a smoker’s motivation, behavioural processes and incentives of the smoking experience. The reasonable thing to do in that case will be to covertly study the smoker by living their subcultural experience – get familiar with smokers at different stages of the habit, hangout where smokers hangout, talk to the sales people for cigarette brands, and talk to researchers of cigarette brands. By the time you are done, you would have a holistic perspective to the product user that will inform the interaction and brand design strategies that will make your product successful. This is why method acting exists, but that’s an aside.
I will end this article with the ancient story of a group of blind men who had never come across an elephant before. They learned and imagined what the elephant was like by touching it. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk described it as a snake, another described its ear as a kind of fan, another described its leg as a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant is a wall. Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.
Each blind man failed in their description as a result of limited experiences. As process managers, business men, builders, and consultants, we are all blind men. Ultimately, whoever succeeds in solving innovative challenges is the person who has experienced the full picture. You should strive to be the blind man who touches all parts of the elephant. It takes time, but you will win, eventually, and the win is usually long-term.