I love that the date for this academic conference on Nizari Ismailis and Spiritual Resurrection — being held on 8 Aug 2024 — also just happens to be the 860th anniversary of the declaration of Qiyama at Alamut on 8 Aug 1164 :)
Seeing people as trees: Ram Dass on Self Judgment
Long Exposure by Garous Abdolmalekian. In Lean Against This Late Hour (Penguin, 2020). Translated from Persian by Idra Novey & Ahmad Nadalizadeh.
There isn’t another day. There is only this moment. And this one. And this one.
Now on: Flagging-it-up/ - An exhibition of quiet, haunting, understated beauty at Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery
Design Questions…
It’s always nice to start the weekend on a positive note.
Covering climate change, AI, and censorship amongst other anxiety-inducing shorts, this Daily Sensemaker isn’t it ;)
That everything is important and nothing is important is a paradox of being human.
So if the urgency around climate change is akin to the proverbial (but untrue) frog slowly boiling to death in hot water, and results in impotent individual hand-wringing, then the sudden and rapid developments in AI over the past few months should certainly and collectively give us immediate cause (and pause) for concern, ergo the story in yesterday’s Daily Sensemaker above on an AI drone ‘killing’ an operator in a simulation.
It was the Royal Aeronautical Society, no less, which reported the story and cited the presentation of Col. Tucker ‘Cinco’ Hamilton, the Chief of AI Test and Operations, USAF, under the provocative header ‘AI: is Skynet here already?’.
Aerosociety has since updated its report to state that Hamilton has admitted ‘mis-speaking’ at his presentation and that the simulation was a hypothetical ‘thought experiment’. Read carefully, however, I’m not sure the attempted clarification fundamentally changes the concern around the likely outcomes generated by the experiment.
And this already on the back of the widely reported one-sentence statement-cum-letter) released by the non-profit Centre for AI Safety just four days ago stating - in effect, for all its brevity - that AI posed an existential threat to humanity.
Here are eight big questions on AI. I’m no Luddite, but the overall optimism of this interactive piece is reminiscent of attending at a beleaguered GP practice for an appointment and being told to ‘keep an eye on it.’
Still, AI is here and as the piece outlines, it’s been here for a while in ways we’ve taken for granted.
My own forays, specifically on ChatGPT, have been disappointing, at least on Microsoft’s Bing and Google’s Bard. Although outright AI hallucination was not an issue for the queries and voices I tested, I quickly realised that I couldn’t trust the results I was getting, and so I ended up spending more time verifying what they generated.
It was far easier and faster to do a regular search either on Google via DuckDuckGo (obviously!), or Wikipedia, and indeed all the other niche, expert and credible sources of authority I already consult for work and play, and then skim the results, before parsing and evaluating them from what I already knew and filling in the gaps in my knowledge as I needed.
Admittedly, ChatGPT is not about search per se and some of my frustration and distrust is simply a case of needing to learn the ropes for a new tool that can do entirely different things that we’re still finding out about and playing with.
Aghast in mid March 2023 that Snapchat had released a clearly unsafe chatbot AI for its largely young-folk audience, I wrote a frantic text in the middle of the school day to the teen, forswearing her to even try it. Her wry response? ‘Bestie, do you really think I’m trying to pay $4 for trashy advice from an AI?’ This was when it wasn’t released in the UK yet and when it was a few weeks later, it was free.
A dear retired friend, on the other hand, is having a blast with the tech as he writes a novel. Not with Snapchat’s AI, I should hasten to add.
Maybe it’s me, not them :)
So learning to use the right prompts is a start - alongside abiding by common-sense warnings about privacy and the confidentiality of any queries or data fed into whatever ChatGPT platform you’re using - and likely to get me better mileage.
The larger and pressing question with hyperobjects like AI, as with climate change, however, is what we can do individually to supplement what we need to do societally.
But before we rush into asking ‘What is to be done?’ we should probably stop to ask ‘What the hell is going on here anyway?’
Sources
Despite it feeling distinctly four-seasons-in-an-hour most of this week, it is now, officially, springtime. The vernal equinox was at 21:24 UTC on Monday 20 Mar 2023 which, for Iranians, was the sal-tahvil, the exact moment welcoming Nawruz¹ (Persian, lit. ‘new day’), the ancient, 3,000-year-old festival kicking off 13 days of feasting, thanksgiving, and visiting with friends and family.
In commemoration of this day as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, as the Earth thaws and, incrementally, almost imperceptibly, we are released from the weight and tiredness of winter to awaken to the scent of spring, we are stirred by the renewed promise of a fresh start, freed from the shackles of the year just passed.
Few, if any, commemorations begin without some reflection upon the past, and New Year celebrations are no exception. And particularly where and when we have been overwhelmed, swamped, busy, and gasping for air, taking time out to pause and reflect is a radical act. A radical act of not only intention, but of giving attention - to others as much as ourselves.
Twenty years ago this week, also on the eve of Nawruz, the US and the UK invaded Iraq in a war that changed the Middle East. A million people had marched in protest at the Houses of Parliament in London against the invasion – to, unfathomably, not a whit of difference.
And so, closer to work/home, what had initially been anticipated as a celebration of Nawruz at my workplace’s old, memorably iconic, much-loved and -missed offices in Grosvenor Gardens across from Victoria station, became a sombre reflection upon a new world we had suddenly been thrust and woken up into. The then-Director of the institution, Professor Azim Nanji, noted that it was one of the saddest, darkest starts to a new year most of us had experienced. We were shaken, some of us visibly, uncomprehendingly, and all of us horrified at seeing wave after wave of bombing carpeting Baghdad in night-vision-green on the TV.
We are still dealing with the fallout of that war, from the rise of fundamentalism, to debates about the freedom of speech and the vital distinction to be made between license and responsibility, and the dehumanisation of the other – all forged in what the late, great, and inimitable Professor Mohammed Arkoun termed the ‘will to power’, garbed in the language of democracy and freedom, but cloaking baser instincts to exploit, colonise, and conquer. And of course, there are still those, reflecting back, who supported the war as a just cause even as they concede that it did not make for a just war.
It is also almost exactly three years since the world first shut down in 2020 because of a novel coronavirus that our species had never before encountered. Around seven million people have died directly from it to date. Despite the world reopening we are, in many ways, still recovering. And there has been and continues to be more global tragedy, more conflict, more death.
People and communities around the world are struggling. Across Afghanistan, India, Iran, Pakistan, Syria, Tajikistan, and many other parts of the world, incl. Europe and North America, these communities and the wider societies within which we all live, are fighting the forces of fundamentalism, resisting assaults on human rights, standing up for women’s lives, freedoms, voices, and choices, and combatting civil strife, conflict, and the climate- and cost-of-living crises.
As we mark Nawruz and its confluence this year with Ramadan, we cannot but remember these struggles. And rededicate our efforts to address them in whatever small way we can as individuals. And hope, as we must always, and pray, if we do, and enable, wherever we can, such that our faiths, our traditions, our values, our ethics, and our service will keep us and others near, far, and around us, strong, steadfast, safe, and living as best as we can in peace, passion, light, and love.
And, so, finally, to the best Nawruz song. Ever.²
Go on. Listen. Soar.
¹ I know, I know. But I prefer Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3 (EI3) transliteration and it is the best alternative for present purposes. See article on why taste matters at Weekend Readings #3 :)
² How can it not be, set as it is to the verses, rhythm, beat, and indomitable spirit, passion, and abandon of Hafiz, the 14th-century Persian poet, and recited by Homayoun Shajarian.
Sources
The best Nawruz song. Ever. youtu.be/UfjU1-80_…
A bit of a mixed bag this week, starting with words and meanings (apparently ‘nice’ used to mean dimwitted, foolish, fastidious; and only recently, agreeable), before moving, nicely(!), on to learning from editors (whose quiet, understated, vital work is often taken for granted – until they’re not part of the writing process).
Then, a tribute to Iradj Bagherzade a dear and much-missed friend of my workplace, whose sudden passing remains a shock but whose life and work is a genuine inspiration – quite aside from the amusing account of how he and his friend and fellow student Michael Palin, sold encyclopaedias, then Bibles (both badly) and were increasingly demoted.
This is followed by news of the reopening of the al-Hakim mosque in Cairo after an extensive restoration by the Bohra Musta’li Ismailis, part of a wider effort by Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities to boost tourism there.
Closer to work, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) together with the EU has also just established a new touristic route in Historic Cairo, which is expected to massively impact and improve the lives of families and artisans in the area.
There’s there’s coffee. Do you want olive oil in yours? One review is equivocal. The second, espressly(!) not – but which is particularly worth reading, if only for the context of the following excerpt:
at a very robust sixty-nine, he already had the Bransonesque vigor of a moisturized billionaire. He was drinking his olive oil in the morning; he already drank his coffee in the morning; why not, he realized, just put the olive oil into the coffee? It was, by his account, a no-brainer, and it does seem as though the number of brains involved was narrowly circumscribed.
And, finally, if you want to #EmbraceEquity ahead of International Women’s Day, some handy tips to survive performative feminism.
Enjoy the weekend!
Sources
Former UK Foreign Secretary, William Hague, on responsibility and leadership:
Orange and blue, Edinburgh
social.coop/@ameliali… This.
I’m a big fan of Cal Newport’s work and his Deep Work provided the set up to just focus on finishing the PhD writing when there was so much else going on. So of course I’ve lapped up his piece for the NYT on The Digital Workplace Being Designed to Bring You Down
Yellow and Red. Daughter and Father.
An afternoon supervision walking-meeting with a student around the canal at King’s Cross generated a lively discussion and reminded me of these old go-tos:
Because it’s Friday, some weekend reading on the history and provision of coffee at work:
There’s an 11C difference between Edinburgh and London?!
Orange and blue
Colour is complicated - atmos.earth/over-the-…