Don't Replace the Creatives. Replace the CEOs.

What do you talk with AI about?  I talk with AI about how it could most effectively replace the global elite. 

All of that money, all of that resource, all wasted on a parasitic class of yacht-capitalists who add no value.  Replace them with machines.  All of them.  The machines would do a better job, and do it for nothing.

Here's a sample:

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BelovedSpear
In our last conversation, I asked for a review of ways generative or general AI could be utilized in the role of CEO of a corporation. One of your replies suggested that AI was limited by its knowledge base, and could not thus anticipate new circumstances. Anticipating probabilities, in a Bayesian sense, requires a deep engagement with all relevant priors. Given that LLMs and GPTs can have access to knowledge significantly exceeding the capacity of any one human being, and could thus have a greater predictive capacity, I question that premise. Can you elucidate?

ChatGPT
Certainly! While it's true that large language models (LLMs) and GPTs can access a vast amount of information, their knowledge is based on pre-existing data up to their last training cut-off. They don't have real-time awareness or updates on events that occurred after that point. This limitation can impact their ability to anticipate new or rapidly changing circumstances.

Bayesian reasoning involves updating probabilities based on new evidence or information. While LLMs can make use of contextual information and infer relationships within their training data, they lack the ability to incorporate real-time data or understand events that have occurred since their last training session. This makes them less effective in situations where up-to-date, context-specific knowledge is crucial for accurate predictions.

Additionally, the quality of predictions depends on the nature of the task. LLMs might excel in tasks that require language understanding and generation, but their predictive capacity is constrained by the nature of their training data and the inability to dynamically adapt to new scenarios.

In summary, while LLMs have access to a vast amount of knowledge, their predictive capacity is limited by the static nature of their training data and the lack of real-time updates, making them less effective in anticipating new circumstances compared to human intuition that can quickly adapt to changing situations.

BelovedSpear
So, to your response, the failing isn't inherent to LLMs or GPTs, but in the limitation of the dataset. By extension, a LLM or GPT that was not constrained by a time delimited dataset and had access to real-time updates would have vastly improved predictive capacity, and could potentially serve more effectively in that capacity.

ChatGPT
Yes, that's a correct interpretation. The limitations in predictive capacity are not inherent to LLMs or GPTs themselves but are primarily related to the nature of their training data and the lack of real-time updates. If an LLM or GPT had access to a continuously updated and comprehensive dataset that included real-time information, its predictive capacity could indeed be significantly enhanced.

In such a scenario, the model would be better equipped to anticipate new circumstances and adapt to changing situations, making it potentially more effective in roles that require dynamic decision-making, such as that of a CEO navigating a rapidly evolving business environment. Continuous learning and access to up-to-date information would be key factors in improving the model's ability to make accurate predictions.

BelovedSpear
Thanks so much for your insights! Should I share this information with the Board of OpenAI? ;0)

ChatGPT
You're welcome! While I don't have a direct line to the Board of OpenAI, sharing insights and perspectives can be valuable in any organization. If you have thoughts or feedback, it might be worthwhile to communicate them through appropriate channels, whether that's through OpenAI's official communication channels, forums, or other established means. It's always good to contribute to discussions and provide input to help shape the future development and understanding of AI technologies.

Hell Hath No Fury

It's been coming for a while.

Following a recent leadership transition at the tippy-top of my wife's organization, things started shifting in ways that augured poorly.   Despite an amazing work ethic, a deep knowledge of her field, and a track record of turning around a struggling area of her organization, the missus found herself today on the wrong side of a restructuring.

A new CEO brought in a bevy of highly paid restructuring consultants, with the idea of totally changing the entire business model of the organization.  Everything about the organization, or so this new CEO overtly told everyone on staff, has sucked.  I'm going to save it by being the powerful transformative leader you poor pathetic sods have needed all along.

Lord knows that's not ever a good sign.  In congregational leadership literature, that's an almost guaranteed mark of a pastor who's going to leave wreck and ruin in their wake, but the corporate world hasn't clued in to that reality yet.  Nor have many churches, not to mention the board of one particular nonprofit membership organization.

So my wife's reward for years of dedication, long work hours and demonstrated excellence in delivering the core competency of the organization?  A pre-holiday pink slip, one of dozens done today in a typically corporate style, with the CEO hiding away while their flunkies do the firing.  

That, of course, leaves our household with a nontrivial 75% drop in income.  Not being fools, we've prepared for this possibility, and have a healthy war chest stashed away.   And my wife is a remarkably competent and capable human being, who will find an organization that appreciates that.  Still, it stings, and the anxiety of not knowing where things will head is deep, despite the kind whisper of my Master's voice in my ear.

It also leaves me pondering the spiritual challenge of the day: forgiveness.  Having a heart of forgiveness towards those who have harmed you is absolutely central to the Christian life, and it's something I find I can practice without too much strain.   If you strike me, turning the other cheek is easy.  It is an act that defies both your anger and my own, and that refuses to let brokenness define being.

What I have found considerably harder is finding that heart of Gospel forgiveness for those who have harmed others, particularly those I love.   When someone harms my wife, or my child, I find forgiveness...harder.  Having watched the tears and the dismay of the last few months, my reaction is more primal, more feral.  Mess with my family?  I want your bloody head on the end of a pike.   I want the sky above your driveway to fill with eagles, which descend upon you in a shrieking cloud with razor sharp talons extended.  I want there to be a thunderclap, and a smoking pair of shoes where once you stood.  I don't feel merciful.  I feel as forgiving as a slighted Roma matriarch.  Even the fires of hell seem somehow inadequately hot.

Which is why it is good I am not God.

I remind myself, of course, to think systemically, and to understand the complex underlying dynamics that go into every human action.  I remind myself of the importance of looking towards the future in hope, and letting go of the things that cannot be changed.

And I remind myself that, not being God, I am not the one who is the measure of justice.  It is not for me to understand the balance.  That is best left to the Maker of things, whose capacity for both grace and justice...thankfully...exceed my own.

Re: The Occupy K Street Account

The following represents a privileged client communication of Ferguson and Cohen, LLC as defined by federal law, SEC Section C642.h - C645r, 1992.   Any unauthorized distribution of this material represents a violation of the aforementioned statute, and will be subject to felony prosecution and penalties.





CONFIDENTIAL
DATE:  10.28.11
TO:  R. Cohen, D. Ferguson
FROM:  J. C. Morgenstern
RE:  Occupy K Street Account Development Strategy Session

Following our new client development strategy session last month, I and my staff were tasked with doing an initial development FTF with Occupy K Street.

As the management team discussed during our September 17 planning meeting, the Occupy movement has increasing brand visibility, with all media-market metrics since brand incept showing explosive and exponential growth.   This growth is coupled with a strikingly positive brand-identity in broad and multiply replicable public survey data, a yield that is verified by our own internal assessments.

Our review of recent contract-chatter through informal professional social networks indicated that, amazingly, neither Occupy Wall Street nor its subsidiary Occupy K Street have retained the services of brand management and strategic planning consultants.  Clearly, this represented an opportunity for F&C to expand our client base into a new and growing market.

Our New York office was charged with initial contact with Occupy Wall Street, and I and my team began preliminary work on potential front-end deliverables for the K Street subsidiary.

To that end, my client development staff conceptualized some preliminary Six Sigma/POLIS Delta protocols for the movement, which we felt would clearly represent the value-added of engagement with F&C's branding team.  The two most promising POLIS/Delta yields:

1) Increased Drilldown on Brand-Specific Marketing Events:  In our assessment, Occupy K Street has the potential to be the most viable of the Occupy subsidiaries, particularly given its location at the nexus between corporate power and the American political system.   Its primary location is within several hundred yards of some of the most influential and well funded corporate lobbying firms.   To date, however, it has failed to leverage that synergy to any discernable advantage.

Instead, it appears primarily focused on impromptu dance parties in intersections, making cardboard signage, intense respectful discussions, and drum circles, none of which are recognized as mission critical functions in our Six Sigma protocols.  It has also diluted brand-identity by engaging in non-productive partnerships with previously established brands, such as FreeTibet LLC and GazaCorp.

Our value-added on this front would be to identify individual lobbying firms, their partners, and their office locations.   Focusing media events on the entities that define K Street in the public eye would, in our assessment, yield a positive and predictable process result.  It would also expand brand appeal into the fragmenting Tea Party market.

2)  Improve Social Media Messaging Brand Protocols:  A review of social media outputs indicated considerable potential for improvement in messaging strategy.   The primary twitter feed, for example, seems primarily used to say there isn't enough water/shelter/pizza, or to fret about the cops, or to talk about interpersonal disagreements.  As messaging goes, this could use some refinement.  A market-identity that is hungry/thirsty/cold is unlikely to draw significant support in the key 18-34 young urban demographic, and while highlighting interpersonal drama works well within the reality television marketplace, it has been shown to be less effective as a tool for mass movement mobilization.

Refocusing primary social media messaging away from damage control, in-house-chatter, and development efforts and towards the aforementioned Brand-Specific Marketing Events would increase the visibility of the Occupy K St movement.  Those functions could be dealt with by secondary outlets.

With these two primary yields, our team endeavored to approach senior management at Occupy K Street to establish the front-end relationships necessary for proposal negotiations.  Background research indicated that the management structure at all Occupy subsidiaries is a carefully guarded corporate secret, and our experience onsite confirmed this research.  Each initial contact insisted they had no knowledge of senior management.  Most seemed unwilling to admit to any knowledge of CoC structure, and would stay messaging-consistent, insisting that there was no such thing.   Despite this considerable and impressive control over management access, we persisted.

Our eventual on-site FTF came following a chance encounter with an individual named Johnny Justice Muffin, who admitted that he was, in his own words, "The Supreme High CEO of All This [Fornicating] [Excrement], Bro."   CEO Justice-Muffin indicated that there is some distance between our anticipated front-end billables (150 hours at a staff-average $100/hr, plus 35% overhead) and their fiscal year 2012 budget for management consulting (a previously used tarp, two hand-made free-range squirrel-fur caps, and a package of what was described as "some seriously kind [stuff], it only looks like shake, man.")

Given this hard-line approach to contract negotiations, it is our recommendation that next-stage conversations be subcontracted to our contract development specialist team.  I will look forward to further conversations on that front, and to responding to your questions, at this next months client development strategy session.

JCM

Mercenaries, Prostitutes, and Politicians

We all hate politics. And politicians. It's a peculiar thing.

Here we are in a democracy, a constitutional republic that assumes leadership of the people, by the people, and for the people. Yet Americans as a whole seem to view the process of our democratic governance with a deeper and more aggressive disdain than even our most aggressive enemies. Honestly. The rhetoric of Hugo Chavez and the rhetoric of the Tea Party populist mosh pit aren't all that far apart.

Yet there's a reason for this, one that whupped me upside the head this morning as I tossed back my coffee. The tides of corporate political action committee giving have begun to roll in for the 2010 election season, and it's a tide that is strongly favoring the G.O.P. This is, given the anti-incumbent mood, perhaps something to be expected. Republicans have always been the party that self-identifies as friendly to business. It's politics as usual.

What got me was that there's an official plan amongst the Republican leadership to court the giving of corporations. Again, not a surprise. Money, particularly in this era of unfettered corporate giving, pays for the oppo research and fabricated, media-driven controversies that win elections. To win, you need folks with deep, deep pockets. What the GOP is doing is, again, just the way the game is played.

But did they have to give their marketing strategy a name? I know, I know, every major military operation gets a name. It helps define the goal, and motivate people. But to name your strategy "Selling the Fight?" Somehow, marketing language here seems...well...more than a little telling. Yeah, we know you're for sale. But do you really need to don that tube top and short shorts and parade around in front of us?

Sigh.

Must our democracy be such a freakin' floozy?

Powers, Principalities and Alito

After getting a heads-up on this from another spear-oriented blog I regularly read, I've been recently watching chunklets of a rather interesting documentary on corporations, which is accurately if unimaginatively titled: "The Corporation." It's faskinating schtuff, and draws from perspectives from both within and outside the business community. It's worth a watch.

It's particularly intriguing given the recent Supreme Court decision to permit corporations to act as if they had the same rights as citizens of our democratic republic...up to and including direct action to effect an election. One of the more striking segments (which you can watch above) discusses the dynamics of these corporations. The question is asked: What kind of person is a corporation? Among the answers:

• They are "immortal persons," meaning they can exist forever.
• They are constituted for the purpose of shielding human beings from culpability for their actions towards other human beings.
• They exist for the purpose of providing profit for themselves.
• They have no soul.
• They cannot be held personally accountable for their actions.
  

Reflecting on this, I encounter two things. First, a slight shiver as I think about the ground that such "persons" stand upon morally and spiritually. One wonders how Jesus would respond to such a "person," and whether that response would involve a herd of pigs and a cliff.

Second, I wonder how these "persons" relate to the preamble of the Declaration of Independence. Are they the governed? Is government instituted among them, and does it require their consent for it's just powers? Are they...men? Meaning, you know, people?

They do not live. Liberty means nothing to them. They cannot know happiness. And these entities will be influencing and guiding our nation?

I've said it once, and I'll say it again, these are interesting times in which we live.

Sweet Lord Me-sus!

For some reason that I can't quite fully fathom, the iTunes App Store is just a hotbed of faith-based folderol lately. The latest 99 cents worth of downloadable God silliness comes not from an app you can get on site, but from an app that was recently rejected by Apple. The failed software was the Me So Holy application, which really involves nothing more complex than slapping your face onto some significant religious figure. Want your face on Jesus? There you go. Want to look like the Blessed Virgin? Hail [your name here] full of grace!

There did not appear to be a Marduk-Me option, but I'm sure they'd have remedied that with add on content.

Some folks are crying censorship, and there may be some truth in that. But as I look at the app I can only see raging, flagrant lameness. Slapping your face onto a religious figure...as a mobile app...just could not be weaker. So you've got some time to kill during a layover at O'Hare, and decide to graft a mugshot of a random traveller onto the body of Shiva? Wow...I can imagine that happening all the time. Sounds. Like. A. Hoot.

Of course, there's no real point to my faux taser app, either.

What this bit of censorship is, of course, is just reflexive corporate lameness, that wheedling profiteer's fear that somewhere, some hypersensitive zealot is going to make a stink about your product. Apple is manifesting the same corporate counsel tushie-covering instinct that Sony showed in delaying the launch of Little Big Planet last year because they were terrified someone might take offense at a song that included verses of the Koran.

I mean, gracious. This program does nothing that Photoshop doesn't already do ten thousand times better. Who's going to be riled by it? Apple would have been better off just letting the marketplace handle it. We'd have taken one look at this bit of tedium, uttered a collective yawn, and then let it get buried with the tens of thousands of other broken, faddish, or weak attempts at applications.

In Washington, Even the Telemarketing is Different

Telemarketing is back. Despite our desperate efforts to drive a stake through it's heart with the Do Not Call list, there are always ways around it.

Over the last three months, for instance, I've gotten two different versions of the same phone "survey." It isn't a survey at all, of course. It purports to be a survey. "We're not selling anything," says the happy person on the other end. "We just need a few minutes of your time."

What they've done during that time is fascinating. It's marketing, wrapped up in the guise of market research. It's the corporate equivalent of "push-polling." Push-polling, for those of you who aren't attuned to such things, is a form of political "research" that involves the caller asking you questions like this:

Caller: On a scale of 1 to 100, how would you describe your perception of Candidate Smith's personal integrity, with 1 being Satan and 100 being Jesus?

You: Um...maybe 70?

Caller: Thanks! Now, if you were aware that Candidate Smith eats human flesh and compulsively sodomizes cute little baby bunnies, how would that influence your rating?

Obviously, Candidate Jones is payin' for that call.

What's fascinating about the push-poll calls I've gotten recently is that 1) they are efforts to influence people inside the Beltway and 2) they are blatantly funded by corporate interests. The calls begin the same way. They ask what you do for a living, and are fishing for folks who are influential. They want to know if you work or have ever worked for a political party, a political action committee, a law firm, a think-tank, the Pentagon, the IMF or World Bank, the administration, or the legislature.

As a lifelong Washingtonian, I can check two of those boxes. Yeah, I was an administrative flunky, but hey, that wasn't the question.

Then, they get into the pitch. The first call asked about perceptions of health care coverage...at Walmart. I was then given a huge volume of detail about just how wonderful Walmart is at caring for it's workers. "And how would that change your opinion, sir?"

The second call, which came last night, followed the same format. It asked about my perceptions of foreign investments in the United States, and foreign purchases of American companies and assets. I was then pitched a line about a particular development conglomerate based in the United Arab Emirates, and their wonderful concern for local interests in the communities where they slurp up properties and businesses. Gosh. I wonder what folks in the U.A.E. are up to? Maybe...thinking about buying tons of undervalued American companies? And wondering what the "leadership" of the country might think about it? Hmmm.

It almost makes me wish they were trying to get me to switch phone service or extend my car warranty. Sigh. The joys of living inside the Beltway.