Albert Einstein

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three rules of work

Three rules of work

Dr. Ichak Adizes is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading management experts. He has received 21 honorary doctorates and is the author of 27 books that have been translated into 36 languages. Dr. Adizes is recognized by Leadership Excellence Journal as one of the top thirty thought leaders of America.

Dr. Ichak Adizes

<h4>DR. ICHAK ADIZES is nostalgic for a time when he could be in tune with the natural world, at peace with himself, and unrushed by modern life.</h4>Over thirty years ago, I took a vacation in a place called Capitan Lafitte, which was somewhere between Playa del Carmen and Cancun in Mexico. We slept under&nbsp;palapas on the sand. There was no electricity, no phones, and no television. We woke up with the sunrise, snorkeled, walked on the beach collecting seashells, and talked a lot. After sundown, we sat around a fire, talked some more, did some singing, and went to sleep. We were fed the fish that was caught that day and vegetables bought from the farmers market that day. It was a vacation I will never forget.&nbsp;<figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://cdn-hfn.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/searching_for_peace2_ad0b071c97.jpg"></figure>I went looking for it some years back. No more. There is a building like a Motel 6 there instead... Also, thirty years ago I went on a walking safari with my sons. We walked and&nbsp;canoed down the Zambezi River. It lasted two weeks, during which we saw no people except the small group we were with and our guide. We slept out in sleeping bags around a fire. I will never forget the sky at night. The stars, an endless number of stars twinkling from above. I have never seen so many stars before or since. The only sounds we heard were the sounds of nature. Time did not move. It felt as if it was already afternoon when in reality it was only 9 a.m. What happened to these places? I am desperately trying to find one. I thought I found one in a remote hotel in Mexico, but no luck. Piped music, endless piped music everywhere at least sixteen hours a day trying to relax me... Does anyone know of a place like I am describing above? A place where human hands have not reached yet to enrich my experience. No wi-fi. No phones. No television and yes no electricity. If it does not exist would someone provide it please?Just thinking and feeling, <img class="image_resized" style="width:13.09%;" src="https://cdn-hfn.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/ichak_adizes_signature_dceacb66ec.jpg">ichak@adizes.com&nbsp; https://www.ichakadizes.com/post/searching-for-peace

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Searching for peace

<h2 style="margin-left:0cm;text-align:center;">JUST THINKING AND FEELING</h2><h4 style="margin-left:0cm;">DR. ICHAK ADIZES challenges the notion that smarter is always better. What is able to surface when we move beyond the intellect?</h4>A fascinating Sephardic expression states, “It’s not good to be ‘too smart’.” One might question this sentiment; after all, it seems to contradict conventional wisdom, doesn’t it? The standard assumption is: the smarter the better.But let’s think about how we process information. A profound relationship exists between the brain and the heart. The more we employ our mental faculties, the less we tap into our emotional ones, erroneously believing that employing the brain is sufficient to arrive at the best decision. So, if a person is extremely smart, they are likely to be utilizing primarily their brain, which can hinder their heart’s engagement.Not all decisions can be made based solely on tangible information that the brain can analyze. “Too smart” individuals might not harness their intuition. They might over-intellectualize risks and fail to sense the nuances of a situation, fail to discern right from wrong from a values standpoint. Truly distinguishing right from wrong calls for something more than cerebral cognition. One must feel the situation and judge the merits of the choices in front of them. That is where the heart speaks.Sometimes, it’s crucial to momentarily suspend thinking and listen to the heart about what truly makes sense. I have solved some of my most complex problems during meditation. When the meditation was over, I had an answer.In meditation, you stop thinking or getting attached to thoughts. You just calm your mind, which enables the heart to open. And ideas, judgments that the brain did not process, emerge.I recently came across a newspaper article about a robotic police officer in San Francisco with lethal capabilities. This robot, leveraging artificial intelligence, assesses threats and decides whether lethal force is necessary. It’s a machine that processes information more rapidly than a human ever could. To me, that's being “too smart.” But where is the heart in all this? There is no intuition, no judgment beyond pure intellectual analysis. Imagine the potential for erroneous lethal decisions.Making decisions involves more than just processing information. To handle uncertainty and risk, it takes more than logical thinking. When all information processing has been exhausted, the last source of uncertainty and risk needs to be addressed. One must pause, and intuition, judgment, and experience play a role. For that, it is not enough to just be smart. One needs to be wise, for which listening to the heart is indispensable.Just thinking and feeling,<img class="image_resized" style="width:17.42%;" src="https://cdn-hfn.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/image_b51eb0e353.png"> <a href="mailto:ichak@adizes.com">ichak@adizes.com</a><a href="https://www.ichakadizes.com/post/the-perils-of-being-too-smart">https://www.ichakadizes.com/post/the-perils-of-being-too-smart</a>&nbsp;

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The perils of being “too smart”

C. Otto Scharmer

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Presencing an emerging future

Ravi lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and is currently the Chief Technology Officer at Cantaloupe. He is also a regular public speaker and public speaking coach. He has been a Heartfulness meditator for over 20 years and is passionate about applying meditation lessons to improve workplace relationships and productivity.

Ravi Venkatesan

<h4>RAVI VENKATESAN takes us on a journey through the world of Artificial Intelligence, charting its history and developments, and also exploring where we are headed.</h4>Part of my job as the CEO of a technology company is to keep track of trends and technologies that could be incredibly transformational. This knowledge is critical to formulate strategies for our business. To use a hockey analogy from Wayne Gretzky, it is to “stake to where the puck is going.” &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Artificial Intelligence (AI) is definitely a major trend today and has probably had more historical cycles of being sold as transformational and not living up to its promise than any technology in the last century. It all started with early neural networks in the 1940s and 50s that looked to make a computer mimic a human brain and its mental functions. In other words, the endeavor was to construct an electronic brain. The benchmark for success was established by Alan Turing in a 1950 landmark paper with what is now popularly known as the Turing test. In simple terms, if you interact (perhaps chat) with a computer, but are unable to tell the difference between this experience and chatting with a real human being, then the electronic brain has passed the Turing test.So, what is AI? The fundamental building block of AI, or an “electronic brain,” is a neural network that mimics the kinds of neural networks our brains have, and in essence has a “learning mechanism.” I remember writing neural networks in languages like Prolog and C as a student. The fundamental difference between this type of computer program and other purely computational programs or software, was the aspect of being able to learn, potentially predict, and come to conclusions.&nbsp;There was a lot of hype at that time about how AI would change the world and dominate fields as diverse as predicting the weather, to picking winning stocks, to automating architecture and design for buildings. However, very little of this came to pass. Funding dried up when people realized that too much expensive computing power was needed and the economics just did not work out.The next generation of AI came in the late nineties when IBM developed Deep Blue, which beat the reigning world champion Garry Kasparov at chess. In 2005, a Stanford robot drove autonomously for 131 miles in the desert. These developments revived interest and funding again. So far, AI still needed very large-scale computing power and bespoke computing equipment – translation, a lot of money. This generation of AI can be called purpose-built AI. It was still in the domain of large companies or governments.The next big move was Google’s DeepMind, which beat the reigning world champion at the GO game, much more complex than chess, and used “deep learning” techniques such as deep neural networks. This generation of AI can be called “deep learning general AI.”The current generation of AI, with ChatGPT as a prominent example, is way more general purpose or multi-purpose and is called generative AI. It has the quality of not just arriving upon a result but also explaining the derivation of the result. It is thus far the closest to human intelligence that AI has reached. Carrying out a conversation with ChatGPT feels like talking to a very intelligent and articulate human being. With computing costs continuously decreasing, and “big data sets” to train the AI becoming more easily available, the improvement in AI with ChatGPT has been accelerated.&nbsp;To summarize these generations, look at the graph below that plots Purpose and Cost:<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:57.49%;"><img src="https://cdn-hfn.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/chatgpt_gamechanger3updated_4d03a5ff84.jpg"></figure>So, is the promise of AI finally being delivered? It is safe to say that AI has finally reached a point where many applications have become economically feasible and hence will scale. Autonomous driving, facial recognition, improved customer service by scanning knowledge bases and using chatbots, authoring marketing content, writing code for software programs, etc., are some of the applications that ChatGPT is already doing successfully. It is the only technology that has been adopted by 100 million users in just two months after launch.<figure class="image image-style-align-center image_resized" style="width:75%;"><img src="https://cdn-hfn.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/chatgpt_gamechanger4_d4468f9f6b.jpg"></figure>However, ChatGPT still does not conclusively pass the Turing test, so there is still a long way to go. A bigger question, often raised, is if AI is conscious. To answer this, let’s look at the various mental functions of a human being:<ol><li>Intellect – this is where logic and reason live. Prior to ChatGPT, AI had already developed logic, now reason has been incorporated as well.</li><li>Ego – this is the sense of self, and while it can be programmed artificially, the way it develops in a human being has not been mimicked in AI.</li><li>Mind – this is broader than just the brain, it includes the ability to process inputs from multiples senses (sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell) and also from internal sources (contemplation and thoughts). It includes the ability to imagine and create.&nbsp; AI is starting to mimic some of these functions. ChatGPT is the first AI that also “hallucinates” and can undertake creative processes such as authoring a poem, creating music, etc. However, the evolution of this aspect is at a very rudimentary stage.</li><li>Consciousness – what forms the base for everything else in a human being’s mental functions can be described as consciousness. There are various levels of consciousness based on the sophistication of the being – humans, plants, or even stones, all have consciousness but of different levels. In that sense AI does have consciousness, but it is of a different kind than human beings. It is based on the programming and inputs provided to the AI and can of course evolve over time.</li></ol>In summary, there have been multiple generations of AI going from very specific to very generic, and very expensive to very inexpensive. ChatGPT has been a giant leap from prior generations, and in some ways is democratizing the access to this technology by making it available to millions of regular people. AI has still not passed the Turing test and is not yet close to replicating all of our human mental functions, however the technology will continue to evolve, creating both opportunities and threats for the human experience.<hr><h4 style="text-align:center;">Illustrations by ANANYA PATEL</h4><hr>&nbsp;

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Three rules of work

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