The Christmas break is a good time to have that delayed conversation with mad Uncle Charlie. Good old Charlie is a Luddite that the originals would have been proud of, we all have one somewhere. The conversation was about AI, a topic in which I claim little expertise beyond the bits I have read, and superficial fiddling I have done.
However, Charlie was adamantly opposed to any notion that AI was anything more than a gimmick used by computer companies to sell their devices.
In trying to make the case for the continued growth of AI, and stuff emerging, I used an old chestnut.
Compounding.
As Einstein observed, compounding is the most powerful force in the universe. The story of the peasant who did a favour for the emperor and was rewarded with anything he wanted and asked for a chess board to be covered with grains of rice, doubling at each square explains it. At casual observation, easy, but the maths is different. There are 64 squares on a chess board. Doubling the gains at each square ends up in billions of grains of rice. The first few are easy, 1,2,4,8,16, but after a modest number of iterations, the numbers really take off.
Digital transformation is similar.
One step compounds on top of the next, and next, and so on, until you recognise it is not a destination, it is a journey.
Fascinating to think we are at the very beginning of the journey.
An idea that has been attributed to many is that we overestimate what can be achieved in the short term, and underestimate what can be achieved over a longer period.
This is compounding at work.
If you think the developments of the last decade have been huge, unpreceded in history, I suspect the next one will make the last one look like it was snail’s pace.
Charlie has his good points, but he really is a devoted Luddite.
Header graphic is via DALL-E. A Luddite trying unsuccessfully to stuff AI back into its box.
Charlie really is a good bloke, archetypical Australian.
He is however absolutely defensive of any position he chooses to hold, and being as dumb as a brick, makes for frustrating and pointless conversations.
Christmas allows them, as there is also plenty of lubricant, so Charlie will not remember my visible frustration, and is about as likely to read his name on my blog as I am to walk across the Tasman sea and say Hi to my Kiwi cousins.
Here here.
Typically a symptom of someone who thinks at a superficial level and fails to explore below the surface.
(so that’s twice the word ‘luddite’ has been used today)