On futures and foresight, the focus of my own queries, ChatGPT readily admits that it’s not a crystal ball (a good start). As a language model, “it does not have the ability to predict future events or to understand the long-term consequences of actions.” Or so it tells me. It will even qualify any future-oriented questions with a standard disclaimer, “It’s hard to predict the future of [X] as it will depend on many factors…”
ChatGPT also confesses to other things it can’t do. It can’t understand what it says — neither the meaning nor concepts of its utterances. It can’t fact-check — at least not yet. By its own admission, it “does not have the ability to reason, plan or solve problems in the same way that a human can.”
https://www.iftf.org/insights/how-to-use-chatgpt-for-strategic-foresight-limitations-possibilities-and-workarounds/
Category Archives: forecasting
Traditional economic indicators can’t predict the timing of a downturn, but newer forecasting methods are untested.
“The signals are mixed in a way that we haven’t seen before,” says Claudia Sahm, an economist and the founder of Sahm Consulting in Arlington, Virginia. “People say, ‘Historically when this happens, that happens, and then we go into a recession.’ That’s a good starting place, but that shouldn’t be the end place for the analysis.” The former Fed economist came up with her own real-time recession test. Called the Sahm Rule, it holds that when the three-month moving average of the unemployment rate rises by 0.5 percentage point or more relative to the low in the previous 12 months, a downturn has begun. (The current reading doesn’t indicate a recession.)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-25/how-close-is-the-us-to-recession-why-experts-are-struggling-to-predict-it
Why leaders are missing the point of trendwatching
We often feel the need to arm ourselves with these trend tomes to give us a glimpse into what many believe is absolutely going to happen and hence prepare for it. It strikes me as somewhat ironic then, that this year there are more trends reports than in any previous year and yet we seem to be less prepared than ever.
https://www.managementtoday.co.uk/why-leaders-missing-point-trendwatching/opinion/article/1811151?utm_content=buffer0bb0b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Digital Twins Are Set For Rapid Adoption In 2023
The idea of digital twins — digital representations of physical systems, products or processes that serve as indistinguishable counterparts for purposes such as simulations, testing, monitoring and maintenance — has been around for some time. But indications are the concept’s time has come for wider adoption to support business applications.
https://frankdiana.net/2023/01/24/digital-twins-are-set-for-rapid-adoption-in-2023/
Related Report: Pre-emptive Culture Mapping: Exploring a System of Language to Better Understand the Abstract Traits of Human Interaction | presentation slides
𝘿𝙖𝙩𝙖 𝙅𝙪𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙚 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝘼𝙡𝙜𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙝𝙢𝙞𝙘 𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮 Syllabus and Reading Lis
How ChatGPT Will Destabilize White-Collar Work
In the next five years, it is likely that AI will begin to reduce employment for college-educated workers. As the technology continues to advance, it will be able to perform tasks that were previously thought to require a high level of education and skill. This could lead to a displacement of workers in certain industries, as companies look to cut costs by automating processes. While it is difficult to predict the exact extent of this trend, it is clear that AI will have a significant impact on the job market for college-educated workers. It will be important for individuals to stay up to date on the latest developments in AI and to consider how their skills and expertise can be leveraged in a world where machines are increasingly able to perform many tasks.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/chatgpt-ai-economy-automation-jobs/672767/
Fake Meat Was Supposed to Save the World. It Became Just Another Fad
Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods wanted to upend the world’s $1 trillion meat industry. But plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-01-19/beyond-meat-bynd-impossible-foods-burgers-are-just-another-food-fad?srnd=premium
Go to Texas to see the anti-green future of clean energy
“Clean energy has been branded a liberal technology. People literally say, ‘this is AOC coming into town,’” explains his son, Samuel, referring to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the left-wing congresswoman whose name pops up with almost flattering frequency among conservative Texans. Eventually, though, economic sense prevailed. As the family points out, at an average return per acre, cattle generate $8, deer hunters $15—and wind hundreds of dollars. It assures the ranch’s future.
https://www.economist.com/business/2023/01/12/go-to-texas-to-see-the-anti-green-future-of-clean-energy?utm_content=ed-picks-article-link-4&etear=nl_weekly_4&utm_campaign=r.the-economist-this-week&utm_medium=email.internal-newsletter.np&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud&utm_term=1/12/2023&utm_id=1446808
The Mars Religion
The goal of this essay is to persuade you that we shouldn’t send human beings to Mars, at least not anytime soon. Landing on Mars with existing technology would be a destructive, wasteful stunt whose only legacy would be to ruin the greatest natural history experiment in the Solar System. It would no more open a new era of spaceflight than a Phoenician sailor crossing the Atlantic in 500 B.C. would have opened up the New World. And it wouldn’t even be that much fun.
https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm
Margaret Mead Imagined Different Futures
For those anxious about the state of the world, Mead’s celebrated work shows how anthropology can help guide alternative futures.
If Samoan adolescents had a (comparatively) easier time adjusting to their maturing sexuality, as Mead claimed, couldn’t people in the U.S. raise their children in a similar way? Mead quickly dismissed that idea, but then offered up another possibility: Familiar U.S. ideals of freedom and liberal tolerance needed to be extended to adolescent women as they explored their own sexuality.
https://www.sapiens.org/culture/margaret-mead-different-futures/
Analyzing Trends with Tim Stock 