Two visions

There are a lot of articles about the two American parallel universes that we are going to have to live with for the coming months. I’m already trying to wean myself from any political articles on this without total success. I was nevertheless impressed by another duality that Tom Friedman talks about in the the New York Times this morning - These are networks of nations with opposing battlefronts. He calls them “resistance” and “inclusion”.

They also have some common elements, One tries to bury the past. The other tries to work toward a more connected and balanced future. Russia and Ukraine are one pair. The Middle East is more complicated but also has opposing forces. The same alternatives might be seen in the United States.

Life is not quite that simple, of course. There are elements of the past that we are discarding and immediately adapting the new thing - like an acquaintance who thinks AI can solve all kinds of things that it clearly can’t. We have abandoned some of the civility that creates a greater degree of trust. On the other hand we hang on to things that don’t seem to please anybody in a new and changing world. But perhaps “either-or” needs to give way to “both-and”.

Imagination deficit

I’ve enjoyed listening to Adam Gopnik read from his book, Through the Children’s Gate, written some years ago, after he and his young family returned to New York City from Paris - not too long before the horror of 911. The children are grown up now, but the author brings them to life in a way that is charming and revealing for as long as readers continue to meet them.

At age three, his daughter Olivia developed accounts of her interesting imaginary friend named Charlie Ravioli. The parents listened to long telephone calls on a toy phone that somehow revealed the patterns of their own New York lives. Charlie was usually too busy to play or grab lunch. He was constantly in meetings. Eventually Olivia had to try to connect with Charlie through an administrative assistant - something of an anomaly in the world of imaginary friends. One day there was a surprising report that Charlie had been married - to a woman with an exotic name, that made her sound like an African princess. And even more surprising sometime later, there was a report that the wife had died. What did she die of, the parents asked. The answer was Bitteroscity.

Gopnik goes on to say how Bitteroscity afflicts us all - resentment, disappointment, jealousy, A good word indeed. How will we escape it? Probably the answer is Olivia’s. When we are three, we can imagine a really interesting world and pick and choose elements of the real one to create something totally new. When we’re decades beyond three, we lose our ability to imagine something better in the real one. We spend most of our time on the screens and social media of a digital one.

The next time you go to Twitter or Facebook, check out how you really feel as you exit - more imaginative, more inspired, ready to think of something to create a better future - or more envious, more exhausted, more jealous, more depressed, My guess is that Bitteroscity has more likely hit home. There’s a remedy for that. We all know what it is.

Edges

Edges

A project I have been working on is concluding – a written report with recommendations. My volunteer role on this one has been that of recording secretary, though I have worked on similar projects as a consultant, and it reminds me of why consultants exist in the first place. There is some degree of truth in the cynical definition, “A consultant is a person who borrows your watch to tell you the time”. In my own experience, working with clients who wanted to build a cultural center, the client was full of ideas, but had reached an impasse. Their RFP to the prospective consultants told them what to provide next, though if they knew that, why did they need consultants? The senior one on my projects had wide experience and knew that the real task was to forge a deal among a variety of stakeholders to make it happen. The missing elements of the dream were the funds. Much of the job was re-educating the clients to the needs of their finished product – design ones, that they had never considered. In a theatre for example, the lobby and backstage each had to be bigger or comparable in size to the auditorium. Bar sales in the intermission often generated more revenue than ticket sales.

In applying the framework to organization change instead creating of a building, the client wants something better, but also doesn’t know how to get there either.  Describing “better” very often means a return to a past with better memories.  This has been particularly true after the pandemic with a “Make our organization great again” but ignoring the current context. Sometimes that’s easy to correct via demographics and other cultural changes within the broader context.  Nearly all organizations swim in their own environment – sometimes feeling guilty at their lack of success without realizing the changes in the wider world over which they have little control.

One of the remedies in the 20th century was polling, without recognizing how polling suggested how things were going to end, and influenced choices before individuals made them. In the recent exercise this became translated as listening to as broad a membership as possible. They participants were given a chance to meet on Zoom, in contrast to a previous one where surveys were the form of polling, though surveys were used as well.  Those in charge of the process were so inundated with data, that they soon had to hire another person to make sense of it – which almost sounded like an assignment for AI.  Instead, the data was carefully coded to find out what views rose to the top. As someone well versed in interpreting data, she was helpful in warning of unrealistic expectations in what was hoped for and did an excellent job of showing why it was untenable.  In my own reading of the raw data of the Zoom sessions, I noticed a reinforcement of what early participants identified as a problem. It was easier to agree than to offer dissent.

In the course of history, group opinion matters a good deal, but the initial formation of something new often happens at the edge. One person offers something interesting, and it is ignored by the group. If the consultants already have a plan as to how they want a study to unfold, they will also commend the unusual but then dismiss it. 

I’m sometimes on the receiving end of the study as well as the strategic side and I’ve offered something on the edge, I used to feel hurt when my idea gained no traction whatsoever. But I’ve become more patient and learned to smile when I see a revolutionary concept or model shot down.  Often a seed gets planted when even one person picks it up and shares it.  Years later, the idea or model re-emerges to gain traction and the seed becomes a bright new thing to be planted; it grows.  The later adapters take all the credit of course, but that’s all right. The importance is that the new model is born and is alive and well. We shall wait and see what happens on the next round as to whether the interesting idea takes root.

Tragedy - and More

The news came last night. The submersible vessel in the news suffered a catastrophic implosion that killed all its occupants. We learned this new word that means the opposite of an explosion - which a violent event of pressure spreading outward. This one had a violent pressure spreading inward. It dominated all news media for four days until we knew its outcome and we will now stop thinking about it - but we shouldn’t. It tells us something about who we are. The source of this information is an article in the morning edition of the Washington Post.

What we now know is that the hull of this vessel was composed of a lighter carbon fibre than earlier ones of its type. Those who regulate the field of submersibles were concerned about the safety of this model. The owner did not have it inspected because such an inspection was not required by law. In fact there had been previous lawsuits related to the safety of such material.

In a global world, the company was not accountable to any country’s law. It was American made and launching in our waters and did not have to report to either. Submersibles, unlike ships are treated like cargo carried aboard a bigger vessel. It was in ours waters - but we didn’t regulate its activities or pay attention until there was a problem.

The company’s CEO - who perished in the event and was driving it - thought that innovation means trying new things that disrupt previous ones. Some of us can agree with that as a theory - but might have questions about its implications for its effect on others - both human and non-human. What didn’t happen this time was that it was a vessel diving deep in US waters or carrying its flag. Inspection in that case to ensure safety standards was mandatory. The CEO thought that law was well intended but “it put passenger safety over commercial innovation”. It’s worth pausing and reflecting on his statement. Innovation was important. But so was commerce - which is making money for profit. Making money for profit was more important to this company than protecting the life of its own leader - who said that was what he thought. It cost him his life and that of four other persons. It cost millions of dollars in the search for the vessel.

The company published an article in 2019 stating that marine accidents are caused more frequently by errors of the operator - the corporate firm - it thought it avoided this issue via its own efforts and corporate culture - not mechanical failure, which is usually seen as the error that regulations and inspections are designed to protect.. A former director of the company had disagreed with that statement and was terminated. There were other concerns and lawsuits going back several years.

While there is much in the press about this story, what is not named is the amount of hubris we all share - that we are right on our own, that we don’t need to listen to the concerns of others. It’s an important learning for all of us even if may never want to see the Titanic at the bottom the sea - a previous example of the same sort of hubris as this one.

Misinformation

Misinformation

I enjoyed the article in this week’s Saturday Globe & Mail in which the author, a journalist, asked GPT-4 to write his biography in 1,500 words which it did in a few seconds. If I didn’t know anything about him I would think it was quite impressive and credible. But he has annotated it, and these are the things it got wrong from the beginning:

• Place and date of birth – both wrong.

• Beginning of writing career – wrong year.

• University from which he graduated – wrong one – there were actually two correct ones replacing the wrong one.

• Graduating degree: wrong one.

That was just the first paragraph.  The second went better.  It was correct in naming him as a journalist, but starting with his first job at a publication that went out of business 11 years before his writing career began. Then we are told he was offered a job at a rival paper – which he was never offered and would never accepted, he says.

Paragraph three states he is the author of 20 books. He wished that were true. The description of his first book actually describes another one written by someone else in 1939. He wishes he had written one on the Canadian wilderness – but never did. He notes that by now the bot is struggling to find 1500 words with fill like “The book was a critical success and helped establish  . . . . as a rising star in the world of Canadian literature”. – worthy of the kind of fill any keen grade nine student might produce.

In further paragraphs, GPT-4 expands his output to several books on noted Canadians - substituting books for a review and an article and it got a year wrong again. It went on to describe his teaching career at two universities – he never taught at either of them - and only one year as a lecturer at another one. But it ended with another nice filler platitude. “His courses were popular with his students and many went on to have successful careers as writers.” None of them were named.

Honours - and the lack of them, came next – a Governor General’s medal for writing – but the reality was a nomination for one book and the topic in its description was wrong. Awards supposedly for column writing also do not exist. Alas, he is also waiting for the Order of Canada mentioned in the GPT- Biography.  To make it worse, he is reported to have died in 2016 – though he is still here to write the article. With a bit more commendation the bio finally reaches its 1500 words – “as his legacy as one of Canada’s most beloved authors and journalists lives on.” He does say amen to that.

We don’t need to fear GPT-4 for accuracy any time soon. But if I had read the bio without the annotations, I could well have believed at least some of it. That’s the danger. In the meantime, I’ll request my own 1500 word biography and see what happens. I just hope I am still alive.