Brewed From Within

1% Better

The entrepreneurial lifestyle is fast. Unfortunately, relentless activity creates an illusion of being healthy without exercise.

There’s something special about breaking a sweat. Physical exercise requires the privilege of time, but a dedication to fitness adds tangible energy into your life. This weight is lighter when we find exercise that is fun and still motivating. Some people like the social aspects of going to the gym, but a solo approach adds efficiency to limit time required.

Extra Shot

“Rise up, give more, and do you. Leave the noise behind, for what they hate, is what’s missing in them.” – Bradley Rose

A healthy diet and time with fitness is testing but offers space to analyze ideas as you manage the pain. With the rush of a second wind, answers to lingering questions often emerge as well. Whether the mind is free or you’re simply trying to survive, feeling 1% better will spin a boost into your day, and it extends how long we have to build.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Propulsive

Technology is an accelerant. At increased speeds, conflict happens and any direction becomes arduous to command.

Welcoming the confluence of humans and machines reduces the gap between human potential and artificial intelligence. Positive intent with ethics at the forefront of progress may help avoid an imbalance, but there’s still no guarantee that comes with our trust in technology.

This means we must remain inquisitive. Pushing elephants into the room encourages critical thinking, invites problem-solving, and provokes new perspectives. Complacency leaves room for degraded integrity, so here are a few brain teasers to help us rise above cliché conversations.

  • What is worth sacrificing to achieve progress?
  • A single AI prompt uses roughly the same energy as running a light bulb for 15 minutes. Adaptive computing, alternative energy, and other bridges to tomorrow will support more efficient interactions, but how might careless consumption impact long-term sustainability?
  • Might unlimited access lead everything to be mediocre?
  • With an answer always available, how can we celebrate experiential wisdom to maintain a willingness to learn?
  • Will enhanced productivity make humans lazy?
  • How is time spent when tasks are no longer a concern?
    • How do humans avoid isolation when technology makes perceived connection effortless?
    • If the Internet is dominated by AI-generated content, might the overwhelming slop tempt exhausted humans to hibernate? As disconnected vaults form, will the beauty of collaboration and our connected era be lost?
    • Could the story of money ever get old?
    • Do we really care about privacy or is it that we just never like feeling surprised or exploited?

      The ethical aspects of technology can feel like a drag. Unfortunately, the ease of overlooking short-term issues usually leads to long-term problems.

      To find an equilibrium with artificial counterparts, elevate what we’re good at and do the same with technology, but slow down to avoid irreversible damage. As we align answers together, trust in a shared direction celebrates limitless diversity, while ensuring a future that respects the past and remains open to next.

      By Ben McDougal, ago

      Bridges to Tomorrow

      Limitations fade as boundaries are broken. If we can avoid extinction and continue building bridges to tomorrow, our relationship with time, nature, technology, and each other will uncork unknowns and light a path to our neon future.

      Robotics

      With AI in the brain and emotions that curate a personality, robots are advancing to go beyond isolated tasks. Cyborgs will turn knobs at work, with humanoids completing chores at home. With the mundane covered, the role of humans can shift toward leading whenever ingenuity is required. With full access to robotic efficiencies, economies will shift and the human touch will be even more luxurious. Leaders who welcome technology, yet never lose touch with the soul of their art, will be the hybrids who prevail.

      Biotech

      As technology interfaces with human biology, a bionic age will alter the laws of nature. When the electrical impulse from a thought is all that’s required to prompt action, the speed at which data can move is unfathomable. Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) and other forms of neurotech are already treating disease and restoring movement by reconnecting the nervous systems. Most people don’t want to be first, but when might a routine doctor visit include individualized diagnostics and software updates to the nanotechnologies inside your body? When every cell has a microscopic computer connected to it, the resource consumption is diffused by DNA computing and the mysteries of health care are solved.

      Material Science

      The atomic levels of technology has already connected intelligence to so many things we interact with everyday. We see how the Internet of Things (IoT) adds digital depth to our physical world and as the cost and size of technology continues to shrink, the periodic table will be the playground. We already have materials used in roads that transfer the force of vehicles to batteries. The energy is stored and converts to energy used to light the street at night. This example of elemental exploration and creative recycling is only a flicker to the flame of alternative energies and improved storage methods that can quench our planet’s thirst for energy, while eliminating a dangerous dependency on limited resources. The universe provides everything we need. It’s up to us to squeeze improvements from elements that are waiting to arrive at their full potential.

      Quantum Computing

      When “or” becomes “and”, a bizarre world of duality is unveiled. The computing aspect within quantum mechanics uses quantum bits, or qubits, to solve complex problems with measured superpositions, entanglement, and interference. Dig in to learn more, but the superpositions found in quantum computing mimics complexity with simulations that include all possible solutions at once. This is not a more powerful, number crunching supercomputer. Quantum computers represent a whole new approach to harnessing the atomic and subatomic levels of physics. A scientific asset that eliminates secrets presents a mixed blessing. With the chemistry of life mapped, medicine may solve disease. Machine learning can be fully adorned and the universal potential of material science will be realized. At the same time, current cryptography and the encryption standards that provide security online is at risk. Increased checkpoints, biometric confirmation, photon distribution keys, and other post-quantum encryption standards are being tested to ensure the world is ready for hardware to keep qubits cold enough to unlock a world-changing partnership between classical and quantum computing.

      Life Extension

      Quantifying the cosmic depths of our own kind will give us ways to experience time in more profound ways. Instead of hoping to reverse the effects of aging, food, medicine, and augmented activities will engrain longevity from start to finish. When aging is countered over time, the human body may not hold up forever, but living more than 100 years will be normalized. As we live longer, how might agriculture, infrastructure, education, healthcare, economies, and our global climate adapt? Many who plan for this longevity will be primed to meet new demands in existing industries. The quixotic leaders will explore less obvious opportunities and convert unexpected challenges into new industries as well.

      Outer Space

      The cosmos make us feel small, yet limitless wonder helps us think big. As bionic humans and quantum computing improves material science, a robot-supported species can be multi-planetary. The origins of astronomy are prehistoric, but off-planet exploration began when machines first visited space in the 1940s, then humans in the 1960s. Scientific exploration led to a commercial space industry that has propelled an excursion throughout our solar system and beyond. Today, orbiting observatories are looking toward the origins of the universe, with life on Earth’s moon and Mars seemingly inevitable. As we interact further into the void, celestial frontiers can provide added stability for the human race and extend life on earth. Cosmic research, travel, communication, resources, manufacturing, logistics, and tourism must all be addressed by international leaders united by shared intentions, on behalf of all humankind.

      There are untold innovations not conceptualized yet, but these bridges to tomorrow all signal progress. Widespread adoption is never straightforward, but listening suspends belief and continuous steps forward can transcend invisible lines for us to work as one. This compounds potential as future generations pilot the world toward our neon future.

      By Ben McDougal, ago

      Yin-Yang

      Technologies constantly intersect. This impacts a technology’s life cycle (TLC) that already has its own phases of development and market adoption.

      Technology life cycles follow an S-Curve. The shape of each technology’s S-Curve is unique, but generally, research and development requires an investment. With traction, the technology can ascend and become profitable. Over time, this ascension slows as a new normal is established. Market relevancy can be lasting, but eventually, new technologies push existing technology toward a final decline phase. The further a new technology’s life cycle is from the current status quo, the faster one can push the other into history books. For example, when cell phones went mainstream, it did not take long for pagers to fall out of our pockets.

      When different technologies ascend around the same time, they each have their own TLC, but the shared timeline only has room for what the market and adoption curves allow. This initiates a game of scarcity versus abundance. If two technologies remain isolated, scarcity wins and causes the ascension of one technology to force the other technology toward a decline. With a sense of abundance, different technologies find reasons to interact, interconnect, support, and perpetuate each other. Even if the relationship is not obvious at first, layered value broadens the impact and extends each technology’s life cycle.

      This can be seen in the rise of web3 and AI technologies. 

      At first, hype was focused on blockchains and everything under the web3 umbrella. As blockchain networks were ascending past early adoption, Narrow AI learned to speak our language and quickly stole the spotlight. This lowered the volume around web3 as everything became about AI. With volume lowered, it was easy to think web3 concepts were no longer relevant, but the interoperability of web3 technologies can support, guide, and tame AI.

      When AI makes everything fake, blockchains make it real again. This symbiosis aligns two different technology life cycles. When balanced, AI is yin and web3 is yang. The yin of AI is exemplified by unpredictability and independence. The yang of web3 draws from decentralized dependancy.

      AI is strongest when rooted in web3 concepts, which are strengthened by the capabilities and functionalities of AI. Together, these two seemingly unrelated technologies benefit in various ways. For example, ChatUX gave AI a voice, which can now imitate anyone, but blockchains and zero-knowledge proofs can confirm identity. The chaos continues as compute speeds of machine learning makes state management hard to uphold, but blockchains, smart contracts, and digital assets can track provenance and the present state of a digital system. If AI projects need financial capital, digital currencies and tokenomics can provide economies to scale. As the capabilities of Narrow AI move toward General AI and Super AI, generative data may struggle to preserve the source of truth, but web3 technologies add transparency to improve inputs and helps avoid unsteadiness. Even at the infrastructure level, AI can benefit from decentralized training algorithms and a growing thirst for electricity can be quenched by HPC data centers originally built for mining cryptocurrencies.

      Extra Shot

      Darkness will always lurks in the shadows, but the virtuous light of abundance bets on a shared, atomically exquisite existence.

      This example highlight how mixing different concepts can greatly extend technology life cycles. Such abundance also paves the way to more exotic technologies.

      By Ben McDougal, ago

      Septenary

      AI is often thought of as a singular technology. This blanket assumption makes it impossible to compare the capabilities and functionalities that differ between the seven different types of artificial intelligence.

      The seven types of AI are organized into two groups. The first group is based on capability and includes Narrow AI, General AI, and Super AI. The second group is based on functionality and includes Reactive Machine AI, Limited Memory AI, Theory of Mind AI, and Self-Aware AI.

      Capabilities are determined by what different types of AI are able to accomplish. The three types of AI categorized by capabilities are Narrow AI, General AI, and Super AI. Here’s a rundown to leverage what’s possible today, while staying mindful of what may be possible tomorrow.

      Narrow AI <realized>

      AI trained from existing data, with compute geared to do one thing really well. While data sets are vast, this type of AI can not go beyond the data sets it is tied to. As of 2026, Narrow AI is the only type of AI that is fully realized within the three types of AI categorized by capabilities. Examples of Narrow AI include language translators, game-playing programs, spam filters, recommendation engines, voice assistants, facial recognition, self-driving vehicles, and robots with specific tasks. Generative AI also falls within this type of AI, which seems odd. The mashups of generated text, images, video, and sound seem to be random, but are still constraints by existing data sets. Neural networks, optimized data sets, computer vision, and machine learning make the capabilities of Narrow AI remarkable, but limited by the data it has to munch.

      General AI <theorized>

      This advancing realm of AI leverage existing data like Narrow AI, but can reason beyond those constraints. The transfer of intelligence, with no human intervention, makes the race to General AI (also called AGI) intense. When AI can make decisions based on an advancing state of its own understanding, the limit of this AI’s capabilities become unknown. Theories set the potential limit around that of a human. Agentic AI hints at AGI with decision making and interdisciplinary task management, but lacks the emotional traits, planning, and other methods of generalization that will define the capabilities of General AI. Other potential examples include all-new content creation, robots that can learn new tricks. As the theories of AGI become realized, ethics, regulation, and a determination of consciousness will be moving targets to navigate. The breeding speed of AGI may release points of no return, which makes it critical to understand and debate opening to ensure a new species is copacetic.

      Super AI <theorized>

      Welcome to when AI becomes it’s own species. Concern triggers due to the finite resources of Earth, but when AI surpasses the capabilities of humankind, dust from the deep future will already be everywhere. Multi-planetary travel will be underway, climate problems will be solved, and life extension will be supported by Super AI. Singularity is theorized to push the functionalities of Self-Aware AI and the capabilities of Super AI beyond humanity’s control. This means the time to plan ahead is now. As the minds of machines are wired, it’s crucial to collectively consider the heart and soul we build into technology. This will guide discovery with an excellence that came before it.

      AI based on functionality is less about power and more about how things works. Reactive Machine AI, Limited Memory AI, Theory of Mind AI, and Self-Aware AI are the types of AI classified by their functionalities.

      Reactive Machine AI <realized>

      This is old school AI. Rooted in statistical math, Reactive Machine AI arrived soon after the programmable computer was developed. There is no adaptive learning here, but the speed at which it can calculate a vast amount of data makes the performance seem intelligent. The functionalities of Reactive Machine AI drives more primitive examples of Narrow AI, such as recommendation engines and game-playing programs. This type of AI provides a static base, but with no memory and only a focus on specific tasks, attention quickly shifts toward functionalities that have more adaptive characteristics.

      Limited Memory AI <realized>

      This type of AI learns and evolves. Functionalities of Limited Memory AI are still constrained by the existing data it was trained with, but world-changing advancements have been seen in machine learning, large language models (LLMs), generative AI tools, multimodality, computer vision, and self-driving vehicles. The realization of Limited Memory AI has Narrow AI pushing it’s full potential.

      Theory of Mind AI <theorized>

      Here we combine existing data, an adaptive ability to learn, and an emotional willingness to think. Enhanced reasoning, multimodality, customizability, adaptive computing, and user-driven functionalities bring General AI (AGI) to life. Theory of Mind AI embraces emotions and understands how we think. This type of AI will add personality to humanoid robots and support reliable relationships by combining digital depth to the realities of our world. As lines blur between humans and machines, compute will remain a currency, efficiency will skyrocket, and a new era of life on earth will begin.

      Self-Aware AI <theorized>

      It’s hard to define consciousness, but true self-awareness exemplifies this type of AI. Along with understanding how we think, Super AI will own emotions, hold beliefs, and is theorized to support the functionalities of Super AI.

      Understanding the seven types of AI helps leaders leverage the perks of technology now and later. Our willingness to lift the fog helps avoid a fear in the unknown and while resisting technology is a choice, it’s one that may put you behind innovation curves. Hybrids add artificial co-pilots, but remain assertive and budget resources knowing we are the pulchritudinous architects of our own neon future.

      By Ben McDougal, ago