Welcome to my new weekly podcast, inspired by stories brewed from within. To celebrate the launch of You Don’t Need This Podcast, listen as I articulate a caffeinated manifesto for this podcast, introduce our friendly co-host (BEN BOT) and invite you to join in on the fun every Wednesday morning. Cheers!
By connecting the global datasphere with computer vision, machine learning, and language modeling, computer science has paved the way for artificial intelligence.
Machines have long used human logic to automate routine and AI is not new, so why has this form of knowledge engineering earned so much attention lately? It’s because AI has learned to speak our language.
Language modeling has taught our digital counterparts how to articulate what it already knows. Not in some robotic, 8-bit voice. AI is now conversational. For example, chatbots are informative, engaging, and entertaining humanoids, while generative AI uses neural networking to transform simple prompts into impressive visuals.
When innovation threatens the status quo, a common response is fear followed by complacency. This is evident in the argument that AI will take all our jobs. Yes, advancing technology will continue to reduce the need for humans to turn knobs and here’s a 2023 Cornell University study on how large language models may impact labor markets. Gone are the days of clocking in on time and keeping your head down just long enough to climb a ladder built to resist change. The willingness to play it safe may extend a sense of temporary security, but this is a choice that makes you easy to replace with cheaper labor and faster tools. To remain indispensable, let AI dine on the dull, devour inefficiencies, and support our own ingenuity.
Start a journey before you see the end. Knowledge is required, but for students, intrapreneurs, and entrepreneurs who stay creative, it’s impossible to compete with being you! As AI munches on mediocre, more of us are invited to build without a map. To make a ruckus with no permission required. To do something for the love of doing it and to care enough to fail.
AI won’t take your job. People who use AI will. It’s a lousy time to be complacent and the perfect time to be creative.
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BEN BOT goes online April 1st.
We are all able to be trappers of time.
Time trapping is as old as time itself. What started as storytelling in ancient times, led to language that was translated into the written word. Humanity then brought the past to life with audio recording, photography, and video. Now, emerging technologies are allowing telepathic thoughts to mark our memories.
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Proof? Here’s a Nueralink Show & Tell.
Time trappers wield an ability to more actively revisit life experiences. To test your trapping skills, grab a device and open your favorite place to store creative content. Whether it’s writing, audio recordings, photos, video, or other types of art, go back to see what you captured yesterday and one week ago. Now travel back in time even more. Revisit this day last year, two years ago, five and ten years ago! As you enjoy your own nostalgia, consider the quantity, quality, and different types of content you’ve created.
Avoid distractions and stay in the moment, but if you’d like to enhance your time trapping capability, think of fun ways to create more content. This might be a day dedicated to taking an exorbitant amount of photos. Perhaps it’s trying a new app? Maybe it’s finally downloading the video from a memory card and trying your hand at editing it together? What if it’s taking the time to share time you’ve trapped with others? Whatever the exercise is, see if you can form a habit doing it for a few months. Set a milestone, then enjoy looking back at the results.
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Think about it. Many idea machines prefer to physically write into ideabooks. Music lovers often choose vinyl over endless streaming and how great is a live theater performance compared to any TV show? The time, skill, and passion from those generous enough to create art, makes thoughtful time trapping more strenuous, but more fulfilling in a way.
We are already cyborgs and biotech will further augment the way we seamlessly capture, organize, and share our realities. Until we autonomously enhance our bandwidth, telling a story, writing, recording audio, taking photos, or shooting video will still take manual effort. Let’s mitigate the risk of AI and optimized efficiency, but might the elbow grease required to set each time trap make our personal creations more memorable? Yes, but that will soon be an excuse. In the future, creativity may be the essential currency to add heartfelt context to our trapped time.
I’m without a thesis, but I’ve arrived at an appreciation for long-term, creative devotion. Caring enough to habitually go beyond what’s expected. When ambitious initiative is a fundamental part of your creative system, you’ll be a timeless time trapper who stays in focus, strategically organized, and inspired with lasting purpose.
We are often told being extraordinary makes us special. We each write our own story in life, but as Neil deGrasse Tyson suggests, perhaps the sameness of our cosmic composition is what makes each of us fundamentally special from start to finish? This eliminates the need for permission and invites us all to be remarkable.
Our connected era has evolved society away from the industrial age. The factory (existing organizations that have an established system in place) and replaceable cogs that follow instructions to keep the vast machine churning has faded in favor of those who unite tribes, are champions of change, and willing to make a ruckus. Back in 2010, Seth Godin gave those who choose to be indispensable a name: Linchpins.
Linchpins are artists who consciously care enough to go beyond mediocre. Linchpins solve interesting problems and make judgement calls without a map. They welcome weird. They are scientists who stay curious. They are generous and passionate about the art of connection. Through an inclusive, positive-sum lens, linchpins lead and let others lead without seeking credit. They are fearless, in that they are unafraid of things they don’t need to be afraid of. Linchpins leave resumes behind with work that transcends time as they build at speed of trust and relentlessly #givefirst, knowing that accelerating others generates unmatched energy.
The skills of a linchpin are hard to quantify with tradition metrics, but a willingness to bring your true genius to work is an open invitation for us all. Over time, the linchpin’s art often becomes meaningful to many, which makes work less about trading time for money. In this centered state of career nirvana, nobody can compete with being you. Cogs in a machine are replaceable and can therefore be paid less. When you are a linchpin, you have leverage and there is no option but to reward you for work that is a creative expression rooted in lasting purpose.
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“Leaders don’t get a map or a set of rules. Living life without a map requires a different attitude. It requires you to be a linchpin.” -Seth Godin
If indispensability is so accessible, why doesn’t everyone accept the invitation to be a linchpin?
One primal reason is the indoctrination of an education system that was designed to produce factory workers. From an early age, we are brainwashed to pursue perfection, to color in the lines, to follow instructions, to care what others think, and to define success by worldly consumption. Educational transformations are all around us and great teachers willing to be linchpins are activating students to go beyond the system. Instead of molding obedient factory workers who’s only hoping to be taken care of by factories built on promises of the past, we can teach people to take initiative. To invite doubt. To passionately explore one’s superpowers. To solve interesting problems while leading us with reverse charisma and confident humility.
Another reason why some stay complaisant, is the outdated promise of an American Dream. Gone are the days of clocking in on time and keeping your head down just long enough to climb a ladder built to resist change. The factory worker’s willingness to play it safe may extend a sense of temporary security, but this is a choice that makes you easy to replace with cheaper labor, faster tools, and advancing technology. Whether it’s fueling innovative action as an intrapreneur at an organization that prefers linchpins over factory workers, diversifying your career portfolio with an inventive side hustle, or building pain-killing projects as an entrepreneur, we may only live once and life is too short not to enjoy your work.
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What makes you indispensable?