How AI trainer is the new trendy gig for students and young professionals

I was not aware until recently how the job of “AI trainer” is the new gig for students seeking some extra money and for young professionals. But as AI-based services and ‘deep-learning’ products increase, there is a need to help them learn faster from existing data. The job is about feeding the data to the software and manually correcting the outcome to help the algorithm learn faster.

AI teaching sweatshop in Asia

For some basic image recognition, there are even sweatshops setup in low-cost countries to teach the algorithms. For more complex matters, this is generally performed in the AI company premises by graduate students in the relevant specialty.

Of course, the intent of deep-learning algorithm is to replicate what has been taught to it in a scalable manner, therefore automatizing the job that was previously performed by junior personnel. But the irony is that it also creates the new job of teaching it on the basis of an initial set of data how to respond and what to produce.

Let’s not be astonished if the first jobs of new graduates in the years to come is ‘AI teacher’!

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How the Van der Waerden Theorem Shows the Limits of Big Data

The Van der Waerden theorem states basically that if a string of data is long enough, there will always be instances of periodic occurrences. This means that when there is enough data, there will always be regularities – and they will not be meaningful, it is just a mathematical situation.

This theorem just means that for a big enough heap of data, we will find correlations that in fact do not have any meaning: these are spurious correlations.

Hence we can expect that with big enough data, Big Data analysis will throw up heaps of correlations that have no meaning at all.

But we can also expect that some people and organizations will take action based on those correlations, and that it may sometimes be deeply counter-productive.

Those who will have success in the world of bid data are those that will be able to sieve the many spurious correlations from the few real insights that can be gained from analysis. This will not be easy, because intuition may not be of great help. A thorough scientific analysis will be required, involving reproducibility of experiments in various independent data sources – and that will be difficult to do fully.

Let’s thus brace for many spurious correlations to be announced as discoveries only to be disproved some years later!

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How to Take Action on Uncertain Opportunities

Following up on our post ‘How to be More Lucky in Life: the Luck Factor‘, one specific aspect is taking action on opportunities. Once one has increase the number of potential opportunities, remains the need to take action to benefit from the luck. And it is sometimes difficult – and often makes the difference.

It is always psychologically difficult to decide to enter an uncertain venture. It is a bet and there is no certainty as to its outcome. How can one be more comfortable taking those decisions?

Based on my experience here are some pointers. And I find that the stock market is an excellent teaching ground to determine behaviors that can later be applicable to many other fields :

  • the foreseeable worst case outcome should not impact substantially our well-being. For example for financial decisions its worst possible impact should be less than a limited % of our total assets, or the time involved should not burden excessively our calendar.
  • The possible best case outcome should produce substantial value
  • It generally boils down to the confidence we may have with certain people. How is the fit with those people, what is our hunch?
  • Do we have a portfolio of opportunities that spreads the risk and ensures that on average, there will be benefits and possibilities to enhance further lucky strikes?

In addition, one should be ready to stop losses when it becomes obvious that the opportunity does not work out (including in time and money involved), and the other aspect is not to be too persistent on luck: know when to fold on a lucky opportunity, it will not last forever.

Grab opportunities, act on them: the secret for luck to realize! Are there opportunities lying there where you did not take action? Go for it!

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How Creating Lateral Growth Opportunities Becomes Rarer in the Modern World

Following up from the previous post ‘How to Create More Opportunities in Your Life‘, I am concerned how modern technology rather tends to close us up to new opportunities.

Typical modern restaurant scene: everyone on their own screen!

This is extremely obvious in public transportation of even at restaurants: people are closing themselves in their own chosen world, sometimes including with headphones, and remain in their bubble. Human interaction and the possibility of chance encounters diminishes drastically.

In addition it is well known that most social networks tend to close us further in our bubble of interests and opinions. While they do give opportunities to meet with new people with similar interests on a global scale, they don’t encourage us to encounter contrarian opinions and views.

Therefore, there is a real premium to those that will know how to take some break off this modern addiction to create lateral encounters that can create substantial new opportunities and make oneself grow in new directions: read books that bring new ideas, participate and listen to meetings and presentations with new approaches, etc.

How much time to you take to create those lateral opportunities in your life?

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How to Create More Opportunities in Your Life

Following up from the previous post ‘How to be More Lucky in Life: the Luck Factor‘ inspired by the book ‘The Luck Factor: The Scientific Study of the Lucky Mind‘ by Richard Wiseman, let’s dwell on the specific issue of increasing opportunities in our life (whatever their luck content). When I read this book I realized I may need to do some effort in that respect.

In this instance, Richard Wiseman exposes 3 sub-principles:

  1. Lucky people build and maintain a strong ‘network of luck’
  2. Lucky people have a relaxed attitude towards life
  3. Lucky people are open to new experiences in their life

It is all about trying not to be closed-in in our usual world but be open to new ideas, new people, new encounters and welcome those inputs that may be outside our comfort zone. Richard Wiseman insists on the opportunity offered by meeting new people we don’t know and the need to be able to accept widely different worldviews to open our horizons and create new opportunities.

“Luck is when preparation meets opportunities”: the issue here is to create more opportunities, and then be prepared to act on them through openness and availability (in terms of time, mentally and emotionally).

For me, this acts as a useful reminder that it is extremely important to act laterally, meet people and go to meetings that may not be directly connected with what I am doing, but that allow to expand my worldviews; and also to try to take advantage of chance encounters as much as possible. I have tried to increase those opportunities in the last few months.

And you, what will you do to create more opportunities in your life?

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How to be More Lucky in Life: the Luck Factor

I read with great interest the excellent book ‘The Luck Factor: The Scientific Study of the Lucky Mind‘ by Richard Wiseman, a professional magician turned psychology professor. He studied scientifically, through a number of experiments, how “lucky people” differ from “unlucky people”. The interesting point is that it basically describes what are the behaviors to have in a random world where a number of events happen, that can be good or bad.

He describes 4 principles for a lucky life:

  1. Maximize your chance opportunities
  2. Listen to your lucky huches
  3. Expect good fortune
  4. Turn your bad luck into good

When looking at those principles, it is all about: 1 – increasing the flux of possible events (lucky and unlucky) in your life, 2 – based on your conscious and subconscious analysis, bet more on those that appear lucky, 3 – be open-minded and persist, 4 – do not persist in bad luck, and consider positively what you learn from bad luck to get more lucky the next time.

This is the application to life of the right behaviors to have for example when speculating on the stock market: increase the frequency of bets, try to bet more on stocks that have good fundamentals, be positive and persistent but cut losses when they appear.

The interesting part is that it seems that by applying those principles more consistently, it is possible to become more lucky in life. What about trying?

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How Electrical Mobility Can Spread Without Subsidy

In an interesting twist, this Bloomberg article describes how e-rickshaws are becoming the norm in India, despite the lack of subsidies and totally independently of any government initiative: ‘India’s Rickshaw Revolution Leaves China in the Dust‘.

“The South Asian nation is home to about 1.5 million battery-powered, three-wheeled rickshaws – a fleet bigger than the total number of electric passenger cars sold in China since 2011. But while the world’s largest auto market dangled significant subsidies to encourage purchases of battery-powered cars, India’s e-movement hardly got a hand from the state.”

It is just that e-rickshaws are easier to maintain and operate and generally more lucrative than conventional petrol-powered machines. And this creates great benefits in terms of atmospheric pollution which can already be measured.

This just shows that even if governments can try to influence markets through subsidies, progress can come from other places, and that the market does not wait when a product just becomes better. The issue for widespread electric vehicle adoption is thus not to subsidize more, but to make the vehicle more practical and usable than petrol-powered vehicles. Vehicle producers, you are warned!

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How Predictive Justice Software Starts Being Used

In this Bloomberg article ‘This AI Startup Generates Legal Papers Without Lawyers, and Suggests a Ruling‘, the operation of an Argentinian start-up, Prometea is described. It uses AI to produce suggested rulings from past decisions, thus increasing dramatically the productivity and reducing the backlog of cases.

The productivity boost is significant: “The Buenos Aires office says its 15 lawyers can now clear what used to be six months’ worth of cases in just six weeks.”

At the moment it only produces drafts that are still reviewed by humans, but the results are apparently very encouraging, and many countries seem to be interested by the system, including the UN.

Predictive justice is coming, at least for simple cases. Our judicial systems will certain try to resist, but that’s the trend of history.

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How Bitcoin Mining Substantially Aggravates Climate Change

As we know, cryptocurrency mining farms are very energy intensive. But I had not idea how much until I read that paper ‘Bitcoin must die‘ by Andrew Gallagher. And in reality, Bitcoin production is really using a huge amount of electrical power worldwide! Actually it takes an enormous cost to produce.

“If Bitcoin were to cease trading tomorrow, 0.5% of the world’s electricity demand would simply disappear. This is roughly equivalent to the output of ten coal-fired power plants, emitting 50 million tonnes of CO2 per year – which would cover one year’s worth of the carbon emission cuts required to limit temperature rises this century to 2C. ”

According to the article, which is very detailed from a technical perspective, there are new algorithms that are must less energy-intensive that the ones used by Bitcoin and that allow for secure block-chain usage, so at least there should be an obligation to shift to those much less power-hungry algorithms.

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How to Decide When To Persist or to Quit

Following up from the previous post ‘How the “Entrepreneur Struggle Myth” May Becomes Excessive‘, the issue of when to quit on an entrepreneurial endeavor comes up front from the fact that struggling too much may be detrimental.

In the previously mentioned excellent piece “No More “Struggle Porn”” by Nat Eliason, he explains that “Working hard is great, but struggle porn has a dangerous side effect: not quitting. When you believe the normal state of affairs is to feel like you’re struggling to make progress, you’ll be less likely to quit something that isn’t going anywhere.”

This is complemented by a great post by Tim Berry, ‘You Have to Know When to Quit‘, based on the same piece. And of course he refers to the excellent little book by Seth Godin ‘the Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)‘. I love Tim Berry’s simple explanation of the choices in an entrepreneurial or creative venture: “There’s no virtue to persistence when it means running your head into walls forever. Before you worry about persistence, that startup has to have some real value to offer, something that people want to buy, something they want or need. And it has to get the offer to enough people. It has to survive competition. It has to know when to stick to consistency, and when to pivot. So persistence is simply what’s left over when all the other reasons for failure have been ruled out.”

Therefore, be persistent and work hard but only when you see progress and some pre-conditions are met that demonstrate that your project has some chances to become something workable!

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How the “Entrepreneur Struggle Myth” May Becomes Excessive

Following up in our myth-busting spree after our previous post ‘How Waking Up Early Is a Myth and May Not Be the Success Recipe‘, let’s turn to the masochist myth of the fact that entrepreneurs must suffer to be successful. In this excellent disruptive piece “No More “Struggle Porn”“, Nat Eliason busts a myth established by prominent bestselling authors and entrepreneurs.

As Nat Eliason explains, “There are [always] two messages being sent. The first, the obvious one, is “Entrepreneurship is hard, work hard and you can succeed.” Nothing new or wrong with this. The issue is the second layer, the message underneath much of what [bestselling authors] broadcast: struggling is good.”

As he explains, “Entrepreneurs devour this message like doughnuts at a WeWork because most of them are failing.”. It gives a reason for the situation, while in many cases it is probably down to poor luck and circumstances, and not the lack of hard work. “Struggling and hustling become success proxies unsuccessful people can brag about to give themselves the dopamine hit they would otherwise get from, you know, actually succeeding at something.”

So if you catch yourself to complain too much that you’re struggling, it might be because you’d need to try something else. Watch out! I must say this piece has given me a lot to think about….

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How Waking Up Early Is a Myth and May Not Be the Success Recipe

One of the key recommendations of a lot of self-help books describing successful people is that ‘successful people wake up early’. It is for example, a key approach of Robin Sharma and of a lot of entrepreneurs. In this Quartz paper ‘Waking up early won’t change your life—but it’s awesome for capitalism‘, this assumption is examined and is not found to be particularly relevant.

We learn there that this waking up myth is so widespread and deeply engrained that some people take it so extreme that they wake up at 2:30 in the morning!

The paper makes the point that “the cult of early rising seems to miss a pretty obvious point: There is an opportunity cost involved“. Basically, it is linked to spend a larger proportion of one’s waking hours doing work: this includes not having long evenings to do alternate activities, and starting earlier to work and be productive (before the lazy ones wake up presumably, so that we won’t be interrupted).

It seems to me that the issue is to find some time without interruption to be more effective. It can be early or late, depending on one’s own rhythm. But at the end of the day we still need our night’s sleep to be productive. As the paper recommends, the best is simply to have such a rhythm that we don’t need an alarm to wake up!

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