Systemic racism is finding its way into AI, futurist Chet W. Sisk. A team of technology and linguistics researchers revealed not too long ago that large language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini were being used to create AI. hold racist stereotypes about speakers of African American Vernacular English, or AAVE, an English dialect created and spoken by Black Americans.

The researchers at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence say there has been a lot of work done on trying to eliminate overt racism, but they are now seeing the less overt forms of racism, such as how people talk, are getting baked into AI. According to Adjavik Ghose, one of the researchers at the Allen Institute, AI simply mirrors society.

His quote here is, “Once people start to cross a certain educational threshold, they won’t call you a slur or anything like that to your face, but the racism is still there.” It’s a similar thing in language models. Garbage in, garbage out. These models don’t unlearn problematic things. They just get better at hiding it.

What can we do to eliminate this level of bias? Based on everything I have had a chance to see to date, here are three things we can leverage immediately. Companies should utilize diverse data sets. Make sure your data is diverse and a reflection of the world as it actually is. Prioritize ethnic and racial diverse development teams.

This increases the odds of someone in that group being able to spot a bias before it becomes part of the program. Provide guidelines for ethics and standards. It’s important to get in front of this challenge before it’s too late. The world that we want to create is right at our fingertips. But first, we have to take out the garbage.

Racism in AI was originally published in Jobs and Workforce on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Anyone can change, even you. Futurist, Chet W. Sisk. As a futurist, my job is to help people wrap their arms around change and see it as a friend. A new study released by the University of Illinois Champaign Urbana says our personalities can change over time. Conventional wisdom used to suggest that we were kind of locked into these personality types that guided our lives.

But, this new report says a number of events over our lifetime can morph us and make us into different beings. The study, conducted with almost 5, 000 participants over a 40-month period, shows that we are often shaped by many life major events, such as the birth of a child or a marriage, and By smaller events, like someone doing something nice to you, or you develop a friendship with someone not like you.

According to scientists, these small e events accumulate and can alter personality trajectories. This study provides a very optimistic view of the road ahead for those who want to become better in life. Even more, it may tell a hopeful story of how societies can actually change since societies are a collection of people going through changes.

Whatever the case, we can rest assured that we have the power and ability to transform. All we have to do is pay attention.

Anyone Can Change was originally published in Motivation/Inspiration on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Puritan work ethic is dragging us down. Futurist Chet W. Sisk. There’s a romantic story often told here in the U. S. about the people who founded the 13 colonies that later became the United States of America. The founders were called Pilgrims, or more commonly known as Puritans. That is, The story we often hear is that they sailed from Europe to live in a land where they could exercise religious and social freedoms that were denied them in Europe.

The more nuanced story is that they were kicked out of Europe because oftheir religious practices In the early days of the colonies, these were people who burned Quakers at the stake for talking to Native Americans, killed people who committed adultery, and believed they were the chosen people and everyone else was an infidel.

One of the most challenging legacies the Puritans left with us was one where you had to work from 5 in the morning till 10 at night, so, as an infidel, you might show God you were worthy. With that show of work, you might get into heaven and be declared pure. Unfortunately, that Puritan work ethic has less to do with being efficient and effective, and more to do with a religious practice.

The technology that exists today can help us break the chokehold that idea has on the culture, and could open us up to new ways of living. Taking care of our loved ones, and living more sustainably. Make no mistake, the technological evolution is an evolution of efficiencies. We can do things better, quicker, and more efficiently than we ever could have dreamed before.

The power of technology to transform our lives into the best version of humanity, along with an uplifting belief system that includes all of us. But it will require us to expand our imagination, leverage our innovation, and perhaps jettison some ideas that came over on a ship.

Puritan Work Ethic was originally published in Jobs and Workforce on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The key to happiness is more simple than you think. Futurist Chet W. Sisk. One of the biggest businesses in the world today is the happiness industry. It’s a push by businesses to get you to buy everything from gongs to meditation tapes, prayer cloths, self-help books, as well as subscriptions to newsletters, podcasts, and YouTube channels.

All for the purpose of helping you get happy. While the industry is finally leveling off, I still see it expanding even more over the next three years as people continually struggle with the unhappiness of challenging financial situations, finding a mate, and existential threats like climate crisis.

We’re in the perfect storm for the happiness industry. Unfortunately, those tokens of happiness may give you a temporary bump, but they can’t keep you there. According to a 2023 evaluation from the World Happiness Report, most tools that people use from the happiness industry simply don’t last, or Flat out don’t work as advertised.

The report conducted by five behavioral scientists from the Global Study says two things are abundantly clear. Number one, there is a direct disconnect between the promises of happiness provided by the products in the happiness industry and what people are actually experiencing. Which is no change at all.

And number two, the only thing that is fairly reliable in producing happiness on an ongoing basis is having intended and developed relationships. Relationships make sense, seeing that humans are deeply social creatures and most of the emphasis in richer countries is about material gain at the expense of relationships.

It’s been suggested that the price you pay for wealth, fame, and financial security is to sacrifice relationships along the way to your destiny. According to this study, that price is too high for your mental well being. So the key to solving our personal and collective unhappiness is spending time with other people.

Perhaps instead of buying that new self help book or listening to the latest podcast from that guru, You might want to invite a friend over for tea. The data says it’s a better bet for your happiness.

Happiness is a lot more simple was originally published in Mindfulness/Wellness on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I know I’m a futurist, and my job is to follow trends. Even with the spike in crime during the crack epidemic of the late 1980s and early 1990s, overall crime has been on a steady and clear decline. This decline started years before any and all tough on crime policies. So why do we still feel like gangs of criminals are everywhere and running our streets?

Here are three clear reasons I’ve seen messaging media outlets, entertainment venues, and advertisers have learned how to exploit your fears for viewership by repeating the idea that crime is everywhere and out of control. Aging out, our population is quickly becoming older. Personal safety is a top concern of older populations, whether it’s real or not.

Confirmation bias if you’re a told crime is out of control long enough, you’ll start to believe it as a truth. Even when you are presented with facts that say the contrary. Your brain doesn’t do well with a conflict to a core belief that’s been developed over years. Don’t try to tell people who are locked into a certain world view that it’s not as bad as it seems They will push back even harder with the goal of not wanting to be wrong.

Your job is to stay open to new information for yourself so that you don’t fall into the false narrative trap. Crime is real, but not like what you’ve been told.

Why our belief about crime doesn’t match the truth about crime. was originally published in Ethics and Values on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Jensen Huang, the founder of Nvidia, suggested that you get your kids into something like biology, chemistry or finance. What I’ve been suggesting is the arts, literature, philosophy, entrepreneurship, any discipline that will require you to think. The reason why myself and Huang are saying this is because the left brain work of coding can be done faster and more efficiently by the machines, but the right brain stuff of thinking, concepts and possibilities and visionary leadership is still the domain of the humans. Because we have the skill to conceptualize.

We are the programmers. Our ability to think, reason, conceive, and imagine are the building blocks for programming We simply feed these ideas into the framework provided by the tech. When that happens, the potential for magic is great. There is a reason why so many companies are asking for employees that know how to think. They know the future will be led by those who capture thought and transform it into an actionable shovel ready thing.

Making America think again is the most important thing we as a society could ever do. And let’s be clear, feeding people propaganda is not teaching them to think, opening them up to knowledge, ideas, and even concepts they don’t agree with gives them the chance to develop new brain synapses and deeper insight.

The days of coding are gone. The days of thinking and conceiving are here.

Stop telling kids to get into coding. was originally published in Jobs and Workforce on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There are two forces at work in our world that could bring trust back as a way we can move forward. They are as different as night and day, but they also are similar in how they could help bring back trust as a tool in common human interaction. Those two forces are blockchain technology and the rising global philosophy of Ubuntu. Let me explain.

Blockchain technology is simply a decentralized digital ledger. If you make a digital transaction using blockchain, it is secured because all of the many pieces that make up the ledger of the transaction are scattered everywhere in the digital ether, making it incredibly difficult for people to steal or make a copy of. That technology could restore confidence in the world of transactions.

The Ubuntu Philosophy is a Southern African concept that says a person is a person because of other people. In other words, it’s a philosophy based on the idea that trust and human connection are key to our future. This is the fastest-growing philosophy in the world right now.

These two forces can work together to restore faith in re-imagined financial markets, new ways of human interaction, and how we see ourselves as human beings.

Trust is at an all-time low right now. These two streams of development could synch together and give the trust the boost necessary for a whole new approach.

What’s the future of trust? was originally published in Mindfulness/Wellness on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The word revolution has been associated with political mass movements and the changing of governments, but it also can apply to our personal lives. We often say we want a revolution in our eating habits, exercise routine, or even our relationships. I suspect that many of you may not necessarily mean a revolution in your actions. You may be thinking about something else that may be more in keeping with what you really want… an evolution.

Let me share the differences:

A revolution, like the hands on the face of a clock, is simply the full journey of those hands around that clock. That makes a revolution. So if you’re thinking of a revolution, you’re thinking of change, but change is regulated by the constraints of the clock. Nothing new is really introduced...just the hands on the clock have simply changed places. It’s also true that those same hands will return to the point that they started. In a sense, in a revolution, you really don’t go anywhere. If that is your desire, then yes, you are correct in seeking a revolutionary act.

But when you speak of evolution, you’re talking about a different beast. An evolution involves not only moving beyond the constraints imposed by the clock, but you’re talking about evolving into something else, perhaps richer, deeper, and more profound. It is the next step beyond what you’ve done into something new, fresh, and perhaps innovative. In other words, you have evolved.

As I continue to speak with company heads looking for talent, they often ask for evolutionary thinking…that is, people who not only think outside of the constraints of a box, but people who cut the tether to the box so that the box no longer holds them back. We now have the power to re-imagine the future.

In a world seeking innovative problem solvers in a new technological and social terrain, it’s the evolutionary that will command our attention.

Revolution vs. Evolution was originally published in Self-help & Personal Development on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Fun fact about my job as a futurist, it can be incredibly depressing because of the great challenges I see around the corner. Now, it helps that I’m a natural optimist, but even I need to boost my optimistic resources based on how things are currently trending. Let me share with you my five go-to’s when I need to pick myself up and dust myself off to go forward.

I drink green tea daily. Yes, there are some basic medicinal benefits that come from drinking green tea on the regular, but for me, it’s more psychological. I have associated my cup of green tea with centering whatever does that for you. Do it daily. I do a gratitude rundown. I don’t have to think very hard to remember some of the worst days of my life and realize I’m not there anymore.

Get some context for your life. By practicing gratitude, I don’t eat too much. Sometimes we eat a lot to cover up some deep sadness inside. May I suggest actively cutting back on that which you eat so that food doesn’t become a crutch? I reach out to the ancestors. Fortunately, I had a really good relationship with my grandmother.

Now that she’s on the other side, it’s actually easier for me to reach out to her and share my life journey. There’s always a listening ear at your convenience. With the ancestors. I look at pictures. I have a lot of pictures from some of the best times of my life because most of us rarely take pictures of the worst times in our lives.

Those positive pictures cheer me up and remind me what I’m doing my work for. I hope these tools help you as much as they have helped me over the years. Do these five things regularly and you’ll find it much easier to get through the valley of the shadows and arrive in the land of opportunities. And possibilities.

Overcoming Negativity and Fear was originally published in Self-help & Personal Development on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The guy in the suit is smarter than the rest of us. Modern society’s most destructive fallacy futurist Chet W. Sisk. Due to the export of Hollywood images and tropes to the rest of the world, there is a kind of an assumption that guys in suits are smarter than the rest of us. We give them deference. We wait for them to make a decision, then we follow it.

We expect them to save the day because we figure they’ll know what to do. This obscene loss of agency on our part is a tragedy on two levels. One, it signals we lost our sense of agency, and two guys in suits have been wrong on many things like the rest of us. Here are some examples of their poor judgment.

We’ll wanna remember when they propose to lead us guys in Suits. Created an entire disinformation campaign to keep us from knowing about climate crisis back in the 1970s when we could have done something about it. Guys in Suits created the Oxycontin addiction epidemic, claiming that they didn’t know people were becoming addicted to the drug.

Guys in Suits financed and organized the transatlantic slave trade for over 250 years. Guys in Suits were behind some of the biggest grifts and Ponzi schemes the world has ever seen. Well, I think you get my drift. That suit doesn’t give them any special insight more than the rest of us. They just have the money to cover up their misdeeds, unlike the rest of us.

This is not to demonize the guys in the suits. It’s to provide balance so that you know that they have no special powers. That should remind you that your ideas, thoughts, and visions carry weight as well. Hold onto that thought. The next time you feel out of place in a room full of suits, you have something to share too.

Guys in suits — are they the real deal? was originally published in Self-help & Personal Development on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.