A CEO's Approach to Problem Solving

Problems don't go away because money is thrown at them, they often get worse.

 Long term solutions are best developed by a planning process that blends innovation, accountability, and fiscal discipline with strategic investment. Results can then be monitored, evaluated, and incorporated into the next planning cycle. The critical question of, "how do we drive accountability and evaluate results?"  is what is often missing from government programs.

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Potential Dangers of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

Why should you be concerned about the potential misuse of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics?
Imagine that someone creates a program to sweep through all social media accounts and make a list of everyone who shared a certain post or video, or liked posts by a certain person.
The list would include not only their name, but their picture, and phone number. This information is then loaded into a database and used to create a target list. AI could also be designed to target certain demographics (skin color, age, gender, etc)
A plane flies over a city and drops out 100,000 small drones, about the size of a hummingbird, but each with a camera, a "phone finder app", and facial recognition technology (like your iphone has).Each drone also includes a single explosive charge designed to detonate once within 1 inch of the target's head, or when the AI determines a door or window needs to be blown open so other drones can fly through. The drones talk to each other, identify the location of targets, and transmit a "mission accomplished" signal a millisecond before eliminating the target.
In a few hours, an entire class of people who believe a certain idea or belong to a certain group could be eliminated.
Farfetched? Not at all. Each component of the technology I described available now. It's just a matter of who gets their hands on it and decides to carry out an attack. These are the types of issues we need to be prepared to deal with in the next decade, and right now we are far behind.

https://youtu.be/GFD_Cgr2zho

Lessons Learned from History

Several folks have asked me if I've been following the impeachment. Honest truth - No, it's political circus that stokes the flames of divisiveness and further pushes us to the extremes. I am, however, thoroughly enjoying my latest deep dive into Roman history, because our government was patterned after, and has many of the same weaknesses as their Republic.
Was Marius or Sulla right? Caesar or Pompey? Octavian or Marc Anthony? Did the Gracchi brothers push social change too far, too fast? With the benefit of hindsight, does it even matter? I would say the true lesson is that hubris, ego, lust for power, and the inability to find common ground led to a steady decline in civil discourse, the rule of law, and the stability of the Republic. "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; There is nothing new under the sun". History bears witness to this fact, the only question is whether we learn from the blood stained dust of a ruined Republic and get our act together before we are lost.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-age-of-caesar-a-fresh-look-at-the-key-players-in-a-time-of-historic-unrest/2017/02/01/8c47df12-e49f-11e6-ba11-63c4b4fb5a63_story.html