First Blog

Introduction . We are living through the classic “bubble” phase of artificial intelligence: euphoric capital flows, breathless headlines, and the near-universal conviction that large language models and generative tools will unlock a new golden age of human achievement. Venture billions pour in, every knowledge worker is told to “adopt or die,” and AI is being injected into classrooms, laboratories, newsrooms, publishing houses, and corporate strategy decks with the fervor once reserved for tulips, railroads, or dot-com startups. The premise is seductive, promising AI will democratize expertise and supercharge creativity. Yet the opposite is more likely. The deeper AI penetrates the knowledge business, the entire ecosystem that produces, transmits, and certifies ideas, the more it will stultify genuine innovation and risk turning the intellectual landscape into a barren wasteland. This short essay describes possibilities, not certainties. Figure 1 Wasteland The Bubble. Th...

 

1. Introduction . In learning to solve problems, we practice in the schools, and then in life, the real problems present themselves. What is needed is not only considerable skill, but an entire framework for solving problems within our respective domains. For instance, the problems of saving a country or the entire world are not simple and require a comprehensive program. We learn how by example.  The leadership of Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill represents two of the most significant case studies in crisis management, in fact, major wars, in modern history. More than any other factor, it was their problem-solving abilities that won their wars. While separated by nearly a century and vastly different cultural milieus, the mid-nineteenth-century American frontier and the mid-twentieth-century British Empire, or more plainly, the peasant and the aristocrat, both men faced existential threats to their respective nations. Their success was not merely a product of iron will,...