On the occasion of 28th Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (COP 28) that is in progress [2 more days to go] at United Arab Emirates (UAE), a tribute to the creative imagination of the master creator himself playing 'The Great Dictator...!'
If you are really curious about the subject matter, are interested in getting a closer look at the truth and have the courage to stand the satire, you can watch the short film "La Fête est Finie" (The Party is Over) by Mark Donne to mark the historic Paris Climate change conference or COP21, 7 years ago.
"On
the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of
contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and
economic life we will have inequality. In politics we will be
recognizing the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In
our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and
economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value.
How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions? How
long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life?
If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our
political democracy in peril. We must remove this contradiction at the
earliest possible moment or else those who suffer from inequality will
blow up the structure of this political democracy so laboriously built upby thisAssembly."
"Back in 1482, a young man heard that the region of Milan was looking for an engineer, so he did what job applicants do. He wrote down his skills and his objectives and how they related to the role in what is thought to be the first resume ever created. That young man was Leonardo da Vinci – the guy that painted the Mona Lisa. Yet if you took a look at his resume, you would never guess that he was capable of achieving any of those things..."
"As if, if we spend 20 more minutes on the resume, it'll somehow be perfect. It will become the ideal resume. As if the ideal resume exists. It doesn't, it's very subjective..."
"If this is all news to you and you're looking for a job, then you’re playing the job search game, and you don’t know the rules. Hardly anyone does. And the problem there is that AI still has a long way to go, and machine learning is nowhere near to making predictions on candidates’ success..."
"A resume doesn't do you justice if you have a non-traditional path. And a non-traditional path is now the norm..."
"Subsequently, it's all about building trust and a culture of belonging. If you ask any CEO about their culture, they'll say it's unique. But to apply to be a part of it is exactly the same as their competitors, which not only limits their options, they end up competing for the same type of talent which results in workplaces that lack diversity..."
"...And once employers realize this, then we'll begin creating workplaces that feel welcoming to candidates even before they join. Plus, it will give us enough time to rethink cover letters, because those are really terrible."
"For every single suicide death, there are 25 to 30 times the number of attempts."
"Our recent research has even shown us that less than half of people who attempt suicide will actually reach out for help, prior, meaning that if we are to reach them, we need to meet them where they are."
"For example, in one study, the investigators went up to these individuals who had recently attempted suicide and asked to see their anonymized search history. And in fact, these individuals had searched up keywords pertaining to suicide means and methodology as well as surrounding hopelessness and loneliness."
Today is twentieth World Suicide Prevention Day established byInternational Association for Suicide Prevention in conjunction with the World Health Organization (WHO). According to the global health body, it is estimated that there are currently more than 7,00,000 (approx,.0.01% of world population) suicides per year worldwide. Do we need to wait and watch this seemingly insignificant percentage rising day by day? Or do we need to Reach Out...?
Lives of people, right from known celebrities like Guru Dutta to Nitin Desai and hundreds of thousands of unknown commoners, could have been saved only if someone had decided to reach out to them in their dark times when they took that decision and executed it, hopelessly and painfully!
If we have AI at our disposal that can 'read your mind', why not put it to the best use of saving precious human lives rather than just checking on their life-style habits to market consumables. There are things no human wants to discuss or disclose with another living soul and AI supposedly being a non-living and emotionless thing, people can find counsel and solace by sharing any disturbing thing with it without the fear of being judged.
If the technology and its tiniest handheld tool is making humans more and more isolated, the same thing must be used to pull them out of that isolation. This ultimately can help the helplines to reach out to them and counsel them in those difficult desperate moments of 25 to 30 attempts; isn't it...?
"They’re responsible for 70 percent of the stock of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, for using up 60 percent of the world's carbon budget."
Clarification: This partly depends on the definition of "developed" and "developing," but the Centre for Global Development reports that developed countries are responsible for 79 percent of global emissions produced between 1850 and 2011: see here.
The estimate that rich countries are using up 60 percent of the global carbon budget is based on analyses showing that the world has used up roughly 85 percent of the global carbon budget, the total amount of carbon emissions that the world can emit while still staying below 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming (see the most recent Global Carbon Budget report here and a Carbon Brief analysis here).
Given that developed countries are responsible for 79 percent of the roughly 85 percent of the global carbon budget already used, this means that they have used up roughly 67 percent of the global carbon budget.
"The problem is that all of the aid in the world will not fund one-twelfth of the green transformation in developing countries."
Clarification: This one-twelfth estimate comes from two numbers: The total amount of foreign aid, specifically official development assistance (ODA), in 2022 was 204 billion dollars, and according to a 2022 report by the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance, emerging markets and developing countries will need to spend 2.4 trillion dollars per year by 2030 to finance a green transformation. (204 billion dollars is about one-twelfth of 2.4 trillion dollars.) See here and here.
"Nevertheless, I believe that there's so much we need to do and can do to make AI sustainable and humanistic. We need to make AI smaller, to democratize it. And we need to make AI safer by teaching human norms and values..."
Same is true for the Next Generation... If we fail to teach human norms and values to our kids, we will end up in a situation where AI-dependent generation will lookup everything on Chat GPT which could be intelligent but never Humane as it would be the sophisticated version of Machine Learning and not cognizance of Collective Wisdom - the privilege of mankind.
This is neither criticism nor skepticism but a warning alarm of what future holds for us if we do not realize its implications at a macro level.
