Week #4 – MBA 6101 – Surfing the Tsunami, Chapter 4: Level 1: Adapt

The fourth chapter of Todd Kelsey’s Surfing the Tsunami discusses the first level of responding to artificial intelligence. Adapting, while a passive exercise, acts as a first step with the hope that it may stir the observer towards action. Kelsey explains that, at the very least, “trying to grow and learn and respond is better than nothing.”

According to Surfing the Tsunami, a reasonable first step towards adapting to artificial intelligence can be as simple as learning more about AI. Kelsey suggests reading articles from sources like Wall Street Journal, Wired, and MIT Technology Review. Other potential sources include blogs like BAIR (The Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Blog) and Amazon's AWS MachineLearning Blog. Podcasts like Sam Charrington’s TWIML, the NVIDIA produced AI Podcast, and, while broader in tech scope, Leo Laporte’s TWIT.tv, provide valuable insights into the development and integration of AI and machine learning.

Kelsey also suggests books like Ford’s Rise of the Robots, Domingos’s The Master Algorithm, and McAfee and Brynjolfsson’s The Second Machine Age as stepping off points for people interested in adapting to artificial intelligence. While books are excellent sources, for those that don’t consider themselves “book types,” Martin Ford, Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee, and Pedro Domingos are engaged experts and frequent commentators with active presences on social media.

While Kelsey encourages indulging your curiosity in AI, he does suggest restraint. The depth of information pertaining to artificial intelligence and machine learning can be formidable, but it’s not necessary to know everything.  Instead, Kelsey suggests taking in enough information to provide a “fair mix of various viewpoints” and to consider graduating to the adopt stage.