How to become an incredible loser and ultimately win.

That’s what I’m about to present to our Story Lab, and then next week I’m in Bergen, Norway where I hope to share more. Norway has been kind to me in the past.

It was in Oslo in 2006 where I unveiled my newly built platform on viewmagazine.tv that streamed video behind photojournalistic photos, whilst reforming videojournalism.

So to now, what exactly are HumAnis? And why is the future not just AI?

In 1997 the world’s best chess player Gary Kasparov lost grudgingly to a super computer IBM’s Deep Blue. After some thought about his loss Kasparov came up with an idea. What if he teamed up chess players with AI? The logic was computers and machine learning can outdo humans on tactics, but strategy ie choice that’s another matter.

If you remember the cartoon sketch of a car opening the garage to go to the beach to sun bathe, with the caption, “I’ll trust AI when my car decides when to take a break” that about sums it up.

“It is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, says Robotic expert Hans Moravec, et al, “and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility”.

Kasparov helped devise advance chess tournaments that became free style chess. That combined Humans and AI, and soon after games flourished between non traditional chess players using computers, and the inevitable. HumAnis had forged a new game and yes now AI could be beaten. It’s down to strategy.

This story translates analogously to the future of information exchange or even more precisely journalism. In ten years time journalism is unlikely to resemble what it is today? You can make comparisons between electricians and electronic engineers as electricity became popular in 19th/20th century. Electricians became engineers to cope with the future, but they didn’t disappear.

Ten years ago journalism went through a digital transformation. The next ten will be shaped by strategic plays using machine language to form approaches. It happens to an extent today using google to do search. But the future has a sense of science fiction materialising.

It’s not a kind world where this phenomena will automatically fit in. It requires working at it. The lessons on bias in machine language for different cultures has been much discussed. To address this spaces then an important lesson has to be ramped up. Live to fail.

To lose is to be unsuccessful in achieving a goal, is its definition. We treat it as a pariah. It scares people, not least growing adults who’ve been made to believe losing is to be abhorred. Winning must come at all cost. Losing sounds a counterintuitive skill, but it’s at the heart of human learning to create.

We’ve all lost out in pursuit of an idea. As an artist ( former artist in residence at the Southbank Centre) my work regularly failed. Conceptualising is high probability stakes. It requires leaning away from first thought solutions to embrace co-creation across multiple domains, trying and losing happens, it’s part of the equation.

Several centuries ago the word “Nice” used to mean foolish. It’s changed over the year. Woke (sadly) has been politically mangled. Losing should be a deliberate use to demonstrate, like love, life is about falling in and out — and should hopefully make you a more informed person.

Not all experience leads to expertise. That PhD doesn’t cut it.

As a maths chemistry grad; the image above is me in an homage to integration of media assets. Conceptual thinking alongside tech has an unpredictable outcome as a vision compared to procedural enterprises ( which are still needed) Become a pro Loser is a prelude to being a better HumAni.