Trust, not attention, will be the most valuable commodity in the AI-world

I had my Masters students interview the chief editor of UN radio last week, Ben Dotsei Malor ( an old friend from BBC in early 1990s). It was one of the best sessions I’ve witnessed in a while. They asked deeply penetrating questions. Thank you Ben and to the students.

We find knowledge from a pattern of study-learn-apply-critique. In two weeks I told my students you’re going to lecture. It’s part of a pattern of teaching I adopted years ago in which current generations try to provide answers to current solutions.

I ran a programme on it called The Lab in which students would find their own solutions, guided by professionals from outside and my experience in innovation and entrepreneurialism.

Remember that line in the film Mile 22 (2018) when an intelligence chief says he needs solutions, not on what academics think (that’s yesterdays model) but on creative thinking.

There’s a video doing the rounds of Peter Buttigieg, US Secretary of State for Transportation, talking about finding solutions to our information-chaos. He rightly assesses how the point of disinformation is not necessarily to prove an alternative view, but to flood people with so much info that they are paralyzed at trusting anything.

Adam Curtis showed this in his film hypernormalisation. That is how a new breed of political technologists could knowingly confuse people by sponsoring truth and false information and letting both sides know.

Buttigieg’s NYT best seller “Trust” looks for ways of securing a civil future, saying this next gen will have to find ways of sorting out the future, because current gens have no idea. I agree. One of Buttigieg’s solutions is to spend more time offline with community-based activities.

There are other ways in tech to assess trust, which we’re going to need for the AI world we’re entering.