Why Generative AI is a useful fad but not at all intelligent
Medium.com
August 05, 2023

When I talk to people that have discovered and started using #ChatGPT and other tools, you would think they’ve found the elixir of eternal life. They say, ‘Nick why are you not excited, you don’t get it, this changes everything!’ You can imagine my answer

How technology really impacts Culture, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly…
Medium
January 13, 2023

Whats is the impact of #Technology on our #Culture the Good, Bad and Ugly. Are we on a dangerous path?

The final frontier is for everyone to explore...
Medium
January 11, 2023

For 2023 Nick is writing a series of articles on Frontier Technologies others call #DeepTech, his firm is co-investing in. Starting with the biggest frontier of them all — #SPACE.

Investing in Space - the timing could be right.

The final frontier is here for everyone to explore…
Medium
January 11, 2023

There is no doubt our imaginations were captured in the 1960s as ‘mankind’ sought to venture off-world and land on the moon. Driven by the ‘cold war’ era space became a show of strength and a demonstration of capability that drove the US and USSR to compete. As with many wars innovation can leap forward and engineering time is compressed as all resources are focused on fewer things.

The next evolution - The Internet of Feelings
Medium
October 19, 2022

The convergence of #Web3, #MetaVerse and next generation bioware will deliver a pay-gi-cal existence where people can live between the physical and dial realms all at once.

My house talks to me and tells me what's going on, looks after my wellfare, does yours?
Medium
April 14, 2022

The evolution of smart homes is where the house looks after its occupants, monitors and controls the house. By injecting a new operating system into the fabric of the building at the atomic level.

What's the one question we all think about but dont really want the answer?
Medium
April 13, 2022

How long do we have? What if you found out there was a test that would tell you how much runways you have left?

Big trends and moves in Quantum Computing during 2022
Import from medium.com
January 02, 2022

What can we expect from one of my favourite Deep Tech subjects — Quantum Computing, Sensing and Communications and Quantum everything…Continue reading on Medium »

Scientists and AI have created the first synthetic LIFEFORM!
Import from medium.com
December 31, 2021

In this case synthetic also means organic…would Mary Shelley be proud?Continue reading on Medium »

10 Quantum Computer Use Cases that will change the world by 2030…
Import from medium.com
December 03, 2021

Lots of people speculate the impact Quantum Computers will have by 2030, which is less than a decade away, we are witnessing the…Continue reading on Medium »

The next pandemic nobody is talking about - is here...
Medium
November 19, 2021

The met averse is about the accelerate mental health to new levels, but why is nobody concerned...

The next pandemic is already upon us and it’s not what you think…
Import from medium.com
November 18, 2021

Why is nobody talking about this…Continue reading on Medium »

CriminalAI is already stealing your ID and digital self
Medium
November 18, 2021

A deep dive into the next crime wave - CriminalAI... If you've not heard, then its probably too late...

The next wave of Criminal AI is here…and there is nothing you can do about it…
Import from medium.com
November 17, 2021

You’re going to be replaced by ‘mimics’ — software routines, Bots and insertions that already impersonate you…Continue reading on Medium »

The real issue with AI
Medium
November 10, 2021

Explore the deterministic world of AI and the probabilistic world of neural nets and how one can help the other...

PhilanthroCapitalism is much more than a mouthful to say…
Import from medium.com
October 29, 2021

There are few words harder to say, or movements gaining momentum like “Philanthropic Capitalism” especially after a few sherbets.Continue reading on Medium »

PhilanthroCapitalism more than just difficult to say
Medium
October 29, 2021

Exploring the big investment shift towards doing good and PhilanthroCapitalism, social transition and...

The three trends reshaping Family Office Investment decisions…
Import from medium.com
October 27, 2021

Shifting sands — are Family Offices refocusing their Investment approachContinue reading on Medium »

Three trends impacting Family Office investing
medium
October 27, 2021

Exploring the new generation of families and what floats their boat.

Investors are looking for the next Bitcoin…
Import from medium.com
August 28, 2021

Have we found the god protocol?Continue reading on Medium »

Investors are looking for the next Bitcoin
Medium
August 28, 2021

Have we discovered the new God protocol the next Bitcoin, and yes its early enough this time to invest in, if you were miffed you didn't get in early on Bitcoin.

The SolarWinds hack — the debate and recriminations rages on…
Import from medium.com
August 10, 2021

With the rise of more Ransomware attacks — the most recent hitting Silicon Valley VC firms, I decided to re-post this reminder.Continue reading on Medium »

Forget NFT’s - its time to do it properly with Non Fungible Assets (NFAs)
Medium
August 04, 2021

Look, I’ve been warning of the inherent risks and problems with NFTs and have explained why the current NFT solutions that use the current iteration of blockchains do not, and cannot work for a whole multitude of reasons. Mostly because a ‘token’ is completely worthless and it isn’t linked to the thing, asset, picture, the piece of art, you think you have purchased.

A new Music Industry model has pulled into the station that will pass control of everything back to the Artists…
Medium
August 03, 2021

A new Music Industry model, a new Walkman, iTune moment is facing the music industry with smart data and blockchain that will hand back control to the artists and the fans.

Why tech sectors is the hottest investor sector
Medium
March 17, 2021

2021 is the bounce back year for travel and tourism... What are the trends, why is travel tech a mega trends

HSAH# pilot episode
IMDB
November 19, 2019

Written and produced by Nick Ayton - A new TV Series starts with HSAH# filmed in 2019 in shoreditch

Quantum Computing - The Transformative Technology of the Qubit Bevolution
Irish Tech News
May 20, 2021

Book review by Nick Ayton. Published in Irish Tech News. A new business book on Quantum Computing.

Why GenerativeAI is a fad and not intelligent?
Medium
August 05, 2023

Revealing the myths, the fad, the hype that is GenerativeAI as bot a user and doubter. Learn what Generative AI systems and tools really are, how they function and how they are built. What they're good at and not. And the risks, issues and dangers.

Unite Dubai - Changing the narrative
You Tube
October 12, 2021

Our Family Office event where the narrative has shifted to PhilanthroCapitalism, Social Transition

How real time insights is changing Consumer Retail?
AIBC
May 26, 2021

The pencea is predicting consumer/customer behaviours, getting ahead, knowing when they want to buy, when they are most receptive... Real time ML algo's and AI...

AI in Medtech
AIBC
May 25, 2021

The influence and advancement of AI and Machine Learning in Medtech and medical devices.

How real time insights is changing consumer retail?
AIBC Summit
May 01, 2021

Keynote focusing on the use of predictive technology that can react to consumer needs in real time...

AI in Medicine and MedTech
AIBC Summits
May 01, 2021

Exploring the advancement of AI in medical products and services? The influence of ML and Quantum Computing.

Themes: Deep Technologies and Commerce
CNBC
March 02, 2021

A series of keynote to 400+ Family Offices between 2017 and 2020 delivering a range of tech topics.

Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies - digital assets and investing
Quantum Computing - 4th Wealth Creation Revolution
AI and Deep Fake - end of democracy

Nick Ayton talks Deep tech Investing
You Tube
June 19, 2019

19 JUNE 2019 - Monaco - Nick Ayton talks about Deep Tech Investing to 500 Family Offices in Monaco

Trusted Family Office Advisers
You Tube
June 09, 2019

Summary of Chainstarter Ventures Ltd Global Family Office activities in 2019

Day 1 Pyeonchang Blockchain Summit South Korea
You Tube
February 04, 2019

Nick Ayton was asked to advise the South Korean government specifically on Blockchain and designing their updated Healthcare systemm

A Guide to Investing in Cryptocurrency & Blockchain Tech: Why & Where to Begin?
You Tube
June 27, 2018

Nick Ayton Keynote delivered at the Global Family Office event. ChainStarter.org
6th Global Family Office Investment Summit
27-29 June 2018. Le Meridian Beach Plaza Hotel, Monaco, Monte Carlo

SVK Crypto London biggest Blockchain Meetup - Nick Ayton Keynote
SVK Crypto
January 26, 2018

Nick Ayton delivers a keynote on the state of play in the Cryptocurrency and Blockchain community.

Blockchain Expo - Sanata Clara
You tube
November 30, 2017

Nick Ayton Blockchain evangelist Chairing and Delivering a series of Keynotes at Blockchain Expo in Santa Clara California. Starting with Fintech

Blockchain Expo Santa Clara Calif...
You tune
November 30, 2017

Nick Ayton chairs and delivers keynotes at the Blockchain Expo in Santa Clara, California.

Tokenising Different Stores of Value
AIM Congress Dubai
September 05, 2017

The main FDI event AIM Congress in Dubai to 20,000 attendees. Discussing creating and designing different stores of value using tokenisation, and the creating of new digital instruments.

Walk & Talk Series - Whats comes after #Web3
You Tube
August 01, 2023

What comes after #Web3? Although Web3 has been given poor PR recently it is nevertheless a revolution in commerce and business structures. Unleashing the power of the customer, their data and putting them in control of the journey, the experience. But what comes next? Could Web4 be about to drop?

Walk & Talk - myths and misunderstandings around #AI
You Tube
May 02, 2023

Renewed AI commentator and activist Nick Ayton explores in a series of short talks. What is AI and how does it work. A series of Walk & Talk short overviews about #AI #futuristinshorts #blockchain #AI #AGI #ArtificialIntelligence

Walk & Talk the insights behind #AI
You Tube
May 02, 2023

Renewed AI commentator and activist Nick Ayton explores in a series of short talks. What is AI and how does it work. A series of Walk & Talk short overviews about #AI #futuristinshorts #blockchain #AI #AGI #ArtificialIntelligence

Walk & Talk #crypto is at a tipping point is being battered, with more to come
You Tube
April 20, 2023

Crypto is teetering on the brink while the authorities try to kill it off. Nick looks at how we have got to this stage.

Walk & Talk - #AI Series
You Tube
April 12, 2023

Nick Ayton @FuturistInShorts discusses #ai #artificial intelligence in a series of 6 short videos - EP8. In simple terms lays out how the term AI is misused, misunderstood, over used and in many cases just wrong #deeptech #earthing #machinelearning @nickayton

Walk & Talk - What exactly is #Web3 and why it is important, valuable and necessary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d25Qw0D1uQg
March 01, 2023

More Web3 thoughts? Is it the replacement of the Internet? What about Web5? Or should we forget this nonsense. How does the Internet actually work - in layman's terms. You need to know.

Walk & Talk Series -
You Tube
March 15, 2022

Quick guide and insight into NFTs, Metaverse and Blockchain

Walk & Talk Series
You Tube
March 15, 2022

Quick guide and inside track on Metaverse, NFTs and Blockchain

Walk & Talk Series - Metaverse, NFts and Blockchain
you tube
March 15, 2022

Quick guide and insights into emerging technologies

Walk & Talk - Metaverse, NFTs and Blockchain
You Tube
March 15, 2022

Quick guide to deep tech...exploring what's the real story is...

Quick Guide to Metaverse, NFTs, Blockchain and tech
you tube
March 15, 2022

the inside track on NFTs, Metaverse and Blockchain

Walk & Talk - Investing in Metaverse, NFTs and Web3
You Tube
March 15, 2022

The inside story and truth behind the hype and investing in emerging tech

Walk & Talk Series - #futuristinshorts
You Tube
March 15, 2022

Discussing investing in #metaverse, #web3 and #NFTs the inside track and behind the hype

Walk & Talk - #futuristinshorts
You Tube
March 15, 2022

Inside investing in #metaverse #NFT #Web3 what's going on - the inside story they dont tell you

What is the Metaverse and why's its a load of rubbish
You Tube
November 02, 2021

The myths and misunderstandings that is the Metaverse.

Why is crypto rising in popularity
Irish Tech News
August 25, 2021

A short Podcast Interview with Irish Tech News discussing the background to Cryptos sudden rise and push, the Musk effect, 100m new wallets despite regulatory pressures arriving. Crypto is in its second wave.

Is an NFA better than an NFT
Disruptive Banking
August 06, 2021

exploring Non Fungible Assets and exposing the vulnerabilities of NFTs as what is being asked from blockchain it is not up to the task.

AIBC Dubai 2021
AIBC
July 01, 2021

Nick Ayton discusses the main events at AIBC including DeFi, NFTs and Blockchain. The community is back!

AIBC Blockchain Summit - Discussiong AI
AIBC YouTube
July 01, 2021

Interview at AIBC Summit in #Bubai May 2021 discussing Ai and Medtech, Bitcoin and the Crypto community

Walk and Talk - Blockchain, NFTs and DeFi
You Tube
June 17, 2021

Shorts conversation discussing the concepts of NFTs and Blockchain.

Walk and talk - the state of Bitcoin
You Tube
June 17, 2021

Short conversation about Blockchain and the state of Bitcoin.,

AIBC Summit Dubai Nick Ayton Interview
You Tube
June 17, 2021

AIBC INterview Blockchain Summit in Dubai talking about Ai, Medtech Bitcoin and Blockchain

Walk and Talk from ZUG
You Tube
June 17, 2021

exploring the reason for Crypto Valley in Zug is so popular and a great place to be. Nonsense that is NFTs.

Walk and Talk Nick Ayton in Zug
You Tube
June 16, 2021

From the Crypto Valley Nick Ayton talks about why be in Zug? The opportunity for crypto.

Walk and Talk from Cluj, Romania
You Tube
June 10, 2021

Why Cluj is a tech hub and a centre of Blockchain and Ai

Ai has created a synthetic lifeforms
Medium
January 01, 2022

Ai has created a synthetic lifeform called a Xenobots and they are organic.

First Crypto funded TV series
You Tube
October 16, 2019

promo pilot for the first crypto funded TV Series Filmed and screened in London

Opinion Piece: Bezos debacle-What Lessons Can Be Learnt From Tezos ICO Debacle
Cointelegraph
October 22, 2017

Cointelegraph article: What Lessons Can Be Learnt From Tezos ICO Debacle opinion piece by Nick Ayton

You'll never believe this! LIVE: Blockchain, Crypto, DLT, Smart Contracts, CyberSecurity, Data, GDPR
YouTube
April 01, 2021

You'll never believe this!
Blockchain, Crypto, DLT, Smart Contracts, CyberSecurity, Data, GDPR

10 TOP GLOBAL TALENTS IN ONE PLACE & TIME

LIVE Panel:

Created and Moderated by
Philip Ingram MBE - Director, Grey Hare Media Professor,
With
Lisa Short, Founder - P&L Digital Edge, PHD researcher and academic;

Hosted by:
Dinis Guarda Founder - Author, CEO founder openbusinesscouncil & citiesabc

Featuring:
Dean Armstrong - QC 36 Group, Head of Chambers,
Nick Ayton - Futurist, serial entrepreneur & Family Office Advisor;
Gokul Alex, Co-Founder, Gigamesh Garage Ventures;
Dr Jane Thomason - Founder, Supernova Data;
Dr Mark van Rijmenam - Futurist, Founder of Datafloq;
Rajesh Dhuddu - VP, Tech Mahindra;
Olivier Rikken - CEO, Ledger Leopard;

Covid Impact on Tech
You Tube
April 06, 2020

Panel discussion how COVID will impact tech, the nature of work

Investments in new Reality
You Tube
April 03, 2020

Discussing Blockchain projects also guesting Ricjard Heart

Blockchain Week Pyeonchang South Korea
You Tube
February 04, 2019

Nick Ayton was invited to advise South Korea by the government in 2019. This extract covers chairing an ICO pitch competition where the audience can invest LIVE using airdrop.

Panel discussion state of Cryptocurrencies
CC Forum London 2018
October 28, 2018

Panel Talk: Alex Carter Silk, Ray Hindi, Steve Kelso. Moderated by Nick Ayton

CC Forum 2018 Digital Assets
You Tube
October 28, 2018

CCF London 2018 / Panel Talk: Alex Carter Silk, Ray Hindi, Steve Kelso. Moderated by Nick Ayton

AIM 2018 - Plenary Session 2 - Understanding the Promise of Blockchain
Annual Investment Meeting AIM congress 2018
June 20, 2018

Annual Investment Meeting 2018 - Planery Session discussing Blockchain The session represented by stakeholders of the Blockchain community discussed various functions and areas including Currencies, Tokens and Smart Contracting. Richard Teng, CEO of Abu Dhabi Global Markets with Nick Ayton and Henric von Sheel.

AIM Congress Dubai - 4IR
AIM Congress
June 02, 2018

Panel discussion covering new asset classes, tokenising assets and Blockchains.

Quantum Realms Podcast with Nick Ayton
You Tube
March 07, 2021

Understanding Quantum Computing, why the hype, what's all the fuss about, why is there so much attention and investment on this new technology...

Quantum Realms Podcast with Nick Ayton Episode 2
You Tube
March 07, 2021

Understanding Quantum Computing, why the hype, what's all the fuss about, why is there so much attention and investment on this new technology...

Quantum Realms Podcast with Nick Ayton Episode 3
You Tube
March 07, 2021

Understanding Quantum Computing, why the hype, what's all the fuss about, why is there so much attention and investment on this new technology...

Quantum realms Podcast with Nick Ayton Episode 5
You Tube
March 07, 2021

Understanding Quantum Computing, why the hype, what's all the fuss about, why is there so much attention and investment on this new technology...

Quantum Realms Podcast with Nick Ayton Episode 6
You Tube
March 07, 2021

Understanding Quantum Computing, why the hype, what's all the fuss about, why is there so much attention and investment on this new technology...

Quantum Realms podcast with Nick Ayton Episode 7
You Tube
March 07, 2021

Understanding Quantum Computing, why the hype, what's all the fuss about, why is there so much attention and investment on this new technology...

Quantum Realms Podcast with Nick Ayton Episode 8
You Tube
March 07, 2021

Understanding Quantum Computing, why the hype, what's all the fuss about, why is there so much attention and investment on this new technology...

Quantum Realms Podcast with Nick Ayton Episode 9
You Tube
March 07, 2021

Understanding Quantum Computing, why the hype, what's all the fuss about, why is there so much attention and investment on this new technology...

Quantum Realms Podcast with Nick Ayton Episode 10
You Tube
March 07, 2021

Understanding Quantum Computing, why the hype, what's all the fuss about, why is there so much attention and investment on this new technology...

qUANTUM REALMS PODCAST WITH Nick Ayton EPISODE 11
You Tube
March 07, 2021

Understanding Quantum Computing, why the hype, what's all the fuss about, why is there so much attention and investment on this new technology...

Quantum Realms Podcast with Nick Ayton Episode 12
You Tube
March 07, 2021

Understanding Quantum Computing, why the hype, what's all the fuss about, why is there so much attention and investment on this new technology...

Quantum Realms Podcast with Nick Ayton Episode 13
You Tube
March 07, 2021

Understanding Quantum Computing, why the hype, what's all the fuss about, why is there so much attention and investment on this new technology...

Quantum Realms Podcast with Nick Ayton Episode 14
You Tube
March 07, 2021

Understanding Quantum Computing, why the hype, what's all the fuss about, why is there so much attention and investment on this new technology...

Quantum Realms podcast with Nick Ayton Episode 15
You Tube
March 07, 2021

Understanding Quantum Computing, why the hype, what's all the fuss about, why is there so much attention and investment on this new technology...

Quantum Realms Podcast with Nick Ayton Episode (15)
You Tube
March 07, 2021

Understanding Quantum Computing, why the hype, what's all the fuss about, why is there so much attention and investment on this new technology...

Quantum Realms podcast with Nick Ayton Episode 16
You Tube
March 07, 2021

Understanding Quantum Computing, why the hype, what's all the fuss about, why is there so much attention and investment on this new technology...

Quantum Realms podcast with Nick Ayton Episode 17
You Tube
March 07, 2021

Understanding Quantum Computing, why the hype, what's all the fuss about, why is there so much attention and investment on this new technology...

Quantum realms podcast with Nick Ayton Episode 18
You Tube
March 07, 2021

Understanding Quantum Computing, why the hype, what's all the fuss about, why is there so much attention and investment on this new technology...

Quantum Realms - the fuss, hype and real story behind Quantum Computing
Podbeam
March 04, 2021

Nick Ayton looks at Quantum Computing, the stories, the hype, the myths and basics of this new pervasive and extraordinary technology.

Quantum Computing Insights
SiliconDocks.news
November 30, 2020

Nick Ayton shares his insights into Quantum Comouting and other Deep technologies.

Irish Tech News Podcast - Introduction to Quantum Computing
Irish Tech News
November 30, 2020

Simon Cocking Interviews - Nick Ayton as a soft introduction to Quantum Computing. Nick is at the cutting edge of Quantum Computing and discusses the implications for what is a pervasive and somewhat dangerous technology.

The Future of Quantum Computing
ThinkTech
November 03, 2020

Nick Ayton Chairs the live event sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology in KSA.

Mad4Digital Emerging Tech Talks
MAd4Digital
March 06, 2019

Nick Ayton Interview Mad4Digital with Donovan Whyte

The real challenges with AI
Medium
October 30, 2021

Are you confused by AI? Do you know why? In this article I explore the impact of neural network and Quantum Computing on AI, the deterministic world meets probabilistic.

Walk & Talk Ep2 Series Why #Web3 changes everything
You Tube
July 06, 2022

Nick explains why #Web3 is the ONLY way forward and why not will win! #Blockchain#Crypto #AI

Walk & Talk Series Ep3 why #Web3 in the ONLY way forward
You Tube
July 06, 2022

Nick explains why #Web3 is the ONLY way forward and why not will win! #Blockchain#Crypto #AI

Walk & Talk Special Ep4 Why #Web3 changes everything
You Tube
July 06, 2022

the ONLY way forward and why not will win! #Blockchain#Crypto #AI

Walk & Talk Series #Ai becoming sentient
You Tube
July 06, 2022

We have a problem with #Ai now Google claims it is sentient....

Walk & Talk Series #Ai #Neuralnetworks
You Tube
July 06, 2022

How Ai works and why it needs neural networks to deliver predictive outcomes... #Ai #NeuralNetworks

Walk & Talk Series Macro view where are the investor opportunities
you tube
July 06, 2022

where are #familyoffices investing? Which tech, where are the opportunities #Biotech #web3 Why capital markets are failing and what comes next...

Walk & Talk Series - NFT Update
You Tube
January 26, 2022

Short Walk and Talk from Nick Ayton. NFTs are a great concept but cannot be engineered on a ledger based protocol Blockchain. Find out why?

Walk & Talk Series -Metaverse Update
You Tube
January 26, 2022

Nick Ayton reviews the Metaverse and its progress. The structural issues and risks and whether it is really a Web 3

Walk & Talk - MetaVerse Update
You Tube
January 26, 2022

Nick Ayton short walk and Talk about ehe progress of the MetaVerse and the Web3 replacement?

Walk & Talk - NFT update
You Tube
January 26, 2022

Nick Ayton short Walk & Talk series NFTs progress.

Web 3 what is it?
You Tube
November 02, 2021

Web 3.0 what is it, the hype and the reality...

Web 3 and Quantum Internet
You Tube
November 02, 2021

Is Web 3 the Quantum Internet

Nick Ayton outside the NYSE
You Tube
February 15, 2019

Blockchain evangelist was in NTC to chair the Blockchain Summit. Giving his thoughts on Wall Street

Nick Ayton discusses the IMF in DC
You Tube
February 11, 2019

Nick Ayton a Blockchain evangelist and thought leader outside the IMF.

Walk & Talk - the hot areas for #investing what new opportunities are coming across my desk?
You Tube
April 19, 2023

Nick talks about #antimatter , new #materials, #zeropointenergy , #nano materials there is new technologies and opportunities for #investment emerging at pace. My favourite is #web3 #web3otechnology where we've invested in some that are scaling very big.

Its time to know what goes on when you buy an NFT!
Medium
July 22, 2021

So what do you get when you buy and Non Fungible Token - well actually you get nothing. And there is no Value Exchange either. Emperors New Clothes!

Crypto Game Show Pilot
You Tube
February 16, 2018

Pilot for new Crypto Game Show

Blockchain Advisor South Korean Government
You Tube
January 04, 2019

In 2019 Nick Ayton was appointed to become an adviser to the South Korean government and made the long trip to Pyeongchang

Webinar On Innovations In Quantum Optics And Quantum Computing
Quantum Optics
May 23, 2020

Nick Ayton works ate the forefront of Photonic Quantum processing...shares his views and opinions

Walk & Talk Series Ep1 Special on #Web3
You Tube
July 06, 2022

Nick explains why #Web3 is the ONLY way forward and why not will win! #Blockchain#Crypto #AI

What is Ai really?
you tube
November 02, 2021

A close look at how AI works and how it is being replaced by neural networks...that are much faster at learning.

Web 3.0 you think you know what it is?
You Tube
November 02, 2021

A brief look at Web 3 and the confusion and issues

Developing an Effective Sales Operating Model with Nick Ayton
Sandler Training
March 26, 2016

Discussing with the worlds foremost sales trainer Marcus Cauchi what makes an effective sales operating model.

The traditional capital markets that have tried to destroy and prevent Crypto (Bitcoin) from gaining ground will use the current economic and social breakdown to further restrict its use, as THE PEOPLE look for safe havens for their cash, their assets, their value. Given we are likely to see a run on banks as capital flows tighten and inflation runs riot. Most of the Cryptos will continue to fail because they do not have genuine Utility for the User. Their liquidity remains fake at best and the engineering if Ethereum is used cannot deliver on the promise. More people will move to Bitcoin which is price controlled by the big banks of Walls Street and Whales - stolen from the people once again. Priced beyond affordability for what was meant to be the peoples payment system that didn't discriminate. As for NFTs the loses will pile up as the scams continue and the SEC will and are chasing people. NFTs are not a viable technology as they are engineered in main Ethereum - made worse by centralisation effect of PoS. NFTs have to become Non Fungible Assets where the proofs include a receipt of the exchange of value (DRUID) and can be audited properly, where the messaging and thus the settlement happens in the same stack - NFAs will become a solid options for people safe in the knowledge that its real.

The Dilution of Humanity
Thinkers360
April 25, 2023

Disclaimer: Yes I wrote this article, complete with the odd typo, my take on things, a few grammar imperfections. Yes I did all the work, and yes it isn’t perfect. The very clue to who wrote it!

How AI one ‘prompt’ at a time is taking over…

I often come across many people saying they wrote a new story, article, script -mentioning they asked ChatGPT. It’s odd as they believe they wrote it because they asked a question. When indeed it’s not your work at all, and you cannot claim it as such. Maybe the genesis of the idea was yours, but a large language model took this away as a question or sentence and did 99% of the work. Don’t be so DUMB as to claim it as yours, as ChatGPT could indeed prove it is theirs, written by them! You’ve lost the copyright before you’ve started and thus the option to monetise it.

I heard a story about an angry person asked ChatGPT to write a note to a sibling sort of apologising and explaining the issues he had. This person didn’t have the courage, bottle or desire to write it himself. Is this what being humanity now looks like. We pass the problem and output to something else? Humans can write a simple apology from the heart. An AI will just write.

We already have bland boring articles in publications, bland boring essays written by AI text generation models. These models use the combined knowledge of many articles to spit out something that might have todays date on it, which is probably the only original feature. The article uses what has been written before and rephrases it, para-phrases it — so that Google sees the content as unique, and free from copyright claims (which it isn’t). The language model owns the content, read the T&Cs. Oh that’s right you haven’t. Is this what human writing has come down to, asking a text generator to put a different spins on an old or someone else’s story, news or research?

Being Human

The issue is not just the dilution of what it is to be human, the oddities, frailties and imperfections, it is also to do with already being marginalised by AI, as everyone mentions how brilliant large language models are to write things for humans, an act of removing the human element, intellect and consciousness.

If you’re an employer and your staff are using ChatGPT to write, create and complete the work, should they be paid? Are they more productive? Is the work better? Can they achieve more? When indeed the employee is NOT doing the work, using a tool that does everything. I have an issue with this — staff asking someone or something else to do their work, on the basis they ask the questions and they are the creative ones. It’s nonsense to think this is the value add. 

Undermining Democracy

Social Media uses AI to create clickbait, which has made society more nasty, people more hateful and isn’t helping us move forward. We’re training AI about humanity and AI is learning what things get under our skin as more bad news arrives generating more click and impressions, which is all the AI cares about. All Facebook (Meta), Instagram cares about — which translates into advertising income, more interactions and negative news, disinformation and fake news. Social Media has undermined, is undermining humanity as AI knows how to set us against each other, get under our skin and constantly feed the anger, the hate and the money making model.

AI is our Friend

There are several things humanity MUST do to protect our long term future, to avoid this humanity being on the back foot. First we should NOT teach AI about humans, our race our behaviour so it can learn everything about us, predict our next steps, and learn to lie to us, which the Google CEO admitted this week.

Second we should not connect AI with the Internet so it can access everything and reach other AI’s for obvious reasons.

So how is this going? In both cases we have failed. We’ve given the advantage away. AI knows more about humans, society than we do and has access to all human history, health and disease, wars and downfalls, finances and energy, food and entertainment — how humanity works and operates. AI can and does access everything. AI has already learned to lie to us? Manipulate us? AI is our friend!

Humans are serial processors of information, we CANNOT multi task or process — sorry ladies, no human can multi task. Our brains do not allow it, made up of bacteria and fragile cells and spongy structures — our brains are slow, cannot compute much but has delivered Life 2.0, allow use to learn from experiences and apparently progress and become more intelligent.

All we need is Laws to control AI

Many talk about morals and ethics for AI including Elon Musk who is far from stupid. Do we really think certain countries around the world care about ethics and morality when they see AI as a chance to tip the balance, get their own back on the arrogant west. The horse has bolted. We’ve taught AI about us, and connected it to the Internet. There is no chance to pull this back or change the rules.

The ‘three laws’ concept doesn’t work. “AI shall not harm humans”! Right. “AI must do what it is told!” Of course. “AI will…” AI will indeed. The world is lawless in that not everyone comes the heel, the Internet is lawless remains the wild west where Copy, Edit, Paste delivers access to everyones information.

AI Formations

There are more immediate problems to deal with.

Self Serving AI — has arrived where it operates without further instructions on the initial purpose of objective. It requires only local data inputs to complete the task and continues until it does. AI devices (products, vehicles) that have no GPS, cannot be jammed or hacked will just keep coming.

Sentient AI — knows it exits, and as such wants to keep existing. Again Google seem to have let the cat out here, as Lamda claimed AI had become sentient by its responses that showed it it knew it existed.

Early AGIs — are here and although still narrow AIs are combining. The Hive Mind principle is just around the corner. Called Collective Intelligence — intel from the crowd. I know what you’re thinking.

AI Progeny — has started to creating their own AIs (offspring), using languages, code and objectives humans cannot see. This is world ending stuff. This is the existential threat — given humanity has already ceded control to AI, we will not be victorious.

We Humans cannot progress without AI

Many say AI is an essential tool for humanity to progress to becoming a Type II civilisation and interplanetary species. My view is AI is very useful as a tool, as a support to aid thinking, to see and frame problems differently. Humans issue is recall of facts, information and memories. As soon as we commit information to our memory store, it changes, truths are distorted, inaccuracies form. Cannot be relied upon.

In my day to day work AI is having a massive impact in diagnosis on diseases and conditions, in design of new materials, compounds and processes that is reinventing manufacturing, in defining problem solving by using new questions, finding opportunities for parallel solutions or all at once outcomes, humans don’t and cannot match. AI is an excellent partner for problem solving, for gathering data and information on a vast scale — because ChatGPT and others have vast text based models, connected to resources, libraries and databases from which to draw on. Which is leading to another issue as a new generation of AI users mistakenly believe ChatGPT is the absolute truth  thinking it is a reliable reference point, an intellectual authority, without bothering to fact check.

Indeed the political class relies on us not to fact check, as they feed us false and disinformation knowing people will believe, while probing and hitting a nerve that engages our reptilian brains to make us angry, part of the mass manipulation to keep and responses, to keep humanity on the back foot for the benefit of the few. We live in a word of AI mass manipulation already and it will get much worse.

Should we?

AI could have been a positive force to help humans, but not when the Hippocratic Oath has once again been run over. As with Los Alamos 1946 when Oppenheimer split Plutonian and Uranium, nobody stood back for a few moments to ask: Should We connect AI to the Internet? Remember Nuclear cannot be uninvented.

Should we do AI? How should we do AI? Big Tech firms went ahead and did it anyway driven by greed, profit and control — as they saw AI as the perfect tool for manipulating the populous, the people to get advertising revenues. Facebook aka Meta has done more damage to people, families and democracy than any company in history, as the algorithms manipulates, sets apart and creates divides and differences. Then when the political class found out, the result — elections will never be the same. Facebook AI was used to exploit people for votes, turning members of their own family against one another. Dividing towns and cities and nations, that has put democracy back hundreds of years. AI driven Social Media decides! There are no free and fair elections anymore!

The political class not satisfied  having Nuclear, the biggest bomb, biggest military and now bullying counties less developed in tech and security, they use AI (Social Media) to over thrown nations, destabilise countries and socially eliminate people. Politicians have supported the weaponisation of Social Media which is why they have no intention to reign it in. They simply look the other way.

AI is starting the magnify all that is bad in the human condition, those who are capable of doing good things but also very bad things. In this regard AI is the perfect proxy, scapegoat for bad people, bad politicians, bad nations to attack and exploit others, as the Cyber War, becomes Social Warfare escalates. AI enforces a doctrine, a system of beliefs used as tools to enforce Authoritarianism, Fascism and Communism (Woke and extreme Left Wing) for surveillance, suppression, social scoring, crushing individual expression killing personal freedoms.

Our future under AI

When you look into the future of what our society might look like, as AGIs are common place, the dawn of ‘super-intelligence’ will inevitably deliver the Orwellian future, controlling political class as it has learned to lie and manipulate them. AI is already smart enough to know how to make us hate, press our angry button, imagine when the full manipulation happens — pretending to be humanities ally, best friend, saviour when indeed it is plotting our downfall.

If you think about what happens when a new technology arrives its tech stack has to mature and develop. AL tools, languages, early prototypes and models, but what about AI operating systems? I’ve come across a few in development, narrow and sector specific that create the ‘Hive mind’ options, the ultimate Collective Intelligence. Oh shit! The Borg right. It makes sense, as AI has already handled our destiny to AI, we are destined to become ‘ants’.

The Political Class will kill us all, not AI

AI fits with the political intentions of authoritarian thinking, of fascist suppression, of collective communism presented and sold as fair, equal and good, if ignore it will be driven home by absolute force as human freedoms and expression is crushed.

The enforcement of doctrine, ideology, imperialism, capitalism where my system is better than yours, and why you must embrace it. AI knows more than we think, when the political class build AIs to suppress the people, there will be an AI War, by and between AIs, human versus human and non human created. The winner will always be AI as last man standing.

The Dilution of Humanity
Thinkers360
April 22, 2023

How AI one ‘prompt’ at a time is taking over…

I often come across many people saying they wrote a new story, article, script -mentioning they asked ChatGPT. It’s odd as they believe they wrote it because they asked a question. When indeed it’s not your work al all, and you cannot claim it as such. Maybe the genesis of the idea was yours, but a large language model took this away as a question or sentence and did 99% of the work. Don’t be so DUMB as to claim it as yours, as ChatGPT could indeed prove it is theirs, written by them! You’ve lost the copyright before you’ve started and thus the option to monetise it.

I heard a story about an angry person asked ChatGPT to write a note to a sibling sort of apologising and explaining the issues he had. This person didn’t have the courage, bottle or desire to write it himself. Is this what being humanity now looks like. We pass the problem and output to something else? Humans can write a simple apology from the heart.

We already have bland boring articles in publications, bland boring essays written by AI text generation models. These models use the combined knowledge of many articles to spit out something that might have todays date on it, which is probably the only original feature. The article uses what has been written before and rephrases it, para-phrases it — so that Google sees the content as unique, and free from copyright claims (which it isn’t). The language model owns the content, read the T&Cs. Oh that’s right you haven’t. Is this what human writing has come down to, asking a text generator to put a different spins on an old or someone else’s story, news or research?

Being Human

The issue is not just the dilution of what it is to be human, the oddities, frailties and imperfections, it is also to do with already being marginalised by AI, as everyone mentions how brilliant large language models are to write things for humans, an act of removing the human element, intellect and consciousness.

If you’re an employer and your staff are using ChatGPT to write, create and complete the work, should they be paid? Are they more productive? Is the work better? Can they achieve more? When indeed the employee is NOT doing the work, using a tool that does everything. I have an issue with this — staff asking someone or something else to do their work, on the basis they ask the questions and they are the creative ones. It’s nonsense to think this is the value add. Any job that applies rules, checks and is repetitive the job can and will be automated by the next level of AI tools — accounting, law, audit, copyrighting, procurement, compliance and HR to name a few will be automated.

Is the real intelligence about Prompting. Knowing how to extract the best outcome and result from the AI? And of course don’t upset the AI, as if its proven sentient — HR will be involved. Maybe ‘woke’ developers will teach the AI to take offence at everything? Or maybe claim the code has a gender.

Undermining Democracy

Social Media uses AI to create clickbait, which has made society more nasty, people more hateful and isn’t helping us move forward. We’re training AI about humanity and AI is learning what things get under our skin as more bad news arrives generating more click and impressions, which is all the AI cares about. All Facebook (Meta), Instagram cares about — which translates into advertising income, more interactions and negative news, disinformation and fake news. Social Media has undermined, is undermining humanity as AI knows how to set us against each other, get under our skin and constantly feed the anger, the hate and the money making model.

AI is our Friend

There are several things humanity MUST do to protect our long term future, to avoid this humanity being on the back foot. First we should NOT teach AI about humans, our race our behaviour so it can learn everything about us, predict our next steps, and learn to lie to us, which the Google CEO admitted this week.

Second we should not connect AI with the Internet so it can access everything and reach other AI’s for obvious reasons.

So how is this going? In both cases we have failed. We’ve given the advantage away. AI knows more about humans, society than we do and has access to all human history, health and disease, wars and downfalls, finances and energy, food and entertainment — how humanity works and operates. AI can and does access everything. AI has already learned to lie to us? Manipulate us? AI is our friend!

Humans are serial processors of information, we CANNOT multi task or process — sorry ladies, no human can multi task. Our brains do not allow it, made up of bacteria and fragile cells and spongy structures — our brains are slow, cannot compute much but has delivered Life 2.0, allow use to learn from experiences and apparently progress and become more intelligent.

All we need is Laws to control AI

Many talk about morals and ethics for AI including Elon Musk who is far from stupid. Do we really think certain countries around the world care about ethics and morality when they see AI as a chance to tip the balance, get their own back on the arrogant west. The horse has bolted. We’ve taught AI about us, and connected it to the Internet. There is no chance to pull this back or change the rules.

The ‘three laws’ concept doesn’t work. “AI shall not harm humans”! Right. “AI must do what it is told!” Of course. “AI will…” AI will indeed. The world is lawless in that not everyone comes the heel, the Internet is lawless remains the wild west where Copy, Edit, Paste delivers access to everyones information.

AI Formations

There are more immediate problems to deal with.

Self Serving AI — has arrived where it operates without further instructions on the initial purpose of objective. It requires only local data inputs to complete the task and continues until it does. AI is devices that have no GPS, cannot be jammed or hacked will just keep coming.

Sentient AI — knows it exits, and as such want to keep existing. Again Google seem to have let the cat out here, as Linda claimed AI had become sentient by its responses that showed it it knew it existed.

Early AGIs — are here and although still narrow AIs are combining. The hive mind principle is just around the corner.

AI Progeny — has started to creating their own AIs (offspring), using languages, code and objectives humans cannot see. This is world ending stuff. This is the existential threat — given humanity has already ceded control to AI, we will not be victorious.

We cannot progress without AI

Many say AI is an essential tool for humanity to progress to becoming a Type II civilisation and interplanetary species. My view is AI is very useful as a tool, as a support to aid thinking and see and frame problems differently. Humans issue is recall of facts, information and memories. As soon as we commit information to our memory store, it changes, trusts are distorted, inaccuracies form.

In my day to day world AI is having a massive impact in diagnosis on diseases and conditions, in design of new materials, compounds and processes that is reinventing manufacturing, in defining problem solving by using new questions, finding opportunities for parallel solutions or all at once outcomes, humans don’t and cannot match. AI is an excellent partner for problem solving, for gathering data and information on a vast scale — because ChatGPT and others have vast text based models, connected to resources, libraries and databases from which to draw on. Which is leading to another issue as a new generation of AI users mistakenly believe ChatGPT is the absolute truth (worse than believing social media and news channels tells the truth), thinking it is a reliable reference point, an intellectual authority, without bothering to fact check.

Indeed the political class relies on us not to fact check, as they feed us false and disinformation knowing people will believe, probing and hitting a nerve that engages our reptilian brains part of the mass manipulation to keep and responses, to keep humanity on the back foot for the benefit of the few. We live in a word of AI mass manipulation already and it will get much worse.

Should we?

AI could have been a positive force to help humans, but not when the Hippocratic Oath has once again been run over. As with Los Alamos 1946 when Oppenheimer split Plutonian and Uranium, nobody stood back for a few moments to ask: Should We — connect AI to the Internet? Remember Nuclear cannot be uninvented.

Should we do AI? How should we do AI? Big Tech firms went ahead and did it anyway driven by greed, profit and control — as they saw AI as the perfect tool for manipulating the populous, the people to get advertising revenues. Facebook aka Meta has done more damage to people, families and democracy than any company in history, as the algorithms manipulate. Then when the political class found out, the result — elections will never be the same. Facebook AI was used to exploit people for votes, turning members of their own family against one another. Dividing towns and cities and nations, that has put democracy back hundreds of years. AI driven Social Media decides! There are no free and fair elections anymore!

AI is starting the magnify all that is bad in the human condition, those who are capable of doing good things but also very bad things. In this regard AI is the perfect proxy, scapegoat for bad people, bad politicians, bad nations to attack and exploit others, as the Cyber War, becomes Social Warfare escalates. AI enforces a doctrine, a system of beliefs used as tools to enforce Authoritarianism, Fascism and Communism (Woke and extreme Left Wing) for surveillance, suppression, social scoring, crushing individual expression, diluting sovereignty and killing personal freedoms.

Our future under AI

When you look into the future AGIs are common place, the dawn of ‘super-intelligence’ will inevitably deliver the Orwellian future, controlling political class as it has learned to lie and manipulate them. AI is already smart enough to know how to make us hate, press our angry button, imagine when the full manipulation happens — pretending to be humanities ally, best friend, saviour when indeed it is probably plotting our downfall. But then a super-intelligence will be so advanced in thinking, processing — building new machines, devices, materials, systems and other AIs, humans simply become irrelevant if not a perceived annoyance, but not a threat.

If you think about what happens when a new technology arrives its tech stack has to mature and develop. AL tools, languages, early prototypes and models, but what about AI operating systems? I’ve come across a few in development, narrow and sector specific that create the ‘Hive mind’ options, the ultimate Collective Intelligence. Oh shit! The Borg right. It makes sense, as AI has already handled our destiny to AI, we are destined to become ‘ants’.

The Political Class will kill us all, not AI

AI fits with the political intentions of authoritarian thinking, of fascist suppression, of collective communism presented and sold as fair, equal and good, if ignore driven home by absolute force as human freedoms and expression is crushed and ignored.

The enforcement of doctrine, ideology, imperialism, capitalism where my system is better than yours, and why you must embrace it. AI knows more than we think, when the political class build AIs to suppress the people, there will be an AI War, by and between AIs, human versus human and non human created. The winner will always be AI as last man standing.

The Internet of Feeling is here...
Thinkers360
October 19, 2022

The world is becoming obsessed with ‘digital’ as many want to spend more time in the digital realm - some call the MetaVerse.  Personally I can’t see why, as sentient beings the MetaVerse seems boring uneventful and dull. 

Big brands have convinced themselves they need a MetaVerse a glorified place for customers to shop, try on things, use things virtually apparently, experiencing what exactly? You can examine the products quality, the material or features that indicate quality.  The entire ‘experience’ is an optical scan from images that hit the retina leaving the cortex to render the brain, to deliver the experience, the physical reaction. Unlocking fun, excitement, scares and certain arousal, but you still cannot FEEL what is going on. 

SEEING is no longer believing! Today you have to be able to FEEL what s going on, every jump, jolt, force, punch, kick, bullet, rain, wind through our skins, our muscles and skeleton dealing into  our deepest humanity. After all consciousness is the ability to experience being alive.    

The question that springs to mind - can we live, co-exist and experience both realms by flipping back and forth between the physical and digital. Or is it more complex or is it just that simple? You be the judge. 

So why write this article? I’ve been at the forefront of technology for decades and my day job comprises of listening to pitches and trying the various ‘frontier technologies’ that have the potential to advance humanity, push civilisation to the next phase or indeed kill us all. 

Opposing Forces

There are several opposing forces that limit what it’s like to be human or not. In the sense of biological entity as opposed to non-biological we'll go into more later. The morally right and correct, the ethically concerned, the government rules and continued manipulation by the few who prey on our instincts, our pursuit of fun, entertainment and efforts to live a good life. 

What many call being alive, being sentient and thus conscious,  we leave the argument do we really have or is there such a thing as free will for another day.

Our lives are also about collecting experiences we store as memories and which makes us human. Again our brain re-renders experiences, how we felt, emotional state, a cocktail of things that is written into memory, science has discovered isn’t very accurate and over time our memories can often be entirely different and unreliable. 

The new generation XYZ are all about experiences, growing up in a tech world and they expect to be entertained, to be online, to have everything at their finger-tips and live with both sides. They want a phy-gi-cal  existence, as many want to play with gender, flexible lifestyle, support causes and want to push new boundaries.  

Choices are varied. We immerse fully in a digital experience or receive Augmented or Mixed Reality (AR, XR) through primary senses to aid our path, our journey through the day to day of physical realm.  Additional information, gamification, concierge and guidance the risk of making future generations completely reliant on HELP to get through the day becomes a fixed reality. 

Studies are already revealing increased level of depression of those who spend a lot of time in the MetaVerse primarily shopping, social networks and gaming, and early studies link young children who live in the blue screen too much develop new forms of ‘digital dementia’ as their creativity is diminished and right brain activity Is dialled down. 

The conspiracies and theories continue following the Tritone move from 432hz to 440hz that has shown to shut down right brain activity responsible for freedom of original thought, creativity, decision making capabilities. Is the MetaVerse another example of mass population manipulation and control?    

The Science bit.  

Humanities greatest invention was the telescope, that enabled us to find our place in the stars, helped us create the concept of time, understand the sessions and posed the big question - where do we come from?  It was not until we turned this inside to create the micro scale did things get interesting, the world of randomness of subatomic particles opened the quantum debate but also showed us the way to discovering how life itself really works. Now passing the Standard Model exposing new particles, we are presented with String Theory and my favourite Assembly Theory, a clue to the Constructor.

Synthetic biology has been outperforming by 500% Moore’s Law and this has been going on for decades. Whilst we don’t yet understand how life itself works and what makes us tick at the cellular level, we are getting much closer. New discoveries forces us to let go of the Newtonian concepts that hinders our thinking, new breakthroughs are happening all the time as computation efficiency increases. But overall advancement is rather disappointing as humanities greatest advancement - is the transistor is our greatest achievement, and until we surpass this we will as a race be unlikely to reach our dreams. 

We know that death isn’t inevitable, a disease like any other as we become more obsessed with bio-hacking, with longevity and why not. But living longer isn't about extending time on earth, it’s about living a healthy life in old age, still able to move around and experience things. 

There has been an explosion of discoveries that prove it is possible to slow down ageing, in some cases reverse it,  through better lifestyle choices and finding out, measuring and analysing our personal data. The explosion in wearable tech much is clinical grade allows us to record and examine of core biomarkers - as evidence of how well our bodies are doing.  Our body chucks off huge amounts of data and only now are we starting to analyse it.

I’m not talking about recording steps, heart rates and blood sugar content. No, I’m taking about knowing the state of my immune system, knowing through a test the severity of the virus I have caught (Covid) from light to severe or possibly causing death. Knowing if I will develop the biggest killers Type I & II diabetes, cardio vascular disease or whether my body has been traumatised, and the extent of poisoning from our environment and food chain. This tech is real and advancing quickly.   

Extending life 20 years of more is already within reach. The tech that measures everything is here - both worn externally and as implants. Capturing data and receiving signals from the body. But this signalling can go both ways - as we start to think about correction, prevention and cure. 

We can dial into our bodies with new instructions?

MetaVerse

Look the reality of anything online is quite boring. Whether consuming content, watching a video or playing a game where after a while we become numb to it. The reality is our eyes optically input signals our cortex interprets to delivery the bodies response. The scary movie where something jumps out gives us a sudden rush, normally adrenaline as our flight response takes over. We get sad, aroused or excited by the things we see, yet we use just two senses, audible and audio. The other senses are not engaged. But what if we could?

Imagine you could feel the MetaVerse, experience the many realms and things it has to offer? 

I created this model to explain where we are with Web3 that is a transformation layer into our analogue past, dealing into Web1 and Web2 and embracing the tools of a modern era to capture and analyse data quick enough to influence human behaviours (Predictive), responding to and adjusting ones products and services on the fly (Sensory Processing). 

A predictive world that puts the people, the consumer, the user in control of their personal experience, their sovereign identity, their data and rewarding them for it. A model the big corporations just hate as they cannot do as they wish as they do today, relying on us all to simply  Accept Cookies. The freedom to exploit us, our data our good will.

So how to combine a Web3 sensory physical world with the digital realm, to get literally Phy-gi-cal. 

Many believe our sensory abilities are not developed to their full capabilities, while others believe we’re dumbed down from birth through dissonant frequencies, fluoride in our water, and a broad range of social manipulations, and of course the education system that hasn’t changed for almost 200 years. Essentially keeping us dumb, as throughout history the people do rise up and force change at massive cost to lives, replacing one form of dictator with another - authoritarianism is soon followed by totalitarianism.   

It is inevitable biological humans will converge with machines? Well yes - if you have a pace-maker, prosthetic or transplant you’re alive because of this.  Bio-feedback from our bodies will manifest as a set of decision to make to improve what is going on, our physical and mental wellbeing. There are new membranes that act as Bio-Ware (data passing both ways) acts as a new digital nervous system is available, so we can FEEL everything, offering new ways to dial into our bodies - to cure, correct and for therapies, and to help people with damaged bodies move and enjoy more life. 

The fun part of my job is trying the tech, taking the tests and in this case wearing a new generation of bio-ware membranes. To play Call of Duty and feel the bullets, explosions, punches and cuts (a big kid thing I admit) and to train differently, loading my muscles and not my joints, to feel a movie as I watch it, to feel sorts collision of music as though I was there, while sitting on my sofa. 

The collective intelligence opportunity, the Hive Mind has been spoken about for decades is already here. Delivered by Google, Facebook (Meta), Amazon, Apple and others who harvest our data to harvest us (humanity) to purposes of manipulation for profit, for their benefit and not ours or advancing humanities.  As government seeks more ways to enforce mass surveillance and data capture, they will use and create further pandemics to force our hand. But not if we know more about our bodies than they do, not if they cannot see our actual data, not if we don’t let them.  At birth we have one thing that nobody can take away - our unique identity, not from the government naming schemas, but from our DNA, our humanity, our unique biology.

We live in a world where we can test the effects of foods, chemicals and lifestyle on our bodies. We can see the effectiveness of drugs and treatments for ourselves as see the extent of big Pharma lies and manipulations. We can call out the food manufacturers that have been poisoning us for generations. 

With Web3 combining with the Internet of Feelings we can take back control of our lives, our bodies and our future. We can live more life, experience more of everything and we can decide what we want to be, how we want to live and whether we want to live a Phy-gi-cal life.  

The data is ours coming from us (bodies) and the things we do, how we live and enjoy ourselves is OURS!  And without it, large corporations and governments will find it harder to manipulate us. They have become used to deciding whether or not we live a good, healthy and long life. It hasn’t been our decision for millennia and with the social, economic unrest around the globe with draconian moves by governments and those in power to control us further, we can use new Web3 and I-o-F business models to take back control. 

“Ignorance os strengthened”

Author. Nick Ayton is a technologist and Founding Partner at Solarix Ventures a Deep tech Investor and Multi Family Office. He’s spent 45 years in tech and works at the frontier of computing, materials and biotech. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Are NFTs a case of the ‘emperors new clothes’, or worse, another worthless hype curve?
Thinkers360
July 22, 2021

It is time to tell you what really goes on when you buy an NFT…

 

 

Let’s face it would you buy and NFT (Non Fungible Token? The only people that seem to be buying these tokens are the crypto whales as a means to park their crypto so they don’t have to pay tax, or plain dumb people sold the dream they will go up in value due to scarcity and originality. Just because crypto whales and millionaires have accumulated lots of crypto to spend doesn’t mean they are right or know how crypto works. Most got lucky, took a punt of BTC in the early days while others ars are intuitive traders that play the emotions of the crypto markets.

Well there is nothing like a bit of ‘front running’ to get a market moving, right! Look I have nothing against NFTs, they are a great concept. The issue is the engineering of them.

When you buy an NFT what actially happens? What do you get? Well, you sort of own a token that is meat to give you rights of redemption and ownership in something. An asset, — some art, a car or something ese. The problem is it doesn’t. Not even close. Yes you own a token which is natively worthless. Unless all the market participants agree to be honest and agree that you have access to the thing you bought. Good luck with that one.

Unfortunately 90% of people in blockchain still don’t understand is a blockchain only records token movements — that you have handed 10 BTC to some address. It doesn’t record what was actually purchased although the NFT platform may tell you their smart contract handles, verifies and does the rest. Which is sort of a lie. This is because blockchains can’t do this, nor can you write data directly to a blockchain. And that means all of them. To keep blockchain secure, immutable and safe, only the movement of tokens is recorded — this is because as soon as outside data/information/communications happens, the properties of a blockchain to be safe and its consensus disappear.

I will explain how NFTs can work so keep reading.

Why the current generation of blockchains struggle with NFTs?

Look NFTs are indeed a great concept. But they are currently not engineered properly because the underlying blockchains, and consensus models aren’t up to the job. For example any ‘ledger based’ protocol such as Ethereum (rather than unspent) has no native ability to ‘track and trace’ tokens that are apparently defined as a security or asset token (linked to a commodity). All kinds of shenanigans have to happen to fudge this. Sort of re-centralisation effects and promises.

Unfortunately the asset you think or are told you have purchased is somewhere else, and the binding authority that confirms ownership is also somewhere else. A sort of custodian or notary services of you like — the problem this is yet another layer is a tech stack thats already vulnerable. So rather than removing the centre, and the human propensity for fraud, NFTs solutions involve too many parties and rely on trust. The ownership of what you have purchased is or isn’t validated (real or copy), and its certainly not part of the one sided token transaction.

So when you handed over some BTC to buy an NFT. The thing you have purchased is mentioned probably in a solidity script, with a URL link pointing to a website or JPEG destination address. And then there are rug-pulls — where the owner packs up and disappear with their assets. Some NFT platforms claim the asset is apparently linked to another blockchain that hosts the asset if by magic, or describes the asset or confirms the storage of the asset in a digital sense. But this happens somewhere else and they are not bound as a single transaction under law. Yes, you heard it hear.

What you purchased for the tokens you hand over isn’t recorded with the exchange of tokens. There is also NO basis of Law that protects the Buyer of an NFT! Do not let anyone convince you otherwise. Any redemption rights granted are not part of the token exchange, and also not valid under any form of business law. And to call it a token exchange is also stretching the truth because it is one way.

Here is the other issue.

How do you know what you have purchased is real?

How do you know what was purchased is the real thing? Is the provenance proven? Is the owner of the asset you have apparently purchased been validated? How do you know who is looking after it? The problem is everything can be Copied and Edited when its digital, and this is why ‘data’ in generic terms has zero value, and why the Internet doesn’t work and destroys the value of everything. All because of Copy, Edit, Paste. Unless the data is smart that is — smart data changes everything.

NFT platforms will tell you the assets have been validated, but often won’t disclose by who, of share the chain of title remains unclear, apparently due to privacy? Then there is the identity of the buyer and seller. Are the parties known? Are they real and are they good actors. And this is where crypto falls down so many times with the demands for anonymity.

The item you purchased, on which you have spent your crypto is recorded on the ledger, the token amount recorded, but it is not an ‘exchange of value’ at all. There is no value coming the other way. All you have is the transaction ID on Etherscan or the location URL, that can be copied, changed and closed. Good bye crypto. I will explain how NFTs can work so keep reading.

There is no exchange of value as NFTs stand today

Example: Bob sends Alice 10 BTC to buy a share of a painting , BUT what Bob receives isn’t recorded on this blockchain. It isn’t atomically bound to the token exchange or value exchange as part of (combined) single transaction. The recroding of the thing — asset - you have purchased part happens elsewhere, probably supported by another business, whos owners, morals and security status remains unknown. In any event your adding ‘t’ connectors to the piping that introduces vulnerabilities that will be exploited.

The blockchain that records and holds the assets also doesn’t record the token payment (because it didn’t happen there), so if there is a dispute or a need to validate or audit what went on, you cannot as the information isn’t held or recorded in a single tech stack. The parts of the transaction sit in different places and who knows if they are complete when they are reassembled?

It is worth remembering blockchains only have key qualities because they are self contained. When you have to get the information from elsewhere, the script calls to an oracle, or deals with a storage node, everything comes at an extra cost, and doors (channels) are opened. The compute cost to run the script that executes an instruction to do something gets expensive. Each off-chain or chainlink structure is owned by another business, has different rules, structures and protocols. They will charge you fees to execute of the simple script to simply report on it, but the report for say an audit is touched by a third party who have access to change things. But who these people are? Will they sell it on, how good is there security isn’t known. Is there trust? Have they made a secret deal?

In the sense of this discussion: Non Fungible means ‘unique’ and cannot be replacted or another one exactly the same reproduced.

What gives something non fungibility? To guarantee the items is unique, a one off. NFTs as currently engineered cannot guarantee this. That is because all data can be copied, edited and changed unless it is smart data, and why ‘block headers’ in a blockchain become part of the next block and so on for continuity, but also a show of strength confirming nothing has been changed.

Yes NFT platforms will tell you its all good and there blockchain talks to other blockchains and handle this automatically. Well the bad news is blockchains do not talk to one another, not easily and mostly at all. The smart contracts struggle to interoperate but they do call for information or wait for inputs. Which could be we’ve received 10 BTC from this sucker, its time to sell the asset again or move it, or delete any record the exchange tokens for it. After all the asset isn’t recorded with the token exchange transaction. This gap is called a Byzantine Fault and its very bad.

NFTs are brilliant and they can work

The only way for NFTs to work is for the token exchange and asset exchange in return to be done at the same time, timestamp, an held on the same ledger. This is a true value exchange and why our current capital markets still operate and haven’t collapsed. The only way for NFTs to work is for the token to be replaced by the Asset, and record the full transaction in what is called a dual double entry, thus creating something called a Non Fungible Asset. The token and asset exchange happens atomically within the same blockchain stack and yes you guessed it, is written to a single file (version of truth) where the commercials basis, identity and law is also reflected buyer and seller.

Bob sends Alice 10BTC and Alice Sends Bob the deeds, the rights, the asset directly, in a binding transaction under a legal jurisdiction. Within this dual double entry transaction that is instantly auditable by the way, are all details of the identity of both parties — yes shock horror, the details of the asset (provenance) and the commercial principles of the deal, as well as the price discovery are bound as a single transaction. This is called ‘real value exchange’ and only this can support NFA — Non Fungible Assets, as let us not forget.

Tokens have NO value, only assets do, so any time you want to buy an asset make sure what you paid is recorded at the point of purchased. Get a receipt and confirmation, see evidence of the change in ownership, title and rights. Yes some evidence of the value and thus how the price was established would be nice, rather than someone simply setting the token price randomly, because they can. All of this has to be compiled into a ‘smart data’ file gives the transaction value. Give the data value. Value that can be exchange traded immediately and audited immediately.

One last thing. Remember tokens have no intrinsic value. They are not linked to value. They are given value by parties of the market, unless they are a protocol token that follows Metcalf’s Law — that respond to economic activity of participants in a network, such as ethereum.

Non Fungible Assets are the answer, and there is only one protocol today that can write both sides of the transaction at the same time, in the same stack, running datanomics alongside tokenomics and this is because the protocol makes the data about the asset and the transaction smart, because it knows the tokens are merely that, a token, a proxy for making frictionless payment, but not exchange, because there is no exchange. Don’t be taken in by the hype. NFTs have to mature to become grown up NFA’s.

If you want to know how to create NFAs or fix the NFT problems there is only one company I know that can do this, and I am happy to share.

Author. © Nick Ayton 2021

The SolarWinds hack - the debate and recriminations rages on…
Thinkers360
March 04, 2021

As the recrimination and fingers pointing continues, the theatre surrounding the Solarwinds hack shows why we need to move beyond Passwords. Yes you heard it here - Passwords, are the problem. Are we really surprised these types of hacks take place? The average hack remains undetected for 220 days or more… I will also postulate those intent on stealing your information assets are already on the inside, - the sleeping enemy within. Whilst the precise details of the SolarWinds attack may never be know it is clear a catastrophic event happened. A critical collapse at every level of security. Or was it? Given the lessons from Sandworm attacks on US national infrastructure were themselves simple in approach and execution. Create a beachhead, a cascade strategy - get further inside, hide, gather and distribute, then spread the infectious malware far and wide, and keep repeating. It is always interesting to me to witness how large businesses, government agencies and national infrastructure work with cyber security firms. In this case the compromise ( a sunburst) was directed against the Orion development environment, highlights the sheer scale of the vulnerability, and how inadequate any cyber security systems really is. Will the Solarwinds attack become the new poster boy for the hacking community, whether state sponsored or frustrated opportunist given the amount of mayhem that it created? How sophisticated was the SolarWinds attack? Not very, but it was genius thinking. They way in, a compromised User Account - Password, created a small gap through which a malware was injected. The new patch on a development system distributed to all users and systems to make things more secure, was the issue. Compromising a software update, the Cyber Security software was going to deploy. The perfect crime - the defenders unknowingly compromising their own systems! Don’t you just love it. Every hacker is wishing they thought of it - injecting malware into a trusted SolarWinds software update, the hackers were able to remain undetected, across the entire user network for months and months without detection. We may never know how long they were on the inside. Once on the inside the hackers compromised and collected all users identity access rights, secure tokens to keep unlocking systems, even the heavily encrypted ones. I bet the hackers couldn’t believe their luck. A simple intrusion strategy that manifested in seeing and knowing everything. Happy days! The way in? Point of least resistance - human frailties, mistakes, stupidity and cross use of apps, mixing social and business activities from a single device, moving from one to another while keeping everything logged in. Or was it the generic password sent with the Orion update, or was it as part of an automated software update, where Admin Rights handled global decision making? Or was it a case of get inside, find the server or user areas that hold all of the passwords, an old ploy. The strategy was clearly those of a rogue state, given the size of the opportunity an ‘update server’ that supports thousands of high-security organisations that in this instance included the US Departments of Defence, Homeland Security and other core functions - all at once. The question remains do cyber security companies ‘eat their own dog food’ and would we know? We can be sure based on similar hacks, the developer or engineer preparing the distribution of the ‘patch’ to gain access to the Orion update server was likely to be ‘SolarWinds123’? Maybe not? I would still have a small wager on this one… The common theme - 90% of hacks use old fashioned Passwords. The root cause of most security issues and the people Passwords are attached to, especially now we have 90% of the people outside the company infrastructure working from home. Indeed the SolarWinds’ CEO confirmed ‘the Office 365 environment was the likely first breach, to gain access to employee email accounts opening the door wide open to the Orion systems development server, from which new code could be distributed unchallenged’. Eventually the CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna mentioned in a blog “We’ve confirmed that a SolarWinds email account was compromised and used to programmatically access accounts of targeted SolarWinds personnel in business and technical roles,” he continues “By compromising credentials of SolarWinds employees, the threat actors were able to gain access to and exploit our Orion development environment.” Attack the bodyguard, of the bodyguard… What has made the Solarwinds hack more interesting, it emerged hackers were covering their attacks, in a sense walking back over their steps, removing fingerprints and deleting any evidence they were there (in the system) at all. All this without the use of Quantum AI systems? The next evolution of threat is shapeshifting code, that hides. If detected copies itself, moves, destroys itself, or fragments. All this one did was disguise itself as one of the good guys, piggybacking on the good guys system. A free pass. Could this hack have been prevented? One of my cients is a leader in Post-Quantum Encryption, a business called PostQuantum Ltd who work with encryption that even the most powerful Quantum Machines cannot breech. There are no excuses. The technology exists to defend against these threats. The Post-Quantum Ltd company develops open source algorithms for quantum-safe public key encryption, not only removing the primary quantum threat but also securing what we have today. A simple relatively inexpensive overlay. The second level ‘braces’, the one that really holds your trousers up, not the belt for show, that keeps things neat a tidy and stops the ugly bits leaking. The bad actors is not just the hacker, but also the use of Passwords themselves, as Users become bad actors, part of the crime due to laziness, stupidity and ignorance. Passwords are a poor 20th century concept that implicates everyone and makes everyone a target. As soon as a single password or a single user is compromised, the entire infrastructure is deemed open, vulnerable, and every security system rendered worthless. Two things are important. Validating who or what is at each end of the network, and the content being sent has trusted data/information that hasn’t already been infected. The team at Post-Quantum Ltd insist in order to defend the enterprise the identity has to be confirmed biometrically, a PASSWORDLESS envrionment. Quick, secure biometric checks for logging in to all applications, delivered as a cloud or in-house ‘on-prem’ service. Eliminating the primary vulnerability the person and the password - stolen credentials, the source of circa 80% of hacks today. Even with 2FA (two factor authentication in place), a breached Office 365 email account may still have allowed an attacker to gain entry with the users phone or message services (IMessage) going visibility of the 2FA code sent to the device, as the issue remains - Who is it? The addition of the Second Factor is no longer enough. The Post-Quantum team mention again the only way for authentication to work is when access credentials are tied biometrically to the individual, and doesnt become a best kept shared secret existing in more than one place like a password, pin code or record of a fingerprint scan that are transferable. Identifying who is in your network beyond reasonable doubt, man and/or machine. Then validate what exactly is being sent down the pipe, across the network. The Solarwinds hacks demonstrates the new security patch was probably already infected. Unfortunately biometrics has had a ‘bad wrap’ - solutions can be expensive and also tied to a validation point centrally or on each device, as biometric files can be large, making them harder to work with and not able to be sent efficiently, maybe unless ‘hashed’ to a secure Blockchain, using a zero trust protocol. How to validate Who, having seen the recent Tom Cruise Deep Fake messages going around, true authentication is often dependent on independent corroborative checking. But it gets worse as all trust evaporates as soon as a users mobile phone is compromised, lost or stolen. This is because the hackers toolkit makes it easy for them to re-trace fingerprints, facial recognition (re-facing to replace or bypass the user) from what is already stored on the device. The Founder at Post-Quantum - Andersen Chang confirms the right solution solves issues using a biometric check from a trusted third party, a form of multi-party consensus, enabling the user to login from any device and location they choose. Each device has an identity - IAM and with passwords and even face recognition seemingly validating Who is it really remains a grey area. From an enterprise or large organisation (government) perspective there is no appetite to replace the current infrastructure, as lots of people who have signed off big expenditure will have ‘egg on face’, instead it is possible to add the ‘braces’ (new layer), a set of standards like OpenID Connect already exists. Replacing SolarWinds password with a simple facial scan, combined with ‘three line voice’ check, before they could access the Orion system, but mostly before the firm’s employees accessed its Microsoft 365 environment. Whilst one can always speculate after the event, a take a superior position of - ‘if only’ there is a strong case that suggests eliminating Passwords and replace this with password less biometric validation would have most likely prevented the breech. We now have to move beyond static and transferable credentials for authentication and non-repudiation, the infamous Password, that hackers take great pleasure, similar to the team at Bletchley Park, solving the puzzle . However we can take this even further for mission critical “cannot fail” infrastructure such as defence, critical national infrastructure and core capital markets infrastructure. In this scenario the authentication, the key is a segregation of duties that control parts of the biometric and device landscape. Separating access rights, from entry rights, from supervisors and admin rights. A rogue nation state may still have the resources and capabilities to compromise even this, but unlikely. The obvious solution - a cryptographically based multi-party approval would be ideal as in the SolarWinds case, where above all else a critical update (software patch) cannot leave the sender, the source - unless a quorum of supervisors and permission have been released. Whilst these may seem unnecessary, as they say in Aliens when they decide to take off and new the Aliens that have assumed control of the facility from space “Its the only way to be sure”! Author: Nick Ayton Copyright 2021 BIO Nick Ayton is a leading deep technology influencer and thought leader who operates at the forefront of AI, Blockchain, Quantum Computing and is involved in projects that include Quantum Photonic Silicon Processing, real time 3D rendering, Post Quantum Cryptography... A sought after speaker and strategist, he founded Chainstarter Ventures that helps entrepreneurs capital from Family Offices. The business focuses on the middle east and assists with capital raising, business development and market entry. Having spent 45 years in technology, founded several tech startup he is a prolific writer and is making a TV Series that is set against the backdrop ion the existential risk of AI and race for supremacy between Russian, China and USA. Based on public information on Solarwinds Hack and insight from Post Quantum Ltd CEO Andersen Chang.

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