 |
|
|
|||||
Why are AI chatbots so intelligentcapable of understanding complex ideas, crafting surprisingly good short stories, and intuitively grasping what users mean? The truth is, we dont fully know. Large language models think in ways that dont look very human. Their outputs are formed from billions of mathematical signals bouncing through layers of neural networks powered by computers of unprecedented power and speed, and most of that activity remains invisible or inscrutable to AI researchers. This opacity presents obvious challenges, since the best way to control something is to understand how it works. Scientists had a firm grasp of nuclear physics before the first bomb or power plant was built. The same cant be said for generative AI models. Researchers working in the AI safety subfield of mechanistic interpretability who spend their days studying the complex sequences of mathematical functions that lead to an LLM outputting its next word or pixel, are still playing catch-up. The good news is that theyre making real progress. Case in point: the release of a pair of new research papers from Anthropic that contain fresh insights into LLMs internal thinking. Just as the parameters inside neural networks are based on neurons in the brain, the Anthropic researchers looked to neuroscience for ways of studying AI. Anthropic research scientist Joshua Batson tells Fast Company that his team developed a research toola sort of AI microscopethat can follow the data patterns and information flows within an LLM, observing how it links words and concepts en route to an answer. A year ago, the researchers could see only specific features of these patterns and flows, but theyve now begun to observe how one idea leads to another through a sequence of reasoning. Were trying to connect that all together and basically walk through step-by-step when you put a prompt into a model why it says the next word, Batson says. And since the models [answers] happen one word at a time, if you can break it down and just say, Well, why did it say this word instead of that word? then you can kind of unpack the whole thing. AI thinks differentlyeven when it comes to simple math The research reinforces the idea that AI systems approach problems very differently than human beings do. LLMs arent explicitly taught tasks like arithmetic. Rather, theyre shown correct answers and left to develop their own probabilistic path toward that conclusion. Batson and his team studied a simple example of this mathasking an 18-layer test LLM to add the numbers 36 and 59and found the AIs process was very different from the average humans calculation. Rather than performing a human-like step-by-step, the test model used two kinds of logic to arrive at the answer: It approximated the answer (is it in the 90s?) and it estimated the last digit of the answer. By combining the probabilities of various answers, Claude was able to arrive at the correct sum. It definitely learned a different strategy for doing the math than the one that you or I were taught in school, Batson says. Thinking in universal concepts The researchers also studied whether LLMs, which often analyze and generate content in many languages, necessarily think in the language of the words given to it in the users prompt. Is it using just English [words] when it’s doing English stuff and French parts when it’s doing French stuff and Chinese parts when it’s doing Chinese stuff? Batson asks. Or are there some parts of the model that are actually thinking in terms of universal concepts regardless of what language it’s working in?” The researchers found that LLMs do both. They asked Claude to translate simple sentences into multiple languages and tracked overlapping tokens it used during processing. Those shared tokensthat is, snippets of meaningrepresented core, language-agnostic ideas like smallness or oppositeness. And using those two tokens in combination resulted in the representation of another universal concept meaning largeness (the opposite of small being large). The model uses these universal concepts before it ever translates them into a given language for the user. This suggests that Claude can learn a concept like smallness in one language and then apply that knowledge when speaking another language with no additional training, Batson says. Studying how the model shares what it knows across contexts is important to understanding the way it reasons about questions in many different domains. LLMs can plan and improvise Claude isnt just thinking about the next logical word to generate, it also has the ability to think ahead. When prompted by the research team to write poetry, Claude indeed incorporated rhyme schemes into its processing patterns. For example, after a line ended with grab it, Claude selected words in the following line that would nicely set up the use of rabbit as a conclusion. Someone on my team found that right at the end of this line, after grab it, before it even started writing the next line, it was thinking about a rabbit, Batson says. The researchers then intervened at that very point in the process, inserting either a new rhyme scheme or a new ending word, and Claude shifted its plan accordingly, picking a new verbal path to get to a rhyme that made sense. Batson says the poetry observation is one of his favorites because it gives a relatively clean look at a specific part of the LLM reasoning through a problem, and because it proves that his teams observation tools (e.g., the AI microscope) work. The poetry study highlights just how much work remains to be done. The element of the LLM thats activated by the poetry-related generation is very small relative to the full universe of tasks the model can do. Industry researchers are taking snapshots, in the way a neuroscientist might study the way one area of the human hippocampus converts short-term memories into long-term ones. Exploring that crazy space is like a bit of an adventure every time, and so we actually just needed tools to even see how things were connected and try ideas and move around, Batson says. So we kind of have this investigation phase after we’ve built the microscope and we’re looking at something [and saying] Oh, okay, what is that part? and What’s that part? and What’s this thing over here?” But assuming that AI companies continue funding and prioritizing mechanistic interpretability research, the snapshots will pan wider and begin to interconnect, giving a broader understanding of why LLMs d what they do. A better understanding of those patterns could give the industry a better understanding of the real risks the systems might pose, as well as better ways to steer the systems toward safe and benevolent behavior. Batson points out that we may develop more trust for AI systems over time by gaining more experience with their outputs. He adds, however, that hed be a heck of a lot more comfortable if we also understand what’s going on [inside].
Category:
E-Commerce
When it comes to wealth, most of us think about money. You measure your financial wealth by looking at your assets and your debts. But there are other areas in your life where you can be wealthy, including time. Would you consider yourself time-affluent or are you living the life of a time pauper? Time wealth is all about freedom to choose how you spend your time, who you spend it with, where you spend it, and when you trade it for other things, says Sahil Bloom, author of The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life. Building time wealth is about awareness and action, says Bloom. Be aware that time is your most precious asset and the one thing that you can never get back. Then act in relation to that awareness by treating time accordingly. Do not allow it to simply exist where you are a passive taker of time, says Bloom. Create time for the things that you care about. Time and energy While you could make more money, you cant make more time. You can, however, prioritize energy-creating tasks that unlock more time in your day. Outcomes follow energy, he explains. The things that you are pulled towardsthe things that you have a natural attraction towardstend to be the things where you end up generating the best outcomes. For example, when youre working on something that interests you, investing a unit of energy could generate 10, 100, or 1,000 times the outcome over something that feels like drudgery. In effect, you unlock time by generating the same output with fewer units of input. You now have more units of input, or energy, that are freed up to do other things. Identifying energy-creating tasks goes back to awareness and action. For the awareness piece, Bloom recommends creating an energy calendar. Looking at your schedule, color code your activities according to the energy they created or drained. If a task lifts you up and makes you feel energized during or after the activity, mark it green. If it was neutral, mark it yellow. And if you physically felt depleted from the activity, mark it red. After a week, you will have a clear visual perspective of the types of activities that create energy versus drain energy from your life. Let energy drive your schedule Awareness is the starting point for making slight, subtle changes over longer periods of time. While Bloom says you probably wont be able to eliminate all the energy-draining activities from your lifethats a bit of a pipe dreamslowly reposition your calendar. For example, prioritize energy-creators at the start of your day to ensure you get the most done. Home in on them and making them a bigger part of your life. Also, adjust the energy-draining things to make them less depleting. For example, Bloom worked in a high intensity finance role in 2019 and 2020. Phone calls and video meetings, which consisted of at least five hours of his day, were a huge energy drainer for him. The first reaction when you hear something like this is to think, Well, I can’t change that. That’s a huge part of my job, he says. But if you scrape a layer deeper, you can ask the question, Are there adjustments I can make to the way that I’m doing this that would make it neutral or energy creating? Focus on what drains your energy Bloom decided he could take some of the calls while on a walk, which created energy because he was outside, moving around. Also, I can’t multitask when I’m walking, so I’m more focused, more present on the call, he says. I took half of my phone calls and made them into walking calls. I was still doing the exact same work, but I was doing it in a way that was significantly more energy creating, which led to significantly better outcomes. Another way to let energy drive your schedule is by batching activities to leverage the different levels. For example, confine some of the energy drainers to a single block, so you arent hitting speed bumps throughout the day. Another suggestion is to put two energy creating activities around an energy draining activity. Manage them more effectively, so that you can get through to the other side more efficiently and in a happier date of mind, says Bloom. Prioritizing what matters The entire point of considering time a state of wealth is to recognize that it is your most precious asset, and you need to intentionally design our time now. In fact, Bloom argues that the most dangerous word in the dictionary is later. We say it to ourselves all the time, he says. I’ll spend more time with my kids later. I’ll prioritize my relationship with my partner and friends later. Ill find my purpose later. Later becomes another word for never, because those things won’t exist in the same way. Later, your kid won’t be five years old. Later, your partner and friends won’t be there for you if you’re not there for them now. You won’t magically wake up with purpose later. Investing time now will pay off in dividends later, creating time wealth that can be richer than money can buy.
Category:
E-Commerce
On the evening of January 7, the Eaton Fire hit Altadena, destroying more than 10,000 commercial and residential homes and displacing thousands of families. Just a little over two months later, and this historically Black community is facing a new threat. Shortly after the fire, a private developer paid $550,000 in cash for the first vacant lot left behind from the wildfires, about $100,000 above asking price. In the days since, at least 13 more properties have sold, at least half of them by offshore private developers. But community leaders are working to beat back the tide. Last month, a Pasadena-based housing justice nonprofit purchased a burned lot in the neighborhood, marking the first Altadena property that has been removed from the market and protected in a community land bank. Jasmin Shupper, a Pasadena resident and founder of Greenline Housing Foundation, worked with land use attorney Remy De La Peza to purchase the lot using a $500,000 grant from The Pasadena Foundation. The pair is speaking with other residents about purchasing their fire-burned properties and is offering Greenline as an alternative buyer for any property owners who need to sell but would like to keep the land in the communitys hands. Greenline has positioned itself to act as a land bank, holding the property to eventually transfer it for community use. Its a way for people to protect the land from acquisition costs that rise on a speculative market while community members decide how to best use the property as Altadena reimagines its future. Most of the buyers were LLCs or corporate entities, a number of them were multipurchase buyers, which means theyre purchasing three or four lots, Peza says. Thats an investment strategy purchase. Its unfolding exactly as she and other community members feared when the fires hit, Peza says. Meanwhile, she says, philanthropic groups have raised millions for recovery since the Eaton Fire, but few of those dollars are flowing toward community land bank initiatives. She and Shupper are constantly being asked to speak with potential funders who ask how they can help. While they have been very clear that what they need is help acquiring the land, the money has not come in. We cannot compete with these developers, says Peza. We need philanthropy donors to step up, or Altadena will end up permanently in the hands of corporations. While state officials have put forward some legislation to protect the community from private investors, including bills SB 782 and SB 658, Peza says its not enough. One of the challenges with state legislation is that the community is still beholden to the state legislative cycle and calendar. None of the bills that were put forward were passed through the urgency process; even if they pass, they wont be put into legislation until the fall. Peza notes that Altadena does not have the same legislative limitations at the county level; rather than having its own city government, as most municipalities do, Altadena is managed by the Los Angeles County supervisors. Technically, local policy can be passed at any point, and there is more that we need to be demanding, Peza says. We need to be focusing on the county level and making sure the county supervisor is taking care of us. Why Altadena residents are vulnerable to outside investors Peza believes Altadena is particularly vulnerable to displacement through disaster capitalism because it has a high concentration of Black and Brown residents. Theres also a high number of seniors who are not as connected on social media, where the majority of resources are being shared. One main factor pushing residents to consider selling is the isolation this disaster has caused. Altadena mirrored an idyllic movie-like community before the fires, she says, where neighbors knew and cared for each other. Now residents have been forced to go to shelters, stay with people in other parts of California, or simply leave the state altogether. When you dont have your team rallying together, its hard. People cant just go next door and ask their neighbor, Hey, what are you doing? Are you thinking about selling? like they used to, Peza says. That social network and capital has been lost. With its older population and multigenerational owners, many in Altadena also lack home insurance. Once a homeowner pays off their mortgage, home insurance is not necessarily required. With insurance rates spiking in recent years, many people in this community have forgone their home insurance and are left with nothing except the land. Their only option is to sell. At this rate, Altadena cannot wait, says Peza. For residents who lost their homes and dont plan to rebuild, but do want the future land use to remain in the community, Greenlines leaders say its land bank is available to purchase those lots. Through their land bank model, Greenline is offering a community-centered alternative to selling to private purchasers. After the purchase, Greenline will work with residents, local housing organizations, and community stakeholders to determine the shared needs and desires for the land. It is important that the community knows that there is an organization that is here for them, and that is committed to ensuring the wonderful community of Altadena is protected and restored, Shupper says. We hope this is the first of many such purchases and that it will be a beacon of hope for the community. This story was originally published by Next City, a nonprofit news outlet covering solutions for equitable cities. Sign up for Next Citys newsletter for its latest articles and events.
Category:
E-Commerce
The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. What do David Beckham, Shaquille O’Neal, and Serena Williams have in commonaside from their standout sports careers? Theyve all built thriving businesses. Sure, having capital and global name recognition helps. But reducing their business success to just fame only tells half the story. The other half is that top athletes spend years honing discipline, resilience, and the ability to think strategically under pressure. Those same qualities happen to make great entrepreneurs. Sports have been a big part of my life for over a decade, and my favorite workout is the one I havent tried before. The more I move, the more I see how it shapes the way I work and think in business. What entrepreneurs can learn from elite athletes Here are six things you, as an entrepreneur or business leader, can take from top athletes. 1. Break down goals like a training plan No Olympic athlete trains at full intensity and on the same goal every single day. Instead, they follow a long-term training cyclepreparation, pre-competition, performance, and recovery. Applying this structured approach to business helps ramp up to peak performance gradually and sustainably. Try this: Break down big goals into smaller, doable milestones. Track what works and what doesnt: The strategy that got your startup off the ground wont be enough when its time to scale. Show up every day with small actions. 2. Design a pre-game routine for peak performance Every athlete follows a routine to get in the right headspace and physical shape before game day. I like to treat each workday like a game day. A morning routine gives me a sense of control and sets the tone for a productive day ahead. Rather than rolling out of bed and headfirst into work mode, I make time for things that fill my energy tank. That might be: A glass of water and a nutrient-rich breakfast A quick mindfulness practice, like mantra chanting or Pranayama breathwork Writing down 13 priorities for the day to stay intentional 1-hour workout A walk outdoors with an audiobook 3. Dont be afraid to fall Athletes fall. A lot. And then they get back up. When I tried skiing for the first time, I quickly realized that falling is part of learning. The more I feared making mistakes, the worse my performance became. Navigating life as an entrepreneur is not like riding down a well-groomed, Aspen-style slope. Its more like skiing at your local city parkice and grass patches, hidden stones, and annoyed pedestrians getting in the way. Falls are inevitable. Instead of hesitating to take risks or avoiding failure, focus on learning to recover quickly. 4. Develop a growth-oriented mindset This quote often pops up in motivational posts attributed to everyone from the Italian football player and manager Gianluca Vialli to Nelson Mandela: You win or you learnyou never lose. Cheesy, but true. Top athletes treat losses as data. Every game teaches them something new about their strengths and weaknesses. Entrepreneurs can benefit from the same mentality. See setbacks as learning experiencesanalyze what went wrong, make adjustments, and move forward. Compete with yourself first, your rivals second. The point of analyzing your performance is to make sure youre better than you were in the last game. 5. Stand on the shoulders of your support network Entrepreneurs often try to do everything solo, inspired by self-made success stories from books and podcasts. But very few things in life are a one-person endeavor. Even in individual Olympic events, there is a team behind every gold medalcoaches, nutritionists, mentors, and teammates. I started BetterMe in 2017 with a handful of people, and most of them are still with me today in C-level positions. From the very beginning, I focused on surrounding myself with people who guided and challenged me, held me accountable, and pushed me to grow. The strongest players in the boardroom and on the field are the ones who know how to buildand lean ona great team. 6. The biggest lesson: prioritize recovery LeBron James never confirmed the rumor that he spends $1.5 million a year on recovery. But the fact that such numbers even circulate shows that rest goes hand in hand with peak performance. Yet, in business, we glorify constant hustle. We wear our bloodshot eyes from late nights at the screen like a badge of honor and exhaustion as a testament to success. Our bodies are excellent communicators and usually find a way to let us know when it’s time to slow down. Instead of dismissing sore muscles or sluggish thoughts as a sign of weakness, listen and integrate sustainable rest into your routine. Schedule recovery like work, blocking time in your calendar for exercise, meditation, or simply relaxing with a book. Fill the time between high-priority tasks with active breaks like short walks, quick workouts, or any movement to reset your brain. Protect your sleep. I stick to a 10 p.m. bedtime and aim for 78 hours of sleep because I know a well-rested mind is a high-performing one. The final thought: Move your body to fuel your mind If you shoot for big goals, thinking like a pro athlete can help open the right doors. But theres more to take from their playbook: a love for sports. And unlike athletes, who dedicate their lives to one discipline, we have the luxury of exploring. In Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein talks about how some of the most groundbreaking leaders pulled ideas from different fields, experimented, and innovated because of their broad experiences. Broad exposure makes you more creative, agile, and able to make connections others miss. So grab a tennis racket or skiing poles. Step onto a Reformer or sign up for a 5K. Be adventurous. Try new things. The more you explore, the more skills, insights, and connections you’ll gain. Victoria Repa is the founder and CEO of BetterMe.
Category:
E-Commerce
The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Here’s a question for business leaders: When was the last time you or someone on your team had a frustrating experience as a customer? Perhaps you were shuffled between departments, asked to repeat information multiple times, left feeling like no one grasped your specific needs, or that the information changed depending on who you talked to. Now flip the scenario. How many of your customers might be experiencing that same frustration with your company right now? Most well-intended, talented teams can have blind spots with their own customer service. Its like sleeping in the guest room at your house to truly understand what your visitors experience. Even the most gracious hosts might not realize just how lumpy that mattress is, or how loud the dining room chairs are overhead. The truth is that delivering a seamless customer experience is one of the most significant challenges for B2B companies. Despite our obsession with customer satisfaction metrics, most organizations still prioritize internal structures over customer needs. I see it constantlythe customer lifecycle journey fractured across marketing, sales, customer success, and renewals, with each department guarding its own territory and creating an inconsistent customer experience. The hidden cost of fragmentation This fragmentation is more than a customer annoyance. Its also a business liability. When departments operate in isolation, several things happennone of them good: Decision making becomes slower and more reactive Customers waste countless hours repeating themselves to different teams Valuable context gets lost in departmental handoffs Inconsistent messaging and experiences create confusion and erode trust Opportunities to anticipate customer needs vanish into the gaps between teams When departments operate in silos, the silos have a real and substantial impact on customer trust and loyalty. By flipping the traditional marketing structure on its head, youll gain a new and valuable perspective. You and your team will have the advantage of seeing things from the outside-in, and reap the benefit of turning customers into partners and champions. Lets discuss how to do it. Build bridges, not silos The shift toward a unified customer lifecycle cant be done at a surface, optics-only level. A cross-department meeting or two to share ideas isnt going to cut it here. True unification means ripping off the Band-Aid and totally rethinking how we structure, measure, and reward our organizations. It sounds intimidating, but its possible. Ive lived this shift. Ive spearheaded this shift. And it is so, so worth it. Here are three key practices that make the biggest difference: 1. Establish cross-functional ownership Breaking down silos starts with shared accountability. Consider experimenting with creating cross-functional teams responsible for specific segments of the customer base. These teams might include representatives from marketing, sales, customer success, and technical support who each own a specific part of the customer experience. This approach ensures no customer falls through the cracks during handoffs between departments. It also creates natural collaboration points where team members develop a deeper understanding of the entire customer journey and can identify common pain points more quickly. 2. Align metrics that matter Disconnected metrics breed disconnected experiences. Marketing teams traditionally focus on lead volume and pipeline contribution, while customer success teams track retention rates and satisfaction scores. These separate scorecards create invisible walls. The shift requires developing shared, customer-centric metrics that every department contributes to. Net retention rates, customer satisfaction scores, and customer lifetime value provide more holistic views of success than departmental vanity metrics. This enhances accuracy and reduces overlap and rework, while eliminating dangerous knowledge gaps. 3. Leverage integrated technology Metrics are critical, but you also have to inform those metrics with the right data. This might sound like the same thing as number two, but metrics are about asking the right questions, and data is about getting the right answers. A unified customer experience requires unified data. Without a single source of truth about customer interactions, teams operate with incomplete information and fail to make data-driven decisions. This doesnt have to be done manually, and probably shouldnt be. Integrated technology with a high-powered platform is critical to making this unification streamlined and accurate. If you continue using individual, specialized tools, they must share data seamlessly. When marketing automation, CRM, support ticketing, and product usage analytics feed into a comprehensive customer database, everyone gains visibility into the complete customer picture. Make the change real I know the kinds of results that can happen when an organization commits to unifying the customer experience: Reduced time-to-resolution for customer issues Increased customer retention rates and enhance customer trust Higher expansion revenue from existing accounts More accurate prediction of renewal outcomes Improved employee satisfaction across customer-facing teams By breaking down silos and ensuring smooth handoffs between departments, unification can eliminate friction points that often lead to customer frustration and attrition. Who doesnt want to see positive results in key performance indicators like these? Lead the change This wont happen on its own. As executives, we must champion this approach from the top. The process starts with: Modeling collaborative behaviors across your leadership team Creating clear customer journey maps that span departmental boundaries Redesigning incentive structures to reward collaboration Investing in technologies that enable seamless information sharing Measuring success through the customer’s eyes, not internal metrics The first step is often the hardestacknowledging that our existing structures may be optimized for our convenience rather than our customers’ success. The competitive advantage Ready to figure this out? Ready to spot opportunities earlier, solve problems faster, and build deeper customer relationships that competitors struggle to displace? One of th biggest reasons for making this shift is creating an environment where employees can focus on delivering value rather than navigating internal complexity. Teams become energized when they see the direct impact of their work on customer success. And happy employees = happy customers. The trust and loyalty you cultivate with your teams has a direct impact on the trust and loyalty your organization benefits from with your customers. When customers trust their vendors, they become more aligned, viewing you as a partner, not an adversary. I believe the business landscape is quickly moving toward prioritizing unified customer experiences. Clinging to fragmented approaches will put organizations at a disadvantage as customer expectations continue to rise. Why not start now? Melissa Puls is chief marketing officer and SVP of customer success at Ivanti.
Category:
E-Commerce
Sites : [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] next »