lighting a candle

Food shopping in the morning, then wander into town to check out some street art. There is some rather spectacular stuff out there.

Also finished book #4, Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari. His main thesis is that we create realities through the information that we exchange. This information does not need to be some objective truth but it can alter our behaviour, both individually and as a society. He then goes on to warn that with AI we are creating non-human actors that produce and exchange information themselves that can totally disrupt our society. I found his argument quite convincing. Although I am not convinced by the AI taking over since, although intelligent, they don't have their own will. All AIs need to get a task, a goal set by humans. I do agree that we almost certainly will fail to set sensible goals (that might even be impossible) but in the end it is humans that mess it up. One thing that I did miss very much is the relation to the physical world. He does mention resource usage and climate change. In the end I think we cannot escape the physical world and machines need to be maintained. Not that that is a very cheering thought either.

Anyway, more pictures from the walk on flickr.