​I was listening to a podcast recently and I heard someone say something I really hold to.  It is no great insight and it is incredibly obvious to me.  It is what I live by.  They said something like “you become what you look at.”
To me that is to say, what you spend your time admiring and doing is what you become.
I really can look at anyone and tell heaps about them just by looking at what is held as important in the life.
What is important in my life is what I am.  For years I saw myself as someone who although decent would never achieve much.  The key to me is that is how I saw myself.  Anyone who is successful in any endeavour sees themselves that way and pursues that.  Little wonder that is what they become.  The best in sport or in business or in philanthropy has seen themselves that way and worked towards it.
Many fail though because they saw the obstacles as showstoppers, and were unwilling to pay the price necessary to achieve a goal.
I do not set myself up as though this is a “them and me” scenario.  I know I face the same choices in life.  I do not think for a moment that I am immune to what is obvious.
Like everyone I have a choice.  I do not pretend I do not need help in choosing what is both best for me and others.  Nor do I pretend that changing ways is easy.  The longer I go on making bad choices the easier it is to make bad choices.
And yet bad choices are not my lot in life.  Good choices are a choice away.  Yet changing is the start of a battle really.  It is easier to go with the flow then swim against the tide.  But when the flow leads to a giant waterfall it is best to swim against it and get all the help available.

I was listening to a guy yesterday who is a computer engineer.  He has been involved for 15 years in AI safety.  That is, the making of the system safe for human use and attempting to avoid dire consequences.  I was trying to figure where I had seen the guy interviewing him, and then it occurred to me, he was one of the potential investors on Dragons Den.
The computer scientist had concluded he was fighting a losing battle.  Change in AI is happening so fast that he cannot keep up with it.  Besides no sooner is a patch in place for a potential problem, then a work around is implemented.
I love AI.  I took notes and asked AI to write an essay based on the notes.  It was brilliant.  Merril read it and gave it an A+.  In many ways I think we are in the golden age of AI.
Yet I cannot help think there is a race to the bottom happening.  There are those who want to control how we think and people and countries all over the world are developing AI to that end.  That would never be stated but our record is not good and it the wrong hands that could be catastrophic.
It is not the narrow or general AI that presents the greatest problem (playing chess or combining what is known to cause something to build a case far greater than any one individual knows) but Superintelligence.
Superintelligence is where computers take all that is known and make decisions themselves.  It is a system where computers override human intervention and are beyond human control.  By its nature it is brighter than the human supposedly controlling it and makes decisions based on its knowledge rather than individual human, moral decisions.
We are already at the point where we cannot visually tell the real from the false.  The scientist was asked to predict what the world would look like in 2100.  He could not.  He sited scientists 100 years ago.  They had not way of knowing or predicting the world would be on our phones.  He could only see two scenario’s.  One was mankind had wiped himself out, or two, something inconceivable at this point.
That is the implications of where we are going with AI.  It has been said it is greater than the Industrial Revolution.  The interviewer said when he has such conversations he sees hope go out of eyes.
For me exactly the opposite happens.  All this has been predicted and the more I hear the more convinced I am that who I adhere to, knows the past and the future.

I am big on it never being too late.  This would have come through in my writing before.  Obviously I see it more clearly being older but it has always been true.
I have seen lots of people with huge amounts of talent.  As they say the world was their oyster.  Yet decade follows decade way quicker than anticipated and before I know it, I once was young but am now older.
Some seem to know what they want and go for it from an early age.  They are laser focused.  I had a mate that always wanted to be a pilot.  Ok tests proved his eyes were not up to a standard where he could  be a fighter pilot, but he could be a commercial pilot.  That is what he became.
It seems though others have enormous talent and squander it.  It may not be put in those terms, but life happens.  Before I know it, chances have passed me by.  It can be chasing the girls occupies several years, and then it is marriage.  Then I say I will be ready to go once the kids are old enough to fend for themselves.  Or it can be I need to look after my place and there is heaps to do to have it ready for sale.  Next step is a bigger place which of course will need looking after.
There is nothing in any of these pursuits that are dodgy in themselves, and I would say all are good and worth pursuing.  The trouble to me is (and it has been my experience) that legitimate things have stopped me chasing the most legitimate thing in my life.
That is a fact of life and the experience of many.  Yet to me it does not need to be the end of the story.  I will not let the regrets of the past stop me from pursuing the legitimate goals of the future.
I may be older and face unanticipated problems, yet the important thing to me is I pursue the right thing for me no matter my age.  Maybe I only have time for 5% of what I could have achieved, but in my mind 5% is better than 0%.