The OA Blog

There is a quiet battle unfolding that most people will not see or understand the implications of. It’s a conflict that will shape the future of technology and, since the world is increasingly tech driven, almost everything else in daily life. If you haven’t noticed technology shaping an increasingly dominant part of your day then you haven’t been watching, or haven’t lived long enough yet. If you have indeed noticed, then you should be worried. ...

At Orbital Alchemists, AI is part of how we work. This is the statement behind the short mentions on our pages: what we use it for, how the output is controlled, and why we think not using it would be the bigger mistake. First, the what. We use AI to speed up the making of things: first drafts of articles and documentation, research on difficult topics, coding (certain elements) and this website, and the admin that nobody sees but everybody has to do. It also gets used as a thinking partner. Explaining our problem to an extraordinarily patient listener and having it pushed back on us has a way of sharpening (OUR) idea, even when the machine contributes nothing you keep. ...

Technology solves problems, but society frequently disagrees on whether a given solution is actually an improvement. We can consider differences in the opinions of older vs younger generations or between different cultural backgrounds but, for the most part, if a large enough group wants a new technology then it will be successfully adopted. The real issue arises when the freedom to adopt a technology quietly turns into mandatory use and forced behavioral change. ...

If you’re reading this, you’re likely a friend or family member I’ve shared this with—though anyone is welcome to follow along. I wanted to take a moment to share what I’m building, and why. I’ve spent my entire life deep in technology and I’ve been programming computers since I was a child. My career has been focused on providing software and technical solutions to banks, insurance companies and to an array of organisations through my various consultancy roles. ...

Artificial intelligence is an amplifier of existing human intelligence. With AI, the rungs of the intelligence ladder only get further apart, not closer together. It doesn’t miraculously allow an unmotivated individual to become the CTO of their own tech startup with minimal effort. If the hurdles stemmed from an individual’s inability to comprehend complex problems, those hurdles will still exist, no matter how well the AI tries to explain them. Even if they somehow found themselves running that company, they wouldn’t understand what they had built, how the pieces fit together, or what to do next. ...