ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | DEEP LEARNING | FUTURE
I worked for 3 years at an AI company. Now I’ve decided to leave the industry indefinitely.
3 years ago the words Artificial Intelligence evoked powerful sensations in me. Entering that world felt like taking a step into the mysteries and secrets of the future. I was mind-blown by the promises of intelligent machines, capable of solving tasks forever reserved to us. I was deep-diving into the amazement of the mind through the familiar passages of technology.
I had just finished my bachelor’s in aerospace engineering and wanted to leap towards AI. It was late 2017 when I met the great Geoffrey Hinton and Andrew Ng. …
The best approaches are often found in the balance
There’s a never-ending debate about the best approach to achieve mastery of creative work. The traditional idea is quality over quantity. Focusing on getting good at the craft is more important than getting lots of results.
In many areas of life this is undoubtedly true. It’s better to have a handful of great friends than many that’d turn their back away at the slightest opportunity. It’s better to read a few great books a year than a thousand crap ones. …
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT | PSYCHOLOGY
Accepting imperfection is more powerful than reaching near-perfection.
No one could look away when she walked by. The dancing movement of her hips. The smoothness with which her feet almost flowed above the ground. Her bewitching smile. Her hair flying with the wind, leaving a scent of blossoming flowers.
From what the world could see, she was perfect. But as beautiful as she was on the outside, she was ugly on the inside. She desired everyone’s praise but always looked down on them. They were inferior, incapable of appreciating the full wonder of her existence. She felt a demigoddess among peasants.
One morning, while people were gathering around…
We have relationships with many people, but with how many do we have a real, meaningful connection?
When I imagine the future I don’t picture a dystopia. We think things will get worse because of rosy retrospection, one of those cognitive biases that keep our brains outdated. However, there’s one thing that worries me: We’re more connected than ever, and yet we experience less connection in our relationships.
Our society seems to be suffering a loneliness epidemic, now aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2018, A Cigna study found that 54% of Americans “always or sometimes feel that no one knows them well.” …
PSYCHOLOGY | PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
Psychologists help explain the reasons behind people-pleasing behaviors.
As social beings, we care about others’ opinions as much as they care about ours. Some people care so much that they seem to live by and for others. This is the core of people-pleasing behaviors.
It’s happened to all of us that we’ve agreed to something we didn’t want to. Or hid a feeling that wanted to be expressed. Or tried to be friends with everyone. Or avoided conflict in purpose. However, when our lives revolve around these behaviors we may be victims of people-pleasing.
Psychology has unveiled some mysteries of these behaviors. …
PSYCHOLOGY | SELF
Sometimes I feel like one, sometimes like the other.
Society divides people into extroverts and introverts. It’s not a secret that people qualify the former trait as more desirable and socially adept. Introverts have always been enigmatic— maybe because they tend to quietly live in their inner worlds. Only recently psychology has begun to unveil the mysteries of introversion and we have started to understand and accept it.
However, other perspectives reject the idea of extroversion vs. introversion. Some psychologists argue that personality is neither fixed nor definite, but malleable. A recent study showed that personality can be changed through “volitional means.” …
The Startup, Towards Data Science, Mind Cafe, The Ascent, Be Yourself, and more
I hit publish for the first time 3 months ago. I had been reading medium for a few years already, but never thought I’d write anything here. I’ve always loved writing, but just my reflections and feelings; nothing worth enough to go public — or so I thought.
I started my career as an engineer. Soon, I realized I didn’t like it so I studied AI and landed a job at an AI startup. Then I took a master’s in cognitive neuroscience. I kept going from one place to another. In November 2020 I was fired. The pandemic took over…
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
We’re often our harshest critic and our worst enemy.
Anzo arrived at the sawmill. The lumberjack lent him an ax to cut a young fir tree.
“If you want to join my guild you’ll have to cut this tree.”
Anzo struck it a dozen times with all his might. But when he looked up at the tree, it only had a few scratches. The lumberjack left out a laugh: “You’ll never be one of us.”
Anzo, sad by his failure, went to the forge. He’d try more luck with the hammer. The blacksmith told Anzo to make a steel sword. Anzo hit the red-hot steel until sweat drops were…
Fear is the common ingredient for all recipes leading to suffering
Some time ago a friend of mine was starting to date a new guy. She liked him a lot and things seemed to go well. But one day she asked me a question that surprised me:
“How can I be sure that he’ll want to be with me before going further?”
I said the obvious. I don’t think you can be sure of that. The relationship itself will tell both of you if it can work out or not.
I didn’t understand at first why she was trying to get that sense of security. In any case, if she wasn’t…
And how you can still use it in your life.
We all know the concept of emotional intelligence (EI).
Most of you probably heard about it after Daniel Goleman popularized the term in his best-selling book “Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ” in 1995. He described EI as:
“Abilities such as being able to motivate oneself and survive in the face of frustrations; to control impulse and delay gratification; to manage one’s moods and keep distress from swamping the ability to think; to empathize and to hope.”
His book was an absolute boom and EI soon became mainstream.
However, there had been other approaches to EI before…
