As a time management coach, I clearly care about organization. On a daily basis, I work with goal-oriented individuals trying to find the right balance. That being said, you may be surprised to hear that being overly focused on organization can be counterproductive. I explain with these five tips to living more peaceful and productive lives.

Sometimes, in the quest for the perfect organizational system, individuals can take their eyes off the prize. I recognize people have missed the mark when they tell me that theyve read every time management book they could find, tried all the tools available, and still feel hopelessly unproductive.

Instead of focusing on the perfect system, I recommend starting to establish simple habits that help you to get more done. For example, maybe begin by writing down your top three tasks for the day on a Post-it note and sticking it to your computer. Then focus on accomplishing those items first. Id rather have you finish whats most important than spend hours reorganizing task lists and questioning whether youre even using the right task management tool.

Over time, you can up-level your systems, and they could become more sophisticated. But if you spend more time planning and organizing than doing, its time to shift your focus.

From my observation, everyone needs some method of recording commitments and everyone needs some way to intentionally decide what they will do each day. But how individuals complete those tasks can vary widelyand thats okay. Some people will have all commitments recorded in their calendar. Others will use a task management app. Others will keep a paper to-do list. And in terms of planning, theres similarly a range of options from all digital to completely analog and variations in between.

Related: The time-management hack that doubled my income

The right organization system for you is the one that youre willing to use consistently and that helps you act in a focused and productive manner.

Saying no by either not accepting commitments in the first place or by eliminating commitments that are currently on your plate is your most powerful organizational tool. Its the equivalent of decluttering your closet before you attempt to hang everything up. By reducing the overall number of items, you make it easier to organize.

When you declutter from a time management perspective, youre not only giving yourself less to fit into each day but also more time to keep the whole system maintained.

Similar to committing to being a healthy person, being an organized person requires a lifestyle change.

You cant eat well and exercise for a few months, lose some weight, then go back to doing what you were doing before and expect to stay healthy. In the same way, you cant think intentionally about your commitments, use your calendar, get some things done, and then just stop practicing those habits.

Organization is an ongoing commitment on a daily basis to do the activities that will make you feel less stressed and more productive.

Im a very organized person, and Im known for having good follow-up and follow-through. But even very organized people can make mistakes! I had a situation recently where I had made a note in my calendar to follow up with one of my coaching clients about a piece of information on a certain day. (Whenever I make follow-up commitments, I write down the task.)

However, in this instance, I labeled the beginning of the task in the same way I label client birthdays with a 3-[Client Name]. On the day I was supposed to follow up, I was moving too quickly and assumed it was my clients birthday instead of opening the task and realizing that I needed to send her follow-up information. So long story short, she got a birthday greeting about six months in advance! This was a good reminder to me to be careful about how I label my tasks and also to slow down and read them more carefully.

The path to an organized life may be closer than you realize. Instead of aiming for perfection or striving to copy someone else, commit to a lifestyle of discovering and using the strategies that help you to be your best, most organized self.

Elizabeth Grace Saunders is the author of Divine Time Management and How to Invest Your Time Like Money and a time management coach. Check out her website for more information.

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A time management coach's tips on getting better organized - Fast Company

Grants funded nonprofits in 50 U.S. states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, and international cities

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- In 2019, the Wells Fargo Foundation launched a new philanthropic strategy anchored around unlocking economic opportunity for people and communities by addressing housing affordability, small business growth and financial health. The Foundation invested $455 million in grants in the last year, funding national organizations to deliver programs at scale and nonprofits that specifically address the needs of local markets.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200220005232/en/

Wells Fargo is on a journey to create greater community impact through its business and philanthropy, said Bill Daley, vice chairman of Public Affairs at Wells Fargo. Economic mobility is a critical issue, particularly for low-to-moderate income communities where people lack access to the resources necessary for a sustainable livelihood: adequate housing, stable jobs, or financial health services. In the year ahead, we will streamline our grant-making around these important areas and focus on addressing systemic barriers to success. This is the time to collaborate, be bold and think like social entrepreneurs.

We commend Wells Fargo for their willingness to step up on issues facing our constituents and commit resources and expertise to look at community challenges at the local, state and national levels, said Derrick Johnson, president and chief executive officer of NAACP. We have a long way to go to achieve economic equality in this country, and its going to take highly focused efforts and unparalleled conviction to get us there. We were glad to see Wells Fargo further their commitment to housing, small business and financial health in its philanthropic approach; as these issues affect everyday life, particularly in low-income communities, and will create a pathway for more people to attain financial mobility.

Making an Impact: Recap of 2019 Philanthropy

Overall, Wells Fargos philanthropy in 2019 helped more people find a place to call home, grow small businesses offering meaningful local jobs and increase financial health and wellness. Results include:

In addition, Wells Fargo made more than 2,800 grants to nonprofits in response to the housing affordability crisis and unique local challenges in communities across the U.S. From Anchorage, Alaska to Atlanta, Wells Fargo supported organizations that are developing new affordable rental homes, expanding homeownership opportunities for ethnically diverse households, creating long-term affordability by investing in community land trusts, and stopping the devastating flow of families into homelessness. For example, Wells Fargo provided funding for the renovation of apartments at Hope Gardens Family Center in Los Angeles, where the Union Rescue Mission helps women and children move from the streets into stable homes.

The Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN2), a collaboration with the National Renewable Energy Lab that speeds the path to market for promising clean-technology startups, is another example of momentum in the small business community. In 2019, IN2 expanded into sustainable agriculture and residential housing, adding 15 new startups. To date, 40 portfolio companies have gone on to raise more than $282 million in follow-on funding and six have successfully exited the program through mergers and acquisitions.

With tax-time approaching, the Wells Fargo Foundation and the AARP Foundation are reaching seniors with free tax preparation services, helping them access critical tax credits and refunds that many depend on for household necessities, debt repayment, or savings. The funding will enable AARP Foundation to expand Tax-Aide, the largest free, volunteer-run tax preparation service in the U.S., to 24 additional neighborhood locations while more than doubling the number of taxpayers who receive a refund from 34,000 to over 70,000.

About Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) is a diversified, community-based financial services company with $1.9 trillion in assets. Wells Fargos vision is to satisfy our customers financial needs and help them succeed financially. Founded in 1852 and headquartered in San Francisco, Wells Fargo provides banking, investment and mortgage products and services, as well as consumer and commercial finance, through 7,400 locations, more than 13,000 ATMs, the internet (wellsfargo.com) and mobile banking, and has offices in 32 countries and territories to support customers who conduct business in the global economy. With approximately 260,000 team members, Wells Fargo serves one in three households in the United States. Wells Fargo & Company was ranked No. 29 on Fortunes 2019 rankings of Americas largest corporations. News, insights and perspectives from Wells Fargo are also available at Wells Fargo Stories.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200220005232/en/

Jennifer Dunn, (202) 303-2966

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Kim Erlichson, (201) 463-4243

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Wells Fargo Foundation Increased Access to Housing, Jobs, Financial Coaching in 2019 - Insurance News Net

PISCATAWAY, N.J. Greg Schiano is back at Rutgers, but hes not quite home yet. That is coming soon. He and his wife Christy had built the house of their dreams during their first go-around here, thinking theyd stay forever. But, of course, life (and an NFL head coaching opportunity) happened, and they didnt stay forever.

Right now, Schiano is living out of a hotel. Soon, he and Christy will be back in their old house their buyers back then have since become sellers, though Schiano knows hes probably not getting the best deal here just a stones throw from the Scarlet Knights football facilities.

Schiano sits now, in his corner office of the Hale Center, tasked with building again what he built up once before. Back in December 2000, he inherited a football program that had just endured the worst five-year stretch in program history (11-44) and turned it into a regular contender in the old Big East. His 2006 team, led by Mike Teel, Brian...

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The reintroduction of head coach Greg Schiano - The Athletic

The 2010s gave rise to a number of tech bubbles, and the threat of those bubbles bursting in 2020 is resurfacing nightmares for some in the tech community of dot-com-era busts. One such bubble could be AI.

Yet, some of today's most successful tech companies -- Google chief among them -- grew out of the shattered landscape of the post-dot-com tech scene. The same pattern could play out in AI. Even if the current AI bubble does burst, there will most likely continue to be successful companies offering impactful tools.

Some experts claim we are in an "AI autumn," as the technology that once was feared for its potential to wipe out broad swaths of jobs has fallen short of its expected potential in many categories. Yet, underestimating the benefits of AI is a huge mistake, as various machine learning technologies are already providing value to businesses. But, given the limitations of AI, how can we get to a future where the technology has the world-changing impact that was previously expected?

Google's AlphaGo Zero forced the current world champion of the game Go into early retirement. In Lee Se-dol's own words, AI is "an entity that cannot be defeated." Using reinforcement learning, the AI played millions of games against itself at superhuman speed -- a number humans can't match in a lifetime of gameplay. The hardware costs for AlphaGo Zero also go up to $25 million.

However, the new world champion would fall flat on its face with the tiniest change to the game's rules. It also can't use its knowledge to master any other game. Humans are superior at applying existing knowledge to new tasks with limited data. This is something most AI pioneers agree upon.

"Current AI algorithms have enormous data requirements to learn the simplest tasks, and that puts a strict restriction on where they can be applied," said Abhimanyu, co-founder and CEO of Agara, which analyzes voice with the aid of AI to augment customer support operators. "While neural networks show superhuman performance, their predictions are sometimes wildly incorrect, so much that a human would never make a similar mistake."

As Jerome Pesenti, Facebook's head of AI, put it: The AI field is about to hit the wall. This begs the question: How can we build smarter AI?

Many experts believe improvements in hardware and algorithms are necessary to break that wall. Some even suggest that we need quantum computers.

Though deep learning and neural networks were developed to mimic how our neurons communicate, there is still much we don't know about the brain's inner workings, which outperforms thousands of CPUs and GPUs.

"Even our supercomputers are weaker than the human brain, which can run 1 exaflop calculations per second," Abhimanyu said. "However, since our algorithms have a long way to improve, it's hard to predict how much computation power we'd need."

More processing power doesn't generally equate to more intelligence. We can see this in the brainpower of various animals.

"As a simple proof point, there are animals with both much bigger brains and moreneurons than humans have," said Alan Majer, CEO and founder of AI and robotics development company Good Robot."So, if we wait for some kind of hardware tipping point, we're likely to be disappointed."

Recognizing the limitations of AI is the best thing we can do for the developing technology. While we are far off from human-level intelligence, companies are taking innovative approaches to overcome those constraints.

Explainable AI is one important approach.

AI has traditionally operated as a black box where the user feeds the questions and the algorithm throws out the answers. It was born from a need to program complex tasks, and no programmer was able to code all the logical decision variations. Thus, we let the AI learn by itself. However, this is about to change.

"Explainable, cognitive AI builds trust with people so humans and machines can work together in a collaborative, symbiotic way," said A.J. Abdallat, CEO of machine learning development company Beyond Limits. "Because explainable AI technologies are educated with knowledge, in addition to being trained with data, they understand how they solve the problem and the context that makes the information relevant."

The higher the potential stakes, the more important it is to know why AI arrived at a certain answer. "For example, NASA will not implement any system where you cannot explain how you got the answer and provide an audit trail," Abdallat explained.

Explainable AI gives us insight into the AI's decisions, improving the human-machine collaboration. However, this method does not work in all scenarios.

Consider self-driving cars, one of the benchmarks of our AI intelligence level. In fully autonomous vehicles, human operators are not enabled to aid the machine in split-second decisions. To solve this problem, experts adopt a hybrid approach.

"Waymo uses deep learning to detect pedestrians, but lidar and hardcoded programming add a safety net to prevent collisions," Abhimanyu explained. Developers use individual components that are not smart per se but can achieve smarter results when they are combined. By creating a smart design, developers challenge our understanding of the limitations of AI.

"The Google Duplex demo that amazed people is a really smart design coupled with state-of-the-art technology in speech-to-text and text-to-speech categories, which exploited what people look for in a smart human," Abhimanyu explained.

But these chatbots fail when it comes to natural conversations, which is still a challenging domain for AI. As an example, let's consider one of the major achievements in the past year, GPT-2, which stunned many with its content writing capabilities.

"GPT-2 can generate entire essays, but it is very hard to make it generate exactly what you want reliably and robustly in a live consumer setting," Abhimanyu shared. GPT-2 was trained on a huge library of quality documents from the internet, so it could predict what words should naturally follow a sentence or paragraph. But it had no idea what it was saying, nor could it be guided toward a certain direction. Experts believe being able to reliably and extensively control AI could mark the next step in our advancements.

The current AI algorithms were made possible on the back of big data -- that's why achieving this level of intelligence was not possible even with the best supercomputers decades ago. We are incrementally finding the next building blocks for smarter AI. Until we reach there, the most productive use of AI is on narrow domains where it outperforms humans.

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How to overcome the limitations of AI - TechTarget

Levels and Limits of AI.

I recently spoke with the innovation team of a Fortune 50 company about their 2020 initiatives, one of which was artificial intelligence. When I asked what specifically they want to use AI for, an executive replied, Everything. I pushed a little more asking, Are there any specific problems that youre seeking AI vendors for? The reply was something like We want to use AI in all of our financial services groups. This was particularly unsatisfying considering that the company is a financial services company.

I have these kinds of conversations frequently. For example, I met with the head of a large government department to discuss artificial intelligence, and their top agency executive asked for a system that could automate the decision-making of key officials. When the executive was asked for details, he more or less wanted a robotic version of his existing employees.

AI is not a panacea and it cannot simply replace humans. Artificial intelligence is mathematical computation, not human intelligence, as I have discussed in previous posts. One of my key roles as an investor is separating real AI from AI hype.

Buyers should not focus on whether or not a company is AI, but rather whether or not it solves a real problem. While technology is important, the most important part of any company is serving the customer. There are specific customer needs that artificial intelligence can address really well. Others, not so much. For example, AI may be well suited to detect digital fraud, but it would not be well suited to be a detective in the physical world. AI should be treated like any other software toolas a product that needs to yield a return. To do so, it is important to understand what artificial intelligence can actually do, and what it cant.

There are several levels of artificial intelligence. A few years ago my friends John Frank and Jason Briggs, who run Diffeo, suggested breaking artificial intelligence into 3 levels of service: Acceleration, Augmentation, and Automation. Acceleration is taking an existing human process and helping humans do it faster. For example, the current versions of textual auto-complete that Google offers are acceleration AI. They offer a completed version of what the user might already say. The next level, augmentation, takes what a human is doing and augments it. In addition to speeding up what the human is doing (like acceleration), it makes the humans product better. An example of this is what Grammarly does with improving the grammar of text. The final level is automation. In the previous two levels there are still humans in the loop. Automation achieves a task with no human in the loop. The aspiration here is Level 5 autonomous driving like Aurora and Waymo are pursuing.

When evaluating AI companies it makes sense to ask if what they are setting out to achieve is actually attainable at the level of AI that the vendor is promising. Below is a rough demonstrative chart with the Difficulty of AI on the y-axis and Level of AI on the x-axis.

The dashed line is what I call the AI feasibility curve. Within the line is AI feasibility, which means that there is a technology, infrastructure and approach to actually deliver a successful product at that level of AI in the near term. In reality it is a curve, not a line, and it is neither concave nor convex. It has bumps. Certain problems are really difficult, but are attainable because a spectacular AI team has worked really hard to "push out the AI feasibility curve for that specific problem. AlphaGo is included because it was an incredibly difficult and computationally intensive task, but the brilliant team at Google was able to shift the curve out in that area. If a company proposes it has built a fully-autonomous manager or strategy engine, I become highly skeptical. As you can see, the AI difficulty of those two tasks is quite high. The difficulty of AI is some function of the problem space and data quality (which I will discuss in a future article). In the chart, treat difficulty for AI as a directional illustration of difficulty, not a quantifiable score.

When purchasing a vendors AI, determine if its value proposition is feasible. If it is not, then the return on investment may be a disappointment. Look to whether it is being marketed as fully automated, but is too difficult a problem for full automation- this could be a sign that the product is actually accelerated AI. Keeping the feasibility curve in mind is important for investing as well, because if the customer is not well served, then the company will eventually fail.

When evaluating a company, I try to determine where on this chart the company would fall. If it is still building out product, I think about its technology innovation. Will the engineers be able to shift out the curve in that particular problem space? In evaluating AI, pick products that you can know with confidence will provide ROI. Dont be like the Fortune 50 that is looking for AI for everything or the government agency trying to have AI that basically does exactly what one of its officers does. Instead, evaluate an AI product for what it really offers you. Then, make an informed decision.

Disclosure: Sequoia is an investor in Aurora and author is an investor in Alphabet, both of which were used as examples in the article.

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Levels And Limits Of AI - Forbes

Editors Note: This article was submitted in response to the call for ideasissued by the co-chairs of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, Eric Schmidt and Robert Work. It addresses the first question (part a.) on how artificial intelligence might affect the character and/or the nature of war?

Ernest Swintons The Defense of Duffers Drift educated a few generations of military professionals in the West. It introduces a set of tactical lessons through six dreams seen by Lt. Backsight Forethought, who was responsible for the defense of a river crossing in the Boer War. Every dream unraveled combat situations triggered by the lieutenants previous tactical decisions. They revealed his mistakes, allowing him to gradually improve the defense. This is similar to how an artificial intelligence-powered system might evaluate combat scenarios. The only difference is that it would do millions of these evaluations, instead of six, would consider much more information, and would do it at incredible speed. This is why artificial intelligence (AI) is likely to revolutionize warfare: It could qualitatively improve the key factors in war human strategizing and decision-making speed.

Assessments and predictions on the future of warfare, as is the case with any type of forecasting, are demanding endeavors by default. One of the challenges is the difficulty of resisting the temptation to make linear projections of past experience onto the expected future. Especially since new technological developments seem to be rendering obsolete our older theories about conflict. Forecasting warfare evolution under the impact of AI is thus a formidable task. An approach that can reduce errors is to combine two sets of knowledge: understanding accurately the micro-dynamics of war (the most basic drivers of combat interaction) and assessing AI impact on war considering AI-specific abilities instead of humans innate limitations.

The Micro-Dynamics of War

Traditionally, military and security experts have perceived warfare in Clausewitzian terms, through preponderance of force and large uncertainty. This view has been determined by humans physical and cognitive limitations rather than by the fundamental dynamics of war. Humans are not the quickest and most agile creatures. They cannot swiftly move away from a bullets trajectory. They are also not the sharpest shooters. It took about 10,000 rounds to produce a casualty in World War II. This number was even higher during the U.S. counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

We learned to compensate for accuracy failures by relying on automatic fire or indiscriminate artillery strikes. Because we are not quick enough in decision and evasion movement, we chose the path of armor building. However, the fundamental element of combat dynamics is not firepower or fire accuracy. Based on my dissertation research, I argue that it is the manipulation of ones relative degree of lethal exposure in combat. And it is by better exploiting lethal exposure that AI systems will affect the future of warfare. Capabilities are just a reservoir from which a side can supply its combat efforts. A side with more troops and more weapons will have a larger reservoir.

Lethal exposure has always been the invisible hand of war, as it practically has complete control over how power preponderance can influence war outcomes. The currently dominant view on warfare emphasizes the importance of attrition of forces as the underlying combat dynamics. The proposed exposure-driven concept of combat brings instead to prominence the critical role played by the speed of attrition of ones troops and weapons for military effectiveness and victory.

To better understand the logic of lethal exposure, let us consider a classical combat analysis scenario with interacting Blue and Red forces. Blues exposure to Reds lethal fire and thus attrition depends on its ability to avoid identification by Red. Basically, Blues degree of exposure becomes dependent upon Reds knowledge about Blues location. At minimum, exposure is determined by two factors: the physical presence of Blue in Reds range of fire and the knowledge of Red about Blues exact location inside its targeting range. It is the quality that reflects the degree to which a sides combat-engaged troops are subject to lethal fire of its competitor, resulting in a varying level of attrition of its troops. To use a more familiar expression, combat exposure of a military unit is the degree of its stealth.

It is not possible to strike an opponent beyond ones weapons reach, no matter how accurate one is. And even inside the targeting range, it is hardly possible to hit the opponent without knowing its location. An extreme illustrative case is the example of a perfect ambush when the ambusher has the opponent in its weapons sights, while the ambushed has no clue about it. The exposure is close to zero for the ambusher and is maximum for the ambushed. The degree of exposure of forces can completely block the impact of capabilities and fire accuracy on troops attrition speed. It is when the value of exposure is very high like in hand-to-hand combat, or trench warfare that the effects of capabilities and fire accuracy are maximized. This logical illustration of combat dynamics allows us to open the black box of combat uncertainty.

To see this, consider two fighting forces, one having 100 units and another one having 30 units. Keeping the conventional combat-related factors and conditions equal, numerical superiority will bring victory. However, as we unilaterally decrease the smaller forces degree of lethal exposure (through various tactical moves or technology), its speed of combat attrition will start diminishing too. In comparison to the unchanged attrition of the larger force, the smaller forces speed of attrition will eventually drop to a threshold value, when the larger force keeps degrading, by contrast, much quicker. But not just quicker. This threshold value, at which the larger side faces a higher speed of proportional attrition (when its X percent of troops and weapons degrade quicker than the respective X percent of the smaller combatants forces) can be rightfully labeled as the margin of military victory. Technically, in order to remain alone on the battlefield after combat, the 30-large force has to reach a kill rate higher than about 3.34 units of its opponent for each of its own destroyed units.

The described combat micro-dynamics allow even a belligerent with considerably fewer forces to win combat engagements and consequently wars against a militarily more powerful opponent.

Manipulating the degree of exposure requires advantage in decision-making and movement speed as well as environmental awareness. One can decrease own exposure while instantly increasing the opponents exposure in combat, by having a good knowledge about the combat environment including location of the opponent achieving a quick decision-making speed and being able to move faster on the battlefield. AI-driven combat systems could have crucial impacts in all three domains and change military strategy.

AIs Capabilities in Warfare

In September 2019 the Russian military conducted the strategic exercise Tsentr-2019, allegedly testing an AI-based command, control, communication, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance system. According to Russian open sources, the new information system of combat command and control gathers combat-related information from various sources in real time, assesses combat scenarios, and provides the commanders with a ranked list of combat mission decisions and an assessment of resulting scenarios.

While still at a rudimentary level, this application transformed AI from an enabler into an actor in the combat environment. If its recommendations are implemented by the human commanders, it makes little difference whether AI directly commands automatic combat units or if it achieves this through human fighters although the second scenario is still much slower. We may be witnessing the birth of an automatic battlefield commander.

Would such an AI system actually be able to conduct combat assessment and mission planning better than a trained human professional? Claims that the military context generates unique challenges may not necessarily be true for AI. We should think about AI as another actor with its own specific capabilities: similar to an alien, who sees our environment outside of the human visible spectrum. An actor that operates by simplifying and stripping a problem down to its essential elements in its search for optimally tailored solutions. A sound way of exploring this issue has been advocated by Iyad Rahwan of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. Rahwan suggested taking an anthropological approach since AI systems have become so complex that we cannot understand and predict what they will do, we should instead observe their behavior in the wild.

This would allow us to perceive the combat environment the way AI will see it. The beginning of this discussion aimed to propose a most likely candidate for AI perception of combat, driven by lethal exposure. AI systems are optimizers, trying to fulfill a task based on a set of incentives. The accuracy of their work depends on the quality of data that humans feed into AI. As technical progress evolves, the evolution of sensors that allow AI combat systems to directly connect to the environment including counter-battery fire, other radars, video cameras, electro-optics, or even satellite observation will solve the data collection problem and increase the output quality of the AI-driven military systems. Because exposure, as described earlier, is the key driver of combat uncertainty dynamics, AI will identify it through data analysis and focus on instrumentalizing it.

Despite skepticism among researchers and policy practitioners, including claims that you cant AI your way out of physics, AI showed capacity to outperform the best human strategists not only in perfect information games such as Chess and Go. A revelatory example is the recent development of Pluribus AI, which is able to win against elite professional players in a multi-player poker game an imperfect-information strategic interaction. Moreover, researchers ingeniously reduced the games high complexity, solving the problem of too many decision points by bundling situationally similar ones into groups, treating then all decisions in a group as identical.

Together with the poker example, which is arguably the most sophisticated, there is too much evidence to doubt the ability of AI to solve complex problems better than humans. For instance, in the biotech industry AI is not just a tool. It designs experiments, carries them out, and interprets their results. The genetic changes that AI systems generate in these labs represent discoveries that human scientists would likely not have identified. According to scientists working in the industry, some of the AI-created genes have no human-known functions.

Moreover, while winning in some of the most complex strategic games, AI revealed an insightful trait. Defeating one of the worlds best Go players, Lee Sedol, DeepMinds AlphaGo AI player made a move that reportedly caught Sedol and other top players by surprise a move that no human would ever do. Facing another of DeepMinds AI systems, AlphaStar, one of the worlds best players in StarCraft 2 pointed out that AI explores strategies in ways different from what a human player would do. Capabilities have an instrumental effect, as they drive behavior.

Unlike humans, AI is better equipped to explore the exposure-manipulated speed of attrition concept, which is arguably the most basic, irreducible dynamic of combat. It arguably suggests the most effective solution in combat interaction the Nash equilibrium of military strategies as whatever the other side does, reducing ones speed of attrition while increasing that of the opponent is the best possible response in combat.

Harnessing the power of modern computing, AI is able to explore an enormously larger part of the probability space all possible developments in its environment. In contrast, to do the same task, humans incur significant cognitive costs and try to reduce them by searching the space of options for the solution that is closest to them. Imagine a solutions landscape, where we are surrounded by various hills, each of their heights representing a solutions optimality level. It is very likely that a moderately high decision hill in our surroundings represents a better solution, but we cannot see it, as a different solution hill that is closer to us covers our eyesight. We will stop at this particular solution, while AI would have a wider vision and therefore will identify and explore the better options.

Providing AI with the logical shortcut of ready-built models will compensate for the debilitating shortage of big data on combat dynamics. Using combat simulations that explore high-fidelity micro-dynamics of war similar to the suggested exposure-guided speed of attrition concept researchers can train effective AI combat systems. Thus, AI battlefield commanders able to outperform human experts can be developed even given the shortage of combat-related data. This will also help us understand how AI deals with combat uncertainty, to be able to know how to instrumentalize this uncertainty for exploring AIs weak sides.

Food for Thought

By implementing the two listed conditions of this AI-empowering approach, international actors will end up in a real AI arms race a race in which they will compete not for the most powerful weapon, but for the most optimized AI-driven battlefield commander algorithm. This will give tremendous advantages in combat, harvesting the AIs decision-making speed and optimized strategies.

Secondly, to fully explore AIs potential by avoiding the transaction costs of the human interface, a few accompanying technological developments are necessary. A demand will emerge for specific hardware applications sensors, exoskeletons, micro-turbine engines, robotic systems, and unmanned vehicles that could best harvest AIs decision-making agility and reaction speed potential.

Third, the use of lethal force will develop to become more accurate, quick, and localized almost surgical. Due to AIs expected ability to effectively discriminate among various types of targets in combat, military AI systems would likely offset the equalizing effect between regular armies and insurgents that automatic rifles made possible, likely due to restricting effects of international humanitarian law.

Fourth, given the resulting intensity and speed of combat attrition, fighting will become faster, will destroy combat resources more quickly and in higher quantities, making wars costlier for the defeated. The way capabilities transform into victory will become again more transparent, so that not everyone will be able to afford and be willing to fight wars. Therefore, state actors with significant financial resources will likely gain advantage in crises.

What should the U.S. government do? Because AI technologies that can be used in the military domain are readily available in the commercial sector, banning the use of AI in warfare becomes impractical. The United States should invest more in studying AI behavior in warfare. Similar to how scientists evolve and study deadly viruses to build vaccines against them, the U.S. government should encourage the laboratory-based anthropological study of AI behavior in virtual combat environments to understand how it thinks. This would enable understanding of the opaque functioning of AI opening its black box and would prepare policymakers to better address potential unanticipated consequences of AI operations, also known as King Midas problem.

The U.S. government ought to encourage and fund disruptive thinking on combat dynamics, military strategy and grand strategy implications, accounting for the ways AI developments are going to remove many of the existing physical and intellectual limitations on how humans have been fighting wars.

Finally, the United States ought to prioritize investing into electromagnetic pulse technology that breaks the connection between the AI and the combat systems it controls, which upgrade AI from a virtual advisor into a physically present battlefield commander.

Dumitru Minzarari, PhD (University of Michigan), is a former military officer who served as state secretary for defense policy and international cooperation with the Moldovan Ministry of Defense, worked for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe field missions in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, and with several think tanks in Eastern Europe.

Image: U.S. Army (Photo by Conrad Johnson)

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From Deception to Attrition: AI and the Changing Face of Warfare - War on the Rocks

Meditation: What Is It? Meditation is a popular subject these days. With a renewed emphasis on spiritualism and alternative medicine, meditation has gained popularity. Yet, depending on the context, meditation can be defined in a variety of ways. Quite simply, meditation is defined as reflecting and contemplating. It makes no value statement any more than thinking or dreaming does. The subject of a person's meditation is what brings value to the act of meditating.

Meditation: Who Does It? Meditation is generally seen as a practice of the New Age movement. This comes primarily from the movement's association with Transcendental Meditation. Transcendental Meditation (TM) was developed by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi of the Hindu religion. On their website, TM is described as "a simple, natural, effortless procedureDuring this technique, the individual's awareness settles down and experiences a unique state of restful alertness. As the body becomes deeply relaxed, the mind transcends all mental activity to experience the simplest form of awareness, Transcendental Consciousness, where consciousness is open to itself" (www.tm.org). The site touts the benefits of TM as enhancing creativity, effectiveness, and success. The site goes on to say that people from any age, background, or religion can practice TM.

However, TM is steeped in Hindu philosophy. The "yogi" in the TM founder's name indicates his status in Hinduism. The philosophy and benefits behind TM are similar with Hinduism's practice that seeks to bring people into union with one's "higher self." Additionally, courts in the U.S. have ruled that TM is not a secular discipline; it is Hindu religion (U.S. District Court, Newark, NJ, on October 29, 1977, and the U.S. Court of Appeals, Philadelphia, PA February 2, 1979.)

Meditation: Is It Biblical? Not all meditation is Transcendental Meditation. In fact, the Bible commands us to meditate. In Joshua 1:8, God tells us to meditate on His word day and night so we will obey it. The words, "meditate" or "meditation" are mentioned 20 times. But meditation's association with New Age philosophy and Eastern mysticism has frightened off many Christians.

In the Old Testament there are two primary Hebrew words for meditation. Haga, which means to utter, groan, meditate, or ponder. Sihach, which means to muse, rehearse in one's mind, or contemplate. These words can also be translated as dwell, diligently consider, and heed.

Meditation: A History One form of meditation that has been used by Christians since at least the 4th century is the lectio divina. It has been traditionally used in monastic religious orders and is enjoying a resurgence today. Lectio divina means "sacred reading" and has four stages: lectio (reading), meditatio (discursive meditation), oratio (effective prayer), and contemplatio (contemplation). In the lectio (reading) stage, one finds a passage and reads it deliberately. The next stage, meditatio (discursive meditation), is where one ponders the text. In the oratio (effective prayer) stage, one talks to God about the reading, asking Him to reveal the truth. In the final, contemplatio (contemplation) stage, one simply rests in God's presence.

As we can see, meditation is simply pondering or thinking over something. The subject of a person's meditation, and the purpose of the meditation, is what differentiates one kind of meditation from another.

What we choose to dwell on and focus our thoughts on make a profound difference in our outlook on life. To find out more on how to focus on "whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things" (Philippians 4:8, NASB), keep searching below.

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Meditation - AllAboutSpirituality.org

on December 21 | in Affirmations | by Matthew Catlett | with 11 Comments

In mantra meditation, you repeat a particular sound or short phrase again and again. This can be done out loud (chanting), in your mind, or in some combination of the two. In many spiritual paths, you cant just arbitrarily pick a mantra your spiritual mentor or guru assigns one to you according to your phase of spiritual development and then later changes it in intervals as you grow. In other forms of meditation, spiritual or not, you pick a mantra from a given list of phrases that are thought to resonate positively. Not all mantras work well for all people, and unless youre taking spiritual direction from a mentor you should feel free to try another.

Using a mantra while youre meditating helps suppress the thoughts and distractions that arise and gives you a tool to use when youre not meditating. Repeating a meditation mantra during times of stress, for many people, brings about some relaxation and helps them to better deal with whatever the crisis of the moment is. Depending on your belief system, the mantras may also do things like get you in touch with the true nature of the universe, help you spiritually closer to God, and/or activate energy centers.

Theres a lot of ways to meditate. Besides using mantras, you could also focus on your breath, music, a real object, a mental visualization, or nothing at all (Zen). If youre just starting out, dont feel like you have to start by picking a mantra you can start meditation shopping the different approaches. Many of the guided meditations are contemplative exercises for gratitude, cleansing, energy, and healing where its not a single idea that holds focus, but an exploration of concepts or guided imagery.

For that matter, even in mantra meditation you could pick nearly any short phrase and have the same sort of cleansing, buffering effect against the mental trivia that inevitably rises during meditation. Theres some serious hitters backing the idea of your mantra having no meaning:

Despite those three very hefty precedents, though, repeating something life-affirming and spiritual can add something positive to our consciousnesses. Theres abundant cultural heritage behind choosing something with meaning or else I couldnt supply you with this list, which just scratches the surface. Theres a ton more Hindu and Buddhist ones you could look at using, at least, and some people outside those paths just go directly to using the Lords Prayer or the name of God according to their religion of choice. My suggestion to you is that you simply explore to see what feels best for you, especially if youre just getting started.

Aum / Om

Ham-Sah / So Ham

Om A Ra Pa Ca Na Dhih

Om Mani Padme Hum

Om Shanti Shanti Shanti

The Ego Self and New Beginnings 5 Christmas Prayers

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21 Mantras for Meditation - Programming Life

Battle meditation [Source] "Every soldier knows that war is more than arms and armor, every warrior carries an image of impending victory in his heart. When the image shatters, to be replaced by defeat, he is beaten. But sometimes a warrior receives assistance from an unexpected source, an in-rush of light, blasting away his fear and despair, releasing new inner strength! Yes, a war is much more than arms and armor. Half of every conflict is the will to win. We are Jedi. We must recognize that the will to win, and the power of war, are given sometimes by the dark side. And sometimes, as dawn throws back the night, victory is givenby the light!" Arca Jeth, while implementing Jedi battle meditation Listen (file info)[src]

Battle meditation was a Force ability that considerably boosted the morale, stamina, and overall battle prowess of an individual's allies while simultaneously reducing the opposition's combat-effectiveness by eroding their will to fight.

Battle meditation was the ability to use the Force to coordinate allies and even entire fleets of ships, allowing them to perform at maximum efficiency, acting as a single entity with the ability to counter every enemy move quickly and effectively. Though ideal for meditating large-scale conflicts, battle meditation was also effective when employed for the benefit of one's comrades in small skirmishes, attacks, and duels. It could also be used to simultaneously demoralize the opponents, reducing their combat effectiveness. Battle meditation was used to influence armies and fleets to win battles and even wars.[2]

The Kirrek pirates lose their will to fight under the influence of Odan-Urr's battle meditation.

This Force power was first made famous by the ancient Jedi Masters Odan-Urr, Arca Jeth, and Nomi Sunrider. Odan-Urr used it during the Unification Wars,[23] while Arca Jeth used it with great success during the Beast Wars of Onderon.[24] Being naturally adept, Nomi Sunrider applied battle meditation in nearly every conflict she participated in, such as the Freedon Nadd Uprising,[25] and the Battle of Koros Major.[26] It was also practiced by Bastila Shan during the Jedi Civil War and the Battle of Rakata Prime, with impressive results.[15]

During the New Sith Wars, the Ithorian Jedi Master Worror Dowmat used battle meditation to bolster the strength of Jedi Lord Valenthyne Farfalla and the Army of Light, as they fought against Lord Kaan's Brotherhood of Darkness. Dowmat also assisted his Jedi companions with his Battle meditation when they confronted Darths Bane and Zannah on the planet Tython, ten years after the war's end. Dowmat's meditation provided the invigoration necessary for Johun Othone, Sarro Xaj, Echani Jedi Raskta Lsu, and Farfalla to contend with Darth Bane, who was himself being fueled by his dark side rage.[6]

Grand Master Yoda was also quite skilled, having used battle meditation during his Mission to Vjun to empower the actor pretending to be him. With a mere touch, Yoda was able to saturate Palleus Chuff with feelings of hope and mission success, while simultaneously eliminating feelings of doubt and despair from the little man's spirit.[27] Yoda also successfully meditated the conflict during the Battle of Kashyyyk.[28] Both Yarael Poof and Oppo Rancisis used it in the Stark Hyperspace War and the Clone Wars respectively.[11][12] During the Clone Wars, Etain Tur-Mukan was able to encourage and calm troopers during the conflicts she took part in, suggesting that she had the potential to use Battle Meditation or some lesser form of this ability.

Luke Skywalker studied the use of battle meditation at some point after the Battle of Endor from a book he found.[29] His sister Leia also studied battle meditation from books recovered on Ossus, and employed her new ability against the reborn Darth Sidious.[17]

Jedi Masters T'ra Saa and K'Kruhk each utilized battle meditation during the final battles of the Second Imperial Civil War, including the Jedi's loss at Taivas[14] and its victory at Coruscant[9] respectively.

A focused version of battle meditation was known as Force meld. Unlike battle meditation, which could influence both the Force-sensitives and non-Force-sensitives of both sides, Force meld concentrated on coordinating and improving the Force-sensitives of the user's side.[2]

Bastila Shan supporting the Sith fleet in 3,956 BBY during the Battle of Rakata Prime.

Battle meditation was not merely a province of the light side; powerful dark side users could twist the wills of their commanded armies not through subtle influence, but with total domination. This perversion of battle meditation was called Sith Battle Coordination by the Dark Lady Lumiya. It was later identified by Darth Caedus as "Sith Battle meditation".[1]

When Nomi Sunrider asked of her Master if those who use the dark side were able to command battle meditation, Odan-Urr replied that indeed they could, but it was very rare.[20] Lord Skere Kaan also used Sith battle meditation during the New Sith Wars in opposition to the superior prowess of a female Cerean Jedi Master.[8]One thousand years later, Grand Admiral Nial Declann was a master of Sith battle meditation, using it to great effect during the Battle of Endor. Following Emperor Palpatine's death, the shock of the sudden removal of this influence threw the Imperial Navy into chaos and allowed the Rebel fleet to defeat them.[5]Joruus C'baoth, the insane clone guardian of Wayland's Mount Tantiss, increased the victory percentage of Grand Admiral Thrawn's armies by forty percent via dark battle meditation.[16]

When Darth Caedus ascended to Dark Lord of the Sith, he soon found out that within his mind he could coordinate and direct battle into whatever outcome he so desired. He would use a meditation chair on board his personal star destroyer to amplify his powers. Caedus' early uses of the art were poor, as his first attempts only resulted in him being able to see the battle unfolding in his mind, not being able to directly influence it.[30] When he tried to dominate the wills of his subordinates via the Force he found that they were not so easily subjugated, and reacted with hostility to his psychic intrusion. His powers were greatly augmented by Alema Rar as he attempted to lay siege to Kashyyyk, and what seemed like a battle lost became a victory for the Alliance.[1] Caedus practiced regularly (he had plenty of opportunity since his early time as a Sith was heavily engrossed in war), and his proficiency became much stronger. Caedus would Flow-walk into the immediate future to see the next battle, and then return to the present to directly influence the battle to bring about the ends he desired. He shortly thereafter gave up the use of his meditation chair upon its destruction by Luke Skywalker and meditated battle directly from the bridge of the Anakin Solo.[31] During the Second Battle of Fondor, Darth Caedus used battle meditation to dominate the collective wills of Fondor's ground forces, causing them to doubt their chances of victory and drop the planet's defensive shielding.[32]

The use and effect of battle meditation was first described in the Star Wars expanded universe by Timothy Zahn in Heir to the Empire, when Grand Admiral Thrawn explains to Joruus C'baoth and Gilad Pellaeon his own theory as to why the Battle of Endor was lost; he believed that Palpatine employed the power to an unwise degree, taking such close control of the Imperial forces as to make them puppets, almost incapable of fighting on their own when his influence was suddenly removed (the use of battle meditation at Endor was later attributed to Grand Admiral Nial Declann instead of Palpatine).

The term "battle meditation" is first used in the 2003 video game Knights of the Old Republic and the power is a plot element rather than an ability usable by any of the player characters. Because the character Bastila is one of the only Jedi in the galaxy who has mastered the ability, she is a vital weapon to be used by either the Republic or the Sith.

In Knights of the Old Republic, the power can only be used when the user is in deep concentration, and not in the midst of combat. This contradicts earlier sources, where Nomi Sunrider is shown to use battle meditation while fighting.

In Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, battle meditation is a usable ability by any of the playable characters who are Force-sensitive. Using the power grants a bonus to attack rolls, damage, Will saves and increases Vitality Points Regeneration to the player's entire party. At higher levels, it can also impair enemies. If mastered, the power also has a story-based use, as it can be used by the Jedi Exile in order to turn the tide of the Onderon throne room battle to the favor of Queen Talia's or General Vaklu's forces, depending on who the player has allied with.

In The Force Unleashed video game, battle meditation was an upgradeable Force Talent. It decreased the amount of time it takes to charge Force powers.

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Battle meditation | Wookieepedia | Fandom

BELFAST In celebration of Heart Health month, Diana Maria Chapin and Lori LeBlanc will offer two free sound healing meditation events, Thursday, Feb. 27,at the Belfast Free Library. These are free community events; donations accepted.

Participants are welcome to attend one of the two sessions: 10 - 11:30 a.m. or 12:30 - 2 p.m.

Participants will learn about the healing art of the singing bowls and Yoga Nidra meditation, and explore the human energy system. There will be an opportunity to practice heart-brain coherence breath-work, which has been shown scientifically to produce a foundational state of well-being.

Yoga Nidra, also called divine sleep, is the art of holding oneself in the state of awareness between fully awake and fully asleep. Specifically, the body is in deep rest while the mind is aware. As a state of being, Yoga Nidra is used to experience and promote relaxation, reduce stress and improve wellness; and has been shown to reduce anxiety, depression and PTSD. Yoga Nidra is a naturally easy meditation for beginners, and is practiced lying supine or sitting in a chair.

Participants should bring their own pillows, blankets and yoga mat items that will help them feel comfortable lying on the floor.

Diana Maria Chapin an Energy Healer, Reiki Master Teacher and Meditation Instructor atMaine Integrative Wellness Center, 8 Jesse Robbins Road, Suite D,Belfast, ME 04915

https://dianamariachapin.com,Facebook: Diana Maria Chapin, Healer,Instagram: dianamariachapin.

Lori LeBlanc a sound healer and Licensed Massage Therapist since 1994. She is certified in Polarity Therapy, BioSonic Repatterining, and Tibetan Singing Bowl Therapy. Belfast.www.lori7bowls.com, Facebook: Lori LeBlanc-Holistic Support for Well-Being, Instagram: Lori7bowls.

These free events are open to the public, donations accepted.For more information contact Diana Maria Chapin 207-249-2261 or Lori LeBlanc 207-208-7492.

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Free heart-healthy sound healing with Yoga Nidra meditation - PenBayPilot.com