An Announcement and a Short Update
A Book Launch - and an Update on the Future of this Newsletter.
I’m gong to start with the exciting announcement. Dr. KJ Haywood just launched her book, “Here We Go Again, Except It’s AI: AI Governance: From Analysis to Enterprise Action,” and I’m a contributor to the book! Dr. Haywood is amazing, and I’m excited to get my own copy of the book. Check it out on Amazon today! Dr. Haywood will be launching it in other stores soon, if you prefer not to support Amazon.
Disclosure: While I was a contributor to the book, I have no financial stake in it. I don’t get any kickbacks if you purchase the book. I’m just excited to share Dr. Haywood’s work and my first credited book contribution.
A Short Update
It’s almost 9 months to the day since I last published. There are a lot of reasons for it, but the biggest one is that I fell out of the cadence of writing on a regular schedule, and I struggled to get back into it. Part of it was my day job, part was the shifting state of political and ideological trends, and part was my problem with Substack’s ideology as a platform. That, and I couldn’t decide what I wanted Byte-sized Ethics to actually be.
Despite the gap, I’ve missed writing. I am going to continue Byte-sized Ethics, but I need to re-envision what it is. Those of you who’ve been with me for a while know that I’ve struggled to find a focus and a niche. I believe in the idea of Byte-sized Ethics — exploring the ethics, values, and morals reflected and expressed through our technology and software. The focus on AI Ethics felt too narrow, and I found myself reacting to the hype, not contributing meaningfully to the conversation. But when I expanded the focus, I started asking Where do I stop? The line between what we consider technology and don’t is getting increasingly blurry, so what are my boundaries?
What I’ve been thinking about lately is that I want to explore how to use software, AI, and technology, and still be a good person. It keeps getting harder to determine what companies and software are ‘good’ or aligned to my values, morals, and ethics. If it’s hard for me, someone who thinks about these things all the time, it has to be hard for others, right?
Over the last few months, I’ve also gotten really into Stoicism, thanks to an impulse purchase of a Ryan Holiday book - “Stillness is the Key.” I’ve been thinking about the application of stoicism to AI, software, and technology as well. There could be a really interesting intersection between the two topics.
That’s the direction I’m thinking about - how do I use software and technology and still be a good person? Or at the very least, make informed choices.
What’s Next?
I need to spend more time thinking about where Byte-sized Ethics is going, and then come up with a content approach, and then start writing. I don’t want to put a date on that because there’s a lot of unknown between here and there.
In the interim, I’ll write when I have the opportunity. I have a backlog of topics to cover; I just need to do the actual writing.
That’s all for today, folks. As always, I appreciate you. Thank you for staying with me on this journey and taking the next steps with me.