Quo Vadis
Where is the journey heading? Where is this blog going?
And where is this blog heading? The short and honest answer would be: I do not know yet myself. But that would probably also be the most unsatisfying answer for my first post — and the shortest one 😅
So let me use this article to sketch out the vision and idea behind Quo Vadis, along with a bit of my personal motivation and why I am finally starting to write now. Truth be told, I always wanted to write — at least for as long as I can remember — but I never got beyond short stories (unpublished), school-related stuff, and unpublished hobby projects. Okay, aside from that, I also published around 30 academic papers, but let us be honest: nobody really cares about those. And ever since I left academia, I have not written anything anymore, even though the urge was always there from time to time. In my head, I kept coming up with concepts, I secured the domain quovadis.news, but in the end it still failed because of laziness — or, as my subconscious likes to tell me, because there was no time, too much work stress, and every other creative excuse imaginable.
Just Fucking Do It
Well, since this year began differently than I had expected, I picked up one of my favorite books of the last few years again: Just Fucking Do It by Noor Hibbert — and honestly, the title alone was enough. So I sat down, finally set up the blog, and now comes the difficult part: the writing itself. But let us see. If I ever end up publishing this article, then apparently I managed that too.
But perhaps I should stop boring you with my personal monologues and instead take a look at the future of this blog.
Quo Vadis?
What can you expect from this blog? Well, to be honest, no fucking clue (yet). I don`t have a polished concept, no commercial interest, and no roadmap filled with articles. What I do have is a broad field of interests, along with a few ideas, sketches, and notes in my notebook. Anyone who knows me knows that I have an absurd number of interests: artificial intelligence, economics, stock markets, politics, philosophy, technology, and the question of what the future will bring. At the beginning, this blog will definitely focus on (generative) artificial intelligence — from the fundamentals to its applications and its effects on society.
And I promise you one thing: not a single article on this blog will be generated by AI — neither for brainstorming nor for content creation. I will use AI for translations and for generating images, but not for the actual writing itself. There are two reasons for that:
- I am pursuing no commercial interests whatsoever with this blog.
- At the moment, every chatbot merely gives us majority opinions — or perhaps consensus opinions. On the one hand, it is not exactly rocket science to generate those yourself. On the other hand, one of my core convictions is that the majority is (almost) always wrong — but more on that at some point over the course of this blog.
Trigger Warning
I do not write to please people, but to make them think — a skill that has noticeably declined in our society ever since the rise of social media. I do not want to generate approval, but rather thought experiments, future scenarios, and sometimes provocations. The more controversial a thesis may be at times, the more exciting it becomes on the other side 😉 Sarcasm, satire, and exaggeration are legitimate stylistic devices for any writer, and I should disappoint you in advance: there will be no trigger warnings or any other semantic bullshit here. Oh, and spelling mistakes are, of course, also a deliberate stylistic device!
Last but not least: a brief preview of upcoming topics
Quo Vadis AI: Between Utopia, Dystopia, and the Legacy of Great Inventions
“Consider the force, the effects, and consequences of inventions […] namely printing, gunpowder, and the nautical compass. For these three have changed the appearance and state of the whole world.” — Sir Francis Bacon (1620), Novum Organum
Every invention of humankind is unique and shapes us profoundly across generations. In retrospect, it is always easy to identify and name these inventions — but can we recognize a turning point while we are still in the middle of it?
Over the past years, many innovations have been called revolutionary and have been massively overhyped. One of the most prominent examples is blockchain technology: a vastly overrated technology that, to this day, has still failed to produce meaningful applications beyond cryptocurrencies, yet nonetheless moved — and burned — billions. At its peak, it was enough for an iced tea company to rename itself Long Blockchain Corp. in order to quadruple its stock price overnight. Even pointless digital monkey pictures — which were not even nice to look at — were traded at the height of the hype for more than 24 million dollars. A trend that was clearly not here to stay.
Right now, we talk about artificial intelligence every single day. Since the release of ChatGPT on November 30, 2022, the world as we knew it has once again been called into question. At first, people mocked it because ChatGPT could not name the German chancellor at the time — usually people who did not understand LLMs in the first place. Many still delight in every single mistake made by LLMs. On the other hand, many are predicting the end of the working world and of the economic system as we have known it so far. But who will turn out to be right in the end? Will large language models be mentioned in 100 years in the same breath as the printing press and gunpowder — or are they ultimately just another short-lived hype, one that merely throws stock prices into disarray?
Stay tuned
Sebastian