Ben Hamley

R&D

[Ben Hamley @benhamley]

What I'm reading about the #FutureOfWork https://t.co/WS4gNnqCE7

[Sam Altman @sama]

GPTs can save a lot of effort:

[Ben Hamley @benhamley]

Whisper API + "anything" 🤯

[Ethan Mollick @emollick]

Very useful AI feature that people aren’t noticing is Whisper, the AI-powered voice to text system that is a free with the ChatGPT app

It handles accents, noise, etc so much better than the Apple default that I will often use it for voice notes and paste the text into other apps

[Ben Hamley @benhamley]

"Poor writing transfers the work from the writer to the reader. Good writing, on the other hand, nearly reads itself, allowing the reader to spend more time thinking about the ideas than pulling out meaning. ..."

— @farnamstreet newsletter https://t.co/AvvOE1OwR0

[Ethan Mollick @emollick]

The weirdest WW2 coincidence: Japan's random balloon bombing campaign hit the Manhattan Project plutonium production site in Washington state, knocking out the cooling system.

If it wasn’t for conservative engineering, the reactor might have melted down before the Trinity test!

[Ben Hamley @benhamley]

By filling in these templates with your observations, you can start understanding the zeitgeist and gain a deeper understanding of our era.

What are you most interested in learning more about?

#GrokkingTheZeitgeist #grok #zeitgeist #ethnography

[Ben Hamley @benhamley]

Grokking the Zeitgeist - intuitively understanding the Spirit of Our Time

❓🤔❓

[Ben Hamley @benhamley]

Social Movements: The rise of _______ has sparked a wave of activism, challenging the status quo and advocating for _______.

[John Hagel @jhagel]

The ability to conjure up possible futures or alternative realities is the flip side of memory. Both faculties cohabit in the brain region called the hippocampus https://t.co/lkpYuJhudt

[Sterling Crispin 🕊️ @sterlingcrispin]

I spent 10% of my life contributing to the development of the #VisionPro while I worked at Apple as a Neurotechnology Prototyping Researcher in the Technology Development Group. It’s the longest I’ve ever worked on a single effort. I’m proud and relieved that it’s finally announced. I’ve been working on AR and VR for ten years, and in many ways, this is a culmination of the whole industry into a single product. I’m thankful I helped make it real, and I’m open to consulting and taking calls if you’re looking to enter the space or refine your strategy.

The work I did supported the foundational development of Vision Pro, the mindfulness experiences, ▇▇▇▇▇▇ products, and also more ambitious moonshot research with neurotechnology. Like, predicting you’ll click on something before you do, basically mind reading. I was there for 3.5 years and left at the end of 2021, so I’m excited to experience how the last two years brought everything together. I’m really curious what made the cut and what will be released later on.

Specifically, I’m proud of contributing to the initial vision, strategy and direction of the ▇▇▇▇▇▇ program for Vision Pro. The work I did on a small team helped green light that product category, and I think it could have significant global impact one day.

The large majority of work I did at Apple is under NDA, and was spread across a wide range of topics and approaches. But a few things have become public through patents which I can cite and paraphrase below.

Generally as a whole, a lot of the work I did involved detecting the mental state of users based on data from their body and brain when they were in immersive experiences.

So, a user is in a mixed reality or virtual reality experience, and AI models are trying to predict if you are feeling curious, mind wandering, scared, paying attention, remembering a past experience, or some other cognitive state. And these may be inferred through measurements like eye tracking, electrical activity in the brain, heart beats and rhythms, muscle activity, blood density in the brain, blood pressure, skin conductance etc.

There were a lot of tricks involved to make specific predictions possible, which the handful of patents I’m named on go into detail about. One of the coolest results involved predicting a user was going to click on something before they actually did. That was a ton of work and something I’m proud of. Your pupil reacts before you click in part because you expect something will happen after you click. So you can create biofeedback with a user's brain by monitoring their eye behavior, and redesigning the UI in real time to create more of this anticipatory pupil response. It’s a crude brain computer interface via the eyes, but very cool. And I’d take that over invasive brain surgery any day.

Other tricks to infer cognitive state involved quickly flashing visuals or sounds to a user in ways they may not perceive, and then measuring their reaction to it.

Another patent goes into details about using machine learning and signals from the body and brain to predict how focused, or relaxed you are, or how well you are learning. And then updating virtual environments to enhance those states. So, imagine an adaptive immersive environment that helps you learn, or work, or relax by changing what you’re seeing and hearing in the background.

All of these details are publicly available in patents, and were carefully written to not leak anything. There was a ton of other stuff I was involved with, and hopefully more of it will see the light of day eventually.

A lot of people have waited a long time for this product. But it’s still one step forward on the road to VR. And it’s going to take until the end of this decade for the industry to fully catch up to the grand vision for this tech.

Again, I’m open to consulting work and taking calls if your business is looking to enter the space or refine your strategy. Mostly, I’m proud and relieved this has finally been announced. It’s been over five years since I started working on this, and I spent a significant portion of my life on it, as did an army of other designers and engineers. I hope the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and Vision Pro blows your mind.

[MIT Sloan Management Review @mitsmr]

There are 6 archetypes for how collaboration becomes dysfunctional and negatively impacts performance. To fix the dysfunction, leaders need to understand which problem they're facing. https://t.co/Ds11mPrIEE

[Dr. Brandon Gien @BrandonGien]

Less than 5 days left before the entries for the 2023 Australian Good Design Awards officially close.

If you want to be in the running to be recognised with Australia’s longest running international design award, this is the last week to get your submission in.

[Vala Afshar @ValaAfshar]

Champions aren’t made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them—a desire, a dream, a vision. They have to be a little faster, they have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill.

—Muhammad Ali

[Vala Afshar @ValaAfshar]

What is the impact of meditation on our brain?