Have you wondered why small startups (mostly the young) have to fight to survive, whereas the rich or those at the top get richer?

Capitalism is in trouble because the social divide is widening in terms of both income and wealth. Furthermore, the planet is being eaten alive by excessive consumption financed by unstoppable debt (borrowing from tomorrow to consume today).

At the same time, aspirations such as dealing with climate change are going nowhere. Who cares about net zero emissions when you can bomb your way to grab more oil and gas? The most profitable stock picks in the last three years are not green or inclusive — they are exactly the opposite: oil and gas and defense stocks, plus tech that make weapons more lethal or accurate.

The reason the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, proclaimed by the United Nations to be delivered by 2030, are only 18 percent on target for achievement is due to the inability of governments and communities to translate these aspirations into concrete projects or programs that deliver visible impact on net zero or people and planet's wellbeing.

Traveling in Sabah on the north part of Borneo last month, I observed how the perennial fern, which is today served as a delicious vegetable dish, is an ancient hardy plant that managed to thrive and survive for 360 million years. Instead of flowering, the fern shoot sprouts through a spiral sequence that follows a Fibonacci mathematical sequence, which then reproduces through releasing microscopic spores (rather than seeds) that spread through wind and stay dormant in soil. Their rhizomes (deep horizontal roots) allow them to resprout even after forest fires. They also live in low light, surviving in deep caves underground. In short, ferns teach us to "turn, learn and earn" to sustainable development.

We are at a turning point in mindset. The scientific, logical thinking prevalent since the Industrial Revolution is breaking down in the face of illogical, chaotic systemic change due to unseen, unintended consequences of human action, sometimes called "black swans." This is because the linear, optimizing logic of science that offers the comfortable idea that the future is predictable is breaking down into the complexity of ecosystems emerging through chaos and unknown, unpredictable order or disorders.

We must confront a future of unknown unknowns.

Except for the aging survivors of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, no one else has experience of the horror of nuclear warfare. So deranged leaders may press the nuclear button to send us all into mutually assured destruction. COVID-19 taught us that another wave of pandemic may be coming, with perhaps even more devastating impact.

Our mindset is slowly turning toward an ecosystem way of thinking, not confined by a narrow linear mindset of what simply follows next. Systems thinking means we must think about how we must act as a whole, with our individual actions impacting not only other human beings, but also the planet and other living things. Life will eventually find a way, but humans may not survive self-destruction.

The turn in mindset then moves to the learning stage. Learning comes from deep observation (to see), deep listening and deep feeling (emotionally and spiritually) as a group. When we realize that individuals often survive through groups, then we must learn to co-share and co-create. We are not masters of others, but stewards of life for the next generation.

Artificial intelligence is seen as a revolution in thinking and learning. Machines are now able to summarize, digest and even predict. Digital machines can only read and learn so far from digitized data, but cannot yet access the tacit knowledge that exists in collective human minds. The bulk of human experience lies in human -- often emotional and social -- intelligence, so those who rely only on AI are artificial imbeciles.

AI large learning models need to be taught and therefore they contain human biases, which explains why American LLMs produce answers different from Chinese LLMs.

One of the biggest eureka moments for me personally was the sudden awareness after the Ukraine war that power, energy, money and data are one and the same thing. The war was fought over food, energy and rare minerals that exist in Ukraine, known as the breadbasket of Europe. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency can be mined using energy. Political or military power is command over energy. Everything runs on energy, largely derived from the sun and gravity. Without energy, nothing moves or changes.

Systems need energy to survive. Systems cannot survive if they cannot earn energy, deriving parasitic energy from others or transforming energy from one form into another through innovation. The fern survives because it collects energy from the sun through photosynthesis, extracts nutrients from the soil and needs less water than other plants.

Capitalism as a system is Darwinian in survival of the few exploiting the many through profits. But linear growth through efficiency alone is not sufficient, because winner-take-all loses eventually through fragility. Thus "sustainable development" is really a trade-off between efficiency and resilience, the ability to adapt and survive over a longer time.

Ecosystem resilience is built through the successful helping the less successful to co-survive circularly. Young and poor communities all go through the J-curve of requiring more energy (negative cash-flow) before they learn to adapt, produce the successful business model where they become profitable and take off into the S-curve of highly positive cash-flow.

Most startups fail because they cannot scale and get out of their poverty trap. Blended finance is therefore the mixture of seed and venture capital from friends, relatives and charitable foundations, then more formal financing from private equity, banks and eventual takeoff through public listing, where they benefit from branding, credibility and scale. Life is a circular cycle of failure before success, then decline and renewal.

In short, earning is all about resilience and sustainability. Charity alone is not sustainable for any startup or community. Self-help and then help from state, business or communities will build sustainable growth. AI is only a new tool to help the young turn, learn and earn.

Is AI a bubble? Many tools go through a fashionable phase, when it is cool to use. One day, we will treat AI as normal, then we will no longer be artificial imbeciles.

Andrew Sheng

Andrew Sheng is a distinguished fellow at the Asia Global Institute, University of Hong Kong, and chair of the George Town Institute of Open and Advanced Studies, Wawasan Open University. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. — Ed.

(Asia News Network)


khnews@heraldcorp.com