Promise of AI ChatGPT, Chatbots: How much Truth or Falsehood or Marketing Hype

All the information that chat gpt is providing was already on internet and Google. What chatgpt has done is to provide this info using conversation models that select the most important and the most relevant pieces of information that answer your questions by removing the clutter, redundancy, and  keeping the answer within the scope of the question. What is exciting about the model is its remarkable ability in understanding the question and constructing appropriate grammatically correct replies to the question asked. Which is a skill that people master with great deal of education and experience. This ability has brought the computer to near where it can pass or has passed the famous Turing Test proposed by Alan Turing in 1950.

Scam of New Startups- Burn Investor Funds to Artificially Inflate Subscriptions, Valuation for the Sake of Selling-off

 #Airlift

Only an entrepreneur can understand entrepreneurship. Books, videos, and theories by those who survive on monthly salaries can not help in making a productive entrepreneur. An entrepreneurial startup is always about the cash flow risk of not making the next month's payroll. Having negotiated and having lived through this risk-prone existence is the essence of entrepreneurial spirit.

Sustainability vs Digital Transformation or Digital Disruption or Digital Slavery: Growth of Digital Disempowerment

Digital transformation and sustainability challenges:
Internet and convergence of technologies have created a digital takeover of all aspects of life to an extent that digital intrusion is now monitoring our most intimate details, which has produced a digital monopoly of nearly all services and has recently created the ultimate buzzword "digital disruption" which is actually a fuzz word.

There can be no sustainability without diversity. Diversity requires adherence to the principle of live-and-let-live. Digital disruption assumes the destruction of everything which is nondigital. However, Inclusive growth means allowing small competitors to survive and grow. Which is now an impossibility due to the juggernaut unleashed by digital disruption. Digital takeover of all aspects of life is now a reality. There is no sustainability of human culture, only the perpetuation of digital virtual existence. 

Sam Walton, ‏Ghazali's Ihsaan in ‎معاملات ‏ ‏and High-end Expensive Brands

There are several types of price setting strategies such as Cost Plus and Demand Driven Pricing. Walmart's success was built on cost plus pricing model. Sam Walton was the founder of the retailing giant of 1990s-2000s. In his autobiography "Made in America" published a few months around his death in 1992, he mentions the example of a toothpaste he was selling at around 2 dollars. He found a vendor who offered the same quality at around 55cents. Managers advised him to sell at around $1.20. Their logic was that Walmart buyers are used to buying this tooth paste at around 2 dollars. $1.2 is a significant decrease. However, he declined. He decided to sell at around 70 cents. His logic was that his CSR is providing consumers with lowest prices. Walmart slogan is "Everyday Lowest Prices". He said around 10% margin is as per his mission. The toothpaste was sold at 70 cents. He writes in the autobiography, while he was suffering from terminal cancer, that this book will come to haunt those who will try to meddle with his legacy. He was writing in the context of the question that what was his contribution to the social welfare of people. He said his mission was to provide his customers with the lowest price anywhere. This mission had made life easier for millions of mass consumers of USA. The benefits of cheaper prices that he had passed on to Americans is unparalleled.

Senator Mazhar Ali - Dreams and Achievements

Sen Syed Mazhar Ali was a man who was ahead of his time. He was a visionary who could appreciate the role of IT in creating wonderful opportunities for Pakistan in 1980s. His apartment complexes set the standard for high quality during 1970s and early 1980s. His Gulshan-e-Maymar town was conceived and constructed decades ahead of the Bahria Town and DHA City. It was established when there was nothing beyond Sohrab Goth. He knew the importance of public-private partnership in developing the revenue resource base back in the 1980s. As part of Resource Mobilization Commission he developed a blue print of how to diversify Pakistan's resource base. As Chairman of the IT Commission, he laid the foundation of the National IT Policy that was developed through public-private partnership in early phase of computerization of the country. He was an important player in the National IT Policy 1997-98 during the Nawaz Sharif's 2nd tenure and Ahsan Iqbal's vision 2020. He was also part of the National IT Policy 2000 formulation during the several working groups formed during the early years of Gen Musharraf rule. His investment in the state of the art institution KIIT at Gulshan e Maymar during late 1990s was the harbinger of how higher education would grow. It boasted during late 1990s the highest number of PhDs after LUMS in private institutions.

Sen Mazhar Ali (1935-2004)

How to be a Change Leader and a Job Creator

[IoBM Orientation for New Students Sep 1, 2018]
As I look at your beaming faces, your youthful energy, and your ambitions for shaping the future of our nation and our dear country, I am filled with hope. I am sure that our future is destined to be better than our today. It is also welcoming to see that "change" and "job creation" are among our top national priorities today. Today I would like to share with you how you can be a change leader and how you can be a job creator.

Parental Concern about Economic Future of our Child

I often see parents excessively worried about the economic future of their child. They are often projecting their own insecurities and their own inadequacies on their children despite a huge difference in their situation as a child and their child's current situation. Their over-worrying about the economic future of child belies their faith and eeaman in Allah as Raziq. In their eagerness to protect their children from any adversity that they may face in future, they destroy their confidence, numb their creativity, and kill their enterprising skills which are the very skills required for survival in the unpredictable future. This post explains the misconceptions in this regard.
[Presented at ERDC Seminar on Economic Future of Your Child at KSBL, January 28m 2018]

Why Engineering Students are Reluctant to become Entrepreneurs: Role of PEC and Universities

Presented at ICEE-2016, International Conference on Entrepreneurial Engineering: Commercialization of Engineering Projects and Research

There are several reasons why Engineering students in Pakistan have been found to be reluctant to opt for entrepreneurship in their engineering fields as opposed to other disciplines such as Computer Science. These reasons can be classified in five major categories; (i) cultural and family mindset, (ii) demographic pressures (iii) narrow focus of curriculum, (iv) teaching and lab methodology, (v) enabling and facilitation environment.  Pakistan Engineering Council has a major role to play in at least the last three areas. The curriculum design and enforcement of PEC has left no room for subjects that can broaden the vision of the students and open their minds to other areas. The recommended lab methodology is based on the use of trainers and fill-in-the-blank type of submissions that further constrains the work of the students in predetermined directions. The recommended teaching methodology focused on class-room type of work also leaves no room for out-of-the-box exploration of ideas. There is a need for the universities and PEC to join together to provide an enabling and facilitation environment that can help the students. There is a need to diversify the curriculum to other areas by reducing the number of technology intensive areas and more creativity and exploratory courses that can broaden the perspectives. There is a need to adopt new methodologies such as project based learning and problem based learning. The lab work needs to be liberated from the clutches of the trainers. A post graduation apprenticeship or internships in exploring new ideas is necessary for entrepreneurial engineering. 

The Case for Engineering Entrepreneurship

Mocking Craftsmen and Business People

Mocking Craftsmen and Business People

[This post was published in Daily Dawn in my letter to the editor Mocking Craftsmen 2013-08-13]

I WOULD like to highlight the psychology and social history of the satirical comments doing the rounds in the media and on cellphones about President-elect Mamnoon Hussain’s links to the cloth and food business community of Burnes Road, Karachi.These satirical comments emerged in the minds of the government servant class and take us back to the 1857 War of Independence when the British Raj eliminated land entitlements of the aristocracy.

Entrepreneurial Leadership for 21st Century

Entrepreneurial Leadership for 21st Century

21st century represents the information age and offers different challenges from the 20th century which represented the industrial age. The transition to the information age from the industrial age heralds specific challenges in the area of education and learning: 

Mass Production Assembly Lines are Out

Need for assembly lines for the mass production of standardized supervisors, managers, engineers or technologists (also calledschools) will diminish. Information age requires people who are nimble enough and who can quickly learn new technologies and new ways of doing things. There will never be time enough go in to expensive training institutes and universities. People will have to learn quickly on their own. Therefore, self learning is a very important part of their skill set.

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• Information age economy will have most people working from their homes through internet on a per project basis for different companies. They would be paid not because they have a CV containing a list of large number of degrees or diplomas, but they would be paid on the basis of their portfolio of past projects and their ability to complete the projects on time and within resource constraints. Even in Pakistan, there are already several organizations that allow their employees to work from their homes. This trend is going to explode exponentially. Very soon all services would be outsourced to off-site people or organizations (See Business Process Outsourcing). 
• Work in the industrial age was typically in jobs whose major attraction was that they were career oriented, they started in a large company after graduation and typically lasted till the retirement. However, in the information age, jobs are typically not going to last a life time spanning the entire career in a single company. Job security is out. There would be frequent job and company switches. People would have to be enterprising enough to find out opportunities whereever they exist after every few years or even months. 
• Work in the information age is often short term, contractual, assignment oriented and project based. People are required to be experts in handling projects of all sizes. They need to have crucial interpersonal skills and intra-personal skills necessary for completing the projects on time.
• Organization in the information age are not mega organizations employing tens of thousands of full-time people. Organizations are smaller, entrepreneurial and virtual. They often shift their focus from one domain to another. Such entrepreneurial organizations require people who are enterprising and who can look at the big picture and have the ability to solve real life problems and can quickly shift from one domain to another. Real life problems never map to any subject text book boundary nor do they come in a one-size-fits-all curriculum! 

• Regimented Schools are Out

  Analysis of the emerging realities indicates that the need for regimented schools that prepare with a fixed syllabus,  broken down in to neat subject boundaries, where every thing that a student has to learn is laid out in advance is going to diminish.
  
  Information age requires students to be enterprising, self motivated, intellectually independent, committed to the completion of work for as long as it takes.
  

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• An information age company often has to recast its business into new areas quickly (see Intel's CEO and founder Andy Grove's book "Only the Paranoid Survive"). Rapid changes in technology and means of communications would not let most companies to settle down in one particular area. Companies would require people who like to work on their own developing crucial new skills and new understandings to enable them to take advantage of the shifting scenarios. 
• More work would revolve around entrepreneurial initiatives rather than settled jobs. This means that instead of waiting for someone to tell a person what to do, people would have to be enterprising enough to seek out new opportunities, explore new worlds, and to scan for new ways of doing things. What is required is the intellectual independence to think on one's own. 
• Strive for intrinsic motivation, self learning, and self-direction are the essential functions of long term visions and ability to take risks and not be discouraged by failures and adversity are the hallmarks of an entrepreneur who is forever on the lookout for new worlds. 
• To make sense of the rapid changes driving our life, we need long term visions than can provide us with anchor. To make world a safe place from exploitation, deterioration, climate change and global monopolistic control requires social and environmental leadership/entrepreneurship.

                    Apni dunya aap paida kar agar zindoan may hay
                    Sirr-e-Adam hay zameer-e-kun fakan hay zindagi!

Related Posts:

• Which Field of Great Scope Should I Choose for My Son/Daughter
• Why we Choose Job Security and Job Safety
• Why this current urgency about visions and entrepreneurship
• Value Based Leadership
• Legacy of a Leader: What should be your legacy?
• What inspires me: Leadership against all odds. 
• Mocking Craftsmen and Business People

Why Job Security?

Why Job Security?

Why we Search for Job Security. Why Not Risk Taking?

Why are we so afraid of taking risks?
Why our primary focus is on jobs that provide security?
Why people go after a pensionable, secure, career job?
Why people think that becoming a government "servant" is their ultimate goal?
Why "sarkar ki naukri" has so much premium?

An analysis of these questions takes us to the time of the early 19th century and after the 1857 war of independence when the British Raj eliminated the land entitlements of the aristocracy. The landed aristocracy of subcontinent especially the Muslims found themselves literally penniless as they lost their entitlements, and their regular earnings from their land holdings disappeared. They found themselves with no marketable skills or knowledge. Their Persian language skills became worthless overnight as the official business started getting transacted in English (recall the famous saying "Farsi seekho, tael baicho").

Why this current urgency about visions and entrepreneurship

Why this Current Urgency about Long Term Visions and Entrepreneurship -- Global Challenges and Opportunities

Information age economy will have most people working from their homes and mobiles through internet on a per project basis for different companies. They would be paid not because they have a CV containing a list of large number of degrees or diplomas, but they would be paid on the basis of their portfolio of past projects and their ability to complete the projects on time and within resource constraints. Even in Pakistan, there are already several organizations that allow their employees to work from their homes. This trend is going to explode exponentially. Very soon all services would be outsourced to off-site people or organizations. Information age requires people to be enterprising enough to find out opportunities where ever they exist after every few years or even months. This age requires people who are nimble enough and who can quickly learn new technologies and new ways of doing things. There will never be time enough go in to expensive training institutes and universities. People will have to learn quickly on their own. Therefore, self learning and intrinsic motivation is a very important part of the required skill set today.