We all enjoy books that are real page turners. Nowadays, we still enjoy the virtual impression of turning pages when we read. Okay, that is a bit old school, I believe. For all those who prefer to hold a page turning book in their hands it is about time to try the e-versions of flipbooks. You may include the sound of turning a page just as in the real book format. Alternatively, you may listen to your favourite music on the same device.
For that reason the chronological blog entries are also available as Flipbooks.
It is still in test runs, so don’t hesitate to send me feedback at klaus(at)schoemann.org
The data base has grown rapidly. Take your time to scroll and read.
2024 January – February.
2023 September – December
2023 May – August
2023 January – April
Bigger screens allow for more comfortable reading, but make sure your eyes do not suffer too much. Adjust the light as low as possible for more relaxed reading. Print formats are evolving and so does the concept of a book or a reader. The content is the conceptual idea. The appropriate form for the content is a matter of an additional choice. Not only books have changed to electronic versions. Libraries are also adapting to the new forms of reading on screens and co-working. Flipbooks are a kind of hybrid version satisfying a readership in transition before endless scrolling will take over. The content is key and the rest is POSSE.
Personal Health
Most people would agree, health is a personal issue. From the onset of life, we have package of genes that predetermine a number of factors of our personal health. Epigenetics has taught us there are many factors to take into account additionally. Environmental factors have huge impacts as well. Improvements in the availability of medical devices in the hands of individuals as well as AI systems on portable devices like smartphones facilitate the monitoring of personal health. Several indicators of early-onset of illness can be retrieved from such devices. Dunn et al. (2024) show that prior to the onset of symptoms of Covid-19 or influenza portable devices can indicate the presence of infections through indicators of resting body temperature, heart rate/min, heart rate variability/millisecond or respiratory rate/min. Combined with the indicators of air quality, indoors as well as outdoors, the presence of allergens a much more personalized data set emerges which can easily be part of an AI-assisted diagnosis. More abundant personal health data and analytical power allows remote and digital health applications to inform patients, medical doctors and the public at large. Digital health technologies are only at the beginning to unfold their potential. Prevention becomes more feasible using such devices, medical professionals should be allowed to focus on interpretation of data and treatment rather than simple data gathering. Thinking about digital health technologies points in the direction of dealing with climate and environmental hazards as sickening causes more forcefully. Personal medicine and personal health are, after all, still heavily dependent on health and safety at work, commuting practices and all sorts of pollution. Personal health, however, is a good starting point to raise awareness of the potentials of digital health technologies to better our lives.
(Image: AI MS-Copilot: 2 robots run in a city. They sweat. The air is full of smog. 2 other robots rest near pool. All look at their wrist watch showing heart beats)
Error 444
The error message 444 is a not so rare encounter while surfing on the web. The error code 444 stands for the message that from the side of the server the connection is closed without any additional message. The occurrence leaves you without further indication of what exactly went wrong in building a connection to a web service or website. You just simply get shut out and that’s it. It may be tough on you if concerns your online banking or other access to vital services delivered through the internet.
In organization science and social science there are many new studies dealing with the finding, dealing, coping or handling errors. It has become much more acceptable to deal openly with errors, blunders or failures. From an individual as well as organizational perspective the cultures that deal openly with these events seem to have a certain advantage to overcome the consequences of errors at all or faster than others.
In some biographies failures are part of the lessons learned throughout life. It is deemed important to acknowledge failures or paths not taken for better or worse. Organizations just like individuals seem to learn more intensively from their failures or omissions than from everything seemingly running smoothly. Learning curves are faster also for “machine learning” if you have access to a huge data set which contains ample data on failures rather than encountering failures after release. Hence, the compilation of errors is an important part or early stage of a learning process. Failed today? Fail again tomorrow. You’ll be really strong the days after although it might hurt. 
AI Collusion
In most applications of AI there is one system of AI, for example a specialized service, that performs in isolation from other services. More powerful systems, however, allow for the combination of AI services. This may be useful in case of integrating services focusing on specialized sensors to gain a more complete impression of the performance of a system. As soon as two and more AI systems become integrated the risk of unwanted or illegal collusion may occur.
Collusion is defined in the realm of economic theory as the secret, undocumented, often illegal, restriction of competition originating from at least two otherwise rival competitors. In the realm of AI collusion has been defined by Motwani et al. (2024) as “teams of communicating generative AI agents solve joint tasks”. The cooperation of agents as well as the sharing of of previously exclusive information increase the risks of violation of rights of privacy or security. The AI related risks consist also in the dilution of responsibility. It becomes more difficult to identify the origin of fraudulent use of data like personal information or contacts. Just imagine using Alexa and Siri talking to each other to develop another integrated service as a simplified example.
The use of steganography techniques, i.e. the secret embedding of code into an AI system or image distribution, can protect authorship as well as open doors for fraudulent applications. The collusion of AI systems will blur legal borders and create multiple new issues to resolve in the construction and implementation of AI agents. New issues of trust in technologies will arise if no common standards and regulations will be defined. We seem to be just at the entry of the new brave world or 1984 in 2024.
(Image: KI MS-Copilot: Three smartphones in form of different robots stand upright on a desk in a circle. Each displays text on a computer image.)
AI and Behavior
We start to analyze the impact of AI on our behavior. It is an important question to be aware of not only how we interact with AI (Link), but also what effect the use of AI (disclosed or not) will have on our social behavior. Knowing that AI is used might change our willingness to cooperate or increase or decrease pro-social behavior. The use of AI in form of an algorithm to select job candidates might introduce a specific bias, but it can equally be constructed to favour certain criteria in the selection of candidates. The choice of criteria becomes more important in this process and the process of choosing those criteria.
Next comes the question whether the announcement includes as information that AI will be used in the selection process. This can be interpreted by some that a “more objective” procedure might be applied, whereas other persons interpret this signal as bad sign of an anonymous process and lack of compassion prevalent in the organization focused mostly on efficiency of procedures. Fabian Dvorak, Regina Stumpf et al. (2024) demonstrate with experimental evidence from various forms of games (prisoner’s dilemma, binary trust game, ultimatum game) that a a whole range of outcomes is negatively affected (trust, cooperation, coordination and fairness). This has serious consequences for society. The social fabric might worsen if AI is widely applied. Even or particularly the undisclosed use of AI already shows up as a lack of trust in the majority of persons in these experiments.
In sum, we are likely to change our behavior if we suspect AI is involved the selection process or content creation. This should be a serious warning to all sorts of content producing media, science, public and private organizations. It feels a bit like with microplastic or PFAS. At the beginning we did not take it seriously and then before long AI is likely to be everywhere without us knowing or aware of the use. (Image taken on Frankfurt book fair 2017-10!)
AI or I
Generative AI receives a lot of attention. One of the main issues is, to study how AI interacts with humans. The hiring decision by managers or an AI algorithm is an interesting application. According to Marie-Pierre Dargnies et al. (2022) the preference for human decisions remains strong despite reasonably unbiased performance of an algorithm. The main issue is with the transparency of the algorithmic decision-making. As a worker or as a hiring manager the preferences continue to sit with the person rather than the AI. It is a worrying outcome, however, that if the rule of gender equality is removed from the algorithm both workers and managers tend to prefer the algorithmic outcome. I interpret this as a latent preference of study participants for gender bias, which could lead them to expect a more favoured outcome in case the AI makes the decision. Knowing what decision-making rules have gone into the hiring algorithm has an impact on all persons involved.
A new managerial competence is to be able to assess tasks carefully, whether you should perform the task yourself or delegate to AI. In this sense the old question: to do the task yourself or to delegate has simply been enlarged by an additional delegation option. The decision-tree goes from (1) To delegate or not to delegate, and (2) if I want/need to delegate, should I delegate to AI or somebody in person (not allowed to use AI).
I opted to use AI for image creation rather than to take a photo myself or by one from a professional photographer. (Image creation: NEUROFLASH AI – Image-Flash 2024-1-26) 
AI and We
Research is beginning to provide empirical evidence and experimental modelling results on the widespread use of generative AI. First results by Doshi and Hauser point at the individual benefits of using artificial intelligence but the widespread use of it is likely to narrow the scope of novel content. This research is particularly interesting because it deals with the micro level to macro level aggregation effects. It is fine for me to use AI. If it becomes a mass phenomenon, we expect in sum a negative outcome for society as a whole.
The example at hand deals with the capability to innovate or to come up with novel content. As more and more texts or newspapers are published with extensive use of genAI, the real element of creation will remain the domain of humans for quite some time.
In my opinion this is due to the difficulties for algorithms to differentiate between the positive and too risky negative aspects of innovative solutions. A query for AI might ask to come up with an innovative solution for auto-mobility of short distances. A human being might propose walking due to the additional health effects the AI might propose helicopter lifts. The not so stupid machine would need a lot of additional information about circumstances to generate useful solutions. Therefore it is not surprising that sometimes public transport apps propose to walk short distances rather than waiting for “delayed or unreliable services“ they provide themselves. Personal circumstances like mobility with children, other dependents or luggage are usually beyond the scope of the information base of the algorithms.
On the other hand, if the AI knows that 50.000 persons after an event want to take public transport at the same time the indication to walk or wait solves an aggregation problem of individual preferences to adapt to available capacities. Lots of issues to solve for AI and us or better yet, us and AI.
(Image creation: AI using Microsoft Dall-E Image creator: Prompt: a person with notebook in profile and in front of 5 other persons in Office with windows 26.1.2024, 8:24 PM) 
Shrinkflation
Shrinkflation is a hybrid term that combines “to shrink” with “inflation”. The trick is to keep prices at the same level for a product, but to reduce the weight or amount sold at a constant price. The intention of producers is to indirectly increase prices without touching at price tickets on products. As consumer you are likely to remember the price tag of a product, but much less the unit costs. However, the unit price is the basis for fair comparisons. In supermarkets there is an obligation to print also unit prices (€/kg or €/L) next to price labels. Comparisons allow information irrespective of package size. In shrinkflation the higher unit costs of a product will drive the official measure of inflation (Destatis, 2024). In Germany inflation for food had the top inflation rate in 2023, surpassing even price rises for energy.
On the one hand, shrinkflation is cheating on consumers to sell them less for the same price. On the other hand, oversized products that solicit higher consumption are part of the health and environmental problems we face. The obesity pandemic is part of the XXL consumption hype the food industry and supermarkets have created. In this respect, more expensive food (Eurostat info) potentially may trigger the rethinking of consumption and nutrition. “Eating better instead of less” has always been more expensive.
Besides the profit-maximising logic of shrinkflation, there is at least a small hope that behavioural changes might be triggered to consume less, to use less detergent in washing, less sugar drinks, smaller size pizza and so on. Shrinking our food intake is part of the solution for many problems. In the end cutting out most convenience food will save you a lot of money. As a side effect of such behavioural changes, eventually prices are likely to come down some time later again. 
Tobacco
The documentation on tobacco slaves has already been told many times. It is astonishing that the medical journal The Lancet just published another short article on the tobacco industry and slave trade. In fact it is the enslaving practice of only buying tobacco leaves from farmers who previously had taken out a loan from the tobacco company. The control of the tobacco supply chain creates a slavish type of relationship between buyers and sellers. The dependency created leaves most tobacco farmers with no choice but to accept the conditions of the big multinational companies.
Taking the issue of slavery even further we might go as far as condemning the advertisement of tobacco and smoking in the neighborhood of schools as an attempt to enrol tobacco slaves. Only few young people manage to give up tobacco smoking later on with already acquired serious health conditions. Helping to break the vicious circle of dependency as a form of slavery to a drug is hard to accomplish. Specialized medical centers are rare and expensive. Pathologising smoking would be worthwhile rather than other diagnoses where easy to perform physical exercise could do a lot for prevention. Helping people to quit smoking or never start with it would be such a big step ahead.
Finding Peace
In international conflicts it the task of diplomacy to find or negotiate peace agreements. Monitoring of the evolution and progress is part of the deal. For societies internally it is equally important to find peace again. Totalitarian regimes are characterized by terror and intimidation of its own citizens. This holds true today as much as in the past. Finding peace, however, necessitates to prosecute criminals and this irrespective of their previous or current status in society. The American authorities after the 2nd world war have held more than ten thousand prisoners due to their commanding functions in the NS-time. After 3 years of imprisonment and attempts of so-called re-education the evaluation of the results were of very modest success. Most prisoners would find excuses rather than admit to their participation in the killing machine of the Nazi throughout Europe and over more than a decade.
The study by Christa Horn (1992) “Die Internierungs- und Arbeitslager in Bayern 1945-1952” comes to the same sobering conclusion (p. 127 extract below). This bears the danger that the totalitarian ideology continues to have supporters and even the transmission to other generations might be attempted. This highlights the importance of reconciliation in the lengthy process of finding peace. It far from easy to resolve who is guilty and of what. The Americans started the process before handing over responsibility to the regional judicial system. More than 75 years after 1945 we still have to name and insist on the criminal behavior of the totalitarian regime with millions of party officials and even more followers. Finding peace is a protracted process if not a struggle that involves 3 and maybe 4 generations by now. 