I realize, now more than ever, how important it is for us to examine and understand human value.

We really are entering the singularity. It’s inevitable as technology becomes an inseparable part of human experience.

The problem of artificial intelligence as it stands is that it must understand the proper, human-centric response for each and every specific context that it finds itself in.

This is the soft-AI.

Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotic is such that to employ its principles, human beings have to program each and every response to all possible senarios. Or if there are contexts which the machine cannot understand, than a placeholder response is put in such as, “I don’t understand” or “I can’t help you” or “here’s a funny response.”

When we reach the full technical singularity, many people think that machines will all of a sudden acquire self-awareness and is able to think for novel situations for which it had no programming. Hal 9000 or SkyNet is a prime example of self-aware AI that seeks to preserve itself by eliminating human beings.

Fact of the matter is that our speicies have often applied technology to our survival benefit – from fire to transistor chips. Even with nuclear bombs, we realized our mistakes; the species as a whole decided that it was not a good idea to toy with technology that is mutually-destructive.

By preemptive wisdom or by painful mistakes, we will continue to try to control how we apply technology in our lives. My hope is that we chose to develop artificial intelligence in such a way to breathe human soul into deferential robots, which understand human wants and desires.

That’s my intention with jobsler anyways.

Singularitarian’s Creed

Understanding that there is no penalty to my misdirection except having squandered the privileges and talents given to me in this brief chance at Life, I promise to observe the following creed to the best of my ability and due diligence.

Whereas the events which are about to unfold in our generation has never occurred in human history, I will do my best to understand and prepare for the challenges to come with the abundance of our times.

Whereas we will create objects with autonomous behavior, I promise not to make things which will harm or kill another human being – intentionally or unintentionally.

Whereas we will create objects made to benefit all humankind, I will perform my due diligence to teach these objects to be polite and deferential to any sentient being.

Whereas our creations will have to obey the principles of thermodynamics, I will wreck my brain to minimize the cost of entropy on this planet in its creation, maintainance, and destruction.

In as so much as it is impossible to understand what happens beyond the singularity of our time, I do most solemnly promise to spend my life in ways harmonious with the existence of human life on this planet as to leave our children our Earth better than I found for myself at my own birth.

Furthermore and whereas our privileged children will one day be given the same tasks as I am given, I will try to instill in them a sense of wonderful mystery of existence, and also, to help them learn and pass on the lessons and experiences of our ancestors to their own children as I try to do so myself.

To all this, I promise to to the penalty of dying in regret, of otherwise having wasted this precious life in vain, to uphold the principles outlined in this creed for the benefit of human beings who have lived, are living, and will come to live – including those to come beyond singularity.

Night Sky at Tuolumne Meadows - from NPS website

In a dream, I found myself walking through a landscape most beautiful. There under an afternoon tree shade, I looked down the grassy hill and saw two old souls walking side by side.

Alone and desiring company, I jumped down from one rock to another and yelled, “Hello!”

Pausing, two old men turned around – two old faces with old smile lines. They looked yonder mountains beyond mountains and waited patiently for my impatient stroll.

“Hi, my name is Aram.”

The older replied, “mine’s Issac and this is Albert.”

In the way dreams are funny, I thought nothing of this chance encounter except for the joy of their company.

All autumn afternoon long, we walked through fields of sweet, wild flowers. The two took turns pointing to things to which I gave not attention before.

With the setting glow of the Sun, the blue turned a shade purple. The evening sky waltzed gracefully to the rise of constellation. We sat on a dry patch of grass and stared at the infinite wonder of space.

As the moon rose to the center stage, I fought unsuccessfully a yawn and smiled sheepishly.

“Young man, I think it’s time for you to return to your bed,” teased Albert.

Knowing I couldn’t stay, I remained in my silence.

“We liked having you this afternoon, but it’s really not for you to stay,” added Issac, “at least not now.”

With those words, I remembered the warmth of haven against the chill of the night. Slowly, I stood up and shook each hand in gratitude.

“Thank you for the company.”

“You are very welcome,” said Issac.

“Say hello to the baby for me,” winked Albert.

“What baby?”

—

I woke up in my bed, cold. I covered myself back with the comforter and waited for the warmth to return.

As pleasant dreams are wont to do, I fell back asleep hoping again to return to that wondrous time and place.

It was about three months ago in a small coffee shop on Telegraph Avenue when I felt this intuition-feeling arose, ‘I should run a coffee shop.’

I know.

After all the years studying to become a doctor, I was going to give it up to run a coffee shop. Even I thought it was pretty crazy, but I stopped arguing with that intuitive part of myself that’s always been wiser than my thinking mind. The difficult task was not convincing myself but convincing others.

The small number of close friends supported me from the get go because they trusted who I am instead of what I am doing. However, I faced a great deal of skepticism from the most. If I got a penny every time someone kindly encouraged me to return to medicine, I could have bought a venti espresso drink from Starbucks with that money.

I kept on going without the reasoning. I had my intuition telling me I was supposed to make coffee. I thought to myself, ‘the whys and hows will come later.’

I read a ton of books. I started drinking coffee daily. Then I started making coffee daily. I worked on the business plan.

I kept busy, but I was aimless for the first two months; the biggest problem was that, of the thousands of tasks a successful entrepreneur must complete, I didn’t know which ones needed to be tackled first.

Looking back, I can identify a few key events which directed me in the right direction.

First was the trip to Grand Rapids to visit Schuil Coffee. It forced me to build the prototype Kup-Fu platform, which I finished the night before I left. Along the trip, I began making coffee to strangers for the first time. I made ton of elevator pitches to new friends who were curious about what I was doing. Then I visited Schuil roasting plant where I learned a lot more about making coffee.

On the last day of that visit, I finally convinced Tim Witting – an old friend who, up until that trip and the first sip of 1Cup, was very skeptical. I returned triumphantly home to Oakland – now with first business trip under my belt.

At this point, the first potential investor requested a copy of the business plan. This got me to work on the business plan as much as I could. What I sorely lacked was a set of milestones which would help me figure out where I needed to focus my limited time and energy. I wrote down a business plan from the beginning to the end – which brings me to the second key event – the first milestone.

As a side note, I realized a real milestone is the event which changes my daily activities as an entrepreneur. Up until the first milestone, I was in a massive, 3-month long brainstorming session. The first milestone changed my activities from brainstorming to putting things into action.

1Cup Week was a public event to showcase Kup Fu as a performance art of making coffee, which took place in early October on Center Street in Berkeley. My primary goal was to become proficient enough to make coffee at 25 cups per hour. By the end of the week, I was actually up to 77 cups per hour before the Berkeley city officials forced me to close shop.

1Cup Week
1. Validated Kup Fu as a valid way of making coffee fast
2. Gave a street sense of future customers
3. Provided an opportunity for an unsolicited meeting with a potential investor
4. Identified rate-limiting step in Kup-Fu which was having a constant source of water at the ideal temperature.
5. Realized the need to file away intellectual properties created from 1Cup activity.

By the end of 1Cup Week, there was no questioning that 1Cup was going to happen; it was just a matter of how and when.

The third key event was the first real investor meeting, where a Kup Fu presentation was made in a conference room with private investors. To be ready, I had to really polish up the game, and to talk about 1Cup became as natural as telling a story. I had to get ready all the things a business needs to legitimize itself – a business logo, business card, and a polished website.

The investors and I will meet again in about a month’s time – after I’ve filed away the patents. And apparently with bigger players next time.

Today, I have also gotten an unsolicited inquiry from an overseas business person who has seen the website. On Thursday, I will be meeting a coffee industry veteran of 45 years, who plans to introduce me to a local large-scale roaster and its president.

This past week, I have really been feeling like 1Cup was taking a life of its own. The force behind 1Cup was now beginning to take shape outside of my mind and will. I can feel the calm before the storm that is going to be 1Cup towards the end of this year.

—

There must be a phrase people use to describe this phenomenon…. things beginning to shape on their own with momentum beyond the initial stages of a startup.

I’m pretty sure I’ll come across it in a book soon.

Apparently, Michael Eugene Porter stated that with twenty hours of library research, he could know as much about the business as a CEO did (of a client company to whom he was a consultant).

This is even more true in the Information Age. Having spent few hundred hours researching coffee, I really appreciate the idea that in most businesses, the owners do not perform the due diligence in learning about the market and trends.

Funny, this was also the same sentiment from a prominent oculoplastic surgeon in Korea who, when asked how he came to the position he was in, replied “you know, it’s not that I read more. It’s that most surgeons do not read as much once they are done training.” Though this surgeon worked in a private setting, I observed him constantly reading and working on his own manuscripts during my short visit.

It’s easy to be good when the opportunities are so vast.

For many uses in our daily activity, buttons are travesties of the idea “form follows function.” In fact, I’m noticing that many buttons make “function follow form.” Buttons, of course, represent a technology whose function is unclear and abstract. For instance, there is no explicit information about the way a button behaves (depress and bounce back) that tells us whether it will bring an elevator to your floor or launch a nuclear weapon.

The only exception to this is when buttons were attached to top of small bells to make a noise. You press it and it actuated a little hammer, which then made a noise.

Today, a button will do a million things, of which only fifty of them is probably your desired behavior. High-tech is overrated for too many things in our lives.

—-
What about making a cup of coffee requires some kind of computational power? Here are the things you need.

hot water.
coffee ground. (more on this later)
a brewing chamber with a filtration method.
a cup.
a person (or two persons if the person making the cup isn’t drinking the coffee)

——

Stupid buttons. I’m boycotting them from now til I have to get in the car to start the engine.

Step 1: Greet coffee head, Load cup onto platform with both hands. Dump sugar and milk into cup, if asked
Step 2: Grab grinder with left hand; scoop and load beans into grinder with right hand
Step 3 (optional): Grab filter with left hand. Open filter and load with right hand (can be skipped if done before coffee head arrives)
Intermission: Go do something else while customer grinds beans
Step 4: Take grinder with left hand. Unscrew top with right hand.
Step 5: Dump ground into filter with left hand. Tap grinder bottom with right hand.
Step 6: Put grinder back together and put it back to its spot
Step 7: Grab kettle with right hand and support with left.
Intermission: let coffee drip. Multitask
Step 8:(If sugar/milk, stir with spoon (right hand) while holding cup with left hand.)Look customer in the eye and nod. Push the cup platform forward.
Step 9: After customer takes cup from platform, reset platform position with both hands.
Step 10: Repeat steps 1-9 until end of day.

One thing you can’t cheat is the quality of the green beans.

The beans in the pictures are from either Schuil or a Bay area roaster. Each tray represents the same volume. In this same volume, there are only 72 beans in Schuil vs California brand’s 78. Beans that Schuil starts with green beans that are uniformly ripe and fat – full of life.

You want to drink coffee like those roasted by Schuil.

I can make you some.

The palate cannot taste what the mind doesn’t know.

Q: what am I trying to taste in a cup of coffee?

A: the sun, earth, water, the peasant hands, the roaster’s inspiration, and your own mind.

Ran like a madman with a cup of coffee, some of which I shared with Monroe street.