The goal of building any technology, AI included, should be bettering human lives and society.

Every time your phone tells you where you are, it is using a mathematical model of the shape of the Earth. A Black woman from rural Virginia spent decades building that model by hand, and almost nobody knew her name until she was in her eighties. Gladys West. She grew up in a sharecropping family in Dinwiddie County and understood early that the alternatives were the tobacco fields or the factory. She finished top of her high school class, which came with a scholarship, and took it. Her work was satellite geodesy: taking the raw data coming down from orbit and using it to compute, correction by correction, the true irregular shape of the Earth. Not a sphere. Not even a neat ellipsoid. A lumpy thing with gravitational highs and lows. That model is the foundation the Global Positioning System sits on. You cannot locate a point on a surface until you know precisely what the surface is. She did this for decades, largely unremarked, and retired in 1998. She was recognised in 2018, when her sorority mentioned her biography at a function and someone realised what was in it. The Air Force inducted her into its Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame. She earned a PhD in her seventies.

“𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐛𝐲 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞, 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐟 𝐚𝐧 𝐀𝐈 𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮'𝐫𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐭'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐬.” - @IrenaPereira Irena Pereira is the CEO of Infinite Realms, and also the CEO, Creative Director & Founder of Unleashed Games in partnership with the legendary Mitch Lasky, former partner at Benchmark SPEEDRUN by Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z). “𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐲. 𝐊𝐢𝐝𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧'𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠. Kids are learning how to shoot each other. And the fastest way to solve that is by creating the most potent connection medium, which is 𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐨 𝐠𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬, based on the gameplay patterns of the most successful video game of all time. It was successful because 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞.” Unleashed Games was funded by Andreessen Horowitz, and has launched the social game, Haven. “It was really that social mission that inspired Haven and the creative effort has always been defined by its core social mission, which is how to bring people together.” Irena advocates gaming as the most secure medium of social interaction: “Technology creates 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 for social interaction for people from all sphere - for folks with disability, mental health challenges, ones that they can't get out of bed but they'll get online they'll take those five steps to a computer and connect to their friends when they're maybe in the heat of depression, or somebody with cerebral palsy who lives in a wheelchair, cannot walk and talk, but they can use adaptive tools to communicate and play video games.” A journey from World of Warcraft and Monopoly GO to building Infinite Realms and Unleashed Games, Irena explores what happens when AI, storytelling, gaming and human connection converge. The conversation also highlighted the social mission of Infinite Realms, “an entertainment infrastructure company”, highlighting one of the key areas in the gaming industry - the IP: “It's a way for authors to entrust their original IP, which is their livelihoods, their craft, their legacy into an AI framework that keeps it secure and safe, but also enables an accelerated adaptation of their work, which is one of the hardest things to do in entertainment.” “What is it that we’re doing for the sake of money to our culture and to our society?” She leaves us with one of the most provocative moments from this conversation, with a very positive perspective: “We can create one of the most technologically capable generations hand-in-hand with AI to where they can 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐳𝐞 the world.” Watch full episode live in my YouTube: piped.video/watch?v=KQhOz4OR… #futureofgaming #socialgaming #digitalstorytelling #intellectualproperty #virtualgaming #immersiveexperiences #techleadership #womeningaming CC @enilev @JagersbergKnut @TysonLester @CurieuxExplorer @GlenGilmore @FrRonconii @chidambara09 @jeancayeux @mvollmer1 @Nicochan33 @RLDI_Lamy @pchamard @mikeflache @Fabriziobustama @Mack1510019 @ipfconline1 @PawlowskiMario @drsharwood @kalydeoo @baski_LA @AnthonyRochand @smaksked @Eli_Krumova @andresvilarino @gvalan @AI_4_Healthcare @bimedotcom @arlenenewbigg @NewsNeus @domingonarvaez1 @bamitav @jornalistavitor @jblefevre60 @FmFrancoise @MHcommunicate @Corix_JC @c4trends @smoothsale @amalmerzouk @PVynckier @bbailey39 @ralf_ladner @mary_gambara