What is understood by the term “coaching” has evolved over the course of humanity. Traces of its altruistic objective can be found in ancient human cultures, where those more skilled and knowledgeable coached those less experienced to reach a deeper level of understanding. For example, in sports and mechanical engineering, but also philosophy and religion. The personal or life coaching profession as we now it today, however, only started to materialise from the ‘80s thanks to

This year, I made time to read more. Even though my commute on the tube is only about 15 minutes, that half an hour a day proved to be just enough for me to start and finish work feeling intrigued. I read multiple books and a bunch of academic papers this way. Some of these were absolutely captivating and broadened my worldview. From rekindling my longstanding interest in understanding consciousness, to opening my eyes to the silent neoliberal powers that are shaping our worl

In 2018, DARPA (the US' military "advanced research" department) published a tender for non-invasive brain stimulation devices to augment military personnel. The bid was won the year after by a research team at Carnegie Mellon University that received $19.48 million to develop a wearable brain stimulation device. The news is in line with DARPA's more longstanding interest in developing "neurotechnology", which can be broadly defined as cyberphysical systems to interact with

Sam Altman is seeking $7 trillion  (!) to develop a new computer chip to help speed up "advanced AI" development. Is it worth it? Who will pay for it? Just less than a year ago, prominent scientists wrote a letter  to call for a global halt on AI development that has since been signed by over 33K people around the world. Guess what? Not much changed, except the major AI hype wore off. The "intelligent" chatbot that spurred industrial strikes and awe is now mostly a brainstorm

Imagine your computer to know your mental weaknesses better than you do. Creepy? Perhaps, yes. But what if it helps to prevent you from falling for scams? What if it stops you before you do something harmful to yourself or someone else? Would you use this technology? To some extent, big online advertising companies have already figured out when to target whom with certain content. They are called recommender systems and thrive on heaps of data on what you browse, buy and sear