March 19, 2025 / 4 minutes / Email Newsletters / Tim Slavin

1.50.1 🚗🚌 Canopy Meg, Finding Slave Ships, Flying Cars, Kids and Wildcats, Traffic Jams

Welcome back. Today I have links about scientist Meg Lowman who studies treetop canopy ecology (there’s canopy catwalks you can visit), how AI can bias business decisions, efforts to find and recover slave ships used to transport Africans to the Americas, and why widening roads causes traffic jams. Plus the BBC has a video of a flying car, which raises a few interesting questions. It’s also $300,000 US dollars. Enjoy clicking and reading…

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Canopy Meg

Margaret “Meg” Lowman is a scientist who studies treetop canopy ecology. She’s the first scientist to explore the tops of the tallest trees on earth. This includes helping to create canopy walkways that let people see and hear what’s up there. She’s also a mentor for young women interested in science. And she’s written books and scientific articles.

When she was a kid, she spent her time outdoors studying plants and animals. She bought scientific measuring devices and recorded her findings. And joined a local birdwatching group. Her parents sent her to the Burgundy Center for Wildlife Studies, a camp for kids into science. That led to a lifetime of education and study of trees and their wildlife. To me as a parent, what’s neat is that all of these things are accessible to kids interested in STEAM. I never thought of buying scientific instruments. But a parent or teacher with a kid interested in science could suggest that. Same for birdwatching and other outdoor science activities.

Her website includes a map with canopy walkways around the world. It might be fun to look up one or two. And learn about what’s up out of view in tall trees. The Burgundy Center also sounds like fun for science-minded kids. Surely there’s similar camps around the world.

Canopy Meg

https://canopymeg.com/
https://canopymeg.com/canopymeg-missions/mission-green/

Margaret D. Lowman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_D._Lowman

Burgundy Center for Wildlife Study

https://burgundycenter.org/

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GenAI Tools Create a Decision Making Bias

Generative AI tools can help with decision making in business. But these tools also can cause problems. An MIT study found these tools led students to solve problems with a control-based style. Instead of a people-based style that often yields better results. Employees also tend to resent control-based solutions which causes problems.

MBA students had to resolve a real life problem Amazon had with delivery drivers. One group used a generative AI tool to brainstorm solutions. A second control group used their MBA education and personal business experiences. The control group of students came up with people-based solutions. The group using generative AI had command and control solutions. Years of management research shows mechanistic solutions harm employee trust and engagement.

What’s also going on is that machines and humans are different. Machines are inflexible because they’re following rules. And making inferences based on rules. Humans also follow rules to make decisions. But interacting with employees while making decisions can result in flexible solutions. People might suggest solutions machines cannot imagine because its not part of their dataset.

It’s also interesting that generative AI, for now, returns us back to Taylorism. In 1911, the engineer Fred Taylor published a monograph, The Principles of Scientific Management. His studies of factory workers led to a work style we still use today. We break work down into tasks. We strive to perform tasks quickly and efficiently. Companies train employees to perform tasks. And companies reward employees for good performance. This works well up to a point. As the study found, making decisions requires flexibility. It has to take people into account as managers and workers make decisions.

Another story came up recently about a startup called Optifye that marries AI with software that tracks worker activities. Geared to the manufacturing factory floor, it’s classic Taylorism. It pushes people to work harder so the boss can sell more widgets and make more money. And, so far in my reading about this topic, the only people not surveilled at work are the senior managers buying this software.

The study is from MIT’s Management Sloan school. It’s $6.95 if you want to read the full results. The Scientific Management article from Wikipedia describes Taylorism, as well as its sources and evolution. And of course I found Taylor’s monograph online in Project Gutenberg, a free source for copyright expired books.

GenAI Tools and Decision-Making: Beware a New Control Trap

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/genai-tools-and-decision-making-beware-a-new-control-trap/

Scientific Management

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management

The Principles of Scientific Management

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Principles_of_Scientific_Management
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6435

Y Combinator Pulls Support for AI Startup After Video Emerges of Boss Barking at Human Worker, Calling Him “Number 17”

https://futurism.com/ycombinator-optifye-surveillance-ai

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“Nothing is as permanent as a temporary solution that works” – Milton Friedman

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STEAM Bits and Bytes

Links I’ve come across recently that might interest you.

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This Week

Our Sunday email this week will have fun offbeat links about bananas left alone in the woods (sounds like a horror movie plot?), how all those Starlink satellites affect Earth’s orbit, Claude AI prompts, a DNA computer solves Sudoku, and living tractors reclaiming nature. Plus a new formula (recipe?) for Pi. Look for the email this Sunday.

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