I’ve decided to make Alan Booker’s the presentation from this year’s Annual Summit available to paid subscribers. This is two hours of pure gold from one of the brightest minds in our community!
Video replays of the presentations given at the summit are available for ticketholders by clicking here. If you are a Key Supporter and did not attend, feel free to take out a free ticket to gain access to the videos. Your price will be discounted to zero at checkout. Tickets are still available for all who would like to access all of the recorded sessions from the Summit.
Friend and Peak contributor Alan Booker recently spoke at the 2025 Peak Prosperity Annual Summit, delivering a deep-dive presentation on artificial intelligence. With a background in AI dating back to 1989, when he worked on early neural networks, Alan provided a high-context overview, combining technical insights with practical recommendations.
Alan traced AI’s history to 1958 with the Perceptron, the first AI hardware, illustrating the evolution from analog systems to modern digital neural networks. He emphasized that these systems mimic brain neurons but lack true thought or consciousness. He then reviewed AI’s development, highlighting approaches like fuzzy logic and expert systems, though neural networks have dominated due to their prowess in pattern recognition, such as in machine vision. He explained training via backpropagation, where weights are adjusted to reduce errors, but noted that neural networks remain “black boxes,” opaque in their decision-making.
by cmartenson