We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely āE.O. Wilson
šĀ On time for your weekend: a round-up ofĀ this weekās remarkable storiesĀ at the intersection of technology, business, design, and culture. Three reads and three listens; no fluff, just stuff ā”
š Reading
Clip Art Doesnāt Come to Life:
The reason we see AI companies investing so heavily into the strange collection of products we see ā why itās designed to replace media, rather than cure diseases ā is because they reflect the kinds of data that is available at vast scales and where randomness and constraint can be meaningfully shaped toward outcomes [ā¦] Thatās what these systems do: take vast amounts of data and use it to generate more of the same kinds of data.Ā Ā
Eryk SalvaggioāCybernetic Forests | 14 minutes
Automatic for the People:
We can pine for the much less chaotic world of old, where a small number of gatekeepers channeled their observations about the world into their āprofessionally curatedā packages. Or, we can choose to subject ourselves to the new endless algorithmic flow of the feed. One channels the thoughts of the few. The other, the engagement data of the masses. Both are easy to get lost in and, incomplete.
Troy YoungāPeople vs Algorithms | 8 minutes
It's Not About Humanities Vs STEM, It's About Systematic Thinking:
So yes, humanities need to be defended [ā¦] But what matters is that we teach kids how to think about systems. And you cannot do that without humanities and you cannot do that without the sciences. A one-sided view of the world just leaves you half blind. The sooner we recognize that, the sooner we can educate our kids properly.
K.C. RaybouldāMetaphors Are Lies | 3 minutes
š§ Listening
Complex Adaptivity All The Way Down:
We're unambiguously at the end of a 30-year cycle in technology that was kicked off with the web browser [ā¦] As you have technologies that change the underlying fundamental assumptions of the cost of production of certain things, whole new opportunity spaces open up [ā¦] that beginner's thinking, that kooky out there, playful, I think is extremely important at the beginning phases of new paradigms, at the beginning phases of S-curves, at the hill finding phase.
Alex KomoroskeāInfinite Loops | 86 minutes
The year of scaling AI:
Tool use in general, the ability for these models to use tools, to interact with systems that we've built for ourselves, I think that's the value on all. Once we can give these models access to this broad system of tools that we built, they can actually go out and do work for us so that they can affect change in the real world [ā¦] Right now what the model does is, it does in a sense some of the thinking [ā¦] and we're literally left doing the work
Aidan Gomezā Azeem Azhar | 71 minutes
Labor-Complementing or Labor-Substituting:
If you're making something for which there's elastic demand, you really shouldn't bet that technological development is going to lead the job loss [ā¦] anything that makes your manufacturing sector more efficient is almost surely going to to push more jobs into manufacturing and quite plausibly also create more engineers who will then create a more efficient manufacturing sector and hence more jobs.
Brad DeLongāHexapodia | 63 minutes
š One More Thing
In this weekās Itās Just a Model podcast, we get to wonder about the aesthetics of AI and what awaits us in a medium where being right is not even wrong.
š Timeless
1ļøā£ year agoāExistential risk, AI, and the inevitable turn in human history
2ļøā£ years agoāWhat Makes a Company āFuture Readyā?
3ļøā£ years agoāDigital Decolonisation