👋 On time for your weekend: a round-up of this week’s remarkable stories at the intersection of technology, business, design, and culture.
Three articles and three podcasts wrestled from this week’s relentless algorithmic chop shops and icky click-bait chum. No fluff, just stuff⚡️
📚 Reading
Why AI Won't Cause Unemployment:
The prices of regulated, non-technological products rise; the prices of less regulated, technologically-powered products fall. Which eats the economy? The regulated sectors continuously grow as a percentage of GDP; the less regulated sectors shrink. At the limit, 99% of the economy will be the regulated, non-technological sectors, which is precisely where we are headed. Therefore AI cannot cause overall unemployment to rise, even if the Luddite arguments are right this time.
Marc Andreessen | 3 minutes
You Are Not a Parrot:
We can respond as if it were an agent in there with ill will and say, ‘That agent is dangerous and bad.’ That’s the Terminator fantasy version of this, right?” [..] Then there’s option two: We could say, ‘Hey, look, this is technology that really encourages people to interpret it as if there were an agent in there with ideas and thoughts and credibility and stuff like that.’ Why is the tech designed like this? Why try to make users believe the bot has intention, that it’s like us?
Emily Bender—Intelligencer | 31 minutes
Fewer:
An underlying assumption many individuals, managers and businesses incorporate into our decisions and choices is the concept of maximizing. While much of growth and well-being may be driven by more, a case could be made that less is what many should aim for if we are to solve problems, be happier and grow. We are moving into an age of “fewer”. Fewer things. Fewer “managers”. Fewer big companies. Fewer people. Which might give rise to greater rather the fewer opportunities.
Rishad Tobaccowala—The Future Does Not Fit In The Containers Of The Past | 5 minutes
🎧 Listening
Building an Immortal Society:
We've given up on the manufacture of physical stuff. For now, we are still open to creating new information products: be it crypto or artificial intelligence, which is just another way of trying to deliver on the promise that software is going to eat the world. I wonder whether even in that domain we aren't slowly rendering one thing after another too disruptive, too dangerous, too socially irresponsible, locking down all possibilities of growth.
Samo Burja—The Aubservation | 34 minutes
Burn the Ad Industry Down:
The reason why new bundling mechanisms are being created now, and why you'll see maybe a little renaissance in bundling, is because of AI. The ultimate bundler, for me, is one that imitates the way I get all of my news now and goes out and does all the work of fetching it, and organising it, and condensing it, and pointing out the stuff that I should be spending time on. The robot can do that for me.
Troy Young—People vs Algorithms | 45 minutes
Intellectual and Technical Progress
[F]rom 1770 to 1870, you have about half of a percent per year, on average, of steady technological progress [..] We had the sudden jump up so that we get our 2 percent per year productivity and real income growth after 1870. It’s that 2 percent, together with Schumpeterian creative destruction, revolutionising the economy to double human technological competence every generation — that wild ride from 1870 to today: that’s the story I want to tell.
Brad DeLong—Conversations with Tyler | 47 minutes
🏘️ Next Door
Scenius Mag this week lifts the curtain on alternative cultures of creativity and innovation where being a maker, owner, or creator trumps being a managed employee.