Our technologies are ultimately not contrary to life, but are in fact an extension of life, enabling it to develop yet more options and possibilities at a faster rate. Increasing options and possibilities is also known as progress, so in the end, what the technium brings us humans is progressâKevin Kelly
đ On time for your weekend: a round-up of this weekâs remarkable stories at the intersection of technology, business, design, and culture. Three reads and three listens; no fluff, just stuffâĄď¸
đ Reading
Why âTraditional Programmingâ Might be on its Deathbed:
The days of manual coding could be numbered, as we transition into a new era where coding is more about guiding intelligent systems than painstakingly crafting every line of code [..] Thereâs a growing demand for roles such as âApplication Architectâ and âAI/ML Specialistâ over traditional âSoftware Engineerâ roles. This shift signifies that companies are looking for professionals who can guide development rather than engage in line-by-line coding.
Arslan MirzaâMedium | 6 minutes
Lifeâs Work Wonât Lead To Dystopia:
Donât think of humans as the crown of creation. Instead, view human civilization as part of a much grander scheme, an important step (but not the last one) on the path of the universe from very simple initial conditions toward more and more unfathomable complexity. Now it seems ready to take its next step, a step comparable to the invention of life itself over 3.5 billion years ago.
JĂźrgen SchmidhuberâForbes | 30 minutes
BCIs and the ecosystem of modular minds:
AI technology will still improve, but will become much more democratized and distributed than at present. Many companies will catch up to the technological frontier and foundation model inference and even training will increasingly become a commodity. More and more of the economy will be slowly automated [..] AI progress will look a lot more like electrification than like nuclear weapons or some other decisive technological breakthrough.
Beren Millidge | 20 minutes
đ§ Listening
Twitter under Elon (and much more):
[T]here's now one major social media platform that follows a different set of rules than every other major social media platform, and so, because of that, it almost doesn't matter what the dominant rules are on either platform. What you have now is something closer to an approximation of a more free-speech-rich social internet, just because they're different [..] and that's better than living in a world where all the platforms are coordinating in real-time.
Mike SolanaâMoment of Zen | 94 minutes
The Roots of Progress:
[T]here's this shifting tide of people feeling better or worse about progress that goes back and forth, both in response to historical events, but also crucially in response to people's interpretation of those events. And so it's a combination of the history and also which commentators, which historians and philosophers and journalists and other intellectuals step forward to explain and to interpret that history [..] So I think that's what we saw in the 20th century.
Jason CrawfordâInfinite Loops | 72 minutes
Advertising Is Bugs:
A lot of companies are getting distracted by trying to replace people entirely, the same way Uber was distracted by investing in self-driving cars. You could have one person that does a lot via AI and learns how to use the tools and also learns on the job as the tools are changing. And your ambitions can change then: you can be more ambitious about how you build sales channels, you can be more ambitious about building a product that might need customer supportâŚ
Alex SchleiferâPeople vs Algorithms | 57 minutes