Soft Power
Evolution does not extend to AI, when intelligence is too cheap to meter, and soft power in Tech
👋 On time for your weekend: a round-up of this week’s remarkable stories at the intersection of technology, business, design, and culture. Three reads and three listens; no fluff, just stuff ⚡
The past is written, but the future is left for us to write. And we have powerful tools, openness, optimism, and the spirit of curiosity – Capt. Jean-Luc Picard
📚 Reading
Evolution provides no evidence for the sharp left turn:
History need not repeat itself. Human evolution is not an allegory or a warning. It was a series of events that happened for specific, mechanistic reasons. If those mechanistic reasons do not extend to AI research, then we ought not (mis)apply the lessons from evolution to our predictions for AI.
Quintin Pope—Less Wrong | 18 minutes
Intelligence too cheap to meter:
It’s interesting that ubiquitous AI means the end of ease of use: you can have a home fabrication unit or whatever that is as complex as you like, with whatever quantity of subprocesses, and there’s no skills gate that means you have to hire a trained professional or learn how to operate it. You will just talk to it.
Matt Webb—Interconnected | 4 minutes
Soft Power in Tech:
By definition, marketing content seeks to sell. The text is scripted, geared toward producing a specific outcome. It may do so subtly or bluntly, but ultimately, its content makes a demand: will you do this? […] Soft power acts more gently, like a story. No explicit demand is made of the listener, and as a result, a state of openness is achieved. The content of soft power is often symbolic or metaphorical, enforcing values and norms through narrative.
Mario Gabriele—The Generalist | 24 minutes
🎧 Listening
The AI/Human Interface: experiments in action:
The World Wide Web came out in 1990; the first commercial web browser in '94. And it took another four years to realise that we could put a credit card number in a text input field and press submit and do e-commerce […] It took 15 years for software as a service to displace box software as the primary business model for business software companies […] It's going to take us 10 years to digest what happened with AI. At the moment, we are imagination bottlenecked.
Matt Webb—NEXT Conference | 31 minutes
TikTok, Porn and The Immediate Risks of AI:
We don't understand what feelings are, where they come from. These are completely different things than thoughts and words. We frequently can't even describe how we feel in words to each other. And we're sitting here saying that large language models might become this amazing, all powerful, God-like technology. And I'm much more interested in the conversation around what they can't do and what needs to be done in order to better interface with humanity.
Dave Morin—More or Less | 51 minutes
What’s Next for the Open Web?
We are all in the process of being augmented. The junior designer is going to feel bad that they used AI to come up with ideas for the logo or the icon. The trader is going to look for ideas to find a good trade. The insurance person is going to look for a new way to think about writing a policy to minimize risk. We are all augmented now. If the AI can write something that's useful, then great. It helped me. If someone had to make that query, fine. If I made the query myself, even better.
Troy Young—People vs Algorithms | 52 minutes
💎 Timeless
1️⃣ year ago: Four Paths to the Revelation
2️⃣ years ago: Everyday Magic
3️⃣ years ago: Techno-optimism for the 2020s