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The not-so dramatic AI disruption â Civilization's original LLM â Triangulating AI hardware products
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 stuff âĄ
đ Reading
AI wonât steal as many jobs as expected:
Contrary to what one might expect, the MIT researchers found that the majority of jobs previously identified as being at risk of AI displacement arenât, in fact, âeconomically beneficialâ to automate â at least at present [âŚ] The key takeaway is that the coming AI disruption might happen slower â and less dramatically â than some commentators are suggesting.
Kyle WiggersâTechCrunch | 5 minutes
How did human civilization get off the ground?
Civilization thus kicked off with development of the original Large Language Model: formal writing systems. History had begun, thanks not merely to the advent of techniques to record events, but because the connections between events could now be situated in a logical historical progression. Without written language and norms, history would likely never have gotten off the ground, as the purely biological explanations of human sociality  simply donât scale.
Samual HammondâSecond Best | 8 minutes
Thinking about the emerging landscape of AI hardware products:
I think we have a triangle: AI-enabled user interfaces, like voice or computer vision, Behind-the-scenes agentive AI, like figuring out sequencing from your instructions, or using apps as tools, Embedded AI to enable a feature, like âinteresting sceneâ detection in a camera [âŚ] Exercise for the reader: find the gaps and invent new products like planting flowersâŚ
Mat WebbâInterconnected | 6 minutes
đ§ Listening
The Expanding Universe of Generative Models:
A four-year-old child has learned an enormous amount of knowledge about how the world works. And we can do this with LLMs today; we're missing some essential science and new architectures to take advantage of sensory inputs [...] This will require a few scientific and technological breakthroughs, which may happen in the next year, three years, five years, ten years...
Yann LeCunâCentre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution | 45 minutes
The Gravity of Platforms:
A lot of the hang-ups in media seem to be nostalgic. I know that people inside CNN miss that kind of live big studios, lots of stuff happening around them. It feels exciting to work. And they're going to have to change that to a model where maybe it turns out that I just load up my HBO Max app and click on "Give me the news update." That's not going to feel the same.
Troy YoungâPeople vs Algorithms | 54 minutes
Fintech Struggles, Netflix Rises and 'Big' is Winning:
These are just good old-fashioned normal businesses masquerading as technology businesses when they're absolutely not technology businesses [...] a lot of people that put a lot of capital to work, trying to add technology to an old school business to see if it was possible to build technology margins and scale, and it just didn't work And so is that what's really going on here..?
Dave MorinâMore or Less | 61 minutes
đ Timeless
1ď¸âŁ year agoâWhat does it look like for the web to lose?
2ď¸âŁ years agoâClass 1 / Class 2 Problems
3ď¸âŁ years agoâRoad Kill on the Information Highway