đ Exponential economies; new AI breakthroughs; going renewable fast; female robots; predicting badly; ketamine++ #61
How fast will an exponential economy grow? Is increasing wealth enough? Where do startup founders think things are headed? Have we found Satoshi? Can psychology help on the path to AI? Do we care about female robots? Will Viv live up to its billing? How fast can the economy go renewable? And so many more questions ⊠hopefully taking you to some great lunchtime conversations :)
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Dept of the near future (economics special!)
đ On exponential growth in the economy: âthe next transition will happen sometime in roughly the next century. Within a period of five years, the economy will be doubling every month or fasterâ MUST READ by EV reader, Robin Hanson.
đ McKinsey&Co on better capitalism: âOur culture celebrates money and wealth as the benchmarks of success⊠Suppose that instead we celebrated innovative solutions to human problems.â (See also Harvard Business Review: Economic growth doesnât bring happiness if it brings inequality.)
đĄ"What assets were for the industrial firm, network effects are for the post-industrial firm.â Esko Kilpi on a new growth theory. EXCELLENT
đźÂ Here is where entrepreneurs think the world is heading. Analysing start-up applications to Y-Combinator, the worldâs top incubator. (Incubators tend to back founders thinking 4-6 years out from the mainstream). STUNNING
đ Bitcoinâs identity crisis: "if Satoshi himself cannot prove he is Satoshi, there is no chance anyone else can eitherâ Izabella Kaminskaâs summary of the state of Craig Wrightâs claim to bitcoin authorship. GREAT READ
Dept of AI, robots and interfaces
Gary Marcus argues that we need more than training data and neural networks to build AI. These approaches, easy and appealing that they are, only let us model shadows of the world. âWe have to go back to human psychology. How is it that humans, most of the time, navigate the world pretty well?â **THOUGHT-PROVOKING READÂ **
đ„ The team behind Siri launches Viv, a new AI assistant which is an open platform designed to compete with Apple & Google as our starting point. Great profile by Elizabeth Dwoskin in Washington Post.
Can AI invent the next wonder material? The growth of machine learning in materials science promises to be revolutionary. âWeâve moved away from the artisanal era of computational materials science, and into the industrial phase.â
đź Laurie Penny: âWe give robots female names so we donât need to consider their feelings.â
Robotic surgeon outperforms humans in suturing.
EV reader Marc Canter: âIt wonât be chatbots alone that will replace the interfaceâ
How Facebook is building AI systems to build AI. Slightly confusing article in Wired which conflates machine learning and AI. Overview of how Facebook has tools which generate better machine learning models (simplifying hyperparameter tuning, Â algorithm selection & validation, presumably).
Dept of renewables & climate change
đ âIt is technically and economically feasible to run the US economy entirely on renewable energy, and to do so by 2050.â Stunning analysis from David Roberts.
Itâs hard to understate the demand-side role that Tesla is going to play in all of this. Automotive is such a huge driver of our energy consumption. Tesla, more than any other company, has demonstrated you can move to a new price:performance bundle without petrol. Teslaâs cars arenât just greener. They are better.
So hardly surprising Tesla is seeing an exponential growth in demand for their cars: âTeslaâs iPhone moment has arrived.â (Also, nice picture profile of Teslaâs Gigafactory.)
đ The price of solar electricity continues to drop. A new record: less than $0.03 per kWh in Dubai. (In EV#22, about 9 months ago, we noted the lowest prices were $0.04/kWh, so this represents a 25% drop in 9 months.)
đ Profile of Americaâs first climate refugees. $48m allocated to move an entire community in Louisiana to higher ground. #itbegins
Dept of drugs and therapies
The first commercial gene therapy to cure a disease is going through approval. Strimvelis tackles âbubble boyâ disease.
Fascinating: an artificial placenta that can improve survivability of pre-terms.
How ketamine beats depression.
đ Legalising weed in Washington state didnât increase teenage access to cannabis.
Short morsels to appear smart at dinner parties
đ What is it that Jane Jacobs made us want to see in the city? The interplay of itâs multiple layers and the importance of the communities at its nodes. FAB
Erik Sandberg-Diment was a tech journalist in the 1980s. He reviews the predictions he got wrong.
With Mooreâs Law running out of road, the semiconductor industry looks for an alternative.
Nice profile of Shenzhen where 90% of the worldâs electronics are made.
IPG moves $250m of advertising from telly to Youtube. #bigshift
SciHub the âpirate bayâ of scientific papers is being used by, well, everyone.
Incredible video of the worldâs longest hoverboard flight. h/t @uwepleban
đđœÂ How to make every part of your life better. Super fun read for a Sunday.
What you are up to
Get on yer bike and help kids. Reader, Eze Vidra, runs TechBikers, a charity bike ride taking the tech community from Paris to London. Seventy founders, investors & engineers raising money for kidsâ education in the developing world. Several other EV readers are on the ride. June 24th. (If you want to take TechBikers to your city, contact Eze.)
EV reader, Evan Niselsson, is hosting a summit on Digital Vision and Imaging in New York on May 24th and 25th; speakers include Josh Elman & Bijan Sabet. He is offering fellow readers 70% off the event if you use the promo code ExponentialView. Hurry!
End note
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Have a sunny weekend.