🔮 The Internet economy; AI, robots & opensource; female bodyhackers; exponential business; emotional design; fairy tales++ #60
Unbundling, the new Internet economy. Exponential growth is the new normal for business. Reinventing media. The case against reality. AI and defining robots, renewables & more. Abbreviated issue due to public holidays in the UK. Enjoy the Sun!
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Dept of the near future
💡 “We are living in the era of unbundling”: Understanding the new Internet economy. MUST READ by Chris Dixon of A16Z
💰 Reinventing accounting: “We are using integers when we should be using imaginary numbers.” by MIT Media Lab’s Joi Ito. EXTREMELY INTERESTING. (I know it is about book-keeping, but it is a worthwhile read.)
🌟 “Exponential growth may become the new normal for successful 21st-century firms.” The Aspen Institute report on Institutional Innovation. GOOD STUDY (Haven’t read all of it, but impressive thus far) h/t @cdelancray
👻 “Compelling voices and stories, real and raw talent, new ideas that actually serve or delight an audience, brands that have meaning and ballast; these are things that matter in the next age of media”. Joshua Topolsky on how to reinvent the media business EXCELLENT
😄 The future of design is emotional: THOUGHT PROVOKING interactive essay.
👾 The case against reality: “According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness.” MIND EXPANDING
Dept of AI
Long read: Wired magazine on Open.AI, the Elon-Musk backed open research foundation for AI. RECOMMENDED
💥 It is harder than we think to determine if AI is sentient. (Do fish feel pain? What about locked-in syndrome?)
Samsung Medison’s new AI-charged ultrasound imaging system outperforms humans for breast cancer detection.
Sutter Health applies deep learning to predict heart attacks up to nine months before doctors can see the risks.
Why is it so hard to define the term robot? This post has a survey in it, you might want to take part.
Google Deepmind starts to use TensorFlow (developed by another part of Google.) Nice practitioner blog post. DeepMind had previously used Torch, an open source framework favoured by Facebook.
Exponential Dinner #6 - The Age of Em
Exponential Dinners are private, participatory intimate dinners where EV readers can sit in conversation with a world expert on a relevant topic.
Our next dinner is on the topic of Work, Life, and Love in the Age of Robots. Our discussion leader is Professor Robin Hanson of George Mason University & Future of Humanity Institute. Robin has been studying the impact of machine intelligence for more than 30 years and brings a deep economic & historical lens to the question. His new book is out in June.
Dinner is at 7pm on May 16th in London; the cost will be £75.
If you are interested in attending, please register your interest here. (This event is oversubscribed and we’ll select attendees this week.)
Short morsels to appear smart at dinner parties
🔥 Stunning bit of neuroscience. Mapping the bits of the brain that fire up with particular words. Interactive playground of the research.
“Bodyhackers are all around. They are called women”, argues Rose Eveleth.
Some fairy tales may be 6,000 years old. Fascinating.
How cheap can electric vehicles get? Extremely cheap argues Ramez Naam, in fact below the lowest cost of a traditional car within 15 years.
Hacking the Tesla API to control your car from an Amazon Echo.
The tribulations of the F-35 are an anti-pattern for how to think lean, simply and empathetically about technology. Now only 1-in-6 of the planes is capable of taking off.
🇨🇳 Alibaba’s plans for a new global trade system. Ambitious & visionary.
How meth, cocaine, and heroin flow. Vice on the golden age of drug trafficking.
👶🏼 Toddler vs CEO _ funny infographic_
What you are up to
EV reader Scott Santens is organising a social media campaign to promote awareness of universal basic income.
End note
Sending this from a new email address (azeem at exponentialview.co) so it is easier to handle replies.
Sunny days and a long public holiday in the UK. Fun time with the family!
Hope you have a good one :)