Hi all, welcome to the last Sunday edition of this month. I spent the week in NYC, where I had a number of meetings and speaking engagements. On the back of last week’s Sunday edition (which got picked up by Elon on X…) about the collapse of traditional news outlets, I had a number of conversations with some of the leading figures of New York & British media on AI and the changes to that industry. It’s got me thinking, which will get me writing on this soon enough.
"And at the end of the day, we will need the computation in these data centres to solve climate change."
Is that really true? We have all the solutions, climate is much more a topic of political will and a needed (but very difficult) paradigm shift than a technological one. And if we look at all 6 transgressed planetary boundaries and we can realize how deeply intertwined our modern way of living is (in the global north) with the extraction of our planet (and our people). It's not a problem to solve, but a challenge inviting us to face the loss of stability, predictability and safety that we got so used to. And that's what we're already experiencing in the latest climate impacts and the fragility of our systems.
As much as I would like AI to "solve" it for us, I don't think wishful thinking is helping us in our transformation as it delays it.
"For LLMs to fulfil their GPT potential, we must inspire people to embrace them, not fear them."
Will recent SCOTUS rulings make this harder by putting too much power in the judiciary or put pressure on Congress and the executive branch to step up?
Could you help clarify a point: What does 'significantly impact' mean in the sentence above on GPTs are GPTs: "... they could significantly impact over half the tasks in 46% of jobs." Does it mean 'reduce completion time by more than a half'? (ie. is the definition of 'significantly impact' the same as 'exposure' per the chart)?
"And at the end of the day, we will need the computation in these data centres to solve climate change."
Is that really true? We have all the solutions, climate is much more a topic of political will and a needed (but very difficult) paradigm shift than a technological one. And if we look at all 6 transgressed planetary boundaries and we can realize how deeply intertwined our modern way of living is (in the global north) with the extraction of our planet (and our people). It's not a problem to solve, but a challenge inviting us to face the loss of stability, predictability and safety that we got so used to. And that's what we're already experiencing in the latest climate impacts and the fragility of our systems.
As much as I would like AI to "solve" it for us, I don't think wishful thinking is helping us in our transformation as it delays it.
I'd love to join the 4 July chat.
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"For LLMs to fulfil their GPT potential, we must inspire people to embrace them, not fear them."
Will recent SCOTUS rulings make this harder by putting too much power in the judiciary or put pressure on Congress and the executive branch to step up?
Could you help clarify a point: What does 'significantly impact' mean in the sentence above on GPTs are GPTs: "... they could significantly impact over half the tasks in 46% of jobs." Does it mean 'reduce completion time by more than a half'? (ie. is the definition of 'significantly impact' the same as 'exposure' per the chart)?
The paper suggests that.
Although I would add that to be a general purpose technology the technology need not effect existing tasks much at all, as it might create new ones.