AI Links
The singularity won't be gentle:
If AI has even a fraction of the impact that many people in Silicon Valley now expect on the fabric of work and daily life, it’s going to have profound and unpredictable political impacts.
Rebuilding our world, with reference to strong AI:
When 2012 passed into 2013, we did not have to rebuild our world, not in most countries at least. It sufficed to make adjustments at the margin.
After the Roman Empire fell, parts of Europe had to rebuild their worlds. It took a long time, but they ended up doing pretty well.
After the American Revolution, the newly independent colonies had to rebuild their own world. They did so brutally, but with considerable success.
After WWII, Western Europe had the chance to rebuild its own world, and did a great job.
We moderns are not used to having to rebuild our world.
It is now the case that strong AI is here/coming, and we will have to rebuild our own world. Many of us are terrified at this prospect, others are just extremely pessimistic. It seems so impossible. How are all the new pieces supposed to fit together? Who amongst us can explain that process in a reassuring way?
Yet we have done it many times before. Not always with success, however. After WWI ended, Europe was supposed to rebuild its own world, but they came up with something far worse than what they had before. Nonetheless, in the broader sweep of history world rebuilding projects have had positive expected value.
And so we will rebuilding our world yet again. Or maybe you think we are simply incapable of that.
As this happens, it can be useful to distinguish “criticisms of AI” from “people who cannot imagine that world rebuilding will go well.” A lot of what parades as the former is actually the latter.
In any case, it all will be quite something to witness.
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Strap in. This is the most exciting time for business and technology, ever.
AI Doesn't Reduce Work - It Intensifies It:
I think we've just disrupted decades of existing intuition about sustainable working practices. It's going to take a while and some discipline to find a good new balance.
Seb Krier: Some of this was weirdly scary.
Family deepfakes help people celebrate and grieve in India:
When the lights dimmed at Jaideep Sharma’s wedding reception in the north Indian city of Ajmer, guests expected to see a cheesy montage of the young couple in various attractive locations. Instead, they saw Sharma’s father — dead for more than a year — on the screen, smiling and blessing the newlyweds.
I spent $10,000 to automate my research at OpenAI with Codex
Other Stuff
‘They All Tried to Break Me’: Gisèle Pelicot Shares Her Story: Words fail me.
I think we’re going to do great things together. I think we’ll make the most of these beautiful years we have left, and I hope they’ll last very long.
Amen.
Navigating ER / Hostpital in US:
The most important thing I've learned about hospitals over the last decade: if your loved one needs to be admitted to the hospital, chances are they will get incredible care... as long as that care can be immediately administered in the ED.
However, if they need to move outside the ED, you must learn as much as you can so you can help expedite the process, advocating to them to get to where they need to go — usually an inpatient floor, as quickly as possible.
The stakes are probably higher than you think.
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No, this is not an AI post. Codex is a NYC bookshop at 1 Bleecker St., at Bowery. It is quite extraordinary in its curation of used books. The fiction section is large, yet you can pick up virtually any title on the shelves and it is worth reading. A wonderful place to go to get reading ideas, plus the prices are reasonable and the used books are in decent shape. Such achievements should be praised.
Record Low Crime Rates Are Real, Not Just Reporting Bias Or Improved Medical Care:
This post will do two things:
- Establish that our best data show crime rates are historically low
- Argue that this is a real effect, not just reporting bias (people report fewer crimes to police) or an artifact of better medical care (victims are more likely to survive, so murders get downgraded to assaults)
- What it was like to be a bush at Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance:
Some of the biggest stars to emerge from this year's Super Bowl halftime show never even showed their faces on camera. They were the ones who dressed as bunches of grass to transform a football stadium into the sugarcane fields of Puerto Rico.