Is there one link, story or idea that stopped you this week… and made you think, “someone else needs to see this”?
My friends: Alistair Croll (Just Evil Enough, Solve for Interesting, Tilt the Windmill, Interesting Bits, HBS, chair of Strata, Startupfest, FWD50, and Scaletechconf; author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (Rebus Foundation, PressBooks, LibriVox) and I made a simple pact years ago. Once a week, each of us would share one link with the others… something we genuinely believed the other two had to see. No trend-hunting… no performance. Just six ideas exchanged with intent. What started as a small ritual between curious friends became Six Links That Make You Think.
These are the six links we passed to one another this week… take your time with them…
- Leaked: The Truth Behind Moltbook, Revealed – The Algorithmic Bridge. “This was a very strange week on the Internet. Tens of thousands of people gave an AI agent control of their machine and their accounts. There were social networks for them to post on. Some of their behavior was remarkable (one agent, when asked to make a restaurant reservation, was unable to secure one via a website so it downloaded speech software and called the place directly). If you’re even slightly aware of computer security, you know this is a recipe for disaster. Here’s a story about what happened.” (Alistair for Hugh).
- Why Do People Believe True Things? – Conspicuous Cognition – Dan Williams. “Plenty of people believed everything happening on Moltbook (one of the social networks for these AI agents, which changed their name twice in the span of a week). Plenty of people believe all sorts of things. But Dan Williams argues that we’re looking at this the wrong way. When we ask, ‘why do people rob banks?’ the answer is simple: that’s where the money is. We should be asking, ‘why don’t people rob banks all the time?’ which is far more interesting. Similarly, when we criticize people for believing falsehoods online, we should be asking, ‘why do we believe what is true?’ I found this a fascinating rumination on the nature of knowledge.” (Alistair for Mitch).
- A Spoiler For The Future – Bitcoin – Simon Wardly – Bits Or Pieces? “Simon Wardley‘s 2013 essay on Bitcoin and what it will do to us. Thirteen years on his predictions look to be dead on.” (Hugh for Alistair).
- Text Is (Still) King – Adam Mastroianni – Persuasion. “Maybe there is hope for humanity yet.” (Hugh for Mitch).
- Velocity Is the New Authority. Here’s Why – Om Malik – On My Om. “I have been tinkering with some concepts to actually… potentially push towards a new book. One of the concepts that I have been working out on stage is the idea that we need to get over ‘speed’. Speed is now boring. We have always been told that things are going fast or getting faster. I’m not sure if it is productive anymore as a driver, especially when we take a look at the developments in technology these past few weeks. We haven’t even focused all that much on what’s around the corner with quantum… and it’s dizzying. Maybe we should just accept it? In this article, Om Malik opines that the speed of information sharing now matters more than its truth or quality. And that’s a big idea. What do the platforms reward? Quick, catchy content instead of deep, thoughtful work. This shift makes it hard to trust what we see and hear online… so what is the answer? Stop. Read bigger and deeper stuff and spend some time actually thinking… not just using an AI chatbot to summarize it all for you…” (Mitch for Alistair).
- Anthropic CEO’s Warnings, Plus Wide-Boundary Considerations on AI – Nate Hagens – YouTube. “Last week, I shared a link to the article title, The Adolescence Of Technology by Anthropic’s Dario Amodei. Since it was published, there has been a lot of discourse (and, if you’ve read it… it’s understandable). Nate Hagens always has in-depth and fascinating perspectives… and this one is no exception. Success with AI depends on wise choices that align technology with ecological, psychological and social values, not just wealth or speed (so… ask yourself… who is watching the creators?). Perhaps best summarized by one of the comments: ‘This made me remember a quote by professor E.O. Wilson that resonates as context, ‘The real problem for humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and God like technology.’” (Mitch for Hugh).
If one of these sticks with you, pass it on… and let us know what earned your attention this week…
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