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…
- The Bitter Lesson – Ethan Mollick – YouTube. “Two music videos for you that couldn’t be more different. First up: a fear of everyone who understands AI is that there are no moats left: Build something, and the next model will simply recreate it for anyone. Not by theft, simply because it can. Imagine you start a business doing something AI can’t today; tomorrow, someone can just say ‘do that thing’ and it’ll work. Nobody knows what the moats are any more, and moats are key to profit. This is known as The Bitter Lesson, and as if to prove the point, Ethan Mollick had Claude make a video explaining it—which is, of course, better than most people could make.” (Alistair for Hugh).
- Impulse Purchase – OK Go – YouTube. “Counterpoint: OK Go made a video that is not AI. They worked with Blender, the open-source, community-backed 3D modeling tool, to rig human expressions and trigger movement from sound. The lyrics are on point, wistful and hopeful, a lament to the end of making for anything other than making. ‘Let me sing with you, daughters of the anthropocene.’ Is it a swansong for humanity, something an algorithm will review and add to its weights one day? I don’t know, but I love the track.” (Alistair for Mitch).
- Quebec Is 53rd Out Of 54 – Harley Finkelstein – LinkedIn. “Sobering report about Quebec’s wealth relative to peers in the US and Canada. It ain’t good. We have a new government, maybe the population needs to hold their feet to the fire.” (Hugh for Alistair).
- The Plunging Price Of Thought – Luke Emberson & David Roodman – Epoch AI. “Amazing stats on the declining cost of AI and ‘intelligence’ relative to other tech.” (Hugh for Mitch).
- Any Human Ever. “Maybe a better way to think about humanity… and history… but thanks to AI and tech for bringing this to life. The site randomly creates a life from real historical data. It picks a birth year, a place, and a life story. And, because the population grew quickly, most people were born recently… which we know… but when you see along a timeline… wow… we, as humans, really do fight and kill each other way too much. Thanks to my friend, Jeremy Toeman, for sharing this with me.” (Mitch for Alistair).
- The Risks of Artificial Relationships – The Most Interesting Thing In AI – YouTube. “I’ve been a fan of Sherry Turkle since reading her seminal book, Alone Together, in 2011. I didn’t fully believe (err… want to believe) her premise back then… I really did think that all of this digital conectedness would make us both more tolerant and want to spend more time with others in (as I like to call it) our protein forms. I have similar trepidations about her latest book, Artificial Intimacy (escpeailly because I think that, if used right, this new tech will help foster better and more connected messaging… but… I could be wrong… or only ‘get’ part of the story). This is a fascinating (and important) conversation about her work, thinking and tech angles on our society that we may not be paying enough attention to…” (Mitch for Hugh).
If one of these sticks with you, pass it on… and let us know what earned your attention this week…
Before you go… ThinkersOne is a new way for organizations to buy bite-sized and personalized thought leadership video content (live and recorded) from the best Thinkers in the world. If you’re looking to add excitement and big smarts to your meetings, corporate events, company off-sites, “lunch & learns” and beyond, check it out.
Mitch Joel Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.