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…
- Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services – Chris Schmitz, Lewis Hammond & Alan Chan – arXiv. “Back in February, I posited that AI will fix government by simplifying online services—but not in the way we think. Rather than the public service deploying these tools, citizens will unleash their agents to do that work for them. Eight months later, AIs from X (GrokBot) and Meta (Muse) are doing just that, so much so that there are research papers offering frameworks on the topic.” (Alistair to Hugh).
- How Tinder Really Works – Ayoships – Instagram. “Software companies are panicking now that AI can reverse-engineer software to make copies. Apparently, a week later, Anthropic and OpenAI now refuse to do so, but open models can. But software contains more than code you can copy—it includes the algorithms that popular apps use to keep people hooked. For example: how does Tinder decide who to match and what to charge for? @ayoships lays it out (hint: it’s as sad and transactional as you think). Another unintended consequence of the radical transparency AI is inflicting on the software industry.” (Alistair for Mitch).
- Early Humans in America Endured Climate Chaos – Sally Christine Reynolds & Matthew Robert Bennett – Nautilus. “Whenever there is a climate discussion, I always think of a graph that I saw (it’s famous I think) about climate variation going back millions of years. The thing about the last 10k years: pretty warm, but also very stable comparatively speaking. My conclusion: civilization was able to grow and thrive because we had stable climates, that allowed for agriculture that allowed for long term planning and food security. If we destabilize the climate, it’s not so much a problem of ‘it’s gonna get warmer’ the real risk is, we destabilize things, then all bets are off. That’s what life looked like for thousands of years, and I guess we don’t want to go back there (sside, wouldn’t it be easier to manage our own perfectly good planet than try to turn a hunk of red rock into something livable?).” (Hugh for Alistair).
- Young Prudes – Aria Schreker – Works In Progress. “Why young people are having less sex than they used to.” (Hugh for Mitch).
- When A.I. Comes for Your Purpose in Life – The Daily – YouTube. “If you haven’t heard this episode, you really have to stop everything and take a listen. It’s very emotional and it really hit me hard. And based on the topic and title of this podcast, you wouldn’t know it. It changed how I think about artificial intelligence and it changed how I think about not just my work… but what I am trying to do with my time here. Yes… it’s emotional… and very intense. As I reread what I just wrote, I actually think I’m underselling the impact of this podcast. This is a really big story that got a lot of attention… but not enough. AI is solving difficult math problems that humans have worked on for years. This has left mathematicians amazed… but worried about losing their role as discoverers. The story asks whether people can still find purpose in work when AI can do it better. How many years has it been that the non-believers, in terms of artificial intelligence’s impact, have been saying it hasn’t really solved much of anything? Well… when this many mathematicians’ (and now many scienctists) heads are spinning because of the amount of problems it is solving… we’ve entered into a new timeline. This is such an important listen. I don’t think we’re paying enough attention…” (Mitch for Alistair).
- AI Crisis In Math: Navier-Stokes, Riemann Hypothesis & Complexity Theory – Lex Fridman Podcast #503 – YouTube. “Now we go deeper on math, AI, life and the future of work. In this conversation, Lex Fridman sits down with three respected mathematicians to talk about what exactly is happening. I’m not going to claim to understand even 5% of what the artificial intelligence solved for in these math realms, but in my brain I listened to this and thought: What if I replaced their jobs with my job… mathematics with what I do? Can I sit here and think (realistically) that if AI can solve what it’s been solving within mathematics, it cannot solve the work that I do? Again as hyped, or maybe over-hyped, as AI might be… I think we might be under-hyping it if you listen to the conversation as it’s unfolding before our eyes…” (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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Mitch JoelMitch 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.