Articles

Six Links Worthy of Your Attention #673

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (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 decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person “must see.”

Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another:

Marriage Counseling with Capitalism – Rhys Lindmark. “Ever feel like the world needs therapy right now? Here’s what a conversation between humanity, capitalism, and post-scarcity utopia might look like. And why they can’t all get along.” (Alistair for Hugh).
Letter from Utopia – Nick Bostrom. “A note from the future, written in 2008 by Nick Bostrom, one of the biggest critics of rampant self-aware AI (and author of the Paperclip Objective Function idea, which says that if you gave a super-intelligence the task of making paperclips, it would disassemble the universe to do so. Of course, if it were super-intelligent, it’d probably get bored of paperclip-making). We are spending so much time arguing as a species about what ‘is’, we don’t think enough about ‘what could be’ if we just got our shit together.” (Alistair for Mitch).
Hey Man, Can I Use That Building When You’re Done With It? – Wired. “We are, maybe, in the process of a profound real estate upheaval. On one side, the pandemic pushed many companies, including mine, to embrace remote work 100%. We gave up our office, and we aren’t alone; I’m hearing that office towers in city centers are dying, with vacancies not seen in decades. On the other side, housing costs have skyrocketed, and despite high interest rates (they keep inching up), there just aren’t enough houses and apartments. Is there a swaperoo to be done? The problem is that buildings tend to be built for one purpose not another. There’s a new movement in architecture, to think about reusable, modifiable buildings.” (Hugh for Alistair).
The hidden force that shapes everything around us: Parking – Vox. “Why making room for parking ruins cities and makes everything more expensive.” (Hugh for Mitch).
The Future of Writing Is a Lot Like Hip-Hop – The Atlantic. “There are so many opinions about generative AI in relation to the creation of new art/content. On one had, you have the whole, ‘it’s a plagiarism machine’ and on the other side, you have an entirely new form of creator using prompting and other tools to create something new. In the middle, you have people like me: Using it to brainstorm, come up with different options, provide assistance and more. There is no ‘right’ here, and with that there is no stopping both the good and the bad that will come from the output of these creators. In this article, you’ll see both the limitations of creating art with AI and the strange and nuanced beauty and originality of it. I also happen to agree with the writer, Stephen Marche, who contends that AI undermining human originality is then also an insult to any form of art or pop culture created using any form of nostalgia or historical context (like hiphop music). Or, more simply put, read Austin Kleon’s book, Steal Like An Artist.” (Mitch for Alistair).
Inflection Points – How To Be Paranoid – Foresight Folk. “How massive of an inflection point are we at when it comes to the disruption of commercializing artificial intelligence? Can we look towards lesson of our past? Personally, I am more paranoid than ever. I find myself wondering if I am already behind the metaphorical eight ball when it comes to my understanding of AI. It’s moving too fast… for me… which is scary. The wave is just too big, and I may be lacking the skills to surf it. Am I getting too old for this? Oh, the paranoia! This article was a great reminder and good reframe that as fast as technology moves (and as fast as people adopt it), the many feelings that all of us may have whenever the next wave of disruption comes rolling in have been felt before. The book, Only The Paranoid Survive, by Intel’s Andy Grove was published in 1988… and many of his sentiments are echoed in our daily debates about AI. Interesting.” (Mitch for Hugh).