MIT professsor David Autor is one of the leading labor economists in the world and expert on the impact of technology on work. I have frequently referenced his work, notably on the polarization of work. An interview in Financial Times shares his perspectives on the role of AI in work. As Autor emphasizes and I […]
The last few days have marked the massive bust in virtual events: Verizon closed down BlueJeans, Run The World bought by EventMobi, and Hopin’s event management platform was acquired by RingCentral. Hopin was valued at $7.6 billion and now appears to be valued at around $400 million. Verizon paid $500 million which is now effectively […]
Powerful forces of decentralization over the last decades, underpinned by the Internet, flowing through to societal shifts, and expanded by distributed technologies such as blockchain, have reshaped business and society. However governments and regulators have largely tried to block these forces, often successfully. The global economy is still founded almost completely on joint-stock companies, with […]
For a couple of decades San Francisco has been my ‘second city’ after Sydney, where I’ve gotten to know the city, built a network of fascinating people, and run a number of conferences. After a break during Covid, I’ve been back briefly 4 times in the last 8 months, usually en-route to US speaking gigs, […]
I’m in San Francisco at the Internet Archive (one of the most wonderful artefacts in the history of the web – read about it), attending an AI Knowledge Mapping Hackathon run by Society Library Founder Jamie Joyce, The event supports the building of a knowledge graph of public debates. This event focused on Marc Andreessen’s […]
I first came across the concept of the Singularity a few decades ago. I was intrigued but sceptical on a number of fronts. There seemed to be some massive and highly questionable assumptions behind it all. Yet a belief in the concept of accelerating returns in all its guises has been central to my life, […]
I just came up with the concept “non future optimal”. I googled it and some variants with zero results so it seems like a fresh idea. Let’s dig into it what it could mean. A starting point is Bryan Johnson’s decision to live his life entirely in accord with a longevity optimizing algorithm he calls […]
After chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov was first beaten by a computer he introduced what is often called “centaur chess“, in which humans and machines collaborate, historically often beating either humans or computers on their own. A centaur is half-human, half-horse, but importantly the head and torso are human and the body is horse, giving agency […]
On 1 May 2023 we were one-third through the 2020s, one-third of the way to 2030. In January 2020 I was intending to write a blog post saying that most people had no conception how different the world would be by 2030. I’ve been kicking myself that I didn’t get around to it, given that […]
Is the new generation of AI conscious? Or at what point might it become conscious? To answer this we need to have a clearly defined theory of consciousness. We will never ‘agree’ on the best theory or model, but if we have a set of contenders that are well articulated we can debate with some […]
