David Autor on the design of how we use AI and work polarization

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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 have been saying for many years, the issue is in the design of work and the economy, and the mental models we apply to how we do that.

The whole interview is worth reading, here are a few excerpts.

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The massive bust in virtual event platforms and what comes next

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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 written off.

Run the World raised $15 million including from Andreessen Horowitz. While a sale price wasn’t disclosed Techcrunch noted that there were 500 events recently listed, down from 15,000.

What went wrong?

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Innovation in decentralized organizations: From DAOs to BORGs and beyond

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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 legislated centralized structures of ownership and governance. 

So what is the best path to decentralized organizations, how can we best innovate in structures for participative value creation?

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Is San Francisco coming back? 9 factors shaping its future

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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, catching up with people, going to events, and getting a bit of a feel for the city post-pandemic.  

In my conversations here I’ve experienecd deep division of opinions on the state and future of San Francisco, with some seeing it as well past its peak following an exodus over the last years (“it’s a shithole”), while others believe it is in the early stages of a renaissance (“everyone’s coming back”).

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Argument analysis of Andreessen’s ‘AI Will Save the World’ article

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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 recent famous AI Will Save the World article, adding human-generated arguments against every sentence and AI-excerpted proposition.

It’s a great exercise. When I first read the article and listened to the accompanying podcast, I found myself agreeing with just about everything, but it still left me deeply unconvinced on some aspects of the piece. So it’s been good to go back to it in depth. 

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The Six Facets of the Singularity

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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, and you certainly can’t discard the idea of the Singularity. The inevitability of it happening as described is more debatable.

However ssince November 30, 2022, when ChatGPT was launched, many of the ideas of the Singularity are not only far more current, they have become central to discussions across many dimensions of society. 

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How much are you indulging in non-future-optimal behaviors?

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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 Blueprint. Every aspect of his life down to what food he eats when and precisely what times he goes to sleep are governed by the algorithm.

The usual immediate response is to ask whether this is a life worth living. Surely the pleasures of life are what make it so wonderful to be alive?

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Humans + AI: Do we want to be Centaurs or Minotaurs?

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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 to the human part of the combination.

In contrast, a minotaur is half-human, half-bull, but the bull is the head and the human is the body that enacts its intentions.

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Checking in one-third through the 2020s: future shock is here

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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 months later it would have been borne out.

As the pace of change increases the period into the future we can see with any semblance of accuracy reduces. The depth of uncertainty about what the world might be like in 2030 is already extreme.

Let’s consider where we stand one-third through the 2020s.

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4 theories of consciousness for the age of accelerating AI

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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 specificity.

Here are four of the most relevant models for consciousness relevant to the advent of AI. 

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