Big Mac
In — of all places — Venice! A pre-Trump example of American ’soft power’?
Quote of the Day
”Power, in a nutshell, is the ability to get things done, and politics is the ability to decide which things need to be done.”
- Zygmunt Bauman
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Dolores Keane | My Own Dear Galway Bay (Live)
RIP for a wonderful and much-loved singer, who passed away peacefully on 16 March — in Galway.
Long Read of the Day
What AI Hypists Miss
Perceptive column by Francis Fukuyama
Recently I heard a presentation by an engineer from OpenAI about the incredible transformations that will occur once we get to artificial general intelligence (AGI), or even superintelligence. He said that this will quickly solve many of the world’s problems: GDP growth rates could rise to 10, 15, even 20 percent per year, diseases will be cured, education revolutionized, and cities in the developing world will be transformed with clean drinking water for everyone.
I happen to know something about the latter issue. I’ve been teaching cases over the past decade on why South Asian cities like Hyderabad and Dhaka have struggled with providing municipal water. The reason isn’t that we don’t know what an efficient water system looks like, or lack the technology to build it. Nor is it a simple lack of resources: multilateral development institutions have been willing to fund water projects for years…
You can guess what the reason is. I liked this because I’m continually irritated by the extravagant claims that AI boosters make about AI will do. It suggests that they know little to nothing about history, politics or indeed reality.
Books, etc.
Having listened to the author on a Santa Fe Institute podcast, I’m contemplating tackling his book. Before diving in, I asked Claude for a summary of any serious reviews that have been published. Here’s its conclusion:
The honest summary for you: the book is probably readable if you’re comfortable with the ideas of complexity and emergence without needing to follow the mathematics (which stays largely in the background). It’s less a popular science book in the Gleick Chaos tradition and more an extended, technically-inflected argument — rewarding if you’re prepared to work at it, but not one that holds your hand throughout.
My conclusion: worth a try. See you in a couple of weeks!
Linkblog
Something I noticed, while drinking from the Internet firehose.
- Why are people taking phone calls on speakers when walking around in public?
Turns out I’m not the only one asking the question.
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