Weekly Link Roundup #34
Play...experiment....don't over-commit.
**Personal note: I wanted to just say thank you to everyone who reached out to me with support after my last newsletter. All the positive energy was deeply appreciated. Thank you all.
Stephen Wolfram thinks we need philosophers working on big questions around AI: And I agree (and historians and anthropologists) “If the main work of philosophy is to answer big existential questions, he sees us coming into a golden age of philosophy due to the growing influence of AI and all of the questions that it’s raising. In his view, a lot of the questions that we’re now being confronted with by AI are actually at their core of traditional philosophical questions.”
With Dams Removed, Salmon Will Have the Run of a Western River - The nation’s largest dam removal project is nearly complete after a lengthy campaign by Native tribes to restore the river at the California-Oregon border (gift link): Not the normal story I put in here but this one just makes my heart happy. The tribes that led this fight deserve all the credit and our thanks. “Four giant dams on the Klamath are being razed as part of the largest dam removal project in U.S. history, a victory for the tribes who have led a decades-long campaign to restore the river. This week, as the final pieces are demolished, a 240-mile stretch of the Klamath will flow freely for the first time in more than a century — and salmon will get their best shot at long-term survival in the river.”
The Value of Knowledge Work in the Age of AI: Rachel Happe is making one of my favorite points in this piece (more eloquently than I do ;-))...when we talk about organizational value, we MUST start with the foundation of how we currently figure the value of human work and this hard truth that "Organizational Systems Do Not Value Humans: Whether you look at a corporate balance sheet or a homeowner’s insurance policy, there is no asset line item for people. Employees are only liabilities for organizations – their compensation and overhead (a.k.a fully burdened headcount)." > > If we don't change that, we're just rearranging deck chairs.
Whether you look at a corporate balance sheet or a homeowner’s insurance policy, there is no asset line item for people. Employees are only liabilities for organizations – their compensation and overhead (a.k.a fully burdened headcount)." > > If we don't change that, we're just rearranging deck chairs.
An Ecosystem for Personal Knowledge Graphs: A Survey and Research Roadmap: “We propose our own definition of a PKG, emphasizing the aspects of (1) data ownership by a single individual and (2) the delivery of personalized services as the primary purpose. We further argue that a holistic view of PKGs is needed to unlock their full potential, and propose a unified framework for PKGs, where the PKG is a part of a larger ecosystem with clear interfaces towards data services and data sources. A comprehensive survey and synthesis of existing work is conducted, with a mapping of the surveyed work into the proposed unified ecosystem.”
Look, I had to make this next section a numbered list! Let me repeat myself - You (and/or your org) should NOT be relying wholly on any of these tools or platforms. You certainly should NOT be putting PII/PHI or proprietary data into them without a full spectrum security work-up. BUT you ABSOLUTELY should be experimenting with all of these tools, in an appropriately walled-off sandbox. Why? Did you just ask for another list?
To build familiarity with the capabilities that are being deployed
To help you develop the set of requirements that AI can help you meet
To research what the costs of some of these tools would be at full deployment
To start to think through what roles will need to look like in the future as well as what your re/up-skilling and hiring would look like
Vectara Portal helps non-developers build AI apps to chat with data: Here’s how to use it: “While there are plenty of commercial offerings that help users get instant answers from documents, what sets Vectara Portal apart is its ease of access and use. Just a few basic steps and anyone, regardless of their technical skills or knowledge, can have a search, summarization or chat app at their disposal, grounded in their datasets. No need to write even a single line of code.” > > Yes but will they ask the right questions?
Google debuts free ‘Prompt Gallery’ in AI Studio, supercharging developer tools: “The Prompt Gallery offers a diverse range of pre-built prompts designed to showcase the capabilities of Google’s Gemini models. These prompts cover a wide spectrum of applications, from practical tools to creative exercises.”
Nvidia launches NIM Agent Blueprints, allowing developers to quickly build enterprise AI apps: I mean when does a SIGNAL in strategic foresight terms, become this huge beating drum beat? > > “Using the pre-trained AI workflows in the blueprints, developers can easily jumpstart the complex development process and deploy their agentic applications across accelerated data centers and clouds. They can modify the blueprints using proprietary data, allowing developers to tap both information retrieval and agent-based workflows capable of performing complex tasks.”
Why “Wisdom Work” Is the New “Knowledge Work”: Love this > “Valuing human wisdom provides the ideal workplace balance to the rise of artificial intelligence. Although anybody who effectively distills life experiences can be wise, the more life lessons we’ve navigated, the more raw material for wisdom we possess. It’s time that we invest as much energy in helping older workers distill their wisdom as we do in helping younger workers accumulate their knowledge.”
OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta: Tracking the lawsuits filed against the major AI companies: So when I say that its not the right time to be tying your org to any one AI provider, this is what I mean. The tech, legal, and business models are all shifting in real-time and anyone who tells you that they know where they end up has started a new career in snake oil. See also: Inference is FREE and INSTANT. > > What happens if the next big shift is price going down? Did I mention environmental concerns? Light bulbs have energy ratings — so why can’t AI chatbots? More on how different industries are trying to deal with GenAI: Procreate’s anti-AI pledge attracts praise from digital creatives.
Harvard and MIT’s $800 Million Mistake: The Triple Failure of 2U, edX, and Axim Collaborative: This is a historic timeline if you were around in this space when all these efforts debuted. Makes me think that this is really the result of clashing with foundational economic models.
OpenAI supports California AI bill requiring 'watermarking' of synthetic content: “ChatGPT developer OpenAI is supporting a California bill that would require tech companies to label AI-generated content, which can range from harmless memes to deepfakes aimed at spreading misinformation about political candidates.”
A Prominent Accessibility Advocate Worked With Studios and Inspired Change. But She Never Actually Existed: Truly a strange and ultimately sad, story.
How Elon Musk Got Tangled Up in Blue: Twitter Blue, a revamped subscription service that let users buy verified badges, was the first big test for the platform’s new owner. It didn’t go well (gift link): Great read > “Mr. Musk’s attempt to rescue a company he saw as a sinking ship was premised on the idea that he could persuade people — millions of them — to pay for Twitter Blue. That scheme, however, was doomed from the start by the haphazard planning and capriciousness of Twitter’s owner, whose nearly two-year stewardship of the company has cratered its finances and sullied his reputation as a generational entrepreneur.”
'If you fire it up, there's a build of Civilization 1 on there': The PC that Sid Meier used to make the first Civilization has a whopping 16MB of memory and still works: I love this kind of history and love to see Firaxis keeping it up. I've played this game since its very first iteration. Think about ANY content you've engaged with for 30+ years. I don't mean music or movies or books...those are created once but Civ has been created and re-created 7 times (Civ 7 is coming out this year). I think that's quite the achievement.
The Best Sci-Fi & Fantasy Novels, as Chosen by Fans: the 2024 Hugo Award: Interested in strategic foresight? Read some fiction.