No. 33: AI is coming faster than you think, how to play the online game, and work > talent
AI is getting better and more useful for regular people very quickly. Are you playing close attention yet?
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First, some numbers:
20 weeks - "We've seen more changes in how we work over the past 20 weeks than we have over the past 20 years," says Erik Brynjolfsson, the director of the Digital Economy Lab at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI).
$165 billion - Investment in Applied AI rises from $66B in 2018 to $165B in 2021.
32 years - It takes the typical self-made millionaire at least 32 years to get rich.
We Need to Talk About How Good A.I. Is Getting
via Kevin Roose
We’re in a golden age of progress in artificial intelligence. It’s time to start taking its potential and risks seriously.
“A.I. systems can go from adorable and useless toys to very powerful products in a surprisingly short period of time,” Ms. Cotra told me. “People should take more seriously that A.I. could change things soon, and that could be really scary.”
There are, to be fair, plenty of skeptics who say claims of A.I. progress are overblown. They’ll tell you that A.I. is still nowhere close to becoming sentient, or replacing humans in a wide variety of jobs. They’ll say that models like GPT-3 and LaMDA are just glorified parrots, blindly regurgitating their training data, and that we’re still decades away from creating true A.G.I. — artificial general intelligence — that is capable of “thinking” for itself.
There are also tech optimists who believe that A.I. progress is accelerating, and who want it to accelerate faster. Speeding A.I.’s rate of improvement, they believe, will give us new tools to cure diseases, colonize space and avert ecological disaster.
I’m not asking you to take a side in this debate. All I’m saying is: You should be paying closer attention to the real, tangible developments that are fueling it.
After all, A.I. that works doesn’t stay in a lab. It gets built into the social media apps we use every day, in the form of Facebook feed-ranking algorithms, YouTube recommendations and TikTok “For You” pages. It makes its way into weapons used by the military and software used by children in their classrooms. Banks use A.I. to determine who’s eligible for loans, and police departments use it to investigate crimes.
Read Kevin Roose’s full article via NY Times
The great online game
We’re all playing a Great Online Game. How well we play determines the rewards we get, online and offline.
The Great Online Game is played concurrently by billions of people, online, as themselves, with real-world consequences. Your financial and psychological wellbeing is at stake, but the downside is limited. The upside, on the other hand, is infinite.
Social media is the clearest manifestation of this meta-game. Beginner-level Twitter feels weird, like a bunch of people exposing their personal thoughts to the world. Medium-level Twitter is Threads and engagement hacks. Twitter Mastery is indistinguishable from an ongoing game. This is also true for Reddit, Discord, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and other social networks.
But social media is just one piece of an interconnected game that spans online and offline spaces. The way you play in one area unlocks opportunities in others. Sharing ideas on Twitter might get you invited to a Discord, your participation in that Discord might get you invited to work on a new project, and that new project might make you rich. Or it might bring you more followers on Twitter and more Discord invites and more project opportunities and new ideas that you want to explore which might kick off any number of new paths.
Read how to win the Internet at Not Boring by Packy McCormick
Talent is bullsh*t says Steven Pressfield
Some people seem to be born with more talent than others and few grow into levels of talent that earn worldwide recognition. But what is common with all real talent is the work it takes to get there. Steven says that he doesn’t consider himself particularly talented, he is just an over-achiever who worked hard.
It is often in the midst of hard work that talent begins to show up, particularly when we pursue areas that feel risky or that we are afraid of.
Read Chase Jarvis’ interview summary with Steven Pressfield
Till next time…
To attain knowledge add things every day. To attain wisdom subtract things every day.
- Greg McKeown, Essentialism