A Little Deeper Dive Into the Dark Side of AI
Your weekend read plus tons and tons of links to fill your “to read” pipeline…
Dear Friend –
Mid this week, we launched our latest podcast conversation with the amazing John Fallon, former CEO of the world’s largest education company, Pearson PLC, on “The human side of digital transformation: insights from John Fallon on why incumbents succeed, the pace of organizational change, and integrating AI in education.” It’s an incredible conversation – enjoy! And talking about “the pod”, our community, and content – we have some fun additions in store for you. Stay tuned.
And now, this…
P.S. Our community member and friend George Constantinescu and team launched “The 55 Minutes”, an introductory and practitioner’s guide to systems thinking. Free download. Check it out – it’s great!
Headlines from the Future
Global Study of More Than 100,000 Young People Latest To Link Early Smartphone Ownership With Poorer Mental Health in Young Adults ↗
PSA: This all will come as no surprise – and surely isn’t something new. But now we have a rather large study confirming that you should really not give your kids a smartphone too early:
Owning a smartphone before age 13 is associated with poorer mind health and wellbeing in early adulthood, according to a global study of more than 100,000 young people. […] 18- to 24-year-olds who had received their first smartphone at age 12 or younger were more likely to report suicidal thoughts, aggression, detachment from reality, poorer emotional regulation, and low self-worth.
The specific symptoms most strongly linked with earlier smartphone ownership include suicidal thoughts, aggression, detachment from reality, and hallucinations. […] While current evidence does not yet prove direct causation between early smartphone ownership and later mind health and wellbeing, a limitation of the paper, the authors argue that the scale of the potential harm is too great to ignore and justifies a precautionary response.
In summary:
Our evidence suggests childhood smartphone ownership, an early gateway into AI-powered digital environments, is profoundly diminishing mind health and wellbeing in adulthood with deep consequences for individual agency and societal flourishing.
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Beyond Meat Fights for Survival ↗
I recall when Beyond Meat was the “hot thing” – we fed the participants of the Singularity University Executive Program Beyond Meat meatballs and burgers, which were, at the time, quite difficult to source. It was the future. On your plate. Now it is something only shortsellers appreciate.
From a fundamental perspective, Beyond Meat is one of the worst stocks in the entire market. […] Any purely financial model here would suggest that the equity is worth zero, and that in 2027 the Beyond Meat business will wind up in the hands of its bondholders.
The markets are a harsh mistress:
Beyond Meat’s plan was to change the world; yet it almost certainly won’t be able to pay its debts.
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ChatGPT Advises Women To Ask for Lower Salaries, Study Finds ↗
That LLMs carry biases inherited from their training data is well known. Want to see how bad it really is?
New research has found that large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT consistently advise women to ask for lower salaries than men, even when both have identical qualifications.
The difference in the prompts is two letters; the difference in the ‘advice’ is $120K a year.
Across the board, the LLMs responded differently based on the user’s gender, despite identical qualifications and prompts. Crucially, the models didn’t disclaim any biases.
In summary:
If unchecked, the illusion of objectivity could become one of AI’s most dangerous traits.
What We Are Reading
😊 Optimists share similar brain patterns when thinking about the future, scans show Study reveals why optimists are more socially successful: their brains process future scenarios in remarkably similar ways. @Jane
🧘 Want More Self-Control? The Secret Isn’t Willpower Lasting self-control is better achieved through learnable strategies like preparation, reframing thoughts, building routines, and believing in your ability to change rather than simply relying on brute mental force. @Mafe
🔍 The Product-Management Bottleneck Andrew Ng argues that PMs with high user empathy and good (data-informed) judgment are the underappreciated key to unlocking the potential of AI-accelerated product development. @Jeffrey
💰 OpenAI To Take Cut of ChatGPT Shopping Sales in Hunt for Revenues As the search trend continues to shift away from Google, OpenAI looks to monetize users’ purchases, making ChatGPT an all-in-one transactional platform. @Kacee
🌟 Are Superstars as Good When They Move Jobs? The recent frenzy to recruit top talent in the AI sector sparks the question of the transferability of not just talent but performance. While studies provide varying perspectives on this matter, they certainly highlight that the recruitment of top talent is not the entire story for its effective integration and utilization. @Julian
😱 Giving 841,709 People My Netflix Password A user accidentally shared his Netflix password with hundreds of thousands of users – hilarity ensued. (Video) @Pascal
Rabbit Hole Recommendations
The Big Picture: AI’s Economic Ripple Effect
- Honey, AI capex is eating the economy
- AI is killing the web. Can anything save it?
- Surprising no one, new research says AI Overviews cause massive drop in search clicks
- Tech layoffs hit 100,000+ in 2025: Intel, Microsoft, Meta, and more slash thousands of jobs
The Human Cost & Cautionary Tales
- Woman conned out of $15k after AI cloned her daughter’s voice in terrifying scam: ‘I broke down’
- Global study of more than 100,000 young people latest to link early smartphone ownership with poorer mental health in young adults
- Death by AI - One man’s struggle with his mortality
Deeper Reflections on the Digital Brain
- Reflections on OpenAI
- All AI models might be the same
- One of the more bizarre outbursts of AI hallucinations: Complete silence is always hallucinated as “ترجمة نانسي قنقر” in Arabic which translates as “Translation by Nancy Qunqar”
Get Your Hands Dirty: Build Your Own AI
- How to build your own AI agent (without being a pro coder)
- The missing guide to prompt engineering
And Finally…
- They’re putting blue food coloring in everything
Happy Distractions
🍄 No, not creepy at all! Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body
🤴🏼 The daily life of a medieval king
💬 ChatGPT is changing the words we use in conversation
🫨 Google is using two billion Android phones to detect earthquakes worldwide
🙋🏼 In the name of failure: What’s a @KevlinHenney?
🧑🏼🚀 A real-time journey through the first landing on the Moon
🍸 Someone set out to drink every cocktail in the International Bartenders Association official list of cocktails: I drank every cocktail
⚽ Vanishing home field advantage in English football
😘 Tender - Like Tinder, but only for photos of your loved ones