AI Innovations Transform Speed, Energy, Sustainability, and Dating Dynamics
AI Innovations Transform Speed, Energy, Sustainability, and Dating Dynamics
Pour your favorite drink, relax, and dive into this week’s radical roundup of tech, business, and futuristic wonders.
Dear Friend,
Pascal here. As you surely have seen and/or heard, this has been a busy week for AI. First, we had OpenAI launch ChatGPT-4o (“o” stands for “omni,” meaning the model accepts text, audio, and video natively). Then, a day later, Google unveiled a whole smorgasbord of AI-enhanced products across the board of its product offerings. After playing with ChatGPT-4o for a couple of days on my iPhone, Mac (there is now a native macOS app allowing for very quick interactions with the AI), and the Web, I want to offer a few observations and thoughts.
First and foremost, ChatGPT-4o is fast—really fast. You ask a question, and instead of staring at the screen, watching how the AI builds a sentence word by word, it now just pops up a multi-paragraph answer in one quick swoop. Gone is the friction of waiting for a response—it’s nearly instantaneous. And this is already a huge game-changer (at least for me). By removing the little bit of friction that was us waiting for the system to respond, I find myself asking ChatGPT to help me with more tasks and questions than before. Turns out, milliseconds count.
Secondly, using the new macOS app further removes friction and makes me pull up ChatGPT more often than ever before. Gone are the days when you copied and pasted something into a pinned tab with ChatGPT inside your web browser—now I have the macOS app open in the background, invoke it with a simple keystroke, and ask it for help when and where I need it. In an upcoming release, you can even share your screen with ChatGPT and ask the AI about the things you have on your screen.
Lastly, when using the improved voice mode (which was heavily demoed in the OpenAI keynote and featured on OpenAI’s website), combined with the fact that ChatGPT-4o is fast plus the fact that when using voice the system doesn’t need to first transcribe what you’re saying, then process your request, then modulate the response back to voice, this modality has turned into a truly conversational use of AI. This also translates into the macOS app—if you have ever seen the famous Star Trek “Hello Computer” clip, we might finally get to a world where our machines become true assistants of ours instead of mere toys.
Which brings me to a closing thought: I remember working at Europe’s largest Apple retailer GRAVIS in the late ‘80s when Apple sent us a promo video for a concept for the computer interface of the future: The Knowledge Navigator. For decades, this was nothing more than a crazy vision of the future—with the release of ChatGPT-4o, it is the first time I can see this on the horizon. All it would take is to combine the power of ChatGPT-4o (or its successor, which will inevitably come) with the apps and data I already use on my phone, computer, and the web. Imagine Siri with the powers of ChatGPT-4o and you are pretty close to Apple’s vision from 1987.
As they say: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And magic it might very well be.
The Thin Wisps of Tomorrow
China’s EV Juggernauts Leaves West in Rearview. A week at the Beijing Auto Show reveals the astonishing pace of China’s EV revolution. With superior tech, design, and connectivity, Chinese automakers are leaving Western brands in the dust. As regulators scramble to limit Chinese EV imports, the real question is: can legacy automakers adapt fast enough, or are they already cooked?
Energy: It’s complicated. On one hand, the world just crossed the 30% threshold for renewable energy production (a reason to celebrate). On the other hand, the world’s energy demands (driven by things like data centers and EVs) are also growing—potentially at a rate which will be hard to cover.
From Haircuts to Batteries. Charles Sturt University’s team is transforming hair and wool offcuts into synthetic graphite for lithium batteries. Sustainable innovation at its best—bad hair days never sounded so compelling.
Dating’s Dystopian Future: Your AI talks to my AI. Dating website Bumble’s founder, Whitney Wolfe Herd, talks about her vision for the future of dating. She envisions AI agents making autonomous contact with other AI agents to determine if there is a match and then arranging an in-person meeting. An idea straight out of Black Mirror.
What We Are Reading
👃 How To Make A Map Of Smell Explore the fascinating quest to map the complex and seemingly ineffable world of odors using AI and machine learning. Spoiler: our perception of smell may be shaped less by the intrinsic properties of chemicals and more by our evolutionary history and ecological relationships with the world around us. @Jane
⛏️ Inside The Crime Rings Trafficking Sand Only behind water, sand is the second most used natural resource on the planet; now it’s being trafficked at record levels, leaving behind ruined ecosystems and communities. @Mafe
🤔 AI Isn’t Useless. But Is It Worth It? For your semi-regular inoculation against Gen AI overhype, here is a well-reasoned and well-documented skeptical take on both what the technology can and cannot do. Additionally, it will address what we should actually want or not want it to do in the first place. @Jeffrey
🚀 Eric Schmidt: Why America Needs An Apollo Program For The Age Of AI Although he was a former leader in the private sector’s pursuit of developing and deploying new technology, Eric Schmidt provides a great hint for a holistic nationwide approach to AI. It calls for centralized approaches from infrastructure to talent pipeline, showcasing its importance and complexity. @Julian
🥸 The Decision Making Process: Make More Obvious Decisions Discover how evolutionary psychology and practical advice from Naval can transform your choices into less painful and more fruitful long-term commitments. @Pedro
🔄 Why You Can’t Get A Restaurant Reservation The restaurant reservation game is truly broken. Hustlers turn tables into tradable assets, exploiting a flawed system. @Pascal
(Random) Bits & Pixels
Sunny: Massive, space-bound solar panels harvesting the sun’s energy in space and beaming it down to Earth? It might sound great but it likely won’t work.
Detailed: Stunning, gorgeous and scientifically important: Cubic millimetre of brain mapped in spectacular detail.
Concise: Slop. AI-generated content’s equivalent to Spam.
Educated: Don’t look at the ROI of your degree—nearly half of all master’s degrees have a negative return on investment in the US.
Flexible: $16,000 later, and you too could own one of the most flexible robots available…
Stealing: Curious about how criminals exploit Large Language Models (LLMs)? Security firm Trend Micro delves into the details and uncover the methods they use.
The Fun Stuff
Need a break? Try One Minute Park TV.