AI just got scary good at talking you into things
Plus: Mary Meeker returns, job market jitters, and why Germans are AI-skeptical (but still using it)
Dear Friend –
It’s been yet another one of those weeks. The AI headlines keep coming; everybody and their dog is discussing whether AI is a thing or just hype. That debate raged this week in the developer community, with oodles of people either singing the praises of AI coding assistants or lamenting the poor code quality of said assistants. In case you are interested, this post is a good summary. In the cacophony of voices these days, it might be a good idea to remind yourself that “AI today is the worst it will ever be.”
And now, this…
Headlines from the Future
Mary Meeker is Back ↗
Legendary tech analyst Mary Meeker hasn’t released one of her colossal trend reports since 2019. This week she did – a whopping 340 slides on all things AI.
https://www.bondcap.com/reports/tai
—//—
Large Language Models Are More Persuasive Than Incentivized Human Persuaders ↗
A new paper showed that LLMs are now more persuasive than humans when trying to influence others:
LLM persuaders achieved significantly higher compliance with their directional persuasion attempts than incentivized human persuaders, demonstrating superior persuasive capabilities in both truthful (toward correct answers) and deceptive (toward incorrect answers) contexts.
Panicking aside, this is both good and bad news. The bad news is pretty obvious (we already live in a world of semi-constant disinformation; it’s not just hard to distinguish truth from lies, but now AI has the upper hand in persuading us), but there are also some interesting upsides: AI could make us more compliant to take our medications (a huge problem in the healthcare industry), save for retirement (another massive problem in the financial services industry), or work out more regularly…
But there is a very real danger:
Human persuasion is naturally constrained by effort and opportunity, but AI-generated persuasion can operate continuously and at scale, influencing vast audiences simultaneously.
—//—
CEOs Know AI Will Shrink Their Teams — They’re Just Too Afraid to Say It, Say 2 Software Investors ↗
Take this with a grain of salt – as it comes from the very people who would greatly benefit from this statement being true (venture capital investors) – but this sentence in the article stood out:
Tech companies, in particular, will see “significantly reduced hiring,” he added.
Ironically, the very people building all this stuff might be the ones most affected by it (on a per-sector/industry level; maybe not on the individual level… AI engineers will be fine for a while).
—//—
German’s Use of AI in Workplace Is Lackluster – and Yet Still Crazy High ↗
New study about the use of AI in German offices shows that Germans don’t use AI in their workplaces all that much and that they are increasingly wary and mistrusting of AI compared to their international peers. That being said, even with those caveats, a solid 42% of white-collar workers are already using AI in their jobs. Given that ChatGPT is just a little over two years old, this is an impressive penetration number.
What We Are Reading
⚡ Here’s How We Might Generate Electricity From Rain Scientists figured out how to turn raindrops into electricity by letting them plop through rice-grain-wide tubes, creating 100,000 times more power—so your roof could literally power your lights with puddles! @Jane
🎯 Lean Strategy Making Most companies treat strategy like improv: fun, but chaotic. What if you implemented a “lean” script where you structured your decision-making like standard work to cut the noise, boost speed, and make strategy repeatable? @Kacee
🤝 Meta Talks to Disney, A24 About Content for New VR Headset As Meta is seeking exclusive content collaborations for new formats, it raises the question of to what degree those new content formats are based on mere technical possibility versus a desire for a better user experience. @Julian
🤖 For Some Recent Graduates, the A.I. Job Apocalypse May Already Be Here Aside from the hardship it means for recent college grads not being able to find entry-level jobs as AI took those over, the possibly bigger question is: How do you ever become mid- to high-level if you never actually started at entry level? @Pascal
Rabbit Hole Recommendations
Being honest about using AI at work makes people trust you less, research finds
TradExpert: Revolutionizing trading with mixture of expert LLMs
Filmmakers used 20 iPhones at once to shoot ’28 Years Later’
Concept borrowed from video games leads to fusion energy breakthrough
Autonomous drone from TU Delft defeats human champions in historic racing first
Happy Distractions
🚦 Oh boy! Chaos on German autobahns as Google Maps wrongly says they are closed.