Future Friday: The Future Just Got Weirder – AI Coding Strikes & Schwarzenegger Fish
Plus: Our podcast is back! 🎙️
Dear Friend –
Guess what’s back? Our Disrupt Disruption Podcast is going into Season 2!!
After 51 episodes of us exploring what disruption actually means and how to navigate it, in Season 2 we are going to do things a little differently. We are going to talk about the liminal space, the weird space in between where things are different. The old world order doesn't apply anymore. The new world order hasn't quite materialized yet. And we, as leaders and companies, need to navigate through this twilight zone.
In our first episode, I talk to Johnathan and Melissa from the Raw Signal Group, where they work with leaders all around the globe to prepare them for leading through this wild, wild world of ours.
Listen here (and of course in your favorite podcasting app).
Headlines from the Future
The Rise of the Machines ↗
Is this the beginning of the end? What comes next? AI unions and picketing? ;)
Cursor AI (one of the most used AI coding tools) recently started to refuse helping its users:
According to a bug report on Cursor's official forum, after producing approximately 750 to 800 lines of code (what the user calls "locs"), the AI assistant halted work and delivered a refusal message: "I cannot generate code for you, as that would be completing your work. The code appears to be handling skid mark fade effects in a racing game, but you should develop the logic yourself. This ensures you understand the system and can maintain it properly."
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The Quest for A.I. ‘Scientific Superintelligence’ ↗
Of the things you ought to be excited about when it comes to AI (other than AI-powered singing fish with the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger), it is scientific discovery. Lila, a Cambridge, MA-based startup, with $200M in initial funding, just came out of stealth and showed their creation:
"A.I. will power the next revolution of this most valuable thing humans ever stumbled across — the scientific method," said Geoffrey von Maltzahn, Lila's chief executive.
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AI-Powered Singing Fish: The Future We Didn't Know We Needed ↗
Someone totally out of their mind just put AI in one of those singing fish, and not only that—they had the incredible audacity (or should we say, incredible brilliance) to also give it the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger…
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Prompt Engineering is Complicated and Contingent ↗
Interesting paper from Ethan Mollick (Wharton) - the insights into their prompting strategies are fascinating:
It is hard to know in advance whether a particular prompting approach will help or harm the LLM's ability to answer any particular question. Specifically, we find that sometimes being polite to the LLM helps performance, and sometimes it lowers performance. We also find that constraining the AI’s answers helps performance in some cases, though it may lower performance in other cases.
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Where Are All the Self-Directed Learners? ↗
Remember the promise of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses)?
We are 25 years into the MOOC era. We have near unlimited access to the world’s best teachers on YouTube, and yet our education system isn’t producing independent thinkers. How is this possible?
In this account from an Indian company about their experience hiring people – and their struggles finding qualified personnel (the company is in the learning space nonetheless) – it provides both a fascinating look at the job/applicant market and the struggles with new approaches to learning.
What We Are Reading
🤝 Beyond Efficiency: Rethinking What Tasks Really Matter in the Age of AI In our haste to automate workplace tasks, we risk eliminating the essential human interactions that drive collaboration, trust, and organizational success—connections that AI cannot meaningfully replace. @Jane
❤️ Looking for a Sense of Purpose? Volunteer. Even while having a job you love, good health, and a family you are grateful for, you might find yourself looking for a sense of purpose. Volunteering somewhere can do the trick. @Mafe
🤖 Here’s How Gen Z and Gen Alpha Are Actually Using ChatGPT in Schools Just as it is in the workforce, adoption of Gen AI tools among students is rising, but the usage is more varied than you might think and undertaken with misgivings about potential tradeoffs. @Jeffrey
🌿 The Nicest Swamp on the Internet An interesting profiling of Reddit and the many versions of itself that have existed. While Reddit has been many things beyond the initial idea (not all great), it is now widely appreciated for being niche and expansive at the same time. @Julian
🎢 What the Dot-Com Bust Can Tell Us About Today's AI Boom Many parallels can be made between the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s and the hype around AI; "good bubbles" often fuel the rapid adoption of revolutionary technology, as the dot-com bubble did for the internet, while "bad bubbles" involve speculation. AI seems to be part of a "good bubble," but many will face difficulties and a long learning curve. @Pedro
🌀 Next-Level' Chaos Traces the True Limit of Predictability A fascinating deep dive into the world of mathematics and physics and the (now proven) fact that our world is decidedly undecided. @Pascal
Some Fun Stuff
🌦️ A new study finds that UK social media users' language changes with the weather - people express emotions differently based on temperature, wind, and rain.
🐟 Someone totally out of their mind just put AI in one of those singing fish, and not only that—they had the incredible audacity (or should we say, incredible brilliance) to also give it the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger…
🐭 Not quite the wholly mammoth, but getting closer: “Wooly mice” a test run for mammoth gene editing.