Solar Surges, AI Fumbles, and the New World Order: Your Tech Lowdown
All the (tech) news you need (and maybe didn’t know you wanted) to end your week and gear up for the weekend.
Happy Friday, everybody!
Jeffrey and I were traveling internationally for clients this week—while Jeffrey enjoyed some incredible Brazilian coffee straight from the source (or close to it), I ate some stroopwafels in Amsterdam. Working with a client in the media industry, I was constantly reminded of how much change this industry has already witnessed in the last two decades and what an insane amount of change is yet to come. More than two decades ago, while working at eBay, our (admittedly tongue-in-cheek) mantra was “change is good; we embrace change.” Given what’s going on in the world (of tech and at large), it looks like it is high time to start chanting our old mantra.
Talking about change—this weekend’s edition of the Briefing is, of course, full of it!
Have a beautiful day!
P ツ
The Thin Wisps of Tomorrow
Solar Will Get (Even) Cheaper — Ever wondered what happened to the rapidly declining costs of solar and why you still don’t have free energy (and maybe why that all even matters)? Tomas Pueyo breaks this all down in a fantastic blog post—including some predictions of where solar will go. The tl;dr (“too long; didn’t read”): Solar costs will drop by another 8x before gains slow down. (link ↗) Relatedly, the US is clearing huge amounts of land for solar, closing the gap between its solar deployment and archrival China. (link ↗)
The New World Order — A recent study by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute shows that China is leading in most technology research areas the institute is tracking. If there ever was a question of China’s ambition and its prowess in achieving them, it’s safe to say China is steamrolling its way to world domination (which, needless to say, will have far-reaching implications not only for its main rival, the US, but for the world at large). (link ↗)
AI Still Has a Long Way to Go — Australia’s corporate regulator wanted to know how good GenAI is at summarizing documents, and thus how much work it would actually save its taxed employees. It turns out, AI is neither particularly good at summarizing nor does it save work (at least for now): “AI summaries often missed emphasis, nuance, and context; included incorrect information or missed relevant information; and sometimes focused on auxiliary points or introduced irrelevant information.” Another reminder to suss out hype from reality. (link ↗)
AI Still Can’t Spell Properly – But Codes Increasingly Well — Talk about paradoxes. Despite OpenAI having a new model in testing that is codenamed “Strawberry,” many AI models are flummoxed by the (seemingly) simple task of spelling the word “Strawberry.” (The last time this made the rounds, it was AI stumbling over the word mayonnaise—which, admittedly, is hard to spell even for many humans). (link ↗) Meanwhile, AI’s abilities to code are rather impressive (and continue to get better). (link ↗) This paradox highlights what Wharton’s Ethan Mollick called “the jagged frontier”—AI is exceptionally good at some things and terrible at others. It is our job to figure out where those boundaries lie.
False Memories Abound — False memories, where people recall events that haven’t actually happened, are a somewhat common problem in crime cases. Now researchers have found that AI can, in fact, implant false memories in people’s minds. Another eerie case of “what could possibly go wrong?” (link ↗) and (link ↗)
Talking About Security — If I were to redo my career, I likely would have gone into cybersecurity. The once somewhat obscure and admittedly geeky corner of the tech industry is becoming not only more and more important for the continued well-being of our economies and societies but also (of course) bigger and bigger. The latest points in case: AI is growing faster than companies are able to secure it. (link ↗) Meanwhile, critical infrastructure (think: your local power plant) was exposed to 13 cyber attacks per second (!). (link ↗) The simple prediction here is: Watch (or build/invest in) this space.
What We Are Reading
🔄 Is Your Organizational Transformation Veering Off Course? Nearly all transformation efforts face challenges that can derail the whole program. New research suggests changes in a team’s emotional energy often signal that there’s an issue. As leaders, we should pay more attention! @Jane
🌽 Sweaty Corn Is Making It Even More Humid You’re not just feeling hot because of heat waves; you can also blame crops. Crops do evapotranspiration, which means they pull a bunch of moisture from the soil and then release whatever they don’t need as vapor into the air, causing more humidity. @Mafe
🏗️ Biden Did Stuff, And It Looks Like It’s Working So Far A long read on the impacts of a renewed focus on industrial policy as more countries are looking to shape their futures in strategic industries. US focus, but lots of relevance here. @Jeffrey
🚫 Dutch DPA Imposes A Fine Of 290 Million Euro On Uber Because Of Transfers Of Drivers’ Data To The USUber is being fined 290 million euros for the transfer of European driver data to US servers. This case illustrates how the good intentions of the GDPR continue to present significant challenges and require close attention and detailed handling by multinational organizations regarding their global data infrastructure. @Julian
🌍 Mark Zuckerberg And Daniel Ek On Why Europe Should Embrace Open-Source AI Mark Zuckerberg and Daniel Ek argue that Europe’s fragmented and complex regulatory landscape is stifling the growth and adoption of open-source AI. @Pedro
📉 Sunk Cost The incredible account of how NFT darling OpenSea fell from grace. Their masterpiece? Keeping all their investments in Ether (the cryptocurrency), which led OpenSea to lose all of it when Ether crashed in 2022. @Pascal
The Fun Stuff
📼 Are you old enough to remember cassette tapes? If so, you might also remember that tapes came in all kinds of crazy designs. And, of course, there is a website archiving those. (link ↗)
🌓 Talking about age—replay the Apollo 11 lunar landing, nail-biting minute by minute on this interactive website. (link ↗)