The radical weekend: From AI Models to Social Media Bans
All this, our favorite reads and lots of links to follow—your radical Weekend begins now…
Dear Friend,
After the deluge of information, opinion, and noise these last weeks (and months), let me keep it short: Now, possibly more than ever, it is high time to look at the signals shaping our world—and then going to build the world we want to live in.
Time for your weekly Briefing.
Have a fantastic weekend!
P ツ
The Thin Wisps of Tomorrow
The Death of the Fashion Model — We have been talking about this for a long time here at be radical. Miquela Sousa (“Lil Miquela”) is our star. And now she and her fellow synthetic humans are (finally) coming for fashion models. In the industry, it pays if you don’t age, always have perfect skin, and never complain about a photoshoot. Roll over Claudia, time for the robots to rule.
Social Uprising Against Social Media — Without a doubt, social media and its impact on kids is one of the hottest discussion topics out there. From the looming TikTok ban in the US (and Canada just shutting down TikTok’s operations in the country), to Meta’s continued efforts to tell people (and lawmakers) that there is no connection between their products and teen mental health issues, the topic is everywhere. Now, Australia might be the first country to enact a law preventing teens from using social media until the age of 16. Is social media becoming the new smoking?
The AI Revolution Retold — In case you are scratching your head a bit on how we got so fast to where we are at in terms of large language models and generative AI, here is a good summary of the (young) history of the deep learning boom.
Headlines from the Future
🚸 Sign of the times: Is there now a generation of users who never worked with files?
👔 AI Bias is real: AI overwhelmingly prefers white and male job candidates in new test of resume-screening bias.
📦 One way to deal with the truck driver shortage: Japan plans automated cargo transport system to relieve shortage of drivers and cut emissions.
🛜 Admittedly nerdy, but fascinating nonetheless: Speed, scale and reliability: 25 years of Google data-center networking evolution.
📊 Pretty cool and useful: (Google’s) Data Commons aggregates and harmonizes global, open data, giving everyone the power to uncover insights with natural language questions.
😱 98% of companies experienced ML project failures in 2023, with poor data cleansing and lackluster cost-performance the primary causes: 2024 State of Big Data Analytics
🩸 Theranos, but for real: Scientists Develop Fast, Affordable Cancer Test From a Single Drop of Blood.
📋 Wondering what the state of the world is when it comes to innovation? Wonder no more: Global Innovation Index 2024.
🛰️ Satellites, meet nature: World’s first wooden satellite launched into space.
What We Are Reading
🌍 When The World Is Too Distracting — And It Feels Impossible To Work These days, uncertainty in the world feels ever-present. Check out this curated collection of resources designed to help manage personal, team, and organizational responses to external crises. @Jane
🚁 Amazon Begins Delivering Select Products Via Drone In Phoenix After ending its drone-based delivery program in California, customers in Phoenix can now get air deliveries of over 50,000 products weighing five pounds or less in under an hour! How urgent can that stapler or lipstick be? @Mafe
⚙️ Could Steampunk Save Us? The lessons of a sci-fi subgenre can help us anticipate—and better navigate—a future where technology is rarely quite as miraculous as promised and might always merit a bit of healthy skepticism and human oversight. @Jeffrey
☕ Somewhere Amid The Frappuccinos, Fans Say Starbucks Lost Something With evolutionary process improvements, Starbucks is trying to advance its reinvention. While one path can be a return to the original identity, pandemic-induced digital customer interactions describe the opposing path. @Julian
🤖 Interactive AI Interviews Are Going To Become A New Norm, Expert Says: It’s ‘here, It’s Real, It’s Incorporated’ If you find yourself applying for jobs, you may encounter an increase in AI for candidate pre-screening processes. Chipotle, for example, introduced “Ava Cado”, their AI recruiter who will help hiring managers schedule interviews, collect information, and answer questions about the company. @Pedro
🌀 The Cult Of Microsoft Take a pseudo-scientific concept such as the “Growth Mindset”, combine it with an over-eager CEO, and you get a very, very weird cult-like work environment. @Pascal
The Fun Stuff
🐒 An age-old question, finally answered: Universe would die before monkey with keyboard writes Shakespeare, study finds.
🎮 Ever wanted to play Pac-Man by using just your head to control the little guy? Now you can!
🎲 Just when you thought it doesn’t get any worse, someone invents a 34x34x34 Rubik’s Cube.
🌔 An age-old question, finally answered: What if everyone pointed a laser at the moon?