Sean Illing of The Gray Area interviews Yuval Noah Harari…If the internet age has anything like an ideology, it’s that more information and more data and more openness will create a better world. The reality is more complicated. It has never been easier to know more about The world than it is right now, and it has never been easier to share that knowledge than it is right now. But I don’t think you can look at the state of things and conclude that this has been a victory for truth and wisdom. What are we to make of that? More information might not be the solution, but neither is more ignorance.
Scaling: The state of play in AI
by Ethan Mollick in One Useful Thing…With continued advancements in model architecture and training techniques, we’re approaching a new frontier in AI capabilities. The independent AI agents that tech companies have long promised are likely just around the corner. These systems will be able to handle complex tasks with minimal human oversight, with wide-ranging implications. As the pace of AI development seems more certain to accelerate, we need to prepare for both the opportunities and challenges ahead.
Superbugs ‘could kill 39m people by 2050’ amid rising drug resistance
by Kat Lay in The Guardian…Child deaths from infections see ‘remarkable’ decline but AMR fatalities of over-70s likely to rise by 146%, study finds
Analysis: Drug-resistant infections are on the rise – so why aren’t we getting any new antibiotics?
A few rules for predicting the future by Octavia E. Butler
by Octavia E. Butler in Common Good Collective…So why try to predict the future at all if it’s so difficult, so nearly impossible? Because making predictions is one way to give warning when we see ourselves drifting in dangerous directions. Because prediction is a useful way of pointing out safer, wiser courses. Because, most of all, our tomorrow is the child of our today. Through thought and deed, we exert a great deal of influence over this child, even though we can’t control it absolutely. Best to think about it, though. Best to try to shape it into something good. Best to do that for any child.
The U.S. needs to pay more attention to electronic warfare
by Steven Glinert in Noahpinion…Electronic warfare (EW) is a bit of a sleeper in the US arsenal. The US invented its modern form and has used it to great effect in every war we’ve fought, especially since 1990. Indeed, if you want to know what the literal “war” in “chip wars” is, it’s this. The US spends about as much on it as its much cooler and flashier younger sibling, cyberwarfare (around $5b) and spending is due to increase. Likewise, the Chinese think of it as essential to their victory in a potential war against the US. Finally, it has become a defining aspect of the war in Ukraine, with Russian and Ukrainian forces playing a cat and mouse game between drones and electronic attacks.
The short history of global living conditions and why it matters that we know it
by Max Roser in Our World in Data…Very few think the world is making progress. In this article, we look at the history of global living conditions and show that the world has made immense progress in important aspects.
More in this category
‘Never summon a power you can’t control’: Yuval Noah Harari on how AI could threaten democracy and divide the world
by Yuval Noah Harari in The Guardian… Forget Hollywood depictions of gun-toting robots running wild in the streets – the reality of artificial intelligence is far more dangerous, warns the historian and author in an exclusive extract from his new book
Apple Intelligence is coming. Here’s what it means for your iPhone
by Kate O’Flaherty in The Guardian…Apple is about to launch a ChatGPT-powered version of Siri as part of a suite of AI features in iOS 18. Will this change the way you use your phone – and how does it affect your privacy?
Global Displacement Forecast 2024
Danish Refugee Council writes in Global Displacement Forecast 2024…The fighting that has torn across Sudan since 15 April 2023 has turned the country into one of the
world’s largest displacement and protection crises, and one of the most dangerous environments for
humanitarians to operate in. The stage has been set for a long war.
Eric Schmidt’s AI prophecy: The next two years will shock you
by Azeem Azhar in Exponential View…While he doesn’t say it explicitly, it seems that Eric expects the next two years to be faster and more turbulent than the previous two.
Selling American bombs
by Tim Barker and Dylan Saba in Phenomenal world.com…An interview with Sarah Harrison on the mechanics of US foreign military sales
The wide boundary impacts of AI with Daniel Schmachtenberger
by Nate Hagens in The Great Simplification…Artificial intelligence has been advancing at a break-neck pace. Accompanying this is an almost frenzied optimism that AI will fix our most pressing global problems, particularly when it comes to the hype surrounding climate solutions.
Outage for Microsoft users knocks out systems for airlines and hospitals in chaotic day
by Adam Satariano, et al in The New York Times…Companies across the world reported disruptions, citing technical issues from a cybersecurity software update.
Chartbook 297: The American migration crisis.
by Adam Tooze in Chartbook….As the World Migration Report for 2024 confirms, the Mexico-US border is by some margin the largest single corridor of country-to-country migration in the world.
Ray Kurzweil still says he will merge with A.I.
by Cade Metz in The New York Times….The big leap, of course, is imagining how human consciousness would merge with a machine, and people like Mr. Kurzweil struggle to explain how exactly this would happen.
Canada’s big worry: A US civil war
by Alexander Burns in Politico…Justin Trudeau probably won’t ask Joe Biden if the U.S. is headed for a war between the states. But a report from within his government says it’s time for Canada to get ready.
Is AI lying to me? Scientists warn of growing capacity for deception
by Hannah Devlin in The Guardian….Researchers find instances of systems double-crossing opponents, bluffing, pretending to be human and modifying behaviour in tests
‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza
by Yuval Abraham in +972 Magazine…The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties, +972 and Local Call reveal.
A national security insider does the math on the dangers of AI
by Lauren Goode in Wired…..Jason Matheny, CEO of the influential think tank Rand Corporation, says advances in AI are making it easier to learn how to build biological weapons and other tools of destruction.
Chartbook 268: “How can we not know?”: CAR and the challenge of tracking a silent crisis.
By Adam Tooze in Chartbook 268…It was at a moment when many of us were discussing the polycrisis as a concept with which to grasp the current world. Was an explosion of child deaths the ultimate indicator of crisis?
Systemic wisdom for and beyond systems change – A critical systems perspective convening not only indigenous traditions of wisdom
by Louis Klein in EUSG.org…Systemic wisdom facilitates the re-entry of trust and love into science. And though this challenges the modern worldviews and the contemporary self-perception of sciences, it allows for translating knowing into understanding and knowledge into wisdom. We may lose the option of heroic systems change, yet we gain the possibility to realise a humanising society embedded in systemic wisdom.