I wrote a post nearly four years ago titled Brief Q&A on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which has held up pretty well. Despite a lot of progress in specific domains since then there is no obvious sign that AGI is around the corner, although as the post points out, the jump to AGI could be very nonlinear. The Turing test is of course a well known proposal establishing that a machine has reached a level of general intelligence (and fans of Blade Runner may think of the fictional Voight-...

I wrote a post nearly four years ago titled Brief Q&A on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which has held up pretty well. Despite a lot of progress in specific domains since then there is no obvious sign that AGI is around the corner, although as the post points out, the jump to AGI could be very nonlinear. The Turing test is of course a well known proposal establishing that a machine has reached a level of general intelligence (and fans of Blade Runner may think of the fictional Voight-...

Yesterday evening in the Democratic Debates Andrew Yang made a key observation in his closing remarks: the debates and their coverage are a reality show, which is exactly how we wound up with a reality show president last time. From the format, to the phrasing of questions to the decisions how much airtime to give to candidates that’s exactly what it happening again. Thankfully we have the internet to get out messages. So if you care about policies that are not left or right but forward into ...

Yesterday evening in the Democratic Debates Andrew Yang made a key observation in his closing remarks: the debates and their coverage are a reality show, which is exactly how we wound up with a reality show president last time. From the format, to the phrasing of questions to the decisions how much airtime to give to candidates that’s exactly what it happening again. Thankfully we have the internet to get out messages. So if you care about policies that are not left or right but forward into ...

Earlier this morning, I marked some 65,000 emails as read. Many of these are various kind of junk, but I am sure they contain some gems of opportunity and some important asks for help. They definitely include some instances where I reached out to someone and then never got back to their reply – for those: I am sorry! I have long ago given up trying to read, never mind reply to, every email as it is simply impossible to get any work done (or have any time to think) if I let my inbox dictate my...

Earlier this morning, I marked some 65,000 emails as read. Many of these are various kind of junk, but I am sure they contain some gems of opportunity and some important asks for help. They definitely include some instances where I reached out to someone and then never got back to their reply – for those: I am sorry! I have long ago given up trying to read, never mind reply to, every email as it is simply impossible to get any work done (or have any time to think) if I let my inbox dictate my...

This is the third post in a series on the climate crisis. Post 1 declares the crisis. Post 2 is about the rising youth movement. Today’s post is about what to do next. The first and most urgent step everyone can take is to answer the call of the young people by joining the global climate strike on September 20th. Head over to globalclimatestrike.net now and register! The purpose of the strike is threefold: first to support the youth movement, second to wake up as many adults as possible and t...

This is the third post in a series on the climate crisis. Post 1 declares the crisis. Post 2 is about the rising youth movement. Today’s post is about what to do next. The first and most urgent step everyone can take is to answer the call of the young people by joining the global climate strike on September 20th. Head over to globalclimatestrike.net now and register! The purpose of the strike is threefold: first to support the youth movement, second to wake up as many adults as possible and t...

Here is a talk which I gave at the Rise of AI conference in Berlin earlier this year on the topic of Artificial Intelligence and the allocation of attention. It explicitly links what is happening online to the climate crisis.

Here is a talk which I gave at the Rise of AI conference in Berlin earlier this year on the topic of Artificial Intelligence and the allocation of attention. It explicitly links what is happening online to the climate crisis.

I no longer say “climate change” – instead I now call it what it is, the “climate crisis.” If you don’t think it is a crisis, I recommend the following readings. http://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf https://www.pnas.org/content/115/33/8252 Both papers – in very different ways – make the same argument: we are on a runaway trajectory now. We are already in a crisis that renders nearly everything else a rounding error. If left unchecked, the climate crisis will rapidly destroy the underpi...

I no longer say “climate change” – instead I now call it what it is, the “climate crisis.” If you don’t think it is a crisis, I recommend the following readings. http://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf https://www.pnas.org/content/115/33/8252 Both papers – in very different ways – make the same argument: we are on a runaway trajectory now. We are already in a crisis that renders nearly everything else a rounding error. If left unchecked, the climate crisis will rapidly destroy the underpi...

I know several wonderful people involved with the process of creating new emoji and occasionally see them celebrating an addition. I understand the motivation for representing more people, such as the recent addition of interskintone couples. And yet, each time I cringe a bit – not about the specifics, but about emoji generally. Written languages based on alphabets are one of the great human accomplishments. They mark an extraordinary progress over the hieroglyphs which preceded them. Alphabe...

I know several wonderful people involved with the process of creating new emoji and occasionally see them celebrating an addition. I understand the motivation for representing more people, such as the recent addition of interskintone couples. And yet, each time I cringe a bit – not about the specifics, but about emoji generally. Written languages based on alphabets are one of the great human accomplishments. They mark an extraordinary progress over the hieroglyphs which preceded them. Alphabe...

So far my climate crisis posts have been about declaring an actual emergency, the encouraging youth movement and joining the global climate strike on September 20th. Now I want to turn to the question of what to do. Today’s post sets out four basic principles. First, the “what” itself is quite simple: we have to emit dramatically fewer greenhouse gases going forward and we have to recapture a lot of our past emissions from the atmosphere. In other words, the good news is we know what we need ...

So far my climate crisis posts have been about declaring an actual emergency, the encouraging youth movement and joining the global climate strike on September 20th. Now I want to turn to the question of what to do. Today’s post sets out four basic principles. First, the “what” itself is quite simple: we have to emit dramatically fewer greenhouse gases going forward and we have to recapture a lot of our past emissions from the atmosphere. In other words, the good news is we know what we need ...

This post is the second part in a series on the climate crisis (Part 1). Earlier this year I gave a talk titled Reasons for Optimism. In it I refer to the Fridays for Future movement started by the amazing Greta Thunberg as giving me hope. It is not just hope though, but also a call to action. Here are our children taking us rightly to task over our failure to stop something that has been known as a problem for a long time. How long? The first research that industrial activity may result in g...

This post is the second part in a series on the climate crisis (Part 1). Earlier this year I gave a talk titled Reasons for Optimism. In it I refer to the Fridays for Future movement started by the amazing Greta Thunberg as giving me hope. It is not just hope though, but also a call to action. Here are our children taking us rightly to task over our failure to stop something that has been known as a problem for a long time. How long? The first research that industrial activity may result in g...

A recent series of tweets about identifying 10x software engineers set off a lot of making fun of the author for perpetuating a myth. Given the wording of the tweets too they made a particularly easy target (I can’t actually find them right now or I would link to them). All that poking fun though obscures some interesting questions about individual and team productivity in software engineering. Before getting to software though I want to point to a related interesting phenomenon. Just three p...

A recent series of tweets about identifying 10x software engineers set off a lot of making fun of the author for perpetuating a myth. Given the wording of the tweets too they made a particularly easy target (I can’t actually find them right now or I would link to them). All that poking fun though obscures some interesting questions about individual and team productivity in software engineering. Before getting to software though I want to point to a related interesting phenomenon. Just three p...