Bianca Bosker – Get the picture
The characters are carefully positioned as archetypes that are painfully accurate.
Military theory always seems to be focused on solving the challenges from the previous war
David Patraeus and Andrew Roberts – Conflict
Somehow, in the world of Mr. Patraeus, all people who agree with the general are the most capable, intelligent and respected leaders to ever walk the earth while the French are never any good.
The ideas that were seriously considered in covert operations and military plots shew a new light on the term ‘Intelligence’
Vince Houghton – Nuking the moon
The overly jolly style of writing can be a bit tiresome, but one cannot help to be fascinated by the outlandish stories..
The West has for a long time under-estimated the tenacity of Russian covert operations
Gordon Corera – Russians among us
The connection between ‘illegals’ and digital information warfare seems mostly motivated by the author’s (or publisher’s) desire to give the book more relevance, rather than the coherence of the narrative.
The populist far-right has been able to gain ground due to the failure of progressives to address underlying concerns across broad strands of the population
Rhetorically strong, with well chosen observations spun into a seductive narrative that is designed to give hope.
The ruthless pursuit of profit optimization has killed the soul of the American supermarket
Benjamin Lorr – The secret life of groceries
Narrated with bravado, the book conjures the nostalgic image of a 1950s store and skillfully contrasts it with the current state of the industry.
AI commitments and gaps
U.S. president Bidenś recently announced AI commitments agreed by US government with Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI.
Fun fact: Meta unleashed its Llama2 (even though there are questions on its openness) just before committing to protecting proprietary and unreleased model weights.
In any case; the USA has a totally different approach from the EU with their AI Act. These commitments provide a great opportunity to do an early check on how self-regulation in AI could shape-up.
There are three observations that stand out.
Vagueness
It has already been observed that most of said ‘commitments’ made by big tech are vague, generally non-committal, or confirmation of current practices.
Considering the success of the EU in getting big tech to change (e.g. GDPR, USB-C) I am convinced that in tech, strong legislation does not stifle creativity and innovation; but fuels it.
Data void
There are also notable omissions. The one that sticks out for me is the lack of commitment with respect to training data. And that at a moment that legal cases over data theft and copyright infringement are popping up in various places. In that context, Getty Images hopes that training on licensed content will become a thing.
Admittedly, discussions on data ownership are super interesting. But full clarity on the data going into foundational models (and the policies around it) would also sharpen the extent to which data biases may put model fairness and ethics at risk.
Content validation
By far the most interesting commitment is around identification of AI-generated content:
“The companies commit to developing robust technical mechanisms to ensure that users know when content is AI generated, such as a watermarking system“
Considering the expected amount of generated content, I expect not watermarking of AI-generated content (the vast majority of future data volumes) will be problematic.
And it also addresses the problem from the wrong side. In the future, the question will not be “What is fake?”, but rather “What is real?”
This points in the direction of watermarking of human-produced content to be the way forward. Think of an NFT for every photo you make with your smartphone of digital camera. I didn´t hear Apple, Samsung, or Nikon about this yet. But I wouldn´t be surprised if we see announcements in the near future.
To counter the Big Evil of the New York Times you should put the truth on the blockchain ledger and solve world politics through technology
Balaji Srinivasan – The Network state
Some fair nuggets of socio-economical diagnosis mixed with personal pet-peeves and drained in a techno-utopian rant.
Contrarian thinking is a powerful weapon, if combined with genuine curiosity and a deep respect for facts and data
Richard Feyneman – Surely you’re joking Mr. Feynman
Not all anecdotes have aged well but there are enough gems to make the book worthwhile.
Structural shifts in energy production and usage (especially shale oil and EVs) have fundamentally affected the global power balance
The ‘it is all about oil’ narrative of international politics over the last 20 years made explicit is a comprehensive yet digestible form.
Since the invention of the micro processor, chip production has become of imminent strategic importance for both the USA and other geopolitical power blocks
Nice historical overview, very topical in an era where technology significantly affects the Ukraine war and the power play between the USA and China around Taiwan.
Protective parenting and the quest for emotional safety hurt the mental resilience of gen Z
Greg Lukianov and Jonathan Haidt – The coddling of the American mind
The writers provide valuable life lessons for individuals, but (unfortunately) do not discuss the broader societal function of protest movements.
Polls are certainly not perfect, but they are much less bad than public opinion suggests
G. Elloitt Morris – Strength in Numbers
The explanation of combining online and offline methods is insightful, though somewhat superficial
Aging populations and the breakdown of global trade make that very bad things are going to happen all over the world, but less so in the USA
Peter Zeihan – The end of the world is just the beginning
Highly entertaining read with a lot of black humor, but incomplete in its analysis (e.g. of risk of internal conflicts in the USA and likelihood of collaboration between states in Europe).
Politicians need not believe in conspiricy theories to spread them
Russel Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum – A lot of people are saying
January 2020: The book spells out the scary power of herd mentality in a post-truth world (indebted to Harry Frankfurt and Fernbach and Sloman).
March 2022: In the perspective of this book, it is curious to see how far Putin can stretch his narrative on the Ukraine invasionfor his domestic audience.
Anything, from a generic concept to a highly personal experience, can be rated on a five-star scale
John Green – The anthropocene reviewed
Although the book is charming at times, reviewing an era through the personal experiences of one arbitrary writer in the early 21st century is a lost cause right from the start.
From Anime to the Karaoke machine and the Gameboy, Japanese design has had an outsized influence on pop culture
Highly entertaining book, providing entertaining facts and refreshing perspectives.
The US postal service is a success story of the benefits of public funding
Winifred Gallagher – How the post office created America
In theory a fascinating topic, but in practice a boring read; as I should have expected because the Post leveraged rather than drove innovation.
A start-up in retail should resolve significant friction in the value chain and/or the consumers’ lives
Christiane Lemieux and Duff McDonald – Frictionless
Story on repeat: X had a frustration, X is so privileged that she can raise at least a couple of $100k from friends and family, and X starts an amazing company to solve the problem – at least in theory – for herself and the rest of the world.
China’s debt-fueled economic growth cannot continue in the same way
Dinny McMahon – China’s great wall of debt
October 2021: Apparently, the financial troubles of Evergrande are the first cracks in the wall.
July 2019: Interesting perspective on China’s impressive rise over the past years, providing more context to the recent trade war with the US and contrasting the view of Kai-Fu Lee.