USA – dr.Pep

It is the oil, stupid

Thorough analysis of how geopolitics, economy and policy of Europe are highly dependent on fossil fuels from the Middle East.

Characterizing fascism as a strategy rather than as an ideology makes identifying it in contemporary politics come across as less controversial

Rosan Smits – Dit is fascisme (NL)

Even if it does not undermine most of the author’s argument, it is worth noting that the characterization of fascism as a strategy is contested.

In a polarized, post-truth US political landscape, the special prosecutor system for investigating presidents urgently needs an overhaul.

Elie Honig – When you come at the king

Refreshing in the way the author separates their legal perspectives from political preferences in an increasingly partisan landscape.

Over the past decades Apple and the Chinese tech industry grew in co-dependence, but in recent years the balance of power has been shifting towards China.

Patrick McGee – Apple in China

The hardware-centric perspective sets the book apart from other accounts.

As trusted deputy of FDR, Harry Hopkins had a major impact on the way in which WWII unfolded

Geert Mak – Wisselwachter (in Dutch)

The author is skilled in blending the arc of history with the personal narrative of the actors shaping it, but could have been a bit more strict in curating the stories he included.

Trying to bring innovation to an organization that relishes traditions inevitably leads to an intense political battles

Raj Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff – Unit X

However hard the authors try, it is hard to make the political machinations sound exciting.

Jensen Huang has a ruthless determination and an autonomous and far-sighted vision, both of which proved justified if measured by NVIDIA’s valuation.

Stephen Witt – The thinking machine

When reading a biography that is too current: remember to skip the final chapter, because it will be inevitably speculative and outdated.

Even though the art world is hermetic, myopic, elitist, and irrational there is still inherent value in art itself (whatever the definition of art is)

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

Nioma Klein – Doppelganger

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

Deep dream generator: “Post-apocalyptical playground at which kids make their own rules.”

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

Daniel Yergin – The new map

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

Chris Miller – Chip war

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.