Hi, y’all! This week’s newsletter includes some thoughts on a dichotomy of human-machine relations. In the roundup of the news, we have new AI battles, personal agents, and sweet city scanning. There are also some events to attend or track.
Triggered thoughts
On the IPO of Reddit and the role it plays as the last big player from the old web, where humans are making relevancy and not machines, as nicely sketched out in the latest Hardfork podcast: the Google-optimised world vs. the Reddit-optimised world.
Are we indeed in a dichotomy? Are we slightly taking the route to the machine-driven lens of reality, or is there a third route that runs in harmony with both? Will the human part be about mastering the digital one, or will it be the only option to switch it on and off?
Relate it to the narrative of Dune. I did not read all the books, but I listened to a very nice conversation by Tech Won’t Save us talking about the societal links between Dune and current reality. Of course, the way religion drives the decisions of the Freemen in the South, but I found a side note interesting, something that is not in the movies. Dune is set in the year 10000s, far away in the future, and it is not ruled by intelligence like, for instance, from the same time of creation, the future of Space Odyssey 2001 was. In the story of Dune, the world has actively switched off AI, as it became uncontrollable. Will we be in that pivotal moment somewhere in this century or even decades?
“Are we creating a place where people still have interesting conversations?”, Casey Newton in Hard Fork
Read the notions of the news, paper for this week and events to track, via the newsletter. You can also subscribe for weekly updates on Tuesday 7 am CEST.
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