NYTimes: “Making A.I. agents more autonomous, giving them access to our personal data and embedding them inside every app we use has profound, head-spinning implications. Soon, if the predictions are right, A.I.s could get to know us on a deep level — perhaps, in some cases, better than we know ourselves — and will be able to perform complex actions with or without our oversight. If OpenAI is right, we may be transitioning to a world in which A.I.s are less our creative partners than silicon-based extensions of us — artificial satellite brains that can move throughout the world, gathering information and taking actions on our behalf.”
WSJ: “Forget universal basic income. In Musk’s world, he foresees something more lush, where most things will be abundant except unique pieces of art and real estate. “We won’t have universal basic income, we’ll have universal high income,” Musk said… “In some sense, it’ll be somewhat of a leveler or an equalizer because, really, I think everyone will have access to this magic genie.” All of which kind of sounds a lot like socialism—except it’s unclear who controls the resources in this Muskism society. A few years ago, Musk declared himself a socialist of sorts. “Just not the kind that shifts resources from most productive to least productive, pretending to do good, while actually causing harm,” he tweeted. “True socialism seeks greatest good for all.””
Scott Young: “Any software company, any technology company at this point is an AI company or they are trying to be an AI company. And even Main Street companies are pretty excited about what’s going on, but no one’s rolled anything out at scale at this point where they have really changed their customer-support operation. We’re clearly at a place where now we’ve got to translate the excitement and the interest level into true adoption…I’m less worried about that. I think about this quote from Bill Gates, that you always accomplish more than you think you will in 10 years and less than you think you will in one year. And I think it is hard to predict the time frame with which this will all play out. I think you have to take the long view. You can’t go quarter by quarter. My point of view is this is going to change how we live our lives, down to how you buy coffee in a coffee shop. I think it is going to be transformative and I think that is a long-arc problem now. What happens in year two or three in terms of the actual demand that comes through? I don’t think anybody knows exactly.”
FT: “Today, romance is the bestselling book genre in the US…It’s also one of the fastest growing, according to new data from the publishing industry tracker Circana. While fiction as a whole grew more popular during the pandemic as readers craved escapism, it was romance that led the charge. Sales of romance grew more than 50 per cent in the year up to May 2022, and 32 per cent in 2021…Perhaps because of the way they have been marginalised, romance readers are a loyal, tight-knit community. And they are an increasingly powerful one. Notable for deeply engaged online discussions, social media recommendations and annual conferences, this fan base has proved pivotal in pushing romantic fiction on to the main stage.”
