Tyler Cowen: “AI will know almost all of the academic literature, and will be better at modeling and solving most of the quantitative problems. It will be better at specifying the model and running through the actual statistical exercises. Humans likely will oversee these functions, but most of that will consist of nodding, or trying out some different prompts. The humans will gather the data. They will do the lab work, or approach the companies (or the IRS?) to access new data. They will be the ones who pledge confidentiality and negotiate terms of data access. (Though an LLM might write the contract.) They will know someone, somewhere, using a telescope to track a particular quasar. They may (or may not) know that the AI’s suggestion to sample the blood of a different kind of gila monster is worth pursuing. They will decide whether we should be filming dolphins or whales, so that we may talk to them using LLMs, though they will ask the LLMs for cost estimates in each case…On any given day, on the quest for more data, a scientist will have to think quite creatively about what he or she should be doing.”
FT: “We need to rethink which “A” we are using in “AI” today. Yes, machine learning systems are “artificial”. However, bots are not always — or not usually — replacing our human brains, as an alternative to flesh-and-blood cognition. Instead, they usually enable us to operate faster and move more effectively through tasks. Shopping is just one case in point. So perhaps we should reframe AI as “augmented” or “accelerated” intelligence — or else “agentic” intelligence, to use the buzzword for what a recent Nvidia blog calls the “next frontier” of AI. This refers to bots that can act as autonomous agents, performing tasks for humans at their command. It will be a key theme in 2025. Or as Google declared when it recently unveiled its latest Gemini AI model: “The agentic era of AI is here.””
Telegraph UK: “Prof Hinton predicted AI would change ordinary people’s lives dramatically, just as the Industrial Revolution did, as documented by Charles Dickens. He said what the future held for life with the technology would “depend very much on what our political systems do with this technology”. “My worry is that even though it will cause huge increases in productivity, which should be good for society, it may end up being very bad for society if all the benefit goes to the rich and a lot of people lose their jobs and become poorer,” he added. “These things are more intelligent than us. So there was never any chance in the Industrial Revolution that machines would take over from people just because they were stronger. “We were still in control because we had the intelligence. Now, there’s a threat that these things can take control, so that’s one big difference.”
The Guardian: “I spent a week doing everything that I could – working, exercising, composing – on my virtual reality headset. This was the year virtual reality threatened to go mainstream, with prices becoming more attainable and Apple entering the market, and so I wanted to see how far VR has come since I first tried it in the mid-2010s, when the main experiences on offer were nausea-inducing rollercoaster simulators. I used a recent model from Meta, called the Quest 3, and the conclusion was clear: this thing now works. It feels a little unfinished, but we’ve reached the point where VR could at last become genuinely useful. The biggest surprise was working in VR. I cannot recommend this highly enough. Donning a headset, you can summon multiple screens, all connected to your computer, make them as large as you want, and place them anywhere in your environment. “Passthrough” – the ability to see digital objects superimposed on the real world, made possible with cameras built into the front of the headset – means you can carve out a window from the virtual environment to see your keyboard. And you can choose between any number of environments to work in, from minimalist cafes to mountain lodges, switching between them at will. I’ve rapidly got to the stage where, if I’m working on my own, I’d rather work in virtual reality than in reality.”
