FT: “There has been a lot of talk about how quickly — or not — artificial intelligence is going to replace humans in the workforce. Short version: the robots are learning fast but are not that smart yet. A lot less attention has been paid to where the impact of job displacement will eventually fall. Although the speed of the journey may be in doubt, the direction of travel is certain: AI will increasingly outperform humans in a widening range of cognitive tasks. And initial research suggests that this AI-driven automation may produce a geographic distribution of disruption unlike any seen before. It could well be that some of the beneficiaries of earlier waves of industrial automation, who have tended to be clustered in the richer east and west coast cities of the US, will be most exposed to the next big digital dislocation.”
Microsoft’s Christopher Bishop: “Scientific discovery is AI’s killer application…The thing that really excites me is the differences between a large language model (LLM) used to help other forms of knowledge work and the nature of science. When you think about scientific discovery, let’s imagine you’re a pharmaceuticals company and you’re trying to develop a drug to tackle a particular disease. You’ve got a protein that you’re trying to target, and . . . the space of organic molecules that you need to explore is about 10 to the power 60. It’s a gargantuan space, and you need to explore that space to find one or two molecules that will bind with the target; that can be absorbed into the body; metabolise correctly; they’re not toxic; they can be synthesised, and all the rest of it. So, you’re trying to find that needle in a haystack. That’s not done by one person in an afternoon. That’s a team of dozens or hundreds of people working for many years.”
NYTimes: “Twenty years ago, many Americans feared that the outsourcing of office jobs to lower-wage economies like India would mean fewer jobs in the United States. Many kinds of jobs have moved overseas since then, and many of those have since been automated. But the American economy needs more skilled workers. Now many American companies are finding those workers in India. As of 2024, there were about 1,800 offshore corporate offices in India, owned by hundreds of foreign-based multinational companies — most of them American. There are 1.9 million people in India working for foreign companies, with 600,000 to 900,000 more expected to join them by 2030. Together, the offshore business centers in India earned about $65 billion last year, more than the value of American imports to India. By 2030, they are expected to earn $100 billion or more. The business centers are springing up in other countries, too, like Mexico and Poland, but most are in India.”
Michael Chad Hoeppner on mumbling and rambling: “When are they so common? We are all capable of speaking with precision, and we are also capable of mumbling and rambling. The key distinction here is are we other-focused, or are we self-focused? When a kid runs in front of a bus, no one says, “Uh, there’s a … the … there’s a … there’s a … you know, a vehicular … incident about to … occur.” When we are other-focused, we reach for language instantly, we grab it, and we shout that language. In that moment, our focus is on the two places it should be: one, our audience—the kid—and two, the message we need to communicate. When we’re more self-focused, we begin to think all about our own performance. Then our communication crumbles, and we begin to mumble, ramble, or do other things. How do you deal with this? Approach it physically. In the book, there are a lot of exercises that rely on embodied cognition to change habits.”
