Hugo Bowne-Anderson and John Berryman: “The first sin is building an AI product with the expectation that it must be 100% accurate, especially in high-stakes domains like legal or medical documentation. This mindset treats a probabilistic system like deterministic software, a mismatch that leads to unworkable project requirements and potential liability issues…[The second sin] involves giving an agent a large, complex, closed-form task and expecting a perfect result without supervision. Due to the ambiguity of language and current model limitations, the agent will likely deliver something that technically satisfies the request but violates the user’s implicit assumptions. This is particularly ineffective for tasks with a specific required solution, though it can be useful for open-ended research.”
Patrick Collison: “I’ve been reflecting on just how much the pandemic changed the world in ways that are completely unrelated to the pandemic itself. I think I’ve underestimated it ‘till now…College professors almost uniformly describe big changes in student behavior: lecture attendance and willingness of students to complete reading assignments are both way down…Lots of the changes are neutral, or even good. Retail participation in the US stock market almost doubled overnight, say, and has persisted at that elevated rate. Firm creation in the US increased by around 50%, which is probably a very good thing.” [via Arnold Kling]
Janan Ganesh: “Capitalism has raised expectations that are then dashed in almost every interaction with the state. The problem is not bad government (it could be better, but realistically only up to a point) so much as a miraculous private sector. Consumer life has rewired people, sensitising them to inconvenience… Don’t misread this column as second thoughts about capitalism. More stuff for more people, would be my campaign slogan if I ever (accept the ceaseless demands to) run for high office. It is just that part of life is reckoning with the perverse consequences of mostly good things. One answer to populism, of which Tony Blair is the most fluent champion, is to improve government. It is a noble and feasible plan, if also a case of looking through a telescope from entirely the wrong end.”
WSJ: “The idea for a no-testing, whatever-it-takes, free-for-all version of the Olympics has an extensive history. For as long as performance enhancement has been around, there have been thought exercises and barroom debates that ask, what if athletes could just take everything? How fast would humans run? How high might they jump? How many home runs could they crush? The philosophical arguments against it, meanwhile, have centered on sporting integrity—the idea that performance should be generated through sweat, focus, and skill, unassisted by potentially dangerous chemicals. But the Enhanced Games have a different read on what constitutes a level playing field. They are taking taboos and turning them into hacks. Technological advantages, such as ultra-buoyant swimsuits, are encouraged. And the unapologetic use of performance-enhancing drugs is a given, tapping into the larger, often controversial movement that is challenging the rules on what we eat, how we age, and what our bodies need.”
