WSJ: “Rudolf Virchow, a 19th-century Prussian pathologist, considered organisms a kind of “cellular democracy,” a harmonious republic of cooperating cells. Wilhelm Roux, who studied under Virchow and later absorbed Charles Darwin’s influence, saw something darker: a “struggle of the parts,” with individual cells vying fiercely for resources and dominance. As Roxanne Khamsi explains in “Beyond Inheritance,” her accessible if disquieting study of our inconstant genomes, we are now, more than a century later, starting to appreciate the prescience—and wrestle with the consequences—of Roux’s unsettling vision. We begin our lives as single fertilized eggs, which repeatedly divide and sequentially specialize into the 30 trillion or so cells that make up the adult body. Each division requires duplication of the original DNA, a process that is high-fidelity but not perfect. Occasionally, small genetic changes—mutations—are picked up along the way. Many of these alterations are benign; some are not…Over time, the glitches in individual cells add up; a single white blood cell from a 100-year-old, we learn, typically contains more than 3,000 mutations.”
NYTimes: “A.I. has fueled a digital ad boom because the technology can instantly sift through large amounts of information. It is helping Google and Meta serve users more engaging content, which increases the number of ads the companies can display. It is collecting deeper insights into users’ interests, which improves the companies’ ability to target ads. And it is reducing advertising costs, which frees up money for bigger campaigns.”
FT: “AI companies and their models will follow one rule before all others: they will seek to maximise returns for their shareholders, up to the limits set by law. When the law of profit conflicts with the company’s internal principles, profit will win every time. This is not to be regretted. It is the outcome our system of corporate capitalism was intended to create. It has made us free and prosperous by encouraging risk-taking and creativity. And, in most cases, the profit motive and the common good line up beautifully. But as we leap into a new technological age, the old rules of capitalism still apply. Corporations only manage or pay for the economic externalities they create when they are forced to.”
Eben Shapiro: “Americans are on their phones all the time and send trillions of text messages every year. Why did we stop calling each other to just check in?”
