Catherine Shannon: “Everything is strange. We work from home. We socialize online. Our private lives are increasingly public. People pretend to be brands; brands pretend to be people. We optimize our bodies until they break. And the more we know, the less secure we feel. In this inverted world, we seek to understand what is real and what is true. To know the truth of ourselves, we begin at what feels like a natural place: the mirror. We wish to see ourselves as others do, and modern life gives us countless opportunities. We are constantly confronted with our own image.”
FT: “The big US tech companies are — or possibly were — the best businesses in history. What markets are weighing now is the possibility that the era of increasing returns is over, and new forms of competition are on the way. Investors already recognise that tech companies are riskier than they were a few years ago, and are re-pricing them accordingly. And they are recognising that pre-digital forms of competitive advantage, from brands to distribution networks to manufacturing knowhow, may become relatively more valuable. Expect both patterns to continue.”
Morgan Stanley: The Wisdom of Crowds in Markets
WSJ: “Health obsessives often monitor workouts, step counts, sleep metrics, heart rates and nutrition data, cross-referencing the information with their calendars, meeting transcriptions, emails and clinical records. Now, they are supercharging their habits with AI systems that serve as hyperpersonalized health trainers and assistants. While fretting over such minutiae is far from mainstream practice—many doctors recommend simplicity in fitness and nutrition—a growing number of so-called datamaxxers have finally found their version of nerd Valhalla.”
NYTimes: “Mr. Babushkin’s new start-up, River AI, wants to put a new kind of computer inside people’s homes, so they can own and use A.I. without oversight from anyone else, including River AI. Backed by $1 billion in funding, the company plans to share its A.I. technologies as open-source software. This means that anyone — including businesses, independent software developers and consumers — would be free to use and modify these technologies. “We hope that in the future, A.I. will be trained to benefit you as the individual, rather than being a centralized thing that is controlled by one big corporation,” Mr. Babuschkin said.”
