Mark Zuckerberg: “Invention, not automation, will be the greatest contribution of superintelligence. Early AI could answer questions and do routine work. Soon it will increasingly help discover new knowledge — ranging from discovering new drugs to cure a family member’s disease to finding new ways to improve your business. While the number of questions a person can ask in a day is limited, the number of valuable things superintelligence can invent to help achieve your goals is unlimited. As intelligence becomes abundant, the most important question will be how we direct it. Some argue that superintelligence itself or a small set of experts who control it should decide what is best for humanity. We disagree. The history of democracy and economics has shown that there is no single objective answer to how people define the best life, and therefore the best approach is letting people decide what matters in their own lives.”
FT: “One of the most gloriously oddball texts in contemporary philosophy is Bernard Suits’ The Grasshopper. Remember the parable of the ant and the grasshopper, where the ant works all summer and the grasshopper lazes about and eventually starves? In the traditional version, the ant is the hero — the ceaseless hard worker — and the grasshopper is the object lesson in the perils of laziness. Suits flips the story. In his book, the grasshopper is the hero; he is the embodiment of play…Imagine, says Suits, utopia — some future paradise where technology has solved all our practical problems. We have perfect medicine, unlimited energy and boundless resources. What would we do with our time? We would play games, says Suits, or we would be bored out of our minds. And if playing games is all we do in utopia, then games must be the meaning of life.”
Debashis Basu: “Economic theories explain growth through capital, technology and institutions, but leadership may be the missing force that turns sound policies into sustained prosperity…What are the attributes of a good leader? Mr Goh says leaders should be visionary and diligent, and selflessly devoted to national interests rather than to party or personal ones. For credibility, leaders must have integrity and be incorruptible (or have the incentives to remain so). Clearly, shifting an economy on to a path of sustained high growth demands radical choices: Creating better and better human capital, integrating into global markets, and continuously absorbing technology and fostering efficiency to keep infrastructure costs low. But these cannot happen on their own. It is leadership (honest, wise, visionary and committed to course correction) that makes it all happen. Empirical evidence says so. It is time for growth theories to catch up.”
NYTimes: “You could call it “hobbyamory”…A growing number of singles [are] emphasizing multiple hobbies over dating. Rather than spending hours swiping and messaging on apps, these singles are investing their time, energy and disposable income in passions like rock climbing, cake decorating and cyanotype printmaking. They say their social calendars are packed, their friend groups are expanding and their lives feel rich, with or without a romantic partner.”
