This is not a touch screen
Impatience with technology
Get smarter in 5 minutes with Morning Brew (it's free) There's a reason over 4 million people start their day with Morning Brew - the daily email that delivers the latest news from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. Business news doesn't have to be boring...make your mornings more enjoyable, for free. Sign up!
Friends,
Welcome to new readers from Interesting Engineering who listed this newsletter as one of the 12 best science, tech and engineering newsletters in and amongst Techcrunch, MIT Tech Review, The Information, Futurism and New Atlas. Esteemed company indeed - I’m much humbled! That might support you sharing this edition to a new friend, group, team or colleague. This is a single-person newsletter so I am reliant on your word of mouth to share this to help me grow. You could like or share the post on LinkedIn - which also gives you a flavour of a few posts you might have missed over the Summer.
At one point during the Summer, I took my youngest to one of the amazing not-to-be-named museums in London. There was a tablet next to one of the exhibits which, before we had read the sign, my daughter immediately double-tapped to try and invoke the screen, followed by a swipe, followed by another double tap. The sign below read: “This is not a touch screen”.
We move quickly in our expectations. When that screen was installed, it was probably at the height of technology but the advent of the iPhone, touchscreens and tablets have shifted our expectations of what we expect from tactile technology.
Impatience continues as we progress with technology. My current “brick wall” is this: “As a language model, I'm not able to assist you with that.” - As we start to expect more from technology, we reach periods of disappointment, especially after we have been delighted by magic. The first time we engaged with ChatGPT and all that came with it, this generation saw the future.
Automation and AI have created the next level of imagination, but have also created an urgency that may not be realistic. As you’ll read in today’s recommended reading, schools are grappling with using AI, after having banned it. Policy tries to define the guardrails but inevitably we push boundaries beyond. That’s how innovation happens.
But we’re also creatures of habit. While it didn’t take much to push us to app-based taxi services, the migration away from PCs will still take some time. The difference between a multi-generational hallmark like the personal computer and where we are with AI is that we are right at the beginning. It’s a bit like starting your 1993 IBM for the first time and seeing the C prompt. We are at the beginning of what is possible but we want it now.
It’s the disappointment that we need to address and where the opportunity lies. You’ll read of the demise of the many AI startups that have built themselves up based on the hype of what AI can bring. The question is whether there is demand for what’s being provided. The last wave of technology was about data and content. The next wave is about making our lives easier - and “doing”. With computational step changes beyond what we know today, the tasks that are commonplace go away, cost goes down and the things that we don’t even know what we want will happen for us.
Perhaps I’ll have grandchildren one day? When they go to the museum, the museum will mould around their preferences, decide what’s the best way for them to experience the artefact and create an experience that we don’t yet know to define.
In the mean time, we will wait and watch the dumb tablet that is on timed autoplay.
Stay Curious - and don’t forget to be amazing,
A Banksy got everyday investors 32% returns?
Mm-hmm, sure. So, what’s the catch?
We know it may sound too good to be true. But thousands of investors are already smiling all the way to the bank, thanks to the fine-art investing platform Masterworks.
These results aren’t cherry-picking. This is the whole bushel. Masterworks has built a track record of 15 exits, including net returns of +10.4%, +27.3%, and +35.0%, even while financial markets plummeted.
But art? Really? Okay, sceptics, here are the numbers. Contemporary art prices:
outpaced the S&P 500 by 131% over the last 26 years
have the lowest correlation to equities of any asset class
remained stable through the dot-com bubble and the ’08 crisis
Got your attention yet? Box of Amazing readers can skip the waitlist with this exclusive link.
See important disclosures at masterworks.com/cd
Here are my recommendations for this week:
Now
News Without Motives: 1440 is the daily newsletter helping 2M+ people stay informed—it’s news without motives, edited to be as unbiased as humanly possible. A five-minute read each morning, 100% free: Sign up now!
The Mystery of Long COVID Is Just the Beginning At Yale’s clinic, medical sleuth Lisa Sanders is trying almost everything
We Used A.I. to Write Essays for Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Here’s How It Went. A.I. chatbots can do a passable job of generating short essays. Whether their use on college applications is ethical is the subject of fierce debate. Related: Despite Cheating Fears, Schools Repeal ChatGPT Bans
The A.I. Revolution Is Coming. But Not as Fast as Some People Think.
From steam power to the internet, there has always been a lag between technology invention and adoption across industries and the economy.
The end of the Googleverse: For two decades, Google Search was the invisible force that determined the ebb and flow of online content. Now, for the first time, its cultural relevance is in question.
‘Oh my god’: Live worm found in Australian woman’s brain in world-first discovery
A woman complained of forgetfulness and depression before doctors pulled out an 8cm roundworm commonly found in pythons. Got a headache, anyone?
Next
Trends.vc: Join 50,000+ founders and investors discovering new markets and ideas. Our readers are saving 2,000+ hours of market research with free 5-minute reports on AI, Crypto and more. Sign up now
‘I hope I’m wrong’: the co-founder of DeepMind on how AI threatens to reshape life as we know it. From synthetic organisms to killer drones, Mustafa Suleyman talks about the mind-blowing potential of artificial intelligence, and how we can still avoid catastrophe Related: I Was an Influencer. AI Will Destroy Us
Google Meet’s new AI will be able to go to meetings for you - Duet’s main job is to help you catch up on and remember what happened in your Meet calls. But it can also maybe save you the trouble of attending in the first place. Related: Google to charge big businesses $30 per user per month for AI in Gmail and work apps
AI Startups are running into some serious problems: The Red flags are coming. Related: We Analyzed Millions of ChatGPT User Sessions: Visits are Down 29% since May, Programming Assistance is 30% of Use
What’s the future of generative AI? An early view in 15 charts
OpenAI’s Moonshot: Solving the AI Alignment Problem The ChatGPT maker imagines superintelligent AI without existential risks. Also: The Contrarian Strategy of OpenAI
Get smarter in 5 minutes with Morning Brew (it's free) There's a reason over 4 million people start their day with Morning Brew - the daily email that delivers the latest news from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. Business news doesn't have to be boring...make your mornings more enjoyable, for free. Sign up!
If you enjoyed this edition of Box of Amazing, please share and help me grow this group. If you share it on Twitter or LinkedIn, please tag me so that I can thank you. If you are interested in advertising, check out our media kit.