Capitalogix

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - August 6th, 2023

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• AI Won't Replace Humans — But Humans With AI Will Replace Humans Without AI. (HBR)
• The Chip Titan Whose Life's Work is at the Center of a Tech Cold War. (NYT)
• What a Mysterious Chinese Room Can Tell Us About Consciousness. (PsychologyToday)
• So What Exactly Makes Taylor Swift So Great? (BCNews)
• Nearly Half of Adults Want Weight-Loss Drugs — If Insurance Will Cover It. (Axios)

Trading Links:

• Elon Musk's Unmatched Power in the Stars. (NYT)
• How Netflix's Algorithms and Tech Feed Its Success. (Wall Street Journal)
• Exploring a Potential Synergy Between Blockchain Technology and AI. (HackerNoon)
• Big Tech Rebounds and Preps for Transformative A.I. Investments. (NYT)
• Apple Loses an Astonishing $160 Billion in Market Value in One Day as Analysts Say the Company is Stuck in a ‘Slowdown Phase'. (Fortune)

E.M.I.G.L.I.O: The Electronic Mechanical Industrial Generated For Logical Infiltration and Observation Robot

I have an old toy robot in my office that my kids played with when they were little.  Its name is E.M.I.G.L.I.O.

Even though it is a toy, this Italian-made robot was interesting technology when it came out.  It was remote-controlled, the remote had a microphone that transformed my voice to sound like a robot, and it had a tray sturdy enough to deliver a video game (or some other surprise) for my kids when they visited the office.

 

Looking back, it's barely even technology, let alone a robot.  But that's because I'm evaluating it based on what's possible now.

I feel the same when I think about my previous company, IntellAgent Control, and what we considered A.I. in the 1990s.  We made a sales automation solution for teams before tools like Salesforce existed.  At the time, the decision logic we used was innovative.  The premise is still valid today, but the technology and implementation scream "relic of a time gone by."

As another aside ... when I searched for Emiglio (in order to write this article), I was astonished by the archive of old robots someone had put together. The site is like a specialized Wikipedia site for toy robots.  Each of the entries has high-quality photos of the robots and their packaging.  It also includes facts, marketing copy, ads, and patents. 

It is kind of cool ... Kind of like Emiglio.

It got me thinking about how much of history - and esoteric knowledge - only exists because a tiny community of people decided it needed to be cataloged or preserved.

Garbage In – Garbage Out.  Nothing In – Nothing Out.  What are we missing from the past because history is often written by the winner (or because no one volunteered to chronicle what happened)?

Even a site like Wikipedia has some serious content curation issues.  For example, the top 50 Wikipedia editors have each contributed more than 500,000 edits.  Think how much is missing.

Soon A.I. will decide what to write about what it decided happened, what to save and for how long, and what to say when asked about it.

Not only will the future be different ... even the past will be remembered differently.

Just a thought!