EDITOR'S PICK TECHNOLOGY The Dangers Of Anthropomorphising A.I. Key Takeaway: Chatbots like ChatGPT have raised anxieties about machine sentience, but these worries are groundless as they are sophisticated sentence completion applications. They are a function of how predictable humans are when it comes to communication. The question of machine sentience is a red herring, as it is easy for people to anthropomorphize or […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK TECHNOLOGY Is Web3 A Fad? Key Takeaway: Web3 is an alternative vision of the web where the services are purely algorithmic things hosted by everybody, and has been called “the hyperfinancialization of all human existence”. Data is no longer easily accessible, making it difficult for entrepreneurs to acquire more users, leading to a stagnant cycle. Web3 startups have focused on […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK TECHNOLOGY The Limits Of Computing Key Takeaway: A computer’s power is determined by the number of operations it can execute per second and the efficiency of the algorithms it runs. The modern notion of an algorithm, known as a Turing machine, was formulated in 1936 by British mathematician Alan Turing. Mathematicians and computer scientists attempt to determine whether a problem […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK TECHNOLOGY The EV Transition Isn’t Really About Cars Key Takeaway: The race to decarbonize passenger cars and light-duty trucks in the U.S. offers big economic and environmental benefits, but they’re not spread equitably. People who bear the most burdens in our current transportation systems often receive the fewest benefits. Bans on sales of new gas-powered vehicles won’t affect those that are already on […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK TECHNOLOGY The Future Of Taste Key Takeaway: In the past decade dining out has become a cultural touchstone and an essential form of entertainment. Gastronomy tourism continues to rise each year as people travel the world to seek out new dining experiences. After World War II, big shifts in transportation led to the emergence of new types of restaurants. TV, […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK PHILOSOPHY TECHNOLOGY How Will ChatGPT Transform Philosophy Key Takeaway: In 1950 English mathematician Alan Turing proposed an “imitation game” where a judge entered into a typed dialogue with an AI pretending to be human as a way of testing if the AI was intelligent. Lex.page is an AI-enabled writing tool that can generate text or answer questions. In 2018, Google unveiled Duplex, […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK TECHNOLOGY How Drones Will Change The Way Buildings Are Designed Key Takeaways: Drones are already shaping the face of our cities. They are being used for building planning, heritage, construction and safety enhancement. But many people have a limited understanding of how they might be practically used. We offer an overview of five ways drones will affect building design. Two research projects have been experimenting with drones […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK TECHNOLOGY Does A.I. Mean The End Of Creativity? Key Takeaway: To what extent does this technology interfere with creativity? We argue that AI art devalues the act of creation for both the artist and the public. The focus on the idea and framing of the artistic task amounts to the fetishization of the creative moment. ChatGPT and DALL-E aim to make the process […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK FINANCE TECHNOLOGY Important Lessons From FTX’s Collapse Key Takeaways: Cryptocurrency exchanges are sometimes described as being like stock exchanges. But they are very different to the likes of the London or New York stock exchanges, which are highly regulated and serve a regulatory function. Cryptocurrency exchanges make money by helping “mum and dad” investors into the market. Seven of the world’s ten biggest crypto […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
ART & DESIGN EDITOR'S PICK TECHNOLOGY NFTs In The Art World: Revolution Or Rip-Off? Key Takeaways: Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are digital objects that represent something else, such as a work of art, a video or even a tweet. They certify the existence and the ownership of this item through a data recording on a blockchain (a distributed ledger technology) NFTs are most often bought and resold via auction sites, […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
What Makes Basquiat Special? Key Takeaway: Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work highlights racial inequalities and the lack of representation of racialized people in the media, but also the violence suffered by African Americans. Jean-Michel Basquiat denounced the violence of cartoons, which he saw as a reflection of 20th-century American society. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painting “Toxic” is an attempt to denounce a stereotypical […] Written by John Harbour March 15, 2023March 15, 2023 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Why Did Signature Bank Fail? Key Takeaway: The failures of SVB and Signature Bank were caused by two major risks: interest rate risk and liquidity risk. Interest rate risk caused the market value of previously issued debt to plunge, especially for longer-dated debt. Liquidity risk is the risk that a bank won’t be able to meet its obligations without incurring […] Written by Vidhura Tennekoon March 14, 2023March 14, 2023 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Art Of Balding Balding is really common, affecting more than 50% of men. It’s also physically inconsequential (bald men live just as long as haired men). So why, in his memoir Spare, does Prince Harry refer to his brother’s baldness as “alarming”? As a social psychologist with a special interest in balding (and author of an upcoming book entitled Branding Baldness), […] Written by Glen Jankowski March 1, 2023March 1, 2023 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Evolutionary Origins Of Imagination Key Takeaway: Mammals evolved to hide out while cold-blooded dinosaurs hunted during the day, but had to eat a lot more food than dinosaurs per unit of weight to maintain their high metabolism and constant inner body temperature. Mammals developed a new system to efficiently memorize places where they’d found food, linking sensory aspects of […] Written by Empirics Asia February 28, 2023February 28, 2023 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Art Of Receiving Feedback Good feedback, whether you are on the receiving or giving end, requires an attitude of curiosity and openness. Intentionally creating space for feedbackcan help, but even with the right space, receiving feedback can be really scary. Many organizations have formal systems of feedback in the style of mid-year and annual reviews. And it’s not uncommon for informal continuous […] Written by Andrea Mignolo February 27, 2023February 27, 2023 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The World After Oil Key Takeaway: The production and consumption of fossil fuels is on the rise, and expected to peak within the next decade. To consider alternatives to oil, we need to be aware of the scale of its integration into our lives. Caleb Wellum, an assistant professor of U.S. history at the University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada, […] Written by Nehal El-Hadi February 24, 2023February 24, 2023 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Secret Chemistry Of Chocolates Key Takeaways: Chocolate has been around for at least 4,000 years, and is now a trillion-dollar global industry. It starts out as a dull-tasting bean, packed into a pod that grows on a cacao tree, and requires two key steps: fermentation and roasting. Roasting is an art form, with different temperatures and times producing different […] Written by Sheryl Barringer February 23, 2023February 23, 2023 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Rethinking Education Key Takeaways: The Industrial model of education that fueled the modern era and its dizzying reach did its job incredibly well. In his writing, Flynn illustrates study after study, spanning nations and decades, in which modern educational gift of abstraction — a transcendent sign of intelligence, as we saw in Raven’s Matrices — has been […] Written by Anthony Fieldman March 2, 2022October 19, 2022 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
How China Is Transforming Its Economy Through Learning I highly recommend reading the McKinsey Global Institute’s new report, “Reskilling China: Transforming The World’s Largest Workforce Into Lifelong Learners”, which focuses on the country’s biggest employment challenge, re-training its workforce and the adoption of practices such as lifelong learning to address the growing digital transformation of its productive fabric. How to transform the country […] Written by Enrique Dans February 1, 2021February 1, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Why You’re Not Seeing Success With Influencer Marketing With the new year around the corner, now is a good time to re-evaluate your past marketing strategies and gear up for the year ahead. For some businesses, influencer marketing has simply not seemed to live up to its lofty promises of genuine engagement, credibility, and transparency. Some have claimed that it has been failing […] Written by Michael Tan January 14, 2021January 15, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
A New Philosophy of Business I’m about to ask you to take a mental leap. For the next 8 minutes, suspend your notions of what a business is, and I’ll propose a new lens for you to look through. There are a lot of questions asked around what “community” means for business. “Where should community fit in my organization?” and […] Written by Empirics Asia September 5, 2018September 5, 2018 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
