This week's best things

Why the Godfather of A.I. Fears What He’s Built

A long read in the New Yorker profiling Geoffrey Hinton, the computer scientist whose research into neural networks in the 1980s and 1990s forms the basis for many of the recent advancements we’ve seen in AI.

“Earlier this year, Hinton left Google, where he’d worked since the acquisition. He was worried about the potential of A.I. to do harm, and began giving interviews in which he talked about the “existential threat” that the technology might pose to the human species. The more he used ChatGPT, an A.I. system trained on a vast corpus of human writing, the more uneasy he got.”

Your phone is the key to your digital life. Make sure you know what to do if you lose it.

A sobering and practical read about something that may not seem that important, but would be incredibly stressful, frustrating, inconvenient and potentially dangerous if (when?) it happens to you.

“There’s nothing like spending 30 minutes panicking that you’ve lost your phone to make you realize just how devastating that loss can be ... and how poorly you’ve prepared for the possibility. Access to just about everything I wasn’t already logged into on my computer was dependent on access to my phone, with my mobile-device-only password manager and multifactor authentication apps and text messages. Actually, had I even backed my phone up to my iCloud account? Didn’t I delete my backups to free up storage space? Was I logged into iCloud on my laptop? Would it even be possible to log in, since my passwords and authentication tools were only on the phone?”

Harness the Power of Curiosity at Work

I’m pretty evangelical about curiosity. But I am also prone to being easily distracted and often find it difficult to immerse myself in a single task. This short piece in the Harvard Business Review suggests some ways you can try to ensure your curiosity remains productive.

“First, identify what’s useful — and hold off on everything else. Productive curiosity is directed toward something that you actually want and need to get done. If you come across something else that catches your interest, add it to a list of future items to explore when you have more time.”

Four Things All Leaders Must Know About Digital Transformation

A good read from Greg Satall, highlighting the importance of people over technology, focusing on outcomes, making swift, tangible changes, and what to do if and when transformation is achieved.

“One way to do this is to choose a solution that will help people with tedious, mundane tasks rather than create a new capability. It’s much easier to get people excited by reducing the time and effort they have to expend on something they hate then it is to push them to adopt something new. You always want to attract and empower, rather than bribe or coerce.”

The Tokyo Rockabillies

A video on Instagram that showcases “these men and women [who] gather in Yoyogi Park every Sunday (without fail) showcasing their pompadours, leather jackets, and flamboyant outfits while dancing energetically to classic rockabilly songs.”

I love subcultures like this.

If you’ve seen something interesting, stick it in the comments! The algorithms are invading our lives, but the best stuff is still discovered and shared through word of mouth.

Here’s last week’s round-up