Five Things Tech: Vision Pro, AGI, Neuralink, CS, X
I have a great idea for you: read this email. Really.
Hello and welcome back to Five Things Tech - the newsletter, where you can read five articles about tech that are hopefully not just the obvious stuff, but a nice mix of topics.
Obviously, I’d encourage you to read all five articles, but if you can absolutely just read one article, then read the second one. Why did I put it on number 2? That’s easy. There’s no ranking here, I like all articles, but for different reasons. Thinking or even worrying about Artificial General Intelligence is something I don’t do that often, but it is a truly fascinating topic. Just think about it. Oh, and read the article first!
Here’s Five Things Tech!
A month of the Vision Pro
The Apple Vision Pro is clearly the future. But of what exactly? And when will we find out? I haven’t used the Vision Pro yet, but I’m reading lots of reviews. Maybe more than I should. I guess, I’m still unsure about what the future of the Vision Pro will look like.
What the Quest to Build a Truly Intelligent Machine Is Teaching Us
“The quest for AGI over the past several decades has taught us much about our own intelligence. We now realize that tasks we find easy, such as visual recognition, are computationally demanding, and the things we find hard, such as math and chess, are really the easy ones. We also realize that brains need very little inborn knowledge; they learn by experience almost everything they need to know. And now, through the importance of modularity, we are confirming the old wisdom that there isn’t any one thing called intelligence. It is a toolbox of abilities—from juggling abstractions to navigating social complexities to being attuned to sights and sounds.”
Watch Neuralink’s First Human Subject Demonstrate His Brain-Computer Interface
Scary? Fascinating? You bet. I would be a more excited about Neuralink if Musk weren’t behind this, because I simply doubt he has good intentions. But this is a truly amazing development.
Universities Have a Computer-Science Problem
Developers who are only focused on computer science and don’t look at ethics, sociology and other disciplines. That is a real issue with negative consequences for us all, but it does remind me a lot of people getting MBA so that they can focus on the numbers and neglect everything else. I guess universities need a broader approach and less specialists.
What Is Twitter? 2024 Edition
Twitter used to be so wonderful. I joined in January of 2007 and it was just a new experience, so carefree, a great experiment. Now it’s more video, but it’s still going down the drain. I have 30k followers on Twitter and I don’t feel like I want to be on Twitter anymore. I can’t even say X. Musk ruined everything.
That’s all for now! Thanks for reading! If you missed last week’s Five Things Tech, you can find it here:
Five Things Tech: Search, TikTok, Drones, European Resilience, Silicon Valley Reality
— Nico