How important is it for a product manager to have deep domain expertise? Marty Cagan (founder of Silicon Valley Product Group and author of several touchstone books on product management has weighed in on this question: I do think there are a few products where domain expertise is truly essential—if I ever need a defibrillator…
on agi and the alignment problem He is intelligent who reasons from truths; he is wise who lives according to them.—Emanuel Swedenborg, from Divine Love and Wisdom Today, of course, the Nazis are considered to be dunces, because they lost the war, but it has to be said that they managed to accomplish a great deal…
In 1942 Isaac Asimov wrote the three enduring rules of robotics: Asimov recognized philosophical and practical problems with the first law especially, and he put these problems at the center of many of his stories. He often explored the idea of allowing harm through inaction, and he sometimes created dilemmas where a robot could not…
I’ve been using ChatGPT quite a bit over the last few weeks to help me with some research and writing, and I’ve settled on a metaphor to describe the experience. In terms of both output and general demeanor, ChatGPT reminds me of times I have had a college intern at my disposal. In both cases…
AI researcher Daniel Kokotajlo, who made news last year when he resigned from his role at OpenAI, recently put out a report called AI 2027 that predicts alarming impacts of Artificial Intelligence to happen alarmingly soon. It’s the product of a collaboration among a small group of AI experts calling themselves the AI Futures Project, presented as a compelling…
On art and efficiency at the dawn of generative AI It feels like a weird and perhaps frightening time to be an artist, or to have artistic aspirations. Not long ago, it was common to imagine that the next wave of jobs to be made obsolete by machines might be so-called menial and repetitive ones…
As promised. The second article I alluded to in my last post is really a series of articles ars technica ran last month. It’s an absolutely riveting tale of how the CEO of a well-known Internet security firm stirred the wrath of a loose collective of hackers known as “Anonymous” and paid a heavy…
The ongoing BP / Deepwater Horizon oil disaster is a sickening object lesson in the evils of oil. Of course it’s just the latest in an ugly line of spills that have occurred over the years. BP itself has a long track record of safety and environmental violations. I still have vivid tv memories of…
I feel like the media constantly bombards us with two completely opposite visions of the future: In future #1 I can talk to my home appliances and have virtual sex with supermodels while my hydrogen-powered biodegradable car drives me to work. In future #2 I’m learning to make fire and trying to defend my survival…
I just finished watching the second season of Mad Men, and I’m left with a familiar bittersweet feeling. The same one you get when you finish a great book. I don’t often get this feeling from a TV show, so I’ve begun to reflect a little on what it is that makes the show so…