Here’s your weekly fix, newsletter number six!
We’ve been Cubed!
What an exciting week for us here at TWIML HQ. On the heels of our one-year anniversary, and hitting 500k listens, I learned on Monday that your and my favorite Shark is an avid TWIML listener!
Speaking to attendees at the Ozy Fest conference (NYC’s answer to SXSW), Mark gave us a shout-out as one of the resources he turns to keep up with advances in AI!!! Woohoo
This little morsel appeared in an article on CNBC.com under the unfortunately click-baity title “Billionaire tech titan Mark Cuban on A.I.: ‘It scares the s— out of me’.”
While I haven’t been able to find a video of the full interview with Mark, and I find the mainstream press’ fearmongering around AI generally frustrating and counter-productive, I otherwise agree with Mark’s general sentiment.
In particular, as I noted last week, AI will have a huge impact on the way we live and work over the next 20 years; more so than any prior tech revolution. On the individual and societal levels, and all in between, we need to be thinking about and preparing for its impact.
While AI will undoubtedly improve our lives, it will also force many changes in the way we live, work and relate to one another. For many these changes will be uncomfortable. There will be winners and losers. In the US and elsewhere, inequality continues to grow and social safety nets are being dismantled. These issues need to be addressed somehow.
At some point though, Warren Buffet’s ‘Noah Rule’ applies: “No credit for predicting rain, only for building arks.”
I don’t have answers to all the big thorny societal questions that AI begs, but I do believe that by better understanding the capabilities and limitations of machine learning and AI we’re better able to put it to good use, and better equipped to reason through the impact its likely to have. I’m glad the podcast has allowed me to play a small role in building that particular ark.
