Beyond the Singularity (047)

What's left when new paradigms of existence and intelligence emerge?

Apr 08, 2024

A horizontal image depicting a total solar eclipse. In the foreground, the black silhouette of the moon covers the sun entirely, with only a faint solar corona visible around the edges. The background is a starry night sky, enhancing the contrast of the eclipse. In the bottom right corner, the text 'Artificial Insights' is written in sleek, modern, white font, with the number '47' just below it in the same style and color. The overall atmosphere is one of awe and mystery, with a clear focus on the eclipse and the text.

Happy Monday and welcome to another week of trying to make sense of our inevitable transition towards greater forms of alternate intelligence.

My last few days have been all about preparing to launch two exciting new projects: our new company website (envisioning.io) and a brand-new AI concept navigator (envisioning.ai). Both will be presented in the newsletter in coming weeks, but my takeaway is about how much of the content and development workload that has been replaced with the continuous use of LLMs. It feels like Claude and ChatGPT have become team members – ones with tons of expertise but no experience, that are capable of performing 90% of what I can’t do myself.

In theory this leaves me spending more time on the 10% that are inherently mine, like conceptualizing, writing and curating ideas. Implementation was always a personal bottleneck but today everything that I can formulate as an answerable query is suddenly solvable. It’s remarkable how much can get done with enough focus and the right tools.

This week’s selection of links were first featured in my favorite place on the internet - this newsletter’s WhatsApp group. 💬 Join today to further satiate your curiosity and read next week’s post before everyone else.

Until soon,
MZ

P.S. Who’s experiencing the eclipse today?

Jon Stewart on the false promises of AI

I’m glad Jon Stewart is back on The Daily Show, but feel he comes across a bit of a luddite in his tone. (Thanks Ricky!)

The increase in quality of life that AI can deliver is extraordinary. AI is the most profound technology humanity is working on more profound than fire or electricity.

Using GPTs in your daily life

Luma shared this amazing podcast interview with Ethan Mollick and Ezra Klein - highly recommended. They cover everything from practical aspects of using LLMs to how to compare different models and what is required for getting to know a model well. Can’t recommend it enough.

Theories of Mind

What is favorite theory of mind? It’s difficult to ignore what’s happening in AI when listening to someone like Iain McGilchrist:

So as a civilization becomes too large and over reaches itself, it moves more and more to towards a kind of left hemisphere thinking that helps it with the map, the theory, the diagram of life rather than the actual business of life.

Visual intro to Transformers

The original transformer introduced in 2017 by Google was invented for the specific use case of translating text from one language into another - here is a comprehensive and approachable explanation about how they work.

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Artificial Insights is written by Michell Zappa, CEO and founder of Envisioning, a technology research institute.

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