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4.1.2025

Voice to Voice AI Agents are gaining momentum. Chatgpt's Advanced Voice mode and Hume.AI are 2 early examples. A16z recently noted rising prospects of Voice AI and they're a now new theme in Y-combinator's startup cohorts.

3.29.2025

Section's AI Proficiency Report: Teaching employees effective GenAI prompting skills is more important than picking the perfect LLM or platform. Per this report, less than 10% of employees are competent in today's workforce.

3.28.2025

Azeem Azar and Niall Ferguson - on the AI Cold War and what might make it turn hot.

Can robots fill the economic gap left by falling birth rates? EV discusses with Kevin Kelly founder of Wired. To put this in context, see Growth in a Shrinking World.

3.26.2025

Recycling minerals will be a challenging but necessary part of 21st century energy and economic growth. What to do with all those worn out EV batteries.

OpenAI, Google and Meta want to extend fair use to include AI training. "National security hinges on unfettered access to AI training data" claims OpenAI. Does "fair use" result in a model simply learning good word patterns vs. gaining the ability to fully replace authors?

3.25.2025

Essay: If we train an LLM on government data, will it run the country better than current institutions? Henry Farrell smells magical thinking.

Consumer Confidence fell again in March - confidence about future employment is at a 12 year low.

Harvard P&G study: Individuals using AI matched the performance of teams without AI. Teams using AI are more likely to think and communicate cross-functionally rather than default to language/frameworks of their disciplinary silos. Key insight: AI is a team member not a tool. See also: Move people out of the middle - How AI will reshape the workforce 2025-2035

China to launches state backed robotics and emerging tech VC fund - hopes to attract $1T Yuan ($138B) in funding from private and local government entities.

3.24.2025

DeepSeek V3 0324 is free open source, can run locally in a high end Mac, and outperforms its closed source competitors (OpenAI, Claude Sonnet etc). Time to re-read: The 2023 "No Moat" leaked memo from an unnamed Google AI engineer who saw this coming. AND The Cathedral and the Bazaar - the original realization that open source projects have advantages closed source projects can't replicate. (See also Wikipedia notes on how this impacted software.)

Alibaba Chair Joe Tsai warns of a Data Center bubble - and EU firms look for ways to abandon US cloud services.

Economist's visual guide to critical minerals and rare earths - and why they are the focus of 21st century geopolitics, like fossil fuels were to 20th century geopolitics.

23andme files for bankruptcy - a case study in SPAC disfunction.

Quantum startups are making headlines PsiQuantum raises $750m in a round led by BlackRock. NVIDIA is building a Quantum research center in Boston.

3.20.2025

CB Insights has assembled an excellent index of where Generative AI Agents are failing to meet the expectations of their customers: Reliability, proprietary semantic layers, and lack of interoperability were frequently cited concerns.

3.19. 2025

Intuicell claims it has innovated a "Digital nervous system" that makes robots capable of realtime learning. See the robot dog Luna in action (Youtube video), and the white paper describing the approach. (my sense is: this needs peer review and independent confirmation).