Ghost in the Machine
Valerie Veatch premiered this at Sundance in January and it has since been picked up by Independent Lens. It examines artificial intelligence through the longer history of human technological advancement, and it is not a friendly film toward the current moment. One critic described it as a Molotov cocktail thrown into the middle of our overinflated AI hype, which gives you a sense of the register. I am invested across this sector and I still think the strongest skeptical case deserves a real hearing. This is that case, made well.
Machine God
John Greer and Lei Huang have been building a documentary on accelerationism and the people pushing hardest toward artificial superintelligence, and the trailer alone tells you the register they are working in. Watch it back to back with Ghost in the Machine and you get the two poles of the current argument in their strongest form, which is a more useful education than reading another hundred posts from either camp. The interviews behind it include some of the most committed accelerationists working today.
The Oldest Person in the World
Sam Green spent more than a decade following successive holders of the title of oldest living person, which means the film keeps losing its subject and finding a new one. What starts as a documentary about extreme longevity turns into something closer to a meditation on time, luck, and what it actually feels like to outlast everyone. It premiered at Sundance in January and reviews have been strong. For a category I spend real money and attention on, this was a useful corrective. Living longest is not the same thing as living well.
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The Art Of Winning Requires One Thing Most People Won't Give
Arnold Schwarzenegger has told versions of this story for forty years and it still works, mostly because he is not selling anything abstract. The thing most people will not give is the unglamorous volume of reps, done when nobody is watching and nothing is happening.
How To Explain Anything To Anyone
Sharran Srivatsaa packs a genuinely useful communication framework into about sixty seconds. Clarity wins when you give people four things: context, understanding, practical guidance, and one obvious next step.
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What I Am Reading:
The hottest new programming language? Biology
mRNA is just one example of a synthetic biology technology. As we speak, people around the world are bending biology to all sorts of precise, ambitious, and (at times) controversial ends. A quick list: resurrecting wooly mammoths, reversing disease, growing meat in a lab, editing genes, producing waste-free materials.
The Secret Tool of Elite Athletes for Achieving your Career Goals
The difference between those who succeed and those who fail in their goals is the transformation of identity. "The act of stepping into a new identity that you're unfamiliar with is a surprisingly effective brain shortcut to change. The human mind is wired to protect its identities, even in the face of irrefutable contradicting facts…
The case for reading all of your emails, according to Tim Cook
“I religiously start looking at customer notes every morning, starting around 5 am or so,” he says. It’s not uncommon for him to forward them to other Apple employees, the feedback having sparked an idea.
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