“Google’s AI succeeds in predicting protein’s 3D structures from their amino-acid sequence”. This was the headline on every tech blog, publication or forum I followed last week. And I had no freaking idea what that meant. I invited a biologist friend over for dinner and asked him to explain to me why that’s a big deal. “If this AI thing works, it’s a 10, 100, or maybe even 1000x improvement on the way we’ve been doing research until now”....
Med students take an oath after they graduate. They read a 2000 year old document called the Hippocratic oath, swearing to uphold certain ethical standards in their profession. And it makes sense. Imagine you’re sick and that your health depends on a young human you call “doctor”. You’d like to know that this human will keep your best interests in mind, and will use her knowledge to heal you, rather than killing you or selling you drugs you don’t need....
You’re driving a car, and suddenly someone walks in front of you. You have two choices: You hit the person You steer towards a wall and potentially kill you and your friend in the passenger’s seat. Which one do you pick? I’ll spare you the discomfort of the decision and tell you the truth: you won’t choose either. You’ll be driven by your instincts, do whatever they make you do in that split second you have, and deal with the consequences....
Last weekend I gathered a bunch of friends, made some popcorns, and watched “The Social Dilemma”. For someone who’s in tech it doesn’t say much new, and it’s hard to ignore that the guys you’re watching trash social media made billions with building it. I guess also Pablo Escobar thought coke wasn’t healthy. But if you manage to ignore the hypocrisy, it can actually give some inspiration to structure your thoughts and take action....
On Wednesday 29th of July, the CEOs of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple (GAFA) testified before the House’s judiciary antitrust subcommittee. The four men lead corporations with a total market cap of 5 Trillion dollars. In numbers: $5.000.000.000.000. That’s more than the GDP of Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Spain, Austria and Switzerland. Combined. Data was one of the main topics of the standoff between the Washington bureaucrats and the Silicon Valley (+ Jeff’s Texas) CEOs....
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