The story of the paperclip maximiser is rather straight forward. To increase and optimize the production of paperclips, an artificial intelligence is developed by a paperclip factory.
The AI is super successful. It optimizes every aspect of the production, increasing the efficiency of the factory significantly. As the easy optimizations are done, the AI starts to look for more creative ways to increase the production.
From here the seemingly innocent algorithm becomes a danger for humans. The AI realizes that all atoms have potential for paperclip production, including human atoms. Eventually leading to a world consisting of only paperclips, no human spared.
I think we are not much different from the AI.
Everyday we wake up and set out to finish today’s to-do list. Some days we succeed, other we don’t - but how often do we actually remind ourselves of the higher purpose or consequences of our activities?
At societal level we have created systems where companies have entire units focused on reducing tax payments. Some of the units did not limit themselves to avoid paying tax, they successfully managed to take €55 billion from tax-payers in Europe.
We’ve also created a system where 60% of animals have been wiped out since 1970. And a system where the faith of the Earth (and humanity) is soon getting out of our control due to climate change according to the latest UN report.
Yet, there is a least one important difference between us and the paperclip maximising algorithm: We have the ability to stop and think.
What are you optimizing towards?
<3
Kristoffer
Making Twitter Better
The principles of Time Well Spent continues to spread among technology companies. The past weeks Twitter has been publicly questioning the role of their like button. In this The Atlantic article, Taylor Lorenz takes it one step further: Twitter, you should remove the Retweet.
After reading the article above, I found a script on Lifehacker that disables all retweets from my Twitter feed. I must say my feed feels like a bliss and less polluted.
I also installed a Chrome Extension that hides all vanity metrics, including follower-count and the number of retweets and favourites for single tweets.
The next step in making Twitter better is probably to start muting certain words. Mute.life is a collective list to gain back sanity. I’ll implement it this week.
Internet Stories
Last week thousands of Google employees left the office early in protest with how the management team had handled reports of sexual misconduct. Powerful move!
15-25M. That is how many views YouTuber Shane Dawson has been averaging for his eight part series on another YouTuber, Jake Paul. With each episode lasting around 40 minutes, including “real-time” responses and made in only three months, the series has set a new standard for what is possible on YouTube - and with video in general.
Meanwhile, Netflix is set to reach $12-13 billion spent on content.
Maps are a super important battlefield for tech-companies. For years Google Maps have been miles-ahead compared to the competition. This might change. At least Apple has - within certain areas - set an entire new standard. This is a beautiful and fascinating break-down by Justin O’Beirne. (And if you like it, make sure to read his older posts).
When Instagram’s founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger announced their resignation, the immediate culprit was Mark Zuckerberg. Ben Thompson offers a slightly alternative story, “I’m CEO, Bitch”.
I was proud when reading Anne Quito’s review in Quartz of what we made with Techfestival this year. Reading Camille Landau’s take on Crypto Springs, it appears more people are changing conferences to become more participatory and inclusive, hurray.
New Home
It has been three months since I last sent out an issue of Naive Weekly. Drowning in work I had to prioritize sanity over consistency and took a break from curating, writing and sending this newsletter.
Today I’m back.
To ensure consistency going forward, I’ve made the decision to block two hours of work-time every Monday for writing Naive Weekly. Hopefully this should also increase the quality.
Going forward I’ll be using Substack as the home for the newsletter. It is a place build for humans writing newsletters, not for marketing professionals. I’m looking forward to trying out their features, including comments.
Please don’t forget, I’m only a reply away. Happy Monday.