AI Pioneer Has a Few Concerns

#Internet

The Most Important Insights From Mary Meeker's 2015 Internet Trends Report

Peaks:

1. The Top Internet Companies Are Platforms: 1. Apple. 2. Google. 3. Alibaba. 4. Facebook. 5. Amazon.
2. Asia’s Messaging Apps Show US Companies What To Do Next.
3. Teenagers Shift From Text To Visual Social Media.
4. Consumer Drones Are Selling, But Commercial Is The Big Opportunity.

#AI

This Artificial Intelligence Pioneer Has a Few Concerns | WIRED

Peaks:

1. Human level AI would be an enormous thing. “The biggest event in human history” might be a good way to describe it.
2. Is it necessary to worry about undecidability for AI systems that rewrite themselves? They will rewrite themselves to a new program based on the existing program plus the experience they have in the world. What’s the possible scope of effect of interaction with the real world on how the next program gets designed? That’s where we don’t have much knowledge as yet.

#Startup

Leslie's Law: When Small Meets Large, Small (Almost) Always Wins

Peaks:

1. The landscape of companies serving most of our basic needs will look very different in just a few short years.
2. There’s always the temptation to over-feature your product, to build in bells and whistles because server space is cheap and you have the funding and talent to do it. Resisting this urge is your real competitive advantage.

# VC

Why investors don't fund dating

Peaks:

1. Investor pattern-matching is lazy and often sucks. Google wasn’t the 1st search engine and it wasn’t clear the category was a good investment. Lots of failures. Same with Facebook or Whatsapp. But the investors who won were able to look at the specific characteristics of some of these new companies, rather than looking at the category, and bet that they’d figure it out.

# Education

Trends in improving young people's education and skills | OECD READ edition

Peaks:

1. Young Japanese have terrible computer skills.

#Software