Sep 6, 2019
Starting with this dispatch we want to change things up a little bit — as some of you know, we used to have a “radical Network” which was a community-hub running on the Basecamp platform. The idea was for us to have a space to share our latest insights, findings & research and for the wider community to be able to communicate, share and collaborate.
Turns out, Basecamp was just not the right fit for what most of you are looking for. Going forward we will use this mailing list to share what we learn from our own research, the work of others in the field, and provide commentary on topics that excite, inspire or make us think. Please feel free to respond by simply hitting reply in your email client — send us your commentary, information you want to share or resources we ought to check out.
With that being said — let’s dig in!
[AI] Ever wonder where the real world use cases for AI are?
Chris Yiu, Executive Director for the Tony Blair Institute, has compiled (and keeps updating) DeepIndex, a rather comprehensive list of examples of AI in action. The list is organized by field (Games, Home & Lifestyle, Industrial, Medicine, etc) and has a handy categorization for the usefulness of the particular application (ranging from “Crushing it”, to “Capable” and “Getting there”). It’s a fantastic resource to see AI in real-world action and can serve as a good starting point for you to figure out what AI can do for you and your business.
[Voice] The importance of (a/your) voice
Pascal uses Alexa prominently in his sessions to drive home the point that technology can fundamentally change our interactions with the real world. He recently wrote this segment of his talk up in a blog post — head over to his personal blog for the full story. The big, important take-away is that we, on average, are ill-equipped to truly fathom the dramatically accelerating nature of technological change these days plus the implications change in one area has on adjacent fields (voice changes shopping behavior but ripples through advertising and many other areas as well).
[Read] The radical team’s information diet
One of the more common questions we get is: “How do you personally stay up-to-date?” For us, it is a combination of many things — we are fortunate to get to spend time with many incredible thinkers and doers from whom we learn. In addition we are pretty ferocious readers — with his background in information technologies, Pascal recommends the following newsletters: Azeem Azhar’s Exponential View which covers AI, tech and society; Andrew Ng’s The Batch covering the latest AI breakthroughs and MIT’s Technology Review and the IEEE Spectrum for all things IT.
Until the next radical Briefing,
Jane, Mafe and Pascal
