#19. pigs feet, algorithms, sports, & the new book
I didn’t try the pigs feet.
A few weeks ago, in Virginia, I stopped at a gas station and met two kind gentlemen selling pickled pigs feet marinating in large, repurposed plastic jars — the two- or three-gallon-scale ones that are usually packed with orange cheese puffs. The men informed me that the pigs feet were very popular and often sold out quickly. Normally I try to embrace local experiences and cuisine when traveling. I'll jump in any water that looks remotely clean, and I still regret not getting a haircut at that roadside barber in Brazil a decade ago. But I passed on the feet. No regrets, either.
I retired from coaching youth sports.
A temporary pause in my book production regimen, during which I'm re-training my foundational model, has given me a chance to write some other stuff. Here’s a humorous op-ed in one of our fine local papers about my retirement from coaching basketball and lacrosse.
The algorithm gets me.
Normally the recommendation engines fail me. Just because I liked Extraction doesn't mean I only like action movies. But recently something magical happened. The algorithm suggested a Korean-language series called Chicken Nugget.
The show is about a mysterious machine that turns an unsuspecting young woman into a chicken nugget, and how her father and one of his employees, a very odd aspiring singer who dresses in bright colors, work to transform her back into a person. There’s a little science fiction, plenty of humor, a glimpse into another world/society, weird dream sequences. Really strange. Really funny.
And polarizing! Look at those ratings. Apparently people either love it or despise it. Reminds me of my first novel, The Wages of Genius. Thank you, algorithm.
My phone has a gray filter.
The camera on my phone appears to have some kind of filter switched on that makes my hair look silverish in all photos. Anyone know how to fix this?
Weird, right? Almost makes it seem like I’m going gray.
Also, that’s my coauthor Daniela Rus, the director of MIT’s AI lab, and our new book, The Heart and the Chip. If you’re on Martha’s Vineyard, Bunch of Grapes has some freshly signed copies. (More on the book below.)
22B was cheating ineffectively.
On an airplane recently I noticed the teen in front of me using ChatGPT to do his history homework. This is a terrible way to cheat. LLMs hallucinate. They’ll tell you the Knicks won World War Two. (Which feels possible with this current team.) If you have a question that requires a knowledgeable answer, try Perplexity. I've been super impressed. The tool provides high-quality answers with footnotes directing you to the source pages/sites.
The Heart and the Chip is a next big idea.
Did that not make sense? Sorry. The Next Big Idea Club picked The Heart and the Chip as one of its books, and Daniela shares five of the key ideas in this article.
Why should you read this book? Robots and AI are already changing our world profoundly. This one and the follow-up, The Mind's Mirror, which comes out August 6th, are designed to help you understand how these technologies really work, how we should think about incorporating them into our lives and workplaces to help people, and what we need to be worried about.
Plus, this stuff is cool! I'm still blown away by Daniela's insights on how self-driving cars work. That’s one of my favorite chapters in The Heart and the Chip. (“The Brain in Motion,” for those of you who have it.) If you haven’t picked up a copy, we’d be grateful if you checked it out. This page has some easy links to your preferred retailer.
Oh, and a quick reminder: We don’t have fully autonomous self-driving cars yet. So stop looking at your phone when you’re at the wheel.
What else?
I don’t know. That feels like a lot for now. Right? I have more to say but I’ll save it to say another day.
Thank you for reading.
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