2017 Starts Interesting

I am one of the few people that still has an RSS Reader, Feedly to be exact, and it holds a lot of stuff I would like to read later. The…

I am one of the few people that still has an RSS Reader, Feedly to be exact, and it holds a lot of stuff I would like to read later. The other part is lots of bookmarks in a small little folder just because I somehow stopped using Instapaper.

Many of those are just there because I want to think about them a bit and I will try to reuse this outlet to think a bit and post those thoughts so I have them written down somewhere. As a side note, you might find them entertaining or insightful. :)

All the AI stuff

AI is an obvious subject that pops up again and again. Actually, at work, the jury is still out if it is just overhype or really something fundamental other than more pure compute power and bigger datasets has happened.

[Will Knight has some predictions for 2017 about AI](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603216/5-big-predictions-for-artificial-intelligence-in-2017/) in MIT Technology Review. One is that we will hear more about positive reinforced learning, mainly allowing computers to learn from positive outcomes. I remember first hearing about something like that as a general concept, at least partly, when I read Jeff Hawkin’s On Intelligence some 10 or more years back. I fully understand why it plays a large part of how we learn.

Dueling Neural Networks are something else and we just saw a glimps of that through somebody having two Google Home Devices talking to each other.

China is investing heavily into AI it seems. Language Learning will see large advances and you might remember the articles around Google’s changes in its translation system. Especially read the NYTimes article The Great AI Awakening.

Will ends by saying that there might be a backlash to the hype, which brings us full circle.

The Autonomous Vehicle Bonanza

Ah well, it’s actually getting boring and we would need a lot more thinking to really get into the deeper parts of it. Obviously A16Z is thinking about it, and so are a lot more. Seems like Mercedes is getting into a competitive environment with Tesla, something that will be really interesting, especially with NVIDIA helping. At the same time Tesla is rolling out testing deployments of its new autopilot. Can the big german car makers get autonomous driving done more quickly than Tesla can make good quality cars? That is the question really.

And very sorry, I do not buy the point that brand will be meaningless in self driving cars.

Some Interesting Bits

My open tabs hold some interesting stuff. There is a billion dollar startup in the pharma field called Roivant. Seems they already raised a billion USDs and are going strong with different drugs through different companies in something more like a holding methodology.

At the same time Grail seems to be raising a billion USDs for its cancer screening methodology. It is really about something that I have read about many years ago. We will never cure cancer, but we will find it at such an early rate that it is just a few cells and then we can contain it, if not cure it.

If you want to think about drones, stop looking further than DJI and now it got even more interesting with DJI investing in Hasselblad. Talking about investments, now Softbank and Saudi Arabia are joined by Apple in a $100 billion fund.

In terms of BHAG, we have Blockstack, building a new kind of serverless and distributed and decentralised internet with the help of the blockchain. Now that is a mouthful but truly interesting.

I might just revisit this next week.