Weekend Briefing No. 515

Top 10 Articles of 2023

Welcome to the weekend and Merry Christmas!

I'm sharing my 10 favorite articles from 2023 this week. Since AI went mainstream this year, there are a few AI-focused pieces in the mix. But you'll also find articles covering topics like bowling, happiness, free speech, and life satisfaction.

I think these are all worthwhile reads. If you have some downtime over the next week, I'd encourage you to check out or revisit all 10 articles. Once you've read a few that stand out, post a comment sharing your favorite and why it resonated.

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Ten Charts

This is a simple post about 10 charts that each tell a powerful story. All 10 are worth checking out. But here are some of my favorites: 1) The happiest age is not what you think. You might intuitively think that happiness peaks as a kid or maybe in your 20s. You’d be wrong. Apparently, it peaks in your 80s. 2) The American dream is getting harder to achieve. In 1940, 90% of children out-earned their parents. That number is now below 50%. 3) Why have prices risen so much in health care and college? The short answer is a huge increase in administrators in both fields. Perspectives (10 minutes)

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Community Responders

This year, New York City is conducting a series of bold experiments in Brownsville that some believe could redefine law enforcement in New York City. The police are hanging back and letting neighbors respond to low-level street crime. If a 911 call does not entail a major incident or a victim is not demanding an arrest, the police channel then calls a group of citizens on duty who are trained to intervene. Police officers, always in plainclothes, shadow the workers. The civilians have no arrest powers. They handle cases that fall into the yawning gap between law enforcement and social services. Brownsville residents complained that officers had become aggressive, grabbing men off the street to arrest them for minor offenses. This experiment is trying to ensure that fewer people are arrested and entangled in the criminal justice system. The Brownsville initiative is part of a movement called the “community responder model,” which aims to reduce the use of armed officers to handle many calls. The data is very limited, but it looks like it may be working. In the first half of 2023, homicides fell 50%, shootings fell 25% and the rate of grand larcenies of automobiles also fell even as it rose in other neighborhoods. New York Times (13 minutes)

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Buffett vs Banksy: The Surprising Winner

What’s one market that Warren Buffet probably hasn’t considered, even though its prices outpaced shares of his very own Berkshire Hathaway, growing at an annualized rate of 14.4% from 2007 to June 2023? The market for Banksy’s art. That's right, Banksy. And now, for the first time, everyday investors are getting in on the action. Thanks to Masterworks, the award-winning platform for investing in blue-chip art. Masterworks enables anyone to invest in paintings by artists like Banksy, Basquiat, and Picasso for just a fraction of the cost. When Masterworks sells a painting, investors can get a return. All of their offerings are limited, and shares can sell out in just minutes, but Weekend Briefing readers can skip the waitlist with this exclusive link. Masterworks (Sponsored)

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The Modern Turing Test

The Turing Test is a subjective evaluation of whether a machine can exhibit intelligent behavior indistinguishable from that of a human. Some believe that Chat GPT-4 may be close to passing the test. (Note: I asked GPT-4. It basically said that in specific instances, it could pass the test but, “In any case, it's important to understand that passing the Turing Test doesn't necessarily mean an AI truly understands the content it's generating in the way humans do. It simply means it can generate responses that are difficult to distinguish from those a human might provide.”) Mustafa Suleyman proposes a new test called the Modern Turing Test, which evaluates an AI's ability to achieve real-world impact rather than just replicating human-like conversation. The proposed test challenges the AI to make $1 million on a retail web platform with a limited investment. The author suggests that such a test would require the AI to perform complex tasks like product research, negotiation and marketing, with minimal human oversight. The article acknowledges that while some technical advancements and frameworks are already in place, there are still challenges in hierarchical planning, reliable memory, security and ethics. Passing the Modern Turing Test would signify a significant milestone in the world economy, as AIs would become highly capable agents capable of performing various tasks and potentially replacing human workers in many domains. MIT Technology Review (7 minutes)

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Baptists and Bootleggers

Mark Andreesen wrote a long form piece called Why AI Will Save the World. The whole thing is worth a read. But following the theme of AI fear in America, I want to focus on one section about moral panic. Moral panic is by its very nature irrational. It takes what may be a legitimate concern and inflates it into a level of hysteria that ironically makes it harder to confront actually serious concerns. This moral panic is already being used as a motivating force by a variety of actors to demand regulation. Economists have observed a longstanding pattern in reform movements of this kind. The actors within movements like these fall into two categories — “Baptists” and “Bootleggers” — drawing on the historical example of the prohibition of alcohol in the United States in the 1920s. The “Baptists” are the true believer social reformers who legitimately feel — deeply and emotionally, if not rationally — that new restrictions, regulations and laws are required to prevent societal disaster. For alcohol prohibition, these actors were often literally devout Christians who felt that alcohol was destroying the moral fabric of society. For AI risk, these actors are true believers that AI presents one or another existential risks — strap them to a polygraph, they really mean it. The “Bootleggers” are the self-interested opportunists who stand to financially profit by the imposition of new restrictions, regulations and laws that insulate them from competitors. For alcohol prohibition, these were the literal bootleggers who made a fortune selling illicit alcohol to Americans when legitimate alcohol sales were banned. For AI risk, these are CEOs who stand to make more money if regulatory barriers are erected that form a cartel of government-blessed AI vendors protected from new startup and open source competition — the software version of “too big to fail” banks. The problem with the Bootleggers is that they win. The Baptists are naive ideologues, and the Bootleggers are cynical operators. The result of reform movements like these is often that the Bootleggers get what they want — regulatory capture, insulation from competition, the formation of a cartel — and the Baptists are left wondering where their drive for social improvement went so wrong. a16z (19 minutes)

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A New Era of Startups

Just as cloud computing and open source unlocked “lean startups” in the 2010s, it’s likely that artificial intelligence (AI) will unlock a new kind of organization in the 2020s. Like lean startups, startups born in the AI era will start small. They will use open source and cloud computing to get off the ground quickly and iterate. But thanks to AI, they will stay smaller for much longer, and the most successful of them will achieve staggering scale with only a handful of employees. More importantly, this new type of organization will be able to try out new kinds of ideas. When experiments get cheaper, a wider variety of people can run a wider variety of experiments. The barrier to entry is already lower than ever. But now that AI is good enough to design interfaces, write code and execute marketing campaigns, we’re going to see a whole new set of experiments come online. To really understand what the new wave of AI-native startups will look like, we need to understand exactly how startups will use AI to get more done with fewer people—and Conway’s Law will help us understand what effect that might have on organizational structure. Every (18 minutes)

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Don’t Work at a Startup

The basic proposition is this: “We raised a lot of venture capital and plan on becoming an enormous company. Join us, take a haircut on salary, but earn way more in the future in the form of equity.” Here’s a contrarian message: You probably shouldn’t work for a startup. 1) The big financial risk you are taking on is “will this thing actually work?” The answer is almost certainly no. The best data set I could find pegged unicorns at ~1% of venture-backed startups. 2) Startups aren’t always a great place to work. “Mission-driven” companies often end up being exploitative. Napkin Math (12 minutes)

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Free Speech at Stanford Law

There has been a contentious debate about free speech on the campus of Stanford Law School this spring. A talk from a conservative federal judge was disrupted by student hecklers. A video of the fiasco went viral. Eleven days later, the school dean named Jenny S. Martinez released a lawyerly 10-page memo that rebuked the activists. “Some students might feel that some points should not be up for argument and therefore that they should not bear the responsibility of arguing them,” she wrote. But, she continued, that “is incompatible with the training that must be delivered in a law school.” She added, “I believe that the commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion actually means that we must protect free expression of all views.” The question for Stanford and other institutions is whether the memo can ease tensions in this fraught and seemingly intractable political climate. In an era of high-pitched politics, living up to lofty free-speech principles can get messy on the ground. New York Times (11 minutes)

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Two Hands

Jason Belmonte’s two-handed technique made him an outcast. Then it made him the greatest and changed the sport forever. When he first alighted on the scene, Belmo, as he’s known to his fans, resembled an alien species: one that bowled with two hands. And not some granny shot, to be clear. It’s a power move that explodes the pins. Not everyone welcomed his arrival. He’s been called a cheat and told to go back to his native Australia. A PBA Hall of Famer once called the two-hander a “cancer to an already diseased sport.” “He’s exactly like Tiger Woods,” said PBA Commissioner Tom Clark. “The domination, the difference, the electricity, the controversy. People don’t like him because he’s too humble, or because he’s from Australia, or they think he’s arrogant because he’s better looking than they are, or something. They’ve got a million reasons why.” Perhaps the main reason is that for much of recent memory, he’s simply been better. He’s won 15 major titles, four more than anyone else in history, and seven Player of the Year awards, tied for the most of all time. Even as the rest of the tour has narrowed the gap, challenging his supremacy, he’s found ways to maintain it. Today, a growing faction of two-handers headline the PBA Tour, some of them major winners, with even more rising in the youth ranks: kids who want to hook it like Belmo, who want to send the pins into concussion protocol. GQ (11 minutes)

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Success and Satisfaction

Many successful professionals struggle to enjoy their accomplishments. Our brains’ reward system, especially the neurotransmitter dopamine, drives us to achieve goals and rewards us with a great sense of pleasure when we do. But that pleasure is short-lived, as our brains are hardwired to also seek balance from extreme emotional states. That leaves us with an empty longing to repeat whatever experience brought us that pleasure in the first place. This ostensibly addictive cycle throws our “enoughness” barometers completely out of whack, preventing us from being able to objectively gauge if what we’ve achieved is, in fact, satisfying. That’s why, although most of us intuitively know that happiness isn’t realized from the pursuit of money, status or fame, we can’t stop ourselves from trying. If you really want lasting satisfaction in life, you’ll need to relearn your approach to finding it. The author presents several strategies. Harvard Business Review (11 minutes)

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Wei Wei

The Daoists have a concept called wu-wei, which roughly translates to “effortless action.” This is the belief that the world we occupy is already in harmony, but this equilibrium is disturbed by our endless desires and wants. In order to restore this balance, we are to navigate the world according to how it already is instead of attempting to bend it to our will. Swim with the current of the river to see where it takes us rather than fighting against it to go to a destination we already have in mind. The reason why wu-wei is compelling is because it doesn’t discount the importance of action. You still have to show up and be present for whatever experience you are entering. If anything, the awareness of your mental state is elevated. But the difference here is that your action isn’t driven by a self-interested motive; rather, you are simply easing into the fluidity of the moment and seeing what happens. More To That (6 minutes)

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Should We Work Together?

Hi! I’m Kyle. This newsletter is my passion project. When I’m not writing, I run a law firm that helps startups move fast without breaking things. Most founders want a trusted legal partner, but they hate surprise legal bills. At Westaway, we take care of your startup’s legal needs for a flat, monthly fee so you can control your costs and focus on scaling your business. If you’re interested, let’s jump on a call to see if you’re a good fit for the firm. Click here to schedule a one-on-one call with me.

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Founder Fridays

Check out my other email, Founder Fridays — a Friday morning briefing helping startup founders and operators scale smarter.

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Weekend Wisdom

Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal. - John F. Kennedy