🔮 After Uber, Snapchat’s boom & tech ethics #103

🚀 This is issue #102 of THE EXPONENTIAL VIEW.

Snapchat pops. Ride-sharing is here to stay, even if Uber implodes. How the focus on exponential company growth corrupts. Trade and protectionism. Predicting suicide early. A conversation with Jeff Sachs. Hope this sparks great conversations!

😍 Love this? Do share it , , .

Dept of the near future

👻 ? (Also, The Economist .)

🚗 Uber may yet implode. Transportation-as-a-service will still have a rosy future, argues . EXCELLENT READ (Note: this article is in Newsweek which .)

🔥 argues . We need to ‘to offer realistic, ethical alternatives to the exponential growth logic. Ones that’ll benefit not just a gilded few, but all of us. The future literally depends on it.’ EXORCIATING

🔮 Podcast: and I . MUST LISTEN.

🙏🏼  . ($) THOUGHT-PROVOKING READ

Dept of ethics in technology

We regularly cover ethics in Exponential View. The rationale is reasonably straightforward. Increasingly our access to all services are mediated by technology. Technology has long outgrown its niche status but rather is our fundamental interface to the world.

The optimism of the technology industry (particularly with the rise of the Internet in the 1980s and 1990s) was that power would be decentralised and distributed. The Internet was the supposed to be a decentralised, open network. Built to survive nuclear destruction (if the failed), the Internet’s first services were initiated, in many cases, by thoughtful netizens influenced by the counter-culture movement of the late 1960s. (See, for example, and .) In the past 30 years, the Internet has grown up. Far from being decentralised, favouring the edge and facilitating groups, the Internet is dominated by two Leviathans Facebook and Google. At the same time, a template, call it ‘zero-to-one’, has emerged for building new monopolies, new Leviathans. And that template, , relentless optimisation in pursuit of extreme growth. At all costs. At any cost.

And the engineers-entrepreneurs leading these firms have found themselves in positions of power that call for more Socrates than slide rule, Mill & Marx than machine learning, Rawls than regression analysis, Aristotle than AI, Nussbaum than ninety-day-plans…

• 🎱 Greyball is . The company “has for years engaged in a worldwide program to deceive the authorities in markets where its low-cost ride-hailing service was resisted by law enforcement or, in some instances, had been banned.”
• on
• EV reader, Vivek Wadhwa:
• : Facebook (FB’s .)
• 🐈 :

Dept of artificial intelligence

What if algorithms can spot suicide risks before the people around you can? Or potentially before you already knew. In a soon to be published paper, a researcher claims . Similar peer-reviewed work has to improve early identification of suicide risk. This model achieved an AUC performance of 0.71, a significant improvement on clinician AUC of 0.56. (Perfect prediction would have an AUC of 1.0). Even Facebook has developed based on your status updates. It seems likely the Google search data could do the same. This brings to mind on when algorithms know us better than we know ourselves. Whether Facebook from status updates or the pattern of our physical symptoms from regular public health monitoring, we’re better able to predict individual behaviour than ever before.

• 💡 EXCELLENT: Should ? “The very different nature of the technological advances currently in progress, in terms of their much broader industrial and occupational applications and their speed of diffusion” means our previous models may not be applicable.
• SUPER (tl;dr: Go fullstack)
• : and its impact on products.
• What are the tensors in Tensorflow (and modern machine learning more broadly)? NICE INTRODUCTION
• How
• Netflix uses
• Apple may have about to .
• Podcast:
• Millenials
• 📜 Interesting profile of .

Exponential View Private Dinner: International Relations in the Age of Trump

I am really excited about our next Exponential View dinner.

Our discussion will be led by Bill Emmott, former editor-in-chief of The Economist.

Bill is a world expert in global business and international political economy, who scarcely needs further introduction. We’ll touch on one of the most pressing issues facing us as citizens, entrepreneurs and investors. And of particular relevance of those of us in global industries (like tech, health, finance, education and others.) If you want to attend, We would be .

Small morsels to appear smart at dinner parties

in Congo. 500 years ago, and turned against free trade. (Graph on how as one nation moves towards protectionism. .) (.) Using When Terminal cancer patients in remission Also, gene therapy . US consumers . (21% of all their time!!) Gorgeous . Fascinating. Why

End note

I’m getting quite interested in the microbiome so I am up for some book recommendations on the topic. This might lead up to a podcast or event at some point. Do let me know your recommendations. Azeem P.S.