Welcome back to The Weekender!
As 2024 comes to a close, we’re excited to share our Best of 2024 edition —a celebration of the moments, milestones, and achievements that defined the past twelve months. From groundbreaking innovations to inspiring stories, these stories were your favorites – the ones you clicked the most and shared with friends. Thank you for spending your Fridays with us!
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Flashback – January: AI Grows Up So Fast
It’s quite difficult to underscore the exponential rate at which AI is growing. Like how dolphins can swim immediately after being born but it takes human babies years to accomplish basic operations, AI is outpacing us at every turn (It’s just a metaphor. We know we haven’t found any dolphin-made civilizations … yet). Companies like OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft are feeding these neural networks more and more information to enhance their education (yes, education). Today, AI does a reasonable job at generating text, but shortly, it will hone its already impressive expertise in creating images and videos as well, and that is only what we see on the horizon.
The goal of these companies is to achieve “artificial general intelligence,” which could do everything that the human brain can do. Much like a human baby saying its first words, the most popular AI, at this point, is focusing its efforts on figuring out communication understandable to (and from) humans. Give that baby a decade or two, and it will be a musician and an accountant; it will learn about the world around it and understand the complexity of human emotions. Right now, AI is well on its way to doing these rudimentary things and will not need decades, as a human would, to mature.
Tech companies are merging AI networks, giving life to “multimodal” systems. Chatbots and image generators are being connected to create videos at a moment’s notice. Each specialization brings a new skill to the table, and much like a human, when two new skills are taught, they are used seamlessly to create something brand new, something unexpected.
As AI are taught new skills and increase their reasoning capacity, the goal is to have them solve increasingly complex problems that plague modern humanity. We will have to see what they create once multimodal systems are increasingly educated. And hope for the best!
Read More at The New York Times
Flashback – March: Tick Tock, Tick Tock, TikTok, BOOM
Tick-tock goes the clock on TikTok as Congress will interlock to decide if the app can continue to walk the walk in the U.S. Until now, it has been a cakewalk for the app to grow like a beanstalk given the massive feedstock of use by younger generations. The House quickly pointed their flintlocks at ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company), voting in a bloc to pass a bill requiring the Chinese-owned company to divest from TikTok or face a national ban. Senators will flock to a hearing to be briefed on the issue by the FBI, Justice Department, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The bipartisan measure is no laughingstock and is likely to put ByteDance in a headlock.
The House was decisive on the bill, easily passing it 352 in favor and 65 against only eight days after it was introduced. The legislation now faces an uncertain future in the Senate, where Members are looking at alternatives to regulating foreign-owned apps that pose security risks. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has remained neutral on the issue and affirmed that the Senate will review the legislation but is not immediately whipping in either direction.
Public opinion polling on the issue is evenly split in a three-way tie. According to a poll by The Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 31% of U.S. adults favor the ban, 35% oppose the action, and 31% neither favor nor oppose it. Further action is expected after the national security briefing in the Senate, but the chamber is unlikely to move as quickly as the House. If the Senate moves in favor of the legislation, there is sure to be an aftershock once ByteDance sells TikTok or abandons the U.S. marketplace.
Flashback – May: The Heyday for Railways
line, sitting in a crowded airport, and being crammed into an airplane for an hour-and-a-half flight for $450? If not, we may be entering the revitalization era of the U.S. railways. If you include the additional time it takes to fly (i.e. waiting and standing, then waiting and sitting), a trip on the train takes about just as long for a quarter of the price while being able to arrive minutes before boarding with less security.
Unfortunately for many, options are limited. Private and public sectors are looking to change that. Brightline West broke ground on a 218-mile rail line from Las Vegas to just east is Los Angeles with zero emission, fully electric trains that can reach 200 MPH. If their plans come to fruition, a ticket on the railway would move passengers in half the time it would take to drive.
Amtrak is looking to replace its entire fleet over the next decade and build out a route from Dallas to Houston, too. The California High-Speed Rail, despite its challenges, is attempting to connect Sacramento and San Diego. With many of these projects thriving from the support of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law going into effect, one could be forgiven for calling the package the “Moolah for the Choo Choo Law.”
If the plans to build out the domestic railway can leave the station, they will face problems everywhere, from a lack of investment to geographic issues to political pushback. There may be a day, however, when consumers can easily, cheaply, and quickly board a train to travel to U.S. rather than committing to the stresses and expenses of long-distance driving and air travel.
Flashback – August: The Tunes They Are A-Changin’
“Your parents will never like your music” has always been true. Big band swing led into the Beatles, which paved the way for rock and roll, only to be overtaken by RnB and soul music. Soul was beaten out by glam rock and disco, which hip hop killed. Music does more than speak to a generation – it is the generation. So, in today’s era of limitless access to music spanning genres, influences, and tones, how are modern musicians cutting through the noise? They don’t have just one preceding generation of music to influence them – they have everything at their fingertips; and they use it.
Music today exists in an era of limitless creativity. With new artists emerging every day, tunes that do not conform to one genre generate their own to encompass it. From Math Rock and Bubble Trance to Boogie Western and Folk Punk, we are living in an era unshielded from our own imagination. Take the meteoric “Playing God” by Polyphia as an example. Despite being heavily influenced by metal, it’s played entirely on two classical guitars, has a whistle solo, does not utilize the brand-dependent distortion effect metalheads crave, and employs jazz chords at every turn, all while the band does not have a lead singer. So, is it metal?
If it is or isn’t, it doesn’t matter. We will not opine on Aristotle’s definitions of the “essence” of something. Rather, we recommend enjoying something for its own sake – even if that sake is that it’s new and outside of your always-on playlists.
Flashback – October: Looking for Neighbors on Europa
On Monday, NASA launched a spacecraft that will study one of the most intriguing objects in our solar system: Jupiter’s moon Europa. The solar-powered vehicle, dubbed “Europa Clipper,” departed Earth via the Kennedy Space Center and is expected to reach the ice-desert Europa in April 2030. Why this seemingly desolate moon? It just may have all the essential ingredients to host life. Liquid water is the most important part of the recipe – and Europa has lots of it. It is estimated that the humble Europa has twice the amount of liquid water as Earth’s oceans combined. Although the planet is wrapped in a thick sheet of ice, hydrothermal activity on its seabed could supply chemical nutrients to give birth to living organisms. It has water, organic elements (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur), heat energy generated by Jupiter’s gravity perpetually flexing the moon, and stability: all critical components to life.
Europa Clipper will reach Mars early next year and return to slingshot itself around Earth’s gravity to retrieve enough energy to reach Europa. The spacecraft will conduct 49 close flybys of the moon, utilizing its nine instruments (including two that will catch dust and gas) to deeply analyze the celestial body.
To be clear, the craft is not directly looking for life. But in the wise words of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, “If you find life on Europa, what would you call it? Would they be Europeans?”
See you next week!
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