My Thoughts, Tipsand other Delicacies which I believe are suitable for a fact-based optimist. This newsletter is for you who are a Premium Supporters at Warp News. Please share it with friends and acquaintances.
🤓 What do Martin Luther and Jonas Birgersson say about AI?
But what the hell does that even mean?! How many times have I cursed myself when trying to understand the content of a research study. It is rarely the topic itself that confuses me the most, but the extremely complex way in which it is described.
We talked about this in the AI ​​master class I had. Jonas Birgersson’s Company Via Europa, last Friday in Lund. Birgersson is one of Sweden’s internet pioneers, founder of two unicorns and today heads the Energy Society project.
As always, he had an interesting perspective on it. I will come back to that in a moment, but first an example from Steven Pinker in Why Academics Fail at Writing. Try to figure out what this sentence means:
“Participants read statements whose truth was either confirmed or refuted by the subsequent presentation of an evaluation word.”
After racking his brains for a while, Pinker comes to the conclusion that it means:
“Participants read sentences followed by the word ‘true’ or ‘false’.”
Of course, it may be necessary to use “difficult words” to achieve precision in an academic’s writing, but in my experience, people write in complicated ways much more often than not.
Jonas Birgersson pointed out that generative AI now gives us the ability to both understand complex issues and quickly delve into very extensive reports and text documents.
I asked the AI ​​tool Claude to simplify the above sentence:
“Participants read sentences followed by the words ‘true’ or ‘false.'”
Nowadays, I always use ChatGPT or Claude to understand and write understandable texts based on research studies.
It reminds me of the priests in the Middle Ages who preached in Latin. People didn’t understand anything but had no other sources and had to trust that what the priest said was correct and appropriate.
Then Martin-Luther appeared, as well as other ideas that he spread in short pamphlets in German. They became bestsellers and millions of people were now able to form an opinion other than that imposed on them by the Catholic Church.
I have already written about this before in “Martin Luther – the first Twitterer”.
⛪ Martin Luther – The first Twitterer
In just four years, Martin Luther went from being a complete unknown to being Europe’s bestselling author. A few years later, he had become such a threat to the church that they banished him. How was that possible before radio, television and the Internet? He used groundbreaking technology in a new way.
As we all know, knowledge is power. With generative AI, it has become much easier to absorb this knowledge.
Mathias Sundin
The angry optimist
âť— Other things
Elo rating shows the relative skill level of players in zero-sum games such as chess or e-sports. This is how the various generative AI models perform.
🧮 Eleonora Svanberg gives mathematical confidence
I met Eleonora Svanberg for the first time in 2016, when I was with the astronaut Christer Fuglesangput forward proposals for a new space policy for Sweden. One of the proposals was that we should send a Swede to Mars. That person should be Eleonora Svanberg.
She was selected by Astronomical Youth and was with us at the press conference to talk about why she wants to go to Mars.
Back then, she was still in high school. Now she’s doing her PhD in physics at Oxford and has become an influencer. But of a different kind. Her focus is not on makeup and interior design, but on STEM, natural sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics.
These days she is releasing a book, Study with me: How to build mathematical confidence.
This is a personal account of her journey from being a young girl doubting her mathematical abilities to becoming a PhD student in a male-dominated environment at one of the world’s leading universities. For those who feel unsure about mathematics, she offers insight into the potential of the subject, as well as study tips, encouragement and inspiration.
Here you can find links to all her social media and here you can buy her book. (So far only in Swedish, but I suspect there will be an English version as well.)
