🌀🗞 The FLUX Review, Ep. 138

March 21st, 2024

Mar 22, 2024

“FCP-138” // Photo: MK with GPT-4 and DALL·E 3

Episode 138 — March 21st, 2024 — Available at read.fluxcollective.org/p/138

Contributors to this issue: Justin Quimby, Scott Schaffter, Jon Lebensold, Erika Rice Scherpelz, Neel Mehta, Boris Smus, MK, Ade Oshineye

Additional insights from: Ben Mathes, Dimitri Glazkov, Alex Komoroske, Robinson Eaton, Spencer Pitman, Julka Almquist, Lisie Lillianfeld, Samuel Arbesman, Dart Lindsley, Melanie Kahl

We’re a ragtag band of systems thinkers who have been dedicating our early mornings to finding new lenses to help you make sense of the complex world we live in. This newsletter is a collection of patterns we’ve noticed in recent weeks.

“People follow leaders by choice. Without trust, at best you get compliance.”
— Jesse Lyn Stoner

🥯💡 On bagels, tandoori, and dual use

To be agile, use what’s already there, embrace exaptation. But where? One fruitful path is to look for examples of dual use.

We take for granted that many things that have become commonplace started in an entirely different context—the internet (ARPANET), GPS (missiles), Tang (NASA). All came from contexts not originally targeted for their eventual common use. These kinds of ‘dual-use’ examples can be useful sparks for finding more utility in a given tool.

Many North American cities exhibit waves of immigration, where different communities sweep through the same, often densely populated neighborhoods generation after generation. This phenomenon creates unexpected second-order effects, such as when bagel bakeries are used as tandoor ovens. Bagel ovens are not ideal tandoor ovens, but they work reasonably well… and they’re significantly cheaper than repurposing the building to rebuild the perfect tandoor oven.

Often, we think of dual use across a spectrum of “good/bad.” Nuclear fission comes to mind: It powers cities (reduction: good!) and nuclear bombs (reduction: bad!). But dual use doesn’t have to live along that normative spectrum. Instead, consider the variety of non-standard applications that it might provide—just don't try to make your watch glow with radium.

Dual use isn’t limited to the physical world, either; software projects follow exaptation all the time. You’ve likely seen people using an issue tracker as a document or case management system. Or spreadsheets as databases. Recently, people have used a car dealership’s site to call ChatGPT for free. Salesforce is another example. The company leaned into customer-discovered dual use and is no longer just a CRM tool. It can be used for close to any business requirement, even managing carbon emissions.

The next time you’re faced with the decision to buy a specialty application or appliance or do a major rework to adapt what you have to a new need, see if you can lean on the power of dual use. Who knows, maybe instead of buying an air fryer, your needs can be satisfied well enough with a special oven tray.

🛣️🚩 Signposts

Clues that point to where our changing world might lead us.

🚏☢️ AWS is buying a nuclear-powered data center to feed AI’s electricity needs

Amazon Web Services has inked a $650 million deal to acquire a data center complex in northwestern Pennsylvania that sits next to a nuclear power plant, which will directly power the facility. The data center can currently support 48 megawatts of power, and it’s on track to raise that to 475 MW. The president of the energy company AWS is partnering with commented that “AI and data centers are at the heart of” recent increases in energy demand, along with cryptocurrencies.

🚏👩‍⚕️ Nvidia is offering AI-powered nurses for $9 an hour

Nvidia unveiled a partnership with an AI startup that offers “generative AI nurses” and “healthcare agents” for as little as $9 an hour, compared to the $90 an hour that they say human nurses can cost. These virtual nurses can “offer medical advice to patients over video calls in real-time” or “follow up with a discharged patient.” The startup does note that the AI nurses aren’t qualified to make diagnoses; the bots will contact a real human doctor to follow up.

🚏🦘 Australian EV owners could earn up to $8,000 a year by plugging their cars in

One helpful side effect of electric car owners plugging their vehicles into the power grid is that they can “soak[] up excess solar power on the grid, or discharg[e] to meet peak demand periods,” thus helping the grid’s stability and potentially earning the owners some money. In fact, according to a new report out of Australia, the average car in New South Wales could earn up to A$12,000 (~US$8,000) per year by plugging in, depending on what electricity market they participate in.

📖⏳ Worth your time

Some especially insightful pieces we’ve read, watched, and listened to recently.

What Can We Do Instead of Appraising People? (The Digestible Deming) — Analyzes a paper that seeks to explain why performance reviews fail to measure employees’ value accurately. (In short, there are too many confounding variables: the different contexts employees work in, the differing biases and preferences of evaluators, etc.) Then, explores some alternatives for rewarding employees and helping them grow without the rigidity of structured appraisal and promotion processes.
AI Is Creating Fake Historical Photos, and That’s a Problem (Marina Amaral) — Argues that AI image models’ uncanny skill at creating realistic-looking images of past places and events can be used to spread completely fabricated historical narratives. “While traditional forms of historical distortion, like propaganda or revisionism, can certainly be influential, they still operate within certain bounds of plausibility… they’re still constrained by the available evidence. AI-generated photos, on the other hand, have the potential to create entirely new realities out of nothing.”
Everyman’s Right in the Nordic Countries (Northern Bush) — Describes the legal custom in Scandinavia and the Baltic countries in which every person has the right to travel, temporarily stay, and even collect firewood on private land as long as it is roughly 150 meters from a private house.
The 1.6 Million Year-Old Discovery That Changes What We Know about Human Evolution (The Independent) — Discusses new research that suggests that humans developed proto-language 1.6 million years ago (compared to the current consensus of about 200,000 years ago). The period from 1.4 to 1.6 million years ago saw the evolution of Broca’s area, a key brain sector for speech, an acceleration of hunting, a sharp improvement in stone tool technology, and more widespread human colonization — all potential evidence for the rise of communication skills.

💊🍀 A dose of hopepunk

An optimistic sign that our world’s systems are changing for the better.

Medellín, Colombia has been suffering from the urban heat island effect as it’s grown and sprawled rapidly in recent decades. As a result, the mayor launched the Green Corridors initiative in 2016, which has set up a vast network of tree-covered bridges, leafy cycling lanes, green roofs, parks, and even vertical gardens (pictured below). The initiative has installed over 2.5 million plants and 880,000 trees (mostly native species).

The greening project has shown great success so far: temperatures in the city fell by 2 ºC in the program’s first three years, and because these plants are also good at sucking up air pollution, the level of PM2.5 (a dangerous form of particulate matter) fell significantly, driving down deaths from respiratory infections by 40%. Cycling is up 35% thanks to the new bike lanes, and samples have shown that local wildlife is returning.

🔍🐿️ Lens of the week

Introducing new ways to see the world and new tools to add to your mental arsenal.

This week’s lens: The Impossible Squirrel.

Let’s say your CEO asks you to do the impossible: “I don’t care what it takes; make the baby show up in one month!” You know, regardless of the resources, it doesn’t work that way. You have a few options. You can try to explain to your CEO how a baby is born and outline the biological impossibility of having a baby in one month (a quite literal version of the mythical man-month). You can try to find other experts to provide more context as to why this is impossible. Many times, however, the reason the CEO is asking for this impossibility is that they might not want to understand those nuances. Maybe they have different beliefs about the world that, from their perspective, make this impossible claim reasonable. Or maybe they see existential risks and threats that make the impossible necessary.

It can be useful to step back and reframe the problem. What context are we missing? In what world would this request be reasonable? Have we assumed constraints that don’t apply? For instance, what kind of baby is required? Have we assumed a human baby? But what about a squirrel? Would that work? Squirrels gestate in roughly a month. Heck, if a fly baby works, they gestate in 24 hours! Who needs a month!

Think through the costs of doing the “impossible” and reframe them. Challenge the constraints you are given or have assumed. That’s how you get breakthroughs. Sometimes you might unlock something new and distinct that brings clarity to the request and helps you understand the need and what you’re trying to accomplish. Sometimes you might discover that impossible merely takes a little longer.

🔮📬 Postcard from the future

A ‘what if’ piece of speculative fiction about a possible future that could result from the systemic forces changing our world.

// If silicon chips are the new oil, then who might be the new pirates?

// 2029. A nondescript airfield in the Texas panhandle. A team of black-clad armed and armored soldiers load into an armored helicopter with well-drilled practice.

A grizzled figure pats each soldier on the shoulder as they load in.

“Alright folks. This is a black op. So, strip the logos. Here’s our team visual ID.” The leader hands out small gray patches. Each team member dutifully rips the corporate logos from their helmet and shoulder pads and replaces them with the gray patches. A bag collecting the corp patches returns to the leader, who counts the contents. They then pass it out the door to a waiting mechanic, who has just finished the inspection and is arming the helicopter’s weapon pods.

A soldier securing their XM7 pipes up. “Glad they didn’t give us helmet spikes this time.”

“Knock it off, Hudson! Here’s the sit-rep—this is a standard smash-and-grab. We fly in low. The ground team will cut the power just before our drone carriers cross the site CIWS range. Helicarriers Red and Blue will launch their drone swarm payloads to neutralize the target’s drones, defenses, and personnel. Thirty seconds later, with a green light, we hit the target in the northeast corner. Our job: breach the site, secure it, and hold it while asset extraction occurs.

“When we give the all-clear, the exfiltration team’s trucks will enter the loading bay. The bots will then offload and begin extracting the cargo.”

A figure inspecting their rifle raises their head. “What are we looking at for the size of the payload?”

“An insider has given us blueprints for the layout. The primary target is 10,000 Gen3 H400s that were delivered two months ago. Secondary targets are the two bays of recent GPU installs. Anything older than a year is tertiary. We know how hard these crypto miners push their hardware, so we expect that silicon to be nearing end of life. We need hardware that is still good for scaled AI training.

“Intel shows these crypto miners have substantial assets and have been reinforcing their data center mining facilities. Watch for booby traps in the racks. When in doubt, send in a drone.

“Stay frosty, because our lives are worth less than training the corp’s newest AI model. We are a deniable asset. Our handlers reminded me that those substantial end of life payouts do NOT happen if you get identified. If it comes to it, use the phoenix.” At that, the commander pats the small pouch at their neck, with wires leading to their hands and plugging into their helmet. “It will destroy your retinas and fingerprints, and inject DNA scramblers that will leave the feds unable to match you with their records.

“I don’t see you as disposable. I want you to come home. Let’s get paid.”

A chant erupts from the squad as the rotors pick up speed…

“Crypto kings and digital dreams, we raid the vaults where the currency streams!”

🌀🗞 The FLUX Review