What is this newsletter about?
Gary Marcus is a very busy person; He teaches (Professor Emeritus, NYU), Founds companies (Geometric Intelligence. Acquired by Uber, and Robust.AI) writes books (5 in fact, including Rebooting AI [Forbes 7 Must Read Books About AI]) and runs an excellent blog for those who want to ensure they always listen to countervailing voices vs. the mainstream narrative.
Garys focus is predominantly on AI, covering the topic from many angles; technical, geo-political, commercial and philosophical. To each he brings clarity, a lot of wit and a good amount of prescience of what may come next.
Why its worth your time
Getting caught up in the hype of any new technology or trend can be intoxicating almost hedonistic. For those of you who have participated in major music festivals, you know the feeling, being part of a large crowd of people, feeling the energy and almost manifest excitement that is resonating through the group along with the base.
At those events the emotions are pretty one-sided; usually happy if not elated. A hype wave is similar, but when it comes to hype waves in the professional world, there is a dual edge sword. New technologies bring new advancement opportunities, however in our current version of capitalism there are incentives to automate humans out of the mix. A 'cost center' to reduce.
This mixes fear and anxiety into the cocktail of emotions. The Gen AI wave is grabbing at all of our heart strings, positive and negative. Combined with the pace at which both the technology and those building it are moving and people are literally breathless each day just to follow along.
For us humans, personal growth is not exponential. Its a slow cycle of learning, testing, internalizing and iterating. Professional growth requires deliberate sustained effort over long periods of time. Its slow. Here again the speed of AI progress is tripping many of us up. Its moving faster than we can reasonably parse.
All of this is why reading Garys writings have been super important for us here at Summereeze, as professionals in the software space.
First and foremost he gives regular sober reminders through his different analyses and research efforts that help to disspell the regular news hype cycle. Its a nice little psychological splash of water to the face when you're feeling overwhelmed, which happens regularly for most these days. This alone helps calm nerves and allows you to stay focused on the slow growth cycle without becoming paralyzed by anxiety can stop us in our tracks. Context switching is the biggest productivity killer (Maybe soon replaced by AI) and the cycling back and forth between existential fear of AI and hands on work with it is a real impediment.
Our focus at Summereeze is on professional growth, but as a team we also believe in being model citizens. Here to Garys writings provide salient points. There are strong corporate incentives (you may be working for one such group) that will as incentives dictate, push for regulation and changes that can benefit the firm at the largest cost of society. The technology is complex and nuanced, its not easy to follow the through trains to where these current developments can lead. Here is where Garys prescient understanding of the subject shine. He has a good track record of topic predictions (timing is always a fickle thing) on what likely outcomes can be based on the tailwinds seen in the space. To be a model citizen you must be informed, and while many out there are actively trying to obfuscate, Gary is on the side of the 'light shiners' trying earnestly to reveal facts through the fog.
Where to dip your toes in
The need for a president that speaks AI is a great first post from Gary.
Full details on Gary Marcus
The newsletter: https://substack.com/@garymarcus
Gary on X.com: https://twitter.com/GaryMarcus
