A Wave of Decentralizing Tech, Death by LLM, Lacoste Tokenizes, & More
Future Essentials - Edition 47
I’ve been thinking about decentralization this week. Not in a political sense, but a practical sense, as a way to solve humanity's problems.
It’s a massively exciting topic, and it finds its way into this edition.
Enjoy the read!
Misha
Here’s what you’re getting in this edition:
A wave of decentralizing technologies
Autonomy is the future of organizations
Lacoste Reveals Gamified, Tokenized Ecosystem for NFT Holders
6 books that will make you smarter about decentralized finance
6 books that will make you smarter about privacy
Death by LLM
Meta readies AI chatbots for artificial companionship—and user retention
Podcast: Beyond Data: Reclaiming Human Rights at the Dawn of the Metaverse
Short Guided Meditation
A question to ponder
A wave of powerful decentralizing technologies
By 2030, a wave of powerful DECENTRALIZING technologies will sweep the world. It will transform every aspect of business, society, & life.
Click on the image to read the thread:
Trust beats command: Embracing autonomy for success
In today’s world, change is the only constant—and the rate of change is itself increasing. For any company, sitting still equals death. As a result, you either disrupt yourself—or someone else will.
In this era of rapid digital transformation and persistent disruptions, organizations must adapt their decision-making processes to remain nimble and responsive.
The future of work differs greatly from previous hierarchical command and control structures. So, leveraging Autonomy now is a key step in the right direction.
“Autonomy is an organizational approach characterized by self-organized, multidisciplinary teams that operate with decentralized authority and, ideally, self-select their work—all in service of hitting OKRs and the company’s MTP and Moonshot.”
Greater Autonomy, in turn, allows for more freedom, the spontaneous formation of teams, and, inevitably, greater creativity and productivity. LINK
Lacoste Reveals Gamified, Tokenized Ecosystem for NFT Holders
French clothing brand Lacoste announced Thursday the latest evolution of the company’s burgeoning Web3 program: a gamified, token-gated ecosystem that incentivizes users to participate in activities and community events by offering them NFT-related perks.
Last June, Lacoste launched UNDW3 (pronounced “underwater”), a Web3 initiative centered around the release of 11,212 profile picture NFTs riffing on the brand’s crocodile-dominated motif. LINK
FE Take: Web3 is inevitable.
6 books that will make you smarter about decentralized finance
6 books that will make you smarter about privacy
Death by LLM: Stack Overflow’s decline and its plan to survive in an AI world
OpenAI released the world's most powerful AI model in March. A few weeks later, Stack Overflow's CEO, Prashanth Chandrasekar, spotted a worrying trend.
Online traffic to the Q&A website for software coders had begun to slip. In April, traffic was down about 13% from 2022, the company's data showed.
For 15 years Stack Overflow has been the online community where software engineers go to ask questions and get tips from fellow coders. Now, though, they can just ask OpenAI's GPT-4, ChatGPT, Codex, or GitHub Copilot for help. So there's less of a need to visit Stack Overflow.
What's even more galling is that many of these new models were partly trained on Stack Overflow's information, which is freely available and has been packaged into a handy AI training dataset. LINK
Meta readies AI chatbots for artificial companionship—and user retention
Meta is reportedly developing a range of AI-powered chatbots with different personalities, a move aimed at increasing user engagement on social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, according to the Financial Times and The Verge. The chatbots, referred to as "personas" by Meta staff, will mimic human-like conversations and might take on various character forms, such as Abraham Lincoln or a surfer-like travel adviser. LINK
Beyond Data: Reclaiming Human Rights at the Dawn of the Metaverse
For several decades, data protection has captured our full attention, but have we failed to protect people in its pursuit? Live from the Better Innovation Boston studio, EY’s Jeff Saviano sits down with Elizabeth Renieris, Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University, who explores this topic in her new book, Beyond Data: Reclaiming Human Rights at the Dawn of the Metaverse. Elizabeth’s captivating book calls for an entirely different data framework centered on the protection of human rights. LINK
Short Guided Meditation: The Cave of Stillness (Time-Out for Busy People)
A short, powerful guided meditation.
A question to consider
"What would you pursue if money and time were not a constraint?"