Everywhere you look, there’s an article about artificial intelligence. Here’s a list of the people I follow to help in navigating AI hype.
These days, I find myself again and again in the same conversation.
It starts like this: “Did you see the (insert something really bizarre) thing that Trump did?”
There’ll be some discussion, some outrage, some amusement, some shaking of heads. Perhaps an argument, or genuine anger.
At some point, I will say: “I’m trying not to follow all this too much.”
That’s an odd thing for a news junkie and former journalist to say about the current really big news story, but it is where I now find myself.
I do follow the news, in the sense that I look at a few selected outlets (okay – it’s really just the Guardian) to find out what has actually happened in the United States, and to understand how those events might impact the African continent.
But I am working hard to minimise the amount of opinion I consume. (Spending only 15 minutes a day on Facebook is a good way to start on that by the way). The thing is that the reams of “takes” on this just make me feel miserable and helpless. I have no way of doing anything about any of it, and I also have no way of understanding the nuances of US politics and society.
So, I’m on a low-calorie Trump diet, you might say.
AI and the hype machine
I am also hearing variations of the Trump conversation about something else: generative AI. People will talk about it, and then say it’s too complicated, or not relevant to their lives, or that they fear various outcomes too much even to contemplate the whole thing. Often, people will say they wish they knew more about it, or that they wish they knew where to start learning about AI.
And I get it: the news coverage of the Great AI Shift is filled with hype and opinion and technical terms. It might be best to be on a low-calorie AI news diet?
But, a year ago, I decided that there are things that I can do about AI, or at least ways in which I can use it to my advantage. So I subscribed to a lot of newsletters, and now find my phone’s news feed filled with news and opinion about the subject (because I click on such articles, of course I see more of them).
My best AI writers
Over time, there are a select few writers I’ve come to rely on for common sense, scientific rigour and practicality. In the cause of enabling you, dear reader, to cut through the bullshit, here are the ones I think are really worth reading.
ONE
Ethan Mollick’s One Useful Thing – Mollick is a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The free version of his paid newsletter arrives in my inbox more or less once a week, and I read it as soon as it drops, and as soon as I can give it my full attention. He covers the latest developments (when one of the AI companies does a new release for instance) but always through the lens of a critical understanding of what the tools do, and what effect they might have on society. They might sometimes be a little technical, but they are always worth the read.
His latest article, for instance, looks at whether we have reached the Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) threshold, the point at which AI can perform human level-tasks (see more about AGI below). Since this is one of the big scare stories about AI (it will take over the world!!!!!!!), it’s good to have his level-headed take on where we are at with this. If you subscribe to nothing else, get Ethan Mollick.
TWO
Benedict’s Newsletter – Benedict Evans is an independent tech analyst. His newsletter comes out once a week, and has a round-up of the latest news about AI. To quote his own blurb, the newsletter covers “what happened in tech that mattered, and what did it mean? Once a week, I send an email newsletter to close to 200,000 people – I pick out the changes and ideas you don’t want to miss in all the noise, and give them context and analysis.” The premium edition costs $100 a year and comes out on Sundays, with an exclusive column. The free edition comes out two days later, minus the column. I get the free edition and skim it every week, and click on a link to a source when I’m interested in something. When I win the lottery, this will be one of the first newsletters I hand over money for.
THREE
Marcus on AI – Gary Marcus is a scientist and author, and is almost always contrarian about AI. He is sceptical about everything that the owner of an AI company says; he ridicules many of the experts; he is resolutely against hype. The newsletters are often short, and sometimes you won’t get the references. But he is a welcome antidote to all the other things you are likely to read. I read everything he writes – I don’t want to be in a bubble about this topic.
FOUR
Zero to Unicorn – Tahnee Perry’s newsletter is more specialised, being about AI as it relates to the world of marketing. There are often nuggets about content creation, or news from the world of social media or SEO as they relate to AI. I always give it a skim, and often end up finding interesting links.
FIVE
Idea Kitchen by Marissa Goldberg – this is a new entrant to my list of must-reads. The subtitle is “simple recipes for using AI”, and that’s what you get. The latest edition, for example, was about a new feature in NotebookLM which I hadn’t known about (it’s called Discover Sources – “you enter a topic or name, and it pulls together their most relevant ideas so you can learn from them as if they were coaching you one-on-one,” Goldberg says.) I haven’t tried that yet but I will!
And that’s it. Start with some or all of these five newsletters and see where they take you!
THE QUESTION YOU WERE AFRAID TO ASK FOR FEAR OF LOOKING SILLY
Renee, what is this Artificial General Intelligence everyone is on about?
Good question! Bearing in mind that the afore-mentioned Ethan Mollick says the term is “badly defined”, let’s start with Wikipedia:
Artificial general intelligence (AGI) — sometimes called human‑level intelligence AI — is a type of artificial intelligence capable of performing the full spectrum of cognitively demanding tasks with proficiency comparable to, or surpassing, that of humans.
The concept of AGI is often bandied about as meaning a state of play where AI can take over the world, or kill off all the people. But note that the Wikipedia article almost immediately says: “AGI is conceptually distinct from artificial superintelligence (ASI), which would outperform the best human abilities across every domain by a wide margin.” A superintelligence is the thing that could lead to the place of our fears, a technological singularity… “a hypothetical point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable consequences for human civilization.”
So stop clutching your pearls, at least for now. Because to get to the singularity, we’d first need to achieve AGI. And the jury is out on that. In a column in which Gary Marcus takes on another writer who thinks we hit AGI on April 16, 2025, Marcus says: “This argument, is, to use the technical, academic term, ‘half-assed’.”
Mollick is slightly more circumspect:
“What’s clear is that we continue to be in uncharted territory. The latest models represent something qualitatively different from what came before, whether or not we call it AGI. They… create a genuinely novel situation with few clear analogues. It may be that.. figuring out how to successfully apply AI in a way that shows up in the economic statistics may be a process measured in decades. Or it might be that we are on the edge of some sort of faster take-off, where AI-driven change sweeps our world suddenly. Either way, those who learn to navigate this jagged landscape now will be best positioned for what comes next… whatever that is.”
That last sentence is why I insist on learning everything I can about what’s happening – and why I want to help others to do the same.
And that’s it for this week. If there’s a question you’d like me to answer, or a topic you’d like covered, contact me here. I can’t promise to answer everything (especially deeply technical questions), but I can generally get us all pointed in the right direction.
Main picture: Shawn Whisenant, Flickr (Licence: CC BY 2.0)
Other things I have written
What makes an email newsletter worth reading? – Ah, the joy of an email newsletter, peacefully waiting for you to find time and space to pay attention to it. Here are some of my favourites…
Resetting my relationship with Facebook and Twitter – Social media and how not to have them steal your life away… start by taking the apps off your phone (a post from 2021).
The AI tool everybody should be using – NotebookLM – Research assistant and note-taker rolled into one – allow me to introduce you to NotebookLM.
How can I help you make order from chaos?
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