Hi there👋 . Building Blocks is a weekly roundup of content to prickle your mind.
Today’s stories in a nutshell:
👩💻 Tech: DALL-E 2
🏎 Business: Formula 1’s turnaround
🤔 Life: A Hanging, by George Orwell
🎸 Weekend tune: Marvin Gaye
🧩 Try a new game
👩💻 Tech: Clever computers
DALL-E 2 is a fabulous example of the progress in artificial intelligence (AI). The programme, developed by OpenAI, creates realistic images or artworks based on text instructions. This isn’t a search of an existing image on the internet. The program creates the image by itself.
Examples to illustrate:
You get the idea. For more examples, click here.
And for a short explainer of how DALL-E 2 works:
As an emerging technology, AI shows great promise and the applications are limitless. In 2020, MIT researchers discovered Halicin, a new type of antibiotic, by using only AI. More recently, AI was used to develop an enzyme that degrades PET, a material in most packaging that makes up 12% of global waste. Apps like Sudowrite covert your mundane sentences into literary splendour.
But people can use this technological power for good and evil in equal measure. One man's tool to create antibiotics is another’s for progressing bioterrorism. It won’t be long before AI can make lifelike video content. Imagine if all you had to do was type: “create a video of Joe Biden making racist slurs”. And, voila, you’d have a realistic video of the President of the United States acting racist. In future, establishing truth from fiction will become increasingly challenging. We already can’t cope with preventing misinformation on social media. How on earth will we manage this?
As excited as I am about these emerging high-tech wonders, I often wonder if humanity’s ultimate demise will be at our own hands as the powerful tools we create become uncontrollable.
🏎 Business: Formula 1’s turnaround
Max Verstappen is the new king of the Netherlands. So living in Amsterdam (where I live), it’s hard to escape Formula 1 racing news these days.
The sport's popularity has exploded of late, with average viewership per race doubling since 2017. Liberty Media, the company that acquired F1 in 2016, have turned it into the pinnacle of sports entertainment. The Las Vegas Grand Prix, scheduled for 2023, promises to be the sport’s biggest spectacle yet.
This short Twitter thread explains the sport’s phenomenal turnaround.
🤔 Life: A Hanging, by George Orwell
Whenever I read something written by George Orwell, I’m struck by how he uses simple language with profound effect. Geez, this man could write.
A Hanging is a sombre but beautifully written essay by Orwell about witnessing, well, a hanging. Here’s a snippet wherein he describes the doomed prisoner sidestepping a puddle as he walks to the gallows:
“It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working –bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming–all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned – reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone – one mind less, one world less.”
To read the essay, click here.
🎸 Weekend tune: What’s going on by Marvin Gaye
Mother, mother
There's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There's far too many of you dying
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today, eh eh
Father, father
We don't need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today, oh oh oh
Rolling Stone magazine rated Marvin Gaye’s 1971 album, What’s Going On, as the greatest album of all time. The greatest album of ALL TIME. Obviously, rating music is a subjective exercise, but that’s quite an accolade nonetheless.
The Motown star co-wrote the title track to the album in response to the violence in America at the time, mostly due to the Vietnam War, the anti-war protests, racial tension and police brutality. The song’s subject matter, coupled with the soulful melody and Gaye’s smooth voice, makes it as powerful today as it was 50 years ago.
Thanks to music streaming, it’s easy to forget about albums and listen to songs only. Like a chapter in a book, a song is part of the bigger story that is the album. What’s Going (the album) is a snapshot of America in 1971 and is about war, unemployment, drug addiction and environmental destruction. If you like soulful music, this album is a must.
Unfortunately, the talented Gaye’s life ended tragically when he was shot and killed by his father in a domestic dispute.
He died one day before his 45th birthday.
🧩 Weekend games
Test your vocabulary: Wordle or take the Mirriam-Webster quiz
Test your geography: Globle
Test your knowledge of maps: WorLdle and You don’t know Africa.
Guess the country based on its exports: Tradle
Another very interesting weekly roundup!
It won’t be long before AI can make lifelike video content. Imagine if all you had to do was type: “create a video of Joe Biden making racist slurs”. And, voila, you’d have a realistic video of the President of the United States acting racist.
Why would an AI be necessary when the real Biden does it?