Lazy Sunday #19

This is almost straight from the plane. I am typing on my way to Bangalore and then over to Chennai for the week. I know it will be a busy week meeting old friends and colleagues, new people, with lots of conversation around work from various perspectives. I have definitely been trying to think about how to structure the days.

My immediate impulse was to schedule as many meetings as possible minus commute. On second thought, I deliberately planned some downtime and time to go through notes, reorganize my thoughts and recharge.

Sharing some suggestions in research below, as well as keeping in mind working memory from last Thursday’s session.

On a side note: Chennai is hot!

Find my research: neuroscience

Deloitte Report on global neuroscience market

Firstly, the global neuroscience market (diagnostics, drugs, and therapies) is to become a $750 bln market. This is huge!

Secondly, it is not all moonshot-scale biology and chemistry: many non-drug therapies fall into the digital health category to treat depression, anxiety and PTSD. While they still require a scientific base, there is less need for developing and trialling a drug.

Yes, invasive BCI is part of that, yes, sequencing and other complex solutions are part of that - but even these become less and less complex for the user through do-it-at-home kits.

Kite Therapy in Australia, part of the last Startmate Accelerator cohort, offers a digital platform to treat Autism in kids through interactive programs for parents. Flintworks offers VR-based PTSD treatments, people could use with their practitioners or even at home.

And with a 15-28% CAGR in digital health, this sector of neuroscience will see the highest impact on the health industry overall in the future.

(Deloitte)

Western Diet and Alzheimer’s

There is enough high-quality evidence that high sugar, processed food diet, often seen in the western world, impacts the brain development.

This specific study was done with mice, but ultimately the effects are similar.

Processed food like white paste, white rice, bread, cupcakes, or Coke impact the insulin level. This does not only increase the likelihood of developing diabetes later in life, but also impacts acetylcholine, which is important to develop memories. Acetylcholine, which can be found in egg yolks, nuts, salmon, and other non-processed foods, is a critical neurotransmitter. Low levels of this substance have shown to be linked to Alzheimer’s in later life.

Low levels of acetylcholine impacted memory formation in mice and it could not be reversed later in life.

I think it is critical we are aware of the impact of processed food on our health. Not that I am advocating to completely get rid of these in your intake completely (though by the looks of it, it might be the healthiest option), but reducing these significantly has to be on your radar. Especially if you have kids.

(MedicalNews)

Find my research: office

How to deal with information overload

Everyone feels it at one point at work or in life. There is too much information to digest and you feel overwhelmed. This makes you feel stressed, tired, exhausted. We talked about it on Thursday.

There is an interesting article sharing some ideas on how to overcome information overload, e.g. when entering a new workplace:

1. Watch for signs: mood swings, bing-eating or frustrations at home or at work. If these come up, maybe it is time to watch out and try to label the sources of the frustration.

2. Manage with the brain: we know that working memory can not absorb an infinite amount of data.

   1. offload incoming information: there are tons of information in meetings. You can not remember it all, hence taking notes (and learning how to take them) is critical. Best is hand-writing. It has shown to be much more efficient to recollect it for later.

   2. organize memory sessions: dedicate specific times to absorb and organize your notes. Block your calendar for that, like you’d block your calendar to meet a new colleague

   3. Break sessions: especially if you are in for a hose full of information, try to break the session into shorter sprints.

   4. Don’t task switch: if possible, theme your days. One day is sales only, one day is product only. That way it is easier to stay in vertical schemas and connecting the dots will be easier.

(HBR)

On top of tech

Getting better at reading feelings

Just in the last Lazy Sunday, I shared an article in which the author argued that AI possible can not beat us at empathy, reading the feelings of others or interpreting a person’s character. With new models like GPT-4o and Google’s Astra, this will become very interesting.

And this is some serious competition for the call centers around the world.

(MITReview)

Building caring robots with cultural understanding

Engaging with people successfully requires to taking into account their cultural background. You can do without, you will be more accepted with. Many have looked into and researched culture. As you probably know, the biggest of them continues to be Hofstede. But that isn’t news to you, is it?

Anyway, developing robots for caring for people in hospitals, restaurants, elderly care etc. requires some more fine-tuning, especially considering that humans still look at robots with a slight reluctance.

(TheConversation)

When and how can AI help entrepreneurs? A study from Africa

It seems that more often than not, the obstacle is still a prompt issue. How do you get deep enough in a conversation with AI that it can be actually helpful beyond generic answers?

A study done in Africa worked with over 600 entrepreneurs in Kenya, providing them a WhatsApp integration with ChatGPT4 to engage in business-related questions vs. a control group who got a business manual handbook only. ChatGPT was of more help for broader creative questions and exaggerated the performance of businesses already struggling. One might say, that businesses already struggling had a harder time implementing GPT-related input and hence the issue is not GPT but rather the performance of the entrepreneur.

If that is the case, then AI could actually further intensify the gaps between high-performers and low-performers.

I think it is more an issue of prompt and workflows design than anything else. The speed of work with GPT (minus the occasional hallucinations) is still higher IF you know how to engage in a way that allows to “surface” the right engagement with language models.

(HBS)

Ethics of AI-driven neural implants

Before you skip this, hold on. Ethics is a big part of anything related to AI, let it be your GPT or neural implant.

Just consider this: Slack announced it will use every Slack message on its platform to train their AI models, unless you opt out. How many things do you discuss on Slack, that might not be for public ears?

Also, Microsoft announced a feature for their new laptops which would take screenshots of the desktop every couple of seconds. The goal is to have the data as a source for user queries, kind of like a second brain. But that means it captures the information you type, like financial planning, chats with costumers and friends, websites you visit.

Apple had a recent bug, apparently surfacing photos from iCloud that users deleted a long time ago. Some algorithm messed up. Some developer messed up.

This specific study interviewed developers of AI-neurotechnology with regard to design, security and other ethical questions. While there was healthy discussion, overall one sentence stood out:

Basically, the statement translates to “technology right now is what it is and whether the user agrees to all of it shortcomings is ultimate up to the user”.

So if you don’t want Slack to use your conversations, then don’t use Slack. If you don’t want Facebook to know everything about you, then don’t use Facebook. If you don’t want your headphones to track your brainwaves and share it with their CEO, don’t use the headphones.

I think we need to do better in developing these products and tools with the customer in mind - even if this means it takes longer to develop the products or that the products are less useful in the beginning.

An interesting read, the study is not technical and really relevant for anything that collects some sort of user data to be processed in one way or the other.

A paragraph from LSJ caught my eye. While being more of a theoretical question (for the moment), I would not know what to answer right now:

“Questions in relation to equality emerge from a consideration of neurotech. What if cognitive enhancement were to become feasible so that there was a class of transhuman that were much smarter than ordinary humans? What kind of social issues might emerge and would such a society be inherently unfair?”

(Nature)

Media Box

NewScientist “12 most mind-blowing” ideas in science: neurodiversity is one of them

We have covered neurodiversity a little in past newsletters. When does “thinking” differently make one “neurodiverse”. Does it have to be diagnosed? Does it have to be treated? Where does it stop? Where does it begin? Is ADHD a disease or “just different”?

It is a topic worth bringing to the table, worth thinking about.

The last edition of “New Scientist”, a weekly publication all things science, tackles some of these questions.

(NewScientist)

Misc but not least…

Are we alone or not? Something Lex Friedman was discussing with Paul Rosolie on one of his latest podcasts straight out of the jungle. It is a fun listen.

But back to alone or not: the reason I had to think about the conversation was that I read an article the other day, suggesting we might have found alien superstructures.

You see, we could harvest energy from stars. This is not so easy, hence we have not done it yet. But other species could have managed it. In such a case, humanity assumes that the stars would radiate a specific heat signal called the Dyson sphere.

Researchers have found a couple of these Dyson spheres around stars recently. The question is: do we have false readings or are we actually not alone? Your take?

(LifeScience)

Thank you for reading.

Have a great rest of the weekend.

Alex