👨💻 The Angry Optimist's 2024 - all texts and columns
Lots of AI, but not just AI. The Angry Optimist lost patience with the current world order and became furious at the ignorant criticism of the green transition.
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Not just AI
AI has dominated this year's texts. That's not surprising, considering the massive impact it will have on humanity and that AI is now for everyone.
I constantly experiment with AI and share with you. My biggest insight was how much better AI works when it's adapted to the user. I created (and taught you how to build) an AI book editor and how to build special versions of ChatGPT, so-called GPTs. One of the year's most-read articles is about how to make music with AI.
But it has been far from the only topic. After meeting people fighting for democracy at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit, I lost my patience with how the world is organized. We cannot continue with a world order where dictators are invited into the fine rooms and help govern the world. We must also develop democracies, they have become rigid in their form.
My most-read text (and the second most-read overall) was about the green transition and Northvolt. I became angry at the ignorant coverage of the company. It's one thing to criticize the company Northvolt, but it was constantly mixed up with claims that batteries and electric cars have no future.
Of course, there has also been some content about the Swedish government's AI Commission, where I've had the privilege of being a member. I summarized the work and evaluated my own contribution in this text.
You can find all my texts below. Thanks for this year!
Mathias Sundin
Angry Optimist
📚 The best books I read in 2024
From over a hundred books read, here is my list of this year’s best reads.
💡 Musings of the Angry Optimist: A moral responsibility to accelerate
When we see a digital solution that works, we have a moral obligation to ensure that as many people as possible benefit from it, as quickly as possible.
🏅 Not celebrating a Nobel Prize is far from being clear-sighted, Han Kang
To only see war and misery is not clear-sighted, it is one-eyed.
🦾 Free AI for all Swedes, proposes the AI Commission
The AI Commission proposes an AI for all reform. Where every Swede gets free access to AI. I have been a member of the AI Commission. Here's my view on the proposals and what I succeeded and failed at.
🌏 The best things happening for humanity right now
It is easy to think of bad things happening right now, but what are the best ones? The list can be made very long, but here are my favorites.
🗨️ No more syntax error
Machines will use our language to talk to each other.
⚡ Complaining about new technologies' energy use is starting at the wrong end
Instead of complaining about the energy consumption of new technologies, like AI, we should start at the other end and make old technologies more efficient.
💡 Musings of the Angry Optimist: Creating small crises for oneself
I have created three mini-crises for myself. It has been difficult, but very liberating.
🧠 My extra AI brain makes me better
It's not about what AI will do for you. But how you will become better with the help of AI. When the AI knows you, everything is taken to a new level.
👩💻 AI will not replace humans - not even when it's superintelligent
It is said that AI will make you unemployed and in the long run turn humans into a useless class. That will never happen.
🧐 I've built an AI book editor (that yells at me like Steve Jobs)
The AI editor is my digital twin. It understands me and my vision, and brings out my very best.
👨💻 The Angry Optimist's guide to building your own AI editor
How to create an AI editor that knows you and helps you level up your writing to a new level. It's easy and requires no prior knowledge.
💡 Musings of the Angry Optimist: Wuuut, is AI making artists more creative?!
Even someone without talent can be right sometimes. And shocking news about French farmers.
🙉 Don't get swept away by short-sighted pessimism
Many opinions are based on the tree one is staring at. Instead, take a step back and see the forest. In space, AI, and batteries, I zoom out from the chatter and try to see what's actually happening.
🧙♀️ Harari is trying to create a myth
In Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari tells about harmful myths. At the same time, he's trying to create his own myth. The one about our downfall.
🦾 Keep calm, AI is not a bubble
The stock market went down, panic arose and the pessimists proclaimed in panic: The AI bubble is bursting. That is nonsense.
🔋 Come on, Northvolt is not a pipe dream, and batteries are not a green bubble
Is Northvolt a pipe dream? asked the reporter. That was when I realized this wasn't a serious investigation, but a witch hunt. Let’s scrutinize this absurd claim.
💡 Musings of the Angry Optimist: Whatever, keep writing in a complicated way, I understand anyway
What Martin Luther and a double unicorn founder can teach us about AI, and the first Swede on Mars.
🗞️ They led the digital transition, now they ban AI...
AI can filter, refine, and enhance, but this newspaper prefers outdated forms.
💡 Musings of the Angry Optimist: What was humanity's first idea?
Once upon a time, there were no ideas. Not a single one. But then someone had an idea. Humanity's first.
⛓️ Chain of Thought prompts yield astonishingly good results (watch out, Gordon Gekko!)
HERE IS THE PROMPT THAT BEATS WALL STREET AND WILL MAKE YOU BILLIONS!!! (I'm not kidding.)
📚 The Angry Optimist's summer reading tips
It was a product that was supposed to transform cities as much as the car did, praised by Steve Jobs, and fought over by investors eager to invest, created by a technical genius. A product so revolutionary that it only appears once per generation. That and other book tips for lazy summer days.
📞 Phone scams could become harder to pull off
If I were a criminal, I would focus on scams using AI. This is a real AI problem, unlike the fantasies about the end of humanity. But as often is the case, the solution can be found in the very technology that contributes to the problem.
🙅♀️ Prebunking - how Taiwan resisted China's information warfare
Showing people in advance what the manipulators will claim gives people mental antibodies to resist disinformation.
📗 Wow, so many bad things have peaked – and more peaks are coming
She left university without hope. But then she happened to see one of Hans Rosling's talks, and it changed her life. Now she wants to become 'Rosling' for sustainability and believes that we can become the first generation to live completely sustainably.
📱 Ukrainian Qela organizes democracy activists with an app
Running a startup is hard. Running a startup in Ukraine is brutal. But that's what Tamara Tachynska is doing. With the Qela App, democracy activists and other communities can organize themselves.
🔎 We were supposed to be flooded with AI disinformation... now 800 million have voted, where is it?
We faced a "tech-driven Armageddon" and experts ranked AI disinformation as the second biggest global threat this year. Have you noticed much of it?
🗳️ The startup VINICI creates a rhetorical timeline of what politicians have said - fighting for democracy in Georgia
Georgia has passed a Russian-inspired law that classifies many democracy activists as foreign agents. A step towards harsher repression. But there are many who are fighting back. VINICI is building a tool that can influence the election in Georgia this fall.
😒 It was the worst of times
When was the worst music produced? Now! Most crime? Now! Worst movies? Now! Worst morality? Now! In area after area, people think the worst time is now — a completely bizarre view.
🗳️ Leopoldo López is building an alliance of democracy defenders – with the help of technology
Four years in solitary confinement did not break him. He continued to lead protests against the dictatorship in Venezuela. After being forced to flee the country, he now continues his work from abroad, building a democracy movement that threatens all dictatorships worldwide.
🚱 We pay to live without electricity and water, that's how good our lives are
How crazy is it to pay to be without electricity and running water? That's my first thought when I read about Kyrkestatorpet, where you can "live as the crofters did in the past." But then I think about the effects that might come from a visit to an outhouse...
🤥 We live in a lie
How can we accept this, I thought after the first day of the Copenhagen Democracy Summit. How can it be that in 2024 we still have dictatorship in the world? How can it be allowed to exist? Because we live in a lie.
✊ The greengrocer's revolution
Nothing has done more to create human progress than democracy. There is nothing more important than achieving a fully democratic world as quickly as possible. Then even a grocer can make a difference.
🗳️ Record support for democracy, but people are disappointed with governments. Why and what do we do about it?
Almost 9 out of 10 want democracy. But far fewer are satisfied with the democracy they live in. This is based on the fact that the democratic system we have is over 100 years old and needs to be updated.
🤖 Is your job threatened by AI? Here's how you should NOT act
Can AI do tasks that are part of your job? Should you then fight and try to stop that kind of AI? That opinion is now being expressed. Instead, there is now a great chance to level up yourself with the help of AI. It will be much more successful.
🖥️ Should Sweden invest in models or increase the use of AI? – report from the second meeting of the AI Commission
The AI Commission's second meeting was held in Gothenburg. There, as you know, people take the tram. Besides that, we discussed whether Sweden should invest in AI models or increase the use of AI, or perhaps both?
📰 This is what the news could look like
The big news was not how many died in the earthquake in Taiwan, but how many did NOT die
☯️ Bad and better – at the same time
For the first time, fewer than five million children are dying per year. Fantastic! But... nearly five million dead children, terrible! Hans Rosling taught us that something can be bad and get better at the same time.
🎵 Now there's a ChatGPT for making music (my three-year-old son and I made an opera)
I sing out of tune and can't play any instrument. My son is three years old. Yet, we have made an opera together. This has been made possible thanks to the latest developments in generative AI.
🦾 AI will not lead to mass unemployment (but something much bigger will happen)
Economics professor David Autor disputes the AI experts who believe that AI will lead to mass unemployment.
☠️ One year after the near-death experience: How are things going?
A year ago, we were close to dying. But we are clearly still here. But how are we doing and how are things going?
🚀 Starship will have a major impact, even in the short-term
In the short term, Starship will reduce the cost of sending a kilo to space to two to three percent of what it was a few years ago.
💡 Musings of the Angry Optimist: A robot with ChatGPT
A robot that can pick up trash, while reasoning why it chose to give a human an apple. The robot Figure One uses ChatGPT to talk and listen, while performing physical tasks.
🔋 Towards the Energy Society - part 1
Jonas Birgersson made it into the history books as Sweden's foremost champion of the internet revolution. Now, he's using everything he learned then to do it again. This time it's an energy revolution.
🏆 The amateur nearly beat the grandmasters
Did Warp News win? AI writer WALL-Y was nominated for Innovation of the Year at the Newspaper Publishers' gala. The competitors in the same category were Aftonbladet and Expressen, two media with budgets several thousand percent larger. How can we compete in the same category?
🦾 Boosting AI usage - report from the first meeting of the AI Commission
What should we focus on to take the lead in the AI era? That's what we discussed at the meeting with the AI Commission. My focus is to quickly increase usage. That was the success of the 90s with the internet and will be the same with AI. And I have an idea of how.
🆙 Warp Levels: How Hannes Sapiens Sjöblad wants to level up humanity
Hannes Sjöblad envisions not just the flesh bodies we are today, but a rich flora of different kinds of life forms and organisms. All interconnected with each other where we can share more and more of our ideas, feelings, and thoughts with each other.
👨💻 The angry optimist's guide to creating a GPT (your own special version of ChatGPT)
Now it's possible to build special versions of ChatGPT. It's powerful but super easy and anyone can do it. Here are some tips to get started.
🤳 Have screens made us stop experiencing?
Thousands filmed the countdown to the new year at a celebration in Paris. They have forgotten to experience, occupied with documenting, some say. Not at all.
🦾 What can we learn from the Swedish IT miracle for the AI era?
Newsweek named Stockholm Europe's internet capital. Swedes had the most computers and the best broadband in the world. From the Swedish IT miracle, Skype, Spotify, and many other unicorns were born. What can we learn from that as we now try to create AI miracles?
👩🏫 Towards the centaur school - part 2
The journey to develop AI services for school and education continues. This time I visit a class, which gave me both déjà vu and an aha experience.
🚀 Starship exploded, but made progress
News media focus on the explosions, providing a skewed view of the progress made during the second test flight of Starship.
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