There’s a combination of hype, ill-will, marketing, and paranoia fueling the current AI spin cycle that all but camouflage any real crimes against humanity that may be enacted through these technologies. Creating a large language […]
arketyp. News Feed
Digital, tech & innovation narratives curated from across the web
Category: Futures
The Mirror of Language
The age of thinking machines will be a new age of mystics extracting truth from hidden worlds. The new generative AI models like GPT-3 and DALL-E have amazing powers. They can generate essays, stories, scripts, […]
The Age of AI has Begun
Bill Gates outlines why Artificial intelligence is as revolutionary as mobile phones and the Internet. In my lifetime, I’ve seen two demonstrations of technology that struck me as revolutionary. The first time was in 1980, […]
Technology Over The Long Run
Bringing to mind how dramatically the world has changed can help us see how different the world could be in a few years or decades. Technology can change the world in ways that are unimaginable, […]
Our Society Is Not Prepared For This Much Awesome
Almost all of the fears around AI right now boil down to one thing: fear about what happens when a whole bunch of people, instantly level up and get really good at making cultural objects. […]
The Next Generation Of Large Language Models
What will the next generation of large language models (LLMs) look like? The answer to this question is already out there, under development at AI startups and research groups at this very moment. It is […]
Why VR/AR Gets Farther Away as It Comes Into Focus
When Neal Stephenson wrote “Snow Crash” in 1992, he set it in the future – at a time where more than a hundred million people used AR/VR glasses regularly. When do you think it was? […]
Becoming Strange in the Long Singularity
A sudden increase in AI capability suggests a weirder world in our near future. I already know people who are training GPT on their own writings, and interrogating “themselves” to discover new insights. I have […]
Last Year Marked the End of an Era in Spaceflight – Here’s What We’re Watching Next
2022 was a momentous one in spaceflight, bringing to a close many of the most significant storylines that have dominated this industry in the last 10 to 15 years. Consider the state of play in […]
Don’t Let Disney Monopolise A.I.-Generated Art
The indie artists suing Stable Diffusion may not realise it, but they’re doing the Mouse’s dirty work. Disney and the rest of Hollywood have been eerily quiet about the launch of Stable Diffusion, despite the […]
The Permaweird
Venkatesh Rao argues that there is no polycrisis, only nostalgia for an imagined present. Crisis theories (and names) are popular. Adam Tooze’s term polycrisis currently seems to be winning. Adam Elkus, coined a similar term, […]
Machine Learning And Deflationary Contagions
Here’s the most common question I get from members of the press, analysts, and others I talk to about generative AI: can you describe what impact this will have on my industry? Moore’s Law and […]
AI and the Big Five
This may be the beginning of the AI epoch, but even in tech, epochs take a decade or longer to transform everything around them. The story of 2022 was the emergence of AI, first with […]
The Fourth Age Of Programming
As flashy as Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT are, old heads know that the Robot Apocalypse has exactly one and only one horseman: computer programs that can write computer programs. Artificially intelligent machines can’t ascend to […]
This Year in Tech Felt Like a Simulation
This year in tech, too much happened and very little of it made sense, so we might just be at the whims of a random number generator. This year in tech, too much happened and […]
China’s New Space Station Opens for Business
The International Space Station is no longer the only place where humans can live in orbit. On Nov. 29, 2022, the Shenzhou 15 mission launched from China’s Gobi Desert carrying three taikonauts – the Chinese […]
Yuga Labs Is Hiring the ‘Best and Brightest’ to Build the Next Internet, CEO Says
Nicole Muniz clarified the fundamental differences between NFTs and JPEG images, as well as declared Yuga’s intent to hire top Web3 talent. Nicole Muniz, CEO Yuga Labs, spoke on center stage at Lisbon’s annual technology […]
Tim Berners-Lee: Web3 Is Not the Web
Berners-Lee said people too often conflate Web3 with “Web 3.0,” his own proposal for reshaping the internet. Tim Berners-Lee, the British computer scientist credited with inventing the World Wide Web in 1989, said Friday that […]
Spider-Verse 2025: Streaming 24/7. No Reruns. Forever
What does the future of entertainment look like once the larger IP holders fully embrace AI content generation? Alongside the discrete cultural products made (at least in part) by humans — blockbuster movies, prestige TV […]
Techno-Optimism and the Rule-of-Threes
Historically, periods of mass flourishing are underpinned by technological revolutions. Currently, we are undergoing a technological revolution unlike anything the world has ever seen. We have evidence, hidden in plain sight, that the world is […]
The Futurist Equation: 2122
The futurist behind “Minority Report” explains 3 steps for predicting what comes next. It’s very easy to imagine how things go wrong. It’s much harder to imagine how things go right than to say, oh, […]
Sci-fi Author Neal Stephenson Wants to Build a Metaverse Open to All
The science-fiction author who coined the term metaverse in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash” is going head-to-head with Meta and Microsoft to create an open-source platform for creating virtual worlds. Many developers are still working […]
Will the World Ever Be Ready For a Linear Metropolis?
Saudi Arabia has unveiled designs for a futuristic megastructure in the desert. But it is an idea that has preoccupied the imaginations of architects – and megalomaniacs – for generations. The army of consultants commissioned […]
What I Learned About the Future from Listening to 223 YC Startup Pitches
By Y Combinator’s own track record, most of the companies launched this week won’t go on to become the next billion-dollar company, but they do give a good indication on what the next wave of […]
Solarpunk Is Not About Pretty Aesthetics. It’s About the End of Capitalism
At its core, and despite its appropriation, Solarpunk imagines a radically different societal and economic structure. Solarpunk took inspiration from the Cyberpunk and Steampunk aesthetics that came before it—take the lush paradises of Studio Ghibli […]
We are Building a “Species-Level Brain” with Big Data and Ubiquitous Sensors
Byron Reese believes that coupling massive processing power with sensors will create a species-level brain and memory. Coupling massive processing power with sensors will create a species-level brain and memory. Instead of being billions of […]
What Ever Happened to the Transhumanists?
The once-vibrant transhumanist movement doesn’t capture as much attention as it used to, but as an idea it’s far from dead. The internet most certainly gave rise to the vibrant transhumanist subculture, but the emergence […]
China and Russia On Track to Set Up Moon Base by 2036
In the next decade, an international coalition plans to build a lunar research station to transfrom humanity’s exploration and observation of the Moon. The planning phase is already underway, and it is going well. Construction […]
An Optimist’s Guide to the Future
Oded Galor’s Sapiens – like history of civilisation predicts a happy ending for humanity. But should we trust him? The influence of the “initial conditions” that shape societies’ development is what Oded Galor has been […]
China Team uses Cold War Material to Pave the Way for a Moon Highway
Researchers say they are close to solving the intractable problem of building lunar infrastructure. Beijing researchers say they have developed and tested the technology to build a highway on the moon. “I have often dreamed […]