We should challenge the cult of Singularity. AI won’t take over the world Last year, I participated in a discussion of The Human Use of Human Beings, Norbert Weiner’s groundbreaking book on cybernetics theory. Out of that grew what I now consider a manifesto against the growing singularity movement, which posits that artificial intelligence, or AI, will supersede and eventually displace us humans. The notion of singularity – which includes the idea that AI will supercede humans with its exponential growth, making everything we humans have done and will do insignificant – is a religion created mostly by people who have designed and successfully deployed computation to solve problems previously considered impossibly complex for machines. They have found a perfect partner in digital computation, a seemingly knowable, controllable, machine-based system of thinking and creating that is rapidly increasing in its ability to harness and process complexity and, in the process, […]

It took me 18 months to write The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck. Over that time period, I wrote somewhere in the vicinity of 150,000 words for the book (about 600 pages). Most of that came in the final three months. In fact, I can confidently say I got far more done in the final three months than I did in the first 12 combined. Now, is that because I was on a deadline and worked like an insane person? Did I shove Adderall up my ass and work in 36-hour spurts or something? No, in fact, those last three months, I worked less each day than I did the first 12, yet I still accomplished far more. In this article, I’d like to make a simple argument (backed with lots of shitty images I created in MS Paint): that when it comes to productivity, things are not […]

The best under-the-radar finds in hip-hop, rock, dance, and more It’s impossible to hear all the music that comes out everyday, but with this list we hope to direct your attention to generally overlooked albums our writers and editors have been returning to over the last few months. None of these releases were named Best New Music and, in some cases, they weren’t reviewed on Pitchfork. But they’re all worth a listen. (All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our Amazon links, however, Pitchfork may earn an affiliate commission.) Clone Aleksi Perälä Sunshine 3 Sunshine 3 starts abruptly, midway through a tone—as if the Finnish electronic producer has been performing for hours, and some enterprising soul just now pressed record. Perälä’s third album for the Clone Dub label offers a peppy update to the subtle, intuitively strange terrain of classic IDM, proposing […]