The Signal: Apple announces ‘Apple Intelligence’, situational awareness, and the importance of asking

Hey friends 👋 Happy Sunday.

Here’s your weekly dose of AI and introspection.

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AI Highlights

1. Apple announces ‘Apple Intelligence’.

At their Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on Monday, Apple and OpenAI announced their partnership to integrate ChatGPT into Apple experiences. This means that starting this autumn, Siri will have on-screen awareness and take action for you.

Alex’s take: By acknowledging personal context and allowing you to ask commands such as “Send the email I drafted to April and Lilly,” I hope Siri will become more useful than its current capacity of setting a 4-minute timer when I’m brewing a cup of tea.

2. I had a dance-off with a humanoid robot.

On Thursday, I attended Mailchimp’s ‘FROM: HERE, TO: THERE’ event in London and met Ameca, the world’s most advanced human-shaped robot.

Alex’s take: This was my first time meeting a humanoid in person. A couple of years ago, I thought conversational-embodied AI was over a decade away. The ChatGPT moment for robotics is coming soon.

3. Google DeepMind and Harvard build a ‘virtual rodent’ powered by AI.

Google DeepMind and Harvard have developed a biomechanically realistic digital rat to understand how the brain controls movement. The study in Nature found that the virtual rat's neural activity accurately predicted that of real rats.

Alex’s take: The intersection of AI and biology fascinates me. This could transform neuroscience research and robotics by providing models for studying neural circuits and improving robotic control systems.

1 Article I Enjoyed

SITUATIONAL AWARENESS: The Decade Ahead.

Leopold Aschenbrenner used to work on the Superalignment team at OpenAI.

Now, he writes banging essays on AGI.

“SITUATIONAL AWARENESS: The Decade Ahead” is a five-part essay series demonstrating what could be in store for humanity as we charge towards artificial superintelligence (ASI).

My favourite takeaways:

• Artificial superintelligence is inevitable. How we build it and what we do with it will be all that matters.

• Over the past year, the talk of the town has shifted from $10 billion compute clusters to $100 billion clusters to trillion-dollar clusters. Every six months, another zero is added to the boardroom plans.

• We’ll have some form of government AGI project by 2027/2028. No startup can handle superintelligence. American AI labs will become nationalised.

I thought this was an eye-opening and insightful read—almost like a thriller.

If you prefer audio, I recommend listening to Leopold break down this piece on the Dwarkesh Podcast.

1 Idea I Learned

Closed mouths don’t get fed.

If you never ask, you’ll never get anything you want.

In the worst case, you hear a no. In the best case, it changes your life.

Don’t let the fear of rejection discourage you from asking for what you want.

When you’ve done the work to deserve it, just ask.

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1 Quote to Share

Roger Federer on perfection:

“Perfection is impossible.

In the 1,526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches.

But what percentage of points did I win?

Only 54%.

In other words, even top-ranked tennis players win barely more than half the points they play.

When you lose every second point on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot.

You teach yourself to think:

'Okay, I double-faulted...it's only a point.'

'Okay, I came to the net and I got passed again...it's only a point.'

Even a great shot, an overhead backhand smash that ends up on ESPN's top 10 playlist—that too is just a point.

Here's why I'm telling you this.

When you're playing a point, it has to be the most important thing in the world. And it is.

But when it's behind you, it's behind you.

This mindset is really crucial—because it frees you to fully commit to the next point with intensity, clarity, and focus.”

Source: 2024 Commencement Address by Roger Federer at Dartmouth

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1 Question to Ponder

How much of my stress is based on reality versus imagination?

Each week, make a conscious effort to write down what’s stressing you out.

You’ll find that you suffer more in your head than you do in reality.

For the outstanding items that require your attention—attack them with ferocity.

Then, re-evaluate next week and see how you feel.

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💡 If you enjoyed this issue, share it with a friend.

See you next week,

Alex Banks

P.S. Ayrton Senna: be spectacular every single day.