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Last week, Rose Horowitch published a splashy Atlantic article titled “The End of Reading is Here.” (Ironically, given the subject matter, it weighed in at over 8,500 words.) Horowitch’s argument, which elaborates on similar concerns recently raised by commentators such as James Marriott, is that distracting digital technology has led to a sudden and radical reduction in reading. Here are just some of the data she cites to back up this claim: Less than half of all adults reported having…
Few recent technological innovations were better poised to become a productivity slam dunk than the personal computer. Spreadsheets, word processors, databases, presentation software, email – the list of programs that could vastly simplify common tasks seemed endless. As I reported in a 2021 op-ed for WIRED, however, reality proved more complicated. For example: A 1991 article in the New York Times quoted an economist who said that despite heavy spending on computers, “white-collar…
Imagine, for a moment, the following scenario. The Ford Motor Company releases a slick whitepaper making the alarming claim that they’re concerned their popular F-150 pickup trucks might soon spontaneously burst into flames. The report features a fancy animated graphic depicting a line of vehicles catching on fire, one after another, and concludes by acknowledging that this “possible future” would be bad, but that there’s nothing they can do about the issue so long as “less cautious” automobile…
The Financial Times recently reported an interview with Rebecca Hinds, head of the Work AI Institute. Hinds was discussing a new survey of 6,000 digital workers, which included the following arresting statistic: although respondents claimed that AI saved them 11 hours a week on average, only 13% reported any improvement in company performance. Hinds offers three explanations for this paradoxical result: When calculating the 11 hours saved, workers aren’t counting all of the time they spend…
The leaders of AI companies often compare their technology to industrial automation: just as machines eliminated jobs that depended on human brawn, AI will eliminate jobs that rely on brains. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has suggested on multiple occasions that his AI-based tools will automate half of entry-level white-collar jobs. Not to be outdone, Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, predicted in February that AI will deliver “human-level performance on most if not all professional…
Last fall, the Notre Dame philosopher, Meghan Sullivan, participated in a closed-door meeting at the Vatican. She was there to discuss AI ethics with a group of religious thinkers, academics, and leading members of the technology industry. As Sullivan recalls in a recent newsletter, she attended an optional Catholic Mass the first morning, held in an ancient church. She was surprised to see one of the tech leaders sitting a few rows away in the pews. “[This was] the kind of guy you typically…
The second chapter of Genesis poetically describes the beginning of the human story. “The Lord formed Adam from the dust of the earth,” it reads. “He blew into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being.” There are different ways to translate the Hebrew term rendered here as “living being.” Onkelos, a Roman nobleman turned Torah scholar, interpreted it to mean “speaking spirit” (in Aramaic: ruach memalela). As Rabbi Shai Held elaborates in the second volume of The Heart of…
If you’ve been following technology news recently, you’ve probably noticed a sudden increase in references to a 19th-century economics theory called the Jevons Paradox, which is named for the neoclassical economist William Stanley Jevons, and captures the observation that increasing the efficiency of a resource can lead to greater consumption. Jevons first articulated this idea in an 1865 book, pithily titled, The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the…
“Something is up in academic research,” write the members of an AI Task Force convened by the journal Organization Science. As they go on to elaborate: “If you are an editor or reviewer at a journal these days, you probably already know this. The manuscripts are arriving in greater volume, with a particular feel that is hard to pin down. On the surface, the papers look the same as ever, but the writing feels weightless in a way that rarely describes academic writing…you find yourself…
David Epstein, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Sports Gene and Range, has a new book out called
Last week, Elizabeth Lopatto published an insightful article in The Verge. It boasted an intriguing title: “Silicon Valley has forgotten what normal people want.” “Within recent memory, people who made software and hardware understood their job was to serve their customers. It was to identify a need, and then fill it,” she writes. “But at some point following the financial crisis, would-be entrepreneurs got it into their heads that their job was to invent the future, and consumers’ job was to…
Late last year, the fantasy novelist Brandon Sanderson gave a talk at Dragonsteel Nexus, an annual conference organized by his media company. It was titled, “The Hidden Cost of AI Art.” As Sanderson explains, early in his address: “The surge of large language models and generative AI raises questions that are fascinating, and even if I dislike how the movement is going in relation to writing and art, I want to learn from the experience of what’s happening.” Sanderson makes it clear that he…
Last week, millions of New York Times readers were subjected to an alarming column by Thomas Friedman. “Normally right now I would be writing about ... Read more The post Is Claude Mythos “Terrifying” or Just Hype? appeared first on Cal Newport.
Ten years ago, I published Deep Work. It was my second mainstream hardcover idea book. The previous title, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, hadn’t ... Read more The post In Defense of Thinking appeared first on Cal Newport.
Last week in this newsletter, I summarized some interesting results from a study that analyzed the behavior of 164,000 knowledge workers. It found that introducing ... Read more The post Avoiding Digital Productivity Traps appeared first on Cal Newport.
I’ve been studying the intersection of digital technology and office work for quite some time. (I find it hard to believe that my book, Deep ... Read more The post Why Hasn’t AI Made Work Easier? appeared first on Cal Newport.
