Emily spitting truth on the way out:
Whatever the path, what ends up happening is these executives who know truly nothing about the day to day work of a data scientist gas each other up about the (usually extremely overinflated) benefits of generative AI. The CEO believes this, because a CEO’s job consists entirely of emails and meetings, and so when he uses ChatGPT to write an email or transcribe a meeting, he projects the tool’s ability to do his job onto everyone else’s. So he hires his tennis buddy at McKinsey to cleave an AI strategy onto the company roadmap, where it takes priority over all the other initiatives that will solve actual problems for the business. It doesn’t matter if it works or not. He has no choice, because all his board members’ companies are doing the same thing. In the world of business, nothing is riskier than being an anomaly.
Berlin isn’t over. More and more people are leaving the city, but even more continue to come. Things are going to be awkward and expensive, maybe indefinitely.
a culturally-decaying and increasingly expensive Berlin
Berlin wishes more than any city I’ve ever seen to be frozen in time. It’s a city of agelessness, where everyone eternally reaches for the aura of 1990, none moreso than the people who weren’t even born yet when the Wall came down.
