A 56 day posting break

Thank you for tuning in to this audio only podcast presentation. This is week 193 of the Lindahl Letter publication. A new edition arrives every Friday. This week the topic under consideration for the Lindahl Letter is, “A 56 day posting break.”

Over the last 4 years, the Lindahl Letter has taken two pretty decent breaks in posting content. This last pause in posting happened to be the most recent 56-day posting break. Maybe this (right here, right now) is a good point in the process to refocus, reconsider, and maybe reboot. Before all that happens, let me answer the question that you all have outstanding. Yes, I read that paper from Machine Learning Research at Apple called, “The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexity” [1]. This paper was foundation shaking. Those researchers from Apple ask some very serious questions about what is actually happening with these reasoning models. I have told people during conversations for years that I fervently believe that what we will see is machine learning methods and the new class of large language models being used to augment workflows and deliver specific value based use cases. That is a rational expectation for what is going to be delivered. I, for better or worse, have argued that we would see a lot of technology get built into products with enterprise scale and scope. People are going to use what gets delivered to them and is easy to enable.

Several trends are on my radar that I’m curious about researching, and that is in the end what yields the spark for these Lindahl Letter research notes. A lot of companies are doing some really great work at the edge of making actual quantum computers that work. My method of measuring that is in how the latest releases are explaining the great race to have the biggest number of qubits. I think a leaderboard could be maintained with the largest qubit-based quantum computers in the world. Let’s call that race to have the best quantum computer that can accomplish real things, the first trend I’m interested in following. Second, I’m curious about the potential for agents to take action on your behalf and what that will mean for society in general. Right now, as I mentioned above, we have a lot of augmentation, but not as much action being built. I think that is a trend that will change as Google, Microsoft, and Apple get more engaged in the game. It’s also possible that Meta figures that one out, but their surface for action is more limited than the other platform companies. Third, I'm really curious about what is going to happen with machines that build machines. We had the 3D printing revolution where these things almost got commoditized to the point where most people could afford one. Moving from making things with 3D printing to potentially making machines or components that make other machines, I think will be the next major trend in manufacturing enablement.

Those three trends on my radar are the great quantum computing race, agents taking action, and machines making machines. My goal here is to continue to produce research notes on a weekly basis, really diving into various parts of these trends that are totally and wholesale organically written, researched, and ultimately published. Bespoke and hand-curated content brought to your inbox every Friday. At this point, I’m taking my backlog that includes around a hundred topics for this Lindahl Letter writing effort and setting it aside to pivot to the trends listed above as an attempt to get closer to the edge of what is possible and further away from pure research of things that have already happened. As a true pracademic, my interests are really in what is becoming possible. That is not a futurist question, but a practical edge of possibility question that I believe deserves in-depth consideration.

What’s next for the Lindahl Letter? New editions arrive every Friday. If you are still listening at this point and enjoyed this content, then please take a moment and share it with a friend. If you are new to the Lindahl Letter, then please consider subscribing. Make sure to stay curious, stay informed, and enjoy the week ahead!

Footnotes:

[1] https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/illusion-of-thinking