Tippets #191
Phone-based childhoods, AI dolls, AI at the Pulitzer, and more. Enjoy!
A warm welcome to new readers getting this for the first time, and thank you for letting me be a small part of your week! As a reminder, I’m Rishi Taparia, Co-founder and General Partner at Garuda Ventures, a pre-seed focused fund partnering with founders to pull the future into the present. Tippets is a curated set of tidbits and snippets (get it…tippets…) from my reading around the web.
New From Me:
From Operating to Investing: Investing with Rishi Taparia
I had a lot of fun sitting down with Grace this week on her pod. The conversation ranged from what it's like being an early startup employee to how we view investing here at Garuda Ventures. I most enjoyed talking about the similarities and differences between picking a company to work at and picking a company to invest in. Feedback welcome!
Tippets from Around the Web:
End the Phone-Based Childhood Now
The must-read article of the weekend (particularly for anyone with children under 18). This made the rounds on multiple text threads I’m on, and for good reason, as author Jonathan Haidt explores some of the root causes behind the growing decline in adolescent and childhood mental health. And before you jump to the conclusion I did - duh, mobile - it’s not just the iPhone’s fault.
One crucial aspect of play is physical risk taking. Children and adolescents must take risks and fail—often—in environments in which failure is not very costly. This is how they extend their abilities, overcome their fears, learn to estimate risk, and learn to cooperate in order to take on larger challenges later. The ever-present possibility of getting hurt while running around, exploring, play-fighting, or getting into a real conflict with another group adds an element of thrill, and thrilling play appears to be the most effective kind for overcoming childhood anxieties and building social, emotional, and physical competence. The desire for risk and thrill increases in the teen years, when failure might carry more serious consequences. Children of all ages need to choose the risk they are ready for at a given moment. Young people who are deprived of opportunities for risk taking and independent exploration will, on average, develop into more anxious and risk-averse adults. Human childhood and adolescence evolved outdoors, in a physical world full of dangers and opportunities. Its central activities––play, exploration, and intense socializing––were largely unsupervised by adults, allowing children to make their own choices, resolve their own conflicts, and take care of one another. Shared adventures and shared adversity bound young people together into strong friendship clusters within which they mastered the social dynamics of small groups, which prepared them to master bigger challenges and larger groups later on.And then we changed childhood.
(31-minute read - The Atlantic)
Five of this year’s Pulitzer finalists are AI-powered
Due to its increasing prevalence in newsrooms, the Pulitzer Board mandated entrants to reveal their use of AI this year. And, in a surprise to no one, people are using it.
Five of the 45 finalists in this year’s Pulitzer Prizes for journalism disclosed using AI in the process of researching, reporting, or telling their submissions, according to Pulitzer Prize administrator Marjorie Miller.
Everyone, from universities to award shows, needs to figure out how to adapt to new technology, which is certainly not going anywhere.
(4-minute read - Niemen Lab)
Welcome to the Valley of the Creepy AI Dolls
Typically, the idea of AI-powered, speaking dolls invokes feelings of horror. But in fact, they might help the oldest members of our society.
Now, this $1,800 AI-enabled doll may well look like something you'd find in a haunted attic, but it’s actually meant to act as an interactive digital pal for people who are lonely or in long-term care facilities.
It's meant as a balm for the epidemic of loneliness, which has affected everyone from older adults in nursing homes to college students. Elizabeth Necka, a program director at the American National Institute on Aging, says there's something to this kind of tech, particularly when used in nursing homes that are already suffering from widespread staffing shortages.
(5-minute read - Wired)
Malaysia: the surprise winner from US-China chip wars
Tension between the US and China regarding technology access has led to an influx of companies setting up or expanding in Malaysia. Malaysia’s history in semiconductor manufacturing has positioned it as an unexpected investment destination, attracting major players like Micron, Intel, and Infineon.
It is already the world’s sixth largest semiconductor exporter and holds 13 per cent of the global semiconductor packaging, assembly and testing market. It is the origin for 20 per cent of US semiconductor imports annually, more than Taiwan, Japan or South Korea. But there hadn’t been much of a catalyst for it to move up the value chain in semiconductors — until now.
Demand for ever more high-powered chips in sectors such as electric vehicles and artificial intelligence means so-called advanced packaging — which connects chips to their circuitboards and protects them from contamination — is regarded as key to improving performance. A previously labour-intensive process now often takes place in highly automated factories.
(9-minute read - FT)
The Best Essay
Paul Graham’s essay on essays, and what characteristics make an essay exceptional.
A good essay has to be surprising. It has to tell people something they don't already know.
(17-minute read - Paul Graham)
Quote I'm thinking about: “We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring. Will be to arrive where we started. And know the place for the first time.” - T.S. Eliot
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