It's best to be of two minds on AI
Veteran blogger offers a helpful reminder to balance optimism and skepticism in the age of generative models.
- Below is the latest edition of w3w, my free newsletter about emerging technology, including AI, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and more . If you would like to receive it in your inbox every Sunday, please subscribe here.
- I used several AI apps to assist production of this edition of w3w, including curation of headlines, copyediting, and other tasks. Final edit 100% by me. For fuller detail, see the newsletter's commit history on GitHub.
A couple of recent AI-related highlights from entrepreneur and OG blogger Anil Dash that are definitely worth a full read:
- He's not a fan of OpenAI's new web browser Atlas, released on Tuesday. Dash says Atlas is oddly "anti-web," reticent to link out to third-party sites or even to clarify which content is generated by its built in ChatGPT integration and which comes from elsewhere. Hmmm...
- More broadly, Anil complains that the majority view of AI among people who actually work in the tech industry is not adequately reflected in the deluge of mainstream press coverage of AI that we see everyday.
His jist is that most tech insiders have a fairly nuanced outlook of AI, aware of both its potential and its limitations. They tend to view AI much like any other emerging technology and are much less prone to messaianic or dystopian language than the handful of quasi-celebrity CEOs that tech journalists tend to over-rely on as sources to quote about AI.
My hunch is he's really on to something there. I guess it's human nature to try to shoehorn any topic into a black-and-white dichotomy. All the shades of gray tend to go out the window, especially in our current era of social algos and infinitesimal attention spans.
The more I learn about AI myself, the more the black-and-white view strikes me as an awful approach with this technology in particular. Better to do the work to actually hold two views at once, recognizing that they're not as mutually exclusive as might appear at first glance.
To put it terms of two frequently asked questions:
Is AI a potential world changer? Yes.
Is AI in an unsustainable investment bubble in which a lot of wildly speculative bets won't pay off?
Again, yes. Get used to it.
Week in Review: Oct. 19-25, 2025
- Crypto companies are escalating competition with Wall Street. Several are now seeking federal banking charters in the U.S. that would allow them to offer additional financial services to the public... Meanwhile, Ripple acquired prime brokerage Hidden Road for $1.25 billion, making it the first crypto company to own such a business.
- Not exactly decentralization's shining moment: CoinDesk's Margaux Nijkerk points out that many popular crypto platforms were affected by last week's Amazon Web Services outage. The situation highlights how reliant the crypto world still is on Big Tech's technical backbone. Sigh...
- The livestreaming platform Rumble announced a partnership with Tether to add bitcoin-based tipping for content creators. (Decrypt)
- IBM said it has successfully run a key algorithm for correcting computational errors by quantum computers using commonly available chips made by Advanced Micro Devices. The breakthrough could speed wider adoption of quantum computing. (Reuters)
- Washington Watch: President Trump nominated Michael Selig, chief counsel for the Securities and Exchange Commission's crypto task force, to serve as the next chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission... Trump also pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who served a four-month sentence last year for violating U.S. money laundering rules.
Market Snapshot
A quick look at some major indicators as of Friday's close on Wall Street:
| Indicator | Close | Weekly | YTD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | $110,626.47 | +3.9% | +17.9% |
| Gold | $4,137.80 | -1.8% | +57.4% |
| USD Index | 98.94 | +0.4% | -8.8% |
| 10-yr U.S. Treasury Yield |
3.997% | -0.010 | -0.576 |
| Nasdaq 100 | 25,358.16 | +2.2% | +20.7% |
| MSCI All-Country World Index (ex US) |
1,083.21 | +1.5% | +29.2% |
Looking Ahead
- Some eye-popping stats on AI investment: Hedge funds' holdings in chipmaker shares and other AI-related hardware hit a nine-year high in October, according to new data from Goldman Sachs... Meanwhile, tech companies' global spending on AI infrastructure is expected to hit $400 billion this year. The outlays so far have already been so significant that they've helped drive the broad-based S&P 500 higher this year... But that also means the U.S. stock market is increasingly vulnerable to a painful pullback if and when corporate AI spending inevitably slows.
- The Journal of the American Medical Association just published a new study about the effects of social media on children's cognition. The paper is somewhat unusual in its focus on social, not children's screen time in general. Its findings suggest that measures by parents and social-media companies to limit children's exposure to social apps could improve cognitive function, including reading scores. (Fast Company)
- OpenSea plans to launch a new SEA token in early 2026. The move is part of the platform's pivot from non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to offering trading across a broader range of digital assets. (The Block)
Odds & Ends
- Italian carmaker Ferrari is holding an on-chain auction among its wealthiest clients for the company's Le Mans-winning 499P vehicle. (Cointelegraph)
- Astronomers recently captured stunning images of the volatile star system Eta Carinae's full light spectrum using a specialized telescope located deep in Chile's Atacama Desert. (Space.com)
That's it for now. Thanks for reading the newsletter today! If you want to know more about w3w's history and (ahem) the author, that info is available here.
Please note, I regularly use several AI apps to assist production of w3w. But the final edit is 100% by me. For fuller detail, see the newsletter's commit history on GitHub.
If you need to reach me directly, please email peter[at]w3w[dot]media.
Best wishes for a healthy and productive week ahead. 😊