🔮 AI & Math 2.0, Pakistan’s solar hedge & who controls computing++The essential view of how technology changes the world.
Hi all, Welcome to the Sunday edition #605. If you’re catching up this weekend, we covered a lot of ground on AI adoption, long-term knowledge impact, agent economics, and chip innovation during the week. If you missed anything, we’ve gathered this week’s Exponential View and AI Investment Brief readings at the end. Enjoy! A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSORGranola unlocked today’s post for you. We use Granola to capture our meetings. See it in action in the notes from our latest AI Investment Brief members’ call. Join EV as an annual member and get four months of Granola Business for free, with 10 seats for your team.
Math 2.0When OpenAI released its repo with hundreds of mathematical manuscripts and supporting proofs, I asked what it might mean for the future of human knowledge:
A new group calling itself the Association for Human Mathematics criticized the release and called on mathematicians to stop working with OpenAI. Here I tend to agree with Rohit Krishnan that there isn’t a “way to unring the bell, nor do I think we would ever go back to the old ways of doing maths.” Terence Tao is pragmatic in his vision for Math 2.0:
The transition is hitting the field hard; after all, an open problem can organize years of training and collaboration at institutions. In a seminar this week, Fields medallist Hugo Duminil-Copin says his PhD students and postdocs were “in a state of total panic”. Like Tao, he calls for community-building — working with colleagues and students to understand the results, organizing conferences, and writing explanations for a wider community. See also:
More than chipsI worked with the WEF¹ to release The Next-Generation Computing Framework this week. Compute is a condition of economic participation and strategic infrastructure. For me, that puts some practical questions ahead of the excitement for governments and firms, including:
Pakistan, electrifiedWe’ve followed Pakistan’s rooftop solar revolution since 2024, and in March examined how it was cushioning the country against imported-fuel shocks with the Strait of Hormuz closing.
Now high fuel prices could accelerate another change for Pakistan. The government targeted 30% of all new vehicle sales to be electric by 2030. This week, government adviser Haroon Akhtar told Bloomberg that higher petrol prices could bring that target forward. The transition in developing nations, however, remains “chaotic and unequal,” as Jan Rosenow points out. The grid’s costs don’t disappear when customers buy less electricity. If those fixed costs are recovered through higher electricity prices, households that can’t afford panels may get higher bills. A cheaper alternative for some can make the shared system more expensive for others. See also:
Short morsels to appear smart at dinner partiesWhy are personal agents taking off in the US, but not in China? Grace Shao points at China’s mobile superapp ecosystem. In a retrospective study of over 54,000 women, AI picked up a rising cancer risk signal years before diagnosis. 🔋😎 A review of 157 experimental studies finds that retired batteries can still have much to give. Of more than 10,000 retired cells, median remaining capacity was 84.5%. Samuel Hume has cataloged 160 new drug programs cleared to begin human trials in China this year.
🧱 Researchers created a semi-autonomous AI system that can build new materials atom by atom. A Canadian startup is deploying permafrost blankets in the Arctic. 🎩 Victorian Britain’s ruling class was successful despite living what, to us, may look like a frivolous life. An amusing read. A new typeface inspired by Michelangelo’s manuscripts is coming to Word. AI can take binary files of two games and fuse them together – think Super Mario running around Dark Souls. 
The latest from our team:In Exponential View:
In AI Investment Brief, we examined:
Thanks for reading!
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I am a co-chair of the Global Future Council on Next Generation Computing. See what’s coming. Understand why it matters. You’re already reading Exponential View. Become a paid member to get more of the insight that helps you navigate a fast-changing world:
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