Wisereads Vol. 78 — Superagency by Reid Hoffman, Duolingo's handbook, and more
Last week, we shared a preview of Two Thoughts by Jim O’Shaughnessy and Vatsal Kaushik, a quote collection to expand your thinking. This week — amid a lineup heavy on AI — we're featuring an excerpt of Reid Hoffman's latest release with tech writer Greg Beato, Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future.
Reid and his team were kind enough to gift us 15 hardback copies to pass on to readers. Read on for the details of the giveaway below!
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Most highlighted Articles of the week
Three Observations
Another week, another viral post from Sam Altman. This week, the OpenAI CEO offered three notes on the economics of AI, including: "The intelligence of an AI model roughly equals the log of the resources used to train and run it," and "The cost to use a given level of AI falls about 10x every 12 months, and lower prices lead to much more use."
The Anthropic Economic Index
Anthropic, the creators of Claude, analyzed anonymized user queries to see how AI automates and augments work tasks, drawing lessons for the economy. "Very few occupations see AI use across most of their associated tasks: only approximately 4% of jobs used AI for at least 75% of tasks. However, more moderate use of AI is much more widespread: roughly 36% of jobs had some use of AI for at least 25% of their tasks."
Why Blog If Nobody Reads It?
English street photographer and writer Andy Hawthorne cuts deep in his latest post. "Back in the day, advertising legend Bill Bernbach said, 'The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.' Let’s tell the truth, then: Nobody reads your blog." Surprisingly, it’s this very realization that helped him uncover the real value of blogging.
Most highlighted YouTube Video of the week
What You're Missing: A Notebook System for Your Life
Ryder Carroll, creator of the no-frills Bullet Journal method, explains how short notes capture life’s moments. One key tip: write as if someone else will read them. "Why? Because they don’t know what you know. By crafting a note that’s clear to someone else, you're automatically future proofing it, because your future self is likely to forget much of what you know right now when they're reviewing your note later. So take a note for someone else; it forces you to think differently and distill the information in a way that is future proof."
Most highlighted Twitter Thread of the week
I recently got diagnosed with a brain disorder
Andrew Wilkinson, co-founder of Tiny (often called the Berkshire Hathaway for internet businesses), was shaken by an ADHD diagnosis that also revealed his entrepreneurial edge. "ADHD traits correlate with entrepreneurial success. Both hunting and building businesses reward adaptability, quick pattern recognition, and comfort with uncertainty. It's as if the business world had accidentally created the perfect environment for minds that don't fit the conventional mold. Suddenly, my own career path made a different kind of sense."
Most highlighted PDF of the week
The Duolingo Handbook
Duo the owl might be dead, but his legacy lives on. Duolingo’s team reveals the guiding wisdom that made their app a household name, including: Take the Long View, Raise the Bar, and Ship It. "Duolingo is the sum of thousands of experiments. The faster we can run experiments—successful or not—the faster we can improve the app and advance our mission. Over time, each of these changes builds on one another, creating a cycle of compounding growth."
Hand-picked book of the week
Superagency
In Superagency, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and tech writer Greg Beato chart a roadmap for using AI inclusively and adaptively to improve our lives. Already acclaimed by Bill Gates, Dario Amodei, Neal Stephenson, Mustafa Suleyman, and Sal Khan, Superagency arrives as both timely and hopeful.
"We’re Homo techne at least as much as we’re Homo sapiens... Every new technology we’ve invented—from language, to books, to the mobile phone—has defined, redefined, deepened, and expanded what it means to be human. We’re the initiators of this process, but we can’t fully control it... This is precisely why prohibition or constraint alone is never enough: they offer stasis and resistance at the very moment we should be pushing forward in pursuit of the brightest possible future."
We're thrilled that Reid and Greg are sharing a preview of the newly released Superagency in our humble Wisereads newsletter. They've also provided 15 hardback copies for readers—just reply with your address, and we’ll send them out on a first-come, first-served basis. You can also purchase a full copy here.
Handpicked RSS feed of the week
Geoffrey Huntley
From his van in Australia, Geoffrey Huntley writes at the intersection of remote work, camping, AI, and software development. From The future belongs to idea guys who can just do things: "If you’re a high agency person, there’s never been a better time to be alive...Ya know that old saying ideas are cheap and execution is everything? Well it's being flipped on it's head by AI. Execution is now cheap. All that matters now is brand, distribution, ideas and retaining people who get it. The entire concept of time and delivery pace is different now."