Trends
Popular Science
Fun, smart and varied feature stories, but a sometimes sophomoric design
By Jeff Joseph


Proactive investing calls for a broad knowledge of where the world’s headed, and Popular Science magazine can help develop that understanding. After all, the magazine’s editors have been looking to the future for the past 147 years. But be aware that the articles vary widely in sophistication. Take a look at some recent headlines…
Groundhog Day is all about woodchuck sex
Six more weeks of Tinder.
What will we name the solar system’s next planet?
Even in space, bureaucracy prevails.
Still, luckbox is fascinated with PopSci’s coverage of the opportunities and challenges of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). A recent article explains that Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, an Estonian-born computer programmer, is working to prevent a literal existential threat to humans in the form of a super-intelligence “breakout” of AI. It’s where “ultra-smart” AIs outpace humans on the evolutionary ladder and dominate their creators the way that humans now dominate apes.
Or worse yet, the machines could simply exterminate humanity. Here are some excerpts from the PopSci article on Tallinn…
Can Super-Intelligent AI Escape Our Control and Destroy Us?
The team defending humankind from a killer AI
By Mara Hvistendahl, Winter 2018
“Advance AI can dispose of us as swiftly as humans chop down trees.”
“Tallinn warns that any approach to AI safety will be hard to get right. If an AI is sufficiently smart, it might have a better understanding of the constraints than its creators do. Imagine, he says, “waking up in a prison built by a bunch of blind 5-year-olds.” That’s what It might be like for a super-intelligent AI confined by humans. — Jeff Joseph
Arts & Media
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Hate Inc.
By Jeff Joseph
|Matt Taibbi—an author and Rolling Stone political writer who’s sometimes pegged as a spiritual heir to Hunter S. Thompson—has scored again with his latest book, Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media… -
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur
By Mike Reddy
|Futurism podcasts aren’t for everyone. With work, family, friends and finances vying for attention, it’s difficult to justify carving out time to listen to what may be in store for… -
Do Dice Play God?
By Mike Hart
|Professional traders dwell in a complex landscape of uncertainty, probability assessment, decision-making and risk. They also wield powerful digital trading capabilities unimaginable only a few decades ago. It’s no longer… -
The Day it Finally Happens
By Jeff Joseph
|This forward-focused issue of luckbox is brimming with expert advice calculated to help readers place their bets on what will unfold in the future—but at what odds? Have no fear.… -
The Great Hack
By Ed McKinley
|Technology’s shocking invasion of privacy gained momentum in the early 1970s when supermarkets began installing closed circuit television cameras to monitor the aisles for shoplifting. Not many customers complained, and… -
Patriot Act with Hassan Minhaj
By Jeff Joseph
|When Jon Stewart took the reins of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show from Craig Kilborn in 1999, the program began outperforming Saturday Night Live as an incubator for rising comedy… -
Twenty-Six Words …
By Jeff Joseph
|In his latest book, The Twenty-Six Words that Created the Internet, Jeff Kosseff, a professor of cybersecurity law in the U.S. Naval Academy’s Cyber Science Department, examines the implications of… -
The Anxiety Guy
|The Anxiety Guy, a top-ranked iTunes podcast, outdoes the competition. That’s an accomplishment because host Dennis Simsek used to want nothing more than to blend in during his years of… -
High Times
By Jeff Joseph
|In 1974, an underground journalist used drug money to launch High Times magazine in a basement office. It was supposed to be a single-issue spoof of Playboy, complete with lurid… -
An Economist Walks Into a Brothel
By Mike Hart
|It takes a certain type of economist—someone who’s devoted years to analyzing data but also possesses a keen eye for the quirks that guide humanity—to take apart, scrutinize and explain… -
Complex Con(versations)
|With so many films and TV shows documenting the triumphs and struggles of pro gamers, it can prove difficult to mine them all for advice to apply in the everyday… -
The Business of Esports
|“The fastest-growing entertainment phenomenon of this generation.” That’s how the hosts of The Business of Esports podcast—William Collis, Paul Dawalibi and Arda Ocal—characterize professional video gaming. Their podcast sheds light… -
TRADING SARDINES
By Mike Hart
|Certain souls become passionate about trading. Market dynamics fill them with adrenalin, feed their competitive urges and sometimes pad their bank accounts. They’re glued to their screens, searching for an… -
LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS
By Ed McKinley
|Some of the 18 short animated films in a new Netflix series called Love Death + Robots end with unexpected twists—like latter-day episodes of the venerable Twilight Zone shows. But… -
MY DEAD WIFE, THE ROBOT CAR
By Jeff Joseph
|In 1964, My Mother the Car, an NBC sitcom, aired one season for 30 episodes. The set-up was a man’s deceased mother communicating with him through his car’s radio. Critics… -
MIT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
By Jeff Joseph
|General-interest journalists love to score interviews with prominent technologists, futurists and other visionaries. But it’s not easy to ask the right questions or understand the answers on the fly. That’s… -
The Hummingbird Project
By Ed McKinley
|Finance meets tech in a new thriller called The Hummingbird Project. Writer-director Kim Nguyen spins the tale of two youngish cousins who quit their jobs at a New York-based hedge fund… -
Mother Jones
By Jeff Joseph
|Mother Jones (MoJo), a news organization launched in 1976, is named after Irish-American labor activist Mary Harris “Mother” Jones. MoJo publishes a quarterly print magazine featuring investigative journalism on politics,… -
Black Monday
By Ed McKinley
|Imagine a TV comedy series that begins with a man in a business suit sitting on the curb crying. On the sidewalk behind him, black-clad punksters spray graffiti on an…