1. State of AI Report 2020 by Nathan Benaich and Ian Hoghart. Among the core findings: R&D is becoming increasingly expensive, the majority of research papers (85%) are not open source, advances in transformer models boost NLP, biotech and military are seeing a wave of AI opportunities, and startups can compete in specific niches.
  2. The Impact of AI on Healthcare by Calum Chace for Forbes. How robotic process automation, chatbots, and automated diagnostics transform the healthcare sector — and what blocks those changes.
  3. Land of the “Super Founders“ — A Data-Driven Approach to Uncover the Secrets of Billion Dollar Startups by Ali Tamaseb. It’s often difficult to separate fact and fiction when looking at the past of successful startups. Tamaseb took on the challenge and wrote the most comprehensive analysis I have seen so far. 
  4. How Intelligent is a Cephalopod? Lessons from Comparative Cognition by Schnell et al. (2020). While octopuses are praised for their cognitive abilities, their complex behaviour can also result from simpler mechanisms.
  5. Honoring Petrov Day on LessWrong in 2020 by Ben Pace at LessWrong. In remembrance of Petrov, LessWrong admins sent out codes capable of shutting down the website for a day to 270 trusted users. Interesting analysis how the experiment failed.
  6. Understanding Ant Group by Ryan Rodenbaugh at East Meets West. As Ant Group is heading for a dual IPO listing, this article details the background and rise of the company that provides digital payments, digital finance, and digital daily life services to more than a billion users. 
  7. Resilience and Vibrancy: The 2020 Data & AI Landscape by Matt Turck. Thorough analysis of the top companies and industry trends. 
  8. How AI is powering a more helpful Google by Prabhakar Raghavan at the Google blog. Google created a range of new ML-based (and particularly NLP) features to improve search. You can even hum a song to find possible results – good news for all techno fans. 
  9. TikTok & ByteDance Report by Attention Factory. A look at ByteDance – the organisational structure, the technologies, and the people behind TikTok any many other apps. 
  10. The Brain Implants That Could Change Humanity by Moises Velasquez-Manoff for The New York Times. A combination of neuroscientific advances and AI have created methods to read information from the brain and even write to the brain. The article addresses research highlights, the road to commercialisation, and ethical concerns.