Weekly Digest 3
Tech
Flutter reconsiders design architecture
Type: info
Materials:
- https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/168813
- https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/170310
With the new Material 3 Expressive and Liquid Glass coming out recently, Flutter’s design libraries Material and Cupertino started to become outdated. And Flutter teams want to review their design approaches in the near future.
The arrival of major updates for both Material and Cupertino presents a significant (and exciting!) opportunity to apply past lessons and reconsider the long-term architecture for design system integration in Flutter.
To evaluate this, we have begun a broad investigation into our current approach. This includes exploring various architectural possibilities - for instance, we are re-evaluating the long-requested idea of moving the Material and Cupertino libraries out of the core framework.
This strategic pause on design updates gives us the space to ensure the long-term health and maintainability of Flutter’s design libraries. We are committed to being transparent with our contributor community as we explore these options and will have more to share on our findings and future direction in the coming weeks. 💙
AI
The Gentle Singularity
Materials: https://blog.samaltman.com/the-gentle-singularity
There is no doubt that Sam Altman’s insights and visions are very advanced and impressive. And I would like to believe the future he promoted:
- Intelligence and energy will be abundant.
- Innovations will come faster and faster, because the new systems are self-reinforcing loops.
- Most jobs will be redefined and changed completely. But humans can get used to the new technology over time, and adapt to it.
Abundance and Scarcity
Scarcity is a fundamental idea to human beings. Humans fight endless wars for limited food and territories. The society, Capitalism, the form of country, are all built upon the principle of scarcity of resources, and who should get them. The thought of scarcity is almost hardwired into our brains.
But what if scarcity no longer exists? I would say society will change thoroughly. But this is not Communism. It’s a new kind of society, and needs a new definition. And I think scarcity will actually still exist, but not be what it is today. Humans can always find new things to want.
To make a practical advice based on the thought above, I would suggest: The scarcity of different things changes rapidly, so should our way of treating them.
Other AI articles
The first big AI disaster is yet to happen
In short, an AI agent is “tools in a loop”
AI agents are powerful, but they are going to cause big disasters occasionally in the future. There is no way to prevent these disasters, because people will want AI agents to do more things, be more powerful. And more power means it is easier to get out of control.
All we can do is proceed with more caution, learning how to harness this potential yet dangerous tool.