Every once in a while you read something that really blows your mind.  Today I was reading notes from Peter Thiel’s Stanford startup class – the topic was Artificial Intelligence (AI).  While the entire topic is pretty impressive this line really blew me away:

“If current trajectories hold, in 14 years the world’s fastest supercomputer will do more operations per second than the number of neurons in the brains of all living people”

I’ve read there are something like 100 billion neurons in the average brain.  I’m not sure how many operations per second my brain is doing but I think I could count them on one hand.

Yesterday I set a personal record by using Uber twice in one day.  First – to get a ride to SFO from San Francisco and second to get to a party across town in Denver.  For those of you who have never tried Uber – try it, it’s an awesome service.  Yes it is usually more expensive than a Taxi but you get superior service.  I like knowing for sure that a car is coming, where it is, and how long it will take to arrive.  I also really like not having to worry about paying once the ride is complete – it’s all done automagically.  

One famous VC describes services like Uber as being part of your “smartphone remote control for real life”.  The internet / smartphone used to only really apply to non-physical interactions like checking email, texting, or phone calls but more and more the smart phone is becoming a remote control for our real lives – need a car? Done.  Make a reservation? Click.  Buy movie tickets?… you get the idea.  I think it’s a really elegant way to think about the convergence of smartphones and literally everything else that goes on in our lives.