Jessica Ryan

On the surface, this article is about neural networks and the beginnings of AI, but I actually think it's invaluable insight into capitalism, scarcity, the psychology of valuations and maybe a little rich people foolishness.

On Sunday, with about six years of musical-theater writing experience between the two of them, the Gen Z songwriting duo beat out a list of powerhouse Grammy nominees that included Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Cinderella”; Conor McPherson’s “Girl From the North Country,” built around Bob Dylan songs; and a Stephen Schwartz musical.

What does it mean to apply our power to promote our values? It means that we can have an impact on our shared political and cultural life. It means that we can support and care for each other. It means we can stand up, individually and together, and say “no” against the injustices in the world. It means that we have the ability to initiate the... See more

They learned that they messed up. A blind spot was revealed to them. In terms of fixing that blind spot, they did a very accessible step for an institution — you educate yourself, you hire consultants, you have a “gender explosion” workshop with your current production. But often that first step of education ends when the workshop is done, which I... See more

As the spark of an idea started to build, she sought help from a collaborator, Emily Bear, a 19-year-old composer and musician who had been introduced to the world as a 6-year-old piano prodigy but was hoping to prove herself as more than just a former spectacle for daytime talk shows.

If you can set up a system where anyone can publish anything, and dynamically allocate more resources to the ideas that seem most promising, you're much more likely to produce a lot of surprisingly awesome output. This is important for reasons deeper than just "people are bad at predicting success"—I think there's something about surprise that... See more