Doug Barton

Director, University of Wisconsin E-Business Consortium; EmTech exec where my passion is helping people and organizations achieve their potential w/innovation.

[Doug Barton @bartond]

Very pleased to share I've aligned my purpose for a world that works better for all and the #wisconsinidea @UWEBCweb @UWMadison #togetherforward Read more if you like! https://t.co/70pzZB5crm

[Doug Barton @bartond]

@JFPuget Have fun. We’ll keep the world
turning. :)

[Doug Barton @bartond]

@FutureJurvetson Very cool!

[Satya Nadella @satyanadella]

https://t.co/MjwFy73LOF

[Doug Barton @bartond]

@IntuitMachine Hi Carlos, can you share your source material for this?

[Doug Barton @bartond]

And now for something beautiful .... it's the day before a scuba diving vacation. I will listen better to the 🐠🦈🐋. #AI #AI and #AI

[Steve Jurvetson @FutureJurvetson]

We can imagine the marvel of first contact, whether alien or AI, and it starts with communication.

We can practice with the isolated animal intelligences all around us. We hosted a gathering for the leadership of the Earth Species Project, with an ambitious plan to do just that, using multimodal AI models.

“Everything that can be translated will be, by 2030.”— @Aza Raskin of ESP, and:

“It’s impossible without scale and inevitable with scale.” (of data and compute)

“We will face the unusual situation where our AI will communicate with animals before we understand what they are saying.”

“Human languages have evolved over a couple hundred thousand years. Whale and dolphin language has evolved over 34 million years. And some are multilingual, using a third language when hunting together off the coast of Norway.”

“Beluga whales announce themselves with their unique name and clan ID. Parrots teach each of their chicks their name in the nest—a lifelong signature that connects them to their family and community.”

“And there are different cultures. The is a fascinating community of crows in Spain that operate unlike other crows. They raise their young as a group, like a kibbutz. They have a unique dialect for collaborative parenting. When an outside crow joins the group, it learns the dialect and participates in the unique culture. The crows have different personalities and there is a lot of drama. There is one adult that none of the other mothers like. She has to zip in and out quickly to feed the young before being chased off by the others.”

“Humpback whale songs go viral. There is group of whales off Australia that are like the K-pop singers. Their songs propagate globally over a couple years."

"An orca once wore a salmon hat, and it became a fashion trend among orcas.”

“80% of animal communication is relatively quiet one-to-one communication, and we need to capture that. It’s a perception problem. Of the animal recordings made, only 3% of the data have been analyzed. There has been little progress in orca communications in the past 20 years.”

“Many indigenous myths start with communication with the animals and nature. And then we forget how. We became disconnected.”

[Stanford Digital Economy Lab @DigEconLab]

Can we fulfill transformative AI's revolutionary potential? Part of it depends on articulating a compelling shared vision for the future, which @_gabrielunger explores in his essay for the Digitalist Papers.

[Doug Barton @bartond]

Wisconsin’s aluminum story just got a high-tech update.
@UWMadison can drive a rover 60 km with 41% less energy-storage mass than lithium-ion. A century ago, Manitowoc–Two Rivers turned the “wonder metal” into aluminum cookware capital with over half the U.S. market. #forward

[UW-Madison College of Engineering @UWMadEngr]

A robotic rover powered by a new aluminum-air battery—developed by @UWMechEngr researchers—completed the same 60-kilometer mission as a lithium-ion-powered rover while carrying 41% less total energy-storage mass. The study is out today in Joule.

https://t.co/WGgvHVXYHW

[Erik Brynjolfsson @erikbryn]

.@BharatKChandar, @RuyuChen and I just released an updated version of our paper "Canaries in the Coal Mine?"

The headline is that we still don't see any widespread job displacement due to AI, but the earlier trends we identified hold up or even grow. E.g., the relative decline for young people in AI-exposed jobs widened to 19% by June 2026, from 15% in our first wave.

We also looked at changes in interest rates, remote work, the tech sector boom and bust and remote work, but none of them seem to explain the effects we see for AI-exposed jobs.

Bharat has a great thread below with more detial. It ends with links to the new paper and to a short blog post summarizing what's new.

I'd love to hear what you think.

[Doug Barton @bartond]

@JFPuget That is good! Glad someone else is noticing that racket. Felonies as marketing. :(

[Interim Chancellor Eric M. Wilcots @uwchancellor]

Proud to share that our @uwmadison researchers were selected for 5! Genesis Mission awards from @ENERGY, spanning physics, geoscience, and fusion. This federal investment fuels discovery, builds talent and drives innovation for our state and nation. https://t.co/OOXQhzETUj

[Interim Chancellor Eric M. Wilcots @uwchancellor]

Wisconsin is a national hub for fusion energy, and yesterday it grew stronger. Congrats to @RealtaFusion, a @UWMadison spinoff, on its new HQ in Madison, built on decades of partnering with Badgers on research & a talent pipeline fueling our state's fusion future. On, Wisconsin⚡

[Doug Barton @bartond]

@uwchancellor @RealtaFusion @UWMadison @GovEvers @DeanRanjan #Forward

[Doug Barton @bartond]

Proud of the long term partnership between @UWMadison, @UWEBCweb, and @subzerowolf! #TogetherForward

[UW-Madison College of Engineering @UWMadEngr]

Through collaborations with organizations such as @subzerowolf, UW-Madison Interdisciplinary Professional Programs is helping ensure AI workforce education reflects real-world challenges, opportunities, and emerging workforce needs.

https://t.co/2ecHvSTnTH

[UW-Madison College of Engineering @UWMadEngr]

This past year, we’ve been focused on one thing: making the future. From new partnerships and programs to deeper engagement and tangible outcomes, we’ve been working to turn strategy into action and ideas into real impact.

[Wimbledon @Wimbledon]

Absolute grass court cinema! 🎦

This ridiculous point between Alejandro Davidovich Fokina & Felix Auger-Aliassime is the Play of the Day presented by @Barclays

[Doug Barton @bartond]

@emollick Otteropolis: High Altitude Catan – AI-Powered Multiplayer Mayhem
Price: $49.99 (or 4,200 Otter Tokens)
Rating: ★★★★★ (12 reviews — all from otters)
Description: Bring the ultimate high-stakes board game experience to life! Inspired by a chaotic red-eye flight …

[Doug Barton @bartond]

@sbkaufman I feel this.

[Ethan Mollick @emollick]

Some (early) evidence that managers have the highest success rate in using Claude Code for coding.

I have been arguing that management is an AI superpower, as clearly specifying what you want, how to do it & what good looks like is key to using agents. https://t.co/ofbCp3f1QB

[Doug Barton @bartond]

@DeryaTR_ Maybe this: Chad Jones (w/ Tonetti): “Weak links” tame the AI growth explosion. Automate 90%? Output is bottlenecked by the remaining 10% (human judgment, novel directions, integration). Top talent strengthens those links—supercharging the flywheel. https://t.co/p9eP9cEnjx