Future Telescope 1
Rise Of The Telescope
Satya Nadella always gets me thinking.
His statements feel natural yet well-crafted, and always present an optimistic view of the future.
Just like Nadella, Sundar Pichai also approaches situations with an expansion mindset rather than a zero sum game one.
Check out these two examples to understand why I say this:
1. Future Telescopes
These two individuals have a front seat to the future of humanity and how it will evolve. They know which software you'll be using in 2025 and what behaviors they need to instill in you today to be ready for that new world.
They have Future Telescopes of their own.
I'm trying to build one of mine by observing them, but it is blurry and prone to all sorts of artifacts. This blog is my way of improving my telescope by engaging with people who know something about all this.
There is an anecdote about Jeff Bezos (another veteran Future Telescope holder) where it's said he saw the growth stats for internet businesses back in the 90s, went on a long drive, and decided to take a bet on making the largest internet business. That made him billions. In an industry that's bigger than trillions today.
(BTW, searching for “Jeff Bezos” on Giphy is a trip I swear.)
Never in my life have I felt the same thing - looking at an explosive growth industry being born right before my eyes, with humanity having barely an idea of how best to use it. And its penetration is growing day by day yet there are many who have absolutely no clue of how this world is changing. The AI technology industry.
2. But What About AI?
Now there are two positions to take in this scenario. One is to call it doomsday and mourn the loss of truth and human employability. The second position is to remember that typewriters did this to handwriting, computers did this to typewriters, Powerpoint did this to slide show making equipment, etc.
Technology is the great multiplier. It creates opportunity for real economic growth. It enables a new level to human productivity as humans become more skilled at using advanced tools in a natural way. Spellcheck made all of us communicate better and improved productivity. Gmail autocomplete saves us a few seconds everyday with its suggestions.
One could extrapolate this argument to say that the integration of AI technologies in our world will mean that each human being will easily increase their productivity by multiple factors. Combined, it will create a world with more opportunities, more advances, more output, more economic growth.
3. IRL
That is one perspective that I have developed on this world so far. A friend talks to ChatGPT about Pokemon and makes it write Dexter's Lab fanfic. My team at work uses ChatGPT to generate headline copy for creative communication. I made it write code for an app that takes in a natural language prompt like "A lovely walk on a summer day" and turns it into a Spotify playlist with songs that make you feel like it's a summer day and you're out on a walk dude.
What is this tool? How far will this go?
Now another perspective could also be that this is all hype. Just like the web 3.0 and metaverse bs, this will fizzle out with a half life of about a year or two. But let's think about it for a second: the blockchain never had much more use than letting bored Wall Street types gamble with billions. The metaverse is still looking for its killer app for consumers and is constrained heavily by hardware. In contrast, I can run my own stock image service with a customized Stable Diffusion build off of a 2021 M1 Max Macbook Pro. I can write an "Infinite Shakespeare GPT" and run it on a 2020 Windows laptop with a 3050 Ti. No sweat.
How is this not a revolution? How am I still on the edge and not diving in headlong to be a part of this opportunity? Maybe I'm not the next Bezos myself, but I know for sure that there are many of them waiting to be found. Maybe you're one of them.
4. Catalogue
If you've not seen these videos yet, I would highly recommend them. It will inform your understanding of the current AI ecosystem by a lot.
Satya Nadella talking about the new Bing launch. His business sense is incredible. So gentle with his words yet his ferocity really comes out when talking to Nilay about Google. The Joanna conversation is great because she basically shows how the new Bing can literally take over much of her work. It's crazy.
This Stanford webinar on what comes after GPT-3. I liked this highly academic overview of what to expect. In my mind, this seems to be the most likely upgrade tothat GPT-4 will come with - the ability to cite sources and be updated in realtime. The latest Bing ChatGPT product that Microsoft unveiled powered by the "next generation GPT model" by OpenAI suggests the same. Watch this if you want a window into the future:
Watch this video to understand how platform business are built to be unprofitable. Gives a clear window into a failed business model of the past decade so you can avoid these mistakes when making your AI company:
Watch Andrej Karpathy, (Tesla's ex-AI head, the guy who said that AI now writes 80% of his code) make an "Infinite Shakespeare GPT". It's the perfect way to learn how transformers work today. So cool that we can learn how to make almost cutting edge AI at home by a leading authority in the space.
Watch this video to understand how Google is actually miles ahead of competition when it comes to AI. Seriously, this is the company that literally invented the concept of Transformers. How can anyone underestimate them.
That's all I have for the first draft. Thanks.
The thumbnail for this post was generated using Midjourney v4. Great fun!
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