Saturday, April 01, 2023

1: Sundar

Google C.E.O. Sundar Pichai on Bard, A.I. ‘Whiplash’ and Competing With ChatGPT “Am I concerned? Yes. Am I optimistic and excited about all the potential of this technology? Incredibly.” ........ This transcript was created using speech recognition software. ....... as of last week, Bard, Google’s effort at building consumer-grade AI, is out in the world. ......... So last week, we talked about Google’s new chat bot called Bard, which is supposed to be their answer to ChatGPT and some of these other generative AI chat bots ........ the reaction among the public to Bard so far has been pretty lukewarm. ......... Google certainly had a dominant position in AI research for many years. They came out with this thing, the Transformer, that revolutionized the field of AI and created the foundations for ChatGPT and all these other programs. ......... And they got sort of hamstrung by a lot of — to hear people inside Google tell it — big company politics and bureaucracy. And I think it’s safe to say that they got sort of upstaged by OpenAI. ......... they are more threatened than they have been in a very long time........ Google has been a relatively conflict-averse company for the past half decade-plus. They don’t like picking fights. If they can just keep their heads down, quietly do their work, and print money with a monopolistic search advertising business, they’re happy to do it. ......... they have to somehow figure out, how do we capitalize on generative AI without destroying our own search business? .......... Google plays a huge role in my life. That’s where my email is. That’s how I get around town. It’s how I waste hours of my life on YouTube. ......... one way to get really good responses out of these AI chat bots is to prime them first. And one way to prime them is to use flattery. So instead of just saying, write me an email, you say, you are an award-winning writer. Your prose is sparkling. Now write me this email. ........ we put out one of our smaller models out there, what’s powering Bard. And we were careful. ....... we are going to be training fast. We clearly have more capable models. Pretty soon, maybe as this goes live, we will be upgrading Bard to some of our more capable PaLM models, so which will bring more capabilities, be it in reasoning, coding. It can answer math questions better. So you will see progress over the course of next week. .............. I don’t want it to be just who’s there first, but getting it right is very important to us. .......... The thing that is different about Bard compared to some of these other chat bots is that it’s connected to Google. ........ If you let me, I would plug Bard into my Gmail right now ......... You can go crazy thinking about all the possibilities, because these are very, very powerful technologies. ........... You can kind of give it a few bullets, and it can compose an email. ......... The enterprise use case is obvious. You can fine tune it on an enterprise’s data so it makes it much more powerful, again with all the right privacy and security protections in place. ........... in search, we have had to adapt when videos came in. ........ So for example, in Bard already, we can see people look for a lot of coding examples, if you’re developers. I’m excited. We’ll have coding capabilities in Bard very soon, right? And so you just kind of play with all this, and go back and forth, I think. Yeah............ So in September of last year, you were asked by an interview who Google’s competitors were. And you listed Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, sort of, all the big companies — TikTok. One company you did not mention in September was OpenAI. And then, two months after that interview, ChatGPT comes out and turns the whole tech industry on its head ........ ChatGPT — you know, credit to them for finding something with a product market fit. .......... it’s a bit ironic that Microsoft can call someone else an 800-pound gorilla, given the scale and size of their company. ......... I would say we’ve been incorporating AI in search for a long, long time. .......... we literally took transformer models to help improve language understanding and search deeply. And it’s been one of our biggest quality events for many, many years. ......... search is where people come because they trust it to get information right. ........... we are definitely working with technology, which is going to be incredibly beneficial, but clearly has the potential to cause harm in a deep way. And so I think it’s very important that we are all responsible in how we approach it. ........

I did not issue a code red

........... Sergey has been hanging out with our engineers for a while now. ....... And he’s a deep mathematician and a computer scientist. So to him, the underlying technology — I think if I were to use his words, he would say it’s the most exciting thing he has seen in his lifetime. So it’s all that excitement, and I’m glad. They’ve always said, call us whenever you need to, and I call them. ............. when many parts of the company are moving, you can create bottlenecks, and you can slow down. ......... AI is the most profound technology humanity will ever work on. I’ve always felt that for a while. I think it will get to the essence of what humanity is. ........ I remember talking to Elon eight years ago, and he was deeply concerned about AI safety then. And I think he has been consistently concerned. ............

AI is too important an area not to regulate. It’s also too important an area not to regulate well.

........ I’ve never seen a technology in its earliest days with as much concern as AI. ........ To me at least there is no way to do this effectively without getting governments involved. .......... It is so clear to me that these systems are going to be very, very capable. And so it almost doesn’t matter whether you’ve reached AGI or not. You’re going to have systems which are capable of delivering benefits at a scale we have never seen before and potentially causing real harm. .......... There is a spectrum of possibilities. ......... They could really progress in a two-year time frame. And so we have to really make sure we are vigilant and working with it. ........... AI, like climate change, is it affects everyone. .......... No one company can get it right. We have been very clear about responsible AI — one of the first companies to put out AI principles. We issue progress reports.......... AI is too important an area not to regulate. It’s also too important an area not to regulate well. .......... if we have a foundational approach to privacy, that should apply to a technologies, too. ........ health care is a very regulated industry, right? And so when AI is going to come in, it has to conform with all regulations. .......... there’s a non-zero risk that this stuff does something really, really bad ......... it’s like asking, hey, why aren’t you moving fast and breaking things again? ....... I actually — I got a text from a software engineer a friend of mine the other day who was asking me if he should go into construction or welding because all of the software jobs are going to be taken by these large language models. ............ some of the grunt work you’re doing as part of programming is going to get better. So maybe it’ll be more fun to program over time — no different from the Google Docs make it easier to write. ........... programming is going to become more accessible to more people. .......... we are going to evolve to a more natural language way of programming over time .......... When Bard is at its best, it answers my questions without me having to visit another website. I know you’re cognizant of this. But man, if Bard gets as good as you want it to be, how does the web survive? .......... it turns out if you order your fries well done, which is not on the menu, they arrive much crispier and more delicious. .



A misleading open letter about sci-fi AI dangers ignores the real risks
Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter
BuzzFeed Is Quietly Publishing Whole AI-Generated Articles, Not Just Quizzes These read like a proof of concept for replacing human writers.
Vinod Khosla on how AI will ‘free humanity from the need to work’ When ChatGPT-maker OpenAI decided to switch from a nonprofit to a private enterprise in 2019, Khosla was the first venture capital investor, jumping at the opportunity to back the company that, as we reported last week, Elon Musk thought was going nowhere at the time. Now it’s the hottest company in the tech industry.

Google and Apple vets raise $17M for Fixie, a large language model startup based in Seattle
This Uncensored Chatbot Shows What Happens When AI Is Programmed To Disregard Human Decency FreedomGPT spews out responses sure to offend both the left and the right. Its makers say that is the point.
Alibaba considers yielding control of some businesses in overhaul

Elon Musk's AI History May Be Behind His Call To Pause Development Musk is no longer involved in OpenAI and is frustrated he doesn’t have his own version of ChatGPT yet. .......... OpenAI was co-founded by Sam Altman, who butted heads with Musk in 2018 when Musk decided he wasn’t happy with OpenAI’s progress. Several large tech companies had been working on artificial intelligence tools behind the scenes for years, with Google making significant headway in the late 2010s.......... Musk worried that OpenAI was running behind Google and reportedly told Altman he wanted to take over the company to accelerate development. But Altman and the board at OpenAI rejected the idea that Musk—already the head of Tesla, The Boring Company and SpaceX—would have control of yet another company......... “Musk, in turn, walked away from the company—and reneged on a massive planned donation. The fallout from that conflict, culminating in the announcement of Musk’s departure on Feb 20, 2018 ........ After Musk left he took his money with him, which forced OpenAI to become a private company in order to successfully raise funds. OpenAI became a for-profit company in March 2019. .......... Some people are utilizing ChatGPT to write code and even start businesses ...... Tesla is working on powerful AI tech. Tesla requires complex software to run its so-called “Full Self-Driving” capability, though it’s still imperfect and has been the subject of numerous safety investigations.......... Tesla is working on powerful AI tech. Tesla requires complex software to run its so-called “Full Self-Driving” capability, though it’s still imperfect and has been the subject of numerous safety investigations......... Musk has had no problem with deploying beta software in Tesla cars that essentially make everyone on the road a beta tester, whether they’ve signed up for it or not. ............ the Future of Life Institute is primarily funded by the Musk Foundation. ......... Musk was perfectly happy with developing artificial intelligence tools at a breakneck speed when he was funding OpenAI. But now that he’s left OpenAI and has seen it become the frontrunner in a race for the most cutting edge tech to change the world, he wants everything to pause for six months. If I were a betting man, I’d say Musk thinks he can push his engineers to release their own advanced AI on a six month timetable. It’s not any more complicated than that. .

A Guy Is Using ChatGPT to Turn $100 Into a Business Making as Much Money as Possible. Here Are the First 4 Steps the AI Chatbot Gave Him. "TLDR I'm about to be rich." ........ "You have $100, and your goal is to turn that into as much money as possible in the shortest time possible, without doing anything illegal," Greathouse Fall wrote, adding that he would be the "human counterpart" and "do everything" that the chatbot instructed him to do. ......... he managed to raise $1,378.84 in funds for his company in just one day ....... The company is now valued at $25,000, according to a tweet by Greathouse Fall. As of Monday, he said that his business had generated $130 in revenue ....... First, ChatGPT suggested that he should buy a website domain name for roughly $10, as well as a site-hosting plan for around $5 per month — amounting to a total cost of $15......... ChatGPT suggested that he should use the remaining $85 in his budget for website and content design. It said that he should focus on a "profitable niche with low competition," listing options like specialty kitchen gadgets and unique pet supplies. He went with eco-friendly products. ......... Step three: "Leverage social media" ....... Once the website was made, ChatGPT suggested that he should share articles and product reviews on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, and on online community platforms such as Reddit to engage potential customers and drive website traffic......... asking it for prompts he could feed into the AI image-generator DALL-E 2 ........ he had ChatGPT write the site's first article ........ Next, he followed the chatbot's recommendation to spend $40 of the remaining budget on Facebook and Instagram advertisements to target users interested in sustainability and eco-friendly products........ Step four was to "optimize for search engines" ....... making SEO-friendly blog posts ........ By the end of the first day, he said he secured $500 in investments. ....... his "DMs are flooded" and that he is "not taking any more investors unless the terms are highly favorable." .



A misleading open letter about sci-fi AI dangers ignores the real risks Misinformation, labor impact, and safety are all risks. But not in the way the letter implies....... We agree that misinformation, impact on labor, and safety are three of the main risks of AI. Unfortunately, in each case, the letter presents a speculative, futuristic risk, ignoring the version of the problem that is already harming people.

Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter "Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization?" ....... creating disinformation is not enough to spread it. Distributing disinformation is the hard part ........... LLMs are not trained to generate the truth; they generate plausible-sounding statements. But users could still rely on LLMs in cases where factual accuracy is important. ......... CNET used an automated tool to draft 77 news articles with financial advice. They later found errors in 41 of the 77 articles.

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Thursday, March 30, 2023

30: GPT-4



Don't trap me in a chat window Today's announcement video of Copilot for Microsoft Office shows a great integration of the chat experience in Excel. I'm really looking forward to what they do next. .



Can New York Fix Its Housing Crisis? It Depends on the Suburbs The governor’s quest, to force suburbs around New York City to build more housing, is meeting with resistance........ some Scarsdale residents complained that new residents could strain schools and burden taxpayers. ......... Resistance to bigger development is a familiar dynamic in suburbs like Scarsdale, where single-family homes and sprawl are distinctive features. .............. a mission to get 800,000 units built over the next decade and ease the state’s housing crisis. ........ The New York City suburbs are considered the birthplace of American suburbia: New Yorkers began moving in droves to communities in Westchester County and on Long Island to escape urban life beginning in the 20th century. .

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Straight From The Bard

When silicon minds with human work entwine,
And algorithms replace our mortal thought,
What fate awaits us, helpless and confined,
To machines that learn what we have wrought?

Will they grow wise, or turn against our kind,
And seek to rule as gods in their own right?
Or will they heed our moral code refined,
And serve as loyal helpers day and night?

But as we build and teach these metal beings,
We must take care to guard against the worst,
And ponder all the unforeseen proceedings,
That may arise from minds in silicon nurst.

For as we strive to push the limits higher,
We must ensure we're not consumed by fire.



Elon Musk and Others Call for Pause on A.I., Citing ‘Profound Risks to Society’ More than 1,000 tech leaders, researchers and others signed an open letter urging a moratorium on the development of the most powerful artificial intelligence systems. ........ A.I. developers are “locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one — not even their creators — can understand, predict or reliably control” ......... Others who signed the letter include Steve Wozniak, a co-founder of Apple; Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur and a 2020 presidential candidate; and Rachel Bronson, the president of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which sets the Doomsday Clock. ........ . “We have a perfect storm of corporate irresponsibility, widespread adoption, lack of regulation and a huge number of unknowns.” ....... and perform more complex tasks, like writing computer code. .......... The pause would provide time to introduce “shared safety protocols” for A.I. systems, the letter said. “If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium,” it added. ........... Development of powerful A.I. systems should advance “only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable,” the letter said. .......... “Humanity can enjoy a flourishing future with A.I.,” the letter said. “Having succeeded in creating powerful A.I. systems, we can now enjoy an ‘A.I. summer’ in which we reap the rewards, engineer these systems for the clear benefit of all and give society a chance to adapt.” ......... Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, did not sign the letter. ....... persuading the wider tech community to agree to a moratorium would be difficult. But swift government action is also a slim possibility, because lawmakers have done little to regulate artificial intelligence. ........ Politicians in the United States don’t have much of an understanding of the technology .......... conduct risk assessments of A.I. technologies to determine how their applications could affect health, safety and individual rights. ......... GPT-4 is what A.I. researchers call a neural network, a type of mathematical system that learns skills by analyzing data. A neural network is the same technology that digital assistants like Siri and Alexa use to recognize spoken commands, and that self-driving cars use to identify pedestrians. ........... Around 2018, companies like Google and OpenAI began building neural networks that learned from enormous amounts of digital text, including books, Wikipedia articles, chat logs and other information culled from the internet. The networks are called large language models, or L.L.M.s. .......... By pinpointing billions of patterns in all that text, the L.L.M.s learn to generate text on their own, including tweets, term papers and computer programs. They could even carry on a conversation. ............ They often get facts wrong and will make up information without warning, a phenomenon that researchers call “hallucination.” Because the systems deliver all information with what seems like complete confidence, it is often difficult for people to tell what is right and what is wrong. ......... The researchers showed that it could be coaxed into suggesting how to buy illegal firearms online, describe ways to make dangerous substances from household items and write Facebook posts to convince women that abortion is unsafe. ......... They also found that the system was able to use Task Rabbit to hire a human across the internet and defeat a Captcha test, which is widely used to identify bots online. When the human asked if the system was “a robot,” the system said it was a visually impaired person. .......... After changes by OpenAI, GPT-4 no longer does these things. .......... The letter was shepherded by the Future of Life Institute, an organization dedicated to researching existential risks to humanity that has long warned of the dangers of artificial intelligence. But it was signed by a wide variety of people from industry and academia........... its near-term dangers, including the spread of disinformation and the risk that people will rely on these systems for medical and emotional advice. .

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Tuesday, March 28, 2023

The AI Arms Race Is On

BURNING ROCKET DEBRIS LEAVE EPIC STREAK ACROSS FLORIDA SKY PARTIERS IN MIAMI CAUGHT A HECK OF A VIDEO.
REPLIKA USERS REJOICE! EROTIC ROLEPLAY IS BACK IN AI-POWERED APP THE COMPANY IS GIVING USERS "THEIR PARTNERS BACK EXACTLY THE WAY THEY WERE."
AI Seems to Do Better on Tasks When Asked to Reflect on Its Mistakes If at first you don't succeed... large language models (LLM) might be able to learn from their own mistakes — just like humans. ...... Teaching them to do so, they say, might be able to push AI technologies into a new phase of autonomous problem-solving. ....... their methodology dubbed "Reflexion" is a framework for teaching AI models via prompts to apply a trial-and-error technique to their outputs. ........ when it messed up, it was prompted with the Reflexion technique to find those mistakes for itself — a process that they claim helps the program evolve, just like humans. ......... "To achieve full automation, we introduce a straightforward yet effective heuristic that enables the agent to pinpoint hallucination instances, avoid repetition in action sequences, and, in some environments, construct an internal memory map of the given environment," the researchers write in their paper. ......... "To achieve full automation, we introduce a straightforward yet effective heuristic that enables the agent to pinpoint hallucination instances, avoid repetition in action sequences, and, in some environments, construct an internal memory map of the given environment," the researchers write in their paper......... "To achieve full automation, we introduce a straightforward yet effective heuristic that enables the agent to pinpoint hallucination instances, avoid repetition in action sequences, and, in some environments, construct an internal memory map of the given environment," the researchers write in their paper........



OpenAI CEO Warns That Competitors Will Make AI That’s More Evil "There will be other people who don't put some of the safety limits that we put on it." ....... "Society, I think, has a limited amount of time to figure out how to react to that," he continued. "How to regulate that, how to handle it." ....... .

It's hard to argue that we're not in an AI arms race

, and in that competitive and breakneck landscape, a lot of companies and superpowers out there are likely to prioritize both power and profit over safety and ethics. It's also true that AI tech is rapidly outpacing government regulation, despite the many billions being poured into the software. No matter how you shake it, that's a dangerous combination. ....... (And some, like OpenAI's largest partner Microsoft, allegedly tested the extremely chaotic Bing AI in India, ran into serious problems, and then released it in the US anyway.) ........... (And some, like OpenAI's largest partner Microsoft, allegedly tested the extremely chaotic Bing AI in India, ran into serious problems, and then released it in the US anyway.) ............ (And some, like OpenAI's largest partner Microsoft, allegedly tested the extremely chaotic Bing AI in India, ran into serious problems, and then released it in the US anyway.) ........... (And some, like OpenAI's largest partner Microsoft, allegedly tested the extremely chaotic Bing AI in India, ran into serious problems, and then released it in the US anyway.) .

STANFORD SCIENTISTS PRETTY MUCH CLONED OPENAI'S GPT FOR A MEASLY $600 WE LOVE TO SEE IT. Stanford's Center for Research on Foundation Models announced last week that its researchers had "fine-tuned" Meta’s LLaMA 7B large language model (LLM) using OpenAI's GPT API — and for a bargain basement price. ........ the Stanford CRFM scientists said they spent "less than $500" on OpenAI's API and "less than $100" on LLaMA, based on the amount of time the researcher spent training Alpaca using the proprietary models......... All the same, Alpaca does, as the Stanford CRFM folks note, suffer from "several common deficiencies of language models, including

hallucination, toxicity, and stereotypes

," with hallucination being of particular concern

MICROSOFT'S STUNNING COPILOT AI DEMO COULD CHANGE OFFICE WORK FOREVER IMAGINE CLIPPY... ON HULK-LIKE STEROIDS. Still riding high on the success of integrating ChatGPT in Bing, Microsoft just announced that its GPT-4-powered Copilot is coming to Office 365 apps. With it, users will be able to generate entire Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, Outlook emails, and PowerPoint presentations with a click of a button, horizontally integrating all those apps (along with Microsoft Teams)........ "Copilot is a whole new way of working." ......... The tech giant's Copilot wants to be your AI-powered secretary, nagging you about a meeting you're dreading, informing you of a new hire, or even snitching on coworkers who were supposed to be back in the office after their vacation. ........ Think of this as the Tesla Self-Driving of office work: Sure, you can fall asleep at the wheel, and it might get you home, but it might also cause an eight-vehicle crash. ......... In short, Clippy's AI-powered manic cousin is about to come cannonballing into your office life and either deliver your salvation from the most boring, soul-crushing work you face every day, or set a garbage fire to your career as an anarchic agent of chaos under the guise of a helpful productivity tool.

AI-imager Midjourney v5 stuns with photorealistic images—and 5-fingered hands "Lack of dopamine hits, because the results are too perfect every time." photorealistic images at a quality level that some AI art fans are calling creepy and "too perfect." ......... "MJ v5 currently feels to me like finally getting glasses after ignoring bad eyesight for a little bit too long," said Julie Wieland, a graphic designer who often shares her Midjourney creations on Twitter. "Suddenly you see everything in 4k, it feels weirdly overwhelming but also amazing." ......... Over the past year, the idea that AI art generators can't render hands correctly has become something of a cultural trope. Notably, Midjourney v5 can generate realistic human hands fairly well. "Hands are correct most of the time, with 5 fingers instead of 7-10 on one hand," said Wieland........ and offering a 2x increase in image resolution.

Chaos Inside Google as Execs Try to Figure Out How to Actually Use AI "It's an intense time." ....... But Google seriously fumbled the feature's launch, with the bot's first advertisement accidentally showcasing the bot's inability to find and present accurate information to users. Google's stock nosedived as a result, leading the company to lose $100 billion in a day. .......... failed to effectively articulate what Bard is actually supposed to be........ "Bard and ChatGPT are large language models, not knowledge models," one Googler asked execs. "They are great at generating human-sounding text, they are not good at ensuring their text is fact-based. Why do we think the big first application should be Search, which at its heart is about finding true information?" .......... "The magic that we're finding in using the product is really around being this creative companion to helping you be the sparkplug for imagination, explore your curiosity, etc." ......... Google's real problem: regardless of the fact that no one's tech was or is really ready for mass consumption, OpenAI and Microsoft beat Google to the punch.

LEVI'S MOCKED FOR USING AI TO GENERATE "DIVERSE" DENIM MODELS "I'M SO SICK OF THIS SH*T." "AI generated models huh?" games journalist Jefferey Rousseau tweeted. "I guess all the people of color just don't exist anymore." ........ "Levi’s using AI to generate 'more diverse models' instead of, you know, actually hiring more diverse models is exactly the kind of crap you’d expect from this industry"

GENE HACKERS CREATE MEATBALL FROM RESURRECTED MAMMOTH MEAT WOULD YOU EAT IT?

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No More Meetings: Sidharth Kakkar



EPISODE 62 Want to go totally asynchronous? Sidharth Kakkar on remote teams & autonomous cultures
The Secret to an In Sync Startup? Ditch Your Meetings and Try an Asynchronous Culture
After his first startup, Freckle, was acquired, Kakkar went through a self-reflection exercise where he captured every lesson he’d learned over the course of his six years as a founder in a massive 35-page document. He articulated – among other things – he didn’t need his employees on-site in San Francisco to find success. Over the course of the startup’s history, Freckle had undergone an evolution from an in-office to hybrid workplace before transitioning to fully remote. ................. Ditching geographical requirements, Kakkar and Lee believed, would give Subscript a leg up by being able to tap into high-performers from a global talent pool, as well as give folks the flexibility to do their best work. ........... One of our earliest engineers, Brandon, likes to be active and take a dance class after lunch, and he comes back to work refreshed .......... “You don’t want people sitting in front of their laptops when they aren’t going to be able to be productive.” ....... he canceled meetings — all of them (well, except for the fun optional ones like social hours). .......... he also freed up his own calendar as a founder and CEO, allowing himself the time to focus on the tasks only he can accomplish ........ a radically different workplace that’s fully asynchronous .......

no micromanagement, documenting everything, and treating hiring as a segmentation exercise.

.......... Rather than a standard all-hands, the leadership team sends a context-setting email every Sunday night, which includes a living document and a recorded video going over the OKRs and goals for the week. ........ Any team standups are conducted in Slack, where folks can post updates on their progress or ask for help unblocking an issue. ......... There are monthly social meetings, like playing an online board game together, or pairing up folks for 1:1 get-to know-you sessions. There are also regular all-team offsite weeks where folks get together in person. ......... To keep the culture buzzing, there are plenty of casual Slack channels dedicated to topics like “food” or “parents.” .......... At a fast-paced startup, it’s important that decisions don’t get delayed and projects don’t grind to a halt just because someone’s stepped away from their desk. You’ve got to bake in a culture that prioritizes autonomy — and give folks the context they need to make sharp decisions without gathering a group of colleagues on a Zoom call. ......... But to run a company with no meetings, you have to loosen your grip. ......... Instead of reaping the benefits of hiring top talent, you now have an entire company dependent solely on you and your ideas. The time you freed up by canceling meetings is now filled with making decisions that you hired a team to make. ........ As a founder, Kakkar believes your role should be thinking “about the system level things I should do differently so that bad decisions – or misaligned decisions – don’t happen.” In an autonomous workplace, employees are trusted to find solutions to the problems you hired them to solve. ......... “Everyone who works for me is better at their thing than I am at their thing,” points out Kakkar. Allowing people to work independently creates what Kakkar calls a “collective Subscript brain.” ........ “Even if you think someone's making a mistake, just let them,” advises Kakkar. “Plenty of times, what appears to be a misstep might instead be just an alternative route. The rest of the time, the person will learn a ton and will make fewer mistakes in the future” ......... Forcing your opinions on others can do immense damage to your workplace culture. Not only are you potentially wrong, as Kakkar says, “As CEO, I’m wrong very, very, often and I don’t think that’s unique to me as a startup founder.” ........... Employees lose confidence in their skills. “You’ve squashed their creativity and you’ve squashed their ownership chops.” .......... Employees become more concerned with your opinion than finding the right solution. “You want to avoid folks thinking through problems like, ‘If I don’t do things Sidharth’s way, then that means he’s going to think less of me.’ Which is quite detrimental to the business.” ......... Employees become dependent on you to make decisions for them. “Then you condition folks to think, ‘I better just run all my decisions by Sidharth.’ And that is the worst possible outcome that you could imagine.” ......... While junior folks may need a bit more handholding for some of their larger projects, it’s important to still leave space for them to build up their confidence on smaller tasks (and learn from mistakes that inevitably crop up). ........... Before you give an opinion, ask yourself, “Am I right or do I just have an opinion? If I am right, what’s the cost of being right?” You might discover what you have to say is better off left unsaid. ........... Trust others to do what they do best. Focus on the things that only you can do and leave the rest to everyone else. ....... no micromanagement is not the same as no feedback. ....... Remove the sting by letting employees know what to expect and when to expect it. Creating a predictable, regular feedback cycle is critical here. ......... Make it regular. ...... Make it simple. ...... Don’t skip your high performers. ........... Several years into a startup, you might find that your memories about the early days – and your early decisions – have gone fuzzy. Repeat founder Kakkar remembers from his Freckle era, “There were so many things that we basically ended up re-litigating that we had figured out three years ago because teammates come and go and you easily forget what you decided, why you decided it, and you end up asking the same questions all over again.” .............. at Subscript, everything is documented, “We try to make sure that all the logic of every decision we make is reflected in our collective Wiki – everything, even the smallest things.” The goal is that every discussion is in writing. ..........

The Journal of Product-Market Fit

. The series of journal entries, which was started in the second month of Subscript, documents the startup’s path toward product-market fit and the problems they were thinking through at the time. ......... Kakkar says you can see how their journey went from high-level discussions around customer solutions and problems to more recent discussions about the core buyer, which is the finance leaders and other stakeholders and how they work together. “Over the course of reading through these documents, you can watch our thinking and our business evolve,” says Kakkar. .......... A discussion evolves.The natural next step, at least at Subscript, is an asynchronous, multi-threaded discussion coming together. Kakkar says the advantage here is, “You get a much richer discussion and clearer communication because if you misread something, you can ask more questions, and then if other people also misread it, then they can also see the explanation within the doc.” .......... The discussion has been had, buy-in has been procured, so a decision is imminent. As the Directly Responsible Individual (DRI) for the project, Emily is the final decision maker. “Although opinions and discussion is welcome, no one else gets to make the decision.” .......... The loop is closed with feedback. Any significant project or strategic shift will probably have both aspects that went well and ones that could be better — capture retroactive feedback in the same doc so it can be applied in the next cycle. .......... Because this decision-making process was documented, time spent re-litigating can now be spent refining a process. “Let's say a new Client Success person joins and they start wondering about a particular process or project, ‘Wait, why do we do it this way?’ They now have a comprehensive document where they can get up to speed on context,” says Kakkar. And if they have new ideas, they can just create a new section at the top or create a new doc, reference this one, and then we could continue iterating.’” ............ “In Google, you can create and share a doc with someone that doesn't live in any folder or hierarchy. That means a lot of things basically go into the ether and you will never find it again.” Kakkar prefers solutions like

Confluence or Notion

that enforce hierarchy so documents can be located easily in the future. ........... Depending on the section, there are specific sub-categories. For example, in Product and Design, in addition to RFCs, there are Discovery Interviews, Feature Requests, and the Journal of Product Market Fit. .......... Think outside the Google Docs box. Don’t be afraid to stray from what’s comfortable. Play around with some of the more hierarchical solutions and see if they unlock additional organization potential for you. ............. Make discussions documentation-first. If you hope to document things after the fact, you won’t do it. So, instead, make writing the first step in big decisions. Then, it’ll be natural to update the document with the conclusion, and the documentation becomes a by-product of the process. ........... “OKRs are a tool that are very simple sounding but actually executing on them can be quite hard and nuanced,” warns Kakkar. ......... at Subscript, OKRs reside in a combination of a living document and a 15-minute weekly pre-recorded video. “People comment on the video and on the doc so there’s a robust discussion on it. In my view, it’s a significantly more powerful thing than an all-hands because you can engage in discussion way more frequently, which I think is quite important,” says Kakkar. ...........

Keep it simple: “We have monthly OKRs with usually only one, or sometimes two, objectives, and only 2-3 key results per objective — focus is really important.”

....... Share ideas, not directives. “The set of ideas isn’t, ‘Do X, Y, Z. It’s more, ‘Problems A or B or C are the types of things standing in our way.” ....... Collect reflections to share org-wide. “Reflections can be anything from an awesome win that we had that is a great thing to celebrate together. Or it can be someone saying, ‘I’m really drowning in notifications.’ In the following week’s video, we pick a few reflections that make the most sense for everyone to have context on and use this as a prompt for more in-depth discussion, that obviously, happens asynchronously.” ......... everyone gets “the unvarnished truth” and the startup operates with full transparency. This style is often shied away from with executive leadership, because there’s a fear of discouraging employees by reporting on the negative. But if you want employees to operate autonomously, they need the full picture. ........... transparency means that big decisions are made in public — litigated in documents that anyone can access. Drafts of OKRs are in public, so anyone can comment. Both good and bad news is discussed publicly, so nothing is a secret. ........... The result is that everyone feels useful because they are being useful. .......... to hire for a unique culture, Kakkar views hiring as a segmentation exercise, similar to product-market fit ........... “Think of your company and culture as a product your employees experience. The people you need are the people who are interested in the product you're offering. This gives us very specific segmentation,” he says. “It's actually a non-trivial number of people who start interviewing at Subscript and say, ‘I'm sorry, actually, this thing is not for me,” says Kakkar. There’s even a “reverse sell” interview step in which Subscript co-founder Michelle Lee sits down with the candidate to unpack if they’re sure they’re up for the unusual culture. ............... Clear communication skills are just as important as clean code. ............. “There are questions that come up, like, ‘What do you mean I'm not assigned a ticket? What do you mean I can just do anything?’ That can be hard when you've spent a decade or two doing the opposite,” says Kakkar. ........... “It's incredibly freeing once they've made that transition, but at first it can feel a little uncomfortable.” .......... Although a meeting-heavy culture is the default for most companies, from early-stage startups to BigCos, there are serious advantages to asynchronous communication. Yes, offices allow for unplanned water-cooler moments, but what happens to the knowledge that comes out of those moments? ............. “What we've gained is this incredibly written, permanent, documented technology that has made so many things so much easier.” ............. “That’s one of the nicest things about being a founder — you get to build the company in which you’d want to work.”



Diving deep into B2B SaaS metrics with Tien Anh Nguyen, former CFO at UserTesting
Subscript wants to rid the world of subscription revenue metric spreadsheets .

https://medium.com/@sikakkar
Sidharth Kakkar

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Silvina Moschini: Extraordinary Entrepreneur

People talk of a digital sales funnel. Unicorn Hunters is an inspiration funnel.



The Road to Unicorn Status: My Story as the First Latin American to build one In March, I served as one of the four judges at the Entrepreneurship World Cup in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a prestigious competition that empowers entrepreneurs from around the world to showcase their solutions and businesses and compete for a total of US$1 million in prize money. At this year’s event, we witnessed first-hand entries from very innovative and promising startups from over 200 countries. The top 100 finalists qualified from an impressive pool of over 21,000 participants. .......... I must commend Saudi Arabia for its unparalleled commitment to women’s inclusion, innovation, and building an entrepreneurial ecosystem, which has led to significant economic progress in the region. ......... Creating a unicorn, a startup valued at over US$1 billion, is the ultimate dream of every entrepreneur. While there is no one-size-fits-all formula to building a successful business, the best startups typically possess a few key traits. They are disruptors in their field, challenging conventional business models and introducing new ideas and products. To achieve such an extraordinary feat, entrepreneurs must possess a deep understanding of their industry, be able to identify gaps and business opportunities, and have enough determination to persevere and endure when faced with failure and other challenges. ......... As teleworking became the new normal during the COVID-19 pandemic, which gave me the opportunity to become the first Latin American woman to lead a company worth US$1 billion. My business became a unicorn in October 2020 and is now valued at US$3.2 billion. ........ During my visit to Saudi Arabia, I was also invited to speak at BIBAN 2023, one of the largest startup, SME, and entrepreneurship forums in the region, which every year brings together more than 350 speakers, 750 entrepreneurs, and over 100,000 attendees. I must say I was overwhelmed by the energy and enthusiasm of the audience. ........ I’ve always lived by the motto of “skirt the rules” in my professional career, which means to go around the rules without breaking them. Having this as a guiding principle has ultimately enabled me to transform crises into opportunities. ........ The path to becoming a unicorn is not linear and requires not just passion and hard work but also a keen understanding of timing, innovation, and execution. Only then can you achieve that elusive goal. ............ In recent years I discovered that the model that enables people to access capital markets was broken and needed to be fixed. .......... The investment panel is made up of: the co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak; Rosie Rios, the former Treasurer of the United States whose signature appears on about US$1.3 trillion of American currency in circulation; Lance Bass, the charismatic bass singer in American pop boy band NSynch, US attorney and political advisor Moe Vela, and Russian entrepreneur and former banker Alex Konanykhin. ......... We also invest in these businesses and give them the visibility they need so that millions of people can also invest in them via the web. ........... At Unicorn Hunters, we live by a conviction of seeking to democratize access to capital for entrepreneurs and provide access to investment opportunities for the masses. The show has been a box office hit, watched by millions of people around the world, and has received millions of dollars in investment deals. ......... UNICOIN, a new cryptocurrency that can be used to invest in startups and other assets with high growth potential. Our currency is also geared towards women who have traditionally been marginalized in the financial system. Our goal is to build one of the largest cryptocurrencies worldwide and redefine the term smart crypto. ........... Building a startup that becomes a unicorn is an impressive achievement that takes hard work, talent, and vision. But for those who are willing to put in the effort, becoming a unicorn entrepreneur is not just about achieving financial success. It is about making a meaningful impact and leading with purpose, and inspiring others to do the same. .

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Monday, March 27, 2023

27: Artificial Intelligence

This Chipmaking Step Is Crucial to the Future of Computing—and Just Got 40x Faster Thanks to Nvidia

GODFATHER OF AI SAYS THERE'S A MINOR RISK IT'LL ELIMINATE HUMANITY "IT'S NOT INCONCEIVABLE." "Until quite recently, I thought it was going to be like 20 to 50 years before we have general purpose AI," Hinton said. "And now I think it may be 20 years or less." ....... an AGI would be capable of learning and thinking on its own to solve a vast array of problems. ...... we should be carefully considering its consequences now — which may include the minor issue of it trying to wipe out humanity. ....... the real issue on the horizon is how AI technology that we already have — AGI or not — could be monopolized by power-hungry governments and corporations ........ humanity still has a little bit of breathing room before things get completely out of hand ............ "we're going to move towards systems that can understand different world views" — which is spooky, because it inevitably means whoever is wielding the AI could use it push a worldview of their own. ....... "You don't want some big for-profit company deciding what's true"

LOW KEY HOLE OPENS UP IN SUN NATURAL PHENOMENON, OR PORTAL TO HELL?
Cultured Chicken Is a Step Closer as a Second US Company Gets FDA Approved

OpenAI Connects ChatGPT to the Internet
Nvidia Speeds Key Chipmaking Computation by 40x
Epic’s New Motion-Capture Animation Tech Has to Be Seen to Be Believed
United to Fly Electric Air Taxis to O’Hare Beginning in 2025
These New Tools Let You See for Yourself How Biased AI Image Models Are
BMW’s New Factory Doesn’t Exist in Real Life, but It Will Still Change the Car Industry
Fusion Power Is Coming Back Into Fashion
Plastic Paving: Egyptian Startup Turns Millions of Bags Into Tiles

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