Gm. Another weekend, another party full of conversations about AI. 😂
POLLS
41+ “Each episode of "Sex and the City" inspired me to a new pair of shoes. How many is many of Manolo Blahnik shoes? Kidding me. Never enough. It's quality what counts. And don't get me started on the Dolce & Gabbana shoes...” You and my fiancée would be best friends.
6-10 “Besides sneakers, formal shoes, and Crocs why would I need more shoes? It's not that I have more than 2 feet.” I need to buy some Crocs!
11-20 “This just made me realize I need to get rid of some shoes 🙃” You are very welcome. Spring cleaning is here.
41+ “roughly 300”. That’s almost 1 per day, which is honestly goals. I heard this story that Jay-Z wears a pair of brand new white Air Force Ones every single day and I think it’s a myth but tbh sounds like the dream.
11-20 “Need more dunks and AF1s” Facts, you can never have enough AF1s.
41+ “Dear Nike, take my money. That is all!” Siri, play Nikes on My Feet.
🏠 AI
OpenAI’s Regulatory Troubles
If you’re reading this newsletter, chances are that chatGPT has become the robot assistant you’ve always wanted.
Unfortunately, not everybody loves our favorite AI chatterbox. ChatGPT has persistently been in hot water with regulators, and that is true in no place more than Europe.
The GDPR
The issues for ChatGPT stem from Europe’s adherence to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), one of the world’s strongest data privacy laws.
It was ChatGPT’s alleged breaking of the GDPR that led to Italy giving it the boot, and although the app has since returned to the land of pizza and pasta, Germany, France, and Spain have since launched their own probes into OpenAI and ChatGPT.
A Variety Of Concerns
The regulators’ concerns really boil down to how ChatGPT uses people’s data. And, because ChatGPT is trained on an immense data set that most people have no idea they are even a part of, the app runs smack into the GDPR, as:
It requires companies to have explicit consent before collecting and using personal data.
It requires transparency over how data is used and stored, something OpenAI isn’t really doing.
It requires users to be able to demand that companies remove their data, something that might not even be possible in large language models.
It requires that all personal data must be accurate, a problem for the current hallucinating-prone chatbots.
It bans collecting data from those under 13, something that OpenAI does not currently monitor for.
Thankfully, it appears that OpenAI is aware of Europe’s data concerns, as they recently rolled out the ability to turn off your ChatGPT chat history (providing an opt-out of providing training data) and announced that it would stop training on its customers’ API data.
They’ve got a long way to go to get the regulators off their backs for good, but it’s a great start.
Why should I care? Data privacy laws may be annoying to the AI companies, but they are important to us consumers. If OpenAI and its peers are able to follow the regulations, then we will have AI tools that don’t infringe on our privacy. What a world that’d be.
🏠 AI
“We have no moat” - Google
In a leaked document from inside Google, a researcher was quoted saying “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI.”
A moat is a competitive advantage — like a moat around a castle. And if an employees says his or her company has no moat, well that’s pretty bad. And if an employee says even their competitor doesn’t have a moat, that’s even worse. So who has the moat?
“The uncomfortable truth is, we aren’t positioned to win this arms race and neither is OpenAI. While we’ve been squabbling, a third faction has been quietly eating our lunch. I’m talking, of course, about open source. Plainly put, they are lapping us.”
The researcher then gave a list of “major open problems” that the open-source AI community is solving:
LLMs on a Phone: People are running foundation models on a Pixel 6 at 5 tokens / sec.
Scalable Personal AI: You can fine-tune a personalized AI on your laptop in an evening.
Multimodality: The current multimodal ScienceQA SOTA was trained in an hour.
“Open-source models are faster, more customizable, more private, and pound-for-pound more capable. They are doing things with $100 and 13B params that we struggle with at $10M and 540B. And they are doing so in weeks, not months.”
Implications according to the researcher include:
“We have no secret sauce.” The researcher believes Google’s best bet is to learn from and collaborate with people outside of Google.
“People will not pay for a restricted model when free, unrestricted alternatives are comparable in quality.” The researcher believes they need to consider where their value really is.
“Giant models are slowing us down.” The researcher believes the best models are the ones that can be iterated upon quickly.
Well, if you’re at Google or OpenAI, this may be slightly terrifying.
Why should I care? It’s a good time to be an open-source dev. The researcher says “we need them more than they need us.” The alpha may no longer be coming from Google and OpenAI, but from the builders on the outside.
🏃♀️ QUICKIES
What else is going on?
TikTok kept track of people who watched gay content.
Joe Biden isn’t allowed to join the cool kids on Bluesky.
We now know what’s inside the moon. And it’s not cheese!
AI is really freaking good at designing mRNA vaccines.
Stat: 18%: How much Coinbase beat revenue expectations by ($773M vs. $655M expected). Inject a crypto bull run into my veins.
Rabbit hole: Seismic Waves Of Gen Z Behavior (Digital Native)
🤩 MONDAY MOTIVATION
How to Stand Out via Garry Tan:
🛠️ FOUNDERS CORNER
The best resources we came across this weekend that will help you become a better founder, builder, or investor.
🗺 Cartographer is a tool for making market maps. VCs can now save approximately 4 million hours per year.
🕸 Venturefy AI is a public wiki of verified B2B relationships.
💻 DevDynamics is a new tool that gives you analytics of your code velocity. How fast are you shipping and deploying code?
💉 DOPAMINE HIT
When You Watch Too Much Succession
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