Economist: “The most significant benefits from new forms of ai will come when firms entirely reorganise themselves around the new technology; by adapting ai models for in-house data, for example. That will take time, money and, crucially, a competitive drive. Gathering data is tiresome and running the best models expensive—a single complex query on the latest version of Chatgpt can cost $1-2. Run 20 in an hour and you have passed the median hourly American wage. These costs will fall, but it could take years for the technology to become sufficiently cheap for mass deployment. Bosses, worried about privacy and security, regularly tell The Economist that they are unwilling to send their data to modify models that live elsewhere. Surveys of small businesses are not encouraging. One, by GoDaddy, a web-hosting company, suggests that around 40% of those in America are uninterested in ai tools. The technology is undoubtedly revolutionary. But are businesses ready for a revolution?”
FT: “Once upon a time, people joined social media networks so they could connect with one another. I signed up to Facebook in 2007 to see what my friends were up to online. It’s hard to remember why it was so interesting to look at lots of blurry photos of a night out, but I spent a lot of time doing it. That has now been superseded by content from strangers. I still have all my social media accounts but I rarely post anything. For many of us, the point of TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter is not to upload our own posts or look at what our friends are doing but to watch a small number of popular creators. Instead of talking to one another, we have become mostly silent onlookers. This is the result of the TikTok-ification of social media. On TikTok, videos are not designed to connect existing contacts. They are content consumed by the biggest crowd possible…What this all means is that social media companies are no longer reliant on the network effect of real-world relationships that made Facebook so compelling in the first place. Who cares if your friends haven’t joined a particular social network? They are not the ones whose content you’re interested in anyway.” NYTimes: “Think of the current large social networks as various European nations at the dawn of the 20th century. Often ruled by monarchs and autocrats (C.E.O.s), they exist in an uneasy balance with their own users and with one another. Users and social networks have an unspoken agreement: In return for entertainment, utility and an audience, users hand over control. If the network chooses to kick you out, you’re out in the cold. Choosing to leave one platform means losing your audience forever. You can’t take it with you.”
Thomas Sowell: “No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: “But what would you replace it with?” When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with?” [via CafeHayek]
Two interesting reports: OpenAI and GPT-4.
Heather Heying (in 2001): “Education should not serve primarily to make the student feel good about herself in the moment. Education is about enriching the lives of students so that they may live informed, enlightened lives in which they have the curiosity to ask “why?”, the knowledge to ask “are you sure?”, and the courage to ask “is this right and good?”.” [via Arnold Kling]
