WSJ: “Chief information officers say that for some of their most common AI use cases, which often involve narrow, repetitive tasks like classifying documents, smaller and midsize models simply make more sense. And because they use less computing power, smaller models can cost less to run. The shift comes as companies slowly move to deploy more AI use cases, while they are also under pressure to manage costs and returns on the pricey technology. “A giant LLM [large language model] that’s been trained on the entire World Wide Web can be massive overkill,” said Robert Blumofe, chief technology officer at cybersecurity, content delivery and cloud computing company Akamai. For enterprise use cases, he said, “You don’t need an AI model that knows the entire cast of ‘The Godfather,’ knows every movie that’s ever been made, knows every TV show that’s ever been made.””
Epigram on main page of WSJ’s Editorial Board: “We speak for free markets and free people, the principles, if you will, marked in the watershed year of 1776 by Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations.” So over the past century and into the next, the Journal stands for free trade and sound money; against confiscatory taxation and the ukases of kings and other collectivists; and for individual autonomy against dictators, bullies and even the tempers of momentary majorities.” [via CafeHayek]
NYTimes: “I left the bustle of Petitgrain Boulangerie in Santa Monica, Calif., with a plain croissant still hot from the oven, and though I tried to let it cool, I couldn’t. The outside shattered into so many fine, crisp, delicate layers across a tender, bubbled honeycomb — delicious, with the softest trace of yeast and a bronzed, malty sweetness. As it collapsed between my teeth, it puffed warm, butter-scented air that made it feel like I wasn’t just eating this croissant, but breathing it in.Fingers shining with fat, jeans covered in crumbs, I started to imagine, just for a second, what it would look like if I rearranged my life and moved to this side of town, in walking distance to this bakery. It felt so good to be reminded that in the competitive and often absurd era of extreme croissants, a plain one could have this effect.”
FT: “India’s brokerages, bourses and government may be enjoying swelling fee income and tax revenues from this rapid expansion, but the country’s capital market watchdog has repeatedly sounded warnings over retail losses as the notional value of index options trades more than doubled in the past financial year to $907tn, according to exchange operator NSE. Cheap access to options, whose leverage facilitates high exposure for modest outlay but magnifies the risk of losses, has resulted in what Ashish Gupta, chief investment officer at Mumbai-headquartered Axis Mutual Fund, calls the “gamification” of the stock market. “In India, there’s no other form of legalised gambling,” Gupta says. His research found that active traders in the country shot up to 4mn last year from less than half a million before the pandemic. Most are below the age of 40 and hail largely from India’s smaller cities.”
