FT: “Over the past few years, a number of gig economy companies in the ride-hailing and food-delivery sectors have implemented algorithmically determined dynamic pay for the workers on their platforms. This means that rather than earning a fee per task based on a predictable formula (such as time or distance), they are now offered a bespoke fee for each task, which they must quickly decide whether to accept or reject in their app. Deliveroo, for example, tells riders that “the fee for each order is unique” and is based on estimates of time, distance, the rider’s location, the time of day, the day of the week, the busyness of the restaurant and a number of other factors. What’s in it for the companies? The use of these algorithms might well help to make the matching between customers and workers more efficient, potentially benefiting both sides. That said, it doesn’t take a hardened cynic to suspect another aim of the business could be to make sure it never pays more than it needs to. Indeed Len Sherman, an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, has argued that Uber’s recent improvements in profitability can be attributed to its implementation of dynamic pricing and pay.”
Balaji: “AI is amplified intelligence, not artificial intelligence. Today’s AI is not truly agentic because it’s not truly independent of you. The current crop of agents can’t set complex goals, or properly verify outputs. You have to spend a lot of effort on prompting, verifying, and system integrating. That just means the smarter you are, the smarter the AI is. It’s really amplified intelligence, more than agentic intelligence…AI doesn’t take your job, it lets you do any job. Because it allows you to be a passable UX designer, a decent SFX animator, and so on. But it doesn’t necessarily mean you can do that job well, as a specialist is often needed for polish.”
WSJ: “Flying private has become the ultimate luxury splurge for many wealthy individuals, surpassing Ferraris, Hermès Birkin bags topping $14,000 or even waterfront Hamptons homes. For many of those aspiring to join the ranks of the truly rich, having “private-jet money” is the new goal, dividing the 1% from the 0.1%.”
NYTimes: “Goodbye to the age of consumer websites and mobile apps. Artificial intelligence has ushered in an era of what insiders in the nation’s innovation capital call “hard tech.”,,,If Silicon Valley’s Web 2.0 era was defined by founders playing God on their computers by creating social networks and other services, the new era is about founders angling to create ‘superintelligent’ computers that may one day surpass humans and become a kind of ‘God’ in the machine.”
