Ben Thompson: “The truth is that Apple’s lack of investment in AI was always going to be a short to medium-term win: the company doesn’t have to spend on infrastructure, and everyone still needs a device. The real threat is in the long-term: what happens if AI becomes so good that it obviates traditional user interfaces? Or, to put it another way, what if the point of integration that is most compelling is not a traditional operating system and hardware device, but rather AI and a dedicated device?”
Ethan Mollick: “AI capability has been running ahead of AI accessibility. The models have been smart enough to do extraordinary things for a while now, but we’ve been making people access that intelligence through chatbots. And, as that cognitive load research shows, the chatbot format is actively working against them. As interfaces improve, we’re going to see what happens when a much larger number of people can actually use what AI is capable of. Every new interface that closes even part of that gap will feel like a leap in AI capability, even when the models haven’t changed (though they are still changing). My guess is that a lot of the “AI disappointment” people sometimes express comes not from the AI being bad, but from the interfaces being wrong. We built one of the most powerful technologies in recent history and then made people access it by typing into a chat window. That will change soon.” [via Jaimit]
WSJ: ““The Laws of Thought” is…a rigorous and captivating account of how cognition can be modeled via three mathematical frameworks: logic, artificial neural networks (“mathematical systems that emulate the operation of the brain”) and probability theory. It’s a “quest for a mathematical theory of the mind,” as the subtitle puts it—opening with Aristotle and ending with artificial intelligence.”
Logan Bartlett: “Across the internet, cloud, and mobile eras, the companies that became durable winners were predominantly founded in years 4 and 5 of each platform shift. Google and Salesforce after Netscape. Snowflake and Datadog after AWS launch. Robinhood and Coinbase after the App Store. ChatGPT launched in November 2022. We are in year 4. It certainly feels possible that OpenAI and Anthropic capture the lion’s share of value this go round, but the last 3 transitions were largely consistent in this. This is also the most crowded, fastest-moving, highest-bar environment I’ve seen, with rounds closing in days and valuations that require exceptional execution to justify from day one. It’s hard not to be excited and uncertain every day.”
