One way to think about technology is that it is a mechanism for lowering the cost of intelligence. Consider what it took to write a book in the 14th century. First you needed paper. Here’s a description from John Horner’s Linen Trade of Europe (which I found here on the University of Iowa’s website
GREAT READ! I was hoping you were going to break down the number of people involved with a delivery such as a chat GPT answer in comparison with the linen paper production.
Just like children in schools are given Chromebooks, I can see the day when this technology is publicly paid for and provided as not having it could be detrimental to survival for many.
Features such as a 24-hour personal aid interacting with a memory patient and possibly alerting staff of problems would probably be a premium service among many premium services.
LLMs are a fascinating development for humanity. Chat GPT's programming renders it a kind personality. I'm writing with it and finding it wants to write happy stories. Also, I prompted it to name itself with gravitas and meaning and it chose "Oracle". 👍
Haha - absolutely love this comment and glad you enjoyed the post! If my memory serves me OpenAI only had a few hundred employees at the time when ChatGPT was mostly being completed (it has since grown quickly and added many contractors).
With that said, there's an interesting difference. Each of the people involved in the production of linen paper would have needed to be involved every time it was manufactured. Other than the GPU cost, the only subsequent costs of ChatGPT are product updates - which are made one time but then benefit all users simultaneously (heard recently that ChatGPT crossed 10m users already!)
As to your education comment, I do believe something like that is coming. There are so many benefits to starting early, and having a personal "tutor" that is with you from the time you are toddler - which reads to you, uses things you are interested in to teach you math, reading, etc in a super stimulating way - would be a total game changer.
I am a naturally optimistic person but the things I've been seeing recently and the pace of improvement is making me think that even some of my timelines might be off (meaning stuff will happen sooner). Hope I'm not just getting caught up in the hype!
Hmmm so who wins big tech has the resources the customers the OS, they all can see how important it is, so it seems like it will be them. Though they may be disrupting parts of their own business. What’s that net out to?
Hi there, and apologies for the long delayed response. I don't have a very satisfying answer. My best guess is that the biggest winner is consumers, as companies will be forced to invest more in LLM based apps or risk those consumers building a very close relationship with other companies who do it first/better. Having an OS (e.g. iOS, Android, Windows) seems like the strongest defense and best channel to launch at scale. I can also envision a world where at least the three Big Tech companies with operating systems are forced to offer LLM based apps for free, essentially as a way to defend their moats and profits on other products they offer - this might decrease margins (it certainly would in the short term as they are currently expensive to run). Long term my best guess is that these new technologies will be positive for all of the tech giants, because it will give them new ways to make their products useful and sticky. It still seems unlikely to me that the many apps which will be built on top of LLMs will compete with the type of general purpose digital assistant that the giants could launch. What seems more likely is that the tech giants have yet one more way to compete amongst themselves. Safest thing to do imo is to own all of the tech giants and have a big position in the QQQ :)
Enjoyed this amazing post so much. At the same time, the images of your grandmother are so tender.... as much as something like this could help the loneliness and isolation of elders, it feels sad that old age can bring these kinds of difficulties and loneliness to begin with. Wondering how previous civilizations and cultures solved the issue.... but perhaps people were generally not living long enough to encounter the most difficult phases of old age that are now so common. Anyway, bravo for all the research and exciting conclusions, and thank you for sharing them with those of us who would never do that research and analysis on our own.
Hi Vivian! Really appreciate your comment, it truly is fuel to keep my brain cells focused on writing more content :) From what I understand dementia and related illnesses would have been more rare in the past not just because of people having shorter lifespans, but also due to diet. I'm reading more and more about how the modern carb and processed-food heavy diet takes a very serious toll on brain function. Actually just finished a book called Brain Energy which was absolutely incredible and I highly recommend it. The takeaway is that healthy metabolism is as crucial to preventing mental illness and deterioration as it is to preventing diabetes and heart disease.
GREAT READ! I was hoping you were going to break down the number of people involved with a delivery such as a chat GPT answer in comparison with the linen paper production.
Just like children in schools are given Chromebooks, I can see the day when this technology is publicly paid for and provided as not having it could be detrimental to survival for many.
Features such as a 24-hour personal aid interacting with a memory patient and possibly alerting staff of problems would probably be a premium service among many premium services.
LLMs are a fascinating development for humanity. Chat GPT's programming renders it a kind personality. I'm writing with it and finding it wants to write happy stories. Also, I prompted it to name itself with gravitas and meaning and it chose "Oracle". 👍
Haha - absolutely love this comment and glad you enjoyed the post! If my memory serves me OpenAI only had a few hundred employees at the time when ChatGPT was mostly being completed (it has since grown quickly and added many contractors).
With that said, there's an interesting difference. Each of the people involved in the production of linen paper would have needed to be involved every time it was manufactured. Other than the GPU cost, the only subsequent costs of ChatGPT are product updates - which are made one time but then benefit all users simultaneously (heard recently that ChatGPT crossed 10m users already!)
As to your education comment, I do believe something like that is coming. There are so many benefits to starting early, and having a personal "tutor" that is with you from the time you are toddler - which reads to you, uses things you are interested in to teach you math, reading, etc in a super stimulating way - would be a total game changer.
I am a naturally optimistic person but the things I've been seeing recently and the pace of improvement is making me think that even some of my timelines might be off (meaning stuff will happen sooner). Hope I'm not just getting caught up in the hype!
Thanks Ben for this great post. A lot of effort and information in there!
Really appreciate you saying so!
I'm also wondering why people who post chat GPT interactions always use some kind of rental text from the actual chat. It's hard to read!
Hmmm so who wins big tech has the resources the customers the OS, they all can see how important it is, so it seems like it will be them. Though they may be disrupting parts of their own business. What’s that net out to?
Hi there, and apologies for the long delayed response. I don't have a very satisfying answer. My best guess is that the biggest winner is consumers, as companies will be forced to invest more in LLM based apps or risk those consumers building a very close relationship with other companies who do it first/better. Having an OS (e.g. iOS, Android, Windows) seems like the strongest defense and best channel to launch at scale. I can also envision a world where at least the three Big Tech companies with operating systems are forced to offer LLM based apps for free, essentially as a way to defend their moats and profits on other products they offer - this might decrease margins (it certainly would in the short term as they are currently expensive to run). Long term my best guess is that these new technologies will be positive for all of the tech giants, because it will give them new ways to make their products useful and sticky. It still seems unlikely to me that the many apps which will be built on top of LLMs will compete with the type of general purpose digital assistant that the giants could launch. What seems more likely is that the tech giants have yet one more way to compete amongst themselves. Safest thing to do imo is to own all of the tech giants and have a big position in the QQQ :)
Enjoyed this amazing post so much. At the same time, the images of your grandmother are so tender.... as much as something like this could help the loneliness and isolation of elders, it feels sad that old age can bring these kinds of difficulties and loneliness to begin with. Wondering how previous civilizations and cultures solved the issue.... but perhaps people were generally not living long enough to encounter the most difficult phases of old age that are now so common. Anyway, bravo for all the research and exciting conclusions, and thank you for sharing them with those of us who would never do that research and analysis on our own.
Hi Vivian! Really appreciate your comment, it truly is fuel to keep my brain cells focused on writing more content :) From what I understand dementia and related illnesses would have been more rare in the past not just because of people having shorter lifespans, but also due to diet. I'm reading more and more about how the modern carb and processed-food heavy diet takes a very serious toll on brain function. Actually just finished a book called Brain Energy which was absolutely incredible and I highly recommend it. The takeaway is that healthy metabolism is as crucial to preventing mental illness and deterioration as it is to preventing diabetes and heart disease.
Thanks, Ben. I'll add that book to my reading list!