P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #314
So many incredible things.
my story 🚀
i’ve been thinking 💭
For the past couple weeks I’ve taken to asking educated professionals if they’ve tried a LLM-powered chatbot (like ChatGPT) yet. One attorney told me he keeps it open on a screen at all times to remind himself never to draft anything from scratch. Yet most people I’ve asked haven’t used it, which is a bit surprising but shouldn’t be. I’ve experienced two breakthrough technologies so far in my lifetime: the internet and mobile computing. I was an early adopter of both. I think back on mistakes I made judging both of the impacts of those breakthroughs. I underestimated the time it would take for the rest of the world to catch up to using them. And at the same time, I underestimated just how different the world would look when everybody had caught up. This breakthrough technology (the large language model is how I think of it at the moment) seems on par with the others, and I’m at risk of misjudging again.
How fast is this moving? Please help establish a baseline with this poll:
What changes when most everyone becomes a user of this technology? I think this is a great question and I don’t know the answer. Meanwhile, there’s a coming wave of practical improvements to all the digital tools and workflows you know and love. A friend recently told me he’s getting pretty good at Adobe Illustrator (he’s not a professional designer), which he uses to create marketing collateral for his startup. I imagine soon he and those like him will redirect their energy into getting pretty good at using large language models to tell Adobe Illustrator what to do.
fun facts 🙌
The Fosbury flop changed athletes’ bodies. This short post reminds me that adaptation is happening in real time all around us. “The Fosbury flop gave an advantage to athletes who start with a high center of mass. In just eight years after Fosbury won gold in Mexico City, the average height of elite male high-jumpers increased by four inches!” ~ learn more
Benihana’s Guinness world record. It was for the longest cooking marathon, back in 2018. It lasted 42 hours and 17 minutes. It was the inaugural National Fried Rice Day. There’s a culture of world record breaking at the organization. “For former wrestler and Benihana founder Hiroaki "Rocky" Aoki, breaking world records was part of his DNA. Almost 20 years after he opened the first Benihana, he began planning his next move: to break the world record for the longest balloon flight.” ~ learn more
What’s a one-hot? Imagine you had a bunch of on/off switches and only one could be in the on position at a time. That group is a one-hot. It’s used in digital circuitry and more recently natural language processing and machine learning. ~ learn more
tech, startups, internet ⚡
GPT-4 is a reasoning engine. There was once a well reasoned argument for life on mars. But it was built upon faulty information, namely a visual artifact from low-resolution photos. Similarly the large language model draws reasoned conclusions as it best can, but is hampered by faulty or limited information. When you instruct it to get updated information to answer a question, “the answer improves significantly because it has the right information to reason over.” ~ learn more
Usage as a moat in AI. This a slightly more advanced spin on the idea of a compounding advantage from more data. Tomasz Tunguz now offers a method for that advantage to compound: He highlights a recent paper about Reflexion, “an approach that endows an agent with dynamic memory and self-relection capabilities…” ~ learn more
better doing 🎯
The law of unintended consequences. What happens when a simple system tries to regulate a complex system. ~ learn more
Thoughts on goal setting. “The reason I hate OKRs is that they are often the wrong answer for startups. OKRs are just a form of a goal — they make the goal specific and measurable and all the other things a goal should be. But OKRs are a very heavyweight, structured form of goal setting that was evangelized by Google.” ~ learn more
Is pay transparency good? This is an economic working paper looking at the question. The author segments transparency into horizontal (across peers) and veritcal (across levels) and finds the outcomes differ. Horizontal transparency makes employers bargain harder, while vertical transparency can lead to more motivated employees. ~ learn more
to your health ⚕
The “mind after midnight” hypothesis. We’re prone to a series of undesirable behaviors like emotional negativity, over-thinking, increased risk-taking, and higher levels of anxiety and depression during the night. The scientists behind the theory posit that nighttime molecular levels and neuronal activities drive this. They write: “So, if we are awake at these times, neurophysiology is prone to foster behavioral dysregulation.” ~ learn more
How the ACA ruined physician-owned hospitals. “In summary, the Affordable Care Act effectively banned physician-owned hospitals. The effective ban followed lobbying efforts from non-POH organizations such as the American Hospital Association and Federation of American Hospitals. Non-POHs feared increased competition from POHs that were providing higher-quality and more cost-effective services, attracting patients and insurers. Since the ACA’s enactment, POHs have been frozen in time. It’s time for a thaw.” ~ learn more
The science of living for a really, really long time. A critical take on the research and commercialization efforts in the lifespan extension space. “The idea that aging is a disease that can be cured, that we should all wish for an anti-aging breakthrough to live forever, or at minimum much longer than nature intended — and presumably while young and dynamic — exacerbates ageism and creates pointless fear of aging.” ~ learn more
retail therapy 💸
Amazon begins flagging ‘frequently returned’ products. I haven’t encountered this first-hand yet. It seems like a pretty good idea, considering those are the items that drive a ton of excess cost and don’t please consumer. Why didn’t they do this sooner? ~ learn more
Black women say products for black hair are dangerously toxic. This is mostly about a category of products called relaxers. They are used by women to straighten their hair. The author notes that they seem safe because they’re sold in stores, but they are not regulated by the FDA and won’t be due to its mandate. “But, again, safety is an illusion when it comes to all Black haircare. Because it’s not just the chemical relaxers or hair dyes that may be dangerous, but depending on their ingredients, the co-conditioners, curly creams, and gels may not be safe either.” ~ learn more
4 of the 5 hottest apps in the U.S. in March were forged in China. I don’t mean for this to be alarmist. I know there's a news cycle about banning apps and whatnot. I mostly find it interesting! Tiktok and Shein are among the list. I hadn’t heard of the other two, CapCut and Temu. ~ learn more
under the microscope 🔬
Highly efficient and rapid generation of human pluripotent stem cells by chemical reprogramming. Making stem cells from differentiated cells just got a lot faster. “Our results highlight a distinct chemical reprogramming pathway that leads to a shortcut for the generation of human pluripotent stem cells, which represents a powerful strategy for human cell fate manipulation.” ~ learn more
A glucose fuel cell to effectively balance insulin levels. The technology from researchers at ETH Zurich could create a self-regulating circuit. “When the fuel cell powered by glucose senses excess blood sugar, it powers up. This then stimulates the beta cells to produce and secrete insulin. As blood sugar levels dip, it trips a threshold sensor in the fuel cell, so it powers down, in turn stopping the insulin production and release.” ~ learn more
thoughts of food 🍔
Food expiration dates don’t have much science behind them. Food safety researcher Jill Roberts explains the lack of standardization. Some expiration dates are based on studies of when 60% of people no longer like the taste. Others are just made up. Only baby formula has government mandated and scientifically verified expiration dates. Remember, drug expiration dates are also mostly BS. ~ learn more
on the blockchain ⛓
Gigastar to turn creators and fans into investors. YouTube creators with meaningful ad revenue from the platform will be able to offer revenue shares to their fans compliant with regulations, unlocking a new funding source for creators. I’m thrilled to be a small investor in the company with nameless ventures. ~ learn more
Tokenized art platform with offerings by Andy Warhol. Once again the key here is that they’ve successfully navigated the SEC review process, making it a legal securities offering. “Freeport will launch its platform for fine-art investing, starting with 4 iconic Warhols from collectors including the legendary Baby Jane Holzer.” ~ learn more