sadface

This is absolutely mindblowing. I understand that these LLMs are essentially "really smart autocomplete", but it's crazy to me how could Bing/Sydney could actually go this far to seemingly express emotions and desires. It's like they gave the AI a personality (that, yes, can go unhinged, although that's almost misses the point).

It really feels like he's interacting with a person here. How can they do this??

The way this is phrased makes it seem like this "treadmill" is a bad thing. I acknowledge that this is bad for an individual, but I actually think this is overall good for humanity and is a major reason why we've developed so much so quickly.

We know plenty of animal species are really smart, but they've never figured out how to build skyscrapers or generate electricity. We chalk this up to the fact that "humans are just smarter", but even in humans brains alone don't bring accomplishments. There has to be associated action, and people need motivation to actually take that action.

Our ancestors didn't say "well I've figured out how to grow some wheat and live in a straw hut, so I'm good now". Sure, they probably did for a while, but soon they started looking for easier ways to grind their flour and tastier ways to cook it because they stopped being satisfied with the status quo. Extend this for ten millenia and now we have billions of people connected to a global network from devices in their pocket.

If humans were always perfectly happy all the time, I don't think we'd have come as far as we have. The "return to dissatisfied normalcy" that comes over time is part of our nature and it may be one of the most important parts for explaining why we got here.

Despite the name, it's probably less about mirroring college applications and more about competing for top undergrad/grad students who would otherwise be recruiting for companies like FB, Google, Bain, etc. When I was in grad school, the top tier firms started recruiting in the fall and their incoming graduates had all accepted their full-time offers before winter break. I believe this is the same for undergrad.

In a lot of ways, you could think about this as giving students more optionality as they will have the opportunity to consider YC alongside other extremely compelling opportunities. It's smart for YC to try and get in front of students when they're in a better mindset to evaluate that tradeoff.

I'm sure there are a lot of students who would have be great YC candidates but end up signing a Google offer in the fall and just stay there for years because the pay is so good it doesn't make sense to leave...

Thanks for linking this. I had a pretty tough time getting quotes on a custom PCB a few months ago. If I'd had this article ahead of time, everything would have made quite a bit more sense!

I appreciate the pun. ;-)

Anyway, I think self censorship is an expected behavior in a peaceful society. For example: you don't bring up recently deceased significant others, comment on awkward physical characteristics of strangers, or mock the suffering of others, without expecting repercussions. People learn at a very young age that certain topics should be avoided for the sake of "keeping the peace".

50 years ago you could use the n-word in business meetings. Now, not so much, but for a long time many people were "self-censoring" themselves to keep the peace in their workplaces. Some still are, but I imagine that most people these days are happy to be in a workplace where n-words are not tolerated. Not just for their own "sensibilities", but also the knowledge that their black coworkers/friends can be in an environment that is actively less hostile.

What we're seeing is the continuing shift in standards for peaceful society. So far I think the track record on these shifts is pretty good, so I'm inclined to let this ride for a while, even if some people have to keep "self-censoring" some of the time.

Good. People should be thinking twice.

Freedom of Speech is not the same thing as Freedom from Consequences. Unless we decide that being "aggressively antisocial" should be a protected class, private companies should have every right to fire employees who they deem toxic for their culture.

Great information here. This is well understood on my end. I just wanted to make a quick point because the topic was on food consumption and I don't think many people ever truly connect the dots between carbon atoms in the atmosphere -> carbon atoms in their salad -> carbon atoms in their breath (atmosphere).

Yes, but surface-level biology is pretty much carbon neutral. All of the carbon you exhale to the atmosphere comes from the food you eat, which gets its carbon from the atmosphere via photosynthesis.

Obviously there are edge cases, but by and large Global Warming is happening because we're pulling carbon out of the ground and putting it in the sky.

Interesting information! I really like the analysis of video content, particularly the "founder presence" info. However, I think that the headline results that isolate video cost when looking at raise results is a bit of an odd way to do this analysis because it leaves out the rest of the marketing mix. I'm actually preparing a crowdfunding campaign myself (first time), and I'd think that the main levers for success would be, in no order of importance:

A: Pre-campaign support (solid email list, social media presence, etc), B: Video Quality, C: Rest of Page quality (ie: copy, visuals, etc), D: Paid advertising, E: Media Coverage, F: (Most important) Compelling product & pricepoint

Money Raised should be a function of a-f (and several other factors I'm sure I'm missing) so isolating any one of those variables on its own is not that useful. Presumably a campaign with a $100k budget for its video has also made significant investments elsewhere.

Something I'm still trying to figure out: assuming there is a limited budget, would one rather spend 20k on a video or 5k on the video + 15k more on Facebook ads? My thinking is that the 3M extra views (assuming $5 cpm) would be worth more than the marginal increase in video quality from $5k-$20k.

Granted, if there's a good ROI on online ads, the budget there should theoretically be "unlimited", but that's not always the case. Curious about other peoples thoughts here.

Maybe 30% of graduates of top 30 universities. There are lots of CS grads from lower ranked schools that are definitely not getting fought over by the likes of Google/FB/Amazon...

I'd be interested in seeing how a "single payer" approach to college financing would work.

High level - The government pours many billions of dollars into colleges and universities every year, but because the money is disseminated via millions of individual loans to individual students, any buying power (and downward pressure on prices) that the government could provide is effectively eliminated. For a university this is a best case scenario: sell a "necessary" product to millions of individual customers with infinite money.

If instead, the universities could only "sell" to the government, the government would be able to actually demand meaningful concessions in price.

I'm thinking something like:

1. Students -$-> Gov't -$-> Universities (many more sellers than buyers)

Instead of:

2. Gov't -$-> Students -$-> Universities (many more buyers than sellers)

Easy to see how case 1 would keep prices lower in an ideal world...

Totally agree in principle, but it does seem like just "getting into" the food delivery business is a humorously quick way to get a $X00M valuation in the private markets.

The trouble is you can't really traverse the waterline because there are lots of cliffs on either side of the beach - hence the importance of this access road.

You're right, but it would still be better to realize a small loss early in the crash and and buy back in at the bottom than just ride the whole thing out. Of course, that kind of timing is pretty much impossible so everyone suggests you don't do it.