The A.I. Daily
Paul Graham@paulg
It can be surprisingly powerful not to stream or even record a talk. It might seem that if a talk is happening anyway, there's no cost to streaming it as well. But I think there often is some cost.
Paul Graham
41 storiesPaul Graham is a co-founder of Y Combinator and a writer of essays on startups and technology. His recent posts cover a range of topics: an analysis suggesting California's proposed wealth tax could have a negative net present value once departures are counted, the rarity of a startup growing 10x a year for three years, AI agents in cyberattacks, paywalled content becoming invisible to AI, and why AI-generated replies favor phrases like "doing work."
Paul Graham@paulg
Sure, there are some kinds of thinking that don't require writing. People could think before writing was invented. But writing is an extraordinarily valuable tool in the hardest kinds of thinking. [Quoting @sfmcguire79]: The head of the philosophy department…
Paul Graham@paulg
I just did office hours with a startup that needed (among other things) a new name. I asked what adjective scientists use to describe the situation their technology is designed to induce. The .com was untaken. If only it was always like this.
Paul Graham@paulg
Our default assumption should be that it will, or has, but we won't hear about it. [Quoting @GaryMarcus]: Imagine how much everyone would rightly be freaking out if we discovered that Chinese AI did what OpenAI is doing.
Paul Graham@paulg
If you know anyone looking for a good and fairly AI-proof career, watchmaker (= watch repairer) seems a promising one. Every watchmaker seems to have more work than he can handle, mechanical watches are increasingly popular, and it will be a while before AI d…
Paul Graham@paulg
Using "think" to describe what an LLM does reminds me of the 16th century, when astronomers didn't really believe in the heliocentric model, but used it for calculations anyway because the math was simpler. We'll start by calling it thinking, then gradually a…
Paul Graham@paulg
This is a big enough problem that there's not just one startup idea here, but several. For example, there will probably be one variant meant to filter out agents, but another meant to welcome them in an orderly way. This also seems an idea you could build mor…
Paul Graham@paulg
A CS undergrad asked me where he could have most effect in the AI age. I said probably at either extreme: either close to the technology, actually making LLMs, or close to the customer, using AI to give them exactly what they want. Or maybe both if you can st…
Paul Graham@paulg
In the last 2 years, web traffic to news sites has fallen by about 28%.
Paul Graham@paulg
Although you pay for AI by the token, that's not the unit of inference, because you get more problem solving per token as models improve. Someone needs to define the unit, perhaps using a chain of increasingly hard problems, each pair of which can be solved b…
Paul Graham@paulg
If the model companies are all going to slow down, this makes it slightly more feasible to start a new model company.
That is everything