you just need to look at Mythos to see the jump in performance from a 10T(?) model. As they scale, they get more capable. We might have an yearly release, but I believe the releases will continue, as long as scaling laws are in tact, and there's huge problems still need solving. (think cancer)
because no one watches them, so better be available, and in peoples minds, grab attention (which is the #1 commodity in the world) than fall to obscurity
i don't know if they were ever profitable. But certainly i think there's been a paradigm shift to commercializing everything (mostly through advertising) the last decade or two and if you fall behind, whatever growth you were aiming for goes away and revenues shrink.
And also almost all advertising revenues have probably become centralized with google search, social media by facebook, and youtube, etc. That combined with rising costs, and higher opportunity cost to instead do something else means these sites are biting the dust.
James Somers is awesome. Every now and then, I see another of his articles that comes up here. Really great writer, who didn't set out to be one, but switched from a career in tech I believe.
This is super interesting. I've been visiting HN every day, multiple times a day for the past year. Over the last month, as I was preparing for interviews I removed the HN bookmark on my browser tab, and almost for weeks in between interviews I would go without checking it.
And honestly I think I was healthier, and happier. Reading, and bookmarking things on HN overflowed my brain with information, and created more anxiety in me I think. Just visiting back to see what I missed after not checking it the past week, and I was better off without it I feel.
Kinda sad that Netflix opted for quantity over quality. It shows with all the inane sequels like Murder mystery 2, Extraction 2 and with the idea of just filling an uninteresting script with some stars to make the numbers like Red Notice. And many of the top 50 shows reflect just that. The last Netflix original I watched and liked was The Queen's Gambit.
Wealth begets wealth. Capital compounds with no effort. A reminder for myself to revisit Capital by Thomas Piketty from 2013(!)
"When inequality gets too extreme, then it becomes useless for growth, and it can even become bad because it tends to lead to high perpetuation of inequality over time and low mobility."
Funnily enough, I was watching the Spotify series on Netflix, The Playlist, and saw Sony Music Group's fight with the Pirate Bay(which covers similar themes) before Spotify exploded on to the scene. This was a real event too covered in the early episodes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_trial
> Otherwise, to be relevant in guiding research towards AGI, they need to stay a going concern, and that means not running off 90% of the employee base.
That's why they presumably agreed to find a solution. But at the same time shows that in essence, entities with for-profit incentives find a way to get what they want. There certainly needs to be more thought and discussion about governance, and how we collectively as a species or each company individually governs AI.
The board was a non profit board serving the mission. Mission was foremost. Employees are not. One of the comments a member made was, if the company was destroyed, it would still be consistent with serving the mission. Which is right.
The fallout showed non-profit missions can't co-exist with for-profit incentives. And the power that investors were exerting, and employees (who would also benefit from the recent 70B round they were going to have) was too much.
And any disclaimer the investors got when investing in OpenAI was meaningless. It reportedly stated they would be wise in viewing their investment as charity, and they can potentially lose everything. And there was an AGI clause that said it will reconsider all financial arrangements, that Microsoft and other investors had when investing in the company was all worthless. Link to Wired article with interesting details -https://www.wired.com/story/what-openai-really-wants/
It's not necessarily consultants in these companies that are malicious. I find working with many to be honest, and deeply caring about their work. It's that some of the management in these companies are incentivized to engage in duplicitous behavior to gain clients one way or another.
Working for a tech consultancy before, they do have clear lines to distinguish for legal reasons and make you take courses. For e.g., you can't give or receive gifts of any monetary value, etc. But management find other ways, to gain client's trust and affection. One way is to overwork the consultants, and other is to share information that is privy sometimes.
I got back into Pokemon collecting for a bit during the pandemic, like many others . And boy it showed how fun and awesome collecting the original cards were in the late 90's/early 00's. Then with the 25th anniversary, they did a great job marketing it with special releases and a lot of hype!
I also went to a Pokemon TCG conference in Toronto last year, and it was amazing! There were around 10,000 people there. People of all ages, parents and kids, older collectors. It really showed the longevity and cultural brand power of Pokemon!