For all the naysayers in this thread, I gotta say you’re wrong. Vint is a class act. Humble, helpful, and optimistic. Not to mention one of the most impactful computer scientists of our generation.
He makes it sound simple, and in some ways, it is. You have to not only build the thing, but also find the thing that people want. It’s the latter that’s as hard if not harder than the former.
In addition, the converse is not true. Just because you’ve found something that grows fast and in large market, doesn’t mean you’ll become a billionaire. With all humility, I’ve been lucky to have done that twice, but in a large company. I’m not complaining, I’m just saying that doesn’t necessarily make you a billionaire.
Eric - I've worked for NASA, ATT, IBM, HP, Amazon, and Google, not to mention a couple of startups that I started in between. None of them (except the startups, but they were brief) stayed true to their original mission. I haven't read your new book, but IMO, it's because the founders leave and the next leadership don't share the vision or values of the founders in the same way. After all, a company is a collaboration among people who want to make a contribution. When the people change, the company changes. It's inevitable.
That said, you seem to have archetypes above Costco, Patagonia, and Novo Nordisk that avoided it.
Can you comment on not what it takes to build such a company, but rather how to transform companies like those that I worked for into ones that resist gravity? Or is it too late?
This administration has made it clear in no uncertain words or actions. They don’t want immigrants. And if you think this is bad policy, please stop voting for them. Please vote for the alternative candidates. This is the easiest way to fix this nonsense.
This is a great article and I share its goals. But, it ignores something fundamental about humans as a collective — capitalism. Capitalism is what got us here and is at odds with first understanding and then building. We’ve done this before with other technologies because that’s how our societies have learned to grow and collaborate at large scale. First build and build to its limits. Then understand and fix if necessary. Nothing new here, but stopping the trend toward epistemic collapse requires building incentives into the system for us humans to coevolve with AI.
I spent 9 months at IBM in 1999. At that time, Lou’s legacy had already been solidified. He saved IBM. While not everyone agreed with his decisions, there was a culture of both honesty to customers and innovation that permeated the company. In contrast, look what happened to HP without such great leadership. Once a shining light in Silicon Valley, it turned into a shell of its former self.
He right. I’ve seen poverty in India, but I misunderstood it.
There was a 12 year old kid who guided our boat down the Narmada after we spread my Dads ashes. He was not in school because he wanted money.
I told him I’d pay him double and continue to pay him for his days work, if he’d go back to school during the day and only row boats at night.
He said no. Just give me what you owe me.
He had no hope that education in the government schools would meaningfully change anything for him. Poverty is not a single static state. It’s a negative feedback loop that requires systemic change to get out of.
Certainly research has made it into product with the help of the innovators that created the research. The dial is turned further here where the research ideas have yet to be tried and vetted. The research begins in the startup. Even in the dotcom era, the research prototypes were vetted in the conferences and journals before taking the risk to build production systems. This is no longer the case. The experiments have yet to be run.
Most of the folks on this topic are focused on Meta and Yann’s departure. But, I’m seeing something different.
This is the weirdest technology market that I’ve seen. Researchers are getting rewarded with VC money to try what remains a science experiment. That used to be a bad word and now that gets rewarded with billions of dollars in valuation.
This site is a stroll down memory lane for me. I had one of the calculator watches as a kid. Used it everywhere, especially when shopping or going out to eat with parents. It was cool to cross check totals and check tax calculations. I was a nerdy kid and craved math.
This smacks so much of a Silicon Valley episode. “Pre-idea individuals” … Sounds like they want people with no opinions. Next we will say stuff like “No thought personas”
I like this post. I see this confusion all the time! What’s the difference between ChatGPT and gpt-5 or gpt-4o, and so on. OpenAI’s carefully crafted naming schemes don’t help. Though, I come from AWS so glass houses.
Anyway, agents are control systems that using planning, tools, and a collection of underlying models. ChatGPT is an agent. What kind? The kind optimized for the general user looking to do work with public knowledge. That’s the best definition I can come up with.
Anyway, let’s make sure people understand the difference between AI systems and AI models. The former is where a lot of startup activity will be for a decade. The latter will be in the hands of a few well funded behemoths.