Here is your weekly dose of Friday Five, a list of what I’m pondering and exploring. Feel free to forward this along to friends.
NEWS - Gary Gensler squirms at being questioned about Ethereum
One of the most entertaining three minutes this week was when Gary Gensler was questioned in front of the Congress about whether Ethereum was a security or a commodity. He just couldn’t answer that simple yes or no question.
The reason it’s a big deal is because of Gary’s jihad against crypto businesses since the FTX collapse. He had sued not just influencers like Kardashians, and coins, but also exchanges like Bittrex, Coinbase and Kraken. This crackdown by SEC is being pushed back by the House. Some are even calling for his resignation.
EXCITED ABOUT - HyperWriteAI’s BrowserGPT Extension
The pace of AI innovation is hard to keep up, but honestly, I haven’t gotten much value outside of ChatGPT yet (I use Poe.com to prompt GPT with questions because it’s faster and has a mobile app). But a browser based agent seems extremely interesting. Anyone will be able to create a bot to help you through most mundane tasks. Imagine now giving it memory, higher context length and some of the tech from AutoGPT.
THOUGHT - The commodification of LLMs
Stable AI launches it’s own LLM called StableLM with 3B and 7B Param models, and with 15-65B params to follow. The code is open source, so anyone can now download and tune it to use it themselves (eventually in their own machines without using APIs).
Last week Databricks released Dolly, an open source LLM with free API for commercial use.
LLMs have become a race-to-the-bottom and the defensibility of the business is quickly eroding (still dependent on large GPU clusters for the really powerful models though - but that’s only for now). OpenAI has a 6-12 month headstart in this business, but these other players and models are quickly coming out and will be at their heels soon. I am usually for democratization, but now this is becoming a moral dillemma. What does the world look like if everyone has their own personal genie?
BINGE WATCHING - Disenchantment
I watched Season 1 of Disenchantment when it came out first tim
I watched the first season of Disenchantment in 2018, but didn’t follow through. Recently, my wife started to watch it and I joined in to watch the newer seasons. It’s much better than I remember it to be. The animated fantasy is created by Matt Groening - the creator of Futurama and Simpsons. The Simpsons is relatable to an extremely wide audience, and Futurama jumped straight into a niche and stayed there unabashedly, with many of the jokes being fresh and new because of how intellectual and specific they were, without having to rely on pop culture references. This feels like a blend of both, with a longer story arc that spans multiple seasons, but can’t really beat Futurama in my book. Rating: 4/5
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures.” - F.M. Alexander
Which of the bullet above is your favorite? What do you want more or less of? Other suggestions? Please let me know.
I will also be travelling for the next three weeks in US (going to Consensus 2023 @ Austin, then SF and NY) to get the word out about Wind.app. If you are there- let’s meet!
Just send a tweet to @realElius and put #FridayFive at the end so I can find it.
Have a wonderful weekend, all, and Eid Mubarak!
Elius