tl
06–22–25
the lathe
all roads lead to edison
This book is so good, I kissed the boy who gave it to me.
To explain why it has such a profound effect on me - from tears of joy to spiraling existential crises in my dorm room - I have to go back to the event that inevitably tee'd up my first kiss.
The release of ChatGPT... no fr.
I was 19 years old and in the trenches trying my best to understand BERT analyzers. But my concern for BERT evaporated when GPT was first released. My co-founder and I were still deep in the days of our first startup, and AI seemed to be the piece of the puzzle we were missing.
Soon, I was having trouble sleeping at night because I was imagining the incredible potential of this new technology. But I’ll be honest, I'm not often the kind of optimist to completely release her inhibitions. I was also overcome with visions of a dystopian future powered by AI.
So even though I was beginning to understand that I could not resist the draw of an exciting future in tech, I was still very much a conscious objector to the industry - in particular, Meta.
There are many horrendous examples of Meta farming the energy and intellect of the world's young (and old) population for the sake of driving ad revenue. There are arguably thousands of human deaths caused directly by Meta's products, with millions feeling the reverberations of mental atrophy to the point of near ruin.
And you might be thinking "okay okay, everyone knows social media is bad for you. But of thousands of deaths? Millions of lives being ruined? Isn't that hyperbolic?"
But my answer is no: the general population never had a chance because Meta is one of the first companies that sprouted in a time where technology completely overtook the speed of regulation.
The speed and complexity of software, the inability for governments to understand and regulate it, is something Mark Zuckerberg inarguably took advantage of. And this practice produced the prevailing framework to define the Silicon Valley process: "Move fast and break things."
One of the more egregious examples comes from Peter Thiel, who was quoted as saying that if you wanted to change the world, you should either go into politics or software.
But if you go into software, you won't need to ask anyone's permission.
To explain why it has such a profound effect on me - from tears of joy to spiraling existential crises in my dorm room - I have to go back to the event that inevitably tee'd up my first kiss.
The release of ChatGPT... no fr.
I was 19 years old and in the trenches trying my best to understand BERT analyzers. But my concern for BERT evaporated when GPT was first released. My co-founder and I were still deep in the days of our first startup, and AI seemed to be the piece of the puzzle we were missing.
Soon, I was having trouble sleeping at night because I was imagining the incredible potential of this new technology. But I’ll be honest, I'm not often the kind of optimist to completely release her inhibitions. I was also overcome with visions of a dystopian future powered by AI.
So even though I was beginning to understand that I could not resist the draw of an exciting future in tech, I was still very much a conscious objector to the industry - in particular, Meta.
There are many horrendous examples of Meta farming the energy and intellect of the world's young (and old) population for the sake of driving ad revenue. There are arguably thousands of human deaths caused directly by Meta's products, with millions feeling the reverberations of mental atrophy to the point of near ruin.
And you might be thinking "okay okay, everyone knows social media is bad for you. But of thousands of deaths? Millions of lives being ruined? Isn't that hyperbolic?"
But my answer is no: the general population never had a chance because Meta is one of the first companies that sprouted in a time where technology completely overtook the speed of regulation.
The speed and complexity of software, the inability for governments to understand and regulate it, is something Mark Zuckerberg inarguably took advantage of. And this practice produced the prevailing framework to define the Silicon Valley process: "Move fast and break things."
One of the more egregious examples comes from Peter Thiel, who was quoted as saying that if you wanted to change the world, you should either go into politics or software.
But if you go into software, you won't need to ask anyone's permission.
more soon :]