9 Comments
Feb 16, 2023Liked by Dave Karpf

A ha ha ha ha ha yes yes yes yes AI will definitely disrupt doctors and lawyers and journalists, but not, you know, *venture capitalists*, whose mystical powers could never be replace by mere software. I'm pretty sure that actually existing ChatGPT could write a book fungible with The Network State? Writing confident bullshit is what it is good at!

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"Take a look at this tweet from Balaji Srinivasan."

First, why would you be mean to me like this.

Otherwise, entirely agree, and this taps into something that I think about a lot - the combination of this absolute overweening confidence and a complete lack of faith that their products deliver any real value to customers. Their real ask is rarely "here's a product that we think you'll love for a good price" - it's "why don't you just let us run things, okay?" which is less a commercial project than a political one.

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Why would I be mean to you like this?

<ominously> JKD, *you know what you did.*

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Great piece (which I came to because you linked to it in the May 4 edition). As a Briton, I'm constantly amazed at America's tolerance for advertising on EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME, and always suspicious of companies which are certain people will love that. Sure, Facebook and Twitter have managed to eke out an existence beyond the US; but that hasn't spilled over into our daily offline lives.

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I know there’s a lot here but I can’t believe you let Srinivasan slide on saying the AI doc would diagnose you “for free”. The unlikelihood (impossibility?) of that could be its own post.

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I’m excited to see what an AI lawyer’s defense is when an AI driven car kills somebody and their family sues the car manufacturer. That’s when these same dudes will start crying about how they need the government to protect them from “frivolous” lawsuits.

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Look, all those lawsuits are clearly "anti-innovation," and if the U.S. doesn't protect these next-gen companies from lawsuits altogether, then we risk other countries out-competing us.

...Won't someone please think of the poor innovators?!?

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Feb 16, 2023Liked by Dave Karpf

Excellent. I was trying to make a similar argument at lunch today. I referred to the same syndrome as the Flying Car Offer. I ordered mine in 1961 and am still waiting for delivery. The history of millenniarian movements is fascinating but a little depressing.

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Feb 16, 2023Liked by Dave Karpf

This is terrific thinking. If the government doesn't intervene, we'll be able to read stuff like this everywhere by 2029.

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